The air grew deathly cold—so cold it burned. Marcus could feel the frost tightening around him like invisible chains, when suddenly he heard it again: the sharp crack of ice forming behind him.
Instinct screamed. He turned just in time to block with his arm—
SHHK!
A jagged ice blade, grown from Iceman's arm, pierced straight through Marcus's forearm. Agonizing cold surged from the wound, racing through his veins like liquid nitrogen, numbing every nerve it touched.
'Damn it… this isn't good.'
Marcus twisted violently, slicing through the ice blade with his other sword, but before he could counter, Iceman vanished—again.
The freezing energy inside Marcus's body was spreading fast, slowing his movements, dulling his reflexes. His breath came out in clouds of steam. And before he could shake off the chill, Wolverine was already back on him, charging headlong with a feral roar.
Marcus met him blow for blow, their weapons colliding in sparks and blood. Wolverine's claws tore through the air like lightning, forcing Marcus backward. Each time Marcus struck him down, the mutant's body stitched itself back together in seconds, his regeneration relentless and obscene.
The fight was dragging on too long. The Bloodflame that fueled Marcus's strength was burning away his stamina. His opponents, on the other hand, could fight indefinitely—one immortal, the other elemental.
He couldn't win by endurance. He needed to think.
Iceman's teleportation… it isn't true space-jumping. It's molecular travel, Marcus realized. He's not disappearing—he's moving through water.
As if to confirm his thought, there was a faint splash beneath his boots. The ground was slick with shallow water from their ongoing clash—the fusion of flame and frost had created a thin sheet of melting ice that spread across the entire area.
Marcus's eyes narrowed. He could see the faint shimmer of frost rippling across the puddles, like veins of light moving through glass.
'So that's it. He's merging with the water… using it as a medium to phase through space.'
Without hesitation, Marcus thrust his bloodflame-wreathed blade into the ground.
Fwoosh!
The sword's heat exploded outward, vaporizing the puddles in an instant. Steam rolled through the battlefield, blanketing everything in a hazy red mist. From across the street, the thin film of water began to hiss and crack apart, retreating into nothingness.
Then, in a surviving pool of water at the far end of the street, Iceman's crystalline form burst forth, reforming from the liquid. His transparent eyes locked onto Marcus like daggers.
Marcus grinned coldly. 'Got you.'
But victory was far from certain. Iceman raised a hand, and from his palm erupted a storm of frozen mist—a thousand shards of frost spraying toward Marcus like bullets.
Marcus raised his sword to block, the blade's flames flaring bright red as they intercepted the cold torrent. The two powers clashed violently—ice melting into steam, steam freezing into snow. The ground hissed and bubbled beneath them.
But as the water pooled again, Marcus realized he'd walked straight into a paradox.
'Damn…'
His own heat was helping Iceman. Every drop of melted ice became new ground for the mutant to phase through.
Iceman smirked, spreading his arms. "You can't stop me. As long as there's moisture—there's nowhere I can't be."
Marcus's patience finally snapped. "Then I'll just burn the sky itself!"
He triggered his armor's nanometal integration, summoning a new shell of silver armor over his body—a sleek, enhanced version of Iron Man's design crafted by Whiplash. The chestplate sealed shut, and the thrusters on his back flared to life, propelling him skyward out of Iceman's domain.
But Iceman wasn't about to let him go.
The ground beneath him rippled, and a massive sheet of ice erupted upward, lifting him high into the air like an ascending glacier. He shot forward, skating up his own frozen highway toward the flying Marcus, his entire body glowing blue-white.
"Freeze!"
His shout echoed with double meaning—an order and an attack.
A surge of frost spiraled toward Marcus, coating his thrusters in a layer of solid ice. The engines sputtered and stalled mid-air, encased in frozen steel. Marcus ignited his Bloodflame internally, melting the frost enough to regain lift—but the momentary delay was all Wolverine needed.
With a snarl, Wolverine leapt from the rooftops, his claws digging into the walls like climbing axes. In seconds, he was level with Marcus—and then he pounced.
The two collided midair and tumbled downward, crashing through layers of debris and rubble before slamming into the ground with a deafening boom.
A storm of dust exploded around them, swallowing both men from sight.
From above, Iceman hesitated, unsure which shadow in the smoke was friend or foe. Then, a column of crimson flame erupted from the center, blasting a hole straight through the fog. A dark figure was flung out of the explosion, crashing through a nearby building in a shower of debris.
Iceman narrowed his eyes. That has to be Logan.
He watched carefully as the remaining silhouette stepped forward from the smoke—tall, armored, silver. Marcus, encased in a full-body Iron Man suit, the metal still glowing faintly from the heat.
But something about him was off. His movements were sluggish, jerky. He stumbled forward as if fighting to stay upright.
'Wolverine must've hurt him badly,' Iceman thought, grim satisfaction filling his chest. He's bleeding out inside that armor.
Iceman raised his hand. "Then let's finish it."
He opened both palms, releasing twin spirals of frigid energy. The air howled as blue-white frost surged outward, engulfing Marcus's figure completely.
In moments, the armored man was encased in ice—layer after layer forming until he was entombed in a massive glacier several stories tall. The frozen tower expanded outward, consuming the battlefield, the Iron Man armor at its center fading into a pale silhouette.
Iceman let out a ragged breath, grinning through his exhaustion.
"Come on," he muttered. "Melt all you want. I'll just freeze it back. Let's see who lasts longer—my stamina or your blood."
The glacier thickened, spreading wider and taller as he poured his power into it. His body trembled, the air around him glittering with frost particles. Normally, he could sustain his cryokinesis for five hours before exhaustion—but in this frenzy, he could go even longer.
By comparison, Marcus's Bloodflame, fueled by his own blood, couldn't possibly last that long.
He clenched his fists. "This ends here."
But as the minutes passed, something strange began to happen.
The ice no longer glowed with the orange-red shimmer of melting flame. The armored figure inside wasn't struggling, wasn't moving.
It was… still.
Iceman frowned. "No fire? No resistance?"
Then realization hit him like a dagger of ice to the chest.
'Wait… Tony Stark's suits don't need pilots to move. They have autonomous defense systems.'
His breath caught. "That's not him."
The figure encased in ice wasn't Marcus at all.
At that exact moment, from behind the ruins of a collapsed building—where Wolverine had crashed earlier—another shape emerged.
A shape wreathed in Bloodflame.
The real Marcus stepped out of the smoke, his eyes burning crimson, his sword already raised.
And Iceman finally understood.
He hadn't trapped his enemy.
He had been tricked.