"Strange—Salvador hasn't shown her face for three days."
Inside Vought Corporation, Hank muttered as he scanned the newspaper.
"She was out every day shilling for Pioneer Company; of course she needs a break." Banshee Sean waved it off. "Right now we've got to focus. A little over a week till the Hearings begin."
At the mention of the Hearings every Vought employee in the room sighed.
Although the final draft wasn't set, once the Hearings were scheduled the deal was basically sealed.
So the X-Men racked their brains trying to secure rights for the Awakened and minimize the bill's fallout.
Clap-clap-clap!
Fang Yuan stepped in, clapping to draw everyone's eyes.
"All right, quit stressing. Come check out our new gear!"
Hank brightened at once and hurried them toward the lab.
"Come on—we've got loads of new toys."
The youngsters perked up; new toys were always irresistible.
On the lab floor the first thing they saw was a sleek black jet, bigger and cooler than the old X-Jet.
Its tail held the real wow-factor: four thrusters arranged in an X, so from behind the plane itself formed a giant X—pure X-Men branding.
"Upgraded with Fang's tech," Hank explained. "Faster flight, advanced decryption suite, even weapons for emergencies."
The redesign had taken cues from Thomas's batplane.
The X-Men's new uniforms owed a debt to the Batsuit as well.
"Totally bullet-proof yet lighter. The belt's packed with gizmos for every scenario." Hank held up a suit and rattled off specs.
Erik ran a hand over the fabric in admiration. "Full coverage—before it breaks, we won't have another Charles incident."
"Hahaha!"
Everyone cracked up; they knew he was referencing the stray-bullet-paralyzes-Charles gag from x-men: first class.
They were all insiders—Charles wasn't really paralyzed, and Erik loved ribbing him about it.
Charles's brow furrowed; he looked at Fang Yuan.
"Um… doesn't Hellfire get any of this?"
Salvador's departure had rocked Vought—she claimed she'd walked over unfair resource splits—so the X-Men were hypersensitive to their sister team's feelings.
Alex and others had even offered to hand over part of their own allotments to Hellfire.
Money had never been why they signed with Vought.
Beside Fang Yuan, White Queen shook her head.
"Hellfire doesn't need it. You're the front line."
Beyond Salvador, none of Hellfire chased fame.
Red Devil had lived millennia; if he cared about status he wouldn't be anyone's lieutenant.
Riptide stayed taciturn and perfectly content as Vought's Security Chief.
White Queen liked power, but she was practically Vought's acting CEO—already swimming in it.
So the once-rival teams, X-Men and Hellfire, rubbed along just fine.
Just then Warren and Darwin strolled in side by side.
They were Vought's headline acts now.
Angel's fame was already sky-high; Darwin, backed by the African-American bloc, had eclipsed even Professor X in popularity, becoming—like Salvador—a Vought icon.
Busy as congressmen, the pair dashed from rally to rally, drumming up support for the Awakened.
Naturally each had bespoke gear.
Darwin's suit differed little in specs from Erik's, but its bold styling catered to African-American tastes.
Angel's, however, was the real centerpiece.
"The Angel-suit's killer feature?" Hank boasted. "A cape! When you spread your wings, the cape wraps them, massively boosting shielding."
Inspiration, of course, came from Batman's cloak.
Batcave tech had gifted the X-Men plenty.
Fang Yuan shot Hank an approving look.
The Batcave designs were only half the equation; Hank was the one who turned blueprints into battlefield reality.
Take the Angel-suit: the cape didn't just drape—it auto-locked into the feathers. Hank had sweated every detail.
Fang Yuan could cram inside a Kryptonian Learning Pod and ace the theory, but sewing superhero suits? No thanks.
He preferred the opposite—getting people out of clothes.
Mystique and White Queen gave that sentiment a thumbs-up.
Beyond the new jet and uniforms, Hank had cooked up a trove of handy gadgets and passed them around.
Seeing the team's delight made Hank beam.
A genius he might be, but Hank was shy and wired to please; being needed lit him up.
So Fang Yuan had asked him to head Vought's R&D—dreaming up black-bone tech for the X-Men and cracking company-wide science bottlenecks.
Weary of the endless roadshow, Hank loved lab work and said yes on the spot.
Vought had stacks of bleeding-edge prototypes—like the original mobile phone titan, the brick-sized "Big Brother."
But rollout waited; priority one was locking down the awakened one act and cementing Vought's position, so Fang Yuan shelved everything.
Right now every Awakened felt a target; Pioneer had announced a detector in the works, sending shockwaves through the community.
Plenty of Awakened were hiding in plain sight—Darwin once among them.
If the detector succeeded, they'd be exposed, countless lives shattered overnight.
Yet Fang Yuan only wanted to pour a flute of champagne, lounge on the sofa, left arm around Mystique, right around White Queen, and wait for victory to knock.
Not premature celebration—the enemy was already dead, merely ignorant of the fact.
The gun had fired; let the bullet fly.
Ring-ring-ring.
A phone trilled in Fang Yuan's apartment; each handset mapped to one VIP.
This particular one meant Bureau Director Frye.
Fang Yuan smiled.
The bullet had arrived.
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