Chapter 143: The X-Men Squad Goes Down — and Tony Gets Stopped
"Within my domain, you lose your senses. Sight. Smell. Hearing."
Matt's voice was even. He walked among the four of them as he spoke, knowing they couldn't hear him, explaining anyway — less for their benefit than for his own sense of order.
"Don't worry. I won't kill you."
He said it to himself as much as to them.
He'd spent years believing in the federal justice system. He'd put people away through it, trusted it with his career and his conscience and a significant portion of his health. The government was imperfect, but it was the structure — the thing that made accountability possible. He'd built his life around that belief.
The government currently attacking his neighborhood had done something interesting to that belief.
He stood in the silence of the Bankai space and felt the old faith crack along lines he hadn't known were there. What he had left wasn't cynicism. It was something harder. Cleaner.
You don't kill. That's still the line.
He walked toward Havok.
Inside the sensory void, Havok had nothing — no sound, no light, no ground beneath his feet that felt like ground. The pain arrived without warning, complete and immediate, and he went down before he understood that he'd been hit.
Matt moved to Iceman.
"The only way to see anything in here," he said conversationally, to the man who couldn't hear him, "is to hold my sword. You won't get the chance."
He swung.
Iceman was reaching out in every direction, trying to locate something to orient himself by. The strike hit before his hands connected with anything, and he dropped.
Colossus was still thinking positive.
Okay. Can't hear, can't see, that's fine. Scott will figure something out. He always does. We'll be out of here in a minute.
He was in the middle of this thought when Matt raised his hand and spoke.
"Hadō #88: Hiryū Gekizoku Shinten Raihō."
The wave of force that came out was something Colossus had not encountered before. He was partially steel — not fully, not fast enough — and the blast hit the seam between flesh and metal and found the weaker material. He went down hard. His eyes, when they unfocused, held genuine disbelief.
He beat me.
He just— beat me.
That left Cyclops.
Scott had arrived at the same conclusion independently: if the barrier couldn't be broken by locating and physically destroying it, he'd have to blanket a quadrant and accept the risk. He couldn't fire in all directions — not with his teammates somewhere in the dark. But one direction, maximum power—
He pulled off his visor.
The optic blast went out in a straight line at full intensity, sustained.
Matt felt the energy wash over the Bankai field from the inside and genuinely paused.
Strong, he thought. Stronger than I expected.
"It won't work," he said. He walked toward Scott's position through the light that Scott couldn't see him in. "The barrier isn't fragile. You'll exhaust yourself before you breach it."
Scott kept firing.
Matt cut him across the legs.
Scott staggered back, still firing, gritting through it — and in doing so, he overextended, and the second strike took him down.
The optic blast stopped.
The Bankai field collapsed with Cyclops no longer sustaining enough focus to maintain his own disruption attempt. Sensation flooded back in — light, sound, the smell of gunsmoke from the surrounding streets.
Scott blinked. His vision cleared.
His teammates were on the ground around him. Havok. Bobby. Piotr.
No.
He lunged forward, or tried to — his legs gave out. He caught himself on one hand.
He looked for Matt.
Matt was standing a few feet away. Watching him.
The rage was immediate and total. You—
He never finished the thought.
Matt hit him once, precisely, and Scott's vision went dark before it could turn into anything.
In the silence after, Matt crouched and checked each of them in turn. Breathing. Stable. None of them in danger.
He stood, sheathed the sword, and didn't look back at them.
There were residents still in the streets. He could hear the fighting from three different directions. He had more to do.
He walked toward the heaviest noise.
Stark Tower
Tony was already suited up.
He'd had the armor on for six minutes — standing in the launch bay, running diagnostics he didn't need to run, listening to Hell's Kitchen on every frequency he could access. Ethan was up there somewhere taking on Captain Marvel while the neighborhood fought a two-front ground war.
He moved toward the exit.
Rhodey stepped into the doorway.
Tony stopped.
"You're not seriously blocking me right now."
Rhodey didn't move.
"Rhodey."
"Tony."
"I'm asking you one time. Step aside."
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