A knock sounded on Scott's office door. He opened it to find Klein standing there, his expression calm and polite as always. "Captain Scott, I trust you've received the alert. A monster is rampaging through Harlem. It is time for you to mobilize. I have already assembled the personnel."
"Assembled already? That was efficient," Scott remarked, surprised.
He followed Klein to the operations hall. Ilyana, Jean, Piotr, and a sullen, dark-faced Leon were already there. Scott glanced at Leon, surprised. He recognized the young agent, but couldn't understand why his skin was now several shades darker and his hair was standing on end in a singed afro. Leon just offered an awkward, sheepish smile.
Scott dismissed the thought and focused on the most pressing question. "Where's Wolverine?"
"Uncle Wolf went out this evening," Ilyana said. "I think he went to a bar." Influenced by Amon, she had also taken to calling Logan "Uncle Wolf."
"The lazy bum," Scott muttered, unable to resist the opportunity to slander his rival.
The main screen in the hall lit up, displaying a live feed of a hideous yellow monster tearing through the city streets.
Klein began his briefing. "The creature is codenamed 'Abomination.' Its original identity was Emil Blonsky, a special forces soldier who was injected with a variant of the super-soldier serum and then exposed to gamma radiation derived from the Hulk. The resulting mutation transformed him into his current state.
"His baseline strength exceeds eighty tons, with an explosive power that can reach one hundred tons. He possesses an extremely powerful jumping ability, capable of covering up to two kilometers in a single leap. His hide is incredibly dense and can withstand artillery fire. Based on our analysis, only Wolverine's adamantium claws or Ilyana's energy sword are likely to penetrate his defense. You must be cautious."
"Where did you get this information?" Jean asked, surprised not by the creature's power, but by the source of Klein's intelligence. "Didn't this 'Abomination' just appear?"
Klein simply smiled. "Please trust the capabilities of our intelligence department."
The team changed into their combat uniforms and prepared to depart. Leon donned a mask, and as it settled onto his face, the charred skin was covered. The mask seemed to squirm for a moment, and his features returned to their state before the lightning strike, even his wild hair settling back into its normal style.
"This is a nice piece of gear," he said, nodding at his handsome reflection in a polished surface. The other members of the X-Men chose not to wear the masks. They were not clandestine heroes; their identities were public, and they had no disfigurements to hide.
A sleek, silver fighter jet waited for them. This was not the X-Men's Blackbird, but a vessel belonging to the Rider Clan's fighter squadron, piloted by a Rider named Boeing, who had been assigned to transport duties for Marvel. Accompanying the heroes were several Marvel employees armed with high-tech cameras, their job to record the team's actions.
Wolverine felt incredibly unlucky. He had just gone out for a quiet drink, and now the world was ending around him. Drawn by the commotion outside, he had stepped out of the bar just in time to be hit by a flying car, which embedded him deep into the wall of a brick building. It took him a great deal of effort to pull himself free from the rubble. Fortunately, his adamantium skeleton and powerful healing factor meant he was more annoyed than injured. Otherwise, he would have been reduced to a pile of Wolverine-flavored fragments.
"Pah!" He spat out a mouthful of wood chips and glass shards, shook the dust from his body, and stalked back toward the street. He was going to teach that hideous yellow monster a lesson.
The creature hadn't gone far. It was holding a car, smashing it against the pavement while roaring the name "Hulk" over and over.
Wolverine's hands drooped slightly at his sides. With a faint snikt, six adamantium claws extended from his knuckles, gleaming in the dark. He flexed his powerful muscles and launched himself at the Abomination, moving like a wolf on the hunt.
The Abomination was still caught up in its destructive tantrum, trying to lure out Bruce Banner and the Hulk within him. He didn't believe a being as powerful as the Hulk could simply vanish.
"Agh, my back!" Abomination suddenly cried out in pain. It felt as if someone had just stabbed him with a handful of thick, sharp needles. "Damn insects!" He spun around and saw a spiky-haired man clinging to his back, raking his claws down his spine.
Wolverine's eyes met Abomination's, and his animal instincts screamed at him. Something was very wrong. He tried to push off, to get away from the monster, but it was too late. A massive yellow hand snatched him out of the air. Wolverine tried to resist, but the power in the grip was beyond anything he had ever imagined. He was as helpless as an ordinary man caught in a hydraulic press. He was caught fast in Abomination's hand.
The pressure was immense. He felt his ribs crack and his lungs collapse, but his adamantium-laced bones refused to break. His flesh was torn and bloodied, but his healing factor was already working, knitting him back together even as he was being crushed.
Abomination was confused. He knew his own grip strength; he could crush a car into a ball of scrap metal. Yet, this small, resilient creature in his hand refused to be squeezed into paste. It was like trying to crush a solid steel wrench. "What a stubborn piece of metal," he growled.
Unable to kill Wolverine directly, Abomination reared back his arm and, as if throwing a javelin, hurled him with all his might. Wolverine became a projectile, smashing through the side of a nearby apartment building.
Gwen and Peter were still on an upper floor, observing the chaos below, when they saw something fly past and slam into their building, shaking it to its foundations.
"Did someone just fly past here?" Peter asked tentatively.
Gwen nodded, her eyes wide. "It was a man. Let's go check on him. I think he was fighting that monster." After her mutation, her eyesight had become incredibly sharp, and she had witnessed the brief, brutal encounter.
The residents of the building had already been evacuated by the military, otherwise Wolverine's impact would have surely caused casualties. They found him embedded in a wall in the middle of a stairwell, struggling to pull himself free. Abomination had thrown him with such force that he was stuck fast.
"Sir, do you need any help?" a pleasant female voice asked.
Wolverine looked over and saw a young blonde girl leaning over, looking down at him. "What help can a kid give me?" he grumbled. "If that boy over there had any muscle on him, maybe he could be useful. Now, get out of the way before you get hurt."
Gwen just pursed her lips, ignored his words, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Wolverine was about to tell her to stop messing around when he felt an immense force on his shoulder. With a sound of shattering concrete, Gwen pulled him clean from the wall.
"This..." Wolverine was speechless. He couldn't believe the slip of a girl in front of him possessed such incredible strength. The power he felt from her was eerily similar to that of the hideous yellow monster. "Who are you?" he asked, completely bewildered.
Peter, seeing his opportunity, held up the bag in his hand. He had somehow managed not to drop their snacks during the panic. "We're just ordinary people passing by. We were attacked by the monster and took refuge up here. Then we found you. Look, this is the food we bought, but it's all been smashed into mush. It's all that monster's fault. These were all my favorite snacks!"
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