Chapter 215: Heard You've Been Trying to Kill Me This Whole Time?
SHIELD headquarters.
As the three helicarriers rose slowly into the sky, Steve and the others shifted their focus away from Pierce and onto the carriers themselves.
Carter looked at Pierce, sitting in his office chair with an unsettlingly serene smile on his face, and a flash of fury crossed her eyes.
Before Pierce's startled eyes, Carter raised her gun and fired twice, shattering both of his kneecaps.
The agony tore a scream out of him.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Pierce collapsed to the floor in pain, both hands clamped over his knees as blood poured out between his fingers, cursing nonstop.
Carter had done it entirely because, with the helicarriers now airborne, she wouldn't have time to keep an eye on Pierce going forward.
So to make sure he couldn't run, she'd simply crippled both his legs. Now he wasn't going anywhere.
"Stark, any way you can get me up there?" Carter looked at Tony, his expression turned serious.
Tony nodded at the question, then asked, "Carter, do you want to go up rough, or gentle?"
"...Is there a difference?"
"Of course."
"Rough means I just throw you straight up there through the air. Gentle means I carry you up there."
"I'll take rough."
"Okay~"
With that.
Tony, hovering in midair, took hold of Carter's hand, met her eyes for a moment, and launched off instantly!
A second later, with the helicarrier still dozens of meters away, Tony swung his arm hard!
Whoosh—
The next instant, Carter blurred into a streak, flying up toward the carrier above!
She landed cleanly on the deck.
That done, Tony didn't waste any more time, immediately flying off toward another helicarrier.
But before he could reach its deck, JARVIS suddenly spoke up in warning. "Sir, detecting a high-energy target approaching rapidly at Mach thirty!"
Before the alert had even finished, JARVIS spoke again. "Sir, detecting a violent shift in the surrounding gravitational field..."
Hearing the alert, Tony froze for a second, and then his HUD display showed him exactly what the "high-energy target" actually was.
Matthew Lawrence.
The instant he saw who it was, something strange crossed Tony's otherwise serious face.
"Looks like we've got a much cleaner way to handle this after all."
Before he'd even finished the thought—
The figure had already come to a dead stop right in front of Tony.
The violent air pressure from the sudden arrival sent Tony's whole frame rocking unsteadily.
Looking at Matthew, standing there with his hands clasped behind his back, Tony clicked his tongue. "Matthew, you could've said something. We wouldn't have had to bother with all this."
"Given your usual temperament, I figured you'd just wait it out at the police station until we finished handling this..."
Listening to Tony's teasing, Matthew spread his hands, helpless. "Honestly, that was actually my original plan, wait until you'd wrapped things up before stepping in, since Nick Fury, that bald guy, only agreed to pay me for helping him flush out the mole."
"But turns out the grassroots really came through for me. I'd barely been in custody any time at all before the officers at the station went ahead and let me out to handle things myself~"
"And since the people cleared my path on their own, it wouldn't be right for me to let them down."
With that, Matthew crooked a finger toward SHIELD headquarters in the distance.
The next instant, a figure with both legs soaked in blood was yanked violently through the air and deposited in front of the two of them.
Looking at Pierce now in front of him, Matthew clasped his hands behind his back.
Sunlight cut through the clouds above, framing him as though he were standing inside a beam of light.
"Pierce, I hear you've been trying to kill me this whole time?"
"But..."
"You were going to do it with this?"
Matthew looked up at the three helicarriers overhead.
Pierce: "..."
"Did I say that?" Pierce played dumb. "Mr. Lawrence, you're New York's most successful philanthropist and businessman. Why on earth would SHIELD want to kill you? You must have misheard."
"No. I heard exactly right." The smile faded slowly from Matthew's face.
"Not only do I know you wanted me dead, I also know you were the one secretly directing the police force that took me into custody."
"But using some third-rate little trick like that, and these three pieces of scrap metal, to try to do anything to me..."
"You've badly underestimated Matthew Lawrence."
With that, Matthew glanced over at Tony beside him.
"Tony, if there's nothing else, I think you all should probably get some distance."
"Worried about hitting us by accident?"
"No. Worried about getting blood splattered on your faces in a minute."
"...All right." Tony was quiet for a couple of seconds, then shrugged, and used his radio to speak to Natasha, Steve, and Carter, still fighting away aboard the helicarriers. "Everyone, I've got some good news for you."
"...What is it?" Steve and the others asked, confused.
"As of right now, Project Insight is over."
"Over? What do you mean?" Carter asked, puzzled.
Tony answered patiently. "It's simple. Matthew's here."
"Stark, are you telling me Matthew showed up, so we're not needed anymore?"
"Uh..." Tony paused for a moment. "I know it's embarrassing to admit, but yeah, that's basically the reality of it."
"And when you say 'not needed,' that includes me too," Tony added, a note of resignation creeping into his own voice.
"So you all should probably pull back, just so nobody gets caught in the crossfire by accident."
"...All right, then..." Steve let out a long sigh.
While it was genuinely good news that Matthew could handle Project Insight, there was still something deflating about hiding behind someone else and letting them handle the danger for you.
It brought back memories of who he used to be, before he'd become a super soldier.
Even so, seeing the guards still closing in relentlessly, Steve didn't hesitate any further. He turned and ran!
The others did the same.
Elsewhere, inside the control room.
Matthew's sudden arrival hadn't gone unnoticed by the HYDRA personnel inside either.
"Attention! Attention! Observation confirms the target's internal energy signature is off the charts!"
"To ensure the helicarriers aren't damaged, prioritize concentrated fire on the target!"
"Understood!"
The personnel in the control room nodded in acknowledgment.
The next instant!
Thousands of gun barrels swiveled in unison, all locking onto Matthew below the carriers...
The moment the targeting locked, every barrel lit up with a red glow at once!
Below the carriers, Matthew watched the barrels lighting up in rapid succession, his expression still perfectly calm.
He turned his head to watch Tony and the others speeding away into the distance, and something cold flickered in his eyes as he looked back up at the helicarriers.
"HYDRA... I think it's time we settled some accounts."
Matthew murmured it under his breath.
His gaze swept over to Pierce in front of him.
A thought stirred. The gravity field flipped in an instant!
Pierce's entire body became a projectile in that same moment, launched straight up into the sky.
The speed was so extreme that the instant the acceleration hit, the blood beneath his skin was forced out through every pore all at once, leaving behind what looked like a single red streak trailing beneath him.
In the distance, Tony watched Pierce rocketing skyward and clicked his tongue in genuine amazement. "JARVIS, check how fast Pierce is going right now, would you?"
"Approximately Mach eighteen..." JARVIS replied.
"Mach eighteen..."
"An ordinary person accelerated to Mach eighteen within a single second would have the fat in their body combust instantly, and their skeleton would shatter. So even if he somehow stopped right now, there's no real chance he survives this," Tony murmured.
"Although it doesn't look like he's stopping anytime soon... at least not before he reaches space."
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
The instant targeting locked, thousands of blazing red beams tore across the sky, converging directly on Matthew.
The entire sky turned a deep, blood-soaked red, the barrage so dense and suffocating it looked like a solid torrent of steel, pouring down on him from every direction at once!
But—
The shells froze dead in the air, a full meter from Matthew.
As if they'd slammed into some invisible wall, thousands of rounds hung suspended in midair, unable to advance another inch.
The next instant.
The gravity field flipped.
No explosion. No flash of fire.
In a single moment, that entire mass of thousands of shells was wrenched violently upward by an overwhelming force, their trajectories bent brutally into a ninety-degree angle, launching straight up into the sky!
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh—!!
The shriek of displaced air was sharp enough to nearly rupture the eardrums of everyone watching.
Thousands of shells, trailing red fire behind them, streaked across the deep blue sky like a meteor shower running in reverse, carving thousands of perfectly straight white lines through the air.
They cut through the atmosphere, driving straight for its outer edge.
Then...
BOOM!!!
Blossoms of white light bloomed silently at the edge of space.
No sound reached the ground, but the sudden burst of light was bright enough to nearly outshine the sun itself.
Layer after layer of crimson fire piled up, forming a blazing canopy stretching for dozens of miles, turning the entire sky as bright as midday.
Light scattered. Fire rained down in fragments.
Thousands of shells detonated in the same instant, as if some god had casually scattered a handful of fireworks across the heavens.
Through it all, Matthew stood exactly where he'd been, without moving an inch.
He hadn't even lifted a finger.
In the distance, hovering in midair, Tony stared at the still-burning sky, and beneath his faceplate the corner of his mouth twitched.
"...JARVIS."
"Yes, sir."
"What exactly was the point of all that work we just put in?"
"Matthew could've handled every bit of this alone."
JARVIS was quiet for a moment. "Sir, I don't have an answer for that one either."
"Though I'd suggest that no matter how powerful one person is, they can't handle every problem alone, which is exactly why the world needs other superheroes too."
Listening to JARVIS's attempt at consolation, Tony clicked his tongue and said nothing further.
Inside the command center.
Dead silence had fallen over the room.
The entire space felt like someone had hit a mute button on it.
Every HYDRA operative stood frozen at their consoles, eyes locked unblinking on the screen, still showing the smoke and fire that hadn't yet cleared.
Thousands of shells.
Within a single second.
Every trajectory reversed.
And that man... hadn't moved at all.
"What... what kind of monster is he..." one operator stammered, hand hovering and shaking violently above the firing controls.
"A capability on this level... how is that even possible—"
"Shut up!"
The commander's furious bark yanked everyone back from the edge of shock.
He was a middle-aged man with graying temples, sunken eyes, and sharply pronounced cheekbones.
He shoved the still-stunned operator aside, slammed both hands down on the console, his eyes shot through with red.
"What the hell are you all standing around for?! Keep firing!!"
"Second volley! Every gun! Fire everything!!"
"Blow him into scraps!!"
"I refuse to believe a power like his doesn't have a limit somewhere!"
"If once doesn't work, do it twice! If twice doesn't work, do it three times! Until he's dead!"
The commander's roar echoed back and forth through the command center.
Snapped out of their shock, the operators slammed down the firing controls almost entirely on muscle memory.
The next instant.
The barrels of all three helicarriers lit up with that same blood-red glow again!
This barrage was denser than the last.
A storm of metal poured down toward Matthew, blotting out the sky!
The barrage left almost no gap at all.
The shells packed so tightly together that they sealed off the sky around Matthew completely, and from a distance it looked like a colossal wall of steel and gunpowder closing in fast.
And just as that wall of death was about to close around him—
Matthew finally moved.
He raised his right hand.
A resonant hum!!
An invisible force erupted violently from within him!
The gravity field became an unseen storm of destruction centered on him, an invisible pulse of pressure radiating outward with ferocious force.
The air compressed instantly into visible white mist, and space itself let out a groaning hum under the violent distortion of gravity!
The second barrage hadn't even come within a hundred meters of him before the storm tore it apart completely.
Thousands of shells lost all direction in an instant, like marbles thrown into a tumbling washing machine, colliding, crushing, and deforming against each other in the gravitational chaos—
Then ground down into a sky full of metal dust.
But the "storm" didn't stop there.
It kept expanding outward.
At that same moment, the engines of all three helicarriers let out a piercing shriek, red warning lights flashing wildly, but by then no countermeasure meant anything anymore.
The invisible tendrils of the gravity field wrapped around the first carrier.
Matthew turned his wrist.
Pressed down.
Screeeech!!!
The tortured wail of steel tore through the sky.
The massive vessel, over four hundred meters long, had its deck cave inward in an instant, as if some invisible giant hand had seized it dead center and squeezed.
The alloy keel let out a teeth-grinding shriek as it snapped, rivets popping loose one after another under the tremendous force, the outer hull collapsing inward in layers.
The next instant, the ship's body tore apart at the midsection!
At the break, arcs of electricity crackled from severed cables, and fuel sprayed out from ruptured lines, misting into a haze in the air.
And the instant that fuel mist touched the sparks still crackling around it—
BOOM!!
A fireball erupted violently in midair.
The severed hull, trailing thick black smoke and roaring flame, plummeted toward the ground like a decapitated steel beast.
Matthew didn't pause.
He turned toward the second carrier, extended his left hand, and slowly closed it into a loose grip.
Five fingers curling shut.
The gravity field collapsed inward in an instant!
The second carrier's hull received equal crushing force from every angle simultaneously.
Under that pressure, the bridge's glass curtain wall gave way first, shattering into a spray of fragments.
Next came the ship's keel framework, which, subjected to uniform pressure from every direction, had nowhere to redirect the force and simply had to absorb it.
Creak, creak...
A teeth-grinding sound of metal twisting rang out from within.
The entire carrier shook violently in that instant, until it finally couldn't withstand the force any longer.
BANG!!
The instant the gravitational pressure hit its critical threshold and released, the entire carrier was crushed in an instant into a solid iron sphere barely fifty meters across.
Metal and flesh had been kneaded together into a single, airtight mass.
Thick blood seeped slowly from the seams of that iron sphere, taking on an eerie, dark red sheen in the sunlight.
Inside the command center.
The HYDRA commander watched two of the carriers vanish from the screen one after another, his legs giving out beneath him, and he collapsed onto the floor.
His lips trembled, trying to form words, but no sound came out.
And reflected in his terror-widened eyes...
Matthew turned his gaze to the last remaining helicarrier.
He spread his fingers wide and flipped his hand sharply upward.
The gravity field inverted!
The last carrier's bow was hoisted violently into the air in an instant, while its stern was pinned firmly in place.
The entire vessel, like a chopstick snapped in half, began tearing apart from the middle outward.
The alloy plating was wrenched into twisted ribbons of steel, the compartments inside exposed layer by layer, fuel, ammunition, and human bodies spilling out through the tear like dust shaken loose.
Then the gravity field's tearing force abruptly split into dozens of separate vectors.
In just two seconds...
The last carrier had been torn into a sky full of fragments.
Broken keel struts. Twisted propellers. Shattered bulkheads. Flattened bodies.
Everything churned violently together in the gravitational chaos.
Once it was all done, Matthew slowly lowered both hands.
The wreckage, hanging suspended in midair, lost its gravitational binding and came pouring down like a violent downpour.
Matthew stood in the middle of that storm of steel and fire, the edges of his coat stirring gently in the hot wind.
From beginning to end, his expression never changed once.
In the distance.
Tony Stark hovered in midair, looking down at the battlefield below, one that looked like it had been ravaged by a natural disaster, and said nothing for a long while.
"..."
"Yes, sir."
"Record that."
"Already recording, sir."
"Good." Tony drew a slow breath. "Next time we run into some kind of terrorist attack, I'm going to send them this footage first, and let them think it over real carefully."
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