Chapter 183 Showroom.

Chapter 183: 183 Showroom.

This wasn’t going to be easy by any means.

But it was hardly impossible.

I hadn’t fought as many top-tier heroes as I had over the last decade just to let some hijacked, puppet from the Bureau cave my skull in during a shopping trip.

I still had some tricks up my armored sleeves. I just had to change the venue.

I couldn’t fight her up here in the main promenade. There were too many screaming civilians scrambling for the exits, and frankly, a shopping mall just didn’t have the sheer volume of raw, industrial metal I needed to put down a reality warper of her caliber. But I knew exactly what was sitting directly beneath us.

"Not bad," I panted, floating backward and touching down lightly on the heavy steel railing at the top of the glass escalators.

I reached out with my hands, my invisible magnetic fields piercing through the floor tiles, sinking deep into the structural skeleton of the building. "But let’s see how you handle a change of scenery."

Mystic’s eyes locked onto me, her scythe humming with intent as she prepared to lunge.

She didn’t get the chance.

I violently clenched my fists and pulled.

The entire foundation of the mall shuddered like it had been hit by an 8.0 earthquake.

Concrete screamed as I magnetically grabbed the massive steel support girders directly beneath the plaza and violently wrenched them in opposite directions.

And the floor gave away with a boom that’d cost millions.

A massive, fifty-foot section of the promenade collapsed inward, swallowing the fountain, the kiosks, and the escalators in a deafening roar of grinding rebar and shattering tile.

Mystic and I plummeted into the dark, gaping abyss, riding a localized avalanche of debris straight down into the subterranean levels.

We fell past the parking garages, the wind roaring in my ears as the heavy slabs of concrete tumbled around us.

I kept my magnetic fields flared, deflecting the chunks of masonry away from my armor as we dropped into the cavernous, artificially lit expanse of the black-market surplus bazaar.

We hit the showroom floor like meteorites.

I used the metal in my suit to violently repel against the iron floor grates at the last possible second, cushioning my landing so I didn’t shatter my spine.

I hit the ground in a heavy crouch, the impact still rattling my teeth (like Magneto had shit on me.)

A hundred yards away, Mystic slammed into the earth with no such physical precautions. She didn’t need them.

A dome of scarlet energy flared around her a microsecond before impact, turning the concrete floor into a crater of pulverized dust.

Absolute, utter chaos instantly erupted around us.

The highly professional, organized criminal bazaar dissolved into a screaming panic.

Underground arms dealers, mercenaries, and aspiring supervillains took one look at the S-class heroine rising from the dust cloud and collectively decided it was time to leave.

Sirens blared. Pallets of illegal cash were abandoned. I briefly spotted a couple of Arman Glint’s hard-skinned enforcers stepping forward to intervene, only to take one look at Mystic’s glowing eyes and immediately backpedal into the shadows.

God, the Armenians would be knocking on my door later.

"Alright," I breathed, rising to my full height as the dust began to settle. I spread my arms wide, feeling the millions of tons of military-grade surplus humming all around me. "Let’s try this again."

Mystic didn’t say a word. Her eyes just locked back on to me.

She thrust her hands forward, and the air around her fractured. Dozens of glowing, jagged spears forged entirely from hard-light materialized in the air above her.

With a sharp flick of her wrists, the magical artillery rained down on me like a localized missile strike.

Oh, shit.

I threw my hands up. I couldn’t magnetize magic, but I could definitely magnetize the product.

She knew exactly what she was doing, she wasn’t turning anything metal to not give me artillery.

With a deafening screech of tearing metal, I ripped a row of decommissioned, five-ton armored personnel carriers into the air, creating a floating wall of pure steel between us.

The spears slammed into the armored vehicles. The tanks detonated in massive plumes of orange fire and black smoke, the kinetic shockwaves throwing me backward.

Shrapnel rained down on the bazaar, tearing through display booths and shattering vintage death-rays.

Before the smoke could even clear, Mystic burst through the flames.

She was flying at Mach 1, her scarlet scythe drawn back for a killing blow. I barely had time to react.

I magnetically grabbed the chassis of a nearby attack helicopter and swung the entire multi-ton vehicle at her like a baseball bat.

Mystic didn’t even flinch. She swung her scythe, the weapon slicing effortlessly through the helicopter’s titanium tail-rotor, cleaving the aircraft perfectly in half.

The two burning halves crashed to the floor on either side of her as she continued her relentless charge.

She was too fast. Too precise. Whatever Bucky mind-control piloting her body was doing it with absolute, ruthless efficiency, completely overriding the human hesitations that usually gave me an opening against heroes.

She didn’t feel pain. She didn’t feel fatigue. She just wanted me dead.

She closed the distance in a heartbeat, her scythe coming down in a vicious arc aimed directly at my skull.

I threw both my gauntlets up, pouring every single ounce of my magnetic power into a localized, polarized kinetic shield.

The hard-light scythe smashed into my magnetic barrier. And then I noticed the corner of my eye pooling red—I can’t keep this up.

The resulting collision was apocalyptic.

A massive shockwave of displaced energy exploded outward, leveling every display booth within a hundred-foot radius.

The iron floor grates beneath my boots buckled and warped into a bowl. The force traveling down my arms felt like I had just tried to physically catch a bullet train.

My bones groaned, my joints screaming in agony as my boots dug deep trenches into the concrete.

I gritted my teeth, tasting blood in my mouth. My magnetic shield was sparking, struggling to hold back the weight of her magic.

"Just... die!" her voice grated, entirely devoid of emotion.

"Make... me!" I hissed back, the veins in my neck bulging against my suit.