Episode 31: The boy with the Iron Will

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Arcade started to feel nervous. He had been counting on the Sentinels to destroy Wolverine and Jean Grey, but Spider-Man's interference made sure that was impossible, with a Spider Slayer that was meant to attack Spider-Man being the very thing that caused the destruction of both itself and most of the Sentinels. When there had been only one left, Arcade still hoped that one could at least badly injured one of the heroes... until HE happened. Now that very same teenage prodigy who lost all restraint and patience in this situation was hacking into as many Murderworld systems as he could. Arcade watched as Cyclops and Storm faced off against robotic doubles of themselves, only for Iron Man to hack into the robot doubles systems, forcing the robots to utterly destroy each other. At the same time, Iceman was in a chamber filled with fire and Nightcrawler was being attacked by a robotic double of Apocalypse, but the fires suddenly shut themselves off and the robo Apocalypse destroyed itself. All of this caused by the one boy he tried to drown in his fears... and he had instead awoken a warrior determined to prove his worth by utterly crushing the forces in his way. Arcade had to admit to himself in horror that he was losing control of the situation!

Meanwhile:
Iron Man released everyone from their level 2 traps except Zhang. Arcade focused all of his remaining cyber defenses to block any attempt of Iron Man long distance hacking Zhang's simulation pod, meaning the only way to hack into the simulation and stop it would be directly hacking into the pod itself.
"So that's how it is, huh?" Iron Man spoke as the other heroes made their way to him.

"That's how what is?" Storm asked.

"I hacked into various Murderworld systems to try to free everyone from their Murderworld level 2 torture events at the same time, but Arcade found out and made long distance hacking into Zhang's simulation pod impossible. So, I need to directly hack into the pod itself. With that said, I'm going to push on ahead and try to find the lab where Zhang is being held." Iron Man explained.

"Wasting time looking for the boy is not advisable. It's more imperative that we go after Arcade, then we can make him tell us where the boy is." Storm argued.

"He wouldn't talk no matter what we do." Both Spider-Man and Wolverine replied in unison in the same matter of fact tone.

"Then you all go on ahead and look for Arcade and I'll go solo to find Zhang. No one is going to be left behind." Iron Man ordered.

"Wait!" Cyclops spoke, making everyone stop and look at him.

"Sakai, I saw you fight back at the Sports Festival, and Wolverine told me about how well you did when you and he faced off against Avalanche together (Season 1, Episode 6). I know you're a capable guy, but you're still a first-year hero student. I can't let you go alone in good conscious." Cyclops lectured. Before Iron Man could say that he was fine with going alone and that his experience over most first years has prepared him for this, Spider-Man spoke up instead.

"He won't be alone. I'm the boy's mentor. I'll go with him to save Zhang." Spider-Man assured the leader of the X-Men.

"Make sure to be quick about it. There's no telling what a guy like Arcade is making that kid go through." Wolverine reminded Spider-Man and Iron Man.

Meanwhile:
After Da Ji mysteriously disappeared, Zhang ran off to find his mother to try and stop his clan, the Tuan Clan, from allying themselves with the Wei-Xing clan. When Zhang finally found his mother, she was already speaking with Cheng. Zhang felt his blood boil but before he could rush towards Cheng, time pushed Zhang forward again. He found himself outside of the Tuan clan family dojo.
"Deamos, you have become very powerful." Tuan, Zhang and Deamos' father, who was named after the one of the former rulers of K'un-Lun and after the clan itself, complimented his older son.

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