"We're superheroes. We protect civilians, and we would never act against the will of the people."
Captain Steve stood before the crowd with righteous conviction in his voice, like a man personally appointed to speak for justice itself. He had no choice but to put on that face. Just a few days earlier, the Avengers had already taken a brutal public beating, and if another scandal exploded at a moment like this, the situation would spiral even further out of control.
He knew exactly what the people in front of him were. They weren't innocent victims. They were opportunistic punks, scavengers, and street thugs who had tried to strip Tony like hyenas tearing at fresh meat. But that no longer mattered, because they had their phones out, their cameras on, and their recordings ready. In the age of public opinion, that was more dangerous than any weapon.
Hawkeye stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Captain Steve, what do we do?"
"What do we do?" Steve repeated, his expression darkening. He glanced at Tony, who was still injured and barely conscious on the ground, and a flicker of hesitation passed across his face. It lasted less than a second. Then he stepped forward and drove a heavy punch straight into Tony's forehead.
Tony slammed to the ground.
The surrounding residents froze in shock, and even the people filming forgot to speak for a moment. None of them had expected to see Captain America deck one of his own teammates in broad daylight. It was so absurd, so shameless, that it looked unreal even as it happened right in front of them.
Steve turned to the crowd and bowed his head, his voice grave and full of controlled sorrow. "Iron Man has been manipulated. He's lost control of himself," he said. "On his behalf, I apologize to everyone here today, and I hope you can forgive him."
It was a lie, clean and polished.
It twisted the truth so hard it practically snapped it in half, but Steve said it without flinching. He wasn't speaking to the people in front of him. He was speaking to the cameras, to the future clips that would spread online, to the faceless millions who would judge what happened from behind their screens. Protecting Tony didn't matter at that moment. Protecting the image did.
And the second those words left his mouth, the crowd's attitude changed completely.
"Then we need compensation!"
"No compensation, no forgiveness!"
"That's right! He broke our legs! He attacked us!"
Their courage swelled the instant they smelled weakness. A bunch of scavengers who had been picking at a fallen man now started acting like righteous victims. Hawkeye's face flushed red with anger. His hands curled into fists, and for a second it looked like he might really charge into the crowd and start cracking skulls.
Tony was their teammate. Their friend. It was already bad enough seeing him torn apart by those street animals, but Steve standing there and handing the mob a script to extort them with made it even worse.
"Captain, what the hell are you doing?" Hawkeye snapped, unable to hold it in anymore.
Steve lowered his head and spoke through gritted teeth. "We'll compensate them."
That was the final blow.
Black Widow, who had been watching in silence the whole time, actually let out a short laugh before catching herself. She understood exactly what Steve was doing. He was terrified of the media taking a chaotic scene and turning it into a public execution. That was why he had chosen the image of humility, justice, and restraint. He wanted the video to show Captain America apologizing to civilians, not the Avengers bullying them.
She understood the strategy.
She just didn't respect it.
"If the Butcher were here," she muttered under her breath, "this wouldn't be happening."
If that monster had still been with them, forget a mob of scavengers—even armed militants would have thought twice before trying anything. But a useful hound was still a hound, and once Director Fury had squeezed enough value out of him, he'd been "persuaded" into disappearing.
"What a joke," Natasha thought coldly. "Just another pretty political compromise."
On the ground, Tony lay motionless except for the faint tremor running through his body. Blood-tears slid down from the ruined sockets where his eyes had been, and the blank, empty stare on his face made him look less like a hero and more like some demon dragged up from hell and dumped in the dirt.
——
"Bullshit!"
Nick Fury's roar shook the room.
By the time the Avengers returned to S.H.I.E.L.D. with Tony for treatment, Fury had already heard enough to be furious, but the full report pushed him over the edge. The injury to Tony was bad enough. The compensation made him livid. The fact that Steve had let a pack of gutter trash pressure the Avengers into paying them was what truly sent his temper through the roof.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. is supposed to be the one leaning on people," Fury growled, his good eye blazing with anger. "Now we're the ones getting shaken down? By who? A bunch of street junkies and lowlife punks?"
If it had been some terrifying supervillain, that would have been one thing. Fury could accept losing a fight to power. But this? This was humiliation. It was weakness. It was letting the whole machine get slapped around by nobodies.
He turned toward Steve and jabbed a finger at him. "What the hell were you thinking? You really disappointed me this time."
Steve stood straight, his expression as serious as ever. "I was protecting the Bureau's image. They were recording everything. If that footage got uploaded, people with bad intentions would use it against us."
Fury stared at him for a long second, then barked back, "So your answer was to punch Tony in the head?"
"Yes," Steve said without hesitation.
For a moment Fury looked like he wanted to strangle him right there. The veins at his temple pulsed, and his blood pressure probably shot through the ceiling. But as furious as he was, he also understood the ugly logic behind it. Steve had acted in defense of S.H.I.E.L.D., even if the method was insane.
In the end, Fury forced himself to calm down. He leaned back slightly and exhaled through his nose. "Forget it. Tony's down for the count, so you're taking over as team leader."
Steve's eyes lit up at once. "Understood."
"And one more thing," Fury continued. "Agent Fitz has made progress on the symbiote suit research. You'll be going over there in the next couple of days."
That made Steve even happier. It was practically good news stacked on top of good news. He agreed so fast it almost looked childish, then turned and headed for the door with barely restrained excitement.
After he left, the room finally went quiet.
Fury stood there for a while, thinking, the anger in his face slowly cooling into calculation. "Steve needs someone to straighten him out," he muttered. "He can't keep going like this."
Then his thoughts shifted to Tony.
"The genius inventor is blind now," he said flatly. "That cuts his value down hard. If I want to keep him tied to the ship, I'll have to sweeten the deal."
Once he had pulled Tony Stark into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s orbit, the two of them had become bound together by mutual interest. If Tony rose, S.H.I.E.L.D. benefited. If Tony crashed, the damage splashed back onto Fury too. That was the downside of binding a genius too tightly—his losses became your losses.
Fury's gaze drifted off as an idea formed.
"The Kree had cybernetic eye tech," he murmured.
He knew cooperating with aliens was dangerous. He knew it was the kind of thing that could burn humanity alive if mishandled. But he also knew the ugly truth: human civilization was still a child compared to the things out there in the stars.
Too young.
Too weak.
And the weak always paid.
——
While the Avengers stumbled into deeper chaos because of Tony's downfall, Carnage was already carrying Doctor Octopus somewhere else entirely.
Before they even entered the estate, Otto saw the first warning signs. Ninja soldiers were stationed everywhere, standing silent guard around the grounds like shadows made flesh. They didn't speak. They didn't fidget. They just watched.
As Carnage led him deeper inside, the atmosphere shifted.
Pear trees stood in full bloom across the grounds, their white petals drifting through the air like snow and blanketing the stone paths below. There, in the middle of that strange stillness, one man reclined calmly beneath the blossoms as if the world itself had bent around him.
Carnage stopped and bowed his head. "Lord Locke," he said respectfully. "I brought the man you wanted to see."
Otto stared, confused.
"This is my savior?" he asked slowly.
Then he felt it.
A low, thrumming force rolled out from Locke's body in pale gold waves, each pulse brighter than the last. It wasn't heat exactly, and it wasn't pressure in the normal sense either. It was more like standing in front of a rising sun and feeling the world itself lean toward the light.
"He's… glowing?" Otto whispered.
He had once been a pure materialist, the kind of man who believed science would eventually explain and dominate everything. But after gaining control of the mechanical arms, after crossing into the world of monsters, mutants, and things that made ordinary logic look pathetic, that certainty had started to crack.
Then it broke.
He had become a believer in power.
And what stood before him now was power in a form so overwhelming it made all his previous convictions feel small and brittle.
As the natural energy in Locke's body climbed higher and higher, circles of pale gold appeared around his eyes like divine markings. He no longer looked merely human. He looked like something born above men, something closer to a god than a fighter.
Otto could only stand there, stunned.
The air itself stirred.
Then Locke opened his eyes.
At that moment, something in him had changed completely. He could feel it clearly now—the rhythm of natural force, the unity of body and world, the strange perfection of moving in harmony with heaven and earth. This was no longer just strength. This was another state of being.
His fingers shifted into a blade-hand.
Then he slashed.
A vast phantom sword-shadow screamed across the sky, stretching hundreds of meters and slicing through the clouds overhead as if heaven itself were made of paper. The sheer scale of it left Otto speechless.
"Power like that…" he murmured, dumbfounded. "How can anyone…"
Locke, meanwhile, looked almost disappointed.
"About a fivefold boost in combat power," he muttered to himself. "Not bad, but nothing crazy."
For him, this was just another leap forward.
After gaining the Demon Blade, the Xuanwu cultivation art, condensing a Martial Dao Golden Core, and awakening the Divine Tree bloodline, he had stacked one opportunity on top of another until he had become something outrageous. Even a basic Sharingan would have been enough to turn some nobody into a monster in New York.
But all of that power concentrated into one person?
That created a different class of existence entirely.
That created a god among men.
——
Doctor Octopus finally snapped out of his daze and stepped forward, sincerity filling his voice. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for sending Carnage to save me."
The moment he spoke, Locke heard the familiar tone he had been waiting for.
[Ding! Congratulations, Host. You have completed Doctor Octopus's moment of frustration. Rewards are now being calculated.]
[Ding! Congratulations, Host. You have obtained One Piece: Armament Haki.]
[Ding! Doctor Octopus has shown both shock and delight. This reward will be doubled.]
[Ding! Congratulations, Host. You have obtained One Piece: Zoro's Three-Sword Style.]
[Ding! Congratulations, Host. You have obtained Devil Fruit: Rumble-Rumble Fruit.]
Locke's eyes lit up immediately.
Now that was a reward package.
Armament Haki alone was enough to make his mind race. That power system was absurdly practical—an invisible armor that could harden the body, boost offense and defense, wrap around weapons, project force outward, and even bypass an exterior entirely to destroy something from the inside.
Hardening meant greater durability.
Entanglement meant enhanced strikes and reinforced weapons.
Emission meant force projected beyond the body into attack or defense.
Internal destruction meant bypassing surface resistance and wrecking the inside directly.
Every single variation was useful.
And the next two rewards were just as vicious.
While the so-called superheroes were taking losses and getting humiliated in public, he was the one walking away with the jackpot.
This was too damn good.
.....
Join my p@treon and read ahead by more than 60+ chapters.
Link : [email protected]/Sonic_Spectre
Free members can read the next two chapters for free on my p@treon