Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman Chapter 839: An Assassination Plan That Couldn't Keep Up with Events

The place Professor X led everyone to was the tank room where Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike had been transformed, their skeletons replaced with Adamantium.

Professor X pointed toward an area that had clearly been damaged, with uneven marks left across the floor, and looked meaningfully at the two mutant comrades with metal skeletons.

"According to the officers at the base, there was originally a heating tank here that stored liquid Adamantium.

"It's gone now. It should have been taken by the intruder."

There were also a large number of X-ray films hanging on the wall beneath a lightbox.

But aside from Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike, no one knew what this room was for, so naturally the others didn't feel much about it.

The two people directly involved, however, didn't feel nearly as relaxed as everyone else.

Both seemed to have fallen into memories from the past.

Lady Deathstrike's memories of this place were much more recent than Wolverine's.

But after being under long-term control, she had spent much of that time in a dazed state.

Now that she suddenly saw this familiar scene, the pain she had once experienced seemed to return to her body.

She couldn't help trembling.

Perhaps Adamantium was simply too rare, meaning ordinary people had no idea how valuable the metal was.

Or perhaps mutants simply didn't care much about things unrelated to their own abilities.

Either way, most people didn't have much of a reaction to Professor X's statement.

Only Magneto, the leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants, felt differently.

After all, wasn't he personally responsible for every aspect of the Brotherhood's day-to-day needs?

He had also witnessed the rise and collapse of Genosha with his own eyes.

So when he heard that the Adamantium had been stolen, combined with the damage marks on the floor, he immediately realized that quite a substantial amount of the metal had been taken.

And it was worth a considerable sum.

"So what exactly was that Wild Boar man's real target?

"Adamantium?

"Or did he come here to take the lives of Stryker and his son?"

The calm Professor X quickly sorted out the priorities.

"Looking at which objective was primary and which was secondary, Stryker and his son were definitely the first target.

"The Adamantium came second.

"Because if you reverse the priorities, all the intruder needed to do was eliminate the base commander.

"There would have been no need to use such extreme methods or kill a mutant who didn't even hold a military rank.

"As for whether the Adamantium was originally one of his targets, we don't know.

"There isn't anything else of greater value in this base.

"Unless he was interested in the mutants themselves, in which case the research data would have been worth taking."

"So he's either a mutant sympathizer or one of our unknown brethren.

"Then the second question: who is he?"

No one had an answer to Magneto's question.

If the intruder's identity had been that easy to guess, there would have been no point in disguising himself as a Wild Boar man in the first place.

If William Stryker were still alive, they might have been able to ask whom he had recently offended and thereby determine why he'd suffered such a fate.

Unfortunately, not only was he dead, but his brain had been damaged so thoroughly that no one could extract any useful information from it.

"What about the base's records?

"Don't tell me those were destroyed too?"

Magneto raised another crucial question, although rather late.

"The other party was kind enough to leave all of them intact.

"He even found some important documents and left them somewhere conspicuous.

"That saved us from having to search through the enormous amount of material here for anything useful.

"Logan, that's how we found the documents related to you as well."

"He was kind enough to deliberately organize them for us?"

Magneto remained highly suspicious of the motive behind such an action.

But Professor X's answer was somewhat different from what Magneto expected.

"No, he didn't deliberately organize anything.

"If you'd seen what the archives looked like originally, you'd know that the intruder wasn't particularly considerate.

"It's just that some documents had been scattered across the desks.

"Compared with the ones lying on the floor or inside the cabinets, those documents were obviously much more important.

"I checked the ones on the desks and found that they were related to recent events and were also useful to us."

Magneto's vigilance didn't diminish in the slightest.

"Was he deliberately leading us somewhere?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not.

"But as long as the outcome is good, isn't that enough?"

"How interesting.

"This is the first time I've seen you, with your endless curiosity, choose not to investigate the truth behind something.

"Charles Xavier, are you still yourself?"

Magneto's question made some members of the Brotherhood realize what was going on, while others were a little slower to catch on.

But no one reacted as dramatically as Mystique.

She drew a pistol from somewhere no one knew she had concealed and aimed it at "Professor X."

Professor X showed neither fear nor displeasure.

He simply reached into the pouch behind his wheelchair and pulled out another document.

"Erik, I'm still myself.

"I'm not someone disguised as me, and I haven't been controlled.

"And besides, compared with investigating the truth behind this incident, isn't resolving the predicament of mutants being targeted by the U.S. government more important?

"Compared with that objective, everything else is insignificant."

Watching Professor X push his own wheelchair toward him and hold out the document, Magneto was filled with suspicion.

He immediately opened it and began reading.

It was a plan concerning the assassination of the President of the United States by a controlled mutant.

Afterward, with the successor's authorization, the U.S. military would launch a nationwide operation to arrest mutants.

But the military's actual objective differed from what the plan publicly described.

Their true target was the mutant school in Westchester County.

They would seize the components of the brainwave amplifier and control Professor X, then use his abilities to eliminate all the mutants in the world at once.

From this, it was clear that the plan had been written for someone else to see.

Perhaps the author even needed that person's approval or consent.

But only William Stryker knew the true objective.

Reading the contents, Magneto had to admit that his imagination really wasn't as rich as that of these schemers.

He had never imagined killing the President of the United States and then taking his place.

"This is a coup…"

The plan itself was very idealistic.

But it had gone wrong from the very beginning.

The incumbent President had not died, the successor had failed to take power, and the subsequent U.S. military operation had not been carried out in such an open and aboveboard manner.

Still, it was obvious that whoever was pushing this plan was working desperately to steer events back onto the intended track.

That was why the typewritten plan contained numerous handwritten additions.

Pinching the bridge of his tired nose to relieve the strain on his eyes, Magneto sighed.

At his age, reading small print was becoming rather difficult.

Although he wanted to return the document to Professor X, for some reason he inexplicably flipped back to the beginning and looked again at the section concerning the plan to assassinate the President.

Former X-Man Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler, was fourth on the list of potential assassins.

The first few names were all marked as having unknown whereabouts.

Only the first had a note beside it that read: "Failed."

And that name was Henry Brown…

At this point, Magneto almost wanted to take off his anti-telepathy helmet and rub his temples properly.

He suddenly understood why William Stryker had ended up like this.

He also understood why Professor X didn't want to investigate the truth behind the base's invasion.

Getting on that man's bad side was practically asking for trouble, wasn't it?

And for him to have caused only this much destruction was practically an act of mercy.

As for half of the base's mutant team still being alive, that was nothing short of a miracle.

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