By the time Alex told Laura the rough events that happened after she was caught, they had reached the slums. It would be the safest hiding spot since there weren't any monitoring drones there and they would be able to plan out their next course of action in peace.
[Even a city like this has such backward slums…] Laura was a little unnerved at the state of the people that were living here. Although she had gone through a hell that was filled with pain for years now, she was still a kind girl at heart. What she went through wasn't able to break her.
'I'm sure that her regenerative prowess played a big role in helping her maintain her sanity.' Alex knew that no person could come out and stay normal after going through such a harrowing experience. He knew exactly what she'd gone through at that facility after getting that data.
[These people are the first line of defense if the monsters break through the outer perimeter. They're basically meat shields.] He told Laura.
[Yeah.] She was disgusted but she knew that she couldn't do anything about this. At least not right now.
[What do you plan now, Laura?] Alex asked a question that sent Laura deep in thought. For one thing, she wanted revenge. She wanted to make everyone in the Bastion pay for what they'd done to her. On the other, she knew that most of the people were innocent and the people to blame were the people who ran the facility and this city. She had been bubbling with utter and complete fury for a long time and she wouldn't be able to rest without getting at least some sort of closure.
[That's a good ques—] Laura wasn't able to complete that thought. Suddenly, she was ambushed by 4 identical bulky suits. They seemed like nerfed versions of the Hulkbuster armor. They had appeared out of nowhere and surrounded her completely.
"X-23. Surrender." There was a mechanical voice from one of the suits.
Laura reacted instantly and extended her claws from her hands and feet, attacking one of the suits with the intention to cut through it.
Sadly though, her claws ended up ineffective against that armor. Only making a scratching sound as a shallow scratch formed on the suit.
On the other hand, taking advantage of her moment of surprise at her attack's failure, the other three suits moved. Two of them grabbed her arms. They grabbed her wrists and slipped a mechanical gauntlet over her hands as Laura tried to resist unsuccessfully. The armors were more than strong enough to overpower her with brute force.
Especially since those gauntlets forcefully pushed her claws back into her knuckles and prevented her from extending them out.
The third suit grabbed her from behind and seemingly started covering her. It was going to form a prison to trap her before they would bring her back to the facility.
'Fuck! Talk about overkill… These are fucking Vibranium suits. How did Tony even get this much of that shit? Did he raid Wakanda or something…' Alex was completely startled at the amount of firepower that had been sent to subdue Laura.
Whoever was currently managing the Bastion had pulled every single stop into capturing Laura. Alex had assumed that it was Iron Man, but it was possible that it may be someone else. As evident by the Vibranium suits. Things might not be as simple as he thought. Tony might just have been one of the people involved in the founding of the Bastion.
There was even a drone in the air that had been suppressing Alex's ‹Enhanced 6th Sense›. It was deployed since Laura had shown her trained 6th sense to dodge a bullet during her escape.
Whatever slightest power had been shown by Laura during her escape had been countered by this legion of suits that were sent to subdue her.
This just goes to show how much work Iron Man had put into this place. There were countermeasures for so many things. Alex didn't doubt that even powers like teleportation would have a hard time working in this city.
'This city is literally like the boss map of this world. I have to get out of this damn place.' Alex decided with newfound conviction.
[Alex! Tell me you have some way to get me out of here. Please…] Laura seemed desperate. She had finally found some hope and if she was thrown back into that facility, she might just break.
[There is one way.] Alex had been preparing something while Laura was being subdued completely by the 4 Vibranium suits.
[Then help me! Please! I'll do anything!] She didn't understand what he'd been waiting for but she was really desperate. She didn't want to go back to that place.
[As much as I'd like to do many things to you, I need just a second.] He placated her. He had to prepare for what he was about to do. Laura could only try her best to resist unsuccessfully as the suit started covering every part of her body, about to completely subdue her.
And then there was a wave of crimson.
Alex had been preparing a Chaos Shockwave that would utilize all of the Chaos energy that he'd collected from Wanda till now. In the week that he'd spent with Wanda in the MCU Earth, he'd collected quite a bit of Chaos energy from Wanda and even got some rudimentary control over it. Though it wasn't anything more than roughly expelling that Chaos energy outward— far worse than Wanda. But the sheer quantity that he expelled was more than sufficient.
That's what he'd been preparing.
As that crimson wave extended outward, all of the suits that had been subduing Laura were pushed away, and even the restraints that they'd put on her hands and feet were gone, though that wasn't without any price.
Such a huge explosion of uncontrolled Chaos energy caused quite a bit of damage to the surroundings. There would've been a lot of casualties if the area wasn't already evacuated within seconds after the arrival of the suits. Though there were still quite a few casualties further away, it wasn't anything too serious.
What was even more serious though was Laura's current state, her body had been almost decimated. Her limbs were devoid of all skin, leaving only her enhanced Vibranium-Adamantium alloy bones in the aftermath of the explosion. Alex had tried his best to protect her vitals and head so the damage wasn't too difficult to fix, but it sure hurt her like a bitch. It also put Laura out of commission for at least the next few hours.
Knowing that there was probably some sort of tracker that he didn't have any way to get rid of in the short term, Alex had to get Laura out of this place as quickly as possible. It was most likely the collar that she was still wearing, but Alex would have to do some work to get rid of it, and that would need some time, time that he didn't have.
Knowing that she wouldn't be able to function in her current state and would only be in unnecessary pain, Alex put Laura in a deep sleep, taking control of her body. He'd realized that her healing factor wasn't enough to completely regrow a lost limb. At least not yet.
It was the same with Wolverine. With time, his healing factor got stronger and faster, allowing him to recover from more serious injuries faster. Initially, he wasn't even able to regrow his lost limbs, but after a decade or so, he could regenerate his whole body from no more than a drop of blood.
But Laura's case was a little weird. She'd been confined in that glass cage for years, and judging by her current age, she was probably captured when she was only starting out with the superhero stuff. She was just in her early twenties right now.
Her skills were polished, but that didn't mean that she had decades of actual experience fighting. She'd probably only received a couple of years of training before being sent into the field. And being captured wasn't exactly something that allowed her to get a variety of injuries to enhance her healing factor.
'If her healing factor is like any other power that needs to be trained, then the more varieties of injuries she receives, the better her healing would be. Just focusing on her bone marrow as a 'healing' target probably prevented the ability from truly progressing.' Alex accurately judged the state of Laura's healing factor and realized that regenerating her limbs was going to take quite some time, 'I'll think about her healing factor later…' Alex thought.
In the meantime, he formed a replica of her limbs to give the monitoring drones the illusion that she'd regenerated quickly and started escaping from the immobilized robots. Chaos magic was apparently very effective against those robots.
Though Alex didn't doubt that there was a countermeasure for that too, so he prioritized escaping the Bastion.
He knew that leaving would be dangerous as he and Laura would have to fend off attacks from the pursuing robots as well as the abominations, it was better since Alex would have more places to hide and he wouldn't have to deal with all of The Bastion's firepower. They wouldn't leave themselves completely defenseless against a sudden abomination attack— which wasn't uncommon— just to capture Laura. Alex could only bet on this plan. He couldn't think of anything better in that situation.
Alex was stuck between a rock and a hard place, either staying and constantly fighting a countless army of robots that keep getting more and more resilient to his efforts, or running and fighting a lesser amount of the suits while also having to deal with the abominations.
It wasn't that the thought of ditching Laura didn't come to his mind, but that would prove detrimental for him.
He'd spent quite a while in this world without a host and it was starting to get uncomfortable for him. As a symbiote, he needed a host. All the different bodies may have been connected directly to his consciousness, but they needed a host to sustain themselves.
If a host is not found, that body will go into a semi-conscious state that would only be able to do the basest things. This was the situation of all his other bodies in their space containers as they made their way to their destinations.
That was why Alex needed at least one host in each version of Earth. And for Earth-Z, Larua was the best candidate for now. Also, he sympathized with her. Alex was a sort of sociopathic killer most of the time, not caring about whom he killed to further his goals.
But he was also a hypocrite when it came to someone he liked. That was why he was willing to go through so much effort to free Laura. No doubt it had to do with how he thought she was a bombshell with a feisty touch to her that made him want to dominate her, but it was also that he somewhat sympathized with her situation and felt like helping her.
***
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