"Are you ready? I've been waiting for you for quite some time. I hope you've brought more than just these few men; it would be a shame for such an operation to end so anticlimactically," the Gurongi avatar said casually, looking at the SHIELD agents stepping out of the vehicles that had surrounded him.
"You are surrounded. Surrender immediately!" a SHIELD agent barked, weapon raised and leveled at the avatar with extreme caution.
Despite the firearms in their hands, the agents knew from their briefing that the target before them defied common logic. Furthermore, the target showed absolutely no sign of the tension or vigilance one would expect from someone cornered.
In fact, the avatar's posture suggested he had been waiting specifically for them. It gave the encircling agents the absurd, creeping sensation that they were the ones being hunted.
"And if I say no? What then?" the avatar asked with genuine amusement.
"We will take necessary measures, and at that point, we cannot guarantee you won't be harmed," Rumlow said, stepping forward. He leveled a handgun loaded with Nerve-Breaking Bullets at the avatar.
"You think you can wait for us without a care because ordinary bullets don't threaten your kind," Rumlow continued. "But the weapons we carry are equipped with special ammunition designed to counter Gurongi regeneration. It destroys your cellular recovery capabilities..."
"Enough. I don't need a lecture."
The avatar waved a hand dismissively. "The recent Gegel games were merely appetizers before the main course, involving only the weaker participants. But I have been watching. I am well aware of the power of the special weapons you humans have developed."
"However," the avatar tilted his head, his tone dripping with mockery, "do you truly believe that just because you have a weapon that can damage cells from the inside, you—this handful of people—are capable of dealing with me?"
Rumlow didn't bother to answer. He simply flicked his right hand, and the surrounding SHIELD agents opened fire instantly. A dense hail of specialized tranquilizer rounds shrieked toward the avatar.
Yet, as the electrified rounds drew near, they seemed to strike a resilient, invisible wall. They jerked to a halt in mid-air, suspended in place. The powerful electric currents—designed to paralyze a grown man instantly—flickered out visibly. The internal sonic vibration devices failed to trigger. Instead, a layer of thick frost rapidly crystallized over the bullets.
Rumlow saw the phenomenon and, though he didn't understand the science, knew it was the avatar's doing. Without hesitation, he squeezed the trigger of his own weapon.
The Nerve-Breaking Bullet streaked out, but it met the same fate as the others. It froze in the air, its momentum killed. The subsequent chain-reaction explosion intended to destroy Gurongi neural repair was completely suppressed by the cold.
This time, however, Rumlow clearly observed a faint white mist swirling around the avatar.
"Standard firearms won't work; they can't even get close. Anything within a certain range seems to be flash-frozen," Rumlow reported grimly into his collar comms.
"Deploy the sonic weapons," Nick Fury's voice crackled with the command.
The agents on the vehicles immediately activated the weapon systems. The roofs of the surrounding SUVs slid open, and devices resembling giant speakers rose up—the upgraded version of the sonic cannons General Ross had used against the Hulk.
The cannons unleashed a massive concussive blast. The avatar was hit by the immense pressure and vibration; the ground beneath him sank five or six centimeters under the sheer force of the sound waves.
"Is he suppressed?" an agent asked, backing away from the overlap zone and looking at the seemingly immobilized avatar with a hint of relief.
Rumlow, however, kept his brow furrowed. According to SHIELD's intel, the human form was merely a disguise. A Gurongi could only exert its true power in its monstrous state.
Which meant...
"This is actually quite interesting. The modern Rinto truly are different; you've developed quite the variety of toys," the avatar said calmly. He lifted a hand, testing the pressure of the sonic cannons as if checking the wind.
"Fine. You're worthy of seeing my true form."
With those words, he transformed.
Jet-black scales, hard as armor, rippled across his body until he looked as though he were wearing a suit of jagged plate. Two black serpents sprouted from his back, writhing and hissing with a life of their own. Like a predator about to strike, he scanned the surrounding SHIELD agents.
Once in his Gurongi state, he moved with total freedom, completely unaffected by the direct pressure of the sonic cannons.
"Use the grenade launchers!" Rumlow shouted. Despite the chill running down his spine as the black snakes stared at him, he forced himself to snap the orders.
The agents dropped their rifles, pulled pre-loaded grenade launchers from the vehicles, and opened fire.
The avatar didn't even move a limb. The two snakes on his back twisted, opening their mouths to exhale a jet of black, freezing mist. The incoming grenades were frozen solid instantly. Losing all kinetic energy, they thudded onto the ground and shattered into countless shards, exactly like glass.
"How is that possible?" an agent gasped, staring at the debris where even the internal explosive timers had been turned to ice.
"Dammit! Use incendiaries!" Rumlow's eyes narrowed.
This time, Rumlow didn't aim at the avatar. He aimed at the ground nearby. No matter how powerful the ammunition was, it was useless if it was frozen before it could impact. By firing at the perimeter, he hoped to raise the ambient temperature and neutralize the avatar's cryokinetic field.
The other agents caught on and followed suit, launching a barrage of incendiary rounds into the surrounding area to stoke a wall of fire.
The avatar watched them quietly. Only when a sea of flames began to roar around him did he slowly raise a hand and give a gentle flick.
The Raging flames suddenly looked as though they had been put into slow-motion. Defying the laws of physics, the flickering of the fire slowed down, becoming a series of eerie, stuttering frames. Even the sound waves from the cannons seemed to halt visibly in the air.
A wave of intense cold swept outward. Every SHIELD agent felt their blood run cold, their hearts trembling with an instinctive, primal dread.
"How... how can this be?!"
The avatar waved his hand, and the frozen flames disintegrated into nothingness. He smiled thinly. "Don't be so surprised. According to the theories your Rinto discovered: the faster molecules move, the higher the temperature. The slower they move, the lower the temperature. I simply... slowed the molecules in the fire down a little."
Hearing the avatar's amused explanation, the SHIELD agents felt a chill that went far deeper than the frost on their armor.