An Unexpected Lineup

"What was that?"

On their way back to the jet, Hawking's heart stirred when they passed a room filled with advanced machinery. Pretending to be curious, he pointed at the pool in the middle.

Wolverine explained with a complicated expression:

"That's where I was experimented on. The bubbling silver liquid beside it is Adamantium Alloy.

According to Stryker, the raw liquid can only remain stable at high temperatures. Once it cools, it becomes indestructible."

After saying that, he shot Stryker, who was being held by Colossus, a vicious glare.

Clutching his right hand, which Wolverine had pierced through, Stryker sneered:

"You should be thanking me. Without me, you'd still be using those lousy bones as weapons."

"Then let me thank you properly with them!"

At those words, Wolverine instantly extended his Adamantium Claws, ready to give Stryker a few more slashes.

But Professor X stopped him.

"Logan, don't kill him yet. We need to keep him alive as proof of the assassination attempt and make the president abandon his decision to wage war on mutants."

Stryker had controlled Nightcrawler to assassinate the president, attempting to provoke a war between humans and mutants. In a few days, the president would publicly announce the mutant threat on the news and issue an order to go to war with mutants.

He needed to produce evidence that Stryker had caused all this in order to resolve the crisis.

While Wolverine and Professor X were talking, Hawking had already sprinted over to the pool.

He looked around, found a suitable hollow tube nearby, then picked up an Adamantium Alloy injector and shoved it inside.

Once the liquid had cooled, he squeezed it hard. The tube shattered, and a thick, hard Adamantium Alloy Long Staff appeared in his hand.

When he loaded the Goku Template, he had the Power Pole, but in his normal state, he did not have any weapons at all.

Saiyans might prefer fighting barehanded, but while he was not strong enough, he felt that having a weapon made him stronger than going without one.

Future Trunks had carried a sword when fighting the Androids in the future world.

As one of the hardest metals in Marvel World, Adamantium Alloy could only be kept liquid through extreme heat during its initial smelting. Once it cooled, it became indestructible. Even at temperatures of 500,000°C, it showed not the slightest sign of melting.

Now that he had come across it, how could he possibly waste the opportunity and leave it here?

Actually, if there had been molds nearby, he would have preferred a knife or sword—something with greater killing power.

Unfortunately, they could not stay here for long, nor could they dismantle the entire machine and take it away. Once the machine stopped and the liquid cooled, it could no longer be melted. He could only use it all to make staffs.

"Get outside, quickly! We have trouble!"

Just as Hawking finished making the Adamantium Alloy Rod, Professor X's expression suddenly changed.

"Professor, what happened?"

Storm hurriedly asked.

She had rarely seen Professor X look so grave. He had never looked like this, not even when facing Magneto directly.

"Erik is fighting someone outside the base, and he's about to lose."

"What?!"

Everyone was shocked. They had all experienced Magneto's strength firsthand. If he got serious, even all of them together might not be his match.

Who could beat Magneto to the point where he could not hold on?

Hawking, who had returned with the Adamantium Alloy Rod, was stunned as well, because this development had completely caught him off guard.

At least, nothing like this had happened in the story he knew.

"Holy shit, S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

Outside the base, on the snowy ground, Hawking's eyes widened as he looked at the group fighting Magneto.

The one holding the shield looked exactly like the comics. She was obviously Captain Britain Carter. The one with the bow whose shots never missed had to be Hawkeye Barton.

The red-haired girl who looked sixteen or seventeen, yet was agile enough to fight Mystique evenly, was probably Black Widow, who had just destroyed the Red Room and joined S.H.I.E.L.D.

The bald Black man with an eyepatch standing behind them and the white man beside him with a somewhat M-shaped receding hairline were most likely Nick Fury and Coulson.

As for the Black woman overhead, covered in energy as she pressed Magneto down and beat him—

There was no need to guess. She had to be Maria Rambeau, Captain Marvel's friend from the Main Universe and the founder of S.W.O.R.D., who had become this universe's Captain Marvel.

If he had seen these people individually, he might not have recognized them because of their ages. But seeing them all together made it painfully obvious.

Why was S.H.I.E.L.D. here?

The moment the thought occurred to him, Hawking could not help smacking his own forehead, cursing himself for overlooking it.

Although what he was experiencing now closely resembled the plot of a standalone mutant movie, this was not an independent mutant universe. It was Universe 838. Aside from mutants, most Marvel characters and organizations existed here too.

With something as major as mutants attacking the president, how could S.H.I.E.L.D. possibly stay out of it?

A newly established S.H.I.E.L.D. might not have been able to interfere, but it was already the year 2000. By this point, Nick Fury should have become S.H.I.E.L.D.'s director and truly developed the organization.

With Nick Fury's arrogant personality, always wanting every danger under his control, how could he casually allow mutants to cause trouble?

In the Main Universe, even without mutants, S.H.I.E.L.D. would find and monitor anyone with superpowers who appeared in the world. They even had a dedicated list.

What surprised him, however, was that this world's Captain Marvel had actually remained on Earth instead of leaving for space.

After Captain Marvel Carol defeated the invading Kree in 1995 in the Main Universe, she went into space to maintain peace throughout the cosmos, leaving Nick Fury with only a pager.

Different universe, different people, different personalities. Naturally, the course of many events had changed as well.

Just as Captain Britain Carter should not have appeared at this point either.

To stop a plane carrying a nuclear bomb from destroying New York, Captain America in the Main Universe had crashed the plane into a glacier with himself aboard. S.H.I.E.L.D. did not find and thaw him out until 2011.

According to the comics Hawking had read, Captain Carter of this universe had been sealed in a Different Dimension together with Red Skull in order to stop him from using the Tesseract to unleash Hydra.

Boom!

Captain Marvel punched through the combat helicopter blocking her path and knocked Magneto out of the air. Hawkeye seized the opportunity to fire a specially made nonmetal tranquilizer arrow, knocking Magneto unconscious.

At the same time, while fighting Black Widow, Mystique was struck on the back of the head by Captain Carter's shield and collapsed unconscious.

"You must be Professor Charles. I'm Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D. I now order you and all your students to come with me for an investigation into the attack on the president.

Don't try to resist. You should have seen what happened to those two!"