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The path of destruction was impossible to miss.
Yasuo ran through streets transformed into war zones, following a trail of overturned cars, shattered storefronts, and cratered asphalt. Civilians fled in the opposite direction, faces pale with terror, some carrying injured companions, others simply running with the blind panic of prey animals fleeing a predator. Police had established barriers three blocks back, their weapons drawn but useless against what they faced.
Natasha moved ahead of him with practiced efficiency, speaking rapidly into her earpiece while navigating the debris field. "I need air support redirected to 42nd and 7th. Civilian evacuation is incomplete. And someone get Tony out of his meeting I don't care if he's negotiating world peace, we need Iron Man in the air now."
Another impact shook the ground, this one close enough that Yasuo felt it through his entire body. A sound followed not quite a roar, more like the bellow of some primordial force given voice. It resonated in his chest, vibrating his bones with its sheer power.
Then he saw it.
The Hulk stood in the center of an intersection, easily three meters tall and impossibly broad. Green skin rippled with muscle that defied anatomical logic, each movement contained enough power to pulverize concrete. But it was the rage that struck Yasuo like a physical blow raw, primal fury that radiated from the creature in waves his Sharingan could almost see. This wasn't controlled anger. This was wrath given form, untempered by reason or restraint.
The creature Banner, Natasha had called him grabbed a taxi with one hand and hurled it like a child's toy. The vehicle tumbled end over end, crashing through a building's facade in an explosion of glass and twisted metal.
"BANNER!" Natasha's voice cut through the chaos, amplified and commanding. She'd taken position on a raised platform, a specialized weapon in her hands that crackled with blue energy. "Bruce! Can you hear me? You need to calm down!"
The Hulk's head snapped toward her voice. For a moment, something flickered in those rage-filled eyes confusion, perhaps recognition but then it vanished beneath another surge of fury. He roared again and charged, each footfall cratering the street.
Natasha fired. The energy blast caught the Hulk square in the chest, and for all the effect it had, she might as well have thrown pebbles at a mountain. He didn't even slow down. She dove aside at the last second, the Hulk's fist pulverizing the platform where she'd been standing.
Yasuo's Sharingan tracked the fight with crystal clarity, analyzing patterns, searching for weaknesses. What he found defied everything he understood about combat. The Hulk's movements weren't random there was intent, however buried but his power signature was unlike anything Yasuo had encountered. It wasn't chakra, wasn't elemental magic, wasn't the technological energy that permeated this world. It was something fundamental, something that twisted the very fabric of reality around it. Raw gamma radiation fused with human consciousness, creating something that existed in the space between man and catastrophe.
And buried deep within that maelstrom of rage and power, Yasuo's enhanced perception caught something else: a smaller signature, human-sized, screaming silently beneath the monster's fury.
Banner's consciousness, trapped and drowning.
"He's still in there," Yasuo said, not realizing he'd spoken aloud until Natasha appeared beside him, breathing hard.
"What?"
"Banner. The man beneath the beast." Yasuo's Sharingan spun, its tomoe patterns accelerating as he focused on that buried consciousness. "He's fighting for control. Losing, but fighting."
"That's wonderful information that doesn't help us stop him from leveling half of Manhattan." Natasha reloaded her weapon, though they both knew it was futile. "S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol is containment until he exhausts himself, but the damage ratio " She cut herself off as the Hulk ripped a fire hydrant from the ground, water geysering skyward. "We're running out of time."
Spider-Man swung past overhead, his webs catching falling debris before it could crush fleeing civilians. "Any brilliant plans? Because the 'let him tire himself out' strategy seems suboptimal!"
The Hulk grabbed a bus thankfully empty and raised it overhead like a club. His target was a building where Yasuo's enhanced sight detected at least thirty people still trapped on the upper floors, unable to evacuate in time.
Yasuo moved before thought caught up to instinct.
He crossed the distance in seconds, his body enhanced by whatever transformation had brought him to this world. The Sharingan guided his footwork, finding purchase on unstable rubble, his movements flowing like water through a battlefield. He positioned himself between the Hulk and the building, directly in the monster's line of sight.
"Yasuo, NO!" Natasha's voice, sharp with alarm.
The Hulk's eyes locked onto him. This close, the creature was even more massive, radiating heat and barely contained violence. Those eyes more yellow than human green held nothing but rage, no recognition of Yasuo as a person rather than an obstacle to be destroyed.
The bus came down.
Yasuo's Sharingan tracked its trajectory with supernatural precision. At the last possible instant, he moved not away, but to the side, the bus crashing into the street where he'd stood a heartbeat before. Concrete exploded upward, chunks of asphalt raining down. But Yasuo was already moving again, closing the distance to the Hulk rather than retreating.
Insane. Suicidal. Exactly what needed to happen.
"Banner!" Yasuo's voice cut through the chaos. "Bruce Banner! I know you can hear me!"
The Hulk swung a fist that could have pulverized him into atoms. Yasuo's Sharingan read the attack, predicted the angle, and he dropped beneath the blow. It passed so close that wind pressure tore at his stolen clothes. He came up inside the creature's guard, closer than anyone sane would dare approach.
This close, the energy was overwhelming. His Sharingan could barely process the information gamma radiation, human consciousness, rage given physical form, all swirling in a chaotic storm. But there, at the center of it all, was Banner. The man. The scientist. The person drowning in his own monster.
"I know what it's like," Yasuo said, his voice somehow cutting through despite the chaos. "To lose control. To become something others fear. To have power you can't contain." The Hulk's hand closed around his torso, lifting him effortlessly. Ribs creaked under the pressure. "But you're still in there. Still fighting. I can see you."
The Hulk's eyes met his, and for a fraction of a second, something human flickered in that yellow-green gaze.
It was enough.
Yasuo's Sharingan spun faster, its tomoe patterns blurring together. This was dangerous using techniques he barely understood with powers already strained to breaking. But he'd seen Banner's consciousness. Knew it was there. And if his Sharingan could cast genjutsu illusions in his old world, perhaps it could reach through the monster to touch the man.
He pushed.
His chakra weak, diminished, a shadow of what it had been flowed through his eyes and into the Hulk's gaze. Not an attack. Not an attempt at control. Simply a bridge, a connection between two minds, two souls trapped in circumstances beyond their control.
I see you, Banner. I see you drowning. But you're not alone.
The mental connection slammed into place, and Yasuo gasped at what he found. Banner's consciousness was a hurricane of self-loathing, fear, and desperate attempts at control all failing against the Hulk's primal fury. The rage wasn't mindless it was reaction to pain, to fear, to a world that had hurt this man so deeply that anger became his only defense.
Yasuo understood. Gods, he understood.
You think you're a monster. But monsters don't fight for control. Monsters don't care about the damage they cause.
The Hulk's grip loosened fractionally. The yellow in his eyes shifted, green bleeding back through. For a moment precious, fragile clarity emerged.
"Banner?" Natasha's voice, cautious and hopeful.
The Hulk's mouth moved, forming words that came out in a growl but were recognizably human. "I... can't... hold..."
Then the genjutsu shattered.
The backlash hit Yasuo like a physical blow. Pain exploded behind his eyes, his Sharingan searing with agony as chakra pathways strained beyond their limits. He tasted copper, felt warmth spill from his mouth. The world tilted violently, Natasha's shout reaching him from what seemed like a vast distance.
The Hulk's hand opened, and Yasuo fell.
He hit the ground hard, his body refusing to respond to commands. His vision swam, the Sharingan flickering erratically. Red filled his sight blood from his eyes, he realized distantly, the strain of using techniques his diminished powers couldn't sustain.
Through the blur, he saw the Hulk stumble backward, confusion replacing rage. The creature's hands came up to his head, a gesture so human it was jarring on such a massive frame.
"Yasuo!" Natasha was beside him, her hands checking for injuries with professional efficiency. "Stay with me. Don't you dare pass out."
He tried to respond, but more blood came instead of words. His Sharingan deactivated involuntarily, leaving him blind except for normal sight corrupted by hemorrhaging. The price of power he hadn't fully recovered. The cost of reaching too far with abilities barely returned to him.
"We need medical, now!" Natasha's voice had an edge he hadn't heard before. Fear? For him? They'd just met, and already she cared whether he lived or died. The thought would have been touching if his entire nervous system wasn't screaming.
A new sound cut through the chaos footsteps approaching at inhuman speed, but controlled, measured. Through failing vision, Yasuo saw a figure emerge from the smoke and debris. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a suit of blue with a white star on the chest. He carried a circular shield that gleamed even in the dim light, and his face held the kind of determined calm that came from facing impossible odds and refusing to break.
"Natasha, report," the man said, his voice carrying natural authority.
"Steve," Natasha replied, relief evident. "We have a civilian down. He managed to reach Banner I don't know how, but the Hulk responded. Then "
"Then I paid the price," Yasuo managed, his voice barely a whisper. Blood bubbled at his lips.
The man Steve knelt beside him, his expression concerned but focused. "Don't talk. Help is coming. You did good, son. Whatever you did, it gave Banner enough control to stop himself. You saved lives today."
The irony nearly made Yasuo laugh. Saved lives. He, who'd been condemned for murder. He, who'd died branded a criminal. Here in this impossible world, he'd saved lives.
The darkness at the edges of his vision spread inward, carrying with it a familiar cold. Not death he'd tasted death before, and this wasn't quite the same but unconsciousness born from exhaustion and trauma.
The last thing he saw before the darkness claimed him was the Hulk, still standing but no longer raging, his massive form shrinking slowly. Returning to human. Banner reclaiming his body.
And Yasuo's last coherent thought was a question: What kind of world am I in, where even the monsters are just people in pain?
Then nothing.
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