Interlude: A Different Kind of Super Soldier
Juarez, Mexico
Bullseye Benjamin Pointdexter |ATC Operatives
Juarez was smoldering ruin as vehicles and homes burned. It hadn't been a tourist destination but was different from what the movies described. Slums, depending on who you asked. Bullseye had hidden out here when things got a little wild, so he had an affinity for the historic city.
He jaunted across the roof, the rotten smell and the telltale sign of the mutant easy to track. The X-Men had been a nuisance, and it was later that they discovered their reasons, but it was a stupid and weak reason.
'The Brood hosts were all but dead. Why try and save them?'
"Hold up, buddy, you can teleport," Nightcrawler asked, hanging upside down. He fired, and the blue mutant escaped. He tracked him quickly with the high-tech equipment and jaunted in the opposite direction.
Bullseye emerged from the jaunt, barely clearing the twenty feet between the two buildings. His heads-up display recalibrated on the spot. He wouldn't make that mistake again. He used the momentum of his mistake and turned it into a barrel roll. He fired, his bullets blasting holes into the roofs of the building.
BAMF.
He turned with the grace of a cat on steroids and barely caught the blue demon mutant by his suit. The mutant named Nightcrawler hissed, his tail deflecting off his skull-accented mask.
BAMF.
Bullseye snarled at the slippery bastard. Bullseye tracked him as his suit calculated. He tossed out the electroshock bolas that tripped and impeded the mutant ability to teleport. Nightcrawler cried out in pain.
BAMF.
He laughed at the mutant misery. He can't go too far with hundreds of jolts of electricity frying his ass. Bullseye unsummon his gun and summoned a Yautja netgun. He fired it, enrapturing the mutant. He tapped away at his wrist, adjusting the capture controls.
"The rotten egg demon is captured. Did you get your person?" Bullseye asked, talking through the helmet mic.
"Let me-Ahhhhhh." He shocked the annoying mutant to silence, his eyes rolling in the back of his head.
He chuckled darkly at his partner's answer, but he didn't expect the man to be able to withstand the pretty boy's ice popsicle attacks. Jeremy had told them the mutant was an Omega and to tread carefully. He scoffed. He could end him with a bullet with the proper setup.
A shrill alien screech was all he needed before he returned to the mission. He tapped control on his gauntlet, and a Boas descended. He smirked as the spy drone expanded and grappled the struggling mutant.
He had questioned Jeremy York's methods, but the kid had turned out to be loyal, a quirk that Pointdexter didn't have. He was only loyal to himself, but something told him, no, that's not right, he thought to himself, it was an instinct, like when he thought about betrayal, the hairs on the back of his neck would stand on attention.
'This is a new nest.' He thought, poking at the exoskeleton with one of his knives from the bandolier. The Still-smoking futuristic .50 Cal leaned against his broad shoulder.
'Drug cartels with Stark armaments are wild.' He thought as the explosion turned night into day for a few moments. He turned away, fading into the darkness. He didn't fault them. The cartels had been hit the hardest; the insects had decimated their hidden ranches in the jungles and amassed hundreds of drones.
Oddly named Blood Sport, his new suit gave him a sinister, dark look. He loved it. And he enjoyed the technology, short-distance teleporting, and the ability to summon an arsenal of weaponry.
In truth, Cole thought it hilarious that he made Bullseye give up his ridiculous costume for the better one.
Cole had long thought Bloodsport was the better gunsmith between Deadshot and Bullseye. He did give Bullseye the nod that he was the better shot, Deadshot boasted the greater accuracy, and Bloodsport had the weaponry and training to come out on top.
Bloodsport possessed a device that enabled him to teleport high-tech weaponry to him from a distant location instantaneously, with many being one-of-a-kind prototypes from advanced LexCorp research projects. Even Superman described the arsenal as "extradimensional" in quality and quantity.
Sometime later.
Dozens of boots thudded against the uneven street, witnessing the ATC soldiers in their matte black nightcrawler light armor, causing the survivors who hadn't fled or stupidly sheltered in place to be shocked.
The ATC operatives were feared because of their stance on the infected. Cole had explained it already, and their physician on the team had confirmed it.
The Brood are parasitic and must steal the bodies of others to reproduce, making them one of the most insidious alien menaces in the Marvel universe. Unlike other parasitic creatures, these embryos do not grow their bodies but rather take over the host's, changing them into their appropriate form. The embryos are also fully intelligent even before they are "born."
They pass on a racial memory to their descendants, possibly including some from their hosts. It takes some time for the embryo to gain the ability to take over its host; in the meantime, the embryo can gain control of the host occasionally, often without the host noticing (since they remember nothing while they're under the embryo's control). If the host possesses any genetic powers, the resultant Brood will inherit them.
What happens to the host's persona once the Brood is "born" is unclear; it appears that it is extinguished, but in some cases, it survives and coexists with the Broods. Some broods have been shown to switch between their host's form and their true one, even changing form only partially if they wish.
Bullseye's role had changed since his upgrade. He leaped from the street atop a two-story hour without a moment's warning. Bio-implants had the most advanced military application they had available. Outside of being a Macgyver-like techno gadget, it had many functions to enjoy, and what made it extremely dangerous was the electromagnetic spectrum optics.
He scanned the entire block. The boas are doing an excellent job surveying overhead, always on overwatch. The Brood had begun targeting mutants, somehow able to differentiate between normal and abnormal.
They feared that the offspring had mutant abilities alongside their shape-shifting ability and could revert to normal, infiltrate a place, and infect from the inside. This was how they lost the Texas small town.
"Infected has infiltrated the church. The wife of the pastor is one of the Brood." The female ATC member said over the comm. The squad specialist, a blonde woman, besides her looks being exceptions, her battlefield abilities were underserving. She was an individual of great interest, something called Project Lifesaver, which the boss had initiated.
'Survive this operation, and I'll ask more than her name.' He thought, looking at her well-developed posterior. There was no doubt the weaker serum had done wonders.
ATC operatives fanned out in an arrowhead formation, their G3A3 Assault Rifles safeties off. A significant maneuver to the front and, with a single kick, splintered the bolted doors. Screams emanated from within the church as the power weapons thundered in the narrow, confined spaces of the small church.
"No." Nightcrawler buckled from underneath the drone that carried him like a mechanical spider. He turned his head, and a low warble of a chuckle emanated underneath the mask.
A shrill sound that even made him shudder came from the church.
"Fall back." He ordered from across the street from the church, his arms folded.
"Murders. You want to get away with this." The mutant with the hero complex hissed in horror.
"Look what's about to come out and ask yourself a question, mutie. What is more human, you, a demon by your looks, or a shape-shifting space-faring race of apocalyptic insects that parasitized their hosts?
The only warning they received was a bulging brood that appeared at the church entrance. A tattered dress hung to her arm. No doubt, this was the pastor's wife who had infected everyone.
The large reared up on spider-like limbs, its segmented maw opening letting out a guttural hiss. An operative stepped forward, and the humm began as the operative blasted it with an illuminated bolt of energy from the LP4 Lightning Arc Weapon.
Standing over the smoldering husk of the church, the alien Bullseye nodded. The short, mousy blonde technician rushed over, her oversized field kit lagging behind her. She quickly received samples from the creature and stood back up.
"Let's move out. Scorch should be at the rallying point." He said, directing the team to depart, not wanting to be under threat of another ballistic missile that had been shelling the neighborhood from the hidden cache of stolen stark tech the cartels had in the mountains.
Shrieks of men and women dying or worse irked him, not accustomed to the enhanced sense. He had thought himself above human once, and a mutant and blind son of a bitch had crippled him. He still felt the phantom pains of the surgery. The only time that he had feared being under or near a knife was when the doctor had cautioned him there might be complications from the swap.
The nth metal, an alien ore with magical and other mysterious properties, had been bonded to his spine and skull. Cole didn't remove the adamantium; it was nigh impossible to remove without killing the person. He only knew of one individual surviving, and the fallout left Wolverine feral and berserk.
He and Chan Ho Yin, or his moniker Scorch, had managed to sequester themselves inside a shabby house that threatened to topple from the weak wind that blew, but they weren't hiding, just taking a breather.
He rolled his neck, clenched, and unclenched it, quickly squatting down and back, making his partner, his co-leader, and, if he wasn't missing the queue, a man of culture like him.
He flashed Scorch a smile as the pyromaniac floater embers around his head. He said it was a practice control method their illustrious leader had taught him.
'Another fire maniac. What was up with that?' He thought, curious about the kid collecting fire-based people.
The Scorch suit, dubbed HeatWave, is a unique protective costume with additional accelerants to ensure his pyrokinetic attacks were countless times more potent. The pyrokinetic had a flamethrower that could project immense flame streams reaching temperatures beyond 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat Wave was also equipped with state-of-the-art technology similar to the Bloodsport armor.
He awoke from a quick nap to the sound of a horrid cicada basso. Scorched had moved to the window and checked. He turned back, nodding.
'Here we go again.' He thought. Hadn't it not been for the X-men, they wouldn't have been pushed across the border.
It had been an instant media blackout from the governments. Proto-goblins had attacked Manhattan, and extraterrestrial bugs that consumed and parasitized their victims had landed on the border between Mexico and the United States.
