VS Strucker

A gray-black suit of heavy armor over three meters tall smashed through the floor and crashed into the hall. Its massive body was covered in gray-black iron plating, and every joint roared as though fitted with a large engine. Its right hand was equipped with blood-red iron claws, its five fingers sharp as blades, while all manner of weapon attachments lined its arm from the back of its hand to its elbow.

Its power source clearly came from the energy core in its chest. A circular Arc Reactor was embedded in the chest armor, emitting a milky white glow.

"Strucker?" Michael confirmed the armored wearer's identity through audio recognition. "You really dressed up for the occasion."

Without waiting for his command, Sherry had already automatically scanned the reactor in its chest. Structural analysis and energy spectrum data quickly appeared on the screen before Michael.

"It is an Arc Reactor, sir," Sherry reported with certainty. "The same power source as Mr. Stark's Iron Man suit, but with several differing technical characteristics."

"So Stark didn't make it." Michael said, "Let me guess, Ivan Vanko?"

The moment he finished speaking, the wall behind him shattered with a low boom. A black whip burst through it like an iron serpent and abruptly coiled around his upper body. High-voltage current rapidly crawled along the whip and over his armor, causing the outer shell to crackle violently.

The wall collapsed with a rumble, and another massive, cumbersome suit of heavy armor emerged from the billowing dust. Long black whips wrapped around both its arms, blue high-voltage electricity coursing along them like countless restless little snakes.

The wearer was undoubtedly Ivan Vanko. The man seemed to have some peculiar obsession with whips as weapons; these two high-voltage electric whips could practically serve as his calling card.

After losing to Iron Man last time, Ivan Vanko had improved his technology once again and upgraded his armor. The power efficiency of his reactor had now greatly increased, and the whips were no longer comparable to what they had been before. In the blink of an eye, the current left deep gouges in Michael's armor shell as sparks shrieked and scattered.

Ivan jerked both arms upward, lifting Michael entirely off the ground with the whips before brutally hurling him away. Michael crashed through a load-bearing pillar like a black cannonball, snapping it in half before falling amid dust and rubble.

Warning beeps for damaged components sounded within his helmet, while the display flickered repeatedly under the effects of the high-voltage current.

"The chest armor shell has melted through. The enemy's Energy Whip is extremely destructive. I strongly recommend that you avoid direct contact, sir," Sherry suggested calmly.

"Good suggestion." Michael rose unhurriedly. "I've decided to take it."

Baron Strucker wore the Satan's Claw on his right hand, while his left held a hilt-shaped energy activator. He flipped the switch. The Arc Reactor discharged energy, and pale blue plasma energy extended from the activator's tip, condensing into a thin, slender blade of light. The extreme heat it radiated warped the light and distorted the space around it.

Ivan Vanko stepped forward and viciously lashed both long whips against the ground. The already cracked floor was carved with deep, charred gashes. The two enormous mechs slowly closed in like twin mountains of steel.

"You really know how to surprise people, Dr. Norton," Baron Strucker said sinisterly. "Honestly, no one expected you to truly reach this point. Even now, I still cannot understand how you did it—always staying one step ahead of us. For secrecy, every one of our officers knows only the confidential matters of his own division and territory. Yet you seem to know everything about every branch of our entire organization. So you are fortunate. Before you tell me how you did it, I do not intend to kill you."

He paused, raised the Plasma Lightsaber, and continued in an even gloomier voice. "But of course, this will not be as easy as a scratch."

Strucker strode forward. His huge metal boot slammed into the floor, making it cave in with a boom as cracks spread like a spiderweb. He raised his blade high and brought it down, the lightsaber leaving a blinding streak through the air. Michael drifted lightly aside, but Ivan Vanko's Energy Whip had already swept in again, blue static clinging to the writhing whip and breaking through the air.

Wolfgang Von Strucker had not personally gone to the front lines and fought anyone in a long time, but he was in fact a master swordsman. His swordsmanship was eclectic yet disciplined, his techniques vicious without sacrificing stability. The artificial muscle-fiber power system of the heavy armor allowed him to wield the lightsaber with the lightness of a swallow, its interweaving shadows of light dazzling the eye.

Ivan Vanko, by comparison, was no martial arts master, but he seemed to possess an astonishing natural talent for whip weapons. Combined with the innate advantages of his two long whips, he posed no small threat when coordinating his assault with Strucker.

Michael did not retreat. Instead, he accelerated straight into the zone woven from sword light and static electricity. He silently chanted a spell, and spatial energy flooded his body, strengthening his physical abilities and reflexes to their utmost limit. Multiple Thrusters on his back alternately fired in different directions, and aided by their counterthrust, his body darted, twisted, and shifted with uncanny agility, weaving between the two men with movements no human could possibly perform.

With magical enhancement paired with the intelligent support of a supercomputer, Michael operated every function of the suit as though it were an extension of his own body, pushing its mobility to the absolute limit.

After consecutively evading seven or eight attacks, the Thrusters on Michael's back abruptly increased their output. His entire body shot from the ground, soaring high above the heads of the two hulking metal giants before him.

Ivan flicked his whip, and the black lash shot toward Michael's chest with a sizzling current. Strucker reacted no slower. His sword flashed, the energy blade transforming into a spiraling spike that thrust upward.

Michael flipped his left hand over, channeling surging magical power through his arm and into his palm. It took the form of a Golden Magic Circle that condensed there, firmly suctioning Ivan's whip like a vacuum cup. He swept his right hand back, and a similar Magic Circle formed in that palm as well, catching the tip of Baron Strucker's thrusting blade.

Michael guided left and right with both hands, and the two Magic Circles rotated clockwise along the direction of their force. Without any effort, he wound the whip around the lightsaber. Their energy weapons struck each other. Both Arc Reactors ran at full power, energy surging along their respective weapons and pouring into the other's armor. Vast energy collided and erupted into visible waves. Both suits of heavy armor crackled violently, while flames burst from Michael's back again. He shot several meters higher, spun once in midair, and landed steadily back on the ground.

The violent conflict between the Arc Reactors' energy blasted the two suits of armor apart. Shockwaves swept across the hall as though they would shatter everything within sight.

Another load-bearing pillar snapped in half beneath the sweeping energy storm, and part of the ceiling collapsed under the strain. Scarlet Witch was shaking her heavy head as she struggled to her feet when she saw a massive section of ceiling debris crashing toward her unconscious brother.

"Pietro!"

She screamed, but she no longer had the strength to stop it. Tons of steel and concrete plummeted toward Quicksilver's head, about to crush him into a bloody pulp in less than a breath.

Yet at that critical instant, the unconscious Quicksilver's body suddenly shifted several meters sideways in an extraordinarily strange manner, narrowly escaping the collapsing ceiling as if an invisible thread had violently yanked him away. Quicksilver was dragged all the way to his sister's feet before stopping, groaning twice as though he were beginning to wake.

Scarlet Witch froze. She instinctively turned her head and saw the black figure—who should have been an enemy—holding out a hand toward them. In his palm was a complex, disc-shaped Magic Circle.

There was no doubt that he had saved Quicksilver—despite the fact that the twins had just tried to kill him.

The girl looked utterly bewildered. "You?"

"Don't misunderstand." After casually saving him, Michael immediately shifted his gaze back to his enemies. "Your mutated superpowers are both exceedingly rare. I simply did not want to see such valuable specimens die so casually. That is all."

Then, seeming somewhat impatient, he waved a hand. "All right, if there's nothing else, leave this place immediately—unless you want another round."

Scarlet Witch glanced at his back, then silently helped her brother up. Turning around, the brother and sister supported each other as they left the hall through the corridor.

(Thanks to reader Diao Si Mingzi Bu Hao Qu for the 5,000 Qidian Coins donation, reader Zi Yu Mo for the 1,000 Qidian Coins donation, and reader Justice League Shota Captain for the 100 Qidian Coins donation!)