Hawk stood amidst the wreckage of his former home, his gaze fixed on the distant, chaotic skyline of Manhattan. He watched the Leviathans, those living bio-fortresses, swim through the air like apocalyptic whales, their roars shaking the very foundations of the city. A fire burned in his heart, a primal urge from his newly awakened Cosmo that screamed for him to join that ultimate battle, to test his power against those behemoths.
But the cold, calculating survivalist who had kept him alive for seventeen years forcefully suppressed the urge.
He was powerful now, yes, but he wasn't a fool. The awakening of his Cosmo was the first step on a journey of a thousand miles, not the destination. Those Leviathans were covered in thick layers of alien alloy, escorted by entire armies. To rush into that main battlefield now, with no armor, no refined techniques, and only a raw understanding of his power, would be suicide. The battlefield of the Avengers was not yet his.
Besides, why go to the feast when a perfectly good meal was being delivered to his doorstep? The Chitauri swarmed through Queens like a plague of locusts, and each one was a spark of fuel for his growing power.
He would not be the hunted. He would be the hunter.
His eyes scanned his surroundings. He had no need to seek out his prey; they would come to him. The Chitauri were a networked army; the death of one soldier sent a signal to the others. All he had to do was wait. And this place… it was the perfect killing ground.
This was a forgotten corner of the city. A place where streetlights flickered and died without ever being replaced, where potholes became craters, and where official neglect was the unspoken law of the land. There were no surveillance cameras here; any that were installed would be stripped for parts before the sun rose. Emergency services? An ambulance might find its way here in half an hour, if they were lucky. It was a blind spot, a shadow on the map of the gleaming metropolis. It was perfect.
Retreating into the deep shadows of a collapsed section of the adjacent building, Hawk became a phantom. He waited.
Soon, the whine of approaching alien engines cut through the air. Two Chitauri soldiers on their skiffs, having received the death signals of their comrades, flew low over the street, their weapons scanning for threats. Their arrogance was their undoing.
Hawk exploded from the darkness.
He moved in a blur of motion that defied the eye. Before the first soldier could even register his presence, Hawk was upon it, his hand lancing out to snap its neck with a single, brutal twist. As the first corpse tumbled from its skiff, he was already airborne, leaping with his Cosmo-enhanced strength towards the second, who was just beginning to turn. He landed on its skiff, his impact shattering the alien's spine before he kicked the body away.
The entire engagement lasted less than three seconds.
"Thud!" "Thud!"
Two more bodies landed in the ruins. Hawk dragged them over to the first two, arranging the four mangled corpses neatly in the center of the wreckage. It was a cold, deliberate, and undeniable taunt. A piece of bait for bigger fish. As the two now-empty skiffs automatically turned and flew off in a pre-programmed direction, Hawk melted back into the shadows.
He didn't have to wait long.
A signal, originating from a Chitauri command ship in the wormhole, pulsed across Queens. Several squads of soldiers, who had been gleefully slaughtering civilians and destroying property nearby, abruptly ceased their rampage. Their heads all snapped in the same direction, their mission parameters updated. A spike in casualties in this specific sector required a decisive, overwhelming response.
Seven skiffs converged, led by a Chitauri Captain whose frame was noticeably larger and whose skiff was more heavily armored than the others. They arrived above the ruined block, their engines humming in a menacing chorus.
They saw the bait. The four bodies, laid out as if for inspection.
The chattering clicks and hisses of the Chitauri soldiers ceased. A dead, cold silence fell over the squad. The Captain's large, green-bean-like eyes narrowed. This wasn't a random casualty; this was a message.
His response was to issue a new order, a simple command relayed directly from the mothership: sterilize the area.
With terrifying, mechanical precision, the seven skiffs spread out, forming a perfect circle high above the street. Then, like cold, biological weapons executing a program, they all opened fire at once.
It was not a battle. It was an extermination.
A curtain of pure, destructive energy descended, a net of inescapable death that scoured the entire block. Hawk, hidden deep within the foundations of the collapsed building, felt the world turn into a hellscape of fire and thunder. The ground shook violently as the bombardment systematically atomized everything on the surface. Buildings that were still standing were blown to dust. The road cracked and melted. Cars exploded in secondary fireballs. The very air was superheated into a shimmering haze of death.
The Chitauri were expressionless, their claws locked onto the triggers of their weapons, their faces illuminated by the constant flashes of their own destructive power. They fired until their energy reserves were depleted, until the entire block was nothing more than a smoking, glowing crater.
Finally, the Captain ceased fire. The other six followed suit a second later. They hovered over the devastation, their sensors scanning the ruins. Nothing. No life signs. No movement. Just smoldering wreckage. To them, it was an impossibility that any low-level life form could have survived such an overwhelming application of force.
Receiving new orders to rejoin the main assault, the Captain turned his skiff. The other six soldiers began to follow, their backs now turned to the crater.
It was the last mistake they would ever make.
As the first soldier turned, its armored chest silently and impossibly exploded from behind, a perfect, fist-sized hole punching clean through its torso. It arched back, a look of utter shock on its alien face, dead before its body even began to tumble from its skiff.
In the space of a single heartbeat, the other five followed suit. Squelch. Squelch. Squelch. Squelch. Squelch. One after another, their chests erupted in a shower of green blood and shattered armor, each one pierced from back to front by an invisible force.
Only after all six were dead and falling from the sky did the sound finally arrive. Six distinct, thunderous sonic booms ripped through the air all at once, a deafening declaration of speed beyond comprehension.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
The Chitauri Captain was a veteran. He didn't hear the attack; he felt it—the pressure wave, the violent displacement of air. His combat instincts, honed over countless slaughters on a hundred different worlds, screamed at him. Without conscious thought, he threw himself sideways, leaping from his skiff in a desperate, instinctual dive for his life.
He was in mid-air when a phantom fist, glowing with the faint, golden light of the cosmos, materialized and slammed into the now-empty pilot seat of his aircraft.
BOOM!
His exclusive, menacing skiff was obliterated in a massive, fiery explosion, the shockwave sending him tumbling through the smoke-filled air.