Niwa's armed helicopter came down quietly over the ruins of the mountain city, the rotors kicking up thin columns of ash and dust from the still-cooling rubble below.
She stepped out of the cabin and spotted the ten rings on Nolan's vibranium arms almost immediately. Her expression shifted into something warm and congratulatory, and she offered her formal compliments on the operation's success before moving to the practical question: would Nolan consider establishing an outpost on the ruins?
He declined without deliberating over it. The interior of the Asian continent remained S.P.E.A.R. territory. Operating under their observation on a permanent basis would constrain his team's freedom of movement in ways that outweighed any tactical advantage the location offered.
The director accepted this without pushing further.
The Scyllax Guardian Automata swept the ruins thoroughly before anyone boarded. No survivors were confirmed. They loaded the damaged Intelligent Control Corps units into the transport aircraft alongside everyone else, and the convoy lifted and turned east.
The Japanese base received them with the particular kind of quiet that follows a large operation: people moving with purpose, fewer of them than before, the spaces between them slightly wider.
An identity screening operation began almost immediately after landing. David processed every remaining member of the ninja garrison and all logistics personnel attached to the base, working through their records with the kind of thoroughness that left no ambiguity. Anyone whose background raised a question was separated and brainwashed. They rejoined the base roster as its most reliable personnel.
Approximately two-thirds of the Intelligent Control Corps stayed behind when Nolan eventually departed. That complement was sufficient to hold the base against a direct assault without outside support, and Mariko and Bucky were designated as the only commanders with authority to mobilize them in Nolan's absence. The Corps served a dual purpose, as it always did: external defense and, if the internal situation ever required it, something considerably more direct.
The Four Sacred Beast, brainwashed and loyal, were added to the base's reserve roster. Their divine powers had been absorbed, but the physical conditioning that had survived the withdrawal left them considerably more capable than ordinary personnel. Useful for unusual situations.
Nolan took Old John and went to Chushin Gakuen while David reorganized the rest. The hidden school was quieter than the base, and smaller, and the children moving through its training grounds were a specific kind of small: dense and coiled with energy, giving no impression of fragility despite their size. Nolan watched them for a while and raised the question of whether the berserker training regimen was suppressing their physical development.
Old John's chest expanded noticeably with the depth of breath he took before responding. He gave his assurance with considerable feeling. As long as Twin Islands maintained adequate supply lines, his berserkers would grow at the rate they were supposed to grow.
Nolan accepted this and left it there.
The Thunderhawk transports lifted from the Japanese base not long after, banking west and south toward the Twin Islands.
The landing platform was not quiet when they arrived.
Several teams of Scyllax guardian had formed a rough perimeter around a single figure who was moving through them with a round shield and a particular economy of motion that Nolan recognized before he had fully descended the ramp. The fighting style was the same as Natasha's. The equipment was not.
Doom raised one hand from the ramp beside him. His telekinesis locked every figure in the engagement zone in place, the combatants and the guards alike, holding them suspended in their respective mid-motion positions.
Natasha walked out of the frozen tableau and came to Nolan directly.
The operation in Europe had concluded successfully. She and Yelena had located and extracted several Black Widows who had recovered their autonomy. The figure currently held in place by Doom's telekinesis was Taskmaster, captured during the extraction when he proved to be operating in opposition to the rescue. The problem was straightforward: Taskmaster was exceptionally skilled at leaving situations he did not want to remain in, and his physiology rejected anaesthetic compounds with enough consistency that keeping him sedated for transport had proven impossible. The current engagement was the result.
Nolan turned toward David and gave him Taskmaster with a gesture.
Brainwashing. Standard procedure.
He then turned to Natasha's sister Yelena, and to the Black Widows standing slightly apart from the main group, and welcomed all of them into the team. They would be given time to settle into the base before any assignments were discussed.
The platform cleared gradually as everyone moved inside.
The Thunderhawk transports sat in the returned silence, their hull panels ticking faintly as the metal cooled. Automated servo robots moved through the space in their scheduled patterns, their footsteps light and regular, the only sound on the platform.
Then, from inside the fuselage of one of the transports, a rapid and insistent knocking sound.
It continued for several seconds. Then the metal panel it was coming from buckled outward and hit the platform floor with a clang.
A red-suited figure emerged from the gap behind it, limbs moving in the loose, recovering way of someone whose skeleton had recently been reintroduced to its correct configuration. He hit the platform on his hands and knees and stayed there for a moment, catching his breath with the theatrical relief of someone who had genuinely not been certain they would make it.
"Your Majesty the Emperor," Wade Wilson said toward the ceiling of the hangar, with complete sincerity. "The difficulties I have endured to reach you in person."
He gathered himself, looked both directions along the platform, and lowered his voice to something he apparently believed was a whisper.
"Move fast. Can't let the Primarch pick up the trail. Last time it was a coffin situation and I am not Dio, I don't do buns."
He crawled across the platform floor for a short distance with the focused determination of a large caterpillar, waited until the feeling had returned sufficiently to his legs, and then moved at speed toward the interior of the base.
The Twin Islands base was a different proposition from the Japanese installation. The patrol schedules were tighter, the gaps between them measured in fractions of a second, the coverage between Scyllax Guardian teams and automated servo robots leaving almost no comfortable margin. After two failed approaches through the main corridors, Deadpool located a ventilation duct access panel and pulled it open.
Progress inside the duct was reasonable for approximately two minutes.
Then his hand landed on something that was already in the duct.
He looked at it. It looked back with the optical sensor array of a power fist, knuckles planted against the duct floor, body oriented in the direction he was trying to travel.
"Hey," Deadpool said, with the careful friendliness of someone buying time. "Little guy. Could you move? Just a little? Just..."
The power fist moved. Directly onto his face.
What followed involved sounds that a working skeleton is not intended to produce, and then the specific silence of something becoming temporarily non-functional.
The power fist dragged the recovering body further into the ventilation system with brisk efficiency, and continued on its way.