The air crackled with the ozone aftertaste of the Chitauri's energy blast. The alien stood, weapon still aimed at the spot where Hawk had been, its posture a perfect tableau of aggression. Then, in the space between one alien heartbeat and the next, everything changed.
There was no sound, no dramatic rush of wind. Just a flicker of motion, a subtle distortion in the air. One moment, Hawk was in front of the Chitauri. The next, he was behind it.
The soldier's insectoid compound eyes, glowing with a faint green light, widened almost imperceptibly. It registered a cold presence at its back, a chilling certainty of doom that its alien mind couldn't fully process. How did he get behind me?
CRACK!
The sound was brutally sharp and wet, a sickening snap of alien bone and cartilage. Hawk's hand, moving with an unnatural speed and precision, had already gripped the Chitauri's head and twisted it a full ninety degrees. The alien's body went rigid, its last, uncomprehending thought dissolving as an endless, silent darkness consumed its consciousness. It fell limp, a puppet with its strings cut, the energy weapon slipping from its grasp and clattering onto the broken concrete.
Hawk looked down at the corpse, flexing the fingers of the hand that had just delivered death so effortlessly. A low chuckle escaped his lips, devoid of humor and filled with a grim, chilling satisfaction.
"That's it?"
The next second, he felt it. A warm, vibrant current of energy flowed from the dead Chitauri, not into his body, but directly into the newly born universe within him. The moment it arrived, one of the countless pinpricks of darkness in his inner cosmos ignited, flaring to life as a brilliant, pulsing star. The power within him swelled, a measurable, tangible increase in his own strength.
With the birth of that first star, a flood of information poured directly into his mind. He closed his eyes, instantly absorbing the knowledge. Within his inner universe, the ethereal, phantom shapes of forty-eight constellations flickered into existence, all of them dark and dormant save for the single, brilliant point of light he had just ignited.
Growing in countless battles.Sublimating in endless wars.
The system's final words echoed in his mind, now imbued with a profound, practical meaning. The path of the Cosmo was forged in the crucible of combat. It was the way of the Saint, a power born for Holy Wars.
"So," he murmured to himself, his eyes still closed as he processed the revelation. "To light the constellations in my universe… I have to fight. Constantly."
The awakening of the Cosmo was the engine. The constellations were the vessels, the frameworks that would shape and define his power. This presented him with a unique situation, a mixture of bad news and unbelievably good news.
The bad news: in the Marvel Universe, there were no Saints, no Sanctuary, no Pope to guide him or bestow a constellation upon him. He was starting from absolute zero. He had to forge his own path, igniting each of the forty-eight Bronze constellations one by one through his own efforts.
The good news, however, was universe-altering. Because there were no other Saints, there was no competition. In his memories of the old world's anime, thousands of candidates would bleed and die competing for the right to wear a single Bronze Cloth. It was a brutal, merciless selection where only one could triumph.
Here, there was only him.
He was the sole inheritor of this entire path to power. He didn't have to choose. He could be Pegasus. He could be Phoenix. He could be Draco and Andromeda and Cygnus. As long as he had the will and the strength to fight, to conquer, to claim their power... he could awaken them all.
A slow, predatory smile spread across his face. Children make choices. While technically still a minor, his mind was that of an adult, and his ambition was now boundless.
He wanted them all.
And wait. If he could claim all forty-eight Bronze constellations... what about the twenty-four Silver? And beyond them... the Twelve Zodiacs? The Twelve Gold Saints?
Hiss! A sharp breath hissed through his teeth. The thought was intoxicating, the potential so vast it was almost terrifying. The image of the twelve radiant Gold Cloths, the ultimate symbols of power in the cosmos, flashed in his mind.
A sudden, high-pitched whine tore him from his reverie. His eyes snapped open. Two more Chitauri skiffs were descending rapidly, their pilots having seen the corpse of their fallen comrade. Their alien eyes locked onto Hawk, the sole living figure on the ruined rooftop. There was no hesitation, no warning. There was only rage.
"Bang, bang, bang, bang!"
They opened fire simultaneously, unleashing a furious, crisscrossing barrage of energy blasts. Under the combined onslaught, the already crumbling rooftop finally gave way. With a deafening groan of tortured steel and screaming concrete, the entire structure beneath Hawk's feet disintegrated.
He plunged into darkness as the five-story apartment building began to collapse in on itself. The fifth floor slammed into the fourth, which then pancaked the third. The entire building swayed precariously for a moment before imploding, sending a massive plume of dust and debris billowing into the war-torn street.
The few residents who had escaped but hadn't gotten far enough away stared in blank-minded horror as their home was reduced to a mountain of rubble. Their shock quickly turned to terror as the two Chitauri skiffs descended to street level, their weapons glowing. The survivors screamed and ran, but it was too late. The Chitauri, following their orders to eradicate all life, opened fire on the fleeing civilians. In a brutal series of explosions and searing flashes of light, the street became a killing field.
After slaughtering the last of the witnesses, the two soldiers dismounted from their skiffs. They scanned the ruins of the apartment building, their weapons held at the ready. Their internal sensors had registered something deeply unsettling. The life signal of the human who had killed their comrade hadn't been extinguished in the collapse.
In fact, it was growing stronger. And stronger.
The two aliens exchanged a confused, guttural click. This was impossible.
BOOM!
The mountain of rubble exploded outward as if a bomb had detonated at its core. A figure shot out of the dust cloud, moving with impossible speed.
The Chitauri on the right vanished. One moment it was there, the next it was gone, replaced by a sonic boom that shattered the windows of the few buildings still standing. A split second later, a sickeningly wet SPLAT echoed from across the street. The remaining soldier turned its head just in time to see its companion plastered against the brick wall of the opposite building, a grotesque mural of green blood and shattered alien armor.
Its compound eyes, no bigger than green beans, widened in alien shock. It instinctively raised its weapon and started to turn, but before it could even acquire a target, it felt a blur of motion in front of it. Then, its entire world became a universe of pain as a fist slammed into its chest.
The final sound it ever heard was the thunderous bang that erupted from its own body.
BOOM!
The Chitauri's chest exploded in a shower of gore and shrapnel. Its ragdoll-like corpse was launched backward, tumbling through the air before landing in the ruins of the building, bouncing once like a pinball before coming to a motionless, mangled rest.
"Pat. Pat."
Hawk appeared where the second soldier had been standing. He calmly patted the thick layer of concrete dust from his clothes, his expression curious and thoughtful. The fight had been over before it even began.
Killed one, and two more came, he thought to himself. Now that I've killed these two, three should come next, right?
He turned his gaze away from the localized carnage, looking towards the heart of the invasion over Manhattan. He saw them now—the Leviathans. Massive, armored space whales swimming through the air, escorted by swarms of Chitauri. Each one was a fortress, a monster, and a massive source of the very energy he now craved.
His eyes burned with a newfound fire. He felt no fear. Only a fierce, all-consuming hunger.
He was eager to try.