CHAPTER 82 - CURBSTOMPING 101

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Sunspot rushed at Vision who still looked calm and composed with his heart beating in rage and trepidation as he tried to understand how everything went to shit in a matter of minutes.

He and the others with him had received a distress call that someone had hacked into their network and before any of them could make sense of what was happening, another call came in that someone just broke into their temporary hideout and by the time they had arrived, the man who he finally identified as Vision had already subjugated the entire hideout.

And now here he was, just knocked out for a brief moment only to come back to find the two guys with him taking a nap while the man eyed him boredly. He just hoped the leader would come before this guy took him down.

"Is Magneto on his way here?" Vision's question drew Sunspot's attention back to focus but the young man remained silent to which Vision just shrugged. "I doubt he'll leave such a sizable workforce to be apprehended."

'Does he know what we are about to do?'

Da Costa shook his head and his body blazed in resolve to hold him down for as much as he could. He shot black-dotted yellow blasts at Vision but the latter remained unfazed in the face of the attack and dodged them with the slightest movements and used his hand to swat away the last fiery projectile to the side to join the background of explosion noise.

If he could, Da Costa would have sweatdropped at the nonchalance he was being shown but it all served to bruise his ego which angered him even more, causing his flames to burn brighter.

Joining his hand together, a large torrent of swirling solar energy gathered in his hands and shot towards Vision but to his astonishment Vision disappeared from his sight which was followed by a jolting pain against his jaws that felt as if he had been smacked across the face with an invisible truck.

He found himself telekinetically suspended midair with Vision appearing in front of him like a ghost. It was then that he understood.

They never stood a chance.

His heart that had been beating wildly like a drumming prelude to despair suddenly deflated in relief as he heard the voice of his leader.

"I'll ask you to leave him be, so that we can have a civilized talk."

°°°°°°°°

[Vision POV]

I looked at the mutant pariah as he slowly descended before stopping a few meters away from me.

A wave of my hand sent Sunspot crashing into the ground and digging a rather long trench.

I hovered towards him until I was but an arms reach from him before stopping. "Stop what you're trying to do."

"And pray tell; what is it that I am trying to do?" He asked in a cold voice that showed how no nonsense his character was.

"The statue of liberty, the city power supply and the drainage." This guy was trying to drown the city in domestic chaos and have them implode on each other.

First of all was the national symbol, which I wouldn't give two shits about, so that was out. He was also aiming to destroy all city lines and the energy stations, effectively drowning New York in perpetual darkness and the worst part was the complete destruction of the city's drainage, mixing the city waste with the reservoir, contaminating all the natural bodies of water both in and surrounding the city.

This guy actually wanted to destroy New York by setting it back a few months from the rest of the world. Just that alone will drive people away from the city, foreigners won't come in and all the big industries based in the city would accrue tremendous loss.

A devious masterstroke that affected everyone, both rich and poor alike.

I could feel the tremors from the magnetic waves rolling off of him but I maintained my cold face and waited for him to call his retreat.

"And why do you think I should heed your words and retreat?" He finally asked after engaging me in a staring contest moments prior.

"Because I'm asking nicely." Well that and I'm hoping he can be reasoned with. If he proves to be the iron headed dick he was in the earlier days of X-Men comics then I'll just have to fold his ass.

Just because he's one of the leaders of the mutant kind doesn't mean no one else can take his role.

"Quite arrogant are we?" I could feel the increase in magnetic pull all around me and even the metals underneath the ground were rattling as they started responding to Magneto's ability. "Unfortunately for you, you are not someone sufficiently capable enough to give me an order."

'Hard heads.'

I shrunk and appeared a distance away from the place I had been hovering at which had been attacked by skewering metal constructs.

A lightning bolt formed in my hands which I hurled at him with a sonic boom forcing him to mold a metal block for defense. I fired an energy blast at him and watched as it blasted through the already weakened defense only for it to crash against the magnetic field barrier he had covering him.

I whipped my head towards their hideout as I felt the human signatures inside it disappearing at an alarming rate only to find that they had a teleporter who was busy evacuating them.

"Do you really have the time to be unfocused when fighting against me?"

Even without looking at what was heading for me, I covered my hands with a repelling field and punched it away. "Frankly, I do."

'His ability really should count as an environmental hazard.'

The magnetic field around him suddenly gained a huge attracting force that started attracting all nearby metallic materials towards him, even those with low magnetic properties found themselves defying gravity.

Seeing the progressing damage a simple application of his abilities were causing, I flew towards him with the aim of keeping things within an enclosed range to prevent more structural damage.

I punched my way, unimpeded, through all the things he sent at me in a bid to slow me down until I closed in on him and phased through the blockade he erected and made physical contact with his magnetic barrier which sent him blasting towards the ground that caused a small mushroom cloud.

"What about it? Feeling the need to willingly pull back now?" I asked with a bland voice as I stared down at him which I think might have pissed him up a notch. 'Meh.'

He grunted and pushed himself off the ground and started his salvo of attack.

Instead of just hurtling things at me, he started breaking them down and reshaping them to create some kind of metallic spider web dome that covered the both of us with over a hundred of meters of space.

I weaved through them with each, phasing through some and blasting others, while making my way to Magneto who was doing his best to increase the distance between us.

I brought my hands together in a clap that released a huge sonic wave that crashed into Magneto but he gathered himself the next second but I was already upon him with a condensed ball of energy at my fingertips that encased his magnetic barrier, destroying it after a short stalemate.

Magneto now was looking worse with surprise, shock and apprehension as he finally understood what was happening here.

He might be an Omega level mutant but this variant of him was nowhere near the level of his stronger version. He must have thought that just because he could fold the Avengers then he'd be able to do the same with me. How innocently stupid.

Still he didn't give up and even now I could feel the very earth under my feet releasing slight tremors as his desperation was pushing the limits of his control.

He dropped four metal columns that caged me from all sides and just as I was about to question his intelligence, the four metal blocks each started emitting large amounts of magnetic push that aimed to crush me at the center.

Even without using my abilities, just my physical body was capable of bearing acting forces multiple folds over this.

I smoothly phased through it and shrunk down to an ant size making Magneto lose sight of me only for me to resize behind him and use my own electromagnetic manipulation to break past his magnetic field and grab him by his cape.

"You know the drill, and so do I‼"

A crater formed around him as a result of my slam and if not for his quick reaction of re-erecting another protective field around him.

I grabbed him by his helmet and brought him up to my eye level and noted the brief frightened tremble that involuntarily passed through his body.

"Now this whole curbstomp could have been avoided with a simple conversation, you know." I removed the helmet to looked at his face which was middle-aged, differing from the late sixties mug I was expecting. 'Super soldier physique. Good to know.'

"You think you won anything?" He looked at me with clear eyes and asked.

I only smiled at him before looking at the herd of incoming helicopters from different new channels and the police force.

While I was briefly distracted, someone appeared behind Magneto and grabbed him to teleport away only for his eyes to roll to the back of his head as he fell down unconscious.

"Your getaway ride?" I asked the stunned mastermind who had been hoping to use a literal get-out-of-jail wildcard not knowing I've had my eye on his chauffeur, who has been speculating from a 2 kilometers distance, since the beginning.

"I don't know about you but I have spontaneous cases of stage fright so we'll be making our backstage exit before they get here."

A single mental command from me easily broke through his impressive mental defenses and put him to sleep just like his teleporting subordinate and we all disappeared.