S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, Low Earth Orbit
"Natasha, do you have a visual?"
Director Nick Fury stood at the central command console, his solitary eye glaring intensely at the high-definition monitor. Thousands of miles away, a Quinjet was tearing through the night sky.
Thick, dark clouds billowed violently as the Quinjet flew at maximum velocity, chasing the gargantuan shadow looming dead ahead.
"We're in pursuit, Director," Natasha Romanoff replied over the comms, her voice tight with focus. "But the target's speed is incredible. We're struggling to close the distance."
Clint Barton sat in the co-pilot's seat, his eyes glued to the instrument panels. "According to the scanners, this behemoth is radiating a massive, off-the-charts energy signature." He paused, squinting at the radar. "Wait... I'm picking up another reading. There's a huge, hostile biological mass down below, inside the ruins of a collapsed church."
"The target is diving!" Clint shouted. "It's dropping altitude fast, swooping directly toward the biological mass!"
Listening to Hawkeye's rapid reports, Fury gripped the edges of the console, his knuckles turning white as he stared at the ultra-clear feed.
RUMBLE!!!
SKREEEEEEOOOONNNKK!!!
A draconic roar, deafening as thunder, pierced through the clouds and shook the heavens for nine miles in every direction.
Back at the church ruins, Venom had just finished grinding Deadpool into the dirt. The symbiote's spider-sense suddenly flared with absolute, paralyzing terror. High above, the clouds churned violently. A sonic boom shattered the air, and Venom rapidly snapped his massive head upward.
A silver-white monstrosity was plummeting from the sky. As it roared, the sheer displacement of air created a localized hurricane. The moonlight caught its metallic, pearlescent scales, casting an enormous, terrifying shadow over the entire city block.
The air pressure instantly grew heavy, suffocatingly dense.
The people who had fled the church and were running down the streets suddenly froze, cold sweat soaking their backs.
Their limbs grew icy, their bodies trembling uncontrollably. It was an unspeakable, primal fear rising from the depths of their DNA. It was the absolute submission of lower lifeforms in the presence of an apex, mythological predator.
But the Venom symbiote, driven by its alien arrogance, refused to show weakness. It opened its blood-red maw and bellowed back.
ROAR!!
The Blue-Eyes White Dragon did not flinch. It continued its lethal dive.
Seeing the dragon closing in, Venom planted his feet, anchored himself to the bedrock, and launched his massive fists upward to meet the strike.
BANG!
The collision was catastrophic. Venom's pitch-black fists slammed directly into the dragon's armored snout.
A shockwave of pure, violent kinetic energy swept out in all directions, completely obliterating the surrounding pavement and grinding the bedrock into a massive, spiderweb crater.
But in that exact moment, Venom realized a horrifying truth. The silver-white dragon was vastly heavier, denser, and stronger.
An unstoppable force traveled straight down Venom's arms.
Venom was blasted backward like a cannonball, violently plowing a trench through the city street.
As everyone watched in absolute shock, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon flared its massive wings, blotting out the sky. It landed gracefully amidst the rubble, causing a secondary gust of wind that blew away the dust and smoke.
"Director, are you seeing this?" Natasha asked, bringing the Quinjet into a high-altitude hover.
On the Helicarrier, Fury replied softly, his face grim. "I see it."
He didn't even know where to begin. Where did these two monsters come from? Were they extraterrestrial? Native anomalies?
Down below, Venom flipped over, pulling his head out of the rubble. "Who the hell are you now?!" he roared furiously.
The Blue-Eyes White Dragon didn't dignify the symbiote with a verbal response. Instead, it unleashed another deafening roar. Everyone on the ground covered their ears in agony, feeling as though their blood had turned to ice.
Seeing the sheer contempt in the dragon's glowing blue eyes, Venom snapped. He transformed into a blurring black meteor, closing the distance in the blink of an eye. His arms shifted, hardening into massive, spiked warhammers. He brought them crashing down, the compressed air buzzing sharply.
The Blue-Eyes White Dragon simply raised one massive, clawed hand and swatted forward, as casually as one might brush away a fly.
BANG!
In front of a dumbfounded Peter Parker and the hovering S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Venom was sent flying through the air once again, crashing through another abandoned building. The dragon's movements were utterly relaxed. The opponent was simply too weak.
Peter turned his head to ask Kaneki what was happening, only to realize the Ghoul was gone. The moment the dragon had appeared, Kaneki had sensed the overwhelming aura, backed into the shadows, and quietly vanished.
Venom slowly pulled himself up from the debris. Staring at the pristine white dragon, the symbiote finally felt genuine fear. It couldn't see a single path to victory.
Black matter surged across Venom's back. Thick, tendril-like threads wove together, expanding into a pair of massive, grotesque bat wings. With a powerful leap, Venom kicked off the ground, whipping up a gale as he desperately took to the sky to flee.
The Blue-Eyes White Dragon did not chase him physically.
Instead, it stood tall, its sapphire eyes glowing with radiant energy. It tilted its majestic head back, aiming its open maw at the retreating black speck. Deep within its throat, a sphere of blinding, super-compressed white-blue energy began to gather.
Burst Stream of Destruction!
A hyper-concentrated beam of white-blue light erupted from the dragon's mouth, piercing the night sky like a bridge between heaven and earth. It crossed the distance in a fraction of a second.
Danger! Extreme danger!
The spider-sense on Venom's chest screamed. Hearing the air atomizing behind him, Venom threw a glance over his shoulder. His milky-white eyes shrank to pinpricks as a vast, blinding whiteness engulfed his entire field of vision.
BOOOOOM!!!
A blast akin to a localized nuclear detonation ripped through the stratosphere. Venom was entirely consumed by the Burst Stream of Destruction. Every cell, every molecule of the symbiote and its host was instantaneously vaporized. There would be no regeneration.
The white-blue beam pierced through the cloud cover, illuminating the night sky as brightly as the midday sun. A dazzling, circular shockwave exploded outward, instantly dispersing the storm clouds and leaving a massive, hollow ring in the sky.
A moment later, the overwhelming backdraft hit the surface, sending hurricane-force winds howling through the streets. Fortunately, because the blast occurred at such a high altitude, the structural damage to the city was minimal.
Its job done, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon spread its magnificent wings and launched itself vertically into the sky, rocketing upward at an impossible speed.
"Target is ascending!" Natasha warned, pushing the Quinjet's thrusters to the max.
But as she breached the cloud layer, she found the sky completely empty.
"How is that possible?" Hawkeye exclaimed, frantically checking the radar. "A monster that large can't just vanish! It's completely gone from satellite surveillance!"
On the Helicarrier, Agent Phil Coulson frowned deeply. He stared at the frozen image of the dragon on his datapad. The appearance, the posture, the distinct blue eyes... it was itching at the back of his mind.
'Do all dragons look exactly like this?' Coulson wondered. Suddenly, a very specific memory clicked into place, and his face turned stark pale.
Back on the ground, Peter Parker rubbed his eyes. "Kaneki? Where did you go?"
He looked around the empty alleyway, realizing the white-haired boy was long gone. Peter sighed, frustrated. He still hadn't gotten the chance to ask if he was literally the Ken Kaneki from the comic books.
'Whatever,' Peter thought tiredly, clutching his bruised ribs. 'I'll just go ask Light tomorrow.'
Church Ruins - S.H.I.E.L.D. Secure Perimeter
S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical teams had rapidly set up a quarantine perimeter, holding back the gathering crowds of New Yorkers. Natasha Romanoff walked through the ruins, her boots crunching on the pulverized stone. Agents swarmed the area, using tongs to collect small, inert flakes of black symbiote matter and sealing them in hazmat bags.
"Agent Romanoff, we found a living survivor..." a junior agent reported, looking highly uncomfortable.
Natasha followed the agent toward the blast crater. Her cold, professional expression instantly hardened into one of sheer disgust.
"Well, hello there! I see a gorgeous redhead has come to rescue me!"
Deadpool was writhing in the dirt, completely naked. His crushed body was knitting itself back together in a grotesque display of snapping bones and bubbling flesh, yet his mouth was moving a mile a minute. What revolted Natasha wasn't just the nudity, but his horrifying, scarred, avocado-like skin.
Venom hadn't been able to kill him; the sheer physical trauma had merely slowed down his healing factor.
"Bag him," Natasha ordered frostily. "Truss him up, blindfold him, and throw him in holding. He's a direct eyewitness to the hostile entity."
...
The Loft, Chelsea
Light Inksworth stood casually on his balcony, the cold wind ruffling his hair. He looked up at the endless night. The massive, circular hole in the clouds still faintly glowed with residual energy.
Whoosh!
A streak of white light shot down from the sky, shrinking rapidly. Light calmly raised his hand and pinched his index and middle fingers together, effortlessly catching the glowing card.
The Blue-Eyes White Dragon was safely back in his deck.
A moment later, a shadow dropped onto the balcony. Ken Kaneki stood up, leaning heavily against the railing.
"Thanks for your hard work, Kaneki," Light said, stepping forward and patting the boy's shoulder. "I didn't expect Venom to adapt and grow that powerful. Sorry to put you through the wringer. I only intended for you to test out your Kakuhou."
"It's fine," Kaneki said softly. He grimaced, his pale face flushing with a feverish heat. He gripped his lower back. "I just... I need to eat. And I need a quiet environment right now."
"Alright, there is..."
"Light, let me go into the Warehouse," Kaneki interrupted, gritting his teeth. A jagged, crimson Kagune suddenly burst from his back, twitching and swelling unstably. "It's quiet enough in there."
"Understood."
Light waved his hand, and Kaneki vanished instantly, pulled back into the System's Warehouse space. On Light's interface, Kaneki's avatar appeared inside his own independent dimensional grid.
The System's Warehouse wasn't just a dark, empty void. For sentient summons, the internal space could be dynamically customized to fit their needs—a highly humane feature of the Mangaka System. However, Light knew they couldn't stay in there indefinitely; the absolute isolation would eventually drive anyone insane.
But for Kaneki, who was on the painful verge of a biological evolution, the absolute solitude was perfect.
'It seems that centipede form was really pushing his limits,' Light thought, scratching his chin. 'Will he be okay? Yeah, he'll grow from this.'
As soon as Kaneki was stored, Alice's holographic avatar materialized next to Light. She crossed her arms, a very human-like frown on her face. "Sir, you realize you've completely exposed yourself with this stunt, right?"
"Exposed what?" Light asked calmly, walking back inside. He tapped the crystal ball resting on his coffee table.
Alice floated after him. "You let a gigantic, recognizable dragon loose in the middle of Manhattan, right in front of S.H.I.E.L.D.! They aren't blind."
"And then what?" Light asked, unmoved. He swiped his finger across the projection, zooming out from the church ruins and panning up toward the cloud layer.
"You're usually quite smart, but are you acting foolish on purpose?" Alice demanded. "Exposure means a squad of heavily armed men in black suits kicking your door down tomorrow morning! They might seize your entire company!"
Light couldn't help but laugh.
He tapped the projection, locking onto the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier hovering in the stratosphere.
"Director Fury is a very anxious man, Alice. He scrambled a fleet of Quinjets and prepped his Helicarrier over the city, ready to drop heavy ordnance. But fortunately, his war room is well within the range of my Telescope Technique."
"Sir, are you even listening to me? Fine, I wash my hands of this," Alice huffed, slamming her holographic hands onto the table. They phased right through the wood, glitching into pixels before solidifying again.
"Don't worry," Light smirked. "In fact, the Director is going to answer your concerns for me. You just lack an understanding of human paranoia."
Light tapped the crystal ball, and the audio-visual feed of Nick Fury materialized in the center of the room. Alice stopped pouting and stared at the projection with intense curiosity.
Inside the Helicarrier Command Center.
Director Fury was standing at the conference table. In his hand, he held a freshly printed copy of Weekly Shonen Jump—specifically, the premier issue featuring Yu-Gi-Oh!.
He slammed the magazine down, pointing at the glossy, full-page spread of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. He looked deadpan.
"Coulson. Are you telling me that the Class-A extraterrestrial threat that just leveled two city blocks... is a character from a comic book?"
"Director, the biometric rendering and energy signatures we captured have a ninety percent visual match to the artwork," Coulson explained nervously. "So... yes."
"So, you're suggesting this monster is the 'Blue-Eyes White Dragon'." Fury crossed his arms, his lone eye narrowing. "Does that mean the cartoonist, Light Inksworth, possesses a superhuman ability to summon fictional characters into reality?"
"It... appears so, sir," Coulson responded cautiously.
"If that is true, then he is effectively a god," Fury said, pacing slowly in front of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows. "A reality warper of the highest magnitude. But answer me this: have any of his other comic characters appeared in reality?"
"No, sir. Just this one."
"So," Fury continued, his voice low and dangerous. "You want me to believe that a literal god... spends his days arguing with printers and publishing weekly manga?"
"Uh..." Coulson was speechless. He frowned. "Then how do you explain the exact match?"
"If he isn't a god, then there are only two logical conclusions," Fury stated, holding up two fingers. "One: He somehow witnessed this dragon in secret, and decided to draw it in his comic. Or two: He legally owns or controls this dragon, and is rubbing it in our faces through his media empire."
Fury looked at Coulson. "Which one do you think it is?"
Natasha walked into the room, leaning casually against the table. "Why don't I just go ask him? I'm betting it's the first option."
"No. I'm betting it's the second," Fury countered darkly. "This kid seems to know a lot of hidden truths. If he controls a beast capable of vaporizing an entire city block with a single blast, it means he commands firepower that rivals S.H.I.E.L.D. And if that dragon wanted to, it could easily tear this Helicarrier out of the sky."
Maria Hill interjected from her console. "Sir, since we don't know the extent of his capabilities, shouldn't we bring him in for questioning immediately?"
"Agent Hill, we must be cautious," Fury reprimanded her sharply. "If it's the first scenario, taking him by force is fine. But if it's the second? What if we send a strike team and he summons an army of these things? Do we drop a nuke on Manhattan? We don't have the firepower to engage in an all-out war, especially since the Fantastic Four just refused an alliance with us."
Fury was a man defined by extreme caution. He never bet the house on a losing hand. He only acted when he calculated an eighty percent probability of success. Right now, Light Inksworth was an unquantifiable variable. Fury wasn't stupid enough to kick the hornet's nest.
"Here is the play," Fury commanded. "Natasha, I want you to infiltrate Marvel Entertainment undercover. Get close to him. Find out what he knows and what he controls. Furthermore, raise Light Inksworth's threat index to Level 8. No one engages him without my direct authorization."
Back in the Loft.
"You see, Alice? That is human nature," Light smiled, spreading his hands towards the crystal ball.
"How is that possible?" Alice frowned, her advanced processors struggling to compute the illogical leap. "His reasoning is entirely flawed."
"It's simple. Fury is terrified of the unknown," Light explained, turning off the projection. "He'll wait until his precious Avengers Initiative is fully assembled before he even thinks about using force against me."
"But right now, you're just a paper tiger."
"Exactly," Light chuckled, stretching his arms and heading toward his bedroom. "I'm a house cat pretending to be a tiger. But by the time Fury gathers his courage to strike... I won't just be a tiger. I'll be a god."
Light turned off the lights, his eyes reflecting the faint starlight from the window. Nick Fury thought he was being cautious, but in reality, he was playing perfectly into Light's hands.
The Director had lost the game before it even began.
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Word count: 2826
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