I Became Spider-Man's Cousin in Anime Crossover

Chapter 320 A Real Man Never Looks at an Explosion Head-On

Alexander Pierce stared wide-eyed, bloodshot eyes that almost bulged out of their sockets. His eyeballs were filled with a desperate, venomous gaze, filled with endless resentment and confusion, as he stared at Bucky's blood-splattered face, which remained as cold and indifferent as an ice sculpture.

In the final moments of his life, Alexander Pierce's mind was filled with a series of questions.

Why?

The program started successfully!

He read out all the secret phrases used for brainwashing, without missing a single word or making any mistakes!

Not long ago, he had even witnessed how the person in front of him, as a loyal guardian, intercepted Captain America's deadly move and saved his life!

Why is that?!

Amidst a flurry of thoughts, Alexander Pierce, as the mastermind behind Hydra, could be said to have spent his entire life scheming and manipulating the fates of countless people in order to achieve Hydra's ambitions.

They treat the world as a chessboard, human lives as chips, and build all of Hydra's achievements upon the suffering and despair of others...

Now, we are about to completely clear away the obstacles and truly reach that uninhabited peak...

How could I have died at the hands of a puppet I had awakened myself, a puppet that should have been under my absolute control?

How could he possibly accept such an ending?

Driven by a surge of adrenaline, Alexander Pierce, in a final burst of energy, suddenly became like a wounded and raging beast, waving his hands and attempting to skin the "traitor" alive before him.

Even if it's just a scratch on his face, leaving only a tiny scar, it would be fine!

However, even setting aside the difference in strength between the two...

Bucky, with his icy expression, clearly had no intention of even giving Alexander Pierce's last humble wish a chance to be fulfilled.

Almost the instant Alexander Pierce made a move, the metal hand that held the warm heart and was soaked in blood suddenly clenched its five fingers inward under Alexander Pierce's gaze, which was filled with despair, anger, disbelief, and a myriad of other complex emotions!

"Pfft—!"

Accompanied by a short, muffled, nauseatingly loud popping sound.

The heart that once carried Alexander Pierce’s endless ambition, conspiracy, and twisted desire to control the world did not last even a second before it burst open!

The tough fibers of the heart muscle were torn apart by brute force.

The strong walls of the ventricles and atria were squeezed and crushed into a blurry, red and white mass of rotten flesh.

Warm blood, mixed with dark tissue fluid, sprayed outwards like a punctured water balloon!

A few drops, still carrying the lingering warmth and life force of Alexander Pierce, splashed into his own mouth, which was instinctively wide open in agony and horror, but which he would never have the chance to close again.

That salty, fishy, ​​and scalding taste was the first and last time he personally experienced the sins of his life.

"Thump!"

With his heart ruptured and completely deprived of blood supply, Alexander Pierce's knees buckled. Like a puppet with its strings cut, he collapsed heavily and utterly without dignity to his knees.

The upper body that had lunged at Bucky now hunched forward helplessly and fell heavily to the ground.

The excruciating pain that penetrated to the bone, accompanied by boundless darkness and a suffocatingly heavy stench of blood, quickly overwhelmed all his senses and remaining consciousness.

Resentment, bitterness, fear, regret...

All the complex emotions intertwined and exploded wildly in the last moment before life was completely extinguished.

Just a few seconds later, as Alexander Pierce's vital signs ceased, he vanished into eternal, absolute nothingness.

At this point, most ordinary, upright heroes would probably think that Alexander Pierce was as dead as could be.

Therefore, based on the principle of respecting the dead, they chose to give Alexander Pierce a final moment of dignity and spare his body.

But Bucky clearly didn't think that way.

Such tender considerations are absent from his thought process.

Even he himself delivered the fatal blow to Alexander Pierce and confirmed his complete death at close range.

In those grey-blue eyes, as lifeless as the surface of a frozen lake, there was not a trace of relaxation after completing the mission, nor any hint of the satisfaction of a successful revenge.

The metal left hand, covered in sticky blood and bits of flesh, was slightly raised, and without pausing, it began to rummage through the pockets of its combat uniform and the lining of its tactical vest, both of which were also soaked in blood.

The fabric rustled softly against each other, its sound unusually clear in the blood-soaked silence.

Soon, Bucky found a grenade. And as naturally as breathing, after taking it out of his pocket, he pulled out the safety pin.

The next second, Bucky bent down and used the straps on the inside of the shield to sling it behind his back, freeing his right hand to grab Alexander Pierce's hair.

There was no pity, no disgust, only indifference towards the items to be destroyed.

With a forceful tug from his right arm, the upper body of the rapidly cooling and stiffening corpse was forcibly pulled up, assuming a grotesque and twisted supine position. Its unseeing eyes, like those of a vengeful ghost, were now fixed intently on Bucky.

Unfortunately, after doing dirty work for Hydra for so many years, Bucky was already used to this kind of look and couldn't be moved or afraid in the slightest.

Along with his left hand, which was tightly gripping the grenade, without the slightest hesitation, as if inserting a bolt into a pre-drilled hole, he precisely and brutally shoved the entire grenade deep into the huge, hollow opening in Pierce's chest cavity! The metal casing pressed against the edges of the broken ribs and the cold, shattered internal organs, producing a dull squeezing sound.

Having done all this, Bucky released his grip on Alexander Pierce's hair as if casually discarding trash. He let the body, now without external support, fall heavily back into the pool of blood, splashing up a thick spray of blood.

Then Bucky turned around and slowly walked towards Riley and Steve.

"boom--!!!"

A short while later, a muffled, extremely loud explosion suddenly erupted from behind Bucky!

The intense flames, mixed with an even stronger, pungent smell of burnt meat and gunpowder, swept in from behind Bucky like a scorching hurricane.

However, the legendary round shield on Bucky's back absorbed the vast majority of the blast's impact. The remaining portion was not even enough to make Bucky, with his super soldier physique, stumble or stop in the slightest.

Throughout the entire process, Bucky acted as if he were simply passing by a stall that was setting off cheap fireworks, without even flinching.

That brief but intense "fireworks show," contributed by Alexander Pierce's mutilated body, merely became a noisy backdrop as he moved closer to Riley and Steve.

Finally, with his back to the rising smoke and flying debris, Bucky stopped, displaying the attitude that "a real man never looks back at an explosion." He stood less than three meters away from Riley and Steve.