"Too high to hurt."
Whoever came up with that must have known what they were talking about --- probably said it with a needle still in their arm.
Generally, when someone was on simulants or certain opioids, they didn't feel pain the same way.
And of course, they weren't as tired either, like their breath forgot it belonged to a body that could bleed.
Simply put, the body was still sustaining damage. It just wasn't registering in the moment.
That, undoubtedly, could lead to worse injuries, overheating, or even collapse once the effect wears off.
That, of course, was only true for normal humans. But even someone with a few powers wasn't exempt.
The illusion of invincibility still came at a high cost—both physically and mentally --- especially in high-stress situations like fights or physical altercations.
And that was what Ander Skyler was experiencing for the first time in his life.
"Haah… haah… damn it—damn it, why am I feeling numb all over? Am I not the chosen one?"
The adrenaline had already worn off, or maybe the drugs had finally run dry, because the moment he stopped fighting, it drowned him like a collapsing wave.
The unbearable weight sinking into his limbs, the tremble in his legs was no longer hidden by whatever swagger or delusion of control he had clung to while the wolves were dying around him.
In fact, a mortal body wasn't built for this kind of abuse, especially when whatever that god gave him was only half-baked and barely understood.
Captain America's strength, even in the movies, was only a hair above peak human performance, and Ander had just torn through living beasts like paper.
Maybe it was Wolverine's power keeping him upright, muscles pulling together when they should've been torn beyond use, ribs healing where they should've pierced through his lungs.
But even that had limits; he didn't have adamantium bones or unbreakable claws, and pain still reached him like a delayed threat.
His healing factor, though, kept him going, but it didn't erase the mental cost in the slightest—it just let him keep walking through it.
Also, this was his first time using that kind of force and power.
There would be a day when he could carry it with grace, maybe even rely on it, but right now wasn't his time.
The only real win so far, unexpectedly, was Susan Storm's invisibility.
In battle, in escape, in assassination or survival, it was a game-changer.
And more importantly, it let him hide his still-naked, blood-smeared body from whatever eyes might be out there, human or otherwise.
Maybe Susan's force fields would come later, maybe flight too, but for now, just disappearing was enough.
The last of the gifts, King Arthur's swordsmanship, remained silent in his bones.
To try it out, he picked up a stick, tried to move with it, see if something clicked, but it was like waving a twig in the dark.
Whatever that power was, it wasn't awakened yet, or maybe he wasn't worthy enough to awaken it.
Regardless, his body was still slightly bruised, though those were not worth mentioning, as they were healing rapidly.
The biggest question was: where to now?
Because all he could see was an endless expanse of white, while the sun was hidden behind red clouds.
It was time for the sun to finish its job.
Thinking there wasn't much time left before the long night, Ander trudged through the frozen woods, his fingers crusted with dried blood and his stomach hollow with hunger.
Even so, that didn't change his primary goal: to find shelter for the night.
Exhaustion weighed down on him, each step making his legs feel like lead.
If someone else were here, they would have missed their home by now, but Ander never liked his old world or its life of mediocrity.
First thing first, he needed to clean himself.
The metallic stench of blood clung to him, turning his stomach. Without hesitation, he knelt and scooped handfuls of snow, scrubbing his skin until the blood was gone and his hands stung from the cold.
The next big problem was, of course, food. The emptiness in his belly made even the bitter smell of pine bark seem like a meal.
But as a modern man with morals, Ander refused to eat the raw flesh of the wolves he'd killed earlier. Without fire or a way to cook, consuming them was out of the question.
He scoured the forest floor with frantic eyes, shoving aside frozen leaves and digging into crusted patches of old snow, hoping to find berries, mushrooms, or anything edible. But the woods offered nothing but twigs, dead grass, and patches of yellowed snow he knew to avoid.
Some time later, his search turned out to be slightly successful.
Not far ahead, he spotted something: a small cluster of three berries and a few fresh leaves on a low branch. With numb fingers, he plucked them, crushed them together for flavor, and swallowed the bitter mix, hoping it would ease his hunger, if only slightly.
With the sky darkening, Ander turned to his primary and final task: building a shelter.
Thankfully, all his National Geographic and Discovery Channel knowledge came in handy, thanks to years of guidance from gigachad among the men, Mr. Bear Grylls.
He created a small igloo for himself and soon knocked off to sleep.
...
The next morning, the sun was already high, glaring through a pale sheet of clouds that veiled the sky like a judgmental god too lazy to smite but more than willing to watch.
Ander stirred inside his snow shelter, his breath fogging in sharp bursts. For a moment, he thought death had come to drag him off, until he tried to roll over, and searing pain shot up from his groin like a curse.
"Ahhhhhh!"
Ander Skyler had no choice but to scream as loud as he could. Few could tolerate such insufferable pain, and he certainly wasn't one of them. His morning wood, his very own ICBM, had frozen stiff to the roof of the igloo.
He reached down, grimacing in pain. When his fingers brushed it, the chill bit so viciously he flinched back, as if it might snap off like brittle ice.
"What the fuck, man? I'm gonna die of hypothermia with a frozen boner. This better not be my legacy…"
Thankfully, he remembered he couldn't die now that he had the powers of Captain, Wolverine, and two other icons. But that didn't mean there was no pain.
Regardless, he sat up, wincing as blood returned to parts of him in slow, painful pulses. With careful urgency, he rubbed snow from his groin, each swipe of his palm more desperate than the last --- not for pleasure, but for the preservation of his cheap bloodline.
Once the frost had melted and his body stopped treating him like a tundra popsicle, he crouched at the threshold of his makeshift igloo, eyes narrowed against the reflective blaze of snow.
No more games. He needed clothes.
A basic layer of cloth to keep his balls from turning into icicles? That had now risen to priority number one.
So, after rinsing his mouth and washing his face with snow, Ander moved west, then circled back, choosing a path that dipped between broken tree stumps and gnarled roots where the wind couldn't howl directly through him.
That's when he saw it: thick tracks in the snow, broad, flat, and deep.
A massive---big---fat---white creature.
A damn! polar bear.
It had to be.
The size of the pawprints, the drag of the belly line between them, the fresh smell of meat, fur, and musk, it all screamed apex predator of the frozen wastelands.
To make matters worse, it was close.
Ander had no fear of fighting the white giant, but every fight he could avoid, he should avoid.
Thus, invisibility kicked in like second nature, his body slipping into the background like a ripple in glass. He stood absolutely still as the beast ambled past, not twenty feet away, its fur white as moonlight, nose twitching in the air. It snorted once, turned its head, yet saw nothing.
Ander waited quietly until the bear lumbered off in disinterest. Only then did he move again, slower now, more cautious, but inwardly grinning because, if nothing else, Susan's gift was already saving his life. Just as he'd thought, it was a lifesaving boon --- sadly, it couldn't save his dick.
Damn, he needed to find clothes faster.
Just when he thought the gods had given enough for one morning, he spotted something pleasant low to the ground, peeking through a patch of disturbed snow near a fallen branch: cloudberries, orange-gold and gleaming like little droplets of sunlight.
Like a hungry beast, he lunged at them.
Sadly, most were inedible, but a few --- only a precious few --- were good. He gathered them like treasure anyway, pressing them between his fingers and licking the juice with reverence.
"Finally, something good."
The flavor was tart, sharp, and wet enough to feel like a meal, at least enough to motivate him to explore further. Thus he walked for hours, cursing the gods and changing direction when he found nothing, only to repeat the cycle until his shadow grew smaller.
With the sun now blazing overhead like a white coin nailed to the sky, he had no sense of time, no way to tell whether it was morning, noon, or the edge of night.
So, once again, he picked a direction to the left walking a few more kilometers, thanks to his incredible stamina and peak human condition.
That's when he found it.
A glint.
Small, barely noticeable unless the sun hit it just right.
He bent down, brushed the snow away, and picked it up: a handmade hairpin, a twist of silver wire coiled around a polished stone.
Too expensive to be lying alone on a road like this, too delicate for a man --- it must belong to a woman.
Ander searched the forest for a while. Then his head snapped up, scanning the horizon.
His gut dropped.
"What kind of fucking world did that old bastard throw me into…"
The trees ahead were marked by bloody death as five bodies strung up like warning ornaments, each swaying gently in the wind, their skin pale and brittle, eyes hollow sockets, stomachs torn open so their intestines dangled like ropes of red seaweed. Each corpse hung from a different tree.
"Tsk… bastards. They had to hang them that high? How the hell am I supposed to rob their corpses now?"
Boots. Cloaks. Belts. All there.
Just out of reach, their legs twitching gently in the breeze, as if they hadn't quite accepted they were dead.
As he looked for a way up, he noticed something else: horse tracks leading in a half-circle around the grove, and another pair of footprints --- human, smaller, being dragged. By the looks of it, they were fresh.
He crouched beside the drag marks, tracing them with his fingers.
Someone was taken.
Recently.
And whoever did this, they were still nearby.
"Hmm… I mean, stealing from the dead is bad, isn't it? So I might as well loot someone who's alive."