Random art
Laura tried to sidestep, shifting left as she attempted to flow around the obstacle and reach her original target. But Dante matched the movement to intercept her again. This time, he grabbed her wrists.
"Listen to me for one second."
"Get lost," Laura roared, sounding more like a growling beast than human.
She twisted violently, trying to slip her hands free, but his enhanced strength held firm. She was even shorter than her father at five-foot-one in her combat boots, but her temper was exponentially worse. Logan had lived long enough to develop some control and restraint through incidents, but Laura had been denied that luxury.
"You aren't my target."
"Laura." Dante kept his voice level, calm, using the same tone one would use to talk to a spooked cat. His gaze shifted toward Logan's unconscious form. "Do you have any idea who that man is?"
"A mutant who broke the laws of SHIELD and must be contained or terminated."
"You're wrong." Dante's grip on her wrists loosened slightly—not releasing, but offering the possibility of release if she would just listen. "Look at the adamantium claws on his hands."
He paused, letting her see Logan's claws for himself.
"The people in Weapon X Project took his DNA, created an embryo from it, and implanted it into a woman. He is your father."
Laura's eyes widened. She finally looked at Logan, studying his face, his claws, and the similarities she would never have considered on her own.
She closed her eyes, wincing. "No! I'm Laura. I'm X-23. I don't have any parents."
Dante realized that her memories were being suppressed. Sarah, her mother, had already revealed everything, but someone had suppressed that memory.
"Then explain to me why you both have adamantium claws and healing factor." Dante released her wrists entirely. She had lost the will to charge mindlessly, replaced by a need to understand herself. "Who do you think Sarah Kinney is to you?"
"I don't know," she growled and suddenly went still. Slowly lifting her head, she looked at Natasha, as though awaiting an order.
Natasha stood perhaps thirty feet away locked in a tense standoff with Psylocke. Both warriors assessed each other patiently, neither willing to strike first but both ready to respond with overwhelming violence if the other moved wrong.
Then suddenly Psylocke dashed, leaving a blur in her wake. She crossed the distance instantly and slashed at Natasha's chest. The accompanying sonic boom left Dante speechless. Psylocke's blade had traveled faster than 343 m/s—she had broken the sound barrier with sheer physical strength.
'What the hell did she grow up on?'
Canon Psylocke felt like a toddler in front of this monster.
Natasha had recognized the danger and stepped out of the katana's range, knowing the attack would've injured her.
Now that Natasha was occupied, nobody could guide her or give her any order.
Laura clenched her fists hard before she turned back to Dante with a gaze that had gone completely flat. She fell back to the protocols Weapon-X Project had conditioned her to follow, which was shutting herself down emotionally and focusing on the last order.
Feelings were weaknesses. Confusion was weakness. Asking questions was a weakness.
All that remained was the killing machine.
In this state, she was no different from the Hand-controlled Wolverine except deadlier since she retained full access to her fighting skills.
She drove her claws toward Dante's chest, this time, he had to move.
"Emma, knock her out!" He yelled, already calling to Null in his mind even as he backpedaled to create distance. "Piotr, I'm fine here. Protect Emma."
[Permission acquired.]
[Level 4 Resonance Link created with Elixir (Joshua Foley).]
Piotr rushed to Emma's side, standing guard around her like a knight.
"Gladly, dear." Emma placed both hands on her temples in the classic gesture of a Telepath 'exerting' themselves. Her brows furrowed. "There is something blocking me off! You'll have to keep her occupied while I work on unraveling this protection."
"Hurry up."
Dante optimized his muscles for agility and explosiveness even as the murderous mutant charged at him. She showed no wasted movement or telegraphing of intent, only efficient technique honed through thousands of hours of training.
Her claws wove patterns through the air as she slashed and stabbed, forcing Dante into constant defense. Her claws literally tried to rip him apart, even more aggressive than berserk Ava.
Even after constant aggression, she didn't breathe heavily or show any sign of exertion at all despite the explosive speed of her attacks. The Healing Factor made it so her physiology was free from fatigue for hours.
Dante's enhanced reflexes allowed him to track the incoming attacks, but tracking and successfully evading were different challenges entirely. His mind processed information with superhuman speed. Doctor Strange's martial expertise and Sue Storm's combat experience flowed together, merging with his own growing understanding in this high-stress battle.
'Left claw high slash. Right claw follows low. Then she'll retreat for charge.'
He read the patterns and made assumptions, his mind slowly adapting to her.
He ducked under the first strike, felt the wind of its passage ruffle his hair. Twisted to let the second slash slide past his ribs by millimeters. The moment she stepped back to pounce at him, he kicked her.
The tip of his boot grazed past her chin as she leaped over it with both claws poised to stab his neck. She had read his counter from his movements, adapted, and exploited the opening his attempted offense created.
Just as he backpedaled to create space and reset his stance—CRACK—a bullet hit Laura right in the arm and knocked her out of the air. Silvija had provided cover at the right time.
With such insane cover, he wouldn't have died even if Laura's shift had left his mind completely blank.
The gunshot was barely anything to Laura. The wound healed rapidly as she pursued him without hesitation, closing distance with heavy, quick strides. Her claws came at him in a blinding flurry.
'High, low, middle, fake left, real right.'
He could also analyze her attacks through her pattern and small movements of her body.
Dante wove between the strikes as biokinetic enhancements and martial expertise merged into his own style of combat. But even as his techniques became more natural and instinctive, Laura was improving faster.
She adapted to his patterns within seconds of seeing them. Every feint he attempted, she countered. Every opening he created, she ignored in favor of exploiting openings he inadvertently left.
He finally got the first-hand experience of what Silvija felt when fighting him. Nothing he did got him past her defense. Nothing she did got her past his defense.
It was a clash of two immovable objects.
Two minutes into the engagement, Dante felt some concern. His solar radiation stores were draining faster than the ambient cosmic radiation could replenish them. The sun had set hours ago, leaving him without his primary power source.
And Laura showed no signs of slowing down.
Even if he tweaked his body for maximum strength, Laura would just recover with the Healing Factor. The easiest option was to use Death's Resonance, but that would leave a terrifying impression on her soul, making it harder to convince her later.
BOOM! Dante's attention shifted to the loud explosion caused by Natasha and Psylocke's fight. Natasha's fiery chain had created a burning gash on the ground, filled with hellfire. Psylocke was still fighting on an equal footing, showing no signs of slowing down even against a Ghost Rider—the being who became stronger in the presence of sins.
That moment of distraction was an opening for Laura. Her adamantium claw slipped between his ribs. The pain was overwhelming. The claw had punctured his left lung, filling it with blood, and drowning him from the inside.
A thunderous BOOM echoed as Silvija, from a couple of meters away, fired the twelve-gauge at Laura's chest.
The young woman flew backward, her smaller frame unable to withstand the kinetic force despite her considerable durability. She collapsed in a pool of her own blood. Dante was glad she didn't have the adamantium-coated skeleton of her father, otherwise, even a twelve-gauge wouldn't have pushed her away.
Silvija tightly held the shotgun, tears coming out even though she was trying her best to maintain her Commander mode. "Sorry I got distracted by them."
"Relax. It's just a scratch."
His skin glowed golden as he mapped the injury and the most efficient way to fix his collapsed lung and internal bleeding. The wound fixed itself within seconds.
'I underestimated her.'
The Laura Kinney from his comic book memories shouldn't be this strong. At best, she had been depicted as a 2-ton strength class fighter at this stage. The woman currently trying to kill him felt like she could bench-press double that. Maybe the result of her being older in this timeline, eighteen or nineteen instead of fourteen. She had more time to train, refine, and perfect her role. Perhaps SHIELD or Weapon-X had run new experiments to make her even stronger.
'This can't go on.'
At this rate, he would die before Emma successfully dismantled the psychic blocks protecting Laura's mind. Biokinesis was overpowered, but it took away his focus. The deeper and more complicated the injury, the more he had to use his mind to "fix" it.
His solar radiation also wasn't doing that great either, sitting at around forty percent. When he was done with Laura, he would be left with nothing for Natasha.
"Venom," he called to his symbiote. "To me."
***
This happened during Piotr's battle with Logan.
Charles Xavier sat motionless in his wheelchair, positioned before the massive interface of Cerebro. He was having a troubled time, which was becoming an increasingly common state of being. Not only did he sense a mutant's emergence earlier—for which he had already sent a duo to investigate—he had also sensed a familiar mutant from Russia earlier in the same location as a former friend.
Oscorp Island.
"Logan…"
The name came out hesitant, covered in guilt.
Through the signals coming from Piotr's mind, Xavier could faintly understand the brutal battle happening between young Russian Piotr and the old Canadian Logan.
Xavier's hands clenched on the armrests of his wheelchair. He wanted to go out there and bring Logan back to his side.
But he couldn't.
Xavier had already pushed Nick Fury too far in the past. The relationship between Xavier's School and SHIELD existed in precarious balance.
Helping now meant sending X-Men into the field and that would defy SHIELD protocols. It meant giving Director Fury exactly the justification to deploy the anti-mutant weapons from the future against his school. The hundreds and thousands of most-efficient mutant massacre machines were more than any mutant could handle.
His telepathic awareness shifted, as though trying to avoid his eyes from the conflict. He found Jean Grey and Ororo Munroe in the mansion's living room. They sat together enjoying light-heard conversation over tea and snacks. Through surface thoughts alone, he already knew about their decision to leave the school and find Skullfire.
He couldn't stop or convince them, not when he had let down Jean Grey. Not when he had failed every X-Man by prioritizing survival over justice and safety over action.
He leaned back in his wheelchair, closing his eyes in the face of too many failures. Maybe if he didn't know what they were doing, he could maintain plausible deniability and tell Fury honestly about not sanctioning their actions.
Xavier could live with one more cowardly compromise staining his conscience.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Cerebro's alert system activated. A new mutant signature had appeared within the system's monitoring range. He connected his mind to the interface again, letting his consciousness expand outward. The device could amplify his already formidable telepathic abilities to a continent-wide scale.
Laura. X-23. She registered on Cerebro now because someone had triggered her healing factor. Somehow, her mind had become more fragile than the last time he sensed her mind. And even now, her mental resistance was going down.
"Emma Frost?"
Emma had tricks to hide herself from Cerebro's detection, and he could see her handwork in breaking the psychic blocks in Laura's mind. This conflict had dragged mutants.
"Father and daughter unite..." Xavier whispered with a sigh. "Under the worst circumstances."
Logan would finally get his wish, but nobody knew how he would convince Laura that she was his daughter, a child born through his stolen bodily fluids. Even if he convinced Laura, Director Fury would do everything to take her back.
Xavier sat in darkness, listening to Cerebro's hum, and did nothing.
Because that's what he did best these days.
Nothing.
***
You can read 20 more chapters on my Patreon!
Patreon.com/Lordheaven