"DEATH OF A PRESIDENT!"
“And so we bid farewell to a man of the people,” the man dressed in a military uniform stated as he stood before an open grave. “A man who was loved by his people for being a fair and just leader, a man who brought Niganda into the modern world.”
He shot a quick look at the row of soldiers standing before the emaciated throng of villagers that had been forced to attend the state funeral. “Farewell, President M’Bu—”
He stopped mid word as a bullet sliced through the back of his skull and out the front. For a second his body stood still, before slumping forward into the open grave.
“You were a little off the mark, boss,” Spear stated, as he looked through the scope on his launcher from the prone position in the veldt 616m, away from where panic was gripping the soldiers. “Not that it wasn’t a good hit or anything.”
“I have little time for your jibes, Mr Daniels, but it seems like you are calling my marksmen skills into question,” Crossfire replied in an almost jovial tone, one that caused Spear to shudder since such a tone coming out of his employer’s mouth was rare indeed. “Would you like to demonstrate how to do it?”
“Uh, sure.” With little enthusiasm, Spear closed his eyes, pointed his spear launcher up into the air at a 45-degree angle, and fired. The bronze projectile arched over the savannah and straight through the bodies of two soldiers, their combined weight sending them toppling into the same grave as their commander.
“Hmm…let me see your weapon for a minute,” Crossfire said as he took Spear’s launcher. He loaded a spear and fired it as the remaining soldiers came charging through the long grass towards them. Silently, the spear flew up toward the men before detonating into a shower of shrapnel, the barbed tips digging into the men’s skulls and their bodies twitching as Crossfire returned the weapon and removed a tablet strapped to his thigh.
“What are you doing, boss?” Spear asked, as he watched the enemy combatants assemble robotically into a circle, before raising their weapons and firing on their own allies. Very soon the bush was littered with corpses, the vultures already descending as Crossfire and Spear stood up to survey the field of the dead.
“Make no mistake: when it comes down to it, as good as you are, your shooting is second to mine, Mr Daniels.”
Crossfire removed a camouflage tarp off a parked Landrover. “Now, let’s find out how the President enjoyed his funeral, shall we?”
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The Presidential Palace was extravagant, a sign of vast wealth kept only for the upper echelons of the nation’s population. Crossfire remembered his first visit to the country, back when he was working for the CIA, and how two-thirds of President M’Buku’s Inner Circle had died from causes unknown in seventy-two hours, which just so happened to coincide with his visit. Like the palace, the man who lived there was extravagant, almost to a grotesque level; something that showed on his obese frame. While many considered people such as the Blob and the Kingpin laughable to their size, Crossfire knew enough to recognise them as deadly combatants when properly motivated. M’Buku, on the other hand, had probably never done strenuous exercise ever since he took control of the country almost eight years ago.
“I assume my funeral was a grand affair!” M’Buku, sitting in-front of his throne, announced between bites food from a golden tray.
“Hardly,” Spear mumbled. “They were just going to throw your fat corpse into a hole.”
“It doesn’t matter. All that does is that we found and eliminated the rebel leader within your armed forces,” Crossfire replied, as Headhunter and Shockwave walked into the room from the left side of the throne room. “I assume being medically dead from the toxin Chemistro supplied you has had no undesirable side effects?”
“I didn’t care for that one,” M’Buku said, his eyes lustfully staring at the Headhunter, her usual red business suit accompanied with a wide brimmed hat to keep the sun off her pale skin. “The albino however…I will double your fee if you let me keep her, Mr Cross.”
“Try it and there really will be a presidential assassin,” Headhunter snarled, as she removed a knife from her belt. “And another thing, I didn’t appreciate the groping you attempted while I was administering the tetrodotoxin.”
“In that case, I’ll triple the price!” M’Buku stated as his fat tongue licked his lips.
“I’m afraid I’ll only be taken the initial amount agreed,” Crossfire said, his cybernetic eye rotating in its socket, as it analysed every little detail of the room and the throne. “You could offer me the entire Nigandan treasury and I’d still be reluctant to part with my lieutenant. I assume the accountant handling the transaction is still alive?”
“His son is. I didn’t trust his father. I’m sure he was taking money from my private accounts.” M’Baku snorted as he went back to eating the extravagant meal laid out before him. “I’m sure the boy will do the same, that’s why his execution is being scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
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After a long and complicated farewell to their employer, one that involved three more attempts to buy the Headhunter, the four mercenaries drove the fifty miles to where the ‘Skua’ was parked. As they arrived things didn’t look good, with Chemistro and Makro both dressed in overalls working on the gunship’s fuel lines.
“Oh, what is that smell?” Headhunter queried, as the stink of burnt jet fuel crossed with rotting fish hit the four returning villains with an almost physical force.
“While we were visiting the Nigandan Treasury someone sabotaged the fuel lines and drained the tanks. We think that some kind of fuel-eating bacteria is responsible,” Chemistro responded as he placed his alchemy gun on the floor. “We managed to purge whatever was responsible, but not before it wiped out the on-board supply. The cloaking field was operational when we left, so whoever did this knew what to find the ship.”
“I doubt this is work of local agents. Even M’Buku’s secret police don’t have access to this kind of technology,” Crossfire said as he walked over to a small box covered with a tarpaulin. “I see you were able to liberate the real reason for our mission to Niganda.” He pulled the tarp off to reveal several shards of purple crystal. “Gillette, what is the current black market value of vibranium?”
“It’s currently listed as $2.6 million dollars per metric ton,” Headhunter answered as she checked the online market. “I don’t see how this helps us in our current situation, unless you are planning to barter those stones for rocket fuel.”
“Unnecessary; there is a reserve cache of money in one of the Skua’s emergency compartments.” Crossfire covered the box with the tarp before removing a tablet and typing a message into it.
“Yeah, problem is, that money is gone,” Chemistro mumbled. “We checked when we diagnosed the fault. The cache itself hasn’t been tampered with. I suspect that the thief had some way to bypass the computerised security settings.”
Shockwave walked up to the gunship and shone a tactical light connected to his armour into the fuel line.
“What about getting Lodestone out here to tow us back to civilization?” Spear asked, as he leaned against the gunship and removed his quiver.
“Not an option. It would take too long to get here and I don’t trust M’Baku to come sniffing around,” Shockwave replied, as he walked the length of the gunship to the cockpit, his armour sparking as he downloaded the security camera feed connected to the aircraft’s fore mounted autocannon. “He wouldn’t be happy to find out that we had been stealing from him.”
He looked around the open vista before his eyes settled on a heat haze at the edge of the clearing. “But we have more urgent problems, such as the cloaking field by those trees.”
“I’m on it,” Spear hissed as he fired on the area Shockwave pointed out, the barbed projectile streaking towards the concealed figures, only for a metal hand to reach out, grab the spear and crush it in his hands. With a hiss, the cloaking field dissipated to reveal six figures armed to the teeth waiting for them.
“Greetings, Herr Cross,” the man with the metal hand stated in a jovial tone. “My name is Jurgen Hauptmann, and these are my New Exiles. We have your money and a tanker full of fuel your transport requires. They are yours if you hand over the vibranium with no hassle.”
“I have to refuse! The vibranium is being auctioned off to the highest bidder,” Crossfire said. “If you want the crystals you are going to have to pay for them like everyone else!”
He opened fire on Hauptmann, only for one of his men dressed in a massive exoskeleton to block the bullets.
“New Exiles!” Hauptmann roared as his men rushed the gunship. “Let out injustice, like lightning, strike down our enemies!”
“Who are these guys?” Spear asked as a woman with long braided hair dressed in a white dress and veil ran at Shockwave, before phasing through his body and pushing Sneed out of his armour.
The British mercenary slammed into the cockpit of the Skua. Removing his trident from his quiver, he ran to his comrade’s aide, only for a figure with wooden skin to leap out of the grass, long bark-like fingers digging into the armour he wore.
“Well, I know King Size,” Chemistro stated as a massive dark-skinned man dressed in orange and black slammed a massive fist down, the shockwaves knocking almost all the combatants off their feet.
Struggling to her feet, Headhunter rubbed her head before being slammed back into the ground by the armoured mercenary wearing beetle-themed armour, complete with massive jaws, chain blades powering up as he bowed his head. “And that guy looks like the Beetle.”
“It’s Stag Beetle! I’m not some traitor like that tool Jenkins,” the armoured figure snorted as Headhunter handsprung away from the closing jaws, dirt and earth flying up from the impact. “The Techmaster jacked our powers up to eleven just to kill you!” An elderly man in a battle harness begun to rip components out of Makro’s robotic arms, even as she tried to incinerate him with the tips of her tentacles.
“Quiet, fool!” Techmaster snorted, as King Size threw a punch at Chemistro, the blow knocking him across the clearing. “My work is confidential and not to be boasted about in some pathetic brawl.”
As Shockwave’s foe slipped through the cockpit of the Skua, the gunship’s auto cannon powering up and blasting the area where Spear and his wooden adversary were fighting, wooden pillars of bark growing their way into his arms and chest. “What I did for you is between you and me, as is the work I did for Veil or Timberus, for example.”
Makro managed to detach her tentacle tips and vault over her foe.
“As you can see, my ‘Exiles’ are far more capable than your men!” Hauptmann cackled as he crushed Crossfire’s pistol, before ripping apart the rifle slung across his back. “Even with your deeds, your men are weak. And in this place the strong destroy the weak!” He slugged Crossfire in the face, before pushing him to the floor. “There is nothing we can’t achieve!”
“My thoughts exactly.” Crossfire rolled something in his mouth over with his tongue. “They are strong but I’d wager that they aren’t adaptable.”
He spat a false tooth up at Hauptmann, the adhoc projectile embedding into the German Exile’s eye. Reaching for the tooth, Hauptmann only briefly saw Crossfire remove a detonator from his belt, his thumb depressing the button before the denture bomb exploded, the blast shattering his metal gauntlet and charring the flesh beneath, not to mention vaporizing the left hand side of his face.
“My men, on the other hand,” Crossfire hissed, as removed a single shot pistol from his ankle holster, the weapon pressing against his wounded foes groin, “they know how to survive, no matter what!”
He pulled the trigger, a hiss releasing as a micro-drill bit bored into the man’s privates, through the skull and out the other side, the internal damage causing Hauptmann to collapse onto his back with a thud.
“Boss?” Veil yelled, her hand coming off the trigger of the cannon, giving Shockwave enough time to slip under the gunship and rip the ammo belt out of the weapon. In that brief second Veil had lost sight of her opponent. Phasing out of the cockpit she looked around the battlefield as Sneed crept up behind her and wrapped the ammo belt around her throat.
“Nope!” Shockwave replied, as he dragged her over to his armour and slipped the end of the belt into the gauntlet of his suit. Phasing her way out of the adhoc shackles, Veil watched as Shockwave activated the electroshock function, the electricity detonating the ammunition and dissipated her body. “That’s what you get for touching my gunship.” Sneed snorted as King Size went to stomp on Chemistro, only for his target to open fire with his alchemy gun, the blast of energy melting the giant’s leg and sending him toppling to the ground.
“Looks like your men are suffering! Perhaps you’d like to call them off before they get hurt?” Crossfire told Hauptmann, just as Headhunter was backhanded by Stag Beetle, the armoured thug grabbing her by the neck and holding her between his jaws.
“Perhaps, but at least one of your people is in trouble,” Hauptmann wheezed, just as Stag Beetle froze, his enemy’s eyes glowing red as she stared through the visor into his eyes.
“Put me down, immobilize the hydraulics, batten down the hatch and turn off the life support system,” Headhunter purred, just as something on the edge of the clearing exploded, pieces of wooden shrapnel flying everywhere. As she was placed down the Techmaster threw his hands up in surrender, his bowed head unable to hide the look of hatred spread across his face.
“What do we do with that one?” Spear asked, as he pulled multiple spears out of what had been Timberus’s chest. “Not to mention the rest of these wannabes?”
“That depends on what the Techmaster is willing to tell us about the fuel Herr Hauptmann offered us a few minutes ago?” Crossfire answered, as he looked around the numerous exiles groaning in pain on the floor.
“It’s at our camp a mile and a half to the north, same with the money veil took.” Techmaster grumbled. “I told Hauptmann this was a bad idea, but he had some one-up thing going with Zemo and thought he could make a better Thunderbolts or something. I told him I’d rather be…” He stopped as Crossfire fired a shot at him, a neural disc embedding into his arm.
“I require nothing more from you?” Crossfire asked, as he stalked over to the crate of vibranium. “I assume you laced the crystals with the nano-transmitters like I ordered?”
“We did,” Makro purred as she crawled over to the box of vibranium, followed by the rest of the villains, evil looks spread across their faces as they looked down at the purple crystals. “Whoever buys this lot is going to lose more than their money. They are going to lose all their secrets, too.”
END
He shot a quick look at the row of soldiers standing before the emaciated throng of villagers that had been forced to attend the state funeral. “Farewell, President M’Bu—”
He stopped mid word as a bullet sliced through the back of his skull and out the front. For a second his body stood still, before slumping forward into the open grave.
“You were a little off the mark, boss,” Spear stated, as he looked through the scope on his launcher from the prone position in the veldt 616m, away from where panic was gripping the soldiers. “Not that it wasn’t a good hit or anything.”
“I have little time for your jibes, Mr Daniels, but it seems like you are calling my marksmen skills into question,” Crossfire replied in an almost jovial tone, one that caused Spear to shudder since such a tone coming out of his employer’s mouth was rare indeed. “Would you like to demonstrate how to do it?”
“Uh, sure.” With little enthusiasm, Spear closed his eyes, pointed his spear launcher up into the air at a 45-degree angle, and fired. The bronze projectile arched over the savannah and straight through the bodies of two soldiers, their combined weight sending them toppling into the same grave as their commander.
“Hmm…let me see your weapon for a minute,” Crossfire said as he took Spear’s launcher. He loaded a spear and fired it as the remaining soldiers came charging through the long grass towards them. Silently, the spear flew up toward the men before detonating into a shower of shrapnel, the barbed tips digging into the men’s skulls and their bodies twitching as Crossfire returned the weapon and removed a tablet strapped to his thigh.
“What are you doing, boss?” Spear asked, as he watched the enemy combatants assemble robotically into a circle, before raising their weapons and firing on their own allies. Very soon the bush was littered with corpses, the vultures already descending as Crossfire and Spear stood up to survey the field of the dead.
“Make no mistake: when it comes down to it, as good as you are, your shooting is second to mine, Mr Daniels.”
Crossfire removed a camouflage tarp off a parked Landrover. “Now, let’s find out how the President enjoyed his funeral, shall we?”
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The Presidential Palace was extravagant, a sign of vast wealth kept only for the upper echelons of the nation’s population. Crossfire remembered his first visit to the country, back when he was working for the CIA, and how two-thirds of President M’Buku’s Inner Circle had died from causes unknown in seventy-two hours, which just so happened to coincide with his visit. Like the palace, the man who lived there was extravagant, almost to a grotesque level; something that showed on his obese frame. While many considered people such as the Blob and the Kingpin laughable to their size, Crossfire knew enough to recognise them as deadly combatants when properly motivated. M’Buku, on the other hand, had probably never done strenuous exercise ever since he took control of the country almost eight years ago.
“I assume my funeral was a grand affair!” M’Buku, sitting in-front of his throne, announced between bites food from a golden tray.
“Hardly,” Spear mumbled. “They were just going to throw your fat corpse into a hole.”
“It doesn’t matter. All that does is that we found and eliminated the rebel leader within your armed forces,” Crossfire replied, as Headhunter and Shockwave walked into the room from the left side of the throne room. “I assume being medically dead from the toxin Chemistro supplied you has had no undesirable side effects?”
“I didn’t care for that one,” M’Buku said, his eyes lustfully staring at the Headhunter, her usual red business suit accompanied with a wide brimmed hat to keep the sun off her pale skin. “The albino however…I will double your fee if you let me keep her, Mr Cross.”
“Try it and there really will be a presidential assassin,” Headhunter snarled, as she removed a knife from her belt. “And another thing, I didn’t appreciate the groping you attempted while I was administering the tetrodotoxin.”
“In that case, I’ll triple the price!” M’Buku stated as his fat tongue licked his lips.
“I’m afraid I’ll only be taken the initial amount agreed,” Crossfire said, his cybernetic eye rotating in its socket, as it analysed every little detail of the room and the throne. “You could offer me the entire Nigandan treasury and I’d still be reluctant to part with my lieutenant. I assume the accountant handling the transaction is still alive?”
“His son is. I didn’t trust his father. I’m sure he was taking money from my private accounts.” M’Baku snorted as he went back to eating the extravagant meal laid out before him. “I’m sure the boy will do the same, that’s why his execution is being scheduled for tomorrow morning.”
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After a long and complicated farewell to their employer, one that involved three more attempts to buy the Headhunter, the four mercenaries drove the fifty miles to where the ‘Skua’ was parked. As they arrived things didn’t look good, with Chemistro and Makro both dressed in overalls working on the gunship’s fuel lines.
“Oh, what is that smell?” Headhunter queried, as the stink of burnt jet fuel crossed with rotting fish hit the four returning villains with an almost physical force.
“While we were visiting the Nigandan Treasury someone sabotaged the fuel lines and drained the tanks. We think that some kind of fuel-eating bacteria is responsible,” Chemistro responded as he placed his alchemy gun on the floor. “We managed to purge whatever was responsible, but not before it wiped out the on-board supply. The cloaking field was operational when we left, so whoever did this knew what to find the ship.”
“I doubt this is work of local agents. Even M’Buku’s secret police don’t have access to this kind of technology,” Crossfire said as he walked over to a small box covered with a tarpaulin. “I see you were able to liberate the real reason for our mission to Niganda.” He pulled the tarp off to reveal several shards of purple crystal. “Gillette, what is the current black market value of vibranium?”
“It’s currently listed as $2.6 million dollars per metric ton,” Headhunter answered as she checked the online market. “I don’t see how this helps us in our current situation, unless you are planning to barter those stones for rocket fuel.”
“Unnecessary; there is a reserve cache of money in one of the Skua’s emergency compartments.” Crossfire covered the box with the tarp before removing a tablet and typing a message into it.
“Yeah, problem is, that money is gone,” Chemistro mumbled. “We checked when we diagnosed the fault. The cache itself hasn’t been tampered with. I suspect that the thief had some way to bypass the computerised security settings.”
Shockwave walked up to the gunship and shone a tactical light connected to his armour into the fuel line.
“What about getting Lodestone out here to tow us back to civilization?” Spear asked, as he leaned against the gunship and removed his quiver.
“Not an option. It would take too long to get here and I don’t trust M’Baku to come sniffing around,” Shockwave replied, as he walked the length of the gunship to the cockpit, his armour sparking as he downloaded the security camera feed connected to the aircraft’s fore mounted autocannon. “He wouldn’t be happy to find out that we had been stealing from him.”
He looked around the open vista before his eyes settled on a heat haze at the edge of the clearing. “But we have more urgent problems, such as the cloaking field by those trees.”
“I’m on it,” Spear hissed as he fired on the area Shockwave pointed out, the barbed projectile streaking towards the concealed figures, only for a metal hand to reach out, grab the spear and crush it in his hands. With a hiss, the cloaking field dissipated to reveal six figures armed to the teeth waiting for them.
“Greetings, Herr Cross,” the man with the metal hand stated in a jovial tone. “My name is Jurgen Hauptmann, and these are my New Exiles. We have your money and a tanker full of fuel your transport requires. They are yours if you hand over the vibranium with no hassle.”
“I have to refuse! The vibranium is being auctioned off to the highest bidder,” Crossfire said. “If you want the crystals you are going to have to pay for them like everyone else!”
He opened fire on Hauptmann, only for one of his men dressed in a massive exoskeleton to block the bullets.
“New Exiles!” Hauptmann roared as his men rushed the gunship. “Let out injustice, like lightning, strike down our enemies!”
“Who are these guys?” Spear asked as a woman with long braided hair dressed in a white dress and veil ran at Shockwave, before phasing through his body and pushing Sneed out of his armour.
The British mercenary slammed into the cockpit of the Skua. Removing his trident from his quiver, he ran to his comrade’s aide, only for a figure with wooden skin to leap out of the grass, long bark-like fingers digging into the armour he wore.
“Well, I know King Size,” Chemistro stated as a massive dark-skinned man dressed in orange and black slammed a massive fist down, the shockwaves knocking almost all the combatants off their feet.
Struggling to her feet, Headhunter rubbed her head before being slammed back into the ground by the armoured mercenary wearing beetle-themed armour, complete with massive jaws, chain blades powering up as he bowed his head. “And that guy looks like the Beetle.”
“It’s Stag Beetle! I’m not some traitor like that tool Jenkins,” the armoured figure snorted as Headhunter handsprung away from the closing jaws, dirt and earth flying up from the impact. “The Techmaster jacked our powers up to eleven just to kill you!” An elderly man in a battle harness begun to rip components out of Makro’s robotic arms, even as she tried to incinerate him with the tips of her tentacles.
“Quiet, fool!” Techmaster snorted, as King Size threw a punch at Chemistro, the blow knocking him across the clearing. “My work is confidential and not to be boasted about in some pathetic brawl.”
As Shockwave’s foe slipped through the cockpit of the Skua, the gunship’s auto cannon powering up and blasting the area where Spear and his wooden adversary were fighting, wooden pillars of bark growing their way into his arms and chest. “What I did for you is between you and me, as is the work I did for Veil or Timberus, for example.”
Makro managed to detach her tentacle tips and vault over her foe.
“As you can see, my ‘Exiles’ are far more capable than your men!” Hauptmann cackled as he crushed Crossfire’s pistol, before ripping apart the rifle slung across his back. “Even with your deeds, your men are weak. And in this place the strong destroy the weak!” He slugged Crossfire in the face, before pushing him to the floor. “There is nothing we can’t achieve!”
“My thoughts exactly.” Crossfire rolled something in his mouth over with his tongue. “They are strong but I’d wager that they aren’t adaptable.”
He spat a false tooth up at Hauptmann, the adhoc projectile embedding into the German Exile’s eye. Reaching for the tooth, Hauptmann only briefly saw Crossfire remove a detonator from his belt, his thumb depressing the button before the denture bomb exploded, the blast shattering his metal gauntlet and charring the flesh beneath, not to mention vaporizing the left hand side of his face.
“My men, on the other hand,” Crossfire hissed, as removed a single shot pistol from his ankle holster, the weapon pressing against his wounded foes groin, “they know how to survive, no matter what!”
He pulled the trigger, a hiss releasing as a micro-drill bit bored into the man’s privates, through the skull and out the other side, the internal damage causing Hauptmann to collapse onto his back with a thud.
“Boss?” Veil yelled, her hand coming off the trigger of the cannon, giving Shockwave enough time to slip under the gunship and rip the ammo belt out of the weapon. In that brief second Veil had lost sight of her opponent. Phasing out of the cockpit she looked around the battlefield as Sneed crept up behind her and wrapped the ammo belt around her throat.
“Nope!” Shockwave replied, as he dragged her over to his armour and slipped the end of the belt into the gauntlet of his suit. Phasing her way out of the adhoc shackles, Veil watched as Shockwave activated the electroshock function, the electricity detonating the ammunition and dissipated her body. “That’s what you get for touching my gunship.” Sneed snorted as King Size went to stomp on Chemistro, only for his target to open fire with his alchemy gun, the blast of energy melting the giant’s leg and sending him toppling to the ground.
“Looks like your men are suffering! Perhaps you’d like to call them off before they get hurt?” Crossfire told Hauptmann, just as Headhunter was backhanded by Stag Beetle, the armoured thug grabbing her by the neck and holding her between his jaws.
“Perhaps, but at least one of your people is in trouble,” Hauptmann wheezed, just as Stag Beetle froze, his enemy’s eyes glowing red as she stared through the visor into his eyes.
“Put me down, immobilize the hydraulics, batten down the hatch and turn off the life support system,” Headhunter purred, just as something on the edge of the clearing exploded, pieces of wooden shrapnel flying everywhere. As she was placed down the Techmaster threw his hands up in surrender, his bowed head unable to hide the look of hatred spread across his face.
“What do we do with that one?” Spear asked, as he pulled multiple spears out of what had been Timberus’s chest. “Not to mention the rest of these wannabes?”
“That depends on what the Techmaster is willing to tell us about the fuel Herr Hauptmann offered us a few minutes ago?” Crossfire answered, as he looked around the numerous exiles groaning in pain on the floor.
“It’s at our camp a mile and a half to the north, same with the money veil took.” Techmaster grumbled. “I told Hauptmann this was a bad idea, but he had some one-up thing going with Zemo and thought he could make a better Thunderbolts or something. I told him I’d rather be…” He stopped as Crossfire fired a shot at him, a neural disc embedding into his arm.
“I require nothing more from you?” Crossfire asked, as he stalked over to the crate of vibranium. “I assume you laced the crystals with the nano-transmitters like I ordered?”
“We did,” Makro purred as she crawled over to the box of vibranium, followed by the rest of the villains, evil looks spread across their faces as they looked down at the purple crystals. “Whoever buys this lot is going to lose more than their money. They are going to lose all their secrets, too.”
END