A Grand Performance Destined for No Outcome

General Ross had made extensive preparations to hold Alcatraz Island. Shortly after he gave the order, two armed helicopters roared in, firing nearly a hundred tear gas canisters onto the bridge deck. Fortunately, this was American soil; otherwise, it would have been ground-attack rockets raining down from the sky.

The bridge was packed with tens of thousands of mutants, making the normally spacious six-lane road feel suffocatingly crowded. Under the influence of the tear gas, the disorganized and undisciplined crowd began to descend into chaos. In the commotion, some tried to retreat while others pushed forward, and the first victim of the stampede soon appeared.

Magneto watched the helicopters circling overhead and reached out his hands with a blank expression. His magnetic field control did not actually require physical gestures to function; reaching out was merely a habit, using the movement of his limbs to help focus his intent.

The moment Magneto reached out, the bodies of the helicopters in the air began to deform. Amidst the teeth-grinding sound of twisting metal, the outer shells buckled inward piece by piece, and then the rotors atop the fuselages emitted a strange "clacking" noise, sparks erupting from their roots before they suddenly ground to a halt.

In just a few seconds, the two most advanced armed helicopters in the world plummeted, crashing diagonally into the sea under their own momentum.

The tear gas smoke still lingered on the bridge, but a whirlwind rose from within the mutant crowd, swirling to gather the smoke into clumps and whisking them up into the sky.

The military's first wave of the offensive had been dismantled with effortless ease.

Xiang Qian watched the footage transmitted back by the drone and sighed with a hint of admiration, "Sometimes I really feel that mutants are uniquely favored by heaven."

Having lost two helicopters, the U.S. Air Force certainly wouldn't dare send any other aircraft into the fray. Before Magneto, the high-tech heavy weaponry the U.S. military relied upon could only serve as decorations.

Beyond the air force, a large number of Marine Corps assault boats were shuttling back and forth on the sea. These units were originally intended to blockade the water, and having anticipated Magneto's superpowers, they had avoided using large vessels in favor of deploying numerous rubber assault boats.

However, facing the bridge deck dozens of meters above, they could only look up and sigh. The U.S. military's air and sea forces had both failed.

The loudspeakers on the island repeated the military's warnings over and over, demanding that the mutants leave. The sound drifted across the vast sea, only to be quickly scattered by the ocean breeze.

No one stopped. The conflict was inevitably evolving into a situation of close-quarters combat.

Suddenly, a drastic change occurred on the screen: at the end of the bridge where it met Alcatraz Island, a thick wall of ice rose from the ground, blocking Magneto and his followers.

Prior to this, without anyone noticing, water vapor from the sea had been rolling upward, gathering in the sky. Before long, dark clouds churned, accompanied by wind and thunder. At the same time, a massive plume of pale, frigid air rose from behind the ice wall on Alcatraz, shooting straight into the clouds and weaving together with the storm.

With a thunderous "crack," hailstones the size of a baby's fist plummeted from the sky, smashing down upon the crowd on the bridge.

Whirlwinds rose within the crowd to blow away some of the hail, and others raised invisible force fields to shield their heads, but no one could fully withstand this overwhelming display of nature's fury.

Flashes of lightning illuminated the highest point of the Alcatraz facility, where a slender figure stood against the wind, her cape snapping and fluttering behind her.

Xiang Qian watched that striking short silver hair through the screen, muttering, "So she actually looks better with short hair?" At the same time, he secretly wondered—he hadn't seen her in years, had the curves beneath that cape and combat suit changed at all?

Countless metal parts flew up from the bridge—some from dismantled cars, others stripped from the bridge structure itself—swarming toward Storm like a plague of locusts. Magneto had struck again.

Storm remained motionless, focused entirely on controlling the storm overhead. A burly, silver-gray figure quietly stepped in front of her, his broad frame shielding her completely. Colossus Piotr was acting as Storm's shield.

The metal parts pelted Colossus's back like rain, ringing out with a cacophony of clangs. The immense impact made Piotr sway back and forth, but his legs remained firmly rooted to the ground.

The attack seemed to have been successfully blocked, but Storm and Colossus soon realized they had been careless. The steel parts that had flown past Colossus without hitting him suddenly veered in mid-air, as if intentionally bypassing him to strike Storm in a dense barrage.

Amidst Ororo's cry of pain, Colossus Piotr reached her in time to scoop her up, intentionally throwing himself off the ledge to avoid the follow-up rain of metal.

The storm, having lost its controller, began to falter. But at the same time, a laser beam shot up from beneath the bridge, slicing through the bridge railing like a hot knife through butter, then slowly and firmly cutting into the bridge deck itself.

The searing beam penetrated the deck from below, moving slowly across; it would take only a few minutes to split the bridge in two. The crowd on the bridge retreated in terror.

The area beneath the bridge was a blind spot for the drone, but it was easy to guess that the one attacking must be Cyclops Scott. He was standing on the rocky beach, a place that would be submerged at high tide; even now, the rising seawater was already soaking his legs.

Just as Xiang Qian had suggested, the X-Men were attempting to sever the bridge to block the mutant crowd. Only in this way could they minimize casualties—both for the mutants and the ordinary people.

This time, Magneto did not act. The one who did was the Latina woman who had participated in the attack on the Professor the previous night: Nightcrawler.

A phantom figure dashed straight toward Scott. Nightcrawler had no weapons in her hands, but she seemed to know Cyclops's greatest weakness. With a powerful lunge, she tackled Scott into the water.

As Scott instinctively cut off his laser beam, Nightcrawler reached for his face and, before he could react, ripped the visor right off his head.

Cyclops's greatest flaw was his inability to control his power. Without his visor, he didn't dare open his eyes. Having been knocked down and disoriented, he had no idea where he would fire his beams if he opened his eyes without first locking onto a target.

Xiang Qian couldn't see what was happening under the bridge, but the disappearance of the laser beam was clear as day. He clicked his tongue, unimpressed; after all, it was just a romantic rival. If he died, he died—it would save a lot of trouble.

Having neutralized two of the X-Men's offensives, the crowd on the bridge gradually gathered at the bridgehead. Juggernaut's massive frame surged out from the crowd, roaring as he charged toward the tall, thick ice wall with unstoppable momentum.

With a deafening "boom," the several-feet-thick ice wall was smashed open like paper, leaving a massive gap. Juggernaut didn't seem to feel the slightest resistance, charging toward the U.S. military's defensive line without pausing for a single step.

"FIRE!"

U.S. soldiers never hesitated when it was time to shoot. Faced with a terrifying figure as large as a demon, they didn't even care about General Ross's orders to use rubber bullets before live ammunition; they poured all their firepower into Juggernaut.

If Scott's laser beam couldn't truly harm Juggernaut, how could these small arms? Amidst thunderous roars, Juggernaut crashed into the military line. Whether it was obstacles or soldiers, they were tossed aside like light straw with a mere flick of his hand.

Behind Juggernaut, a large group of mutants filed through the gap in the ice wall.

"Magneto truly lives up to expectations!" Xiang Qian sneered as he began operating his tablet.

At some point, the Spider-Bot that had been quietly clinging to the outside of General Ross's command center had climbed onto the outer wall. Supported by its powerful limbs, it crawled along the rough concrete until it reached an inconspicuous small window.

Inside that small window was the source of this entire commotion, the origin of the mutant cure—the mutant boy, Jimmy.

Startled by the earth-shattering noise outside, Jimmy was standing on his tiptoes, peering out the small window, when a giant, never-before-seen spider suddenly crawled into view. He stumbled back in fright and fell onto his bed.

In Jimmy's terrified gaze, a transparent crystal the size of a fingernail popped out from the spider's back and stuck to the glass with a "ding." Then, the spider vanished from his field of vision, and a blinding light suddenly erupted from the crystal.

After the light faded, a circular hole appeared in the center of the glass, with gelatinous, melted liquid dripping from the edges. The reinforced glass, capable of withstanding large-caliber anti-materiel rifle fire, was now like butter under heat.

The High-Heat Crystal—one of the products derived from analyzing the Mandarin's gemstone rings. Its small volume could store a massive amount of thermal energy and discharge it directionally when needed. Its first practical application had been a success.

It was just a pity that the production of such crystals, capable of bearing such immense heat, was too low; otherwise, Xiang Qian would have rewritten the global energy market.

Back to the matter at hand: having successfully broken through the reinforced glass, the spider outside crawled in quickly. It ignored the shivering Jimmy and crawled along the wall, soon slipping into a gap in the ceiling and attaching itself to a wire.

A moment later, Jimmy heard a strange "crackling" sound, and then a burst of electric sparks erupted from the corners of the ceiling.

Jimmy knew those were the locations of the surveillance cameras. Having lived here for years, he naturally knew the room was under twenty-four-hour constant surveillance.

Confused, Jimmy climbed off the bed and walked toward the corner to get a better look, but before he could take two steps, he suddenly felt the ground vanish beneath him, and he plummeted straight down in a free fall.

Aside from a short, sharp scream from Jimmy himself, everything else remained silent.

The focal point of the entire event, the boy Jimmy, whose fate could decide the future of all mutants, had vanished into thin air.