"Monster…"
Pierce recognized the figure before him. This was the same alien who had frozen an entire S.H.I.E.L.D. base solid not long ago.
Now, as Bant's footsteps drew closer, frost crept across every instrument panel in the main control room like moss spreading over stone.
"Fury, that idiot, actually colluded with an alien like you. Sooner or later he'll bring destruction down on all of humanity!"
Pierce spat out the words in fury.
As a Hydra operative, he was certainly no saint.
But as a human being, he genuinely loathed aliens, especially those who meddled in humanity's own affairs.
"First, I'm not entirely an alien. Second, the alien Nick Fury's been working with is someone else entirely. Third…"
Bant reached out, his mothman-like hand covering Pierce's face.
"Nick Fury won't have much of a role left on this Earth from now on."
An intangible arm passed through Pierce's body. In that instant, the leader of Hydra froze solid into a statue of ice.
He was no Captain America. Unlike the super soldier who could survive frozen for decades, Pierce's body temperature plummeted in seconds, his life force snuffed out just as fast.
Bant gave the frozen figure a light push with a curled finger. The ice sculpture toppled.
"Crack!"
The ice shattered, taking Pierce's corpse with it. Fragments scattered across the floor.
"Collect all the hero fragments, and you can summon the Supreme Hydra."
Bant chuckled coldly, stepping over the debris as he approached the main console. His watch flickered and morphed into a small alien creature.
At the same time, the polymorphic virus Bant had previously planted aboard the helicarriers activated. In moments, aside from the one Bant stood on, the other two helicarriers also fell entirely under his control.
"The mothership is mine!"
Truth be told, the helicarriers weren't all that useful to Bant personally. But if Norman Osborn was going to establish the Hammer of God Bureau, these would serve nicely as both deterrent weapons and mobile bases.
Besides, they wouldn't have to foot the bill for maintenance. The World Security Council would gladly allocate funds.
In fact, if they didn't spend the Council's money, the Council might actually get suspicious.
On the ground below.
The superheroes and Hydra operatives were still waiting for Pierce's attack.
But the expected nuclear firestorm never came. The helicarriers simply ascended into the clouds and vanished from sight.
Both sides stood in silence for a moment. Then the Hydra forces renewed their assault with even greater ferocity.
Peter scrambled up and down, dodging attacks left and right.
"Alexander Pierce wanted to wipe all of you out along with us! And you're still going to keep fighting us?"
"Those are necessary sacrifices!"
The Hydra soldiers couldn't care less. They kept attacking, kept shouting, refusing to surrender even as they saw the tide turning against them.
"For the new world!"
"Hail Hydra!"
The sight of thousands upon thousands of Hydra troops charging forward in unison was, admittedly, still rather awe inspiring.
At the end of the day, the superheroes only numbered so few.
By now, Nick Fury and his people were running on fumes. Connors' transformation had become wildly unstable.
Scales were already starting to flake off his body. His size was visibly shrinking.
He had injected four full doses of the serum at once to counteract the antibodies in his system, but even then the transformation had lasted far less time than he'd hoped.
The Falcon was only flesh and blood.
He and Captain America had become friends back in their workout days. When he heard Steve was a wanted man, he'd been determined to help him out. But now, surrounded by enemies on all sides, he was barely holding on.
Tony Stark's power supply was more than ample. His armor had way more stamina than he did.
But he couldn't take on this many people alone. Not unless he made up his mind to kill every last one of them.
Back in the Middle East against terrorists, he'd had no problem doing exactly that. One long range missile strike, no blood on his hands, and every enemy wiped out.
But this was different.
This wasn't a matter of dozens or hundreds of lives. This was tens of thousands of Hydra operatives.
"This is never ending."
Natasha panted heavily.
All of them had been forced back into a tight space, standing back to back in a small circle, fending off attacks from every direction.
And still the Hydra soldiers kept coming, screaming "Hail Hydra" as they threw themselves into the fray.
"Anyone got another idea?"
Sam asked.
"At this rate we'll drop from exhaustion!"
"There will be reinforcements!" Steve shouted. "We just need to hold on a little longer! I refuse to believe we're the only ones willing to fight!"
No sooner had the words left his mouth.
A wave of looping sirens echoed from the far end of the street.
George Stacy had arrived, leading the NYPD into battle.
From the opposite direction, several large trucks barreled through, crushing everything in their path. It was the Hell's Kitchen mob. More specifically, gangs under Kingpin's control.
Kingpin understood perfectly well that if Hydra actually won this war, his own criminal empire would face a grave existential threat. So without a moment's hesitation, he'd ordered his gangs into the fight.
Ironic, really. These gangsters were better armed than the NYPD by a factor of ten.
"Spider Man! I'm coming to help!"
From above, Daredevil swung in on his billy club, using the Times Square buildings to propel himself into the chaos.
The tide was starting to turn.
Seeing that the timing was about right, Bant opened a channel through the helicarrier's communications and broadcast his voice directly to everyone on the ground.
"Can everyone hear me? This is Hacker speaking. Mr. Osborn, I've seized control of the helicarriers. Hold on just a bit longer. The Iron Soldiers will be on site shortly."
"Mr. Osborn?"
Nick Fury's instincts immediately latched onto that detail. While everyone else was cheering the news that Bant had taken the helicarriers, Fury spat out a curse.
"Motherf…"
So that's how it's gonna be. The credit for turning the tide of battle goes straight to Osborn, huh?
Glory to Osborn. And the rest of them just end up looking like grunt laborers.
Nick Fury was bitter, but there was nothing he could say.
A moment later, he just let it go.
A Hydra infiltration on this scale, while not technically his fault, still happened on his watch. If anyone came looking for someone to pin the blame on, he wouldn't exactly walk away clean.
After all, someone had to take the fall.
Pinning it all on a dead Howard Stark obviously wouldn't satisfy public outrage.
Best case scenario, his black ass was getting fired. Worst case, he might even do a few years behind bars. S.H.I.E.L.D. would be shut down for good. Whatever came after that was none of his concern.
Instead of stressing over things he couldn't change, maybe he should start thinking about other options. Find a Skrull to do his prison time for him, then just vanish off into outer space somewhere and enjoy himself.
With that thought in mind, Nick Fury's trigger finger got noticeably lazier.
Right then, dozens of Iron Samurai descended from the sky, instantly surrounding Times Square.
"Hey, aren't those the same human tanks we saw at the Stark Expo? The ones I choked out?" Steve asked.
"Why the hell didn't he deploy these things sooner?" Barton grumbled.
These veteran agents were old hands at smelling a setup. Naturally, they caught a whiff of something fishy right away.
But like Nick Fury, they couldn't be bothered to care.
Working stiffs had no business worrying about the boss's shady dealings. Natasha, for one, felt zero sympathy.
With reinforcements pouring in from multiple factions, the Hydra soldiers quickly surrendered.
Of course, the forces here only represented the Hydra elements inside S.H.I.E.L.D. Plenty more Hydra cells remained hidden outside the organization.
But those would be rooted out one by one using the "Project Insight" algorithm.
The algorithm wasn't omnipotent, but any Hydra agent who so much as poked their head up would eventually expose a weakness.
The new rule was simple: poke your head out, get it chopped off.
And with that, the war was pretty much over.
Bant sat on his frozen throne inside the main control room, legs crossed, mentally tallying the major event he'd personally orchestrated.
Setting aside the spoils of war for now, what really interested him was reviewing how the plan had actually played out.
Honestly, the outcome was more or less what he'd expected, but there had been a few bumps along the way.
The biggest wildcard had been the Hulk.
He'd never imagined Pierce, as a contingency against extraterrestrial heroes, would actually drag the Hulk into this. If Bant hadn't been strong enough to take the Hulk down himself, things could've gotten dicey.
The other unexpected variable had been Steve Rogers.
Having seen the movies, plus having personally witnessed Steve lift Mjolnir, Bant's original script had called for Steve to close out the war by raising Thor's hammer high.
It would have been a perfect thematic fit for the name "Hammer of God Bureau."
Who could've guessed that Steve, consumed with self doubt over Bucky, would find himself unable to lift the hammer?
Thankfully, it hadn't led to disaster in the end.
But it had been a wake up call for Bant.
No matter how perfectly you plan, reality will always throw you a curveball.
"So in the end, there's no such thing as a perfect plan. Only perfect power!"
Seated on his throne, Bant had an epiphany!
With enough strength, you can bulldoze your way through any unfavorable situation. If you can't solve it, that just means you're not strong enough yet.
Therefore…
X Superman, activate!
Except, activation wasn't happening.
Bant leaned back, propping his feet up on the control console.
X Superman was strong, sure. Arguably a cheat code in physical form. But it had one fatal flaw.
If the two warring consciousnesses inside the mind couldn't find unity, X Superman simply couldn't move.
That was precisely why the invincible X Superman was also known as the "AFK Superman."
A game breaker, and a literal game quitter.
When faced with a crisis that nothing else could handle, X Superman was the ultimate trump card. But for minor, trivial issues, transforming into X Superman was itself the biggest danger.
"If I can't resolve the conflict between the two consciousnesses, transforming is pointless."
In reality, every Celestialsapien's dual consciousnesses had distinct personalities. Take the Galactic Gladiator, for example. His two minds were relatively aligned, allowing him to react quickly in battle.
But the X Superman inside the Omnitrix? Those two had a love hate relationship that bordered on obsessive.
They could debate for billions of years over whether or not to save the dinosaurs and still not reach a conclusion.
Bellicus would go out of his way to oppose Serena on principle. Then when Ben Tennyson made Serena cry, Bellicus would fly into a rage and kick Ben right out of the mental space.
"The X Superman problem has to be solved," he mused.
Sure, using cheat codes in a game can ruin the experience. But just because you don't plan on using a cheat doesn't mean you shouldn't have one.
Better to have and not need, than to need and not have.
/-\
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