Demons dropped one after another across the battlefield. Some were incinerated where they stood by Hellfire, while others were sliced apart by the sweeping arcs of Locke's flaming wings before they could even get close. It only took a few brutal passes for the area around the base to be cleared out, leaving scorched ground, broken bodies, and the smell of burning sulfur hanging in the air.
On a distant rooftop, two figures stood in the dark and watched the slaughter unfold.
One of them was wrapped head to toe in black cloth, with only his eyes visible. But even hidden like that, his identity was impossible to mistake. The bow slung across his back and the unique mechanical right eye gave him away immediately.
Hawkeye Barton.
What made the sight far more disturbing was the black mist constantly leaking out from beneath the cloth wrapped around him. It rolled off his body in slow curls, no different from the demonic energy pouring out of the monsters from Hell.
Beside him stood an older gentleman dressed in immaculate formalwear, elegant and approachable at a glance, like some refined aristocrat out for an evening stroll. Only the look in his eyes gave away what he really was.
Mephisto.
The father of Blackheart watched Locke carve through the demon horde, and a faint crease appeared between his brows. From this distance, he could sense something on Locke that felt annoyingly familiar. It was a power he recognized instinctively, and yet he was absolutely certain he had never granted it to him.
That guess forming in his mind made him angry.
The property of the Lord of Hell was not something anyone could just steal and keep.
Seeing more and more of his soldiers being butchered, Mephisto finally turned away with a cold sneer. "Go greet him," he said softly. "My Hawkeye."
…..
At Avengers Base, after the last wave of lesser demons had been wiped out, the pillar of red light shifted.
The energy inside it churned, twisted, and then split apart as something much worse pushed through. A formation of black-flamed armored knights emerged one after another, each mounted on a hellish warhorse and towering four to five meters tall. In an instant, they spread into position in front of the portal like an elite honor guard from the underworld.
Floating in midair, Locke frowned.
The system's sensing ability had already given him the answer. All the cannon-fodder demons from before had only registered at Silver-tier. These nine knights, however, were different. Every single one of them was Platinum-tier prey.
That meant each of them carried a power on the level of hatred, maybe even something higher.
Stopping all nine at once would not be easy, not even for him.
Fortunately, the Hell-modified Blackbird finally descended from the sky at that exact moment. Professor Xavier, Jean, and the others had made it back to the battlefield at last. Locke landed in front of them and immediately turned to Charles.
"You ready to kill?" he asked.
Charles's expression was grave. "I may not be able to help you much directly," he said. "I can interfere with the soldiers and keep the lesser demons locked down, but those nine knights…" He paused, his face tightening. "They're like Blackheart. They don't have souls."
That gave Locke a brief jolt.
So this wasn't just a straightforward massacre after all.
Across from them, the nine knights lowered their weapons and began to charge. Their momentum was terrifying, the kind that made nine riders feel like an army.
Locke drew in a breath and said, "Hold the line. I'll kill them."
The next second, his flaming wings snapped open and he shot skyward. Hellfire gathered between his hands in a violent spiral, growing larger and denser as he rose. Then he folded his wings and came down fast.
The impact was immediate.
Boom.
The nine knights were swallowed by a sea of flames. Nearby demons caught in the edge of the blast howled miserably as they burned alive, some collapsing with the crack of scorched bones splitting apart. But the fire didn't finish the knights.
Instead, nine longswords slashed out from inside the blaze and cut through the heat, all of them aimed straight at Locke's head.
…..
In the underground research lab, Anton and Ivan were working like madmen.
The Thunder Armor was almost finished.
A lot of the weapon systems and secondary functions still weren't fully developed, but even in its current state, the armor already had frightening combat potential. It stood more than three meters tall, a massive war machine with a heavy but elegant frame. Across its chest, six arc reactors had been arranged in a wide V formation, each one feeding power into the whole system.
Not every weapon had been installed yet.
Both arms housed powerful sonic attack units strong enough to flip heavy trucks. Several compact but high-yield missiles were hidden in the shoulders. Mounted on the back was a special oversized unit whose exact function was harder to identify at a glance. The armor was originally supposed to receive an even stronger chest-mounted main gun—a laser cannon—as well as an ultra-high-frequency neural suppression device at the center of the brow.
There was no time for those now.
As for the adamantium, most of it had been reserved for key structural areas. The rest had been forged into two enormous shield-shaped armor plates, one mounted on the back and one over the chest. When detached, they could each serve as giant tower shields.
Two purposes. Same battlefield.
With the help of automated machinery, final assembly was wrapping up. Ivan leaned over the computer, checked the driver program one last time, then slammed the Enter key without hesitation.
A transfer bar flashed across the screen.
Ten percent. Twenty. Forty.
Then the whole armor shuddered.
Its eyes lit up.
…..
Back on the surface, Locke had been locked in a hard fight.
Being surrounded by nine knights wasn't enough to make him panic. What bothered him was the one thing he hadn't expected—the Hellfire wasn't doing nearly as much damage to them as it should have. That made every exchange longer and every mistake more dangerous. The fight had already slipped into a stalemate.
Then, without warning, a needle of cold danger stabbed straight through his instincts.
Locke's head snapped toward the direction he had come from, but he saw nothing. Still, that sense of danger remained, sharp and precise.
Then it hit.
A black arrow punched into his chest.
The impact made his expression change instantly. There was some kind of strange power on the arrow, something specifically designed to interfere with Hellfire. The flames around him dimmed violently, and for a moment he nearly dropped out of Ghost Rider form altogether.
Damn it.
Grinding his teeth, he grabbed the shaft and ripped it free. Hellfire surged back over the wound, and the torn flesh slowly began to close, but the power carried by the arrow remained lodged inside him like poison, constantly interfering with his control of the flames.
At that exact moment, a giant sword came crashing down toward his skull.
He dodged sideways, but another hellhorse was already there. It reared up and hammered both front hooves into his chest.
Bang.
Locke was launched backward like a cannonball and smashed straight into the Avengers' formation. Wolverine moved to catch him, failed completely, and got flattened underneath him like an unwilling crash cushion.
Locke pushed himself up, one hand still over his chest. Beneath the armor of Hellfire, he could feel broken bones grinding back into place. Even with his flame power suppressed, his own recovery ability was still monstrous.
Wolverine coughed a few times under him and muttered, "If even I can't stop you, are we all dead?"
Locke rolled his eyes. "If you're scared, leave."
Then the attacker finally revealed himself.
Above the Hudson, suspended in midair, stood a man with a bow in his hand and a pair of white wings spread from his back.
Locke actually froze for a split second.
What was this, a marriage angel come to set him up with somebody?
Then he got a good look at the face, the eye, and the black demonic energy rolling off him and recognized him immediately.
Hawkeye Barton.
The realization hit him in layers. Barton had been corrupted again, but this time it was stranger. The black demonic energy around him screamed Hell. The wings on his back, though, were clearly angelic.
A devil's body and an angel's wings.
What, was this freak trying to speedrun Heaven?
Hawkeye said nothing. He simply drew his bow again and aimed at Locke.
That same sense of fatal danger locked onto him. This one couldn't be dodged. The understanding hit Locke all at once. No matter where he moved, the arrow would follow. He instinctively looked toward Wolverine beside him. Adamantium bones could probably block it, but there was still the issue of angle. If the shot slipped through gaps in the skeleton, it would still go through.
Then his eyes drifted lower.
The pelvis was broader. Better chance of interception.
Wolverine swallowed hard. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
On the far side of the river, Hawkeye released the string.
The black arrow flashed once and seemed to vanish into another dimension.
Locke narrowed his eyes and shoved his mental focus to its limit, ready to teleport himself to the front, back, left, or right of Wolverine at any instant if that gave him even a chance—
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
Boom. Boom.
Two giant metal shields dropped out of the sky and slammed into the ground, one in front of him and one behind him, boxing him in at the exact last second.
Clang.
The black arrow slammed into the shield ahead of him and burst into black mist, but the metal surface didn't so much as dent.
Adamantium.
Heavy footsteps shook the ground.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
One of the shields was grabbed by an enormous mechanical hand and mounted back onto its owner's back. The other was lifted into a grip as a weapon. The giant suit's chest opened, revealing a pilot compartment inside.
Then a familiar feminine voice sounded from the armor.
"Master, Thunder Armor is in place."
The Avengers all stared.
Standing before them was a silver-white giant over three meters tall, with smooth lines, balanced proportions, and a shape so refined it looked more like war sculpture than machinery. Locke looked over and saw Anton and Ivan in the distance waving at him like lunatics.
You beautiful bastards.
He stepped forward without hesitation and entered the cockpit. The chest closed automatically behind him, and the shield-like breastplate locked into place.
The moment his mind connected, the remaining electricity in his body poured through his palms into the machine. The specially designed systems received it at once. All six arc reactors roared to full power, and a monstrous current surged through the armor and back into him.
The dark energy left by Hawkeye's arrow shattered instantly.
Hellfire returned in full.
In the next heartbeat, blazing flames erupted over the entire suit. Just like the Blackbird, the Thunder Armor completed its transformation into a Hell-forged version of itself. The silver-white exterior turned red and black. The eyes, once glowing white, burned crimson instead.
An armored arm reached behind its back and drew out a weapon.
A buzzing chainsaw sword.
Ahead of him, the Hell Knights were charging again.
Locke's eyes went cold.
Now the fight was getting interesting.
He broke into a run like some giant predatory beast, the entire armor pounding across the ground. Just before colliding head-on with the nearest knight, he planted one foot and launched himself upward.
His left arm came up.
Silver-white thunder erupted.
The battlefield was instantly drowned in lightning again. Even the hellhorses screamed this time, their burning bodies twitching under the electrical storm. Locke's chainsaw sword came down with savage force on the leading knight.
Crack.
The high-frequency blade tore through armor, flesh, and skull like an industrial grinder. The knight's head exploded into shredded fragments, and the sword didn't stop there. It kept cutting all the way down until horse and rider were split cleanly in two.
This was no ordinary chainsaw sword. It was a high-frequency monster that Anton and Ivan had developed in obsessive, sleepless bursts of genius. Now, with Hellfire layered over it, it was horrifying.
After that, the slaughter truly began.
With violent thunder in one hand and the flaming chainsaw sword in the other, Locke tore into the nine knights like an eagle falling on barnyard animals. One after another, they were ripped apart, broken, burned, or shredded before they could regroup.
Above the battlefield, Hawkeye kept firing.
Arrow after arrow streaked toward Locke, but now they either vanished inside the thunderstorm surrounding him or were stopped cold by the adamantium chestplate and back armor. When Hawkeye finally lost patience and flew in himself, Locke had already crushed the head of the last knight in one hand.
The battlefield had gone quiet.
Every ordinary demon had been wiped out. Only two surviving hellhorses remained, shrieking toward the sky in fury and fear.
Hawkeye hovered in front of him, expression dead and unreadable. His left eye held no emotion at all, as cold as a corpse's.
Locke narrowed his eyes. "I was going to offer you one chance to surrender," he said. "Not anymore. Whether you kneel or not, you die today. You attacked my base. That means you die."
"Haha…"
Hawkeye laughed, low and hoarse. "So you've got armor too. Did Stark give it to you?"
Without waiting for an answer, he continued, his voice rough and almost amused. "What a coincidence. I've got a set too."
The black cloth wrapped around his body withered away piece by piece. His bow vanished, reshaping itself into a long, sharp sword. Then silver-gray armor spread across him, forming from the inside out. The cloth over his face fell away at last, revealing Barton's real features and a faint smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
"Tell me," he said, looking Locke up and down, "which one looks better?"
....
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