Chapter 142 — Quicksilver / Scarlet / The Stark Tragedy

Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch had fallen on hard times.

They possessed formidable fighting strength and enjoyed immense prestige among the rebels, who had even hailed them as the "Supernovas."

Their future had seemed limitless.

Unfortunately, they were too young.

Youth means a lack of experience.

The two were simple and naive by nature, and they had misplaced their trust in someone unworthy of it.

And so betrayal followed as a matter of course.

"Cyclops, you traitor! If I ever get the chance, I'll kill you!"

Quicksilver, now fitted with the Know-No-Far Suppression Collar, glared venomously at the strange bespectacled man not far away and hurled his threat.

He had always treated Cyclops as his right-hand man, regarding him almost as a blood brother.

And what had his trust bought him?

Ruthless betrayal and mockery!

Betrayal stings like salt rubbed into a wound.

Quicksilver could accept his own defeat, but he could not accept being so incompetent—his arrogance and recklessness had dragged his sister Wanda down with him.

Hearing his words, Scott Summers gave a cold sneer.

His gaze, filtered through the futuristic lenses, settled on Pietro, the Quicksilver.

As though looking at a stray dog, Scott said in a mocking tone: "Reduced to this, and you still dare to talk big? You probably don't know—I was an undercover agent for the New World Federation Government from the very start."

"Impossible!"

Pietro's breath caught.

Stripped of his super-speed and the ability to phase through objects, he was just an ordinary young man—no longer the magnificent Quicksilver who toyed with the Federation Government's running dogs.

The Scarlet Witch, Wanda, carried herself with far more maturity than her brother.

She smoothed her blood-red dress and sat cross-legged on the ground.

Like the queen of a defeated nation, barely holding on to the last shreds of dignity and pride.

Wanda did not spare Scott Summers a single glance.

Her eyes were fixed on Ai Chengyu Lensherr, the man who now called the shots in the enemy camp.

"Cyclops has personally killed quite a few of the Federation's running dogs. Even someone like that, you can accept?"

With one sentence, she planted wariness in Scott Summers' heart while simultaneously posing Ai Chengyu a difficult problem.

To Wanda's surprise, Ai Chengyu did not show the troubled expression she had anticipated. Instead, he looked at her with approval.

"Clever girl."

Ai Chengyu's tone was kind and benevolent—not like a ruthless, seasoned politician, but like a gentle elder who dabbled in charity: "Your only shortcoming is that you haven't read enough. Otherwise you'd certainly accomplish great things one day."

That tone made Wanda feel strangely wretched.

She would rather be scolded and cursed at with haughty contempt than pitied like this.

In truth, Wanda did not need Ai Chengyu to answer.

She had already guessed the answer.

Nothing more than the dark art of purging dissent.

The same sort of thing happened often among the rebel forces.

"Is this your way of mocking me? Please, spare me your sense of superiority."

Wanda showed the bearing of the Scarlet Witch, saying firmly: "You can kill me, but you cannot defeat me."

"No, no, no, my dear girl, you've misunderstood me."

Ai Chengyu snapped his fingers.

Scott and the special-ops soldiers scattered like birds and beasts.

Wanda and Pietro stared in utter bewilderment at this turn of events.

What did this mean?

They soon let it go.

As the head of the Federation Government's chief brain trust, Magneto was no easy man to deal with.

His ideas were wild and unconstrained, as elusive as a gazelle's antlers in the mist.

Even as the defeated party, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver strove to preserve their last measure of pride.

"Children, why resist the Federation Government?"

"Under the God of Justice's control, the whole society can maintain order and stability."

Magneto spoke with earnest sincerity: "You must understand—peace has never been the norm; war is the eternal theme of history. Through effort and struggle, we barely managed to reverse that underlying tone."

Quicksilver Pietro opened his mouth, but not a single word came out.

In a war of words, how could he possibly best a seasoned old hand like Ai Chengyu, who had spent decades sparring verbally with a pack of geniuses in the brain trust?

Dumbstruck and speechless.

But the Scarlet Witch Wanda remained defiant.

A faint light glimmered in her eyes, like a martyr's, her tone somewhat ethereal yet her gaze unshakably firm: "For freedom!"

Ai Chengyu finally showed anger.

"Freedom? The freedom to commit crimes?!"

He swept his hand, and the two siblings were wrapped in fine metallic particles and lifted into the air.

After all, the surface world was still rebel territory—once the two were hauled back, there would be all the time in the world to break them in slowly.

……

In Laboratory Bing-261 of the First Federation Academy of Sciences.

Bruce Banner sensed that his good friend was not in the best of moods today.

"Hey... Tony, what happened?"

Tony Stark was not one to keep things bottled up, especially in front of his best buddy.

He poured out his grievances like beans spilling from a bamboo tube, telling a story about himself.

A story whose timeline spanned a full decade.

Ten years ago, Tony—still a wild young man then (now a wild middle-aged one)—had asked the former campus beauty a question at a class reunion.

"I know that in ten years, my son will be surnamed Stark. Do you know what your son will be surnamed?"

At the time, she had lowered her head, her face blushing like a lotus at sunset, and said softly: "Also Stark."

Young Tony hadn't understood what that blush meant; he had merely played along and had a fling with her.

Only now, suddenly grasping the meaning, did Tony feel a faint ache in his heart—but it was too late for regret.

At this point, Tony Stark blew a smoke ring.

Dazed for a long while, he finally said in a hollow voice: "She became my stepmother."

Bruce Banner's expression was complicated—he couldn't laugh, nor could he comfort him.

Emmm...

From a certain angle, that woman could be called a prophet.

Her son was indeed surnamed Stark.

"Hahahaha!"

The test subject burst out laughing without restraint.

He laughed so hard his body convulsed.

It was a while before he recovered and remarked cheekily: "You could have a threesome."

"Do you want to die?"

Tony glared at him furiously.

Faced with Tony Stark's murderous look, the test subject felt his scalp prickle.

So the test subject decided to take a roundabout approach and dial it back: "Don't misunderstand—what I mean is: plan, ploy, position—these form Wade Wilson's strategic 3P model! You could borrow a bit from it; it'd be very useful for your scientific research! Hey, not there! Ah!"

Those who court death often die by their own loose tongues.

Tony Stark, in a fit of agitation, came down hard on Wade.

"Test subject breathing has ceased, heartbeat has stopped. Immediate resuscitation required."

The alarm bells rang out in the laboratory, red lights flashing everywhere.

Tony, steeped in grief, wore a look of utter lifelessness and did not react at all.

Bruce Banner set about cleaning up the mess his friend had made.

Epinephrine hydrochloride, norepinephrine, nikethamide, lobeline, atropine...

One by one the resuscitation drugs were injected, and the cardiopulmonary resuscitation protocol was set in motion.

The entire resuscitation sequence ran its course without producing the slightest effect.

"Brain waves have ceased. The test subject is dead."

Banner sat stiffly beside Tony. "It seems we... accidentally went and killed this Mingyuan fellow..."