Sam stood alone in the Atlas Biotech penthouse, the city laid bare before him through the wide glass walls. The skyline burned. Stark Tower glowed like a beacon, its roof torn open by the vortex above. Leviathans slithered out of the wound in the sky, dropping swarms of Chitauri soldiers into the streets. Explosions, screams, lightning—New York was unraveling.
He watched quietly, hands clasped behind his back looking down at the burning city. The sky was torn open, Leviathans falling out like monsters from a nightmare. People were running, screaming, and the Avengers were barely holding on. Thor and Hulk were no longer fighting for them. Amora had turned them into weapons.
"…This is so damn wrong," Sam muttered, pacing his office as the muffled sounds of chaos echoed across New York on the live feeds. His reflection glared back at him from the glass. "Thor getting mind-controlled? Hulk turned into a puppet? Amora showing up this early? None of this was supposed to happen."
He rubbed his temples, almost laughing at the absurdity. "The plot's broken. Totally shattered. This wasn't how it went in the movies. This wasn't how it was supposed to go at all."
He slammed his hand against the desk, frustration spilling out. "If I step in now, that's it. No going back. But if I don't—" He glanced at the feed again, watching Thor and Hulk tear through his would-be allies. "—they're dead. The Avengers, the X-Men, the city. Game over."
Sam leaned against the window, staring out at the distant glow of destruction. "Great. Just great. I didn't even want to be a hero, and here I am, forced into a boss fight that wasn't supposed to happen.
His hands clenched into fists, a low growl escaping his throat. "Fine. If the plot's broken, then I'll just break it worse."
His gaze fell on the matte-black suit folded neatly on the workbench in the corner. F. He crossed the room, placed a hand against the suit, and willed it to change.
"System," he said quietly. "Strengthen combat suit by one hundred times. Priority: concealment. Defense. Identity obscuration."
The hum of unseen power resonated through the air.
> [Ding! Strengthening initiated…]
[Material: Composite-weave armor reinforced x100.]
[Result: Adaptive Phantom Exosuit.]
The suit shifted under his hand. Black spread like ink, erasing every seam until the armor was smooth and seamless. Fractal lines of silver traced across its surface, flowing like circuitry before sinking into the material. A faceless helm unfolded upward, its mirrored finish bending light into strange distortions. Even his own reflection warped when he looked into it.
> [Properties:]
– Identity Obscuration: Visuals, audio, and biometrics scrambled.
– Adaptive Defense: Physical, energy, and psychic resistance multiplied.
– Stealth Protocol: Bends light and EM waves, suppressing detection.
– Command Link: Fully integrated, responds only to the host.
Sam flexed his fingers. The armor moved like a second skin, silent and absolute. His voice, when he tested it, came out filtered—calm, cold, unrecognizable.
Perfect.
—---
The streets of Manhattan were a battlefield. Smoke choked the air, and the ground trembled with every clash of gods and monsters.
Thor, the God of Thunder, was a storm given flesh and fury. Mjolnir came down, It didn't just smash against Captain America's shield; it unleashed a concussive blast of pure, elemental force. The vibranium screamed in protest, transmitting a shockwave up Steve Rogers' arm that felt like every bone turning to glass. He was thrown backward, not just into a wall, but through it, the brick and steel surrendering instantly. He landed in a cloud of dust and splintered drywall, his world a ringing, painful haze. Gasping, he forced himself up, his uniform torn, his body throbbing ache. "Thor!" he shouted, his voice raw, scraping against his throat. "Listen to me! This isn't you! Fight it!"
The only reply was the crash of Mjolnir arcing toward him again.
A streak of red and gold intercepted. Iron Man slammed into Thor's side, repulsors blazing at full, unprecedented power. "Pick on someone your own size, Point Break!" Tony Stark's voice was strained, the suit's systems screeching warnings of catastrophic overload.
The blasts were enough to vaporize a tank battalion. They did nothing but slow the Asgardian for a few precious seconds, scorching the gold on his armor, making him turn his head. With a guttural roar that drowned out the repulsors, Thor surged forward, backhanding the suit with a crack of enchanted steel on reinforced alloy. Tony was flung sideways like a discarded can, carving a trench through the asphalt before crashing into the husk of a city bus.
On the other side, Hulk roared and charged like an avalanche. Natasha rolled just in time as his fist cratered the street where she stood. Clint loosed an explosive arrow, but Hulk swatted it out of the air like a fly before backhanding Hawkeye through a storefront window.
"Clint!" Natasha called out, firing round after round at Hulk's head. The bullets bounced harmlessly, earning nothing but another ground-shaking roar.
The X-Men pressed the fight alongside them.Cyclops, positioned on a unstable overpass, fired optic blast after optic blast, each one a calculated, ruby-red beam of concussive force. They hammered into the Hulk's chest, forcing the behemoth back a step, then another, a relentless, metronomic push. "Keep him contained! Don't let him get momentum!" Scott Summers yelled, his jaw clenched tight
Overhead,Storm battled Thor, a duel of deities. Her lightning, raw and white-hot, crashed against the divine storm he commanded.
Jean strained under the weight of civilians trapped behind the wreckage, shielding them from falling debris with raw telekinesis. Sweat ran down her brow as she shouted, "I can't hold them both off! One of them will break through—"
Hulk's roar, a sound of pure, undiluted hatred, severed her words. Enraged by Cyclops' constant barrage, he abandoned his advance and instead slammed both of his colossal fists into the ground. The effect was apocalyptic. The shockwave wasn't a ripple; it was a localized earthquake. The street bulged, then buckled
Bobby scrambled to throw up an ice wall, to protect a group of fleeing medics. The Hulk simply smashed through it in a single punch, the ice exploding into a million glittering shards.
Kitty Pryde was a blur, phasing two civilians through a collapsing billboard only milliseconds before it crushed them, reappearing solid and gasping for air. "There are too many!" she cried, her voice terrified.
And above it all, Amora stood on the edge of a rooftop, watching with calm delight. Her smile widened, her voice carrying across the storm as if whispered into their ears.
"Dance, little heroes. Dance until you break."
—
The battlefield raged—heroes pushed to their limits, Amora's puppets tearing through them like gods among ants.
Then—
CRACK!
A blur sliced through the chaos.
Thor didn't even see it coming. One second he was raising Mjolnir for the killing blow, the next his jaw snapped sideways as a brutal roundhouse kick sent him hurtling across the skyline, crashing through a skyscraper with an ear-splitting boom.
Hulk roared and swung wildly—but the same blur struck him mid-charge, boots slamming into his chest. The green giant was launched backward like a cannonball, tearing through concrete and steel until he disappeared in a cloud of rubble.
For the first time since the invasion began, silence fell.
The Avengers froze. The X-Men froze. Even the Chitauri turned their heads in confusion.
Only Amora remained composed, though her eyes narrowed sharply. "What…?"
That was when the blur appeared behind her. A gloved hand gripped the back of her neck with surgical precision—then BAM! drove her skull into the rooftop. She crumpled instantly, unconscious, her spell chains breaking with a shatter of green sparks.
Thor and Hulk stilled where they lay in the distance, their eyes flickering back to their natural colors.
But before Sam could even stand fully straight, a shadow loomed behind him.
The Executioner.
The Asgardian juggernaut towered with his rune-etched axe, sneering as he swung downward with killing intent.
Sam vanished.
The world seemed to hold its breath for a fraction of a second. The Executioner's axe, a blur of enchanted Uru metal, completed its murderous arc. BOOM! The rooftop exploded, not just splitting, but vaporizing into a cloud of concrete dust and twisted rebar, leaving a smoldering crater where Sam had stood. The Executioner's roar of triumph died in his throat, replaced by a prickling, primal unease. The silence was wrong. It was the silence of a vacuum, of a grave.
Then—CRACK! The sound wasn't just an impact; it was the catastrophic failure of divine biology. A fist, moving with the force of a meteor strike, slammed into the small of his back. The Executioner felt his rune-etched ribs splinter, not one or two, but a whole cage collapsing inward. The air left his lungs in a shocked grunt as he was hurled across the street like a discarded toy. He crashed through the facade of a skyscraper, glass and steel screeching in protest, tumbling through offices and cubicles in a whirlwind of paperwork and debris.
He came to a stop embedded in a server farm, the machines sparking and dying around him. Gasping, he shoved himself free, his axe materializing back in his grip with a thought. He spun, his enhanced senses screaming, his warrior's instincts flaring—but the corridor was empty. Only the flickering emergency lights and the dying whine of electronics answered him.
A whisper of air above him. He looked up.
BOOM!
The heel of a boot connected with the crown of his helmet with the precise, catastrophic force of a piston. The enchanted metal, forged in the heart of a dying star, didn't just dent; it contracted, screaming as it was crushed inward. The world dissolved into a blinding white flash of agony. The impact launched him not just into the skies, but through the atmosphere itself, the air growing thin and cold in an instant.
Before the dizzying ascent could even register, before gravity could reclaim him, Sam was there again. Not falling with him, but waiting for him at the apex of his flight. The Executioner's bloodshot eyes, visible through his visor's slit, widened in disbelief. Sam's elbow descended like the hammer of an angry god, driving him back down toward the earth. The descent was not a fall; it was a targeted bombardment. He struck the pavement not like a man, but like a kinetic weapon, the intersection below bulging upward for a heart-stopping moment before collapsing into a crater twenty feet deep. The shockwave blew out windows for a mile in every direction.
But Sam was already gone carrying the Executioner for a warm welcome to Earth
The fight blurred into something unreal, a nightmare of pain and disorientation.
One strike in New York. He was staggering from the crater, one arm hanging useless, when the air in front of him solidified. A open-palm strike that didn't just hit him, but compressed the space around him before detonating. He felt the fabric of reality warp, heard the zip of a teleportational jump, and—
Another in Paris.—he was spinning through the air, the Eiffel Tower a fleeting, impossible glimpse to his left. A kick to his kidney sent a nova of pain through his nervous system. Another zip.
A kick that sent him flying through Tokyo's neon night. The world became a streaking palette of electric blue and hot pink.
A silhouette waited for him against the full moon—a kick to the jaw that reversed his momentum and—
A punch that drove him across the dunes of Egypt. The dry, scorching air of the desert filled his ruptured lungs. He plowed a hundred-yard furrow through the sand before bouncing and skidding to a stop at the foot of the Great Sphinx. Gasping, spitting blood and sand, he saw his own fractured reflection in the monument's timeless stone eye. Then a shadow fell over him. Not from above, but from in front, as if the sun itself had been blotted out. A punch to his sternum lifted him off the ground and launched him backward, the pyramids blurring past in a streak of gold and shadow. Zip.
A knee to the gut in the frozen Siberian wastes. The temperature plummeted from blistering heat to soul-killing cold. The air burned his lungs. He was on his knees, vomiting a stream of blood that froze instantly on the permafrost. The wind howled, a lonely, dying sound. He looked up, tears freezing on his cheeks, and saw Sam standing silently amidst the swirling snow, a specter of absolute finality. Before he could beg, before he could even form a thought, a knee rose with impossible speed, catching him under the chin. He felt his teeth shatter, his jaw unhinge, and the world went black for a microsecond before— zip.
A finishing blow that hurled him back into New York. He was weightless, broken, a puppet with its strings cut. He recognized the skyline he was hurtling toward. The same street, the same crater. He saw his own axe, still lying where he had dropped it. He braced for the impact, a pathetic whimper escaping his lips.
It never came.
Instead, a hand caught him by the throat an inch from the ground, halting his terminal velocity with effortless, terrifying control. The force of the stop traveled back through his broken body, a final, insulting jolt of agony. The hand held him there, suspended over his own failure, and then, with a contemptuous flick, threw him the last inch into the rubble.
The Executioner tried to rise, his body a ruined tapestry of pain. He coughed, a wet, ragged sound, and a torrent of blood splashed onto the cracked concrete. His fingers, numb and broken, scrabbled for his axe, but it slipped from his grasp like a dead thing. He looked up, his vision swimming. The figure before him was no longer a man; it was a force of nature, a walking oblivion.
"W-what…" he wheezed, each word a knife wound in his chest. "What…are you…?"
Sam's boot settled against his chest plate, the gentle pressure an unbearable weight. There were no words. No taunts, no boasts, no grand revelations. There was only the work. The silence was more terrifying than any threat. It was the silence of the abyss, the void from which nothing returns.
The Executioner wanted to pray to the All father. He wanted to scream. But all that came out was a choked rattle.
CRACK.
The sound was not loud this time. It was final. A dry, precise snap, like a branch underfoot in a dead forest. The Asgardian's body, all its divine might extinguished, went utterly, completely limp. The silence that followed was absolute, and infinitely more frightening than the chaos that had preceded it.