Hawk suppressed the heat in his chest. He did not rush to Manhattan's main battlefield.
The Leviathan war-beasts of the Chitauri swarmed through the portal, enormous bioweapons clad in thick alloy armor.
Even without fighting them, just their size alone made the gap clear—earth to sky.
If he had a Cloth, maybe he'd join the fight there.
But for now? No.
After all, Queens had plenty of Chitauri swarming like locusts too. No need to head into Manhattan.
That battlefield belonged to the first Avengers.
Not him.
Yes, he was stronger now.
But only stronger.
Awakening the Microcosmos was just the beginning, the starting line.
Not the ending.
So—
Hawk didn't go anywhere. He didn't even launch an attack. He simply crouched at the ruins of his home, waiting like a hunter for the Chitauri to come when they sensed their comrades had fallen.
Much easier than chasing them himself.
After all, they could fly. He couldn't.
And there was another thing.
He lived in a slum.
What was a slum?
Put simply—ambulances that arrived in three minutes for Manhattan's rich took thirty minutes to reach here.
Same for surveillance cameras.
In the rich districts, even garbage cans in alleys had cameras watching. In the slums? Not even the main roads had working ones.
And if there were cameras, by the next day they'd already be stolen and sold off.
Soon enough—
From the shadows, Hawk spotted two Chitauri soldiers flying in, responding to the deaths of their comrades.
His eyes lit up.
Two minutes later—
Thud!
Thud!
Two more corpses lay neatly beside the ones he had already left as bait.
Their hovercrafts, now without riders, turned and flew away, autopilot carrying them back toward the hive.
Hawk quietly melted back into the shadows.
A minute later—
Alarms from the hive ship triggered. The sudden surge in Chitauri deaths in Queens had been noticed.
A signal was fired down.
The soldiers rampaging through nearby streets—blowing apart buildings, burning cars, massacring civilians—suddenly stopped.
They turned in unison.
Gathering under the command of their squad leader—taller, broader, riding a larger, more menacing hovercraft—they headed straight for Jackson Heights.
In an instant—
They arrived above the ruins of the apartment.
And there, they saw four broken corpses of their fallen.
"Skrrrk!"
"Hissss!"
For a moment, the squad leader and six soldiers froze.
Then—
They received new orders.
Their hovercrafts powered up.
In the blink of an eye, they fanned out into a circle around the block.
Eyes cold, claws on triggers—they opened fire.
Like biological machines, merciless.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The entire neighborhood was blanketed in destruction.
Buildings shattered, roads split apart, cars erupted into fireballs.
The Chitauri soldiers kept firing, faces expressionless, until their hovercrafts ran out of ammunition. Only when their captain ceased did they stop as well, mechanical in their precision.
By then, the district had been erased—reduced to a wasteland.
Crumbling apartments.
Burning cars still exploding.
It looked more like war-torn Iraq than New York.
The Chitauri captain scanned the silent ruins with his oversized green-pea eyes. Satisfied, he turned his craft to leave, relaying the all-clear to his mothership.
There could be no survivors under such overwhelming fire.
Certainly not humans, those pathetic beings who couldn't even leave their own planet.
And so—
Orders from the mothership were transmitted through their vision. Time to leave.
The captain turned. The six remaining soldiers followed, hovercrafts banking in formation.
But—
As they turned their backs—
One soldier's body suddenly bent like a boiled shrimp. With a wet crack, its chest exploded outward.
Then—
Another.
Another.
Another.
All five left soldiers convulsed, their chests bursting open with fist-sized holes.
Their torsos ripped apart from back to front, as if someone had punched clean through them.
Only then did the sound catch up.
Six thunderous booms cracked the air.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The captain's head snapped up. The sound of thunder in his ears.
In an instant, instinct screamed.
He leapt off his hovercraft, abandoning it without hesitation.
A second later—
His own personal craft exploded in midair.
Boom!
…
(End of Chapter)
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