Chapter 79: Judgement Day VIII

A few moments before, when the Jester was standing on that destroyed Quinjet, Kurt had said that Veritas was impossible to defeat. That he had no weaknesses.

Gwen had replied to him, “No, he does have weaknesses. There are a few things we can use against him.”

She looked at the others, her voice low and serious.

“I have seen his powers up close. Trust me, he’s being very careful with his most dangerous power right now… his explosions. I think it’s because he can’t destroy this helicarrier. He needs it for his, you know… mass murder plan.”

She paused, letting that sink in.

“The second thing is his teleportation,” she continued. “I am pretty sure there is a strict rule he has to follow to teleport another person. He has to completely envelop their body in ash first.”

Gambit raised an eyebrow. “But didn’t he just teleport dose Helicarriers? He didn’t wrap dem in ash.”

Cap shook his head. “No, she might be right. Forget machines and objects. For teleporting people, that condition might be true. He teleported Spider-Woman and Bucky exactly like that on the highway. And today, he hasn’t gotten the chance to do it because you and Kurt kept breaking his ash constructs or taking his targets away.”

Gambit spun a card between his fingers. “Maybe, maybe. So what’s the third? I ask because dere’s always a third.”

Gwen smiled a knowing smile and looked straight at Rogue.

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.

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“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.”

“When I was a kid,” Veritas continued, “I couldn’t sleep without checking under the bed. Checked the closet twice. Kept the lights on until my eyes burned.”

He tilted his head, the painted smile unmoving. “I was terrified that something was hiding in the dark, waiting to hurt me.”

He took another step forward. The ash around his boots stirred like restless smoke.

“But growing up is a funny thing, isn’t it? You eventually realize there are many kinds of monsters. Monsters who abduct children. Monsters who devour dreams. Monsters who suck blood…” He paused, letting the words hang.

“And then there are the worst kind. Monsters who tell nothing but lies. Lying monsters are a real nuisance. They’re much more cunning than the others.”

His voice hardened as he walked closer to Gwen.

“They walk the streets in nice suits. Live happily with their spouses. Smile at children. Pass laws. Wear badges. Lead prayers.” Each word came out sharper than the last. “They hide in plain sight, pretending to be human. And no one ever checks under the bed for them.”

Gwen kept walking toward him too. Her steps were steady, fearless. Behind her, Steve, Rogue, and Gambit fanned out slowly, flanking Veritas from both sides. They kept their distance, but their intent was clear. Kurt, heavily injured and weak, crawled backwards into safety.

“If I were to encounter such monsters,” Veritas said, his voice dropping low, “I would likely be eaten by them.”

He stopped walking. Gwen stopped too. Only a few feet separated them now.

“So, if I have to become the monster to purge them from the face of this earth… to instill a fear so deep into their souls that no one else dares to follow their footsteps… then so be it.”

He spread his arms wide. “Call me a monster.”

“Right, because nothing screams ‘I’m fixing society’ quite like a genocide,” she scoffed. “You’re a lunatic. Admit it and get checked.”

With that, all hell broke loose.

They gave him no time to retort. Captain America’s arm snapped forward in a blur. The vibranium shield sliced through the windy air, flying directly at the Jester.

That was the signal. The remaining three heroes moved at the exact same time.

Rogue shot forward from the left, her bare hands reaching. Gambit came from the right, a fan of glowing cards already leaving his fingers. Gwen propelled herself forward on a web-line, a silent pink and white predator.

They were a closing fist, aimed to crush him from four directions at once.

In the center of the storm, Veritas just looked ahead.

A fine, almost invisible mist of black ash puffed out from his body, expanding in a fifty-foot radius. The particles swirled lazily in the wind, a harmless-looking fog that was anything but. The smoke was connected to his senses. It was an extension of his body.

He didn’t possess a natural danger sense like Spider-Woman, but within this cloud, he could physically feel the battlefield.

The smoke rippled sharply in front of him… The shield.

He ducked under the frisbee. The vibranium disc passed over his head, missing by inches. Rogue’s fist came the next instant. Veritas twisted, letting her punch sail past his face. He wasn’t going to let her touch him.

“Too slow, sugah,” he mocked, raising both palms toward her.

A concentrated blast of explosive force erupted from his hands, catching Rogue head-on and sending her hurtling backward across the deck.

Gwen dropped from above, both feet aimed at Veritas’s skull. No surprise attacks were surprise for him right now. A blast from his palm launched him sideways just as her boots slammed into the deck where he had been standing.

Steve caught his rebounding shield and hurled it again, forcing Veritas to raise a wall of black ash as it struck and bounced back, only for Steve to catch it and keep charging.

The smoke was working. Veritas could feel every step, every shift of weight, every punch before it came, allowing him to slip through their relentless attacks like water through fingers.

Gwen attacked from the left with a rapid combination, but Veritas blocked the first punch, evaded the second, and caught the third before twisting her wrist and throwing her toward Rogue, where she flipped through the air and landed cleanly on her feet.

Rogue swooped down from above Gwen, but Veritas raised his arm and sent a pillar of ash surging from the deck, catching her in the stomach and launching her backward as she skidded across the metal, gasping while the ash dispersed and swarmed around her.

Gambit launched his kinetically charged cards to break the ash before it could swallow Rogue. “Don’t worry, I ain’t gon’ let him swallow nobody. No city-wide transfer today, Jester. Not on Gambit’s watch.”

‘Do they think I can only teleport a living person if the ash swallows them whole?’ Veritas thought for a quick second.

Well, their assumed limitation of his power actually made sense from their point of view… after all, he had teleported both Gwen and Bucky in the last stream only after he enveloped their whole bodies with ash.

And today he hadn’t been able to do that because of Kurt and Gambit…

Well, whatever… it served his purpose, so he might as well play along. Besides, it was better that no one truly understood his powers. That way, even though he has to show off his powers during the stream, he can still keep a few trump cards hidden.

Gambit swept both arms toward Veritas. Dozens of glowing cards shot forward, swarming him like a pack of angry wasps.

There was very little time… Veritas mustered all his speed to spin mid-air, both hands raised. Sparks flew from his gloves, intercepting Gambit’s kinetic cards in a deafening chain of mid-air concussions that rattled the deck.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Several of the explosions had torn through the Helicarrier’s deck, leaving a massive hole in the metal plating.

Right then, he sensed the shield coming straight at his back. Veritas ducked, letting the vibranium disc whiz over his head. At the same moment, he fired a small blast from his boots, sidestepping another one of Rogue’s charges from his side.

They were working together now, timing their strikes so there was no gap between them. Every dodge created an opening for another attack. Every block left him exposed somewhere else. The smoke felt it all, a storm of movement pressing in from every direction.

And this woman was so adamant about touching him.

“Fine then,” He said to himself as he gazed at her fleeting figure.

Veritas teleported.

In a blink, he was directly in front of Rogue, his fingers grazing the gliding vibranium shield as it passed. He clutched the rim and hurled it at her.

“Ormghh!!” She grunted as the shield smacked Rogue square in the chest with a sickening crack.

She crumpled to the deck like a puppet with cut strings. The shield ricocheted off somewhere.

Before she could even hit the ground, Veritas appeared next to her. He grabbed her arm mid-fall and slammed her down with enough force to dent the metal plating beneath her.

Rogue went limp.

Her eyes rolled back, and she stopped moving.

‘The second most troublesome mutant for the day, dealt with.’ Veritas thought. ‘It was a bit easier than I expected…’

“Rogue!” Gambit yelled as he launched another barrage of cards at Veritas, each one glowing bright pink with kinetic energy.

Veritas blasted the unavoidable ones out of the air with quick bursts from his fingertips. He gritted his teeth behind the mask. Gambit was relentless.

But then something shifted in the smoke.

Gwen’s fist was already in front of his face, too close to react. The smoke had warned him, but his body was a fraction too slow.

Smack!!

Her punch connected hard. Veritas staggered, but Gwen kept the pressure on. She stepped in for another strike but Veritas recovered fast. He swatted her second punch away and brought his palm up to her face.

His hand glowed bright orange.

BOOM!

The blast tore through the air, but Gwen’s spider-sense warned her just in time, sending her into a backflip that carried her safely beyond its reach as Captain America charged in from behind with a heavy punch.

Veritas sensed the shift and raised a thick wall of ash, swallowing Cap’s fist to the elbow as the mass flared crimson with searing heat before he shaped it around his right hand into a razor-sharp scythe and swung for Steve’s arms.

Before the blade could connect, hot-pink cards sliced through the air, shattering both the scythe and ash wall in a burst of kinetic explosions before homing in on Veritas.

With a frustrated grunt, Veritas unleashed a point-blank blast into Cap’s torso, sending him flying. Smoke rose from his uniform as he rolled across the deck and crashed into a metal crate.

Veritas felt another ripple through his smoke-sense as Gwen shot toward him at breakneck speed, having anchored two web-lines to opposite ends of the deck and catapulted herself at him like a stone from a slingshot.

‘They’re fucking relentless!’ He thought as he turned just in time, raising both of his arms.

BOOOOOOM!!

Veritas knew Gwen was only wearing her regular spandex today. She didn’t have her blast-proof suit. That was why she had been avoiding his direct attacks.

But she didn’t dodge this time.

Despite the searing heat, Gwen lunged through the fading flames, locking her legs around his waist and wrapping her arms tightly around his shoulders as she pressed herself against him.

Their combined momentum sent them tipping backward. Together, they fell down into one of the jagged holes Gambit’s cards had blown open in the deck.

The scenery shifted instantly.

His eyes saw the opening they had fallen through and the smoky sky shrinking above them as they dropped into the lower levels of the carrier.

In their first fight in the Daily Bugle, he had done something similar to get the environmental advantage…

But that brought in a question.

Why would Gwen throw herself onto him like this? It was practically suicide. He could trigger an explosion from anywhere on his body. She had to know that. What was she sacrificing herself for?

‘What are they thinking? What’s their plan…?’ Veritas thought through gritted teeth.

Well, while Gwen’s thighs were soft, sure… but her grip was incredibly tight. Her thighs squeezed his sides hard enough to make his ribs ache.

He had to get her off him.

His chest started to glow a deep, burning orange. She would move, he thought.

Her spider-senses would force her to move away from the blast.

‘Do they think I’ll control my explosions inside the Helicarrier just because I need this ship for my plan?’ he mused as he prepared for a full-bodied blast in every direction.

Then he heard it.

BAMF.

Veritas widened his eyes. That annoying sound came from right behind him.

Was Kurt back already? It didn’t matter. The blue mutant would get caught in the blast wave too.

But then he felt a bare finger graze the skin of his neck.

A sharp, draining cold shot through his entire body. The explosive energy building in his chest sputtered and died. The sudden weakness made his lungs seize.

That wasn’t Kurt.

It was Rogue.

She only touched him for a second, but it was enough.

Gritting his teeth against the dizzying, draining pain, Veritas instantly teleported to the uppermost deck, landing atop the destroyed Quinjet he had marked earlier.

Fortunately, with such a brief moment of contact, it didn’t mean he lost his powers.

But the moment he appeared, he staggered, his knees nearly buckling.

He felt weak. It was only a little bit of his power drained, but the physical shock was jarring.

He took deep, ragged breaths to stabilize his shaking muscles.

He understood now. When he had slammed Rogue to the floor, she hadn’t passed out. They had outsmarted him.

They had barraged him with attacks, overwhelmed him with their sheer stubbornness, giving him no time to think, no time to confirm the job was done. Veritas had been careful not to destroy the Helicarrier, but Gambit had no such limits. He was tearing holes in the deck on purpose.

And then Gwen forced him down into one of those holes. That was their whole plan. The moment they were out of his sight, Kurt must have teleported to Rogue. She had absorbed his powers, letting her teleport directly behind him in the chaos of the fall.

They shoved him into the interior of the ship to make sure he wouldn’t know the secret sauce of their plan, so that he was unaware of Rogue’s absorption of Kurt’s powers.

To make him think he was safe from her touch, Rogue even took direct hits and acted completely passed out.

What a brilliant, suicidal, perfectly executed plan. No, it wasn’t their plan.

It had to be Gwen’s.

Bamf!

Rogue and Gwen suddenly appeared on the upper deck, right in front of him.

A grin spread beneath Veritas’s mask as he watched them arrive.