Maybe it was because she'd caught wind of something, maybe it was because Root of Hatred had some special sensing device on her; the moment Howard landed, she turned around too.
Their noses were almost touching, the air instantly solidified; standing on the four gigantic statues' heads, the midnight wind over President Mountain carried a killing chill.
Lady Nine-Heads did not step back; ever since she came to the United States, retreat had never been part of the plan.
Howard did not step back, because Deathstroke's palm was pressed into his back.
Separated by the gold octopus mask, the two of them stared at each other in silence. The one feeling slightly relieved was Howard, because he realized that with this layer of mask, the Hydra Leader's oppressive aura wasn't quite as overwhelming.
He'd met Red Skull, met Zemo—those guys were all lunatics, while the one in front of him looked very calm.
Just as Su Ming moved around to the side, watching the two stand there like they were under a freezing spell, wondering if they were going to have a moment of mutual appreciation and impulsively blow each other a kiss, Lady Nine-Heads spoke first.
"Nice beard."
Howard had considered all sorts of possible openings, but had absolutely not expected that one. He rolled his eyes upward at the sky, thought for a second, and tried answering, "Uh… thanks?"
The woman turned her back to him and left him with just a silhouette, slowly walking toward the edge of President Mountain. Staring down at the white snowfield below, she muttered in a mechanical tone, "Someone sold me out."
Howard scratched at his temple, secretly shot Su Ming a look, and said at the same time, "That I don't know, but I'm pretty sure you didn't come to the United States this time just to promote fashion ideas, right?"
Root of Hatred no longer looked at him. The gaze behind her golden mask shifted to Deathstroke standing to the side, and her head slowly dipped:
"Deathstroke, the Demon from Legends. This is our first meeting. You're impressive. I truly don't want to be your enemy."
"Your Hero is my Villain. It's just a matter of different sides. But a lot of people need an explanation for what happened today. You have to die."
Su Ming calmly folded his arms, pondering where the machine woman's weak points might be.
Was her memory storage wireless-backup type, or old-school plug-in cards? Surely she hadn't combined some of Kang's tech into it, right?
"Well said. And that's where Hate comes from. Only if you've done something can you be called either a Hero or a Villain, isn't that so?" She let out a dull mechanical laugh; the way she breathed was like the Black Knight, with that respirator hiss, ssshhh-lala sound.
As expected of someone who can be a Leader: reputation might not be loud, but even with Deathstroke locked onto her, she was still this relaxed and natural.
"So you thought of secretly flipping the script, using Faust's abilities to turn the United States' Heroes into enemies of the United States' people." Su Ming rubbed his chin. For now he could be sure she still had lungs and a brain—her respiratory system still needed to function, which meant her circulatory system should still be working.
Looked at this way, her level of mechanization didn't actually seem that high?
"I only borrowed Faust's power to push the world forward, to let people see the United States' hypocritical nature. Hydra is not afraid of death… cut off one head, two grow back. I'm the same."
Hearing her say this so seriously, Howard couldn't help twisting his nose.
So she's a lunatic after all?
Howard was smart, sure, but he tended to overthink things. Su Ming didn't have much of a reaction to it; right now they were still on opposing sides anyway. Let the woman say whatever she wanted—he'd just let it go in one ear and out the other.
Su Ming patted Howard's shoulder, signaling him to step back, then said to her, "But your plan failed too. I found a perfect scapegoat to do all the dirty work."
The woman kept her eyes on the distant scenery and merely nodded, neither agreeing nor denying:
"Yes. A Mutant—a perfect Demon King candidate. Under the United States' propaganda, the public hates Mutants just like the people of old Europe hated Jews. The United States and us… we're not that different."
"No, ma'am, there is a difference. The difference is that the Jews had no power to resist, whereas Mutants are not the same." Su Ming laughed. He'd planned all this long ago.
Magnetic King didn't want allies, so he'd just use the greater situation to force him to seek allies. Give it a few years, then introduce that Little Bald Head Charles to him, and he'd have the two faction leaders of the United States' Mutants in his hand.
Not total control, but as long as he could influence some of their decisions, the strategy would count as effective.
Later on, once he wooed the White Queen and took down the Hellfire Club, then did some cooperative moves with the East and Zheng Xian, most of the Mutants on Earth 40K would be in his grasp.
After the previous Atlan incident, Kama Taiji now held considerable sway over the conservative Inhumans. After all, most of the Terrigen Crystals were still in Su Ming's hands; Atlan itself only had a few shards left. These stones that trigger Superpowers were basically their lifeline.
The more the outside world oppressed Inhumans and Mutants, the more they would gravitate toward the Magic Realm, which also wielded Extraordinary Power yet represented neutrality.
Who calls the shots in the Magic Realm now? Naturally, Supreme Mage Deathstroke.
The greater the power, the more options on the table.
Mutants plus Inhumans—the two groups whose descendants most easily manifest Superpowers—were already in his hand. The Future of the Cosmos didn't necessarily have to walk the path of evolutionary Transcendence, but Su Ming liked having options.
The lady clearly froze for a moment; maybe she hadn't expected her plan to land perfectly in Deathstroke's lap. Turned out the invisible winner had been standing right in front of her all along.
But she quickly shook her head and calmed down again: "I already knew that once you showed up, our plan would most likely fail, but I never thought you'd go with the flow and squeeze benefits out of it from the inside. Aren't you from the United States?"
"To that question, all I can say is, I'm an Earthling."
Su Ming smiled as he drew the Weapon in his hand and shoved Howard—who'd just received too much intel to process—flying away:
"Still, you achieved your goal too. Just one little play, and you took down Captain America and the American Spirit."
Lady Nine-Heads laughed. She reached up, grabbed her Mask, and twisted it off with a bit of force.
Beneath that helmet was a glass jar filled with transparent liquid, with steel pipes acting as a neck. All sorts of cables of different colors and thicknesses ran into the jar, connecting to the underside of her floating head. Her golden hair drifted in the liquid, and her face was swollen from being soaked.
When she spoke, a mass of bubbles surged up beneath the water's surface, and a wheezing sound came out from the loudspeaker hanging under the jar.
"Faust and Zemo just wanted to use me. But now, you and I have both accomplished our own goals, so… who exactly lost?"
"Heh, yeah, who lost?"
Su Ming let out a soft chuckle, and his Weapon swung out immediately, chopping toward her neck.
But she was already prepared; instead of retreating she stepped forward, shoving her neck right onto the blade. With a flash of Golden Light, that glass jar spun away, flying off and tumbling down the side of Statue Mountain.
The headless body then toppled over into the snow with a thud, and from the severed stump flowed a liquid like black motor oil.
"As expected..."
Su Ming knew his intel was basically on point. After this woman's mechanized Transformation and memory backup, she simply wasn't afraid of death anymore.
He put away the Weapon in his hand. Looked like he'd have to wait for Howard to crack the systems on her body and locate all her memory backups before this could be resolved.
Why did this feel like hunting down Voldemort's Soul Artifacts?
But in this era, even computers were still stuck on blueprints—so what method was she using to upload her memories?
Radio waves? Soul transfer? Quantum communication?
Too many possibilities.
"Stop playing dead and get over here to work." Su Ming turned his head and shouted to Howard, who was lying in the snow not far away pretending to be dead, then flew off the cliff himself, going after that head.
But strangely, even if a glass jar fell from a mountain and didn't shatter, it should've left some trace, right? Yet the snowfield below was smooth and flat, with only some winter twigs poking their bare branches out of the snow. The Supreme Leader's head had vanished into thin air.
And just then, Statue Mountain behind him suddenly blew apart. From the smoke and dust shaped by the few statues, an impossibly huge Robot burst into the sky.
Its entire body was made of Silver White metal, with no head, just a huge screen set into its chest, displaying the woman's crazed face.
Su Ming had personally seen Transformers, and he'd seen Conqueror Kang's Machine Armor as well, but this monster in front of him was simply too big. When it stretched out its body, the neighboring mountain ridges looked like little mounds of dirt beside it.
Compared to this giant Robot, the Ultimate Ferryman he'd once dealt with might as well have been a tiny bird.
"SSR people really are trash. Ten years after the war, and they let someone build this kind of giant machine in their own backyard..." Seeing this thing appear, Su Ming still felt a bit of a toothache, even though it posed no threat to him.
But he also knew that the management rights of Statue Mountain Park reported directly to Congress, and it was crawling with Hydra. There were way too many ways to cover up the movement of materials and the noise of construction.
The woman's face on the giant screen, along with those crazed eyes just before launching a suicide attack, said a lot all by themselves.
Her intent was obvious. This wasn't War Machine; this was the biggest propaganda machine of all.
This behemoth could be seen from dozens of miles away, and it came with its own lights-and-sound show. This area was already a famous tourist spot, and after the trouble in the city, plenty of people had headed for this park to seek refuge.
It wasn't hard to imagine that with her entrance now, nobody was going to be able to keep a lid on this. Even if Su Ming took out this machine in the next second, this thing would still be in tomorrow's headlines and news broadcasts.
Not to mention the fact that what got blown up was Statue Mountain—a landmark building.
Su Ming didn't move right away. First, he caught Howard, who was plummeting from the sky, and carried him to a safe spot. The man really was a scientist—at a time like this, he was still clutching that half of a mechanical body in his hands.
"It'd be best if that big Robot stays relatively intact. I want to study it." He even reminded Su Ming.
"Run, Forrest Gump, run!" Su Ming gave him a kick in the ass, shoved him into a car by the side of the road, and told him to floor it and get as far away as possible.
Because the enemy was dead set on blowing this up into a huge incident, and before this Robot went down, there was definitely going to be a big fireworks show. You had to remember, back in the day the Hand Union had been Hydra's ally, and some of their tactics had been duplicated in Europe as well.
Like kamikaze attacks.