Some say it all began with the mythical phrase "I am Iron Man".
Others claim the story had started long before that and that it was only at that moment when it began to surface. Maybe Stark was simply a flame too bright, capable of attracting every moth that had remained hidden. Who knows.
What is a fact is that the world changed. It did so with brutal speed. But if humanity prevails it is thanks to its ability to adapt, a skill that evolved over millions of years. And, little by little, what was once considered strange stopped being strange. It became part of normality.
But something far more drastic was needed for the planet to understand the magnitude of what stood before it.
December 10, 2015. The day Earth changed.
That is how it will be remembered in the future, not as the day humanity was attacked, but as the day its mentality was shattered forever.
It took a worldwide invasion for people to realize how different the world had become compared to a few years earlier. When chaos engulfed every continent, the first reaction was disbelief. Surprise. Denial. They struggled to accept that something taken straight from a science fiction movie was happening before their eyes.
But they understood something else.
SHIELD was a known organization, respected, publicly considered the strongest and most advanced force on the planet. Even so, when rumors began that it was infiltrated by a terrorist nation, global opinion turned against it. Protests, defamation, accusations, and SHIELD never responded. For nearly an entire year it remained silent, making no statements and appearing nowhere. Everyone believed its fall was final.
But SHIELD returned.
No, it would be more correct to say it never left.
It simply appeared at the exact moment, sweeping away thousands of Skrulls with terrifying ease. Even those who had criticized them reached the same conclusion.
The reason SHIELD did not defend itself was simple, it did not care. Perhaps the entire world was against them, but it was still a world of ordinary people. SHIELD did not even consider it necessary to respond.
Association with terrorists? Ridiculous. If SHIELD wanted to dominate the planet it could do it without tricks.
The same was true of Wakanda, publicly acknowledged by SHIELD as a commercial partner. When vibranium became known, the scientific community exploded. Its properties were impossible, and yet there it was, tangible, irrefutable.
Wakanda handled the Skrulls on its own across two entire continents during the invasion. Two. It may not sound glorious, but there were countries that, using their entire military force, could not take down even a dozen invaders. Wakanda eliminated armies.
The World Council aligned with them immediately. Gratitude, respect, but above all recognition. Recognition that Wakanda was not something they could touch.
The UN and other organizations protested, but their opinion mattered little. The World Council was already accustomed to the supernatural. They identified a powerhouse when they saw one.
After this, SHIELD and the Avengers made public evidence showing that many of the people who had caused chaos, hunted heroes, or provoked incidents in recent months were, in reality, Skrulls. Among all the names, the one that generated the strongest impact was that of Thaddeus Ross, who had recently risen to United States Secretary of Defense.
The US government attempted to counterattack by alleging defamation. SHIELD ignored them. They had the power to do so. And when Ross's true form came to light, doubts vanished.
The law designed to control people with abilities was discarded, and an agreement was signed prohibiting any attempt to create something similar without a proper and exhaustive process.
Another discovery that shook the world was that Skrull abilities came from humans on Earth, individuals who were later freed and returned to their homes. This led humanity to understand the true number of powered individuals living among them.
And if they were already shocked by SHIELD, Wakanda, and the existence of people with abilities, alarm exploded when Thor presented himself as the new king of Asgard and declared that Earth was one of the Nine Realms under his protection.
The existence of Asgardian gods should have made it obvious, but human denial is powerful. Even though they knew Thor existed and that there were other realms, they had never processed the implications, that Earth was under his rule.
Earth protested, of course. It was pointless.
The World Council, the Avengers, SHIELD, Wakanda, and several hero groups recognized Asgard as Earth's legitimate ruler. The reason was simple, Asgard did not impose laws or demand tribute. In practical terms, it was a protector.
According to Thor,
"Odín once said that the waters of Earth are much deeper than they seem."
It did not mean fear. It meant respect.
In exchange for that recognition, Asgard offered something invaluable,
the key to space travel.
Knowledge of the universe.
Interstellar trade.
Access to the galactic network.
Once Earth officially joined Asgard, it inherited its connections as well.
There would be no immediate interplanetary travel, but the knowledge alone and the connection to cosmic communication networks were already worth the price. A negligible price, considering the benefits.
Of course, a problem emerged, the growing distance between ordinary people and those with abilities. Some even feared them.
The Avengers took care of that. Hundreds of powered individuals joined the organization publicly, other groups appeared, SHIELD opened its doors to new recruits, and the gap shrank little by little… until it disappeared.
Although the rapid acceptance occurred mainly because the gap had never made sense to begin with.
The rise in popularity of heroes and SHIELD agents was instantaneous. But now children did not dream of meeting a superhero. They wanted to be one.
In the middle of all this a massive uproar broke out when people learned that Leonardo would not return as a hero. Many feared Earth would be left vulnerable, but they remembered what had happened in the past months, the Iron Legion, the Black Room, the ninja organization in Asia, Wakanda, SHIELD, the Avengers, Asgard…
Earth was not alone.
And Leonardo continued painting, showing fragments of his retired life. None of those works were prophetic.
When he painted the portrait of a newborn girl with sky-blue eyes, the entire world celebrated with him.
Even without painting the future, his works continued to sell as treasures. Leonardo remained the most sought after artist on the planet.
However, no one had forgotten that he had announced he would one day create one final prophetic work.
Two years after the Skrull invasion, in February 2018, the painting was finally revealed.
And the world was shaken.
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(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)