I spent a few more minutes talking to Rin, who asked endless questions about the demons, mutants, and everything else he could think of. He'd been with HYDRA since he was thirteen and was stuck in the laboratory, gritting his teeth through endless testing until his powers manifested half a year ago. Since then, he's slowly climbed the ranks and earned himself a spot in Pierce's latest home rotation.
As for why security was so scant in Pierce's home, he looked at me like I was insane. They hadn't expected a fucking teleporter to show up and wreck their shit.
I suppose he had a point.
When we arrived back at the bedroom, Jean was finally done, and she had Pierce pressed against the wall with his eyes rolled back and his mouth sagged, drooling. With a swish of her hand, she slammed him into the ceiling. Another swish threw him right at my feet.
Rin stepped back, slightly unsettled by the display, while Natasha and Clint gave her a wide berth.
I could feel Jean's emotions swell through her bond. It took everything in her not to squish him like an overripened tomato. The rage she tried to bottle began to leak from another hole, so to speak. The entire house started to shake.
Knowing where we were headed, I produced a Pinion from the Thunder Harpy and threw it straight through Pierce's open neck. It bit through the meat and stuck to the floorboards.
Jean settled like a kettle settling from a stove's heat, but her emotions still burned hot.
"He has hundreds of them," she said.
"Well, shit."
"Of what?" Rin asked.
"Mutants," Clint said.
"He gave them to those animals, Strucker and Trask. We need to save all of them. They need us."
"We will." We'd expected this outcome, planned for it even, so it was no surprise. "After we eliminate each of them and their highest lieutenants. Then we make the call."
Jean looked choked up, but she didn't argue. This was always the plan. We were here to assassinate first and rescue later. After Hydra's leadership was confirmed dead, SHIELD would swoop in with Jean and me at the helm. This play was to insulate us from potential suspicion and win even more brownie points. I also planned to milk my burns during the display; after all, I was supposed to be injured.
After the roundup, the plan was to use Jean's abilities to discern who needed saving and containment from a preliminary scan of their mind. It would be nothing too invasive, of course.
The people who've been cleared will be moved to a protected shield town in middle America, where they will be protected from the demon threat. Hopefully, Jean and I will eventually be able to bring in the X-Men and get them to act as liaisons between the government and the population if we ever get them to stop hating us.
Naturally, Fury promised that those who wanted to be released to the public would be, while the more dangerous elements would be detained and rehabilitated.
A million things could go wrong, but it was our best option. Leaving the mutants in the hands of Hydra would end with them being experimented on, turned into puppet soldiers, or abducted by the demons.
We had to act before the enemies did, and that meant taking a risk sometimes.
"There's so much I have to tell you," she said to me mentally. And one by one, she started to show me what she'd plucked from the Hydra leader's head. It was substantial, to say the least. There were coordinates to secret bases, recipes for mythical weapons like Adamantium, Vibranium sculpting and weapon-making secrets, safehouses, money drops, an imperfect supersoldier serum--which all of the soldiers I faced used-- and information about Bolivar Trask that had me questioning the success of our little quiet assassination plot.
It turns out he was the one who gave Pierce the idea to shepherd and control the mutants. Jean told me she would've gotten even more information about Bolivar, but Pierce's mind finally gave out. Between his mental resistance that he trained through meticulously organizing his mind and his age, it was a miracle she got that much from him before she charred him.
I kept all this information close to my chest and asked Jean not to tell anyone what she learned. She knew me well enough at this point not to ask why. As much as we trusted SHIELD, we weren't truly on the same side.
Fury got a call from Natasha with an update on the situation. He was hesitant about Rin but signed off on him after I promised to watch him personally.
---
Despite Jean's concerns, Trask and Strucker were not the next targets of our campaign.
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Arnim Zola, Daniel Whitehall, Gideon Malick and their deputies were.
Whitehall was promptly drained in his lavish apartment after I took off the head of his guard/assistant with a swing of Rebellion. Aaron and I portalled downtown, where his top three lieutenants were in a meeting. I promptly killed them all and disappeared before security could make it into the room.
Whitehall's brain was packed with fascinating and frankly terrifying ideas on mutant experimentation and forcefully awakening the X-gene in humans. There was also some information about Gravitonium, the creation of Absorbing man, and his plans to perfect the supersoldier serum via Banner.
I was tempted to spare him after Jean told me everything Whitehall knew. It was worth keeping him around for the Gravitonium and Supersoldier knowledge alone, but I knew Whitehall had a reputation for slipping out of impossible situations and fucking people over.
It would've been tempting to add him to my future roster of 'investments', but I knew how sparing a monster like him could come across to Jean. More than that, I didn't want to be responsible for whatever atrocities the son of a bitch would perpetuate if he ever escaped.
So, I took his head off with Rebellion and called it a day. Jean already had all of his knowledge; knowledge I was sure she'd transfer to me at some point. SHIELD got most of his research, papers, and computers.
Gideon Malleck's death was the most anticlimactic of them all. In this universe, he was a billionaire philanthropist with fingers in multiple industries.
His mind turned out to be the most useful. Jean harvested dozens of bank accounts with currencies numbering in the millions, weapon caches, contacts with some of the evillest organizations in the world, including the Hand and the 10 Rings, and lastly and most importantly, years of experience running a multi-billion-dollar organization.
Rin begged me to do the killing this time. It turned out Malleck was the one who handed him over to Strucker, who was singlehandedly responsible for some of the worst years of Rin's life.
After having him put on a pair of gloves, I handed him a sword I had lying in my Weapon Vault, and he took his head off with a single on-edge swing.
I was impressed by his form. He had a future as a Swordsman if we didn't get filleted by the demons first.
When we arrived at Trask's base, the atmosphere of the team suddenly shifted.
Bolivar was the most well-prepared of the bunch. The intel Jean got from Malleck allowed us to finally put the pieces together. Malleck saw Bolivar as a genius on the level of Howard Stark, driven by paranoia and hate for mutant kind. They'd signed a contract with him about three years ago to develop an effective containment and neutralization system for mutants. He accomplished that a year after capturing a mutant he stored at the heart of his plant. Her mutation apparently reduced the potency of any mutant's mutation by fifty percent.
Since then, he'd worked on producing and weaponizing the unique properties of her genes and made suppression rounds. His invention made it even easier for Hydra to capture and study mutants.
After delivering what he promised, Bolivar grew more radical. He spoke with Malleck in confidence about exterminating all Mutants.
"Don't you see that we are the Neanderthals in this situation," he'd said. "Our only choice is extermination. I've studied them for decades and still find it impossible to predict how their mutations emerge. We've been lucky so far. We're one massive uprising away from mass extinction."
As crazy as Bolivar sounded, he was right on the money about the mutants. After learning about Sebastian Shaw, it became obvious that the Hellfire Club ran the world behind the scenes on some level.
They maintained the status quo while also looking out for their interests. I was genuinely curious about what they thought about our little struggle with Hydra.
Unfortunately, Bolivar failed to realize, despite his brilliance, that he would create the world-enders he was so afraid of if he launched a genocide.
Jean did not reveal everything she learned to SHIELD, of course, but there was no feasible way to hide the girl who was the literal key to controlling the most powerful people on earth. However, Jean made it clear to Fury that she would not allow SHIELD access without permission.
Fury was a bit surprised by Jean's sudden spirit but agreed, seeing as Jean literally had the bigger gun. However, I had a feeling that Fury was working behind the scenes to even the scales a bit.
If I were in shoes, I knew I would.
We didn't bother setting up signal jammers before going in because we understood it would be a waste of our time entirely.
Trask's technology was miles away from anything available in most places. Only maybe Stark and Mandarin had better tech.
Our only hope was shock and awe. By the time he'd realize he was in danger, it'd be entirely too late.
When we got to strategizing, Jean decided she had to be the one to secure Nadia---the living mutant suppressant.
Natasha and Clint obviously had objections, but I visibly watched as they shrugged it off as they reminded themselves that Jean was still Jean, even at 50%.
The new addition to our team, however, was quick to speak up. "I know you're supposed to be this ultra-badass, but I've seen those suppressants humble the toughest mother fuckers at Strucker's camp," he said. "If they mix that stuff with Chloroform, it's game over. I don't care how powerful you are."
"He reminds me a lot of you, Dante, when we first met," she said. "Cursing with every breath."
Clint chuckled. "He thinks it makes him more mature."
"I suppose you can't really blame him," Natasha said. "He has no good frame of reference of how normal people act."
"He is awfully crass," Aaron said, folding his arm.
"Holy smokes," I said with an exaggerated chuckle, "he speaks. I was afraid you'd hold your little grudge forever."
Aaron did not respond to my comment, so I turned to Natasha and Clint.
"Y'all don't have ground to stand on. Do I need to start picking apart your past in front of the new guy?"
That earned a slight grumble from Natasha and another chuckle from Clint. Then, I turned to Rin, patting him on the back.
"The concern is certainly appreciated but wasted entirely," I said. "Jean is in a category you and I cannot frankly fathom. I don't think a little Chloroform is going to stop her."
My comment only made the kid more confused.
We split our team into two. Natasha, Jean, and Aaron to secure the girl and ensure nobody suddenly made off with her or any other mutant in the madness.
Clint, Rin, and I were on the assault team. We expected some level of resistance. However, it was not to the level that Trask had been waiting for us.
Aaron's portal opened in a large hangar with a middle-aged Bolivar Trask staring us down. Behind him was a Sentinel. It stood about 18 feet tall, partially painted, with dozens of soldiers waiting behind him.
"So, you've finally come for me."
(