Chapter 456: Avengers VS U.S. AvengersCarol Danvers froze, the golden energy around her fists flickering. If the War Machine armor was a hollow drone, the implications hit her like a physical blow. The real James Rhodes was missing.
"I bet the Secret Service is just going to write us up for dereliction of duty if we don't stop these terrorists from bagging the President," Tony muttered. His faceplate tracked the rest of the U.S. Avengers. They weren't moving to protect the stage. They were shifting into combat stances, targeting the crowd and the real Avengers.
Tony aimed a repulsor at the Greek God of War. "Is Ares out of his mind? Why is he standing on their side of the room?"
"I don't know him well," Carol said, her jaw tightening. "But I'm guessing he doesn't care who's writing the checks as long as there's a war."
The U.S. Avengers surged forward.
"Just one question, Carol," Tony said, his repulsors whining to a high pitch. "Were you planning to renew your contract with these guys?"
"Do you think they're keeping my spot warm?" Carol shot back.
"Not our department," Tony said.
He raised both gauntlets and unleashed a sustained, high-yield repulsor barrage directly into the Super-Adaptoid. The android staggered, its synthetic skin scorching away, but the damage reversed almost instantly. Glowing, Extremis-like heat sealed the breaches. Worse, the Adaptoid raised its own arm. Its forearm shifted, perfectly mimicking Tony's brand-new repulsor tech, and fired a localized, identical blast right back at him.
Tony rolled out of the air, dodging his own weapon.
"Carol," Tony barked, stabilizing his thrusters. "Your primary offensive output is raw energy projection, right?"
Carol blinked. "Yeah. Why?"
"Great. He's yours."
"What?"
"If he fights me, he copies my tech," Tony explained rapidly. "The stronger the opponent, the stronger the weapon he builds to counter them. I'm way too strong. Tag in!"
Tony didn't wait for her to argue. He fired his thrusters, accelerating toward the evacuation corridor where the Secret Service had dragged President Ellis.
As he flew, the plating on Tony's armor rippled. The classic hot-rod red and gold retracted, shifting fluidly into a sleek, matte-black stealth configuration trimmed with gold. A second later, the optical camouflage engaged, rendering the Iron Man completely invisible against the convention center ceiling.
This was the Model Prime. It was built on the foundation of the Mark 42's modular concept, vastly improved by a casual lab session with Peter Parker. Peter had floated a simple, brilliant concept: If you standardize the micro-storage geometry, you don't need dedicated gauntlets or leg plating. Any piece of the suit should be able to transform into any function.
Tony had taken the kid's idea and sprinted with it. The Model Prime didn't rely on bulky, interchangeable parts. It utilized advanced nanotechnology and micro-storage architecture. It could generate heavy-assault cannons, stealth plating, or deep-space thrusters on the fly. It was an entire Iron Legion condensed into a single, shifting second skin. Against an enemy that could adapt to anything, Tony couldn't risk giving the Adaptoid the Model Prime blueprints.
Down on the floor, total chaos erupted.
Thor intercepted Ares with a thunderous clash of divine metal. Mjolnir met the God of War's battle-axe, sending a shockwave that shattered every glass fixture in the hall.
"Why do you aid this conspiracy, Ares?!" Thor roared, lightning sparking across his chainmail. "They seek only ruin!"
Ares threw his head back and laughed, pressing his axe against the hammer. "A conspiracy that brings a magnificent war! Why should I not stand with them, Odinson?! I am aiding the nation that wages the most wars on this pathetic realm! A God of War requires no other reason!"
Thor scowled. He tightened his grip on Mjolnir's leather-wrapped handle. "Is this why you have never tasted true victory, Ares? You chase the bloodshed, but you lack the vision to secure the triumph."
Ares's eyes flared with rage. "You dare insult the God of War?!"
Thor didn't answer with words. He swung Mjolnir in a brutal upward arc, catching Ares under the chin. The impact launched the Greek god straight through the reinforced ceiling, blasting him into the open sky. Thor launched himself into the air a second later. The sky was the true battlefield of gods.
Across the room, the Hulk roared. He charged straight at Zzzax. The living lightning elemental crackled with raw, untamed voltage, expanding until it matched the Hulk's towering mass. Gamma radiation clashed with pure electricity, tearing the convention floor to shreds.
Steve Rogers and T'Challa found themselves boxed in by Darkhawk and Jack of Hearts.
Darkhawk was manageable. The alien amulet powering his suit made him a flying tank, but a tank could be dismantled. Jack of Hearts, however, was a walking, volatile nuclear reactor. His energy output was entirely out of Cap and Panther's weight class.
Carol Danvers did the math in a fraction of a second. She remembered Tony's tactical logic. The Adaptoid scales to the strongest threat.
"I've got Jack!" Carol shouted. She ignited her binary aura, tackled Jack of Hearts mid-flight, and physically blasted him through the convention center's grand window, taking the living bomb out of the civilian zone.
T'Challa didn't waste a breath. He deployed his vibranium claws and vaulted over a shattered podium, locking Darkhawk into a brutal, close-quarters melee.
That left Steve Rogers standing alone in the center of the ruined hall.
The Super-Adaptoid—still wearing the patriotic, star-spangled colors of "Citizen V"—turned its blank, synthetic face toward him.
Steve lowered his shield. He looked at the machine draped in the American flag. He looked at the chaos, the betrayal, and the sheer, manufactured violence tearing his country apart from the inside.
Steve let out a slow, heavy breath. He tightened the leather straps of his shield, locked his jaw, and charged straight at the machine.
PS: Marvel Fun Fact! Tony's "All-New, All-Different" armor in the comics is officially known as the Model 51 or Model Prime armor! Debuting in Invincible Iron Man Vol 3 #1 (2015), this suit uses nanotechnology that allows it to change its shape and color on command, effectively letting Tony merge all his specialized suits (Hulkbuster, Stealth, Space) into one single, highly adaptable armor!
Chapter 457: The Current State of the Raft PrisonThick, acrid black smoke billowed from the fractured hull of the Raft. The submerged supermax prison was currently tearing itself apart from the inside out. The emergency deployment of the Pym-shrunk 'Mansion' vault had violently expanded, warping the facility's titanium bulkheads like cheap tin.
Janet van Dyne darted through the choking soot. Her iridescent wings blurred into a hum. Hank wouldn't have triggered the Mansion expansion unless the situation was an absolute, unsalvageable catastrophe. But the sudden, violent displacement of mass meant the exact moment the structures collided was lethally dangerous.
"Hank?" Janet tapped her earpiece. "Hank, do you copy? What's your twenty?"
Static hissed in her ear. Electro's massive EMP wave had completely fried the Raft's internal communications grid.
Flying blind through a riot of escaped supervillains was a bad hand, but Janet didn't slow down.
She banked around a shattered concrete pillar and nearly collided with a familiar face. Ulysses Klaue. The vibranium smuggler was stumbling through the debris, coughing on the smoke. The Raft didn't store inmates with their gear; without his prosthetic sonic-cannon, Klaue was just an ordinary man missing his left hand.
"Give it up, Klaue," Janet buzzed, hovering at his eye level. "We're in the middle of the Atlantic. Unless you've suddenly grown gills, your only exit is feeding the sharks. Sit down."
Klaue froze, his eyes widening. But he wasn't looking at her.
Janet's instincts flared. She dropped her altitude just as a massive, olive-green hand swept through the space she'd been occupying, crushing the concrete wall behind her into powder.
Emil Blonsky. The Abomination.
Janet zipped backward, leveling her bio-electric stingers. "Listen, big guy. Stand down right now, walk back to your cell, and I'll personally make sure they keep serving you coffee. Deal?"
Blonsky paused. He let out a low, rumbling laugh that vibrated in Janet's chest. "You really don't get it, do you, bug?"
He lunged, swinging a fist the size of a wrecking ball.
Janet didn't flinch. She fired twin bio-electric blasts directly into Blonsky's eyes.
The Abomination roared, swatting blindly at his burning face. Janet didn't try to fight him head-on. Instead, she buzzed right past his ears, taunting him, leading him deeper into the wreckage. Blonsky charged blindly after her, his massive bulk smashing through collapsed steel beams and debris blockages, inadvertently clearing a perfectly clean flight path for the Wasp.
She zipped through a newly opened corridor and slammed on the brakes.
Carl Creel—the Absorbing Man—was brawling with a teenage girl.
Janet didn't immediately recognize the girl, but she recognized the raw, crackling crimson energy radiating from her hands. Chaos magic. It whipped around Creel, burning his skin. The Absorbing Man kept trying to reach out and touch the surrounding debris to shift his molecular structure, but the dense, shifting red mist physically repelled his hands. He couldn't absorb pure, volatile hex magic.
"Heads up!" Janet yelled.
Wanda Maximoff heard the warning. She dropped her hex shield and dove to the side.
Janet led the blinded Abomination straight into the clearing. She pulled up sharply. Blonsky, unable to stop his forward momentum, collided head-on with the Absorbing Man like a freight train hitting a brick wall.
The two heavyweights went down in a violent tangle of bruised green muscle and cracked asphalt.
Janet landed lightly on a tilted steel slab, returning to her normal size. "Always nice to see a friendly face in a supermax riot," she said, offering a quick smile. "I'm Janet. Wasp."
"Wanda Maximoff," the girl replied, catching her breath. "I know who you are. I just... didn't expect to see the Avengers down here."
Janet filed the name. Maximoff. Magneto's daughter, the princess of Genosha.
"Let's walk and talk," Janet said, gesturing down the hall. "Those two meatheads aren't going to stay down forever."
Wanda nodded. They hurried down the flickering corridor.
"Did Spider-Man come with you?" Janet asked.
"Yes," Wanda said, her red coat swishing as she stepped over a downed Ultron drone. "We split up to cover more ground and secure the inmates, but the riot is massive. Our comm feeds are completely dead."
A sudden, violent gust of wind ruffled Janet's hair.
Pietro Maximoff materialized in front of them, casually brushing dust off his silver hair. "Good news," Pietro said, looking at his sister. "I ran a sweep. Knocked out a couple dozen guys in orange jumpsuits. Left them in a pile. Need a hand with anything else?"
Wanda sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "This is my brother. Living proof that the only thing some mutants are good for is running away very quickly."
"I don't run away, I run efficiently," Pietro smirked. "I can map this entire prison in three minutes. Even with all the new structural damage."
Janet grabbed Pietro's shoulder. "Can you find Hank Pym? Red and black suit, silver helmet with ant-mandible antennas. He shrinks. If he's on the floor somewhere, do not step on him."
Pietro gave her a deeply weird look, then vanished with a sonic crack.
Less than three minutes later, another gust of wind heralded his return. He wasn't smiling anymore.
"Bad news," Pietro said, his chest heaving slightly. "I didn't see your bug-guy. But I found Spider-Man."
"Is he okay?" Wanda asked sharply.
"He's taking a massive beating," Pietro said grimly. "He's fighting six heavy-hitters at once. He needs backup immediately."
Pietro vanished again, speeding back toward the fight.
Janet and Wanda shared a look and broke into a sprint toward the main detention gates.
They didn't make it far. A deafening, metallic screech echoed from the Raft's primary entrance. The massive, foot-thick vault doors began to buckle inward, the steel groaning under unimaginable pressure.
BOOM.
The doors blew completely off their hinges, crashing onto the cellblock floor in a cloud of dust.
"It's clobberin' time!"
Ben Grimm stepped through the smoke, brushing twisted metal off his rocky orange shoulders. Behind the Thing stood Reed, Sue, and Johnny.
The Fantastic Four had arrived.
Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of the prison, stripped of his bio-electricity and walled in by sand and illusions, Peter Parker was fighting the Sinister Six for his life.
Chapter 458: Sink or SwimJust how many people were locked up in the Raft, and what kind of monsters were they?
The numbers were staggering. In the six short months since the submersible supermax opened, it had already processed over five hundred super-criminals requiring specialized, maximum-security containment. It was a grim metric of just how much superhuman and high-tech crime had spiked globally since the Battle of New York. Naturally, the vast majority of the inmates hailed from the United States and Europe—nations where the legal systems made executing superhumans practically impossible. Anywhere else, these guys would have already met a firing squad.
Now, with the Raft paralyzed in the water and the Avengers still en route, the skeleton crew of heroes on-site was fighting a losing battle against total anarchy.
Most of the escaped inmates quickly realized that being trapped in a sinking steel tin in the middle of the Atlantic meant their breakout was a mathematical dead end. But the heavy hitters? They were already engineering their own exit vectors.
Emil Blonsky was one of them. The Abomination smashed his massive green fist through a marble wall—where a marble structure came from inside a submersible prison, he didn't know or care. He was just looking for anything buoyant.
Carl Creel, the Absorbing Man, had already checked out. The second the containment fields dropped, that son of a bitch touched a ruptured plumbing line, turned his entire physical body into liquid water, and flushed himself out into the ocean at lightning speed. Even Blonsky had to respect the hustle. It made you wonder how S.H.I.E.L.D. ever managed to catch the guy in the first place.
"You guys just keep making a racket. Let's see how long that lasts," Blonsky muttered.
He ripped a heavy, cast-iron bathtub out of the rubble. Gripping the porcelain rim, he vaulted off the flooded deck. His gamma-powered leg muscles launched him entirely out of the Raft, sending him soaring several kilometers into the air. He crashed down into the freezing Atlantic, sitting perfectly upright inside the tub, and immediately started using his massive green hands as paddles to aggressively row toward the mainland.
"Oh my God. Is the giant green ass-goblin seriously trying to row a bathtub to shore with his bare hands?"
Wade Wilson yanked his red spandex pants up over his hips. Deadpool watched the Abomination splash away into the distance, then glanced over his shoulder. Victor Creed—Sabretooth—had just ripped the heavy mutant-suppressing collar off his neck and stepped out of his cell.
Wade flashed him a cheerful thumbs-up. "What do you say, boys? Care for a swim?"
The five surviving members of the Weapon X program, including Lady Deathstrike and Daken, all possessed absurd regenerative healing factors. They could easily dive into the Atlantic and just start swimming. If they drowned from exhaustion halfway to New York, who cared? They'd revive a few minutes after washing up on a beach or getting scooped into a fishing net. When it came to jailbreaks, Weapon X had the lowest overhead cost on the market.
Creed, Daken, and the others didn't waste time. They sprinted for the nearest breach and dove into the dark water.
Wade, however, stayed behind. As the only ethical mercenary who had actually negotiated two sanctioned prison releases to help superheroes—and even scored a sweet teleportation belt out of the deal without going rogue—Deadpool wasn't in a rush to become a fugitive again. He took a leisurely stroll down the chaotic cell block.
He didn't make it three steps.
A silver blur slammed into his chest. Wade flew backward, tumbling head over heels into an empty cell. Before he could even blink, a massive pile of concrete rubble and twisted steel furniture slammed into the doorway, sealing him inside.
"Hey!" Wade yelled, pressing his masked face against the bars. "I'm handsome, not super-strong! I can't lift a vending machine!"
Wade wasn't the only casualty. Herman Schultz, who had just been slapped across the room by Doctor Octavius, staggered to his feet to join the riot. A silver shockwave hit him in the sternum, throwing the Shocker back into his cell. The heavy iron door slammed shut, followed by the screech of bending metal as it was jammed tight.
Pietro Maximoff didn't have time to sort the good guys from the bad. He knew Spider-Man was taking a beating in the lower levels, but Pietro trusted the web-head to hold his own for a few minutes while he handled crowd control. In the span of sixty seconds, Quicksilver swept the upper tiers, violently shoving every groggy, unarmored supervillain back into their cages and barricading the doors.
Pietro skidded to a halt near the central atrium. Ulysses Klaue was stomping his heavy boot down on a tiny, red-and-black figure.
Pietro blurred forward, tackling the one-armed smuggler into a reinforced pillar, making sure not to accidentally kill the man with the sheer kinetic impact. He knelt down, scooping up the tiny scientist.
"Hello, Dr. Pym," Pietro said rapidly as Hank scaled back up to normal size. "I'm Pietro. We haven't formally met, but I've helped the Avengers before. You okay?"
Hank groaned, clutching his ribs. "Not good. The Mansion... the shrunken secondary vault. It holds the most dangerous, irredeemable criminals on the planet. You have to be careful."
"We'll swap notes later, Doc," Pietro said, hoisting Pym to his feet. "I'm getting you out of here first."
Quicksilver grabbed Pym by the harness and blurred toward the exit, nearly colliding with the Fantastic Four as they finally breached the main gates. Pietro set a dizzy, nauseous Pym down against a wall, cracked his neck, and pointed down the corridor.
"Spider-Man is getting jumped by six heavy hitters down in the lower levels," Pietro reported. "I highly recommend you guys go back him up."
Johnny Storm sparked a flame over his thumb, raising an eyebrow at the silver-haired kid. "Why don't you go help him?"
"Because I'm busy putting three hundred loose inmates back in their boxes," Pietro shot back. "Unless you can run at Mach 4, I suggest you take the bug."
Pietro vanished in a sonic boom.
Johnny shrugged. "Fair enough. Flame on!"
Johnny ignited, rocketing down the hall. He had heard Cap and Spidey recently took down the original, WWII-era Human Torch. Johnny was itching to find out who had the hotter fire.
"Wait!" Hank Pym yelled, grabbing Reed Richards's sleeve as Janet flew over to stabilize him. "You need to be careful! Down at the very bottom of the Mansion vault... there's an enemy locked down there that even the full Avengers roster wasn't confident we could beat..."
Meanwhile, deep in the lower levels, the tactical math was rapidly changing for the Sinister Six.
"Otto!" Electro shouted. His eyes glowed with raw voltage as he tapped into the Raft's failing sensor grid. "The Fantastic Four just breached the upper levels!"
Electro had just been prepping a lethal, room-clearing voltage spike to give the Rhino a clean charge at Peter. Now, he hesitated. The six of them were already struggling to put Spider-Man in the ground. If Reed Richards and the Thing joined the fight, their window was closed.
Otto Octavius didn't hesitate. His titanium tentacles whipped outward, burying their heavy claws into the Raft's exterior hull. Metal shrieked and groaned as Otto violently peeled a massive section of the wall backward, exposing the dark, churning ocean outside.
"Dillon!" Otto roared over the rushing water. "Discharge everything! Hit the Raft's grid and paralyze the entire structure again!"
"I'll lose all my stored power!" Max yelled.
"Do it!" Otto bellowed.
Peter saw the opening. He dropped his stance, his hands glowing with golden magical energy to cast a binding spell.
But Dillon threw his arms wide. A blinding, apocalyptic shockwave of blue electricity exploded outward.
The sheer concussive force of the EMP blast caught Peter in the chest, throwing him violently backward into a concrete pillar. Blinking through the spots in his vision, Peter looked up just in time to see Doctor Octopus pull a sleek, advanced piece of technology from his belt.
A blinding column of teleportation light slammed down from the ceiling. When the light faded, the Sinister Six were gone.
Chapter 459: Juggernaut Stands Tall on the RaftElectro's plasma blast was a blinding, catastrophic wave of voltage. But Peter saw the surge coming.
The millisecond before the shockwave hit his chest, Peter dropped his physical stance, tapped into the mystic arts Doctor Strange had drilled into his head, and violently shoved his consciousness out of his own body.
His physical form collapsed to the steel floor, paralyzed and smoking. But his glowing, translucent astral projection stepped right over it.
The astral Spider-Man raised his fists, glowing with the raw, ethereal energy of the Web of Fate. He kept swinging, trading phantom blows with the Sinister Six while his real body rebooted. The villains might have actually managed to kill him right then and there if they had stayed to fight a ghost.
But they didn't have the time.
Peter's astral ears picked up the echo of a massive structural impact from the upper levels. The Fantastic Four had breached the Raft.
Doctor Octavius heard it too. Otto ripped a jagged hole through the prison's exterior bulkhead with a titanium tentacle, activated a sleek piece of stolen technology, and vanished with his entire team in a blinding pillar of teleportation light.
Peter severed the spell. His astral form snapped back into his physical body like a rubber band.
He gasped, his eyes flying open as the paralysis faded. He pushed himself up off the scorched floor, shaking the static out of his limbs.
"Otto definitely didn't build a localized teleporter from scratch in a jail cell," Peter muttered to the empty corridor.
He stretched his back. A dull ache radiated through his muscles. Man, I really wish Venom was off the injured reserve list. Ever since the Goblin fight, he's been running on dial-up speeds. Total symbiote sugar crash.
Peter pushed the annoyance aside. He needed to focus. Otto hadn't orchestrated a mass breakout just to test-drive a new boy band. Releasing hundreds of super-predators into the ocean was a calculated act of domestic terrorism. It was a smokescreen.
"I need to call Frank or Logan," Peter said, adjusting his web-shooters. "If Otto is still gunning for Norman Osborn, tracking him down just got a lot more urgent."
A blur of crimson energy illuminated the far end of the hall.
Wanda Maximoff sprinted around the corner. She flicked her wrist, sending a wave of red chaos magic crashing into a random escaped rioter, pinning the grunt hard against the ceiling. She didn't even break her stride.
"Spider-Man!" Wanda called out, her red coat flaring behind her. "Are you okay? Pietro said you were getting hammered down here."
"I'm fine," Peter said, dusting off his shoulders. "The Sinister Six teleported away the second they heard the Fantastic Four knocking. Incredibly rude, honestly. Where is everyone else?"
A sudden, violent gust of wind blew a stack of loose paperwork down the hall.
Pietro materialized next to his sister, casually leaning against the wall. "The Fantastic Four are currently dealing with the single most dangerous inmate in this entire submarine. Pym said the full Avengers roster might not even be enough to stop him."
Peter blinked. "Wait, where is Hank?"
"Dr. Pym took a bad hit," Pietro reported, his smirk vanishing. "He's heavily injured. The Wasp is doing triage and keeping him stabilized. I've been playing janitor on the cell blocks."
Pietro crossed his arms. "The good news is, I swept up almost all the loose inmates. Shoved them back in their boxes. The bad news? I only caught the D-listers who don't know how to throw a punch. The guys left standing are the real nightmares."
"A nightmare that can take the Avengers?" Peter frowned. He had read the Raft's manifest. He didn't remember anyone on that weight class being transferred here. "Who is it?"
"He calls himself the Juggernaut," Pietro said, scratching the back of his silver hair. "Claims to be Professor Charles Xavier's stepbrother. Which makes him, what, almost twenty years younger than me? Weird family tree."
Peter stared at the speedster. Your dad had twins in his seventies, Pietro. Let's not throw stones.
Two levels up, Wade Wilson pressed his masked face against the reinforced iron bars of his cell.
"I demand legal counsel!" Deadpool screamed at the empty corridor. "This is unlawful imprisonment! Magneto's track-star brat shoved me in here! I am a victim of circumstance!"
Deadpool rattled the bars. Pietro hadn't just locked him in; the speedster had jammed an entire mountain of crushed steel desks and concrete rubble against the door. Deadpool didn't possess super-strength. He wasn't moving it.
Heavy, rocky footsteps echoed down the hall.
The Thing stomped into view. Ben Grimm paused, peering through the gaps in the barricade. He caught a clear look at Wade's scarred, avocado-textured face beneath the half-lifted mask.
Ben grimaced and immediately took a step back in disgust.
Johnny Storm flew down the corridor, hovering over Ben's shoulder. "What is it, Ben? What did you see?"
"I don't know," Ben grunted, rubbing his rocky chin. "Looks like a bad guy. Or a dropped pie. Either way, definitely not a good person."
Wade gasped dramatically. He clutched his chest. "I heard that! I heard you, you giant orange rock-monster! This is a hate crime! This is blatant discrimination against the cosmetically challenged! Tomorrow, I am organizing a protest outside the Baxter Building! You don't even have ears, and you're judging my skincare routine?!"
"He's just trying to goad me into opening the door," Ben told Johnny, ignoring the mercenary. "Not gonna happen."
"I am advising you to let me out!" Wade whined, shaking the bars. "If you don't, you're going to regret—"
Wade froze.
A rhythmic, earth-shattering vibration rippled through the floor plating. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Wade's white lenses widened. He recognized that sound. He scrambled backward, pressing himself flat against the back wall of his cell. "Wait! No! Forget I said anything! Do not open this door! Leave me in here!"
Ben cracked his knuckles. "Looks like Pym's heavyweight just arrived."
The reinforced concrete wall at the end of the corridor exploded outward.
A behemoth stepped through the falling rubble. He stood over seven feet tall, dwarfing even Ben Grimm. His body was encased in massive, seamlessly forged red metal armor. A heavy, domed helmet completely covered his head, leaving only two narrow slits for his eyes.
"Sorry, pal," Ben rumbled, stepping into the center of the hall to block the giant's path. "Whoever you are, visiting hours are over. Time to head back to your cell. Let's have a little criminal accountability here."
The Juggernaut slowly lowered his massive head. He stared at the rock monster.
"No."
"You're asking for it, buddy!" Johnny yelled.
Flame on!
The Human Torch unleashed a blinding, concentrated torrent of white-hot fire directly at the behemoth's chest.
The Juggernaut didn't flinch. He didn't raise his arms to block. He just stood there. The red metal armor absorbed the inferno, radiating a terrifying, shimmering heat that warped the air around him. He peered through the eye-slits of his helmet, entirely unbothered.
Then, he charged.
The Juggernaut crossed the distance in a heartbeat. He didn't throw a punch. He simply reached out, grabbed Ben Grimm by the sides of his rocky head, lifted the multi-ton hero off the floor, and violently slammed him face-first into the steel deck.
The impact buckled the floor plating in a massive crater.
Ben grunted, his face pinned against the warped metal.
"Is that all you got?" Ben wheezed, spitting out a chip of concrete. "Because I brought backup."
Chapter 460: Annihilation! The Fantastic Four!Johnny Storm was pinned to the floor, gasping for air, but the "reinforcements" he had just threatened the Juggernaut with were already in motion.
Ben Grimm charged. He threw a massive, rocky right hook directly into the Juggernaut's domed helmet. The impact rang out like a cracked church bell.
Ben's confident grin vanished instantly. The Juggernaut didn't move an inch. He didn't even blink behind his narrow eye-slits.
"Alright," Ben grunted, shaking out his knuckles. "I thought you were just a regular super-sized mook. Turns out you got a thick skull, too."
The Juggernaut casually swung a backhand. The blow caught the Thing square in the chest, launching the multi-ton rock monster down the corridor like a skipped stone.
Further down the cell block, Reed Richards was elbow-deep in a sparked-out junction box. Electro's EMP had completely scrambled the Raft's grid, but with Dillon gone, a manual reboot was mathematically possible. Sue Storm stood guard, projecting a faint, shimmering force field over their perimeter.
They didn't get far. A deafening crash echoed down the hall.
Ben Grimm smashed through the ceiling scaffolding and slammed into the concrete floor, sliding to a halt right at Reed's stretched-out feet.
"Ben?" Sue gasped, dropping her shield. She stared at the crater. Who could throw the Thing like a baseball? Was the Hulk down here?
Ben groaned. He pushed himself up on one elbow, rubbing his rocky jaw. "Sue. Reed. Sorry to interrupt the IT work. But we're gonna need all hands on deck for this one."
Reed retracted his elongated arms, his brow furrowing. "Ben, your epidermis is highly resistant to blunt force trauma. What exactly—"
"The guy doesn't feel pain, Reed," Ben growled, pointing a thick orange finger back the way he came. "And he hits like a freight train."
Back in the corridor, Johnny finally peeled himself off the floor. He ignited into a blinding pillar of fire, rocketing straight at the Juggernaut. If raw heat wouldn't melt the armor, he'd starve the guy out. Johnny flared his aura, rapidly burning away the ambient oxygen in the enclosed hallway.
You gotta breathe, right? Johnny thought, cranking the temperature until the surrounding steel walls began to warp and slag.
The Juggernaut just took a deep breath. He held it. He walked straight through the white-hot inferno, completely ignoring the heat, and grabbed Johnny by the face.
Johnny choked. The flames sputtered and died as the oxygen vanished.
A flat, elongated sheet of unstable molecules suddenly wrapped around the Juggernaut's massive bicep. Reed Richards snapped his elastic body back into proportion, coiling himself entirely around the Juggernaut's upper torso. Reed popped his head over the behemoth's shoulder.
"Mr. Cain Marko," Reed began, his tone perfectly conversational despite the life-or-death struggle. "I am unsure of the psychological root of your violent tendencies, but logic dictates that since S.H.I.E.L.D. captured you once, you are mathematically capable of being defeated again. I strongly advise you to stand down before—"
The Juggernaut reached up, clamped a massive hand over Reed's face, and violently peeled the scientist off his back like a piece of tape.
Sue thrust both hands forward. An invisible, telekinetic wall slammed down in front of the Juggernaut.
The Juggernaut took a step. The force field shrieked.
Sue gritted her teeth, a thin line of blood trickling from her nose. She poured her concentration into the construct. But a crackling, crimson aura suddenly flared around the Juggernaut's armor. It pressed outward, physically compressing her invisible barrier. It was absurd. Force fields didn't bend.
"I haven't received any new orders," the Juggernaut rumbled, his voice echoing from inside the dome. He tossed the gasping Johnny aside. He set his boots against the buckling force field and pushed. "So I haven't made a move. But now I'm leaving."
He took another step. The crimson aura flared brighter. "And once the Juggernaut builds momentum, absolutely nothing stops him."
Ben Grimm roared, charging back into the fray. He threw a haymaker directly into the Juggernaut's faceplate. It didn't stagger the giant, but it bought Sue a fraction of a second.
"Blow his helmet off, Sue!" Ben yelled, wrestling with the giant's thick arms. "Crush his brain! Don't hold back!"
"I can't!" Sue screamed, wiping the blood from her lip. "There's a secondary energy barrier! I can't penetrate it!"
The Juggernaut grabbed Ben by the rocky chest, hoisted him overhead, and hurled him directly at Sue. She desperately threw up a shield to catch her husband, and the impact sent them both skidding uncontrollably down the corridor.
As Reed snapped his elastic body back together, his genius-level intellect processed the data. The force field. The unstoppable momentum. Marko wasn't a mutant. His power defied the laws of thermodynamics entirely.
It was magic.
Reed stretched his legs, bounding down the lower levels to find the one hero on-site who had a working relationship with the mystic arts.
He found Spider-Man dusting himself off from his recent bout with the Sinister Six. Peter didn't need a lengthy explanation. Thanks to the X-Men's files, Peter knew exactly who Cain Marko was. The Juggernaut wasn't just a big guy in a metal suit. He was the human avatar of the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak, a primordial dimensional lord. Physical webs and bio-electricity were going to bounce right off him. Marko needed to be handled by a professional.
Peter raised his hands, closed his eyes, and channeled the mystic arts. He sparked a localized dimensional frequency, reaching out through the Sanctum Sanctorum's network.
A portal spun open in a shower of golden sparks. Doctor Stephen Strange stepped through, his Cloak of Levitation billowing. He looked profoundly annoyed, clearly suffering from mild PTSD over Spider-Man's constant emergency calls.
"The Avatar of Cyttorak," Strange sighed, eyeing the massive red behemoth stomping toward them. "You truly have a gift for finding the most irritating problems, Spider-Man."
Strange raised his glowing hands. The air fractured like shattered glass. He cast the spell, and the Juggernaut plunged headfirst into the Mirror Dimension.
"Alright," Strange said casually, adjusting his cuffs. "I will handle him. I'll be right out."
Peter leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. He let out a relaxed breath, incredibly happy to finally outsource a boss fight to the Sorcerer Supreme.
Three minutes passed.
A deafening explosion rocked the cell block. The fabric of reality shattered.
Doctor Strange flew backward out of thin air, tumbling violently across the concrete floor. His cloak was torn. His hair was a mess.
Strange pushed himself up on one trembling arm. He looked up at Peter, his arrogant facade completely gone.
"Spider-Man," Strange gasped, wiping blood from his cheek. "I am going to need your help. That thing is much harder to deal with than I anticipated."