Legion remained hunched over, trying to steady himself.
Steam poured from his joints and the cracked visor flickered, but he never took his eyes off Hellion and Speed.
The two mutants didn't move. They simply waited, those violet diadems glowing on their foreheads.
"Sir," SID's flat voice spoke through the communicator, "engaging both targets simultaneously presents a low probability of success. I recommend applying direct pressure on Martha Vancroft. This will force Hellion to use his powers to protect her, leaving Speed as the sole frontal attacker."
Legion gave a slight nod.
"Do it. But nothing lethal, SID. I just need Hellion to stay where he is."
"Understood."
The five ceiling turrets rotated with a metallic screech and began firing sustained pulse barrages.
Martha let out a shriek and recoiled, but before the shots could touch her, Hellion raised his arms. A green telekinetic barrier rose in front of her, absorbing the impacts that made the entire laboratory vibrate.
That was the signal. With Hellion occupied holding the shield, Speed took off.
The boy vanished in a blur of motion. The air cracked from the sudden displacement, but this time Legion was ready. He lowered his center of gravity, anchoring the spheres of his feet to the ground and pushing his own neural processes to their absolute limit.
When Speed reached him to land a direct punch to the face, Legion was no longer the easy target from before. He tilted his torso aside at the last millisecond, feeling the hot air of Speed's fist graze his helmet.
The boy shot past him, but stopped almost instantly, skidding across the concrete and launching himself back into the attack.
The two speedsters became streaks tearing across the basement.
Legion blocked and deflected, using the speed XLR8 granted him to counter Speed's savage aggression. Every time they collided, the sound was like a whip cracking through the sound barrier.
"Speed, buddy, if you're in there, now would be a great time to snap out of it!" Legion shouted, but the boy showed no emotion. His eyes were fixed, empty, focused solely on finding an opening in the hero's defense.
In the blink of an eye, Speed lunged again, becoming a white blur that crossed the distance in milliseconds.
Legion reacted on pure instinct, accelerating his own perception of time.
Individual blows could no longer be heard, only a constant thunder of impacts echoing throughout the laboratory.
Legion moved with fluid precision, blocking punches with the backs of his claws and responding with sweeping kicks that Speed dodged by mere inches.
For several seconds, the basement became a nearly impossible scene to follow, two forces colliding, rebounding off walls, and crossing at the center of the room like lightning bolts.
Legion saw his opening when Speed attempted a downward strike. The Kineceleran slid forward on his spheres, passing beneath the mutant's arm and, using the rotation of his own body, unleashed a violent lash with his tail.
The impact was sharp, slamming into the boy's side and hurling him with tremendous force into a row of monitors.
The crash of shattering glass was barely audible over the roar of the turrets, but the small victory was short-lived. Before the fragments even hit the floor, Speed was already back on his feet, vibrating intensely.
That was when the balance began to tip.
Legion paused for a millisecond, panting. The air burned in his lungs and sweat ran down the blue skin of his face beneath the visor.
He had spent too much energy during the initial rescue. Otherwise, keeping pace with Speed or even surpassing him wouldn't have been a problem. Unfortunately, he didn't have that luxury.
Speed charged again, but this time his aggression surpassed Legion's ability to track him.
The boy became erratic, appearing and disappearing in blind spots, unleashing flurries of blows that struck directly against the hero's skin and black armor plates.
The fight stopped being an even exchange.
XLR8 shifted from trying to strike back to fully turtling into defense, covering his face with his three-fingered claws and hunching his torso as he retreated under the pressure.
A knee to the ribs made him stagger. A right hook to the temple filled his vision with points of light. Fatigue was catching up to him; his reflexes were growing slow and heavy against his opponent's seemingly endless energy.
"Sir, I am monitoring the target's kinetic patterns," SID's voice cut in from the Omnitrix, processing data. "I need you to endure the exchange. If you survive the next few seconds, I will be able to plot an exact interception route for a counterattack."
Legion blocked a blow that nearly shattered his forearm, feeling his legs tremble.
"You say that like enduring is easy…" he muttered through clenched teeth, narrowly dodging a kick. "For a speedster, these seconds might as well be hours. I'm getting old down here, SID. Hurry it up."
A few meters away from the speedsters' clash, Martha Vancroft watched the white and blue trails from within the safety of the telekinetic dome. The noise of pulse rounds slamming into the energy shield was deafening, and the woman's patience had run out.
"Hellion!" Martha screamed, angrily pointing toward the ceiling. "Forget the intruder for a moment and get rid of those damn machines!"
Under the diadem's control, Hellion didn't even blink.
He kept his left hand extended to maintain the barrier protecting Martha, while aiming his right toward the nearest turret.
A burst of green energy shot from his palm, wrapping around the machine's metal and crushing it like a soda can until sparks flew and the barrel was rendered useless.
"Sir," SID warned as a red alert flashed in Legion's visor, "defense unit 01 has been destroyed. Subject Hellion is recalibrating his aim toward the remaining units. Without suppressive fire, both mutants will be able to focus their attacks on you."
Legion took a blow to the shoulder that made him stagger, but he never lost sight of the white streaks left by Speed's movement.
"It doesn't matter now, SID," he panted, blocking a barrage of punches raining in from three different directions. "If we don't finish Speed first, I won't have a chance to get near Hellion anyway. Give me that pattern already!"
"Calculating… 89%. Subject Hellion has just locked onto defense unit 03. You have approximately eight seconds of coverage before the distraction fire becomes insufficient."
Legion clenched his teeth, feeling physical exhaustion threaten to tear his muscles apart.
He had to gamble everything on a single move. He completely forgot about Hellion and the explosions of the turrets beginning to fall from the ceiling one by one.
All his focus narrowed to Speed's frantic rhythm, waiting for the exact moment the boy would use that column again to launch his next charge.
"Trajectory plotted at 100%, sir. Prepare yourself."
Legion felt time nearly freeze. Despite the pain in his ribs and the burning in his lungs, his senses sharpened under the AI's guidance.
"Now, sir. The target will launch in three, two, one—"
Speed became a white projectile, launching from the column along a predictable path for the first time in the entire fight.
Legion didn't retreat. Instead of dodging, he planted his spheres firmly into the ground and leaned forward, calculating the interception angle under SID's guidance.
At the exact moment Speed passed beside him, Legion didn't throw a punch. He used the boy's own inertia.
He grabbed Speed's arm and, using the accumulated velocity, spun on his own axis. The motion was so fast the air around them shrieked violently.
At the point of maximum tension, the hero released his grip, slamming Speed onto his back with a force that made the concrete tremble.
Legion lunged at the mutant, extending his claws to rip the violet diadem from his forehead. He was millimeters from succeeding when, in a move that challenged even his enhanced reflexes, Speed reacted.
With a burst of kinetic energy, the boy shot upright and grabbed Legion by the neck at blinding speed.
He was injured all over, blood streaming down his forehead, but somehow he had endured the attack.
Legion felt his back slam into the concrete wall with such force that the air was driven from his lungs.
Speed held him suspended against the wall with one hand while raising the other, vibrating it at such a high frequency that the limb became a translucent blur.
The intent was clear: to phase his hand through Legion's chest via molecular vibration.
And then, at the worst possible moment, the most unwelcome sound in the world rang out.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!
A red flash engulfed the room.
Legion felt his skeletal structure shrink and his alien physiology vanish. As he reverted to his human form, much smaller and thinner than XLR8, Speed lost his firm grip on his throat.
The young man slipped downward, escaping by mere centimeters as the vibrating hand slammed into the concrete, punching through it like butter.
Speed froze for an instant, his arm buried in the wall, taking a fraction of a second to process why his target had suddenly shrunk and changed shape.
It was the only mistake Legion needed.
"I've got you!" Legion exclaimed.
Instead of backing away, Legion surged forward. In his right hand appeared a metallic collar of advanced design he had kept hidden. Before Speed could pull his arm free from the wall, Legion snapped the device around the boy's neck, sealing it with a magnetic click.
The collar emitted a brief blue pulse. Speed let out a strangled groan as the vibration of his body abruptly stopped, dropping to his knees with his powers neutralized by the inhibitor Legion had just attached.
The hero staggered back a couple of steps, breathing heavily and clutching his aching neck.
"SID… has it been twenty minutes already?" he asked hoarsely, looking at the Omnitrix glowing red.
"Negative, sir," the AI replied. "I remind you that pushing the Kineceleran form's physical capabilities to the maximum drastically reduces transformation time."
"Damn it," Legion growled, turning just in time to see Hellion, his eyes glowing green, focus his attention on him.
With Speed out of the fight and the watch drained, Legion was at the mercy of Hellion's telekinetic power.
Just as Hellion was about to clench his fist and bury Legion under a tide of debris, the air above him tore open.
A disk of silvery light burst into existence, and a figure descended like a meteor charged with mystical energy.
Magik emerged from the portal, wielding the Soul Sword with both hands.
The bluish glow of the magical blade sliced through the basement's gloom as it fell in a lethal arc. Hellion, reacting on pure instinct, unleashed a psychic blast to hurl himself backward, dragging Martha with him barely a second before impact.
The great sword smashed into the floor. Concrete shattered, opening a deep fissure that ran across the laboratory and sent a shockwave through the walls.
Legion, still catching his breath and with his chest rising and falling heavily, raised both hands in relief.
"About time," he said, though his expression quickly shifted as he saw the portal behind her close. "And the reinforcements? Where's everyone else?"
Illyana straightened calmly, resting the weight of her weapon on the cracked floor. A confident smile spread across her face.
"I am the reinforcements," she replied simply.
Legion let his shoulders drop, releasing a sigh of absolute defeat.
"Incredible. I was hoping you'd bring your teachers, you know, the ones with official uniforms and rescue plans."
Illyana let out a small laugh, spinning the sword with an ease that defied the weapon's size.
"They'd take too long to agree on anything," she replied, locking her eyes on Hellion. "But if you want, I can go back to the mansion right now and let you deal with him yourself."
She pointed the tip of the blade at the mutant, who was already regaining his offensive stance, surrounded by a vibrant green aura. Legion looked at Hellion, then at his Omnitrix glowing red, and finally back at Illyana.
"No, no… I think you've got this under control," he murmured, accepting the situation as he stepped back a couple of paces to stay out of the way.
Illyana smiled predatorily, tightened her grip on the greatsword, and without another word, charged at Hellion at full speed.
==========================================================
The basement became a chaos of green lights and silvery flashes.
Illyana was in her element, jumping in and out of her teleportation discs to harass Hellion from every angle. The sound of her greatsword crashing against psychic force fields was like two trains colliding head-on.
Legion, taking advantage of the fact that Hellion was far too busy trying not to be cut in half, moved toward Speed.
The boy tried to get up and throw a clumsy punch, but Legion simply swatted his arm aside and planted a foot on his chest to keep him on the ground. Without hesitation, he drew a pulse pistol from his belt.
"You'll have to excuse me, kid," he muttered, pulling the trigger. "But I'm not planning to fight fair this time."
The high-voltage shot knocked him out instantly.
Speed convulsed for a second and then lay still, unconscious. Legion crouched down, ripped the diadem from his forehead with a sharp tug, and stared at it, turning it over in his hand.
Suddenly, a piece of piping flew out of the main fight and smacked him directly on the helmet.
"Ow!" Legion yelped, staggering and rubbing the metal on his head. "Hey, Illyana! Are you going to take much longer? If you want, I can give you a hand, it looks like you're struggling!"
Illyana burst out laughing as she blocked a rain of debris with the edge of her sword. She didn't even bother looking at him.
"Shut it! I'm just having a little fun," she shouted back with a wild grin. "Besides, admit it. Without your little watch right now, you couldn't do anything but watch. Stay in your corner!"
She laughed again and, with a violent burst of motion, charged Hellion once more.
Legion snorted and slipped Speed's diadem into his pocket.
"Sir, Hellion's energy levels are rising erratically," SID warned. "The basement structure is beginning to fail."
"Yeah, I can see that, SID," he growled, watching the cracks crawl up the columns. "At this rate he's going to bury us all before the girl finishes playing."
He started moving through the rubble toward the guards who had been caught in the crossfire.
"Finish this already, Illyana!" Legion shouted as he knelt beside one of the wounded men. "The whole building's going to come down on us!"
"I already told you to stay in your corner, old man!" she yelled back.
He opened his medical kit and began applying fast-recovery gel to the guards' open wounds to stop the bleeding.
Once the gel was applied, he pulled out three metallic cubes the size of a fist and tossed them onto the floor around the injured group.
As they hit the ground, the devices activated with a hum, deploying reinforced energy domes that covered the men just in time for a chunk of column to slam into them without causing harm.
The hero stepped a little out of the line of fire, watching the chaos with a grimace.
Illyana and Hellion were turning the basement into a war zone. She dodged psychic energy blasts and returned the punishment with blue energy slashes from her greatsword, while Hellion bombarded her relentlessly, blowing everything apart.
"SID, how long would it take her to finish this?" Legion asked, adjusting his helmet.
"Based on current combat patterns and the subject's endurance, quite a while, sir," the AI replied. "The probability of the ceiling collapsing before the duel concludes is 64%."
Legion exhaled sharply, looking up at the ceiling beams that were already starting to give way.
"Great."
He tapped a side command on his suit.
A pulse of energy ran through his body and, in the blink of an eye, his figure vanished, turning completely invisible.
Using the roar of explosions and battle cries as cover, he began moving slowly, carefully navigating the debris so as not to give away his position.
Hellion was completely unhinged, focused on overwhelming Illyana with a storm of telekinetic projectiles. He was so intent on the girl with the sword that he didn't feel the subtle displacement of air behind him.
Suddenly, a metal collar appeared out of nowhere in midair, snapping around his neck. Before the mutant could even process what was happening, the device closed with a magnetic click.
The green glow in his eyes died instantly, and the whirlwind of objects he had been holding aloft crashed heavily to the floor.
Hellion staggered, clutching his neck as he felt his connection to psychic energy severed in an instant.
Legion gave him no chance to recover from the surprise. The moment the collar locked into place, he drew his pulse pistol and delivered a precise electric shock. The mutant collapsed forward, completely knocked out on the broken concrete.
Legion became visible again right behind him, letting out a sigh of relief as he brushed the dust from his shoulders.
"Looks like you needed help," he said, looking at the girl who had frozen mid-swing with her sword.
Illyana lowered the weapon, looking from Hellion to Legion with a mix of annoyance and a crooked smile.
"You really love ruining my moments, don't you?" she replied, though she sheathed her greatsword and let the energy of Limbo dissipate.
For a few seconds, the only sound was the hum of exposed cables dangling from the ceiling.
Legion stood there in front of Illyana, and the two of them stared at each other in silence. He let out a long sigh, lowered his shoulders, and began rubbing his back with an obvious grimace of pain.
"Ugh… I took way too many hits back there," Legion said, exaggerating a bit as he glanced at Hellion sprawled on the floor. "I'm really exhausted, Illyana."
He shot her a look, hoping she'd take the hint and deal with moving the mutant.
She simply raised an eyebrow, a smile full of malice spreading across her face.
"Oh, poor 'hero,'" she mocked, crossing her arms. "But a true knight wouldn't let a delicate damsel carry such a heavy man on her shoulders, would he? That would be very unheroic of you."
Without waiting for an answer, she turned on her heel and began walking toward where Martha, Speed, and the group of guards protected by the domes were.
Legion was left alone with Hellion at his feet. He huffed loudly, cursing his luck, and bent down to hoist the mutant over his shoulder with a groan of effort.
"And where's the proud and all-powerful Queen of Limbo now, huh?" Legion grumbled as he straightened up, wobbling slightly under Hellion's weight. "I thought you were more into doing the heavy lifting."
Illyana, without stopping and with a tone of absolute smugness, replied over her shoulder,
"Right here, just in front of you… watching her subordinate do what he does best: carry things."
Legion snorted in indignation, but had no choice but to follow her, dragging his feet through the rubble.
He reached the group, shuffling along, and let out a grunt as he lowered Hellion from his shoulder.
Despite his exhaustion, he set him down carefully so as not to hit him too hard. Once free of the weight, he stretched a bit and extended his hand toward the devices protecting the guards.
At his gesture, the small metallic spheres generating the shields stopped glowing.
The domes vanished, and the pieces floated gently up from the floor into his hands. Legion collected them and stowed them in one of the pouches on his belt.
Martha Vancroft, though cornered, didn't stay quiet. Her eyes flashed with hatred as she glared at Legion.
"You think you've won something, don't you?" she said venomously. "You're just a child playing at being a hero. You don't know our true reach, you have no idea—"
Illyana didn't let her finish.
With a quick motion of her hand, a portal of dark light opened right behind the woman.
From the shadows within it emerged small creatures with glowing eyes, Limbo imps that scampered about, cackling sharply.
"Take her," Illyana ordered authoritatively. "Look after her in Limbo for a while until I get back. Don't let her get bored."
The demons laughed excitedly and leapt toward Martha with claws extended. The woman went pale, backing away at the sight of the creatures. But before they could lay a hand on her, Legion moved swiftly and stepped in front of her, blocking the imps' path.
The creatures screeched to a halt in confusion. They turned to look at their queen, waiting for an order to remove the man from the way.
"No, Illyana. None of that," he said, holding his ground.
Illyana stared at him in disbelief and pointed at the woman.
"Are you serious? I can see her soul, Legion. It's stained with the blood of innocents. She's a cold-blooded killer. Are you really going to defend someone like that?"
"I'm not defending her," Legion replied calmly. "I'm just going to give her a chance to redeem herself."
Illyana let out a dry, bitter laugh as her imps continued shrieking around her.
"Stop talking nonsense. She needs punishment, and I can assure you there's no better place than Limbo for that. My people have done this forever. It's what she deserves."
Legion shook his head, maintaining his firm stance in front of the woman.
"Everyone deserves a second chance, even her. Her sins? She'll have to atone for them and learn to live with them every day of her life. But I'm not going to let you take her to your dimension."
Illyana rolled her eyes in total annoyance. She sighed in resignation and crossed her arms over her chest.
"Fine, do whatever you want. Keep your trash," she said, preparing to open a portal and leave the ruined basement.
Before she could take a step, Legion stopped her with a question.
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
Illyana halted and looked at him, confused, not understanding what he meant.
Legion said nothing more. He simply walked over to one of the back walls, one that looked as solid and ordinary as the rest. He stopped in front of it and, in a nearly teasing tone, spoke:
"Open sesame."
The hum of a hydraulic mechanism sounded. The wall sank a few centimeters and slid aside with a metallic noise, revealing a hidden door.
Legion glanced back over his shoulder, his tone mixing disappointment with a hint of humor.
"And I thought you guys were friends… Did you really forget about Cessily?" he asked, already starting to walk into the darkness of the secret corridor.
Illyana froze for a second, then let out a long "ohhh." She immediately hurried back to Legion, and the two of them began moving down the narrow passage.
"Don't tell the others, but… yeah, I completely forgot," she admitted without much guilt. "Honestly, I'm not that close to Cessily. I was just worried Kitty, Kurt, or Jubilee might get into trouble, so I joined the group to look out for them."
Legion let out a short laugh.
"Well, it doesn't look like your plan worked out very well," he commented, amused.
Illyana snorted, visibly irritated by the memory.
"I warned them something was wrong! But they stopped trusting my instincts just because of what happened right before we went in," she complained as they walked. "There was a guy who wouldn't stop staring at the group, and I was sure he was spying on us. Turns out the idiot was just interested in Kitty and wanted her phone number. That's why they let their guard down, and we ended up like this."
Legion smiled nervously beneath his helmet, doing his best to keep his composure.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Illyana watching him sidelong, her gaze sharpening as she caught the slight change in his posture.
Feeling scrutinized, Legion decided to play dumb and picked up the pace, pointing ahead to divert the Queen of Limbo's attention.
"Look, we're here already," he said quickly, cutting off the conversation.
At the end of the corridor, it opened into a reinforced security chamber.
At the center, inside an armored glass containment tank, was Cessily. Her liquid mercury body was frozen in place, gleaming under neon lights, connected to several sensors monitoring her condition.
Legion approached the console, sighing in relief when he saw that she at least appeared physically intact despite her captivity.
"SID, release the containment system. Now," Legion ordered, leaning against the console with a tired sigh.
"Accessing stasis chamber security protocols, sir," the AI responded.
Illyana stepped forward a couple of paces and let out a long whistle when she saw Cessily up close.
The mutant girl wasn't unconscious. Her eyes were open, moving desperately behind the glass. She was completely immobilized by a series of energy fields surrounding the tube, technology specifically designed to prevent her mercury body from flowing.
"Well, looks like that little escape didn't help much, huh?" Illyana remarked with a sardonic smile, leaning on her sword. "You have no idea how much trouble the guys and I went through to come rescue you. So you'd better be grateful when you get out of there."
Legion, who had just stepped up beside her, placed a hand on her shoulder and interrupted in a gentle but firm tone.
"Don't push it, Illyana. Not the time," he said, nudging her aside as he moved closer to the glass tube.
In front of them, the force field flickered and vanished, and the cryogenic liquid began to drain with a metallic hiss.
Cessily, freed from the pressure holding her still, pressed her hands against the glass before the hatch slid upward. Slowly, her mercury body regained a more human shape as she stood up, trembling slightly as she tried to focus on her rescuers.
"Illyana…? Legion?" Cessily whispered as her feet touched the laboratory floor.
Legion offered her a hand to help her keep her balance.
"It's okay. It's all over now. You're safe."
===============================================================
HOW ARE YOU ALL DOING? I HOPE YOU'RE WELL.
AT LAST, THE BATTLE IS OVER AND OUR HEROES HAVE FOUND CESSILY. LEGION STILL SEEMS TO HAVE A LOT AHEAD OF HIM: MEETING THE X-MEN, DEALING WITH MARTHA, AND WHAT ON EARTH IS SPEED DOING DURING ALL THIS TIME?
SO WE'LL SEE HOW HE MANAGES IN THE NEXT CHAPTERS.
WE'LL LEAVE IT HERE FOR NOW. SEE YOU NEXT TIME.
AS ALWAYS, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT AND COMMENTS.
TAKE CARE :)