"Avengers, attack!"
It was seven in the morning. As the sun slowly rose, the support team stood guard by the bridges that hadn't yet been overrun by the endless symbiotes. Captain America caught his shield after it ricocheted off several symbiotes. Hawkeye, meanwhile, used a sonic arrow to hit an incoming symbiote, blowing it into a mess while looking at the Captain.
"You know there's no one here but you, right?" Hawkeye said.
The Captain shook his head with a helpless smile. It was a habit.
"Ms. Frost, what's the situation at the other evacuation points?"
Because the entire support team only had nine members and had to guard seventeen bridges, as the number of symbiotes grew, the Captain had to make adjustments. He changed the evacuation routes to three bridges, one each for the south, north, and east, and then divided the team into three groups.
They had been fighting for eleven hours, repelling countless enemy attacks, and everyone was exhausted. The Captain took a deep breath, looking at the unrecognizable Manhattan, and shook his head in disbelief. They had been fighting all night, and it wasn't until now that he saw the state of the city.
The entire island was almost completely covered in symbiotes. Black biomass spread between buildings, and one symbiote after another, able to maintain a humanoid form without a host, climbed the buildings. Their numbers were almost endless, but their attack frequency wasn't high.
The Captain looked at his body. The barrier cast by Strange was beginning to flicker, almost at its limit.
But… how could they defeat Knull?
"Hello, citizens of New York, this is J. Jonah Jameson."
Jameson kept his promise and stayed behind to report the invasion to the world. His loud voice had an unexpected effect; when he yelled at the symbiotes with a microphone, they actually scattered.
And so, J. Jonah "Wire Saw" Jameson decided to return to the fray with his camera and microphone, reporting the battle all by himself. At this moment, he stood on the side of the road, filming Captain America and his team's temporary retreat. After fighting for eleven consecutive hours, even the superheroes were extremely tired. And now, no one was evacuating from any of the exits, which meant that even if there were other survivors in Manhattan, they either feared the symbiotes' attacks or had some other reason for not leaving.
This also meant that the rest of Manhattan had become a battlefield.
"The only thing we can be sure of is that these superheroes have not chosen to evacuate. Without a doubt, the heroes you see on screen right now are all able to avoid being possessed by these terrifying alien monsters."
"I'm also very certain that the other Avengers have not left either; they are still fighting somewhere in the city."
In the small Eastern European country of Latveria, Doctor Doom sat on the throne of his palace, holding Valeria, and watched the symbiote-covered New York on the screen. The symbiote monsters seemed endless, and their origin was impossible to pinpoint.
Reed Richards will have a solution. There's no way he can't handle these lowly alien creatures. If a loud-mouthed reporter can survive until now, much less Reed Richards.
Meanwhile, Jonah's news report continued.
"If you encounter these monsters, don't panic. I've found some weaknesses in these creatures. Use your loud voice, a microphone, or a megaphone to make a high-decibel noise, and they will run away! If you have a lighter, they will also avoid you. Sound waves and high temperatures are what they fear!"
On the all-metal artificial island of Genosha, the mutant nation, the nearly eighty-year-old Magneto, Erik Lehnsherr, watched the television showing Manhattan sealed by magic, without saying a word. He wasn't sure if Charles's students had gotten involved in this mess, but they probably wouldn't sit around. The X-Men always managed to get themselves involved in human affairs.
"I suppose you've come to bid me farewell for that reason, haven't you, Mr. Wagner?"
The man who had come before Magneto was Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner, a member of the X-Men. His appearance was no different from a legendary demon, with blue skin. He joked, "Yes. Thank you for taking care of me over the years, but the X-Men need me. And perhaps, they need you too…"
Magneto said nothing. It was clear that he was unwilling to get involved in a war between humans and aliens. So Nightcrawler bowed, turned into a puff of blue smoke, and teleported away.
"Are you really not going to help them?"
"Wanda?"
Standing at the door was his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wanda. She had the same dark red hair as her late mother. Magneto once again explained his reasons: "Wanda, you have to understand. It's not that mutants are unwilling to help humans; on the contrary, it's that humans have rejected the help of mutants. They don't need us, do you understand?"
"If one day, humans choose to beg me for help, perhaps for Charles Xavier's sake, Magneto might agree. But not now. They haven't asked for our help, so why should we help them?"
"We just need to wait and see."
Naturally, others were also watching this news report. In the Sanctum Sanctorum, the X-Men and the American Avengers had all arrived. They watched Jameson on the news using a megaphone to demonstrate how to deal with the symbiotes. War Machine, Rhodey, shook his head helplessly and immediately retorted, "We're just going to wait here? A regular old man can show how to deal with these things, but when it's our turn, we're powerless?"
"We can't take the risk, Colonel Rhodes." The one who answered was Black Widow. She was also watching the news report. Let alone superhumans, even ordinary people like her didn't choose to help, because symbiotes could read their hosts' memories. And if some intelligence were to be obtained by Knull, it might accelerate their defeat.
But the problem was, they didn't know what to do right now. They could only watch the news report and assess the situation.
"November 1, 2012, Thursday, 7 a.m. D.C. Time."
The last person to be concerned about all this looked down on everything from high above Manhattan with a cold gaze.
"Jumped to the corresponding time point. Begin observing the spatiotemporal anomaly, Peter Parker, codenamed Spider-Man, to determine if he is the original sample that will destroy the timeline."
This year, Magneto is 75, and the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are 15.
Polaris is 7.
Magneto is still going strong.
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