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Chapter 166 – Battle on the Train
🕑 Added 2025-09-13 16:57:22 +0000 UTC
Outside, the thumping roar of helicopter miniguns still echoed through the night. But inside the train, what terrified everyone more was the sudden silence.
The gunfire from the rear cars had stopped.
Had the soldiers won? Or had they been slaughtered?
Their answer came with a deafening crash.
BANG! A steel door at the back buckled inward, a perfect fist-shaped dent warping its surface. Another strike. Then another.
The sergeant’s face went pale. No human fists did that. His men clicked off their safeties, fingers curling over triggers.
The final blow tore the reinforced door off its hinges, sending it clanging to the floor. And there, framed in the doorway, stood… people. Ordinary-looking civilians. Jeans. Jackets. Nothing mutant about them.
“Fire!” the sergeant roared.
Bullets shredded the intruders—except they didn’t fall. Instead, their flesh shimmered, peeling away to reveal the truth.
The soldiers were shooting aliens.
Skin gave way to slick, chitinous plating. Eyes glowed like molten coals. Bullets that would drop a man in seconds tore chunks of camouflage away but did little else. Wounds knitted shut almost instantly.
Only the heavy machine gun at the rear had any effect, its shells punching through armor, spraying alien ichor across the walls. For a moment, it worked.
Until one soldier’s limp body was hurled like a wrecking ball straight into the gunner, smashing man and weapon alike into the wall.
Then the aliens surged forward.
They weren’t here to posture. They hit like a tidal wave, slamming soldiers aside with inhuman strength. Screams, gunfire, the crunch of metal filled the narrow car.
“Unlock us!” Cyclops shouted over the chaos. His visor glowed bright red. “Now, or you won’t live long enough to regret it!”
The guards hesitated. But the logic was obvious: the mutants weren’t working with these things. If they were, the captives would be cheering, not shouting at the soldiers.
And the invaders weren’t trying to free them either. Their eyes were locked on one direction—forward. Toward the car where Jean Grey was being held.
Finally, one terrified private broke ranks, sprinting to the control panel at the end of the car. His hands shook as he jammed a key into the override. Red lights on the collars flicked to green—one by one, the inhibitors fell silent.
The mutants were free.
Cyclops didn’t waste a heartbeat. His visor snapped open, and a crimson blast slammed into an alien mid-stride, vaporizing half its chest.
“About damn time,” Logan growled from the corner, claws snikt-ing free.
In seconds, the balance flipped. The Brotherhood and the X-Men—natural enemies—unleashed hell together. Aliens who moments ago tore through soldiers like paper suddenly found themselves flanked, blasted, shredded.
But the reprieve didn’t last. More intruders dropped through the roof hatches, clawing their way in from above. Others forced the side doors, pouring in like ants. And the ones that had fallen? They weren’t dead. Unless you took them apart piece by piece, they stood right back up, stronger and angrier than before.
Even with mutant power unleashed, it was a war of attrition—and attrition was on the aliens’ side.
Magneto’s voice cut through the chaos. Calm. Commanding.
“Cyclops, Storm, Cilia—on the roof! Hold the line there. Nightcrawler, take Xavier forward. Wake the girl before they do. Beast, with me. We push them back.”
“Wait!” the soldier at the panel shouted. “Our men are still back there!”
“Then pray they’re still breathing,” Magneto snapped. “Because we don’t have the luxury of saving them. You know what they want.”
The truth stung, but there was no time to argue.
Magneto raised his hands and every discarded rifle, pistol, and magazine ripped into the air, swirling into a lethal storm around him. Guns opened fire in unison, spitting death down the narrow corridor. Empty weapons became missiles, slamming into alien skulls. And when that wasn’t enough, strips of steel ripped from the walls themselves, twisting into spears that punched through armor and bone.
Cyclops fired another blast, this one ripping straight through the ceiling, blasting a skylight open. Storm seized the opening, winds whipping around her, lifting Cyclops upward.
On the roof, they braced themselves as the night exploded with more alien shapes clawing their way toward the moving train.
Inside, Beast and Magneto fought shoulder to shoulder, forcing the tide back.
And for the first time tonight, the mutants weren’t prey. They were the storm.
