Mark of the Multiversal Pretender

<Leo....I'm done here.>

Leo, still busy fighting with the cowboy, heard Buddy's voice through his ear piece, however he was wondering why does he seem so down?

'Did something happen down there? Was he caught and trying to lure me in? God dammit, I might have to change my death plan.' Cursing under his breath, Leo decided he might have to teleport in with full force.

"I enjoyed our fight, comrade. But it is time for me to finish this in one slash!" Announcing his next attack like a true small time villain, Leo pointed his two sharp claws towards the Cowboy.

"Hmph, we'll see." The cowboy simply snorted in arrogance, still confident in his own strength. From what he saw during their previous class, The Shredder is probably just a normal person with a slight increase in Strength, speed and senses, his durability seems to be not that strong because if it is, why would he keep dodging or blocking all of his bullets then?

Confident in his analysis, the cowboy didn't feel threatened by Leo's words.

*Bang!* x12

Without saying anything anymore, the cowboy quickly drew both of his revolvers again and this time, spent all the bullets towards Leo's exposed eyes.

Seeing all the bullets coming towards his eyes, Leo wanted to dodge or block it but knowing that he was supposed to escape now, decided to just dodge a few and let himself be hit.

You know, one thing that is amazing when it comes to Raven's morphing ability is that in terms of changing appearance, imagination is the only limit.

He could literally morph into someone without a head and nothing bad would happen to him.

That's what he's gonna do in here. Once the bullet made an impact on his head, he would pretend to have been truly affected by the bullet and fall on the ground, all while using Raven's morphing ability to create a small sized bullet hole on his eye.

And that's exactly what happened next.

*Thud!*

Falling on the ground, Leo sensed the cowboy approaching him, his steps reeking of the same arrogance as earlier.

"Told ya, boy. Still the same as the others, weak and full of arrogance." The cowboy blew the smoke coming out of his revolver's barrel before spinning it and sheathing it back on his strap.

*Mumble*

Hearing a mumble coming out of Leo, the cowboy got curious and approached him before crouching.

At the same time, the cowboy also got to see the bleeding hole on Leo's right eye, the blood was still oozing out and seems like it won't stop any moment.

Despite it being a fake, it looks so real that the cowboy didn't doubt it was being faked.

"You have any last words, boy?" Once closer, the cowboy finally heard Leo's mumbling.

"....What's your name?" It turns out to be a question.

"My name? Well since I admire your bravery for doing this and not killing anyone earlier, perhaps I could do you this favour. Consider it my goodbye to you, Shredder. My name is John Arthur."

"I see. See you in hell, John." Once getting his name, Leo grinned and replied, confusing the cowboy now known as John Arthur.

"Hmm?" Not knowing what Leo meant by his words, John just assumed it was just an empty threat that holds nothing.

If only he knew what's going on in Leo's mind.

'Hey Genesis, I still have those explosives in my inventory that I got from a Gacha draw, right?'

[Yes?]

'Imma blast this mother fucker out.' Widening his grin, Leo noticed that John was about to stand up and leave, so he didn't hesitate anymore.

"Like I said John, see you in hell." Leo said for the last time.

*Toot Toot* x5

John squinted his eyes at Leo and activated his dead-eye power, making things go in slow motion, if Leo had something of a last resort, he would need to be cautious.

'What's that sound?' He muttered under his breath in confusion and through his Dead-eye power, he noticed that Leo took out something from his left pocket.

Seeing a small black round ball with a blinking red light followed by the ticking sound, it only took a second for it to click on John's mind.

'An explosi-!?' However, despite everything being in slow motion through his Dead-eye power, that doesn't mean he can move as fast as his eyes can see. While his perception and reaction time is increased, his physical body still shackles to mere human strength.

*Boom!*

Everything was too late as an explosion not only engulfed them, but also damaged the front side of the White House, causing the white pillars to crumble into pieces, destroying a small part of the White House.

***

On the underground, Buddy also felt the explosion, which is prominent due to the cracks and dust that came from the stone ceiling.

However despite feeling this, Buddy never once cared about it since he's currently on the run.

A few minutes earlier right exactly as the Super USB finished downloading all of the data from the server and he informed Leo that he's done here, the owner of the 'supposed' desktop that he's using earlier suddenly came back which led him to this situation.

"Stop that man!" Currently, all the security and soldiers underground were giving chase to him through the hazy maze of a hallway.

Buddy doesn't even know where he is at anymore. The only reason he got this far and hasn't got caught yet is because of how he takes advantage of the masking technology.

With his masking technology, he would sometimes tweak it and change himself back to his child form, shocking everyone but would also give him the necessary time and space to escape.

Since they weren't expecting him to transform into a child, they weren't also expecting him to use his small size advantage by running through the gap of their legs.

Thanks to this, he was still alive and kicking at this moment.

However from the looks of it, it won't be too long before they adapt to him and start making countermeasures against him.

'Leo, oh Leo. Where are you!?' Buddy cried out in his heart, he wanted so much to yell at his ear piece but that would be too risky and might reveal that he's not alone in this operation, making the chase much harder than usual.

Unknown to him, Leo has already arrived and is currently running behind him.

The reason why no one has seen him yet was because he's currently wearing his Panther Habit and activated the stealth function.

Due to his cautiousness, he was wary of what he would meet once he activated the Thunder God mark but now seeing that Buddy is being chased around, he sighs in relief.

'Time to go.' Leo muttered to himself and touched Buddy's shoulders, startling him, thinking that the security guards had finally caught up to him.

*Swoosh!*

Before he could fight back from his freedom, he saw that his surroundings had changed, from the cold hard stone walls to the familiar walls of their laboratory.

"Wha-?!" Turning around in confusion, when Buddy saw Leo, he sighed in relief and his legs that have nene aching for the past 5 minutes of constant running for his life, finally gave out.

*Thud!*

"W-What took you so long!" Accusing Leo, Buddy pointed his finger angrily towards him.

"Sorry about that, I had to make my death as majestic and memorable as possible." Leo shrugged his head and said.

"What do you mean Majestic and Memorable?!" Buddy's face twitched and he yelled again, throwing the Super USB towards his face angrily.

*Plap!*

Catching the Super USB with ease, Leo sauntered towards the Super Computers and inserted the Super USB.

Countless machine codes flashed within the screen before Leo finally got access to it.

"Let's see. Thousands of folders with each worth 1 TeraByte? What the fuck is this?" Leo's cheeks twitched.

Should he perhaps create his own Artificial Intelligence first? But that would take too much of his time.

'Unless there's already an Artificial Intelligence I could work out and just modify it to my bidding?' If this were a cartoon, a light bulb would've appeared on top of his head as Leo suddenly got an idea.

'I could just work on the Artificial Intelligence that I stole from Buddy's grandma.' Remembering the Artificial Intelligence that could scour through the servers within minutes, Leo smirked and was about to take out the private server containing the said A.I.

'No, doing it now is risky. If I take the server out right now, Buddy would recognize it.' Shaking his head, Leo decided to bring Buddy out of the laboratory for now.

Before he could do so however, he heard Buddy speak.

"Do you think those experiments are real?" Buddy asked, sadness can be seen plastered on his face.

"Hmm? What do you mean, Buddy?" Sitting beside him, Leo noticed that his sadness must be connected to his question.

'Did he see something in that underground?' Leo made an assumption which is slightly plausible.

"When I was tinkering with that computer, I skimmed through the files and saw this certain folder containing videos and stuff."

"Are the government really dissecting children and adults just for the sake of discovering how powers came to be and how they can duplicate it?"

"Is that what you are sad about?" Leo patted his back and asked. However, Buddy's answer confused him.

"No."

"Huh? Then what are you sad about?"

"I saw grandma and grandpa's name on a list as the head scientist of those projects."

"Oh."

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[Next Chapter: Ch. 123 - ElastiGirl's official debut!]