read my new story : Marvel Zombies, I Am the Only Antidote
"Six... five... four... three... Vision is out! Tony, drop it!"
Seeing Vision burst from the Hell Gate amidst a fiery explosion, Luca shouted the command.
Of course, Tony didn't need the reminder. With laser focus, he had already thrown the Capsule the moment he saw the signal.
A massive shipping container, roughly the size of a small building and clearly welded together from thick steel plates, plummeted from the sky.
The instant this colossal box completely covered the Hell Gate, Luca fired his final compression beam.
A blue flash, an explosion, and then—silence.
"D-did... did it work?"
The Avengers gathered around the crater where the final Hell Gate had stood.
But there were no cheers or celebrations for closing the last portal. Instead, everyone looked a little lost, their faces etched with uncertainty.
For the last few large gates, Hell had thrown endless waves of demons at them, stalling for time with sheer bodies.
In the end, the Avengers had to abandon the quick-seal method and resort to a "dumber," brute-force approach.
They had relied on Vision's intangibility to force his way into Hell, clear the area with a compressed nuke, and then deploy a massive army of mechanical soldiers to hold the line on the other side until the gate could be sealed.
It took longer, but they finally managed to close every Hell Gate in New York.
However, looking around at the devastation—worse than Washington D.C. after a nuclear strike—the mood was grim.
Desolation. Ruin. Bottomless craters and skeletal remains of buildings everywhere. The ground was littered with countless demon corpses.
Red and blue rifts still floated in the sky like ugly scars.
Thinking of the New York citizens who had been forced to evacuate to other states, most of them now penniless refugees...
No one felt the joy of victory. Or perhaps they were wondering: does this even count as a victory?
At that moment, a single thought crossed every Avenger's mind.
What exactly did we protect?
Piloting his Boxer Gundam, Luca slowly descended from the sky. Thanks to the overpowered GN Drive engine, the massive mech landed without causing so much as a tremor.
Compared to the Avengers, who were burdened with a heavy sense of responsibility and justice, Luca wasn't as emotionally shaken. In his eyes, repelling a demon invasion without mass casualties was already a miracle.
Still, reading the room, he kept his mouth shut.
He stepped out of the cockpit, compressed the mech back into its Capsule, and quietly walked over to a dazed Tony.
"It's over. Let's focus on the cleanup."
Hearing Luca, Tony gave a slight nod but remained silent.
...
After the battle.
Having temporarily resolved the Hell invasion, Luca didn't rush back to Sokovia.
The so-called "permanent seal" only patched the weak points in New York's space.
The rest of Earth was still riddled with countless similar weak points. He stayed behind to brainstorm a solution with Tony and Banner.
They needed to stop Earth—which currently had the structural integrity of a sieve—from facing endless Hell raids in the future.
While Tony went with Cap to coordinate refugee settlement with S.H.I.E.L.D., Luca didn't get a chance to start research with Dr. Banner immediately.
Just as the fighting ended, a Kamar-Taj sorcerer—who had seemingly vanished during the battle—approached Luca.
"Mr. Aurantius, the Ancient One wishes to see you."
Hearing this, Luca was a bit puzzled as to why a sorcerer he didn't know was delivering the message.
But since he had a bellyful of questions for the Ancient One anyway, he had no reason to refuse.
However, after following the sorcerer through a portal, he realized why the Ancient One hadn't come to find him personally.
"Old... Uh, Ancient One? Are you... dead?"
Luca stared blankly at the figure before him. The Ancient One was floating in mid-air, her body semi-transparent, looking for all the world like a ghost.
But then...
Thwack!
Before Luca could say another word, he felt a sharp smack on the back of his head. Even with his enhanced physique, he stumbled forward a couple of steps.
The Ancient One rolled her eyes at him, her expression one of utter exasperation.
"Dead? I'm not dead, you numbskull!"
"Hiss... That grip... definitely still kicking..."
Rubbing his head, Luca realized his mistake and offered an awkward smile.
"But if you're alive, Ancient One, what's with the... look?"
"Thought projection. Astral projection. Call it what you want. It's maintained by the magic arrays of Kamar-Taj. You have the Mind Stone; can't you tell?"
The Ancient One didn't bother arguing, offering a direct explanation.
Luca wasn't surprised she knew about the Mind Stone, but that still didn't explain why she was meeting him like this.
Fortunately, the Ancient One didn't keep him guessing. She rolled her eyes again and continued.
"You completely obliterated the New York Sanctum, you big hero. My physical body is currently busy holding back Mephisto and Dormammu—those two old geezers—acting as a human shield for the planet. I won't be back anytime soon."
Luca froze, then asked sheepishly, "The New York Sanctum got blown up too?"
The three Sanctums were special structures built by Kamar-Taj at key points on Earth: New York, London, and Hong Kong.
They served as nodes for a massive defensive array against magical threats and acted as the final warning system and barrier against dimensional invasions.
Although Earth's spatial stability was currently about as secure as a public restroom—frequently visited by outsiders—the Ancient One had been relying on the Sanctums' shields to repel enemies while constantly repairing the planet's fragile space.
And now, one of the three Sanctums—New York—had been flattened by Luca's meteor shower. Even back when Earth's space was intact, losing a Sanctum would have been a catastrophic crisis.
But facing Luca's guilty inquiry, the Ancient One just gave him a flat 'What do you think?' look, seemingly uninterested in dwelling on the blame.
If she had been angry and wanted to punish him, Luca wouldn't have thought much of it. But seeing her indifferent attitude, his mind jumped to a darker conclusion.
"Wait... Ancient One, did you know this would happen?"
"Or rather... did you guide things to end up this way?!"