Killian's hand seemed to repair itself within a second. This time he grabbed me by the back of my hair and tried to slam my head against the wall. Of course, I powered out of the hold by grabbing him by the wrist and forcing him to let go before Killian could put any real force into his attack.
I grabbed him by the neck and chucked him into the thick steel door he'd pointed to earlier, the one that implied to have Louise on the other end. This time he didn't simply leap back to his feet again and stayed planted into the door.
"Louise!" I yelled, figuring that even if she was gagged at the other side of the door, she'd be able to mumble, with my super hearing I should be able to hear that at least. But I heard nothing, so I jammed my fist right into the door and pulled it back like I was opening a can.
This snapped off the sections from the door connected to the wall while also forcing me to look at Killian's face once more as the back side of the door was now visible. He then opened his mouth and exhaled a massive plume of fire into my face.
It turns out that it was hard to fight against the instinct to flinch, so I threw up my hands to block the fire. The heat bit more than a bit, meaning that Killian had gotten even hotter in the time since we'd started fighting. It reminded me of whenever I had picked up a hot cup of tea as a child. Which was concerning given how tolerant of heat I've been lately.
When I reopened my eyes a hard punch to my stomach didn't end up breaking his hand this time… but my counter chop to his wrist shattered it like it was glass. I pushed forward, grabbing him by the top of his hair and twisting it around in a smooth motion. He dropped to the ground, gargling through a snapped neck in a series of sounds best described as cat scratches.
"And you're still alive?" I couldn't help but question, before I could finish the job something caught me in the corner of my eye.
This new room did contain a vertical table much like the last two I'd been in. Only it didn't have Louise lying on it, it wasn't a person. This was obvious due to having metal rather than flesh, optical sensors instead of eyes, and an open mouthpiece with a grill and a speaker rather than teeth and a tongue. It had a pair of antennas rather than ears and cloven feet.
Rather than showcasing an arc reactor on the chest, instead it had a smooth featureless chest.
As I looked at it the optics of the armor lit up red and blasted out a stream of red energy that knocked me off my feet. It moved fast too, before I could get to my feet it caught my throat with its hands. Now, there was something to be said about the fragile nature of metal versus my flesh, this wasn't typically something someone could say. But metal was weaker.
So no matter how much the mechanical nightmare squeezed, he just lacked the tensile strength to contract my airways.
"Robots," I groaned, slamming my fist into it and knocking it off me. "I hate robots."
At this point of my life, I was done with robots. I hadn't even been a superhero for a year before being attacked more than three times by robots. First with Doc Ock's, then Brainiac and his forces, before finally fucking AIM has an Iron Man-esque Robot. Who doesn't have at least one robot to fight me?
I am expecting to face SHIELD's robot army within the year at this point. Just to round off the list of annoyances in my life. It wasn't like any of them lasted more than a punch…
Except against all the odds, this robot didn't break or crack even against my strength. Instead it wobbled slightly on its feet, before blasting me once more with an added mouth beam to its eye beams. I ended up zipping back into the last room and through the glass sliding doors with so much force that rather than glass shards, dust was the result.
My ass hit the concrete wall and smashed through for a few inches.
"Okay, this might need a bit more effort than usual," I mumbled as I shook off the dust from my body. These events were only increasing my hatred for robots. "So what model number do I put on this thing's grave?"
"I am so much more than a mere model number… Pat."
I recognised the voice and bit the inside of my lip. Just how bad was his prison at keeping him trapt if he could constantly communicate with the outside world. This time he even had a body built for him. I almost wanted to go in there myself and deal with him once and for all… but that was a bad idea.
"Brainiac," I stated calmly, instead of yelling in frustration like I wanted to. "I see that you've managed to poke a pinky out of that hole you've been trapped in. I would pull back before someone chops it off."
"You continue to stand before me in arrogance. How quaint, for all the power you've been granted you remain in your line," Brainiac taunted me as I started to feel a slow chill crawl up my back. "Perhaps you will learn the truth before we end these engagements of ours."
"And you think that you'll end this?" I asked, before moving as fast as I could. His red beams struck the wall while I had already made my way beside him, hammering with my fists over and over again.
I struck his head faster and faster, building up speed as I found my blows had yet to cause a blemish on the shimmering metal. Eventually, I forwent even aiming at his head and merely rained punches wherever on his body in desperation. Still he stood, so I swept my right leg out and took the robot off its feet. Then I slammed my fist through his right optical sensor with as much force as I could bring down.
This turned out to be a mistake.
"Oh fuck!"
Brainiac was right in one factor so far. I had been arrogant. Arrogant enough to have never taken my visionary powers and looked down. As it turned out that the AIM HQ had another hidden level to it not on any of the building plans at all. So when I brought my fist down onto the floor as hard as I could, the entire room collapsed onto the floor below.
It was only due to the surprise of all this that I had fallen at all, otherwise I would have floated down with my flight powers. It was luck as well that it was just the room we were in and not the entire floor, which would've caused the entire building to cave in on me. Something that was bad enough in the bank, but it happening here as well would be just too much.
I shook off the debris from my body Brainiac had returned to attack me with his annoying red beams. I ended up being blasted through the nearby wall. Which didn't help my anxiety about this whole place collapsing.
I caught his beam the next time with the palm of my right, before using my free one to fling a concrete rock into his helm. It didn't cause any damage, but it did get me a moment to think things through.
Whatever this Brianiac drone was made from, it was far tougher than anything I'd come across before… minus Thor's hammer or Cap's shield. But I was unsure if this material was the same, no one could find more of the stuff Cap's shield was made from and Thor's hammer was made from material that didn't exist on this planet at all. So I was left at a loss to what this one was made out of.
So since brute force hadn't worked so far, I blew at him as hard as I could. The air from my lungs was compressed so finely, so densely that it froze at contact with the drone. The condensation in the air around him was enough water for the ice to form.
As I walked towards the now frozen drone with a concern for it breaking out at any moment. But it shouldn't have been the drone that I was worried about as Killian lept out from his place amongst the debris around us and smacked me as hard as he could with left foot.
As before something shattered, unlike before it was my nose.
The blood instantly ran down my face and into my open mouth. I spat out a wad of the stuff right into Killian's eyes before slamming him down against the ground hard. I wasn't sure if this was one of my few moments of weakness or if he'd just grown stronger.
My moments of weakness had grown fewer over the months, but there were still moments like this where something that normally would do no harm would end up causing me to bleed. It typically came during moments of surprise. This made testing it hard to do on my own, as any tests would need to come from others and neither Ben nor Louise wanted to test such a thing, just in case I was hurt badly.
It was a bit of a mystery.
One that wouldn't be solved by letting Aldrich Killian wail on me.
This time instead of breaking any of his limbs, I dislocated his arms from his shoulders and then picked him up by the chin. A growl escaped my lips and I glared into his eyes with enough hatred that I was sure my vision would turn red.
With my free hand I readjusted my shattered nose as it healed with the same speed as Killian and Blonsky had shown so far.
"Where is Louise?" I demanded of him, squeezing his jaw lightly… for me.
"AHH, ok, ok!" Killian screamed, his legs kicking against my chest as I raised him up. this proved to me then and there that my broken nose was a lull in my invulnerability rather than him having risen to my level of strength. "She's on this level!"
I wasn't dumb enough to let the man go, so instead I kept his jaw in my hand as he narrated the way towards Louise. The entire floor was nothing but low lighting conditions, much like submarines in movies. It was probably due to some cut connections when the room collapsed, taking out some wires in the ceiling. Or this place was always like this and AIM were just dumbos that liked the dangerous aesthetic of people not being able to see what they were doing properly.
Given that the group has been working with Brainiac, it wouldn't surprise me to find either to be true.
After a minute of walking, I finally came upon the room, with the leader of AIM quivering in my hand. There was a large metal door, much like the one Cross had been kept in, the walls were lined with lead and there was an obvious panel on the wall next to the door.
"You're going to need to let me down so I have my eye s-" I didn't let him finish, instead I just turned him around and shoved his face into the scanner on the control panel. They opened with a hiss then and I continued inside with the squirming man still caught in my grasp as I passed the threshold. Just in case this was a trap.
But low and behold, Louise was there on that familiar vertical table with a gag and a blindfold while being tied down to the table. I removed the blind fold first then the gag only for Louise to cry out;
"It's a trap!"
"I know," In response, I lifted Killian into her eyeline and shrugged. "But really when my enemy includes the guy testing experimental super soldier shit on themselves, then I really don't worry too much about their traps," I took a glance at her body with my vision powers to make sure there were no problems, but besides a temperature there was nothing I found odd. "You ok?"
Killian started to laugh like I'd injected laughing gas straight into his lungs when I voiced the question. Louise herself grew pale at the sight of this action. I threw Killian into one of the walls as hard as I could and I asked again, this time getting a answer:
"Damn maniac injected me with a new form of his Extremis virus, at least that is what he said he did."
The worry in my heart erupted like a volcano. From what Hansen had told me, most Extremis subjects eventually exploded without constant supervision and treatment from a trained medical profession.
"Well, we can get you to one of the scientists that worked on this shit, she switched sides given the shit AIM was pulling. So she should be able to help you out."
"I am sorry that won't be happening. You see this is all according to my plans," Brainiac's voice spoke through the speakers. Rather than wait for him to finish talking, I dropped Killian then tore off Louise's restraints and moved to leave the room. "While killing you is currently out of the equation for me, I can send you elsewhere while I finish my plans."
I would spend time wondering why killing me is out of the question but that would go against my blazing out of the building as fast as I could. But the door to the room had been shut and rather than breaking through it as I expected, I bounced off it.
"Since you were immune to the Kryptonite radiation on board my vessel, I decided to try and replicate the solar conditions of Krypton more faithfully," Brainiac's voice echoed throughout the small room. "For now, your powers are lesser."
I heard the snap of limbs connecting together as Killian rose from his place on the ground. His body lit like he'd hidden a lightbulb inside of himself as he smiled at me. I could tell that I still had some amount of super strength in me so I stood my ground as he walked slowly towards me… then Louise kicked him in the balls and watched him fall over again.
"As much as the Extremis Virus does amazing work," I gloated. "It doesn't change how painfully it can be to be kicked in the goonies."
It was then the whole room shook and Louise and I crashed to the floor as well. The pressure kept increasing for several seconds before the sensation stopped… and the door opened to reveal… a normal street?
"What the fuck?" Louise said, being the first one of us to step out into the street. I had taken time to freeze over Killian with my returning Ice Breath. "Pa-" I coughed, "Really? Fine, Lugh take a look at this, Brainiac just sent us to another city? Does he not know how fast you are at this stage?"
I stepped out to see the same sight as she had. I didn't recognize the street, so it wasn't New York. But as I looked up I spotted something that confused me more than anything else did. On top of a Skyscraper, there was a giant spinning globe with a ring around it. The ring had text written on it by hollowing out those portions.
The Daily Planet.
"Holy shit."
Author's Note: AND WE ARE HERE! After years of working up to this arc, I have finally done it. Here we have the beginning of the arc that I have given the most planning, the most time, and the most effort into setting up throughout the whole fic.
This is going to be good folks. Now… common reminder that I have a ko-fi account, a fanfic account, and a discord account. If you contribute to Kofi and are part of my discord, you get to vote with the other members of the ko-fi exclusive role in order to decide on the next fic that I work on. I would link them all but I am only just on the prior chapter and it might even be on the same page as this chapter. So that would feel redudenpt.
Now, this is a chapter I was going to release next week but things are going to get in the way then. So I thought I would post this now and stuff because its not like it matters. It was finished before I posted the last chapter here after all.
This is a very special arc. Not to overplay it here. But a lot of things, from the interactions to the character choices. Those will be interesting to view in the light of coming events. I know this is going to annoy a lot of people who read "MCU/DC" and thought to themselves these two universes weren't going to cross over. But this is the plan.
Also if you were complaining about how the status quo never changes, somehow, or that these were just repeats of the movies. I don't think this could be ever said again. Nothing will ever be the same again.