At the same time Peter was resolving his psychological issues, the battle for Earth-616 between Nimrod and the world continued. A massive swarm of small Sentinel units had raided a Hydra storage facility, leading to a fierce clash with the Hydra guards and the newly arrived Thunderbolts. Once the battle concluded, Hawkeye led his team to clear the battlefield, only to receive some very unsettling news.
"Gone?"
Nick Fury was incensed when he heard the report over the comms. "How did you lose it? You fought off a swarm of robots and still couldn't hold onto the inventory?"
"Only one unit was lost, sir."
Fury, who had been ready to tear Hawkeye a new one, paused as he registered the phrasing. He frowned and asked, "What do you mean by 'one unit,' Barton?"
"Hydra wasn't storing Promethium metal here; they had completed Super-Adaptoids. A.I.M. only ever had three units, but there are five here—not counting the one the Sentinels made off with."
Hawkeye remained on the line, posing a critical question to Fury: "What are our orders for the remaining units, sir?"
Fury remained silent for a long time.
"Hand them all over to Tony Stark."
At the Hydra warehouse, Hawkeye reacted with disbelief. "Sir?"
"I'll deal with the bureaucrats upstairs. You just follow orders and turn every Super-Adaptoid over to Tony Stark. Nimrod needs a Super-Adaptoid as its prime host. If we're going to study these things, there's no one better suited for the job than Stark. He might not be the greatest genius in every field, but he's certainly the best engineer we can find."
Fury added a meaningful postscript.
"And the Avengers are more reliable."
"Understood, sir." Hawkeye sighed, catching Fury's drift. He looked at the inactive Super-Adaptoids. They were currently down by one point in this race against Nimrod. What would happen next? How would they fare in the second round?
Paris, France.
Ever since the X-Men disbanded, Rogue—Anna Marie—had come to Europe. Initially, she thought Cyclops or Logan would choose to carry on the Professor's legacy and keep the team together. To her surprise, both men seemed to lose their souls after Jean's death. The team fractured, leaving Rogue deeply disappointed.
However, she was no longer the helpless little girl who needed others to save her. She decided to find her own path. Rogue moved to Europe, dedicating herself to protecting mutants in a region where the X-Men had never established a formal presence.
Perhaps due to the social landscape of Europe, the situation for mutants here was slightly better than in America, yet systematic discrimination remained. Unlike the racial undertones in the U.S., discrimination in Europe felt more like a modern-day witch hunt; countless mutants were hunted because of their appearances or their abilities.
At its core, it was driven by fear.
Walking through the streets of Paris, Rogue was buying food for the mutant children she cared for. She had only taken a few steps before she sensed someone watching her. After purchasing her bread, she immediately left the stall, pulled up her hood, and ducked into a narrow alley.
Her pursuer followed instantly, only to be grabbed by the throat in the shadows. The person immediately cried out in intense pain. Realizing her assailant was a girl no older than eleven or twelve, Rogue quickly deactivated her power, stepped back, and pulled her gloves on.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was you following me." Rogue offered a smile, trying to appear as friendly as possible. "Did that hurt? It must have been awful. Do you want me to take you to see a—"
Her smile froze. She felt her body undergoing a rapid transformation. A pair of bone claws burst from the knuckles of her hands—a sensation she had felt once before when absorbing the life force of someone else.
Who exactly was this girl?
"We've been looking for you for a long time, Miss Anna."
Stepping out from behind the girl was a man with red eyes, a toothpick hanging from his mouth and a metal staff resting on his shoulder. He leaned against a wall with a casual, messy air and looked at Rogue. "Uh, don't get the wrong idea. We're here to protect you. There's a group of guys looking for you, and we need to make sure they don't find you first."
"The girl alone is enough to prove you can't be trusted," Rogue said, scanning her surroundings. She took a deep breath, suddenly sticking to the wall like a gecko and scrambling upward with incredible speed. Gambit couldn't help but look up as she scaled the wall, sounding impressed.
"Boss never mentioned this girl could store abilities... or maybe she's mastered her power enough to hold onto what she absorbs for longer?"
If that were the case, Nimrod truly did need this girl.
X-23 immediately moved to follow. Steel claws snapped out from her hands and feet, sinking into the masonry as she ascended at an impossible speed. Simultaneously, another mutant appearing from a different direction hurled boomerangs made of bone at the climbing Rogue; this new attacker had extra bones growing from her body that she could pull out to use as weapons.
As for Gambit, he was slacking off. He thought the girl was pretty and had spirit, and since they were there to protect her, he didn't see the need for things to get ugly.
But others were prepared to make things much uglier.
Just as X-23 drew close to Rogue, a beam of red light slammed down from the sky, blasting the girl back to the ground. Realizing what was happening, Gambit snapped his fingers. A crystal flew out from nowhere, opening a portal that whisked X-23 away.
"Get us out of here, Blink. No need to tangle with the X-Men. Actually, they're here to protect the lovely lady too."
Gambit smiled, seemingly unbothered by the fact that his boss might yell at him later. "We'll come back after Nimrod beats them so hard they don't recognize their own parents. Then they'll realize we aren't the bad guys."
Still clinging to the wall, Rogue looked up. She saw the Blackbird jet and her long-lost companions waiting as the hatch opened.
"Sorry to disturb you, Rogue," Cyclops said, looking down at her. "But you need protection."
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