Anyway, getting back to my epic showdown. I knew the big fight with the Hulk was coming up so I had the bright idea that if I could take on all the X-men and win, then the Hulk should be a cake walk. Yeah, it sounds stupid now when I say it out loud now but at the time, I thought it was a good idea. Realistically with all my powers, I should be able to take on anybody and win. It's just a matter of which one of us is more powerful at the time. For instance, say me and Superman were to get into a fight. If I was at full strength, I would be able to freeze him with Tk before he could even move a muscle. As I am now, I could maybe hold him for like a second or two. Although I was not that powerful now, I figured I could make up for it by out thinking the X-men to beat them with what skills I had.

“Listen up people, the Hawk here has challenged the X-men to a battle royal.” Cyclops put his hand on my shoulder as the chuckles died down. Most of the whole team and I were in the waiting room for the Danger Room. “I know, but the Professors swears he’s not mentally insane so let’s show him that the X-men aren’t pushovers!” “Ok here are the rules for this battle. Jean and the Professor made up a randomly drawn list of 20 of us. The first 5 on the list will start out hunting Nighthawk and if he happens to take one of you out the next person will come in to take your place.” Cyclops made sure everybody understood before pointing to Jean and Crawler. “If you are taken out one those two will come in and take you out of the battle.” “Alright everybody good… Ok, the first 5 combatants are Moonstar, Cannonball, Jubilee, Gambit, and Rogue. Nighthawk you get to pick the stage, what will it be?” I only need to think about it for a second. “Let’s do this in a city at dusk.” This way I could blend in at will and they would have to protect the civilians and keep a low profile as if this was real. “Ok, the list is posted so when your name is called come in and join the hunt. Oh, and to keep the Hawk from just turtling this contest will only last for 5 hours if it even takes that long. Regardless of the time, the last five players on the list will enter in 10 mins intervals just to make things interesting. Also, the people outside will get to watch all the action up to the ‘point of contact’ from Hawk then the screen will switch to someone else or go black to keep things fair.”

The doors to the Danger Room opened to the middle of what could be any busy city street in America. I ran in and worked on turning on my camouflage, I only had a 60-second head start and I needed all of it. I got about half a block away before I found an alley that would work for me. I sat down quickly and started concentrating as hard as I could to get this illusion set up. I probably wouldn’t be able to hold it long without my full concentration but it should work if they didn’t look hard enough. Thankfully by the time Cannonball came rocketing by I looked like just another homeless person asking for change. My plan was going well so far. Rouge, the temp leader, had the team fan out in a search pattern and by now I was way behind there search lines so it was time for me to be the hunter. Little known fact two of my favorite game series were, Spiderman ps4 and the Arkham series. So, during my ‘alone time’ in the danger room, I tried to develop my own proto stealth takedowns. Now was time to see if they would actually work. Some people say go after the weakest link first. So, you would think out the 5 my first target would be Jubilee and you’d be so so wrong. After our training sessions, that girl is unbelievably dangerous. She can now make her plasms look like a realistic butterfly that can blow up a building, so no she’s next to last on my list. I’m going to go after Moonstar because Gambit will be hard to take by surprise in this setting and Cannonball hardly ever stops moving. (Which reminds me gotta do something about his whole family later.) It took a couple of mins to track down Dani and when I found her, she was walking down the street watching for people’s reaction to a Native American girl in a funny costume carrying a big purple neon glowing bow. It was actually a good plan to smoke me out from all the simulated people. Unfortunately for her, it gathered a crowd behind her as people stopped to gawk and take vids, so I was able to blend in with them. The monitors in the waiting room switched to someone else as I made my move. First, I silenced my steps and then I started generating enough power to Tk freeze her body and deliver a knockout blow to the back of her head. Simple I know but hey I did say proto stealth takedowns. It worked so there. By the time Dani realized she couldn’t move the blow to the head was already delivered and she was out. Nightcrawler ported in with a grin, gave me a thumbs up while picked up Dani and ported out. The Danger Room doors opened again and announced the next combatant Thunderbird.

I was on a clock now because the rest of the X-men knew where Dani was so they knew where I was. I expected the two flyers to get to me first so I decided to lay a gravity trap that should work for either of them. I flew/hovered up a building to get a better view of the ambush site and waited. Rouge showed up first but I could see Cannonball’s fire trail not far off in the distance so this was going to be close. As Rouge zoomed in to hover over Dani’s last known location, I hit her with 3 times earth’s gravity and as she fell…HARD! I jumped after her. A simple knockout punch wasn’t going to cut it with Rouge so as I was falling after her, I fired up my electricity to give Rouge the shock of her life. Rouge’s landing (if you can even call it that) created a big butt crater and shattered windows for about a block. But before she could even get up and get her baring’s I was on her and tasering the life out of her. She was down and Crawler ported in again to take her out but I waved him off because Cannonball was due any second. He ducked into an alley.

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I didn’t have the time to concentrate on another illusion so I pretended to be one of the injured bystanders. My wait wasn’t long. Cannonball came roaring in as he saw Rogue lying in the crater. I don’t think he even really looked around for me. Kinda dumb of him cause anything that can take out Rogue should be a priority threat. But maybe he thought I was long gone and was more worried about her than me. At any rate, instead of hitting Sam with gravity I did Rogue I need to do the opposite for Sam because of the way his powers work. I hit him with a null gravity field quickly disoriented him and with another quick blast of electricity and he was done for. I looked over at Nightcrawler, who was hiding behind a dumpster laughing his butt off and gave him a two-finger salute before flying/hovering off. That was three down seventeen more to go.

“Colossus, Storm now entering combat.” The Danger Room doors closed once again. It was going to get harder now that big sis was in the game. She knew me better than anyone else except for Jean. This was proven when she called all the remaining players in for a strategy meeting instead of letting me pick them off one by one. I would have loved to bomb them while they were planning but I had nothing in my bag of tricks that was quick enough, to get me a big enough bang to take them all out. Like I said sis is really smart. She split the team into offense/defense pairs while she took a high enough ground that I wouldn’t be able to sneak up on. Colossus and Jubes would be a hard pair to deal with, so I decided to go after Thunderbird and Gambit. There was no way I’d be able to take out both those two guys at the same time so I’d have to get sneaky. I was paralleling or following them on the next street over, thinking on what to do when I saw the answer to my problems. I ran ahead block till I found another one, a simple fire hydrant. I went into the shop in front of the hydrant and pretended to shop when really, I was using my Hk (Hydrokinesis) to build up water pressure. I don’t think any of what I’m doing today, let alone this next trick, would work if I wasn’t able to split my mind to the level, I’m at now. Even so, it all almost fell apart. Imagine trying to juggle with one mind while you read poems and play chess with the other. Doable for a while but not without tons of practice. What I was doing, was continuously building water pressure, keeping track of the guys, and keeping up my shopping act all at the same time. I got lucky when Gambit moved a bit ahead of John cause I was pretty sure I could take John in a heads up fight. As Gambit lined up with the fire hydrant I let loose. The water blasted him off his feet and pasted him to the wall across the street. Til the day I die, I’ll never forget the look on his face as he went flying. John got clipped too which gave me a few more seconds to finish my plan. Gambit was dazed and had the breath knocked out of him when he hit the wall but he was still flailing against the water that was constantly pressing him against the wall. So I figured I’d be nice and help him out by freezing him and the water.

I froze Gambit to the wall but made sure to leave the top of his head free. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to admire my artwork cause Thunderbird picked that moment to try and curb stomp me into next week. Sucks for him cause I got a force field, nany nany boo boo. So instead of flying off into space, I was only pushed back a couple of feet. This was fight was on!! He came at me with a right cross which I defected with a Tk hand shield. (See the movie push for more details) I responded with a Tk left jab that rocked him for a sec. John kicked out at me to create some distance but I used that to do a Tk grab. Which pulled his leg up and away and dumped him on his butt. I tried followed through with a Tk elbow drop but John was ready for it and rolled out of the way. He got to his knees and went for a lunging tackle to try and grapple me. That would have the end for me because his super strength is stronger than my Tk right now. But I was still able to freeze him long enough to create some space. I was sure Storm had seen us by now and was on her way so I need to wrap this up quickly and get gone soonest. So it was back to my dirty tricks. I hit him with my version of a flashbang at point blank range. That really messed him up, and I’m not going to lie hilarious as he was stumbling around like he had been drinking all night long. It was nothing for me to just walk up to him and taser him like everybody else.

I thought about making some fog with the water coming from the hydrant to cover my escape but Storm would just blow it away. So since I couldn’t go up I decided to go down. I remembered there was one of those sewer maintenance entrance in the sidewalk down from the hydrant. I didn’t need it to completely cover my tracks, just needed to hide enough to get a few blocks away unseen. Storm arrived just as Crawler did. He looked at all the damaged and shooked his head. “I would say he’s doing better than expected eh Fräulein?” Storm chuckled. “It would seem so Nightcrawler but my little brother has a ways yet to go.” “Well if you excuse me I need to get these two to medical.” Storm gave a little head nod and said. “And I need to regroup so we can come up with a better idea.” Crawler first ported Gambit out of the ice then grabbed both him and Thunderbird and left.