Ultra Responsibility (My Hero Academia X Spider-Man Reader)

Issue 103 - The Bar With No Name Part 3

The first lesson Psylocke ever learned from the Hand was simple.

Pain was not punishment.

Pain was language.

The training course stretched through the underground halls beneath the old estate, carved from stone and shadow. Lanterns burned red along the walls, their light barely reaching the floor. Wooden beams crossed over pits. Narrow bridges hung over sharpened stakes. Hidden doors opened without warning. Every corner had been designed to punish hesitation.

Psylocke moved through it barefoot, dressed in black training cloth that clung to her skin with sweat. Her breathing was steady. Her hands were empty, but her mind was not. Purple light flickered around her fingers, forming the edge of a blade that hummed softly in the dark.

The first ninja came from above.

She sensed him before she saw him.

Psylocke twisted aside as his blade cut through the air where her neck had been. She drove her elbow into his ribs, swept his legs out, and slammed him into the floor without looking back.

Another came from the left.

Then two more from the right.

She moved through them like a storm trapped in a girl's body. A kick to the chest. A twist of the wrist. Her telekinetic blade flashed once and knocked a weapon from a masked hand. She ducked under a chain, leapt onto the wall, and kicked off it to bring another ninja down with both knees.

From the viewing platform above, Lady Deathstrike watched.

Her long adamantium nails rested against the wooden rail, each one shining in the lantern light.

"Too slow," she called.

Psylocke gritted her teeth but did not answer.

Another attacker rushed her from behind. She spun, caught his spear under her arm, and used his own force to throw him into the wall.

"Better," Lady Deathstrike said. "But instinct is not enough. Instinct is animal. The Hand is not animal. The Hand is discipline."

Psylocke ran forward, jumping over a low trap as blades snapped out from the wall behind her.

"Again, too slow," Deathstrike said. "A true weapon does not react. It knows."

Psylocke launched herself across a gap, grabbed a hanging rope, and swung to the next platform. The moment her feet touched down, three Hand ninjas surrounded her.

She fought them without pause.

One grabbed her wrist. She broke his grip and struck his throat with the heel of her hand. Another caught her shoulder with the flat of his blade, hard enough to send pain sparking down her arm. She ignored it. Pain was language. Pain meant continue.

She drove forward, blade forming bright and violet in her hand, and knocked all three aside.

At the far end of the course, a single red gate waited.

The finish line.

Psylocke ran for it.

That was when the floor opened beneath her.

She jumped, catching the edge with one hand, but two ninjas dropped from the beams above. One kicked her fingers loose. The other caught her by the back of the neck and drove her hard into the dirt below.

Before she could recover, more of them were on her.

A knee pinned her back. A hand forced her wrist behind her. Another pressed a blade close to her throat.