The Weight of the World
The moment the city halted, Owen knew that second was all they had.
Just one.
After that, even at that reduced speed, the sheer mass would be enough to tear through everything in its path and erase life from the map.
The air vibrated. The sky darkened beneath the colossal shadow. The ground, far below, was already trembling in anticipation of the impact.
Owen let out a long breath, deeply exhausted. His legs trembled for just an instant. Not from fear, but from the accumulated weight of everything he had already given before reaching this point.
"Hulk, crush him."
His voice came out steady, even though his body was already at its limit. Before anyone could respond, he vanished in a red flash.
"Tony, take care of the rest," he managed to shout as he faded from everyone's sight.
The heroes froze for a fraction of a second, confused. No one fully understood what Owen was planning. No one except Tony.
For Tony, it was not a brilliant idea. It was a terrible conclusion. One of those you know will work… and that should never be necessary.
Stark's eyes widened sharply. His mind accelerated, fitting the pieces together at an absurd speed. The humor vanished from his face, replaced by absolute seriousness. He slowly turned toward Thor.
"We don't have time to think," he said, his voice tense.
"Beach boy. I need you to go up there and keep the city falling perfectly straight. No bending, no tilting. Even all the way. Now."
Then he looked at Wanda. "You're his assistant."
Thor did not understand the full plan, but he saw something in Tony's eyes that left no room for questions. He tightened his grip on Mjolnir, nodded once, and hurled the hammer into the sky, shooting after it. Wanda began to float up behind him, her expression clearly worried about Owen. This was not the moment.
"Speedy and psycho surgeon, get the Captain and the two spies out. I don't need martyrs today," Tony continued, assigning tasks without stopping to breathe.
Ultron opened his mouth to say something, perhaps a mockery, as he watched everyone move at once. He never got the chance. His sensors registered the sudden increase in mass, energy, and velocity. He did not have time to process an adequate response.
A green mass appeared in front of his face.
Hulk grabbed him by the legs before he could rise, slammed him into the ground, and fell on top of him like a living tower. He lifted him again and smashed him into the earth over and over, each impact carving out new craters. Then, with half his body pressing down, he pulled with both hands.
Ultron shattered into pieces.
…
Owen emerged beneath the city just as it began to accelerate again. At that rate, in less than thirty seconds, it would collide with the Earth and destroy it completely.
"This isn't a punch from Superman… but it'll do," he muttered.
He placed his left hand against the rock descending like an entire world. He felt the vector energy of the fall, brutal and crushing, and absorbed it. He guided it through every muscle, every tendon, every fiber of his body, and returned it with a right-handed punch.
The impact barely cracked the surface.
A sting. Nothing more. For the first time since it all began, Owen understood that this would not be a matter of strength, but of absolute endurance.
Owen changed the flow. He received with the right, returned with the left.
He struck again.
Pum.
Time began to fragment. There were no seconds, only impacts.
Another.
Pum.
He did not stop.
Each blow increased his internal speed. Each exchange of energy made the contained force grow. He absorbed the fall. He returned it. Again and again.
For an instant, the city tilted slightly to one side.
Hundreds of lightning bolts descended at once. Entire buildings shifted in the opposite direction. Thor had intervened.
That helped. If the city bent, Owen would have to move, readjust, start over. He could not afford that.
When he passed the hundredth strike, his clothes no longer existed. Residual energy had reduced them to nothing. His muscles bled. Each impact forced jets of blood from his pores. Every fiber of his body screamed for him to stop. His mind simply did not listen.
Bum.
Now the strikes sounded like explosions. For microseconds, the city seemed to stop… before falling again.
Bum.
The next impact shattered the vibranium gauntlet. Vibranium could withstand impacts; not continuous vibrations, heat, and accumulated fatigue. The metal gave way, exposing glowing red scars along his right arm. The pain was unbearable. Owen bit down on his tongue until it bled.
That pain was worse than feeling his body tear itself apart from the inside.
Even so, he struck again.
Bum.
If he looked back, he could see the Earth. Too close.
His arms were bruised and swollen. The bones were probably splintering with every movement. Even so, he kept punching. So fast it looked like a single blow was hundreds layered on top of one another.
His face was covered in blood. Red energy coursed through his entire body, every part of his existence. He absorbed kinetic energy and released it without pause.
It felt like his arms weighed more than the city itself. And yet, his gaze remained fixed. Serious. Unbreakable.
"Aaaah!" he shouted, forcing one last surge.
A fully charged right punch. The energy changed in nature. It was no longer just motion. It was rage, will, and something dangerously close to self-destruction.
An explosion of red flames and kinetic energy engulfed the underside of the city. The fire was abyssal. For an instant, the falling speed slowed even further. The rock hardened by constant blows began to burn.
Owen opened his eyes for a microsecond. There was an almost excited glint in them.
He kept punching.
His left hand was pure kinetic energy.
His right hand, red fire.
As if that had given him a new impulse, the blows continued.
Above the city, Wanda and Thor were at their limit.
Wanda breathed with difficulty, holding massive sections together with her power, preventing them from splitting apart under the brutal force of Owen's strikes. Thor flew from one side to the other, hammering the areas that threatened to separate, forcing them back into place, keeping everything straight.
Tony kept cutting pieces off the mountain without rest, reducing its weight little by little. Vision did the same, turning intangible to pass through entire structures and fragment them from the inside. War Machine destroyed the remaining debris with missiles, making sure it fell as rubble and not as meteors.
Around the city, V.I.T.A.E.'s lifeboats, filled with civilians, watched in silence. They saw their home being slowly destroyed to save the world. No one looked away. They did not scream. They did not cry. Some prayed. Others simply stared, knowing that this spectacle would decide whether there would be a tomorrow.
"Looks like you could use some help," Nathaniel's voice echoed through the communicators.
"Sorry, old man," Tony replied without stopping. "Unless you've got weapons of mass destruction to throw nonstop, I don't think there's much you can do."
"Kid," Nathaniel answered calmly. "I'm a general. Of course I have those."
He gave a signal to the man behind him.
The submarine began firing ballistic missiles. Other submarines, from different countries, hidden near Sokovia, opened fire at the same time. The sky filled with white trails and fire, as if the entire world had decided to fight together, for the first time or perhaps for the last.
"It took me a while," Nathaniel added, "because I needed all these idiots to agree not to go extinct like dinosaurs."
The first missiles struck the edges of the city, tearing entire sections away. Even the heroes had to pull back to avoid being caught in the destruction.
Owen kept punching.
The explosions detonated far too close. He did not seem to feel them. In his focus, he perceived only one thing: the almost completely halted falling speed.
But the next strike came out weak. He tried to close his hand. It did not respond.
His arms no longer obeyed him. The rock began to push him downward again.
"I did everything I could," he said into the comm, barely audible.
"You did great, son. You can rest now," Nathaniel replied.
Owen smiled faintly when he heard his voice.
Then something grabbed him.
A cold, solid body wrapped around him. Vision phased through the rock, turned solid at the precise instant, and took him in his arms, pulling him out from beneath the city just before the weight came crashing down again.
Owen did not resist as he closed his eyes, seeming to rest.