"Go away!"
Steve's knuckles cracked against Bucky's jaw, bone meeting metal with a sickening crunch.
The blow rocked the Winter Soldier backward, just enough for Steve to slip past.
He darted through the smoke-filled corridor, lungs burning, his shield scraping sparks against the wall as he ran.
The door to the central control room slid open with a metallic hiss.
Steve slammed the hard drive into the command console.
The system lit up, blinking, recognizing Fury's override protocol. Green lights flashed across the interface.
"Carrier One… control restored." Said the AI voice in a calm monotone.
Steve exhaled, relief bleeding through his sweat-streaked face.
But then he looked up, and froze.
Through the panoramic window, the other two sky carriers soared higher, their immense hulls vanishing into the clouds like ascending gods of war.
Their underbellies gleamed with missile bays and ion cannons, casting ominous shadows over the city below.
"They're too far..." Steve whispered.
Behind him, the sound of heavy footsteps.. Bucky was back on his feet, stalking forward with cold fury, a terminator in flesh and armor.
Steve didn't move.
His shoulders sagged as he stared at the other two ships.
"It's over."
"We were too late."
Streets Below
People poured into the streets, shielding their eyes as the massive aircraft carriers blotted out the sky.
Children cried. Phones were lifted to capture footage. Sirens wailed.
The dark shadows cast by the twin sky monsters stretched for miles.
Inside a nearby clinic, Soren, an unassuming figure in a white coat, stood motionless.
His gaze pierced through the glass window, fixated on the sky with unnatural calm.
Patients tried to flee. But Soren… only narrowed his eyes.
"Still clinging to this plan, HYDRA?" He said softly, more amused than angry.
"You never did know when to stop."
He walked back to his chair, sat slowly, and placed two fingers on his temple. A faint glow shimmered around him.
The room fell silent, like the air had forgotten how to move.
Then, a magic circle formed beneath his feet, etched with arcane runes so old the air itself seemed to shiver.
"Insight plan?" Soren said.
"I have a better insight."
His fingers snapped.
Sky Above – Moments Later
At first, there was only heat.
Then, two points of burning light erupted in the sky, no, not light.
Meteorites.
Gigantic, fiery colossi tumbling through the clouds, trailing red-gold flame across the horizon.
They screamed like dragons as they descended, aimed like divine spears at the rising aircraft carriers.
On the bridge of Carrier Two, alarms shrieked.
"Unidentified objects incoming! Impact in six seconds!" a technician shouted, voice shaking.
"Evasive maneuvers!" Pierce barked through the comm. "Get those ships out of the—"
"Too late!"
Pierce stood frozen, the panic in his eyes betraying the calm he wore like a mask. On the monitor, both meteors closed in fast.
Then…Click!
He turned and found a pistol pointed at his temple.
"Game over, Pierce." Said a familiar voice.
The female agent's form shimmered, skin folding away like a digital disguise until Natasha Romanoff's icy gaze met his.
"You really thought you'd win? That we wouldn't plan for snakes like you?"
Pierce scowled. "You think stopping me changes anything?"
Natasha leaned in. "I know it does."
BOOM!!
The first meteor struck Carrier Two, fire consumed it in a split-second. Steel twisted like tinfoil. The ship erupted into a thousand burning fragments that rained down across the sky.
BOOOOOM!!!
Half a heartbeat later, the second meteor collided with Carrier Three. Another detonation. Shockwaves ripped through the clouds, and the horizon flashed like a second sunrise.
The sky turned red.
Below, buildings shook. Glass shattered. Fireballs bloomed like deadly flowers.
Burning debris fell, embedding themselves in the ground, in cars, in the bones of the headquarters.
The sky was a canvas of devastation.
Two aircraft carriers, once symbols of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s might, now fell like shattered monuments.
Fire trailed behind them as debris rained from the heavens. From the Capitol to the Potomac, the skyline trembled.
The world had looked up in fear of control. Now it stared up in awe of destruction.
Down below, Captain America, blood on his shield and smoke in his lungs, stood with Natasha Romanoff and Phil Coulson, their eyes fixed on the burning heavens.
No one spoke. Not for a moment.
Then Steve murmured. "That… wasn't natural."
"No." Natasha replied, slowly.
"That was the Doctor."
Phil Coulson looked down at the communicator in his hand, then up at the sky again.
"That was a friend's Hail Mary."
"Thanks… again."
And for the HYDRA agents watching from shattered control rooms, from crumbling corridors and panicked sublevels, it felt exactly like that.
"This is divine punishment!" Screamed one HYDRA technician, backing away from the monitors.
"A wrath of gods! We shouldn't have~"
Others didn't even speak. Some dropped their weapons. One simply sat down on the cold tile floor, eyes blank, muttering. "Thirty years of planning."
"Crushed… in fire."
"Every agent still loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D… this is Phil Coulson."
Coulson's voice crackled through emergency loudspeakers across every floor, stairwell, and hallway.
"The Insight Plan is gone. HYDRA's leaders are in disarray."
"Now is the moment, take back our home!"
His voice grew louder, steadier.
"Clear the halls. Seal the exits. Arrest every traitor still holding a weapon. Take your orders from the badge you swore to serve, not the snake behind it!"
The floor beneath him shook slightly from another explosion in the sky. But Coulson didn't flinch.
He looked to the agents gathering behind him, weapons raised, eyes steeled by betrayal and fire.
"Move out." He commanded.
The roar that followed was eternal fury.
Hydra cells tried to regroup, but the panic had cracked their chain of command. Some fired blindly. Others tried to flee.
Most never made it past the stairwells. SHIELD agents, once too afraid to act, now fought with vengeance.
A group of engineers from R&D charged a fortified room using nothing but riot gear and repurposed pulse grenades.
In the underground archives, a lone analyst barricaded the door and uploaded classified HYDRA logs to whistleblower networks.
And on the top floor, Natasha, still holding Pierce at gunpoint, smirked as he glared back at her.
"You were planning to take the world."
"Now look out the window. Nothing but ashes pierce."
Pierce, bloodied and sweating, muttered, "You think this ends here?"
"It ends with your trial." Natasha said, tightening her grip.
"If you're lucky."
Meanwhile Somewhere Unseen
In the quiet of the ruined medical wing, far away from the battlefield, Soren sat alone, fingers still gently glowing from residual magic.
He stared at his own hands.
"Meteor Class. Level 10. Faster cast time. Area yield improved."
He exhaled slowly, his voice low, calm, like a scientist taking notes.
"Not bad. But inefficient."
"Next time, one strike should suffice."
He didn't move anymore.
He didn't need to.
The explosion wasn't the end. It was the spark.
Over the next 24 hours, encrypted HYDRA files leaked worldwide. Decades of operations, black sites, political assassinations, and deep-cover agents were broadcast across the globe.
News anchors trembled as they read the names.
Nations reeled.
Allies panicked.
And the U.S. government, cornered by exposure and public outrage, made a quiet, historic announcement.
"Effective immediately, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, also known as S.H.I.E.L.D., is hereby disbanded."
"…"
Captain America stood at the edge of a battered rooftop, looking out over a city still covered in smoke.
Coulson walked up beside him, a file in his hand.
"They're calling it the Day of Fire." Coulson said.
"No one's really sure how to explain the meteors. Some say it was a weapon. Others… divine."
Steve didn't respond. He just stared.
After a moment, he said. "We fought for inches today. And he moved mountains without even leaving his clinic."
"You jealous?" Coulson asked.
"No. Just wondering whose side he's on."
Behind them, Natasha stepped out, quiet as ever.
"I think he's on his own."
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream