"This is bad!"
Lurking in the tall grass below, Logan felt his heart hammer against his ribs as he watched the massive metal shackles snap shut around Goku. The sheer volume of metal Pierce had summoned was enough to hold a main battle tank in place.
But the old soldier forced himself to breathe. Panic was a luxury he couldn't afford. Charging out now would be a death sentence; his only sliver of hope lay in waiting for Magneto to descend to the ground to inspect his prize. Only then, at close range, could a silent ambush work.
Logan hadn't been idle during the aerial chase. While the sky was filled with fire and steel, he had crawled through the shadows, ending the life of the cowering Dr. Rice before the man could escape. Then, utilizing the primal survival skills he'd honed in the trenches of two World Wars, he had fashioned a crude bow and several arrows.
The shafts were pure wood, harvested from the scrub brush—no metal for a magnet to catch. He had tipped them with the concentrated sedative from the Reavers' discarded tranquilizer pistols.
Dr. Rice had intended to capture the children alive, so his men were well-stocked with high-grade anesthetic. It was a potent irony: the very tools meant to enslave the children might now be the key to their salvation.
*Thump-thump. Thump-thump.*
The sound of a heartbeat, amplified and distorted, began to echo across the desert.
"ROOOOOOAR!"
Just as Logan drew his wooden bow string, aiming at the descending figure of Magneto, a primal, earth-shaking howl tore through the night. The sound was so violent it felt like a physical blow to the chest.
Logan froze. High in the Sokovian command center, Baron Strucker froze as well.
Before their eyes, the boy beneath the metal shackles was disappearing. His body was expanding at a nauseating speed, muscles bulging and tearing through cloth, fur erupting like a dark tide over his skin.
The heavy metal locks, designed to hold a Level 4 mutant, groaned and then shattered like glass as the boy's frame surged upward. In seconds, a terrifying, moon-mad Great Ape, standing over fifteen meters tall, towered over the desert floor.
"Kong?"
The name flashed through both of their minds simultaneously, a reference to the films that had captivated audiences years ago. But the reality was far more terrifying than a movie.
A chilling question followed: 'Is this truly a mutant?' Mutation was a broad spectrum, but transforming into a mountain-sized primate under a full moon was outside any known X-gene profile. This wasn't a biological shift; it was a total molecular metamorphosis.
"ROOOOOAR!"
Under the cold radiance of the full moon, the Oozaru raised its massive head and let out a second scream of pure, unadulterated rage. Its glowing red eyes immediately locked onto the tiny silver speck in the sky—the Magneto cyborg that had dared to bind it.
The Great Ape slammed its fists into the earth, causing the ground to split in a jagged spiderweb of craters. With a single explosive push from its tree-trunk-sized legs, the beast launched itself into the air, reaching for the heavens.
Strucker yelped, his fingers blurring across the controls to pull the cyborg higher. He desperately commanded the surrounding wreckage to form a shield.
He had gathered nearly thirty thousand tons of scrap metal during the fight. He believed this mountain of steel would be an impenetrable fortress—a barrier that even the boy's energy beams couldn't pierce.
*CRUNCH.*
The defensive wall, thirty thousand tons of reinforced industrial steel, disintegrated under the Great Ape's fist. It didn't feel like metal hitting metal; it felt like a sledgehammer hitting a dry cracker. The shield didn't just break; it pulverized into a cloud of dust.
"Impossible!" Strucker screamed.
He wrenched the cyborg to the side, narrowly avoiding a follow-up swipe that would have swatted Magneto out of existence. The sensors in the cyborg's eyes were screaming.
The data was nonsensical: the boy's raw physical power hadn't just increased—it had multiplied by at least ten. If the boy's strength was "terrifying" before, it was now "apocalyptic."
'How am I supposed to fight this?' Strucker thought, his face pale with cold dread.
Even if he stayed at the edge of the atmosphere and rained down tens of thousands of tons of metal, he doubted he could draw blood from a hide that dense.
And if the ape landed a single hit? The thirty-five years of research invested into the Magneto cyborg would vanish in a spray of oil and bone.
Without the original Magneto body as a reference, creating another high-functioning clone or cyborg could take decades. While Strucker had stolen Rice's cloning data, he knew its limitations.
Rice could clone Logan because he'd spent half a century mapped to that specific X-gene. Every mutant was a unique biological puzzle. Hydra's biology department, despite its black-market brilliance, would be starting from scratch without the Master of Magnetism's physical remains.
Moreover, a fifteen-meter ape wasn't something you could hide. The U.S. government and S.H.I.E.L.D. would be here within the hour. Not even "The Clairvoyant" could cover up a giant monster sighting of this magnitude. Nick Fury was many things, but he wasn't blind.
'Withdrawal,' Strucker decided. 'I'll find another way to capture this... thing.'
His interest in the boy had eclipsed everything else. This wasn't just a mutant; it was a god of destruction. If Hydra could control even one of these Great Apes, the world would bow overnight.
Strucker scanned the ground for Dr. Rice, intending to extract the scientist. But his heart sank when the cyborg's thermal sensors found him. Rice lay in the dirt, his chest a hollow ruin where Logan's claws had punched through his heart.
"Damn that Wolverine!"
Strucker had been so focused on the ape that he'd let the old dog slip through his fingers. Without Rice to refine the cloning process, the dream of a Magneto army was pushed back another forty years.
Seeing the Great Ape preparing for another leap, Strucker didn't hesitate. He diverted all power to the magnetic thrusters, aiming to break the sound barrier and flee.
But he had once again underestimated the Saiyan heritage.
The Oozaru didn't jump this time. It planted its feet, hunched its massive shoulders, and unhinged its jaw. A swirling vortex of white-hot energy began to condense within its throat.
*BOOM!*
A terrifying energy blast, over two meters in diameter, erupted from the Great Ape's mouth. Unlike Goku's Kamehameha, which required a few seconds of focus and stance-work, the "Mouth Cannon" was nearly instantaneous. It was a roar made of pure, raw destruction, and it was headed straight for Magneto's back.