An Oscar-worthy performance: forcing the battle to stop with a "critical injury"

Lynn reversed his circuit and hurled himself straight into the scarlet vortex hot enough to melt vibranium.

Wanda looked past Gwen Stacy's shoulder and saw that bloodstained face clearly. The thread of "reason" in her mind snapped completely.

"No-!"

Wanda let out an utterly piercing scream. Through sheer willpower, she forcibly dragged back the ball of Chaos Magic she had already released. The violent backflow of energy surged into her meridians. Wanda spat out a huge mouthful of blood and fell from the air like a kite with its string cut.

At the same time, Gwen Stacy's Spider-Sense also picked up Lynn's suicidal move.

"Lynn!"

The rims of Gwen Stacy's eyes instantly reddened beneath her mask. The steel rebar in her hands had been aimed at Wanda's heart, but if she kept going, it would definitely pierce Lynn as he lunged toward her.

Within a mere hundredth of a second, Gwen Stacy made a move that utterly defied biological instinct. Her waist and abdomen contracted sharply, forcibly reversing the momentum of her charge. Clutching the rebar with both hands, she bent it into a massive U-shape. The tremendous recoil broke the bones in her right wrist on the spot, the crack of breaking bone clearly audible amid the ruins.

Lynn had won his gamble.

Both lethal attacks were forcibly withdrawn an inch before touching his body.

But the price of reversing his Magic Circuit was no act.

The agony was like having every blood vessel in his body put through a meat grinder over and over. Blood instantly clouded Lynn's vision, and an uncontrollable surge of metallic sweetness rose in his throat.

"Blergh-"

A great mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of internal organs burst out, splattering onto the scorched marble floor.

Lynn crashed into the ruins like a rag doll, shards of glass and splinters of wood digging into his back. He did not get up immediately, instead letting his body convulse violently with its natural reflexes.

He rapidly adjusted the rhythm of his breathing in his mind, perfecting that sense of near-death frailty. His lungs wheezed like bellows, every gasp bringing up mouthfuls of bloody froth.

If I'm going to act, I have to go all the way. To deal with yanderes, I have to be crazier and more pitiful than they are to seize back control of this Shura Field.

"Lynn... Lynn!"

Wanda scrambled into the ruins. She had even forgotten she could fly, not noticing as her knees struck the rubble until they were mangled and bloody.

The lofty Scarlet Witch who treated human lives as worthless was gone. The person kneeling beside Lynn now was merely a panicked woman on the verge of collapse.

She reached out with trembling hands, wanting to cover Lynn's mouth as blood kept pouring from it, only to recoil as though shocked. She feared her Chaos Particles would hurt him again.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I didn't mean to..." Wanda's large tears fell onto Lynn's face, her scarlet eyes filled with extreme terror. "Don't die... Please, don't leave me..."

On the other side, Gwen Stacy stumbled over, dragging her broken right hand.

She tore off her mask, revealing a face as pale as paper. Her azure eyes were bloodshot, and tears mixed with dust washed two muddy tracks down her cheeks.

"Get away! You crazy woman!" Like a beast guarding its food, Gwen Stacy slammed into Wanda's shoulder, knocking her aside, and pressed her intact left hand firmly against the pressure points on Lynn's chest, trying to stop his bleeding. "If you hadn't gone crazy, how would he have ended up like this!"

"You attacked first!" Knocked to the ground, Wanda once again surged with murderous intent, red light beginning to flicker at her fingertips. "I'll kill you-"

"Cough... cough, cough..."

Just as their murderous intent was about to clash again, Lynn let out a violent fit of coughing with perfect timing.

He raised his hand with difficulty, first catching Wanda's red-glowing wrist with extraordinary precision.

Lynn's fingers were icy and covered in cold sweat.

"Wanda..." With his eyes half-open, Lynn looked at her with an unfocused gaze, his voice so faint a breeze seemed enough to scatter it. "Don't... don't blame her... It was me... I didn't control the barrier properly..."

The moment he said that, the red glow at Wanda's fingertips went out.

She turned her hand over and gripped Lynn's tightly, pressing her face into his palm as she sobbed uncontrollably. "I don't blame her. I won't fight anymore... Stop talking. I'll save you with magic..."

Lynn did not let her continue casting. Instead, he turned his head slightly toward Gwen Stacy, who was pressing on his chest with reddened eyes.

He mustered an extremely weak yet utterly indulgent smile.

"Gwen..." Lynn's thumb gently brushed the grotesquely twisted fracture in Gwen Stacy's wrist, a trace of anguished tenderness flashing in his eyes. "Your hand's broken... It must hurt, right? As long as... you're all right."

Gwen Stacy's defenses crumbled completely at that moment.

When they fell from the Clock Tower, he had looked at her with those same eyes and smiled as he severed the web.

Now, to keep that witch from killing her, he had actually thrown himself into that destructive magic!

"It doesn't hurt! You idiot! Liar!" Gwen Stacy trembled all over as she cried, her left hand gripping the hem of Lynn's clothes. "Why did you rush out? Are you trying to get yourself killed!"

Lynn let out a long sigh of relief inwardly.

It worked.

Both sides' hostility had successfully shifted from "attacking each other" to "aching for the male lead" and "extreme self-blame."

As long as they believed that continuing the fight would kill Lynn, this world-destroying Shura Field could be brought to a temporary halt.

"I... I just..." Lynn's breathing grew weaker and weaker, and his eyelids began to droop uncontrollably.

This was no act. The aftereffects of reversing his Magic Circuit really had pushed him to his physical limit.

"I just... didn't want to see either of you get hurt..."

Lynn uttered those final words, his head lolled to one side, and he completely "passed out."

"Lynn!"

"Lynn!"

Both women cried out at once.

Without hesitation, Wanda summoned the purest Chaos Origin within her. Scarlet energy became a soft halo of light that settled directly over Lynn's chest.

At the same second, Gwen Stacy drew a syringe of highly concentrated Cell Repair Serum specially made by S.H.I.E.L.D. from her tactical belt. Holding the syringe in her left hand, she drove it hard toward Lynn's carotid artery.

One red hand and one pale hand collided without warning at Lynn's neck.

The exclusivity of Chaos Magic and the bioelectric field of the high-tech repair serum erupted into an extremely piercing buzz the instant they came into contact.

"Zzzzt-"

The unconscious Lynn suddenly jerked, another trickle of black blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.

Wanda and Gwen Stacy froze simultaneously.

To their horror, they discovered that the Energy Circuit inside Lynn's body had fallen into complete disarray. Whether pure magic infusion or a physical drug injection, either one entering his body alone would trigger an even deadlier rejection reaction.

"Damn it..." Gwen Stacy gritted her teeth, staring fixedly into Wanda's eyes.

Wanda stared just as fixedly at Gwen Stacy, a trace of extreme humiliation and conflict flashing through her scarlet eyes.

A crazy, bizarre option stood before these two yanderes who wanted nothing more than to tear each other to pieces.