Johannesburg, South Africa.
The city center looked like the end of the world had arrived early and decided to start with this neighborhood.
Sirens screamed from every direction. Dust choked the air. Cars burned in the streets like funeral pyres. And cutting through it all — louder than the explosions, louder than the screaming, louder than the entire infrastructure of a modern city coming apart at the seams — was the roar.
"ROAAAAR—!!!"
Every pane of glass within three blocks shattered simultaneously.
The Hulk tore through the commercial district like a force of nature that had developed a grudge against architecture. His eyes blazed with an unnatural crimson — Wanda's fear magic, still burning through his neural pathways, drowning Banner's consciousness under wave after wave of manufactured terror. He grabbed a police cruiser off the street — two tons of steel and flashing lights — and hurled it at a building like a man throwing a tennis ball.
BOOM!
The roar of thrusters split the sky.
From the satellite platform Veronica, hovering in the upper atmosphere, modular armor components rained down — dozens of them, screaming through the air, assembling mid-flight in a cascade of precision engineering. They converged on a gold-and-red figure and locked into place, piece by piece, transforming Tony Stark into something considerably larger than usual.
The Hulkbuster. Mark 44. Over ten feet tall, wider than the Hulk, every joint and surface radiating the brutal aesthetic of industrial-grade violence. This wasn't a suit designed for finesse. It was designed for one thing: going toe-to-toe with the strongest being on the planet and surviving.
"Listen up, big guy!"
Tony's amplified voice boomed from the Hulkbuster's speakers, muffled and heavy. "That witch scrambled your brain! You have to fight it, Bruce! Be smarter than her! Don't let—"
A fuel tanker sailed toward him end over end.
"Right. Reasoning is off the table."
Tony sighed, swung a fist the size of a compact car, and punched the tanker into a fireball before charging through the flames at Hulk.
BANG!!
The collision was seismic. Two massive figures — one green, one gold — slammed together in the center of the street, and the shockwave ripped up the pavement in a thirty-foot radius like peeling back a carpet. Tony grabbed Hulk's shoulder with one massive hand and began hammering the green skull with the other — a hydraulic piston-driven punch that hit like a pile driver.
"Go to sleep! Go to SLEEP! Go to SLEEP!"
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Each impact rang like a church bell. Hulk staggered backward, dazed, bleeding from a cut above his eye—
Then the red light in his eyes intensified.
Wanda's magic wasn't weakening. It was feeding on the pain. Every hit Tony landed made the rage worse, and the rage made the Hulk stronger.
"ROAAAR!!"
Hulk seized the Hulkbuster's left arm in both hands and squeezed.
SCREEEEECH—!
The sound of gold-titanium alloy — the hardest armor Tony had ever built — being crushed flat like a beer can. The Hulkbuster's left arm crumpled inward, hydraulic fluid spraying from ruptured lines.
"WARNING: Left arm hydraulic system — critical failure!" JARVIS reported.
"Spare parts! NOW!" Tony yelled.
A replacement arm module dropped from orbit, locking in mid-descent — but Hulk didn't wait for the repair. He leaped onto the Hulkbuster's back and began dismantling it with his bare hands, ripping at the reactor housing like a wild animal tearing into a carcass.
"I can't hold him! Somebody HELP!" Tony was being ragdolled inside his own armor, slammed between buildings, the HUD screaming red from every direction.
"On my way, boss."
Jake's voice came through the comm — calm, steady, and carrying a note that Tony had learned to recognize as I'm about to do something impressive and slightly terrifying.
"But you might want to fly higher. Things are about to get... shaky."
Before Tony could ask what that meant, the ground exploded.
RRRUMMMBLE—!!
The asphalt split open in a jagged line, and from the crack — drilling upward through solid bedrock, trailing a geyser of pulverized stone — a massive figure erupted into the daylight.
It planted itself between the Hulkbuster and the Hulk with the immovable certainty of a mountain that had decided to relocate.
Thirteen feet tall. Four arms. But this wasn't the familiar red of standard Four Arms, and it wasn't the yellow of Armodrillo.
It was both.
Deep red Tetramand muscle served as the foundation — dense, powerful, rippling with combat-bred strength. But layered over it, fused at the cellular level, was heavy yellow Talpaedan armor plating — industrial-grade, mechanical, built for impact. And the hands — all four of them — had been replaced entirely.
Four massive mechanical drills.
Each one as wide as a manhole cover, already spinning with a high-pitched whine that made the air vibrate. Hydraulic pistons the size of tree trunks were mounted at the elbows, and every rotation sent a pulse of seismic energy through the ground that cracked the remaining pavement in expanding circles.
Four Drills.
Gene Fusion: Tetramand + Talpaedan.
"HULK!"
Jake's voice came out layered — the deep Tetramand bass overlaid with the mechanical buzz of Talpaedan hydraulics. He clashed all four drills together, and the metallic shriek that resulted made every person within earshot clap their hands over their ears.
"You want to play demolition? I'm the professional."
Hulk abandoned Tony instantly. The new target was bigger, louder, and closer — three things that the rage-drunk green giant found irresistible. He roared and charged, a missile made of muscle.
"Straight-up strength? You'd win." Jake planted his feet. The pistons on all four arms screamed to maximum RPM. "But vibration?"
He spread all four drill-arms wide.
"Quadruple — Resonant — Drill — STRIKE!!"
BOOOOOM—!!!
All four drills hit Hulk simultaneously — two to the chest, two to the shoulders.
This wasn't a punch. Punches were blunt force, and the Hulk's body was built to absorb blunt force like a sponge absorbed water. This was something fundamentally different.
Ultra-high-frequency vibration.
The drill impacts transferred seismic energy directly through Hulk's skin — bypassing the gamma-reinforced muscle, bypassing the nearly indestructible bone structure, and conducting inward like ripples through water. The vibrations reached his organs. His skeletal structure. His brain.
"URRGH—!"
Hulk's entire body went rigid. His pupils contracted to pinpoints. A mouthful of bile erupted from his lips. The sensation — every bone in his body resonating at a frequency that made his inner ear scream and his brain feel like it had been thrown into a centrifuge — produced a howl that was more agony than rage.
"Not done!"
Jake's lower two arms shifted — drills retracting into heavy clamps that locked around Hulk's waist in a vice grip. His upper two arms transformed into pile drivers — drill tips flattening into broad, piston-backed hammering surfaces.
"Get — DOWN!"
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Jake hammered Hulk's back like the world's most aggressive game of Whack-a-Mole. Each strike triggered a localized earthquake. Glass exploded from every remaining window in a two-block radius. The ground cratered deeper with every impact, the asphalt and concrete surrendering completely.
"TONY! Lock him down! I'm charging the big one!"
"Copy!"
The battered Hulkbuster fired its remaining arm — launching a cluster of magnetic restraint drones that snapped into position around Hulk's limbs, generating an energy field that held the thrashing green giant in place for precious seconds.
"NOW!"
Jake raised all four arms overhead. The drills merged — four separate mechanisms combining into a single, massive battering ram of vibrating metal. He stamped both feet, and his entire body's vibration frequency climbed to maximum — a harmonic so intense the air itself blurred around him.
"Tetramand: EARTH-SHATTERING STRIKE!!"
RRRUMMMBLE-RUMMBLE-RUMMMMBLE—!!!
The strike didn't just hit Hulk. It went through him — through the ground beneath him, through the bedrock, through the underground infrastructure. Water mains burst in geysers. Sewer lines collapsed. The earth itself split in radiating fractures for a hundred meters in every direction.
The shockwave — transmitted directly into Hulk's cerebellum and vestibular system — scrambled his sense of balance, his spatial orientation, and his consciousness simultaneously. It was like being hit by an earthquake from the inside.
Hulk's eyes rolled back.
His body — still mid-thrash, still fighting — went slack. The green began to recede. Muscle mass shrank. Features softened. And in the space of ten seconds, the Incredible Hulk dissolved back into Bruce Banner — shirtless, mud-covered, unconscious in a puddle at the bottom of a crater.
The red light in his eyes was gone.
Jake detransformed and sat down hard on the rubble.
"Phew..." He was breathing like he'd just sprinted a marathon while bench-pressing a bus. "That guy is worse than the Destroyer. At least the Destroyer didn't get angrier when you hit it."
Tony landed beside him, the Hulkbuster shedding damaged plates like a dog shaking off water. His faceplate opened.
But he wasn't looking at Banner.
He was looking around.
The street — a bustling commercial thoroughfare thirty minutes ago — was ruins. Buildings had collapsed. Cars were burning. Dust hung in the air like fog. And emerging from the wreckage, from behind overturned buses and through shattered doorways, came the people.
Civilians. Bleeding. Crying. Clutching children. Staring at the armored figures and the unconscious green man with expressions that held no gratitude.
Only fear.
News helicopters circled overhead, cameras broadcasting every frame to every screen on the planet. The footage would be on every channel within the hour — not Avengers Save City, but Avengers Destroy City.
"We won the fight," Tony said quietly. His voice was hoarse. "But we lost the people."
Jake hauled himself up, grabbed the unconscious Banner, slung him over one shoulder, and covered his face with a jacket.
"No time for soul-searching, boss." He looked at the police lights flashing in the distance, the approaching military vehicles, the tightening perimeter. "We need to pull out. The Avengers' reputation just went from complicated to radioactive. We need somewhere to regroup."
"Where?" Tony looked lost — genuinely, visibly lost, which was something Jake had never seen on Tony Stark's face before.
"Somewhere without internet. Without Ultron. Without reporters. Without anyone who wants to arrest us."
Jake thought of the one Avenger who had a secret that none of the others knew about.
"Call Barton. We're going to his farm."
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