Quicksilver laughed like a man with too much speed and too few scruples. "Mutant Brotherhood's power keeps growing. Still short on muscle? I can fix that—give me the roster and I'll recruit the real heavy hitters. One strike, we wipe out Ryuuto and those so-called heroes."
Loki folded the paper into a neat triangle and tossed it to Pietro with the practiced casualness of someone who just lit a fuse. "Take it. Do your job," he said, smiling like a man who already had the strings in his hand. When Quicksilver disappeared into the city with his crew, he added, low and cold, "Kill the kid. Don't fail me."
Loki stayed on the wind, watching Pietro go. He'd removed the true heavyweights from that list the moment his palm had brushed the paper. Quicksilver was a pawn who would assemble cannon fodder and chaos—a perfect smoke-screen for whatever Loki was actually planning. Two opportunists. Two double-backs. Perfect.
Below them, the whole country started to tremble.
Radar blips, emergency channels and military calls flooded the air. From Washington to the Pentagon, people who were used to being in control realized they were not. Asgard's army darkened the sky like an omen—countless silhouettes, armor glinting, falling toward Earth. New York became the focus of a coming storm.
A uniformed officer reported to the throne, voice tight. "My lord, our advance reached the border. They're resisting—strong forces pushing back."
Thor smiled like a god who'd taken up a new hobby: annihilation. "Perfect," he said. "Raze it all. I do not want a single building standing."
The Asgardians moved like lightning incarnate. Jets screamed up into the sky, the U.S. military answered with everything from Black Hawks to anti-air batteries. Radio traffic turned into a frantic chorus. Evacuate, retreat, hold—none of it mattered.
The skies shredded. Mjolnir split the horizon. Thor laughed, the sound a thunderclap, and the first bombs that tried to pin his force turned into bright, useless sparks. He strode through the artillery like a god through a rainstorm—each swing of Mjolnir a crater, each hammer-throw a burst of divine reckoning. Soldiers died in numbers that made the word "casualty" feel like a misprint.
"Don't leave any survivors!" Thor demanded, voice cold as a war horn. The Asgardian ranks charged like a tidal wave. Within hours the military's lines cracked. Cities burned. New York stood at the eye of the coming apocalypse.
On a rooftop under a sky cooking with divine wrath, Ryuuto breathed in once and felt the world squeeze. He looked calm because panic looks ugly on him; inside, he felt the neat, terrible click of strategy lining up. He'd predicted this—Thor wanted spectacle, and gods were predictable in their fury. Predictability is a weakness you exploit.
"Thor's here," Charles said into the comms without theatrics. "He's less than a hundred klicks out. They're hitting hard."
Ryuuto glanced around the command tent as the X-Men, the Avengers liaison channels and S.H.I.E.L.D. feeds triangulated. Jean and Scott were already dispatching teams. Bobby and Steel were steady, the kind of steady that smells faintly of danger and fried ribs.
"Good," Ryuuto said. "Then let's make him regret the trip."
He dropped from a helicopter like a meteor, voice dry: "Thor. You brought a hammer to a promised ass-kicking." The roar of battle tried to swallow him; he spat a fireball that swallowed a line of Asgard soldiers whole—because theatrics are useful when the sky's already on fire.
American troops, battered and about to break, found a sliver of hope when they saw the X-Men's symbol and Ryuuto standing there. Someone started to cheer. It sounded like a prayer wrenched into a war cry; the moment of terror bent toward a new shape.
But the real show had only just started. Thor was already laughing like a man who had nothing left to lose. The hammer rose, lightning pooled, and the sky itself leaned in to watch the god smash the city between his hands.
Ryuuto looked up, grinned—thin, wicked—and moved.