Chapter 23 Nowhere Near the End

"Austin?! How are you here? No, how am I here? I remember, yes, we were fighting President X. I should have died already, right? Could you have died too?"

Pietro struggled to open his mouth. His super brain was about to explode from all the bits and pieces of memories. The endless information prevented Pietro from processing his current state at all.

"Alright, calm down. I didn't die and neither did you. Calm down, okay? We haven't reached safety yet." Austin swallowed the food in his mouth and picked up another slice of pizza.

"We...didn't die?" Pietro froze for a moment. "How could that be possible? No one can escape from President X. What on earth happened?"

Seeing that Pietro's emotions were extremely unstable, Austin also understood that he would not be able to eat this meal properly if he did not explain properly it to him, so he opened his mouth.

"Actually nothing much. President X still can't fully control the Scarlet Witch's power. Although he can use that power to slaughter all the mutant prisoners in that prison, his use of the Chaos Magic is still very crude."

"After I killed him, the Chaos Magic and Psychic Power tore open a rift in reality at the weapons factory. The whole place was affected and turned into a bizarre mirrored world. Time and Space there were in upside-down states. If you randomly opened any door there it would lead to a random other place."

"This leads to whether it is dead there or not dead people are in a state of mental confusion. They become half-dead creatures, I can't explain what that kind of state is like, you can understand it as Walking Corpses. They will follow the instinct to attack the living things around them."

"But this also gave me a good chance. Before the space of the whole factory was torn apart, I brought you and ran out. But to be honest, your injuries were far too heavy. I could only use my gun to threaten another soldier who escaped to give you a simple bandage."

Saying this, Austin paused for a moment, then looked at Pietro and said.

"I admit that his medical skills are really bad, but there was really no way to send you to the hospital in this situation. That guy said that your leg might grow twisted. I didn't study medicine either so I wasn't sure if he was right. Later when that guy tried to sneak attack me, I blew his head off with one shot. So even if you want to find him for payback, you have no way to anymore."

"Wait.. wait.. wait a minute!" Pietro really couldn't help but interrupt Austin's words. He stared wide-eyed at Austin, his voice trembling a little.

"What did you just say? You killed President X!? How did you do that??"

"Ah, right."

Austin shrugged, then took out the pistol in his pocket. "Used this one, remember? This is what you stole for me, and also my first gun, the one that killed Nick Fury."

"No, that's not what I meant. I asked how you managed to do it. That was President X! Even the whole Avengers after struggling against him for so many years still didn't succeed. How did you do it?!"

"To be honest, I have no idea." Austin retracted his gaze and stared at the road in front of him seriously. "It could be that he saw something interesting in my mind, and for a moment, he fell deep into it and couldn't pull himself out, and then I shot him. eriously, from another perspective, I can understand why he reacted that way."

"It's that simple?" Pietro found it somewhat hard to believe.

"It's that simple." Austin nodded.

"Otherwise, what did you think? Was it because I unleashed my hidden powers in my final moments, unlocking unprecedented strength? Or I suddenly discovered I was actually also a mutant, and extremely powerful, and then fought with him for three hundred rounds without a win. At the very end when both sides unleashed our final moves, he suddenly understood everything and realized his errors, finally stopping his resistance and letting my attack blast him away...."

"Ah..." Pietro felt like he had a lot of things he wanted to say but didn't know what to say.

"The situation is as simple as that, Pietro. We are not comic book characters that have to have all those big scenes and fiery battles to attract the audience. We are just living and breathing members of this sad world, you and I, President X too. There is no difference."

"But that's too simple, isn't it," Pietro muttered. He still did not understand why President X, who had brought fear to the entire country, had been taken care of so easily.

"Simple? I don't think so. Probably, in this world, I am the only one who can kill President X in this way." Austin said indifferently, no emotion in his tone.

At those words, Pietro froze slightly and then leaned in the direction of the car door.

"Hey..! I saw that. You're not afraid of me now, are you." Austin speechlessly rolled his eyes.

"Hehe, no way! I was just sitting too long and wanted to change position." Pietro smiled rigidly until the moment when he finally looked down at his heavily injured leg.

There were two wooden boards tied to his leg, with circles and circles of gauze wrapped around it. The original white gauze had long been soaked and wet with blood, but by now it had long since dried up and turned into a black blood stain.

Noticing Pietro's line of sight, Austin spoke. "You are seriously injured, that person said that your leg was broken hard by a huge force, the pain of that instant is enough to kill a person alive. And generally, people who go through this basically have no way to heal it, losing the leg would be going easy on them. But your ability saved you there."

"Well, my high speed metabolism allows my injuries to heal much faster than the average person."

"That's true. But when a bone is snapped by someone, it wouldn't be so simple. After all your ability only lets you recover quickly, it doesn't make your bones regrow into place. So I had that soldier reset the bones in your leg. Otherwise, once you finished healing, your leg would have ended up deformed."

"Thanks."

"Why're you being so polite? We're brothers." Austin smiled.

"Are you really not eating? I remember that you consumed a lot. If it wasn't for the glucose inside Nick Fury's safe house, I was afraid that you would starve to death before you even woke up."

Hearing this, Pietro then accepted the pizza and took a big bite. His eating manner was very crude since he only had one hand free, but no one cared about that right now.

"Where are we going next?" Pietro asked as he ate.

"You forgot the address you gave me? 1407 Graymalkin Lane in the suburbs of New York. To be honest, if we had known that Professor X's people were in the mutant secret prison, we wouldn't have needed to make this trip at all, we would have just done the job in New York."

Austin complained as he spoke, but he didn't actually seem annoyed at all. Although this journey had truly encountered all kinds of inconceivable things, fortunately, everything was now over. All these experiences would finally become an amusing part of his life's journey.

(End Of The Chapter)...To be continued.

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