5 Chapter 5
Shanks waited until they brought Raven to the corridor. He had not been idle during this time. He had observed all the mutants around him and guessed their powers from their appearances.
Soon, Raven was dragged to the same corridor as Shanks. He saw the man behind her, who had a smug look on his face.
Shanks turned to the speaker and said, "I hope you have trained these mutants well."
He then quickly knocked out the guy near Raven and yelled, "Run!"
The voice from the speaker ordered, "Catch them. Don't let anyone get away."
Raven hesitated to leave Shanks behind, but Kayla ran to her, grabbed her hand and said, "If we don't run now, we will only hinder him. We have to get out of here and find a way to save him later."
Raven asked, "Why should I trust you?"
Shanks shouted, "Hurry up, before these fools get past me."
Raven still felt reluctant, but Emma also pulled her away from the fight. Shanks had already begun to battle the mutants. He was clearly outnumbered and he lacked the strength to use his conqueror's haki and knock them all out.
He faced various attacks from different directions. One guy from behind was shooting his limbs with precision and avoiding hitting the other mutants. Two mutants were firing fire and ice from their hands, which Shanks had trouble dodging in the narrow corridor.
One man ran on all fours and leaped at him with claws, while another dropped down from the ceiling.
Shanks had coated his whole body with haki, so he was not fatally wounded, but he was still bleeding. He punched the two men who jumped at him in their faces. The first one with claws tried to evade the punch, but failed. He fell to the floor and realized that he could not heal from the hit.
(A/N: This concept is based on the fact that haki can cause permanent damage to the target, from which they cannot recover.)
Shanks knocked out the other one who looked like a frog with a single punch.
He looked at the guy who resembled Liev Schreiber, who played Sabertooth in the movies, and said, "My powers can negate any mutant powers. If you value your life, run."
Sabertooth was a savage beast, but he still had some sense. He had joined this fight just because he craved blood, but after hearing what Shanks said, he felt fear for the first time in his life.
He had always thought that he could heal from anything, but now he was terrified.
The others also showed fear in their eyes, but the collars around their necks did not give them any choice to flee.
This time, Shanks faced a guy who could teleport, a guy with swords and a big muscular guy.
Shanks asked the guy with swords, "Are you Wade?" because he did not look like Ryan Reynolds.
The confused man answered, "No, my name is Shatterstar."
This was where Shanks felt that the fight was dangerous. Shatterstar and the muscular guy, Fred, who would later become Blob, both had superhuman strength and it was risky to take even a single hit from them. Shanks had to use his observation haki to constantly dodge their attacks and counterattack, while blocking attacks from two other people. (I will call Fred Blob in the chapter because I already used that name and I am too lazy to change it.)
One was the teleporting guy, while the other was an invisible guy. Both made it extremely hard for him to concentrate on the superhumans.
Meanwhile, Raven, Kayla and Emma had escaped from the facility without being caught. They then ran through the woods as there might be people waiting to capture them if they went by road.
After they were far away from the research facility, Raven stopped and freed her hands from Kayla and Emma.
Raven yelled in anger, "I can't believe I trusted both of you. You gave him false hope of freedom and sent him back to where he came from."
Emma could not look at Raven and said, "I know what I did, but I was threatened. They have ways to put me down at any time. So I had to obey them to survive."
Kayla said, "I also know what I did, but I already corrected my mistakes."
"What do you mean?" Raven asked.
Kayla replied, "After I noticed that we could not leave this country, I knew that someone else was watching us. So since they decided to dispose of me, I confessed everything to Shanks and also gave him the details about the bombs that I knew. He made a device that cancels out the signals sent to trigger the bombs. That's the only reason he can fight without worrying now."
"Nice. Since I was only targeting him, you managed to slip through my mind reading." Emma said.
"Shut up. You have no right to even talk. Now that we have escaped, I think you should leave." Raven said.
"I don't have to listen to anyone. I have decided to save Shanks and I will do it." Emma said.
Then a voice from behind them said, "Although I hate to admit it, we need Emma to help save Shanks."
Everyone looked at the source of the voice and saw a woman with purple hair. Standing behind her were Charles Xavier, Hank and Eric.
Charles looked at Raven and said, "Raven, we are here to help rescue this person named Shanks."
Raven was confused and asked, "Why?"
"I will explain this later, but for now we have to leave before we get caught." Psylocke said.
Raven asked, "Why are we leaving? If all of us tried, we could easily save Shanks from them."
Psylocke shook her head and said, "Raven, it is not that simple. Right now..."
*Back to Shanks*
Shanks avoided the attacks from Shatterstar and Blob while also fighting back. As for the attacks from the invisible guy and the teleporting guy, he noticed that they did not hurt him at all with his haki.
However, the invisible guy was not attacking, but instead tried to grab Shanks' hand to stop him from attacking. This was a problem because he would lose his momentum.
He dodged for a while when suddenly, his future sight kicked in. He saw that the teleporting guy would appear behind him and ducked.
At the same time, Blob tried to punch his face, so when Shanks ducked, he hit the teleporting guy instead. This was enough to knock him out.
The other three mutants around him were distracted for a moment. Shanks used this moment to use all his remaining haki and strength, concentrating it all in his fists. He then punched Shatterstar repeatedly in his face.
Blob tried to punch Shanks while he was busy, but he dodged the punch and managed to snatch a sword from Shatterstar.
Shanks then jumped back to create some distance from them. He swung the sword around a few times.
Shanks smiled and said, "It feels weird without my sword. I am sorry for showing such a pathetic performance until now. Let me apologize for that and show you my current full strength."
The guy from behind who was shooting at him fired another bullet aimed at Shanks' eye. Shanks did not flinch and used his sword to cut the bullet in half.
Since there were many people he had to deal with, he decided to go full offense and directed all his haki to his sword, keeping only a little around his body to defend against the bullets flying towards him.
Shanks then saw Shatterstar and Blob running towards him. He did not waste any time and swung his sword diagonally with all his strength. It released an air slash made of compressed air from his sword.
Blob could not see it and he had a cut diagonally across his shoulders.
Shanks clicked his tongue and said, "This guy is tough. I used all my strength, but it is still not deep enough."
So, Shanks decided to change his strategy. Besides Shatterstar and Blob, there were still 10 more mutants in the room. He decided to deal with them before he took care of the superhumans.
Shanks ran towards Blob, who was still shocked to see his blood because he could not see the attack. Shanks jumped over him to reach the other mutants behind him.
He did not waste any time and attacked the two people in front of him. One mutant had green hair and looked like he was about to spit out something while the other had a health hazard tattoo on his palm.
Shanks made multiple cuts on both their bodies in a split second, which were not deep enough to kill them, but would cause enough blood loss to make them lose consciousness.
Next, he noticed two men closing their eyes and trying to do something standing beside the two guys who were shooting out fire and ice.
Now, these two were going to be hard to deal with, because earlier, Shanks was surrounded by mutants, so they did not attack in fear of hitting their own, but now that Blob and Shatterstar were behind Shanks, they did not have to worry about that. Shatterstar and Blob could easily tank the attacks.
'Since they are attacking, it also means the invisible guy is not behind me.' Shanks thought.
He then looked at the knocked out guy with green hair, who looked like he was about to spit out something.
He picked up the guy and used him as a shield to defend himself. The guy with fire and ice powers stopped attacking while the gunman kept shooting.
He shouted to the two, "We either capture him or die. So stop thinking about others and only think about your lives."
That was the worst motivational speech, but it convinced the two mutants to attack. Shanks was also fighting for his life, so he did not flinch before hiding behind the guy.
They attacked for a while before they both stopped for some reason. Shanks did not miss this chance and threw the unconscious mutant at them. He ran towards them, using the flying mutant as his shield while approaching them.
When he got closer, he immediately made a deep cut in their palms because Shanks noticed that their powers originated from their palms. Now, since Shanks was close to the gunman and his bullets were not working, he knew he had to do something else to save his life.
He quickly said, "Stop! I know you can kill us all easily, but these two here, they can control electricity. So I suggest you cooperate before they detonate the bombs inside you."
Shanks said, "Thanks for the information."
He then swiftly swung his sword and released another slash of pressurized air towards the two who were trying to use their powers.
Shanks then saw that Blob had recovered from the pain and was ready for the battle, so he dealt with everyone else around until only Shanks, Shatterstar and Blob were conscious.
Shanks thought, 'These two are way too strong and I can't handle them. This is going to be troublesome.'
Shanks now had no one else attacking him, so he decided to go full offense and directed all his haki to his sword. This time, he was completely unprotected.
A single attack from either of them could knock out Shanks. Shanks was a glass cannon now.
Shanks did not have much strength left. It was his first proper fight after he was reincarnated and he had used a lot of strength. So he needed to finish the fight as soon as possible.
Blob usually just rushed towards Shanks and swung his fists randomly, having full faith in his strength and speed, but for the first time in a while, he saw his own blood. He was scared and he started using his brain.
Shatterstar also did not move and all three of them were waiting for their opponent to make the first move. Shanks was running out of time, so he decided to start first anyway.
Shanks swung his sword in their direction and both of them thought that Shanks was doing his air slash again, so Blob crossed his arms to take the attack on his arms while Shatterstar decided to use the chance to attack Shanks.
Blob was waiting for the attack, but he did not get hit. Shanks used his sword swing as bait to fool Shatterstar. He used Shatterstar's caution against him.
When Shatterstar was close enough, Shanks used all his strength and swung his sword diagonally up. Shatterstar reacted in time and blocked the attack, but Shanks' sword cut through Shatterstar's sword and dealt a fatal blow.
Shanks did not wait and followed up with four more attacks to disable his limbs.
Now that Blob was alone, he was even more terrified.
Shanks looked at him and said, "Here's a little advice before you lose consciousness: Never get scared in a fight."
Shanks then ran towards Blob. Blob crossed his arms in front of his face, but Shanks went for the tendons behind his knees. This dropped Blob to the ground, but he still had his arms crossed.
Shanks used haki around his palms and delivered a karate chop to the back of his neck. This was enough to take care of him for a while. Shanks was sure that he would wake up in a few minutes.
The voice from the speaker said, "It was truly an amazing performance, but I have many things to do. We have to stop here for now."
Shanks then sensed a huge robot walking towards him and he could also hear it move.
Back to Raven and Psylocke, Psylocke said to Raven, "We can't save him now because he is not just fighting against mutants, he is also fighting against a prototype Sentinel. Since they need Shanks alive, they will not kill him. So we have time to save him in the future, but not now."
