Hawk looked up at the sky.
He had a feeling, as if someone was watching him.
William Stryker?
Hawk thought of the mutants' famous enemy, Colonel Stryker.
Indeed.
With so many agents deployed here by the Sentinel Special Service Bureau to exterminate the Mutant Underground Community, how could their leader William Stryker not notice?
Hawk pondered.
At that moment.
"Hawk."
Wanda's voice sounded from behind.
Hawk snapped back to reality.
With two mutant guards on either side and behind her, Wanda also hurried up from the staircase of the escape tunnel and came to Hawk.
Wanda looked at Hawk, who seemed to have come out of a blood pool: "Are you okay?"
Hawk shook his head.
The two mutant guards looked at the messy and damaged scene in shock, their mouths wide open.
One of them even couldn't help swallowing hard.
Clearly.
This mutant guard was very shocked.
The administrator, Mark, supported by a mutant guard, glanced at the ground full of corpses and then looked at Hawk, thanking him.
He had little chance of being saved.
But...
Thanks to Hawk's timely intervention and the destruction of the anti-riot vehicles equipped with X Ability Inhibitors, Mark, the administrator who had regained his mutant ability, managed to pull himself back from the brink of hell with his 'healing' X ability.
However, his healing ability couldn't compare to Wolverine's.
Wolverine's ability was such that even if a bullet hit his head, he'd at most suffer pain for a few days but would still revive in place.
Mark's ability wasn't that strong.
Listening to Mark's thanks, Hawk replied, "I thought such a big commotion would bring out Professor X."
Mark gave a pale smile.
"Professor X wouldn't care about the lives of us ordinary mutants."
"Alright then."
Hawk, upon hearing this, remained indifferent.
At that moment.
Two seemingly ordinary vans pulled up to the side of the road with a screech, and as the doors opened, the surviving mutants, under the direction of the mutant guards, quickly piled into the vehicles.
Their location had been compromised, and they urgently needed to leave.
After all, reinforcements from the Sentinel Special Service Bureau might already be on the way, leaving them little time.
Administrator Mark, supported by a guard, looked at Hawk.
"Mr. Phoenix, let's go; the Sentinel Special Service Bureau will probably be here soon."
"Thank you."
Hawk responded to Mark's invitation with a thank you and a slight smile: "But, no need."
Upon hearing this, Mark looked at Hawk.
Their eyes met.
Mark understood and said no more.
"Take care, we sincerely wish you and your wife can find your daughter."
"Thank you."
"Goodbye, Mr. Phoenix."
"Goodbye, Mark."
Hawk gave a slight smile.
Mark said no more, and with the help of a guard, climbed into the van, after which the two vans carrying fewer than twenty surviving mutants quickly left the scene.
Meanwhile.
In the distance, the belated sound of sirens wailed from police cars.
Listening to the sirens, Wanda looked at Hawk.
"What next?"
"Next..."
Upon hearing this, Hawk looked up again, gazing at the vast sky: "Do you think the Sentinel Special Service Bureau is watching us with a satellite?"
Wanda raised an eyebrow.
"It's possible."
"So the Sentinel Special Service Bureau has noticed us too?"
"Very likely."
Wanda nodded and, following Hawk's gaze, looked up at the vast sky: "Indeed, there's a satellite pointed at us."
"I see."
Hawk's lips turned upward, then he looked at Wanda again: "Do you know when I began to make the Federation fear me?"
Wanda looked at Hawk, blinking: "Fear? I thought the Federation respected you."
Hawk laughed heartily.
"I wanted them to respect me."
"And then?"
"They interpreted my respect as weakness and repeatedly tried to provoke me."
In a calm voice, Hawk recounted his journey: "So, after that, I learned one thing: I don't need their respect; I only need them to fear me."
Respect comes from the heart.
But fear comes from instinct.
Like a tiger, even if it stands silently, any small animal that smells its scent will tremble uncontrollably and some might even play dead, hoping the tiger would mistake them for a corpse, sparing them its gaze.
That's exactly what Hawk did in this universe.
He didn't seek respect from the Federation or anyone other than those he considered friends; he only needed them to fear him.
And Hawk did so quite successfully.
He exchanged the annihilation of families, and even entire clans, and endless bloodshed, for the fear of the Federation and almost everyone who knew of his existence.
"So..."
Hawk said this, smiling slightly, and looked at Wanda: "Guess, how much blood do I need to shed here for the Federation and this Sentinel Operations Bureau to understand this fact?"
Wanda raised her eyebrows, meeting Hawk's smiling gaze.
"What about the plan of steady growth?"
"I thought about steady growth."
"But?"
"I also like to eliminate dangers in their infancy."
Hawk's voice was eerie, as if he could see the Sentinel satellite scrutinizing him from miles above: "The police need evidence; I don't. I only need to suspect that the Sentinel Operations Bureau might become my trouble, and that's enough."
As he spoke.
The arriving police cars had already thumped to a stop not far away, and one New York officer after another jumped out, guns drawn, aiming at the criminal pair who not only didn't flee upon their arrival but continued standing and talking.
"Don't move."
"Drop your... hands up!"
"Damn it, hands up!"
"..."
The officers' voices were drowned amidst the wailing sirens.
Hawk's lips curved upward, and, under the watchful eyes of the officers, he lifted Wanda and rose into the air at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The next second.
"Boom!"
"Bang, bang, bang!"
"Ah!"
With the abrupt appearance of a sonic boom cloud beneath Hawk, a fierce gale instantly swept in circles all around, smashing the arriving patrol car windows as all officers were forced to stagger backward, closing their eyes involuntarily against the gust.
By the time they reopened their eyes again.
They found Hawk and Wanda had vanished without a trace.
"Where did they go?"
"Are they located?"
"Shit, their speed is incredible."
"Where do they intend to go?"
In the Operations Command Center of the Sentinel Bureau, under the locking of the Sentinel satellite, they securely locked onto Hawk, flying at high speed tens of thousands of feet in the sky.
Stryker's eyes narrowed.
For unknown reasons, he suddenly had a bad premonition.
But...
Mutants, mutants more powerful than Hawk, he had seen, and even killed them.
So!
"Track them. The moment they land, immediately notify the strategic support troops to move. Tell them I want this one alive."
"Yes."
The Sentinel, listening to his boss's orders, nodded hurriedly in response.
After Stryker finished speaking, he looked at Hawk again on the big screen, his eyes flickering.
"Where do you plan to go?"
"Quantico!"
Carrying Wanda, with Little Cosmos' energy being blocked, Hawk could only fly at supersonic speed toward Quantico, talking to Wanda in his mind: "This is Earth, so if anyone provokes me, I'll target the military."
As known to all.
The reason Hawk can maintain deterrence in this Cosmos, on one hand, is because he kills enough to make everyone shudder, and on the other hand, because there are troops advocating for him.
No matter who provokes him, he strikes at the military. If the military wants to reason, sure, but they'll need to bring the heads of those who tried to provoke him first.
Thus, in such circumstances, someone wants to move Hawk, Hawk moves against the Pentagon, and the Pentagon moves against those suicidal idiots who want to move Hawk.
This forms a closed loop, as it were.
Actually, technically, Hawk thought of going straight to the Pentagon.
But...
In this Cosmos, when he went to the Pentagon, it was because before he went to the Pentagon, he had already established his formidable reputation, so when he first appeared, all the military bigwigs who knew him immediately switched from proud eagles to trembling quails. Therefore, under his intimidation, they obediently fried squids for him.
But the current Earth is a brand-new Earth.
No one knows who he is.
Moreover, Hawk had to admit that this Earth with mutants, and its Earthlings have rather tough heads.
And not just tough, unusually tough.
Though the fact that Earthlings are so tough-headed toward mutants could be half attributed to a mutant dove camp on their side, it was clear that these Earthlings wouldn't yield unless they were beaten until they were in pain, maimed, and even then, unless you killed them, they wouldn't submit.
Luckily.
Hawk excels at dealing with the unyielding.
Starting from Quantico.
After all, in a sense, Quantico belongs to the place where he started his rise.
In 2012, it was from Quantico that he embarked on his path to power. Through years of effort and struggle, he acquired his current formidable strength.
So—
This time starting from Quantico again is quite reasonable, isn't it?
Soon.
Quantico arrived.
Holding Wanda, Hawk stopped instantaneously from supersonic speed, then lowered his eyes to gaze at the busy training scene of the Quantico Military Base below.
The next second.
He raised his head again to look high above.
Colonel William Stryker, in the Sentinel Operations Hall, was watching Hawk's mocking gaze through the screen when his heart suddenly skipped a beat.
"No good, quickly inform Quantico..."
"Boom!"
"..."