CHAPTER 63 - METAL AGAINST METAL, HOMERUN

As Laura descended towards her marked target, an adamantium blade extended from one of her legs as she was just meters away from landing.

The mutant, sensing someone behind him, quickly turned around but he was too late as Laura's blade effortlessly pierced through his shoulder blades as her weight fell upon him and brought him down to the ground.

Seeing her downed opponent, she nodded a job well done to herself and did a backflip off the body. She was about to run in another direction but her senses blared and she dodged to the side to avoid an extended blade piercing through her.

She looked up in mild surprise as she saw the person who was supposed to have suffered a fatal injury from her landing get up and then something happened.

The different metallic part of his body shifted haphazardly until the silvery part that used to be around his stomach area moved towards his shoulder and the hold that was there closed.

'Mercury.' Laura thought as she caught the smell of the different metals he was consisted of.

He rushed at Laura without so much as a word spoken between them while Laura got into a defensive stance to receive him.

His right hand flattened to a blade which he swung downwards to cleave off the little girl's head but Laura just ducked under it and in a quick stepping motion, she got into his personal space which rendered his blade ineffective due to how close and small the space she occupied was.

With a pair of pristine gleaming adamantium blades jutted out from both hands, Laura twisted her small body to narrowly escape the side punch from his other hand. Moving precisely as her instincts dictated, she slashed her claws toward the incoming blade-arm and severed it without much resistance but no groan of pain came from her adversary's mouth.

Capitalizing on the opening created from his lack of balance for losing an arm, she used his chest as a platform to step off from and used her other leg to give him a roundhouse kick that disoriented him.

She looked at the stump of his arm that wasn't bleeding and frowned, even harder at the lack of reaction she was getting from him.

He really looked like he was made up of metals both in and out. The man transformed his other hand into a golden mace and brought it down on her which forced her to step out from his space to dodge, unfortunately that turned out to be a wrong choice of action as the man picked up his other arm and moved his mercuric portion to the stump before fusing it with the severed limb which immediately gained the mercuric property upon contact.

Laura groaned as she saw him back to being whole but didn't panic as she formed an action path with the goal of cutting out the part of him that was made of Mercury.

"Piece of cake." She muttered and this time took the initiative of attacking.

°°°°°°

With Steve's group.

They were facing off against a group of five mutants which consisted of a behemoth of a man will bull horns and hoofed fingers, a guy with two tail that looked like stingers, clearly poisonous at a glance, a woman with a weird mouth and heavy belly with unknown abilities, the guy who explodes anything he touches and one with spikes from all sides of his body as if he were a porcupine.

The moment they saw Steve and his group, the one with the spikes sent a volley of spiked projectiles at them which was stopped by Wanda who caught all of them midair and sent them back to their sender.

Three of the mutants dodged while the horned man and the weird woman stood their ground at the incoming spikes. The woman opened her mouth and a great suction force flew out from it and took in all the projectiles sent her way while the man just stood there and let them crash against his body.

"I'll hold these two off." Wanda said as her whole body got covered in a red glow.

"I will take spiky and our arsonist."

"That leaves me with tail." Steve and Natasha went after their chosen opponents while Wanda faced off against the two mutants in front of her.

Since they were lacking in numbers compared to their opponents, their best decision was to engage them very quickly to prevent the other from branching out from their reach and that was what Wanda and Steve did.

It was a race for them to take care of their enemies quickly and help the others.

For Wanda, she smirked and looked at the two and said. "You'll do just fine."

As there was no need to draw this out any longer than it had any right to be, Wanda flew directly towards them and threw a car at the woman who opened her mouth once again and sucked the car inside stomach.

The horned brute rushed at Wanda with his intimidating tall and broad figure only for him to be slammed sideways as a pole swatted him.

Wanda saw the woman opening her mouth as she wanted to focus on her downed opponent which prompted her to shoot her hex blast towards her to halt her action, but not only did the woman not dodge, instead of a suction force, what greeted Wanda was different object of varying sizes hurled at her at breakneck speeds which forced her to put up a barrier.

Seeing as how the woman had no intention of stopping her onslaught, Wanda flew backwards and erected shields that shielded her from the attacks.

A red intense glow covered her hands and she punched it into the ground causing it to crack in a progressing line towards the woman with red spewing out of the cracks.

Seeing the incoming attack, she closed her mouth and attempted to dodge but it was at that point that she was covered in a red explosion that downed any scream she could have let out.

"Now it's your turn." She said, addressing the horned man who was preparing for a charge in a bull-like way.

As the man started his charge, red chains spewed out from Wanda's back and shot forward to bind him, wrapping against every part of his body until his charge became static.

The chains clung tighter to his body as he tried wriggling his way out of it. Darkness cast a shadow over him and four barriers went up around him which made him look up only to be greeted by the sight of a falling tanker that exploded in a fiery blaze as it crashed into him.

"Hmm, not what I expected."

°°°°°°

While Wanda was taking care of the two mutants she squared off against, Steve was having a bit of a hard time fighting a ranger and a bomber.

Dealing with them wasn't too hard but the problem was that they were not exactly making it easy for him.

All the combustor needed was to grab anything lying around and it became a literal bomb in his hands.

Steve dived through the window of a coffee shop as a glowing block was thrown into it which sent the café up in a blazing explosion.

"1, 2. Two seconds, maybe less." He said with a slightly uneven breath due to all the jumping around he's been doing. "I got this." Psyching himself up, he tapped the ear region of his cowl and it simultaneously covered his exposed mouth and eyes.

His shield let out a whirring noise as the edge of his shield turned red like plasma. Taking a deep breath, Steve jumped out of his hiding spot and immediately threw his shield towards the spiky mutant with his full strength causing it to tear through the air with negligible resistance as it covered the distance between Steve and its target.

Steve dashed towards the combustor who held a couple of glowing rocks in his hand that he threw towards Steve.

'2 seconds, maybe less.'

Steve ignored the squelching sound he heard as his eyes were focused on the bombs halfway towards him.

With his higher than average physical factor, he jumped towards the incoming bombs and with a flicking motion of his hand, his shield shot back towards him from where it had been lodged after dissecting the spiky mutant halfway.

The shield flew towards him with a speed just as fast as the one he threw it with and landed in his hands at the exact moment the bomb got in front of his face.

In a display of an applaud-rewarding gymnastics, Steve dodged the bomb with a sideways 360°, but before the bomb could sail harmlessly past his reach, he swung his shield as if swatting something and hit the bomb with a backhand smash that sent it flying back to its pitcher.

The mutant who never expected Steve to be able to dodge the bomb in the first place, least of all hit it back, was in the middle of another throw, caught off guard, as his own bomb appeared in front of his face which caused him to freeze involuntarily.

The bomb which Steve had already calculated the time frame between its explosion and time of impact exploded right in his face, setting off a chain reaction with the other bombs the mutant held.

"Now, that's a homerun."

[Your area has been cleared, Cap.]

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