Chapter 78: Judgement Day VII

[Auto BGM: Monster (Kanye West)]

A dreadful song no one there had ever heard filled the space around them.

((I shoot the lights out… ))

Hearing that menacing track while staring into the Jester’s stretching, psychotic smile sent a spike of pure ice through Kurt’s veins. Kurt always relied on his hit-and-run tactics—teleport in, strike, vanish.

But for some reason, fear froze him up for a fraction of a moment

“Kurt! Get away from him, quick!” Rogue screamed as she saw Veritas’s free palm glowing a blinding, violent orange.

BOOOM!!

A massive explosion swallowed the space where Kurt stood.

Bamf!

“Woaaahh!!” Kurt yelled in mid-air. Pure instinct had kicked in, and he had teleported a short distance away just in time.

But his relief didn’t even last a second.

Veritas was already there. Kurt was marked… There was no place in the universe or any dimension he was safe in now…

And appearing right in front of Kurt in mid-air. Catching his hand once again, Veritas swung his entire body downward, aiming to smash the mutant into the deck like a rag doll.

Bamf!

(Hide ’til it’s bright out)

At the very last microsecond, Kurt teleported again. This time, he appeared safely behind Captain America and the rest of the team.

“Hah… aha,” Kurt panted, out of breath but cracking a nervous smile. “That was a close one! He’s a madman!”

But the madman wasn’t letting his prey escape.

Veritas vanished and materialized directly in front of Steve Rogers, his finger grazing his shield.

“What the f—!” Gambit cursed, desperately flicking a barrage of charged cards at the Jester.

Around the deck, Fury’s soldiers held their fire. They couldn’t shoot without risking shooting the heroes.

Steve reacted on pure instinct, bringing his vibranium shield up. But Veritas simply grabbed the rim of the shield. Firing a massive blast from his palm, Veritas used the extreme propulsion to pivot and hurl the Captain – shield and all – straight at Gambit.

Steve twisted hard in mid-air, avoiding crushing the Cajun with the shield’s surface, but the sheer force of a two-hundred-pound super-soldier slamming into Gambit was devastating.

Both men were sent tumbling violently across the steel deck.

((Oh, just another lonely night))

Veritas lowered his stance a little… as both Gwen and Rogue charged in to counterattack, but Gwen’s spider-sense screamed.

BOOM!

A catastrophic eruption of force blasted from Veritas’s back and boots, instantly blowing Gwen and Rogue sideways from the sheer shockwave, several of the quinjets exploded in his wake.

The concussive wave launched Veritas at supersonic speed at Kurt. He closed the distance in a microsecond, his hand snapping around Kurt’s throat mid-flight. Kurt was unable to react in time…

Without breaking speed, Veritas drove the mutant headfirst into the metallic wall of the ATC cabin.

The steel shrieked and tore open as they crashed entirely through the structure, blasting out the opposite side.

Veritas stood amidst the wreckage, still clutching Kurt by the neck.

((Are you willing to sacrifice your life? Aaaa~~))

The mutant had passed out on the initial impact, a trail of saliva slipping from the corner of his mouth. All of those earlier rapid teleports and sheer terror had completely exhausted him. He never should have gotten close enough to become the Jester’s target.

“You were quite slippery,” Veritas muttered. “I’m gonna enjoy this hunt.”

As Rogue saw Kurt’s condition, her eyes widened in shock.

“HAAhh!!!” Rogue screamed, her eyes burning with rage as she rocketed toward him at top speed.

‘He’s a damn sadist!’ She thought, ‘He’s gonna torment Kurt even more.”

Veritas smirked behind the mask.

He tossed Kurt to the side, his body language dismissing the mutant like a used napkin as he braced for the next incoming attack.

But at the absolute last second, before Kurt’s body could even touch the steel deck, a jagged chain of black ash erupted from Veritas’s sleeve, snaking around the mutant’s ankle.

With a violent yank, Veritas swung the unconscious Nightcrawler through the air like a medieval morningstar, aiming him directly at Rogue.

Rogue’s eyes widened in horror. She twisted desperately mid-flight, trying to pull back her momentum to avoid hurting her friend. But Veritas wasn’t going to let her off that easy. The ash chain elongated mid-swing and then detonated.

Smack! BOOM!

The explosive shockwave propelled Kurt’s skull squarely into Rogue’s chin with a sickening crunch.

“Argh!” Rogue cried out as the brutal collision knocked her out of the sky. Both heroes tumbled in a painful heap across the scorched floor, sliding across the metal grating.

Veritas stood up straight and cracked his neck with a deeply satisfying pop.

“There is no need for this much bloodshed, you know,” Veritas’s voice boomed, heavy and mocking. “Just hand over the targeting blades,”

Bang! Bang! Rat-a-tat-tat!

Nick Fury’s reinforcements finally got a clear line of sight. The commandos unloaded their assault rifles directly at the Jester.

He casually raised a hand, and a thick wall of black ash erupted, swallowing the hail of bullets. Then, he lowered his stance.

The soldiers’ eyes went wide. They knew what was coming. It was the same posture he’d taken before – the one that meant he was about to move at speeds that defied belief.

Explosions flared from his boots and his back. The ash wall dispersed, and he blasted toward those commandos like a dark meteor.

However, this time… someone was ready.

SMACK!

Gwen slammed into him like a freight train.

She had used two web lines anchored to the Helicarrier’s massive thrusters to slingshot herself through the air. The moment Veritas launched, she intercepted his trajectory perfectly, driving both of her feet squarely into his right shoulder with every ounce of spider-strength and momentum she could muster.

CRASH!

The redirected force sent Veritas flying sideways like a cannonball. He smashed completely through a reinforced steel wall, the heavy metal caving in and shattering around him like cheap glass.

Captain America and Gambit, who were already sprinting toward Gwen after recovering from being thrown earlier, finally reached her. Steve immediately turned to the SHIELD soldiers.

“Get inside the carrier and clear out the rest of Hydra! Do not engage Veritas!” Cap barked and turned back to Gwen. “Let’s go.”

Gwen, Gambit, and Cap rushed over to Rogue, who was just pushing herself off the ground. She was gently holding up a groaning Kurt, who was weakly fluttering his eyes open.

“You both okay?” Gwen asked, breathless.

“I’ll live,” Rogue gritted out, wiping a smear of blood from her cheek. Her knuckles were scraped raw, and a thin line of blood trickled from a cut along her brow. “But Kurt’s…”

“Oh, no…” Gwen winced.

Kurt was breathing, but he was in terrible shape. His right leg was completely snapped at a gruesome angle. His suit was scorched with burn marks, multiple bones were fractured, and blood pooled from a nasty gash on his head. Yet, despite the agony, he stubbornly tried to sit up.

Steve pursed his lips. “That’s not good. He was our last-minute rescue.”

“That’s exactly why the maniac went out of his way to get him,” Rogue said, her voice shaking with anger. “He saved Spider-Woman earlier. Veritas knew he couldn’t leave a teleporter on the board.”

Gambit shook his head. “Non. Kurt is fadin’. He needs to bamf down to the ground team so they can patch him up, or he’s gonna die a useless death up here.”

“…Nein…” Kurt coughed, blood staining his teeth. “I can… still be useful.”

He turned his head heavily toward Rogue, looking at her with desperate, pleading eyes. “Rogue… absorb my powers.”

Rogue recoiled, gritting her teeth. “No! Kurt, you’re already too weak right now. Even if it’s for a moment, it might…”

Gambit stepped forward, his usual cocky grin nowhere to be found. “You should do it, Rogue. That’s the only way we win this.”

BOOOOOOM!!!

A massive explosion blew the debris of the caved-in maintenance wall straight up into the sky.

Veritas slowly stepped out of the smoke, standing atop the e flaming wreckage of a destroyed Quinjet. He looked completely unharmed. The dust on his suit and mask, too, was gone like it was never there…

His hollow eye-holes locked onto Gwen, ignoring the rest of the team. He just stood there, radiating a sadistic amusement, savoring their sheer helplessness.

Gwen stared back at him, a volatile combination of frustration, anger, and something deeply confusing twisting in her chest. She tore her eyes away from him, turning back to the group.

[Patron Comments:]

[urANUS:] Fire explosion bro, but this is NOT a Madara Uchiha aura-farming insta edit 😭

[urPP:] I think he’s trying to recover some aura points he lost when Spider-Woman dropkicked him across the deck XD

[Erehh:] Came here after someone told me a block-level T-Streamer took the whole freaking planet hostage. And damnnn it’s actually true. What is this? His 6th stream?

[Yeageristo:] @Erehh You came at the right time. Someone pointed out in one of his past streams that the beginning of his fights are usually slow… the mid part is absolute carnage… and then it ends in a satisfying, explosive climax. If this was just the start, imagine the next 20 minutes.

[Enemies_to_Lovers_Enjoyer:] Veri-boy! Will you be forcefully assaulting Gwen today as well, or are you planning on switching your archenemy today?

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There was a short but tense discussion among the heroes.

Veritas, the ever-patient Jester, let them talk. After all, it was nice to have a little one-minute breather in the middle of a long 35-minute stream. He still had over 20 minutes left to hit his minimum stream duration, after all.

From where he stood, it looked like Kurt had said something ominous about him. Then Gwen responded with something positive, which Gambit countered with a dismissive shrug. But then Captain America probably backed Gwen’s words. It was hard to tell from this distance.

They were definitely forming a plan against him.

He wasn’t entirely surprised. Gwen had a nasty habit of coming up with the absolute best strategies to counter him. But she came up with this one awfully fast. Looking at the heavy hitters in her lineup, though, they definitely had options.

Still, Veritas wondered what their actual play could be. Gambit certainly had the raw power to blow this entire Helicarrier out of the sky, but the heroes wouldn’t dare.

They knew that if they destroyed this ship, Veritas would just instantly teleport to his other Helicarrier – the one completely out of their reach – and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, with a push of a button.

Their only real option was to keep him engaged right here. They had to defeat him on this deck, trapping him so he couldn’t escape, and they had to do it before the Helicarrier reached the required altitude for Zola’s algorithm to calibrate the Insight satellites.

“Spider-Woman…” Veritas called out, “I wonder… every time we meet, we end up fighting. Why is that?”

He hopped down from the destroyed jet, casually strolling toward the group. “Don’t we both want to create a better world?”

For a moment, Gwen didn’t speak. Then, she took a bold step forward, separating herself from Cap and the X-Men.

“Because you’re broken, Veritas,” Gwen said, her voice steady but laced with a strange, sad edge. “You’re entirely alone. You don’t know humanity’s warmth. You don’t understand love. You look at the world with twisted eyes, and all you see is rot. For whatever circumstances you have faced… You now want nothing but destruction… and that makes you a monster.”

Veritas paused mid-step.

He turned his head, looking off into the distance. When he spoke, his voice was softer, almost reflective.

“You know…” he said slowly. “I used to be scared of monsters.”