"Out! Into the open!" Tony barked, his thrusters firing at maximum burn to keep the rampaging Hulk at bay. "The hall is too confined! We need space to break his trance!"
Inside the cavernous throne room, Bruce Banner's uncontrolled frenzy was a death sentence. Scott Lang was the first to sprint through the shattered gates; the palace walls and vaulted ceilings were forged from ancient, reinforced bronze, and Scott knew that expanding into Giant-Man in such an enclosed space risked crushing his own skull against the rafters.
The Avengers dodged and weaved through the falling debris, tumbling out onto the wide stone terrace and leaving the Execution Bureau behind on the dais floor.
"Dearest Brother," Chinu Gen murmured, stepping over the shattered flagstones to stand before the paralyzed High Patriarch. A chilling, sadistic amusement danced in his golden pupils, like a cat watching a mouse bleed out. "Remain here in quiet contemplation. When the sacred monarch awakens... this dais will serve as your funeral pyre."
Chinu held zero desire to grant Chisei a swift death; he wanted the proud patriarch to drown in the despair of his own powerlessness.
A few paces away, Dr. Herzog remained completely undisturbed. The violent skirmishes tearing the hall apart had not caused his low, ancient Draconic chant to falter by a single syllable.
ROAAAR!
The behemoth burst through the shattered archway, tearing up slabs of stone as he lunged.
Outside, the regrouped Atlantean vanguard reacted on pure military instinct. Dozens of Seahorse Knights leveled their heavy, shell-forged Sonic Cannons, pulling the triggers in unison.
SKRRREEEEEEE—!
A concentrated wave of invisible, high-amplitude acoustic energy slammed dead center into the Hulk's chest. Caught completely off-guard mid-leap, the concussive pressure hurled his massive green frame backward across the terrace lawn.
"Not bad, Fish King," Tony said, landing the Mark VII beside Namor with a heavy metallic clatter. "Glad to see your personal guard isn't entirely decorative."
Despite their earlier hostility, the existential threat of a mind-controlled Hulk forced an immediate, pragmatic battlefield alliance.
"Is that rampaging abomination your comrade?" Namor demanded, his golden trident crackling with bio-electricity as he glared at the billionaire. "Do surface-dwellers lack the basic discipline to keep their beasts on a leash?!"
"Hulk has never been big on obedience training," Tony quipped.
BOOM!
A twin repulsor blast caught the recovering Hulk beneath the chin, flipping the monster into the grass before Tony's boots left the earth again.
Namor's jaw tightened in frustration, but he wasted no more breath. Raising his trident, he barked commands to his shock-troopers, coordinating their firing arcs with the Avengers' flanking maneuvers.
Without the driving force of his own genuine rage, the Hulk was not scaling at his usual terrifying pace. Trapped under Chinu's mental Yanling, Dream, the brute's psyche was clouded in a hallucinatory haze. He was dangerous, but he was stagnant.
Hovering twenty feet up, Tony's tactical HUD rapidly processed the combat telemetry.
"I see it now!" Tony's amplified voice blared through the suit's external speakers. "His emotional feedback loop is trapped in an artificial fog! His anger isn't spiking exponentially! His output has hit a plateau—take him down before the mental block shatters!"
Hearing Tony's broadcast, Namor's eyes widened in disbelief.
'That green brute can scale higher than this?' Namor thought, a cold sweat breaking out beneath his collar. 'He is already tearing our ranks to pieces. If his strength multiplies, none of us leave this floating rock alive.'
Discarding any lingering thoughts of betrayal, Namor committed his legions entirely to the suppression.
"Scott! You're up!" Tony yelled over the comms. "Pin him to the dirt! Give Natasha a clean window to sing him down!"
Standing on the perimeter, Scott Lang's eyes lit up behind his visor.
'Finally,' Scott thought, grinning wildly. 'Time to show these ancient gods how an ex-con from San Francisco handles business.'
Scott twisted the primary regulator on his wrist gauntlet, releasing a concentrated surge of blue Pym Particles through his suit's conduits.
VROOOM—BOOM!
In the span of a single heartbeat, the space warped. A sixty-foot colossus in a black-and-crimson suit expanded into existence, the sheer downward displacement of his boots gouging two massive craters into the floating island's turf.
The Atlantean soldiers froze in sheer, paralyzing shock, their jaws dropping as they craned their necks toward the clouds.
"Are... are all surface humans capable of this dark sorcery?"
"Have the air-breathers advanced so far?"
"Can the seven oceans truly wage war against monsters of this scale?"
Uneasy whispers swept through the Atlantean ranks like wildfire. Even though the giant was theoretically on their side, witnessing human technology casually manifest a skyscraper-sized warrior shattered their ancient sense of terrestrial superiority.
Out on the lawn, Giant-Man was completely drunk on the rush.
As the roaring Hulk charged him, Scott simply cocked his leg back and delivered a massive, size-twelve boot directly to the green monster's ribs, sending the Hulk skidding three hundred yards across the grass like a hockey puck.
"Boom! Did you see that?!" Scott cheered over the open comms, his deep, booming voice shaking the trees. "Tell me recruiting me wasn't the greatest executive decision in Stark Industries history! I am an absolute force of nature!"
His glory lasted approximately four seconds.
SWOOSH!
The Hulk, bouncing off a marble pillar, rebounded with the speed of an artillery shell. Before Scott could even track the trajectory, the jade monster had scaled his massive leg like a squirrel climbing an oak tree, latching onto Giant-Man's upper back.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The Hulk began hammering Scott's shoulder blades with furious, rapid-fire punches.
Scott's gigantic arms flailed behind him in frantic panic, trying desperately to pinch the monster off his spine, but his massive hands lacked the articulation to reach between his shoulder blades. The sharp, concussive impacts sent waves of numbing pain radiating through his nervous system.
Losing his balance on the shifting turf, Scott's knees buckled.
"No, no, nononono—crap!"
THUUUUD!
The sixty-foot titan collapsed backward onto the lawn with an earth-shaking thud, crushing several ornamental trees to splinters.
Scott scrambled to roll over, completely red-faced at the humiliating slip. But before his vision cleared, a massive green fist filled his entire field of view.
CLANG!
The punch struck the side of Scott's enlarged helmet, whipping his head violently to the right. The sheer kinetic shock rattled his teeth, involuntarily spraying a fine mist of saliva across the inside of his visor.
"Ugh, damn it..." Scott groaned, frantically shaking his ringing skull. 'That was pathetic. Keep it together, Lang. Do not let them know that hurt.'
Unfortunately for Scott, the high-gain tactical mic inside his helmet remained wide open. His muffled groans, the wet splat of saliva hitting his faceplate, and his desperate self-reassurance were broadcast in high-definition audio straight into the earpieces of every single Avenger.
Mid-air, Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, while Natasha and Clint fought with heroic discipline to suppress their snorts of laughter.
Determined to salvage his shattered pride, Scott rolled onto his stomach, pushing his massive frame upright. "Alright, green bean. Gloves are off!"
Scott swatted his gigantic open palms down at the grass, trying to trap the monster beneath his hands.
Yet, while Pym Particles multiplied mass and structural density, they did not increase raw synaptic speed. The enlarged Scott moved with the heavy, deliberate inertia of a crane. To the Hulk's feral, beast-like reflexes, the giant's sweeping hands were child's play to dodge.
The Hulk slipped between Scott's fingers with insulting ease, leaping onto his wrists and ankles to deliver stinging counter-punches before vanishing back into the tall grass.
The spectacle looked less like a clash of titans and more like an overgrown bear being tormented by a rabid hornet.
"Hey! Guys!" Scott's voice broke through the comms, carrying a distinct note of breathless panic. "I know this slapstick routine is pure cinematic gold, but could someone throw me a bone here?! My shins are turning into jelly!"
"On it," Tony sighed.
Pivoting toward the Atlantean lines, Tony spotted an auxiliary heavy-ordnance net resting on a supply wagon—woven from deep-sea titanium cable and the calcified sinew of abyssal kraken.
"Fish King! Grab the other corner!" Tony commanded.
Namor didn't hesitate. The wings on his ankles flared with golden energy as he launched into the air, grabbing one end of the titanic net while Iron Man hoisted the other with his twin thrusters.
Soaring across the courtyard, the two flyers cast the massive, high-tensile web straight over the chaotic brawl, enveloping both the struggling Giant-Man and the thrashing Hulk beneath thousands of pounds of reinforced mesh.
With the net restricting the Hulk's leaping vectors, Scott seized the opening. Thrusting his massive hands through the slack cables, he wrapped his colossal arms around the green monster's torso, locking the thrashing brute in an inescapable, earth-shattering bear hug against his chest.
"Got him!" Scott wheezed, pinning the roaring beast flat to the turf. "Untangle my hands so I can hold him down! Nat, get in here and do your lullaby before this psycho bites my fingers off!"
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Give me powerstones.
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