"OK, OK. You're in charge. You want us waiting, we wait." MM stepped in and played the peacemaker.
Hughie let a breath out beside him.
"Oi.. You and me, this is meant to be an equal partnership." The Temp V was doing some of the talking. Butcher's tone on Ivan had gone hard.
"You want to fall out with me?" Ivan drew the tentacle back, calm.
The blade set in the iron door snapped in like a stretched rubber cord and vanished into his right hand.
"That's not what I said. I just don't want my team buried in this shithole because one man fancied a pointless wait." Butcher watched him, face set.
"If you don't want to fall out, then stand there and behave. Bored, I don't mind. Go outside. Find yourself something to do." Ivan wasn't going to coddle him.
Temp V had put a nasty jump in the man's strength. Not enough to make Ivan look twice.
"Just remembered. When we came in I saw some classified files. Butcher, come and have a look. There's bits on them I can't read."
A year and more around Butcher, Hughie knew the temper. Sometimes the man went cold and sharp and you could almost call him a leader. Other times he was like he'd been snorting blasting powder, rash and angry, no hold on himself at all. Two people in one coat.
He got Butcher out of the room, voice low as they went.
"Don't forget how he did those special police. We can't take him, so we stay clear of him- you said these words previously."
"Running off doesn't fix it."
All that careful talk, and Butcher's brow only pulled tighter.
"You taken the Temp V yet?" he asked, sudden.
Hughie blinked, then shook his head. "Not yet."
"Get it in you. We haven't got long."
Butcher glanced back the way they'd come, toward Ivan.
Every minute that passed, the bad feeling in him sat heavier. He heard what Hughie was saying. He knew it. As they stood, if it came to a fight with the mystery man, they didn't have the odds.
He still wasn't sitting still for it. No telling what was in that iron cabinet. From the way the mystery man had reacted, though, it was either the supe-killing weapon Mallory had talked about, or Soldier Boy, the thing the man had been after for a long time.
Let him get what he wanted and the lot of them stopped being useful to Ivan. And a thing with no use left in it, well. You didn't need a diagram for how that ended.
"We're beasts shut in a furnace. Fire's getting up, and the life in us is running out with it. Two choices. Find a gap and get out, or smash the furnace."
"Is it that bad?" Hughie couldn't quite buy it. "You sure you're not overthinking this?"
His face said he didn't follow. Far as he could see, there was no blood feud between them and the mystery man. Apart from the time Butcher had stuck him in the back. And even then the man hadn't looked hurt. He'd turned around and killed Stormfront.
"I know you never trust supes. Doesn't mean you've got to treat every one of them like the enemy in your head." Hughie was at a loss with him.
He half thought Butcher had caught a persecution complex.
"I hope I am overthinking it." Butcher watched the red lamps going on the wall. "Still. Extra prep never hurt anyone."
"That bit I agree with."
Hughie wasn't built like Butcher. The power coming for him didn't make him hang back. He was keen for it. He'd been waiting on this all day. Out came the syringe. Green liquid beaded on the needle, and his chest went tight and fast under his shirt.
"Come on, then." He hooked a grin, set the needle to the skin of his left arm, found the vein, and pushed it in.
"Hss."
He drove the plunger up slow until it sat at the top. Cold liquid ran out through his blood and into the rest of him.
"This feeling..." The smile on him picked up a mean edge. He closed a fist, a bit gone on it already, drunk on the strength. "Right now I feel like I could wreck anything. This power..."
He reached for the corner of the bench beside him. Steel. He pinched it and the metal gave.
"Whoa. Unbelievable."
"You meant to be cradling that Temp V and going, oh, my precious?" Butcher couldn't help himself, seeing the state of him.
"Can't deny it. I still look better than Gollum with the ring on." Hughie wasn't bothered.
Outside the lab, five tanks had gathered, and a dozen armored cars with them.
"Colonel Boris. The special units we sent in, we've lost contact. All of them." A Russian soldier snapped a salute as the colonel came up beside him.
"Can we raise the intruders?"
The uniform on Boris did a poor job of hiding how big the man was.
"We haven't tried."
"Don't." Boris's face had gone dark. "Call up every gun we've got. Three minutes and they're not out, you flatten that lab. Fuck it. American thieves."
The thought of the files in there crossed his mind, and went. Papers or not, he wanted those Yank bastards dead.
At the same time, inside, Ivan's read was down to the last of it.
"How much longer are we stuck in here?" Kimiko signed at Frenchie.
Frenchie shook his head. He didn't know either.
[Analysis complete]
[Talent skill: Super Defense]
[Fusion condition: break Soldier Boy's defense and wound him]
[After fusion, the strength of the player's skin will rise by a wide margin, and gain resistance to high heat, low cold, and the like.
At the same time, ordinary weapons will not be able to harm the player. (Provided he is in a normal state.)]
That was the one Ivan wanted.
Carbon Ultra stacked on Super Defense, and you were about at the ceiling for defense in a two-star world. Anything past that meant a three-star world.
Going by how a two-star world scaled, Ivan put the cap on a three-star somewhere around planetary, or cosmic. He looked untouchable now. Drop him in a three-star world and he'd be keeping his head down for a while.
Before he jumped, though, he wasn't leaving until he'd wrung Black Noir dry.
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69