Chapter 297: The War Rages On
"Why is it you?" Iron Man stared at Captain America — a man he hadn't laid eyes on in ages — genuine confusion crossing his face.
Then he noticed it: Steve's left arm, fully intact, and the shield in his hands.
Smart as he was, it clicked into place almost instantly.
"Don't get the idea that saving my life makes us buddies now," Tony said. Even with Steve having just pulled him out of the fire, his feelings toward the man stayed as complicated as ever. He looked at Steve's righteous, dead-serious face, and felt a familiar flicker of resentment stir despite himself. After all, Steve's closest friend, Bucky Barnes, was one of the men who'd murdered his parents.
That wound had never healed for Tony. He wasn't magnanimous enough to just wave it away.
Steve didn't seem to register the tangled emotion beneath Tony's words. He simply said, dead serious, "Tony. Whatever's between us can wait. Right now we've got a shared enemy — the Chitauri, invading our home. We need to stand together if we're going to beat them."
Hearing that, Tony's resentment didn't disappear, but he understood well enough that now wasn't the time to settle old scores.
He nodded, turning his focus back to the distant Chitauri fleet.
With that, Steve hefted his shield and threw himself straight into the enemy ranks. Hawkeye and Natasha followed suit, coordinating their attacks against the Chitauri.
That's when Tony spotted Banner nearby. He raised an eyebrow. "Dr. Banner. So you're the one who dragged America's super-boyfriend out here."
Banner chuckled, reaching up to remove the suppressor from his head as he answered. "Tony, I was just following Ethan's orders. Right now, we need everyone focused on the enemy."
The moment he finished speaking, his body began to change violently.
His skin turned a deep, brilliant green, muscles bulging outward, until standing there in his place was the Hulk himself.
He let out a furious roar, and a single punch shattered an incoming Chitauri fighter craft to pieces.
"HULK!!!!!!"
Watching Banner transform, Tony instantly lost all interest in further conversation, muttering under his breath, "Don't you go and steal all my Friend Points."
That's right — the group chat had just posted a group bounty, which was exactly why Tony had been the first one out the door in the first place. Every alien out here was, functionally, a walking pile of Friend Points, and there was still plenty in the Marketplace he had his eye on.
The New York civilians nearby were equally stunned by the sight unfolding in front of them. They recognized Captain America immediately — America's household name — and the man who'd just transformed into the Hulk.
"Mommy, look! It's Captain America! He's alive!" a child shouted, pointing excitedly toward Steve in the distance.
"Thank god! With Captain America here, we're definitely going to beat these bastards!" another civilian said, brimming with confidence.
Captain America's return gave the once-hopeless crowd a fresh surge of hope.
They believed, with the superheroes leading the charge, the Big Apple would surely pull through this crisis.
Ethan, though, wasn't nearly as optimistic. Sure, with the Illuminati, the Avengers, and the X-Men all on the field, it looked like the battle had already turned — the Chitauri advance had stalled, and the defenders were even starting to push back.
But Ethan knew better. The Chitauri hadn't committed their full strength yet — he could sense three considerable presences still lurking behind the black hole. The Black Order, almost certainly, working under Thanos.
Ethan understood exactly what they were really after: the Space Stone in his possession, and the Mind Stone he'd taken from Loki. Both were exactly what Thanos needed. If it weren't for the fact that the Ancient One and old Odin were both still alive and kicking, Ethan figured Thanos himself might well have come here in person.
Right now, he and his opponent were locked in a kind of standoff — two players on a chessboard, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
Which was exactly why Hell's Kitchen had only deployed the X-Men so far — everyone else needed to stay behind and protect Hell's Kitchen itself.
Still, Ethan wasn't a patient man by nature. Every second this dragged on meant more damage piling up across the Big Apple, and he had no intention of letting things end with Hell's Kitchen sitting there completely untouched while the rest of the city burned. If that happened, once the dust settled, Hell's Kitchen would become the target of every bit of the public's and the federal government's resentment.
Ethan understood human nature well enough to know exactly how that would play out — why should their homes get destroyed while Hell's Kitchen walks away without a scratch?
With that thought, Ethan shouted, "Thor! Time to go find your brother!" and opened a portal.
"Figured you were about ready to burst."
That's right — Ethan intended to take the fight to them directly. If the enemy wasn't going to make the first move, he'd just send Thor to do it for him.
"Of course. My hammer's been aching for a good fight this whole time," Thor said with a grin. "You're sure you don't need my help over here, though?"
"I'm fine — this is my turf, after all." As he said it, Ethan seemed to sense something. His gaze snapped toward the black hole, and he added, with a knowing edge to his voice, "I've got company to attend to. Excuse me."
With that, he stepped straight through the portal.
"Company? What company?" Thor didn't quite follow, but he'd long since gotten used to Ethan's habit of speaking in riddles.
"Forget it. Time to go find Loki." Thor made up his mind quickly, grabbed his hammer, and launched himself skyward in a single powerful leap.
On a once-bustling street in Manhattan, the crowd suddenly scattered as if yanked by some invisible force, fleeing in a single direction all at once. Terror painted every face, eyes wide with fear of the unknown — as if something behind them was capable of destroying everything in its path.
A sudden, sharp whoosh cut through the air.
A massive scythe carved a cold, merciless arc through the sky, coming down without hesitation on a group of innocent civilians.
The one wielding that terrible weapon was none other than General Corvus Glaive, one of the five members of the Black Order.
Clad head to toe in black armor, scythe in hand, eyes gleaming with cold malice — he looked every bit like Death himself, walked straight out of hell.
Behind him stood his wife, Proxima Midnight, and another of the Black Order — Ebony Maw.
Proxima Midnight wore matching black armor, a sharp longsword in her grip, her gaze every bit as merciless as her husband's.
Ebony Maw, by contrast, carried himself with something closer to elegance — draped in a long robe, idly toying with a handkerchief, occasionally pressing it to his nose in obvious distaste.
"The air quality on this planet is genuinely terrible," Ebony Maw complained, his voice dripping with disdain and contempt.
Corvus Glaive seemed not to hear him at all, his gaze fixed steadily in one direction — toward what Loki had described as Hell's Kitchen, the location of their true target: the Tesseract.
"That should be the place Loki called Hell's Kitchen. The Tesseract's there," Corvus Glaive said coldly, his voice carrying nothing but grim resolve.
At the mention of Loki's name, Proxima Midnight's brow furrowed with irritation. "That worthless waste of space, losing the scepter Lord Thanos personally gave him. Now I'm the one who has to come clean up his mess. If Lord Thanos hadn't ordered me to stand down, I'd have killed that pathetic excuse for a god myself already."
"Whatever. We're here now. Let's grab both artifacts and take them back — and while we're at it, might as well finish off this whole planet too."
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