Volume 5: The Young Wolf Seeks Home Chapter 39: There is also the power of liberation in delayed death
Wolverine, a powerful mutant, has superpowers including immortal healing, beast perception, and steel claws and skeleton covered with adamantium, which can all be summed up in one sentence!
Wolverine's only superpower is "survival".
He is truly "immortal" and has almost no weaknesses except being able to drown.
Of course, being immortal doesn't mean being invincible, and in fact, in all of Wolverine's battles, there have been many times when his immortality became a terrible torture because he couldn't defeat his opponents.
It was obvious that Harley's kinetic bullets could not hurt Logan. The flying bullets only penetrated his skin and did not even leave any marks on his adamantium skull.
Just a few seconds later, Logan, covered in blood, stood up again.
All his injuries had healed, and nothing had changed except that his clothes were more torn.
He rubbed his forehead, sighed, and looked back at Mason and Harley. The captain was taking out a wheelchair, and Harley was helping the weak White Queen Emma out of the magic suitcase.
That caring expression seemed like he was trying to please this "mother-in-law".
"Won't you show us around this place, Logan?"
Mason pushed the wheelchair and looked back at Wolverine. Old Emma, sitting in the wheelchair, maintained her mental power, making her still look like the gorgeous White Queen.
She looked at the ruins of Xavier College in front of her with a nostalgic and complicated look, and said in a hoarse voice:
“Come on, Logan.
In addition to Mason, I would love to hear the truth about that night and the answers you can give me. I was still out there when Scott died, and I feel I deserve to know how my boyfriend spent his last night. "
"Is your relationship with him really that good?"
Logan lit a bloody cigarette and complained:
"You're just treating Scott as another toy, Emma, just like what you did to Namor. You've trained the king of the sea to be a loyal dog that licks your toes."
"Maybe it's because you, as a rough man, don't understand romance? But guess, when we were still friends, did I ever control you from licking my toes?"
The White Queen in the wheelchair covered her mouth and chuckled.
She did not deny Logan's accusation, which made Harley next to her blink her eyes. She suddenly realized that her "mother-in-law" didn't seem to be a good person when she was young.
Mason, who was pushing the wheelchair, was not surprised at all.
The White Queen is a famous female sea queen. She is powerful but has a bad temper. She enjoys toying with men, so it is not surprising if she does anything excessive.
Old Wolf stood up and removed the twisted and rusty iron gate in front of the weed-covered field. The group walked along the blasted ground towards the desolate ruins ahead.
The main body of the academy, which was supposed to be in the style of an ancient castle, has collapsed beyond recognition. Just like the abandoned Wayne ancestral home in the War World, it does not even need any decoration to be used as a filming location for a horror movie.
But it's certainly better than any other ruin in the wasteland.
No refugees have taken root here, so everything here remains the same as it was after the Doomsday War seventeen years ago.
Logan led the way, like a tour guide, taking the three people to the X-Men's underground base. As he smoked one cigarette after another, he told the story of that night in a hoarse voice:
"There were more than 40 people here at the time."
He said:
"Besides me, there were Scott and the others. We were divided into three groups and took turns on duty. Although everything was calm at that time, things were turbulent privately. Especially in those days, there were rumors that the super villains were secretly uniting, which made everyone stay alert.
The professor was away that night.
He was summoned by the Illuminati to discuss some private matters. Hank went with him. Qian Huan and I are on duty here..."
"Bang"
A collapsed entrance deep underground was kicked open by Logan, and a dilapidated hidden passage was revealed amid the flying rubble. He pushed open the half-closed door and walked in, continuing:
“At nearly midnight, we received a call for help from the Avengers. Steve Rogers said they were besieged by a large number of villains and needed support.
Then came the Baxter Building, then Attilan.
Signals for help were sent out from almost all places where superheroes gathered, and the situation seemed to have suddenly become tense.
This immediately set off alarm bells for me.
But Xavier College was also invaded, and an energy bomb penetrated the ground and shot into the base, causing a huge explosion. Qian Huan...she... died in front of me."
"Bang"
The door at the end of the dim passage was violently kicked open, and the place where the tragedy happened that night was arrived in front of him.
A faint light shone from overhead, allowing Mason to see a twisted female skeleton lying in the bricks and stones amid the miserable ruins. She had died from a twisted steel bar piercing her head.
Her identity can be vaguely seen from the uniform she is wearing.
Li Qianhuan, a reserve member of the X-Men, is Wolverine's apprentice.
This is just the first body.
"Her death angered me..."
Logan half-knelt on the ground, and the old wolf's thoughts seemed to have completely returned to that night seventeen years ago.
He suppressed the discomfort and anger churning in his heart, reached out to pick up Li Qianhuan's skeletal body, and put it in the body bag he carried with him.
No one interrupted the process.
Mason and Harley were waiting nearby, and the White Queen sighed in her wheelchair. As a master of the mind, she probably had guessed where the story would lead next.
The facts were exactly as she expected.
"I frantically searched for the attackers, and then, in the broken land, I saw Doctor Octopus rushing into the base, with that bastard Ulysses Klaue at his side, and Scorpion and Rhino rampaging around.
I realized something was wrong, so I fought them and called Scott...
He never responded.”
Logan stood up and staggered deeper into the room.
As he walked, he said:
“More and more super villains rushed into the base, including the Absorbing Man, the Red Hulk, the Green Goblin, the Purple Man… one after another, they rushed over to fight me.
I can't stop them, there are too many of them.
I need support.
I called out to Scott, I called out to Warren, I begged them to come, there were those kids in the academy, and they didn't know how to fight.
We have to protect them, it's our responsibility as X-Men.
But I never got a response.
I can only kill!
Kill like crazy! Kill with all my might! My beast sense turned me into a crazy predator. I don’t know how many times I swung my claws and killed people…
The blood.
Those smells excite me and I feel like I can win.
I know I can win!
I must win!
However, Bullseye was surprisingly powerful that night..."
He staggered into the base's main control room.
Mason pushed the wheelchair and followed Harley. The moment they entered there, Harley covered her mouth to prevent herself from screaming. The White Queen in the wheelchair closed her eyes, unable to bear to look at the tragic scene in front of her.
Mason stared straight ahead with a blank expression.
The not-so-large control room was filled with corpses, lying all over the place. Some had their heads pierced by steel claws, and some had their necks torn by sharp blades.
The most miserable one was almost torn into pieces.
Seventeen years have passed without changing the furnishings in this "tomb", leaving the dead and victims of that year lying here in the same state they were in when they died.
But just looking at their twisted movements when they were dying was enough to guess their despair and confusion at that time.
They didn't seem to expect they would be attacked at all.
“I don’t know how many times I was killed, but I came back to life quickly each time. Their counterattacks became more and more fierce. I heard them threatening that I was doomed.
But I’m not afraid at all.”
Logan fell to his knees with a thud.
In front of him was a corpse wearing a black battle suit and special red goggles. It looked like a mummy, but that could be seen just from the marks on the suit.
He died miserably in extreme pain, as if he had been cut into pieces.
The old wolf could no longer hold back the remorse and pain that was surging in his heart. He reached out with trembling hands to touch the corpse in front of him that he had tortured to death with his own hands. He said sadly:
“I killed them all, not one was spared.
It’s like the ending of all Wolverine’s stories, the hero wins after a hard fight, and even the toughest Bullseye was stabbed in the heart by me.
I'm out of breath.
I thought I had won. I thought I could protect those kids and my companions, just as I had pledged when the professor invited me to join this group.
It was they who took me in and turned a beastly, world-weary man into a hero.
It was never that the X-Men needed Wolverine.
It's me who needs them.
My family, my compatriots, I thought I had finally protected them, but... but when I woke up, this is what I saw.
It's me!
I killed my brothers and sisters with my own hands..."
The atmosphere in the entire base became extremely stagnant at this moment.
Only the low howl of the old wolf could be heard, which was the final release of despair that had been suppressed for seventeen years. Harley grabbed Mason's arm in extreme anxiety.
She couldn't imagine how desperate Logan must have been when he learned the truth that night seventeen years ago, and the way this damn tragedy happened reminded Harley of a terrible person, someone she hated extremely.
She whispered to Mason:
"It was a joke... a deadly joke, sweetheart, and it was planned by Mr. J! It was definitely him! He may not have come, but his plan was executed.
No one else would be so malicious and crazy.
Another him was in charge of all this, although I have no evidence.
But I'm sure!
This is definitely his work.
He loves to see heroes crumble under his toy , he enjoys the irony and the suffering, and looking at Logan now, this is exactly what he has always wanted to do to Batboy."
Mason was silent.
Rao had already guessed the truth when he had talked to Logan using the golden apple at Houtley Farm.
But at this moment, seeing this creepy hellish scene before his own eyes and looking at the old wolf who was so desperate that his heart was broken, he still felt shocked.
This is what the enemies he will face in the future want to do to him and his companions...
"Your mind being affected by beast sense has always been a big problem, Logan."
Old Emma in the wheelchair sighed and said:
“They picked a good time to complete this scene. In the absence of the professor, perhaps only a superficial spiritual guidance would be needed to allow you to play such a killing.
But it must be more than just the guidance of second-rate villains that led to this situation.
That night you were not only bewitched, but also strengthened.
Under normal circumstances, it is impossible for you to defeat the entire X-Men with only forty of them. Our compatriots did not choose to escape in such a desperate situation, but fought you to the death here.
This is not normal!
Scott would not make such a stupid choice. After realizing that you have been mind-controlled, he would definitely withdraw his men and lock you up here.
So, they... they must have been bewitched as well.
The responsibility is not entirely yours.”
"What's the point of saying this now?"
Logan lowered his head and knelt beside Cyclops Scott's body in a repentant posture.
There was no longer a single tear in his eyes. Perhaps all the tears of regret he had shed in the desperate night seventeen years ago had dried up.
After telling all the secrets, he seemed to have completed the last ritual of his life, and his soul seemed to have left his body and reunited with his brothers and sisters here.
All that was left here was a dying body.
He said in a hoarse voice:
"I did something wrong. I destroyed the X-Men. I made a huge mistake. If I hadn't gone crazy that night, Scott would have been able to lead his people to support Steve Rogers.
They can survive and then go to support more places.
Perhaps the nuclear war that destroyed the world could have been stopped at the last minute, and the world would not have fallen into its current miserable state.
I screwed up everything.
The world is dying because of me, Emma, and Mason, I'm a sinner, and I've been waiting for this day to come, hiding like a coward in the California desert.
Now I can finally face it all and die peacefully after repenting.
bring it on.
Kill me.
Give me a break from the pain of living like this, even though I should have died seventeen years ago. I don't want to live anymore. It's too painful. I have killed Wolverine in my heart, and today Logan Hautley should be buried here."
Emma and Harley stopped talking. They looked at Mason, obviously waiting for his decision.
The captain didn't say much.
He took off Johnny's gun from his waist and loaded it. He strode behind Logan who was kneeling there, raised the gun and aimed it at the back of his head. Logan closed his eyes and said in a hoarse voice:
"Bullets can't kill me."
"But it can make you, who is numb, feel pain... Also, we can test whether Wolverine is dead or not."
Mason whispered, then pulled the trigger.
The bullet, accelerated to extreme kinetic energy, hit the back of Laolang's head with a roar, blood splattered everywhere and made his body shake. Then a twisted bullet was squeezed out by the muscles and fell to the ground.
This won't kill him.
But Mason did not stop, and kept pulling the trigger with extremely steady movements, emptying a magazine in a few seconds and causing blood to gush from the back of Logan's head.
The impact was so strong that he fell on his face, right at the level of Cyclops' eyes.
"Click"
In the dim light from the broken top beside him, Mason reloaded his magazine, and in the smoke from the muzzle, he said:
“Are you awake?
If you are not awake enough I can continue until you understand the situation.
Logan Hautley!
I will not comment on what happened seventeen years ago, but it is really disappointing that when you knew that you were framed and committed a serious mistake, you did not look for the real murderer but chose to hide your identity like a loser.
Maybe it's true as you said, Wolverine was killed by your own hands that night, becoming the 41st X-Man to die at your hands.
But I want to ask you..."
He leaned over, grabbed the old wolf by the collar, lifted him up from the ground, and scolded him:
"Wolverine is long dead, but Logan is still here! What? Is old Logan Hautley a wimp who can't fight? Just letting the bastards who played you get away with it?
The blood of these people was shed in vain, right?
You are just a node in a dark plan. They must make you crazy so that you can stop the X-Men from rescuing you, and let the heroes of the whole world suffer in despair under the siege of villains.
But that's not their purpose!
Only in a world swallowed by despair can outsiders openly play the role of savior, and people like you are just stepping stones for them to shine in the light.
That’s the organization I’m in.
I am very familiar with this routine.
Your enemy is out there!
You couldn't track them down before, and I didn't blame you. They blocked off this world so you couldn't seek revenge, but now, they have reappeared.
You want to die, you can!"
Mason loosened his fingers and let Logan slide to the ground. He shouted to the old wolf at his feet:
"Look at these corpses. You have to get your revenge before you die! I have a plan, Logan, and I need someone who is not afraid of death to help me carry it out to the last step...
You want to be free, right?
But how can one drink with old friends in hell without taking a cup of the blood of his enemies before meeting them?
