Once Laura broke through the walls, she didn’t hold back and rammed through every structure that she came across. Unlike before, where she was merely using her own strength, this time, she was acting with the full eight times base amplification of the level six organ bond that she had with Alex. It pushed her firmly into the territory of a Cosmic Physique, allowing her to break through almost everything in her feral charge toward the blood red dome that protected the command center.
Within seconds, she reached her destination and leaped up before punching it with her claws extended. It was as if her claws had struck unbreakable metal and made her entire bone structure shake. Considering the force with which she was moving, without Alex being bonded to her bones, her claws would have snapped by now.
[I think we might need to upgrade your claws. At my current strength scale, Vibranium and Adamantium might not be able to keep up.]
Laura grunted and punched again as Alex forcefully retracted her claws. Her punches held enough power to crack the crust of the earth in half, yet they were merely deforming the crimson dome as it held steady.
After a few seconds, she finally paused after coming to her senses.
“What do we do about this?” She asked. “We’ve already blocked his main exit route. What if he continues to hole himself in there?”
“Allow me. When brute force doesn’t work, what I like to do is to make it so that the barrier doesn’t exist in the first place,” Alex said, appearing beside Laura and putting his palm on the barrier.
Immediately, he released an obscene amount of Chaos Energy and cast a spell to dispel the barrier.
“Whoa…” Laura could tangibly feel the waves of Chaos energy radiating from Alex and pressurizing her. “Couldn’t you channel that through me? Why the need to create a separate body?”
“It’s complicated,” he said. “Unlike before, where I was essentially taking Wanda’s remnant energy for myself, now, I am pulling it through a sort of official channel. The Chaos energy that I can tap into by myself is both greater and more controlled than if I do it through one of my hosts. This Chaos energy now has my signature on it, and if it is released by anyone other than me, it won’t have as good an effect. Naturally, it’s still possible for me to cast Chaos magic through you, but it’s just not as efficient.”
By their time he finished speaking, the blood red dome fizzled out of existence as parts of it started disintegrating, only for the whole thing to disappear in a few more seconds.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Last time we were here, I was sneaking around when I tried to enter.”
“And then you lied to me and told me that you were also stuck in here,” Laura said with a reminiscing expression. “Going from that to telling me the truth about treating people here as cattle. You’ve come far. No longer a pathological liar and just a genocidal maniac for the time being.”
“I’d like to think so,” he said. Just as they broke through the fencing, a barrage of bullets shot at both him and Laura in her Apex form. Naturally, none of their weapons could do anything to either Alex or Laura. Their bullets simply bounced off their bodies as if impacting an impenetrable wall. All the energy weapons and the explosives did was create more dust and shrapnel all around, without actually hurting either of them.
They shared a look and decided to simply ignore the attackers entirely and continue forward. Even though, unlike the general civilians, these were all skilled mercenaries who both protected the Bastion from outside threats and maintained the peace within by quelling any rebellious elements in their society. Still, they were simply following orders. Of course, Alex couldn’t care less about the moral quandary that was posed here. What he cared about was the fact that these people were genetically enhanced, which meant that they and their spawn would be prime candidates to transform into stronger variants of Abominations. Instead of killing them, Alex and Laura calmly walked through their volley of gunfire. As they passed the guards, the tentacles extending out of Laura’s back simply stabbed them into unconsciousness. Just as each of them would fall to the ground, a feminine silhouette would momentarily appear beside them and pick them up before disappearing again. By the time Laura reached the main entrance to the tower, the widows had cleared out all of the guards in the vicinity.
“Would you like to do the honors?” She asked.
“As if you can get this door to open by yourself,” Alex retorted at her before placing his palm on the control panel.
“Can you hack into things?” Laura asked.
“Remember when we were here last time?” Alex asked. “I delayed our escape by two minutes to hack into their systems and locate the Extremis formula.”
“I suppose,” she said. “I don’t really remember. It’s been a long time since then.”
“I have the ability to directly interface with electronics,” he said before frowning and looking at the control panel. “You know I can read minds and pretty much take control of someone’s brain and nervous system? I do that by interfacing with the synapses of the nerve cells and controlling the electrical impulses. A similar principle can apply to technology.”
“So calling you an Apex biological life-form is a lie,” she said. “You are even more than that… What’s wrong?” She asked as Alex showed a look of effort when trying to hack the door into opening.
“The resistance being put up is a bit more than I expected. I don’t think even churning abomination meat into generating raw electricity can achieve the kind of power to run such a strong AI…It seems like Tony’s AI is much more capable than I’d expected.”
“Can we take it?” Laura asked.
“Of course,” Alex said. “And done, see?”
A second later, the door opened as Alex and Laura entered the facility. Unlike what they encountered outside, here, they were greeted by a legion of robots that immediately started blasting at them with all sorts of different attacks. Sonic attacks, energy attacks, projectiles, and more. In another life, Alex might have been immediately killed by the sound-based attacks of the robots.
[You know, funnily enough. It was this place that helped me get immune to heat and sound.]
Alex said with amusement in Laura’s head as he stood back while Laura jumped into the thick of it and started destroying the robots ceaselessly. The tentacles on her back all acted individually to take on multiple robots a second while she used her claws to swipe through most of them and slice the metallic bodies as if they were made of paper. Amidst her rampage, Alex also did some cleanup duty and collected all of the scrap robots that were on the ground. Despite the ease with which they took care of them, the automated robots were far beyond what Tony Stark of the MCU Earth had ever created. They could be used as references if he ever decided to make something like that for his empire.
The robots kept endlessly pouring out at the same pace as Laura killed them. Unfortunately, there was a serious resource deficit in the wasteland, and Alex was making sure to keep collecting every single destroyed part of the robots, preventing the automated system from repairing them on the go. Ultimately, after almost half an hour, in which they destroyed tens of thousands of robots, the facility seemed to be out. However, it wasn’t long before the big guns came along. Large armors that seemed like smaller versions of the Hulkbuster came in to stop Laura and Alex’s rampage. Each of them had a Sentinel label over their chests.
“Hey, I remember these,” Alex said. “I think they got upgraded after last time. Think you can take them? They are made of the same Adamantium-Vibranium alloy as your bones.”
“Let me try first…” Laura took up a fighting stance as five identical Sentinels came to kill her. “Going straight for the kill, I see. Last time, these things wanted to subdue me and bring me back to be their damn healing panacea.”
Her body crackled with lightning as her speed shot up, leaving a blue trail in her path as she appeared in front of one of the Sentinels and slashed her claw at its joint while it crackled with blue lightning. Her claw was only able to cut halfway into its weak spot before her tentacles pulled her back from its swiping arm. Laura continued attacking that specific spot of that specific Sentinel until she was finally able to lop off its arm without depending on Alex. Of course, dependency here meant something completely different. She didn’t count the tentacles coming out of her back, even though they were the entire reason she didn’t keep getting whacked around by the five highly coordinated robots that were able to appropriately respond to her attacks despite the speed at which she moved.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Laura mumbled as she saw the arm she’d just lopped off break apart into multiple nanites and fly back to its robot, returning it to its original state.
“I’m taking over, Laura. I want the tech behind those nanites,” he said. “It will be a complete game changer for Gaia’s technological advancement.”
“Go for it, I can’t do anything about these things. As long as you let me stab Tony Stark multiple times, I’m fine,” she said with an exhausted sigh.
Immediately, a wave of Chaos energy erupted from Alex as he cast a spell that immobilized the robots in place. He quickly shot five blobs of his body at each of them to break them down and absorb them into his ‹Inventory›.
Unlike what he’d expected, the robots almost immediately shook off the effects of his Chaos energy and erupted with plasma bursts all over their bodies. It was as if every individual nanite was releasing bursts of plasma that shook his body away and prevented him from taking them into his ‹Inventory›
“I’d forgotten about his adaptability,” Alex said with an annoyed expression. “Of course, he found a workaround after seeing Chaos energy break these things a single time.