Chapter 23
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"I couldn't even break through her defenses!"
The realization struck Mark like a blow to the chest. The shimmering remnants of his full-powered Kamehameha faded into the air, leaving Captain Marvel to simply shake her head, recover, and charge toward him once again without sustaining any visible damage.
Mark's heart pounded in his ears, a cold film of sweat collecting beneath his temples despite the chill in the wind. His strongest technique, the culmination of years of training, powered by desperation and battle instinct, hadn't so much as scorched her uniform.
He wasn't the only one stunned. Storm, perched in the sky like a thunder goddess, had just summoned another wave of electrified hailstones to bombard the SHIELD squads below. Cyclops, beside Colossus, was still channeling his optic beams at full power. Yet both mutants glanced in Captain Marvel's direction, visibly alarmed and disoriented.
She hadn't slowed. Not even slightly.
Nearby, SHIELD agents, battered and dazed by the earlier strikes, began to hesitate. Even Black Widow's movements faltered as she parried a feral lunge from Deathstrike. The rhythm of the battlefield had shifted. The momentum was slipping away.
Nick Fury, who had been observing the unfolding clash from a vantage point near a scorched armored vehicle, stepped forward amid the chaos. His voice, always firm but now almost pleading, cut across the discord.
"You have no chance of victory," he declared, his one eye locked on Professor X.
"This resistance is pointless. If you're truly innocent, I give you my word that no harm will come to you afterward."
But Mark, hovering above a crumbled section of wall, clenched his jaw. He knew that voice. That tone. It was too calm, too rehearsed. Fury's words carried the polish of diplomacy but lacked the substance of trust. In every dimension, some truths seemed to hold constant. Power makes promises it never intends to keep.
Even if Professor X saw reason, Mark could not. He wouldn't. He had trusted before. He had seen compromise lead to ruin before.
This would not be one of those times.
Mark's eyes narrowed as his mind began to race. If brute strength failed against Captain Marvel, then tactics would have to become his next weapon. Fury was their linchpin, the pillar propping up this entire military response. Remove the commander and the whole machine might collapse.
The strategy was dangerous, bordering on reckless. But it just might succeed.
He dropped low, coiling his energy into his legs like compressed springs, then launched himself forward directly at Nick Fury. His staff came up like a spear, his eyes locked on the center of Fury's chest.
But Captain Marvel blurred into motion.
One moment she was airborne, mid-recovery. The next, she intercepted him with impossible speed, a streak of glowing blue and gold energy tearing through the air. Her body collided with his trajectory like a heat-seeking missile, sending a shockwave outward that flattened trees and staggered nearby SHIELD operatives.
She hovered in front of him, eyes glowing, lips parted with breathless restraint.
"Stop, child." Her voice was firm, not cruel. There was a measured tone to it, almost maternal.
"I promise you, if you cooperate, Fury won't harm you."
Mark didn't flinch. He dropped into a deep stance, fists raised in the Turtle School guard, one foot sliding across the broken earth with practiced grace. His power pole spun behind him in a figure-eight arc, humming with residual energy.
"I don't believe you," he said, voice low and steady.
"Maybe you don't know him as well as you think."
She tilted her head and gave a soft chuckle, oddly intimate. "Don't know him? He's my husband. How could I not?"
Mark faltered.
What?
The words crashed through his mind like an avalanche. Captain Marvel and Nick Fury were married? For a moment, time itself slowed. Pieces began to click into place. Maria Rambeau, not Carol Danvers. Earth-838 and its alternate histories. Her choice to remain grounded. Their synchronized commands on the battlefield.
It made a terrible, disturbing sort of sense.
But there was no time to process it. No moment to breathe.
Mark's pupils sharpened into focused slits.
"Triple Afterimage strike."
With a sharp breath, he vanished, splitting into three flickering projections that whirled around Captain Marvel in erratic, unpredictable spirals. The clones darted and weaved in triangular formations, each mimicking his ki signature and movements with flawless precision.
The real Mark blinked into place directly above her, defying physics with a graceful aerial arc. He brought his staff down in a swift, targeted strike, not aimed at her head or limbs, but directly at the neural disruption device fastened at the base of her skull.
A direct hit could short out the dampening field and allow Professor X's psychic influence to reach her. If she could be turned, the tide of battle might reverse.
But Maria was not deceived.
With a sudden flex of her core, she spun mid-air and caught Mark by the collar. Her speed made the capture seem almost casual. She lifted him with one hand, her grip immovable. He kicked and twisted, but her strength was unrelenting.
"You're fast," she said, almost admiringly.
"But not fast enough. I'm sorry, kid. I'll make this painless."
She drew her free hand back, energy gathering in her palm. A photon pulse flickered into focus.
Mark made his decision.
"It looks like I have no other choice."
He tore off the black Mickey Mouse sunglasses from his face, revealing wide, primal eyes. His tail lashed upward like a whip toward the sky.
And overhead, the full moon glowed, cold and brilliant.
A heartbeat passed.
Doom. Doom. Doom.
His bones cracked. Muscles rippled and contorted. The air itself grew dense and warped around him. Captain Marvel let go instinctively and stepped back.
"What is happening to this child?"
In the space of seconds, Mark's body exploded in size. His uniform tore away in fragments. Coarse fur burst across his limbs like wildfire spreading through a forest. A monstrous silhouette rose against the moon, towering over the battlefield at nearly fifteen meters in height.
His crimson eyes gleamed with ancient fury.
The Great Ape had awakened.
He released a roar so deafening that the surrounding cliffs trembled.
Nightcrawler stared upward in mute disbelief. Cyclops took an unconscious step back. Storm gasped, caught mid-chant.
Captain Marvel rose into the sky again, more wary now. "He's... transformed?."
But this was no mindless creature. Mark was not the Goku of old, driven by uncontrolled rage. He had evolved. A protagonist sculpted by hardship, memory, and ambition. Some part of his will still remained intact.
And that will had found a singular focus.
Captain Marvel.
The Great Ape slammed his fists together, producing a sonic wave that shattered boulders and flipped armored transports. Then he pounded the ground, unleashing jagged tremors that buckled the earth and sent snow exploding into the air.
Before Maria could respond, Mark opened his mouth wide.
An enormous sphere of golden light surged forth, erupting into a cannon of raw energy that struck her square in the chest.
She grunted, spiraling backward in a trail of blinding plasma. Her armor smoked. Blood trickled down her lip.
Mark was relentless.
He launched skyward, the ground splitting beneath him. In mid-air, he caught up to her and brought both fists crashing down, sending her plummeting into a nearby glacier. The impact carved a crater over thirty meters wide.
Still he did not stop.
He dropped from the sky and landed on her position with a force that shattered the ice beneath. Blow after blow rained down. Each mouth blast erupted from his fanged maw like a mortar shell. His fists struck like meteors falling from orbit. The landscape around them transformed into a smoking ruin.
Nick Fury stared in silence. May gripped a shattered railing, her expression frozen in disbelief as the tide of the battle shifted violently in favor of the X-Men.
Because for the first time…
Captain Marvel bled.