Chapter Fifty-Nine — Is This Cat for Real?
Shadows were the best camouflage.
Levi pressed his body tightly against the twisted, deformed side of a cargo container, deliberately suppressing even the rhythm of his breathing. Like melting ice, he silently erased his own presence in the corner, trying to merge completely with the surrounding darkness.
The energy inside his body was like a sea that had just calmed after a storm. On the surface, it seemed tranquil, but deep beneath, hidden currents churned violently. He could clearly feel that the immense power originating from the Tesseract and from Carol—after that brush with death—was no longer a purely foreign force. His body was accepting it, absorbing it, gradually making it part of himself, like his own hands and feet: unfamiliar, but already responsive to his will.
A brand-new form of perception slowly unfolded in his mind, like a scroll being unrolled.
He didn't need his eyes to see. He could feel the energy distribution throughout the entire hangar.
The brightest presence, without question, was the blonde woman lying unconscious in the shallow crater at the center. Her body was like a stellar embryo just ignited—its glow faint, yet containing world-destroying potential—radiating unconscious waves of energy outward. She was a mobile energy singularity, a walking catastrophe.
Second was the Kree commander approaching her—Yon-Rogg. The energy within him felt like a precisely forged weapon: stable, condensed, and lethally sharp. Though his total energy was far inferior to Carol's, its extreme compression made him no less dangerous.
Then there were the scattered Kree soldiers. Each carried similar, standardized energy signatures—like cold bullets—devoid of emotion, driven only by obedience and the instinct to kill.
Beyond them were fainter points of light: Nick Fury, Coulson, and the surviving S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Their energy signatures were barely different from ordinary humans. In this battlefield dominated by superhuman forces, they were as fragile as candle flames in the wind—liable to be snuffed out at any moment.
The sensation was surreal—like a man born blind suddenly gaining sight one day. The world had been reconstructed before him, revealing a truer, more brutal dimension defined entirely by energy and power.
Yet this newborn sense of strength couldn't mask the profound weakness buried deep in his body.
Every breath tugged at aching muscles, as if every fiber had been torn apart and forcibly stitched back together. Mental exhaustion crashed over him in relentless waves, tempting him to collapse and sleep where he stood.
He knew what this was—the backlash of forcibly merging energies.
His body was like a riverbed violently widened by a flood. It could now carry more water, but the bed itself was cracked and damaged, in desperate need of time to heal.
So he couldn't move.
At least, not in front of everyone.
Revealing his newly gained power now would be like bleeding in a sea of sharks. He had to wait—wait for the perfect moment, when everyone's attention was drawn elsewhere, when he could slip away without a sound.
Inside the hangar, the brief calm shattered with a shout.
"Everyone freeze!"
Nick Fury had stepped out from behind cover, gripping his standard-issue pistol tightly. The dark muzzle was aimed squarely at Yon-Rogg, who was walking toward Carol. Coulson immediately followed, raising his weapon in textbook form, forming crossfire with Fury.
Fury's face was smeared with dust and sweat. His once-pristine suit was wrinkled and torn, making him look disheveled—but his gaze was razor-sharp, without the slightest hint of retreat.
"Put her down, alien," Fury said coldly, his voice carrying unmistakable authority. "This is Earth. Not your colony."
Yon-Rogg stopped and slowly turned around. He didn't even look at Fury's gun, merely sweeping him with a contemptuous gaze, as if inspecting an ant.
"Earth?" he scoffed, speaking in a metallic-toned universal language. "A primitive species that hasn't even left its own planet dares to talk about ownership?"
He pointed at himself, then at the Kree soldiers still exchanging fire. "We are Kree—the enforcers of the universe, the guardians of peace. We're here to eliminate terrorists who threaten cosmic order… and to reclaim property belonging to our empire."
His gaze returned to the unconscious Carol, appraising her like a priceless artifact.
Fury's single eye narrowed. "I don't care who you are. All I know is, on my turf, you hurt my people and destroyed my base. And now you want to take an American Air Force pilot. I can't let that happen."
"Just you?" Yon-Rogg laughed openly. "With that toy that can't even scratch my armor?"
Before the words fully landed, he raised his arm. The armor emitted a soft click as a weapon port opened.
"Die, primitive."
A blue energy blast screamed toward Fury's face.
Levi's pupils contracted. He knew Fury couldn't dodge this shot.
But at that critical instant, a figure lunged from Fury's side—
Coulson.
He threw himself forward and shoved Fury aside with all his strength.
Hiss—!
The energy beam grazed Fury's shoulder and slammed into the wall behind him, melting a fist-sized hole straight through it, the edges glowing red-hot.
Fury and Coulson crashed to the ground, narrowly escaping death.
"Sir! Are you alright?" Coulson asked urgently, ignoring the pain in his own arm.
Fury rose to his feet, staring at the smoking hole in the wall, his expression darkening.
His combat experience. His weapons. All of it seemed laughable before this alien.
This wasn't a fair fight.
This was dimensional suppression.
Yon-Rogg lost patience. He ignored the two "ants" and turned back toward Carol, preparing to lift her.
Then—
"Meow~"
A soft, lazy cat's meow echoed through the smoke-filled hangar.
It was jarringly out of place.
Everyone turned.
An orange cat strolled out from behind a pile of burned wreckage, its gait elegant and unhurried. Its fur was pristine, untainted by dust, as if the earlier explosions had been nothing more than fireworks.
It padded over to Mar-Vell's cold corpse, gently rubbing its head against her hand, purring softly in apparent grief.
Fury froze.
He loved cats. And in that suffocating moment, seeing such a harmless little creature eased his tension—just a fraction.
"Hey, little guy…" he said softly.
The cat looked at him with innocent, glassy eyes—then turned its gaze toward Yon-Rogg.
In the next instant, its body lowered, a deep, threatening hiss rumbling from its throat. Its fur stood on end, all cuteness gone, replaced by raw predatory menace.
Yon-Rogg noticed it too, frowning in irritation. He didn't know why this animal was hostile—but he had no time for nonsense.
He bent down to grab Carol.
The moment his fingers were about to touch her—
The cat moved.
It didn't pounce.
It opened its mouth.
What followed shattered every Earth human's worldview.
The tiny feline mouth split open in a grotesquely impossible way. Thick, slime-covered pink tentacles burst forth, lined with barbs, whipping through the air like alien horrors, lunging straight at Yon-Rogg.
"What the hell—!"
Levi, watching from the shadows, nearly popped his eyes out.
He knew this cat—Goose—was no ordinary cat. It was a Flerken, one of the most dangerous creatures in the universe.
But knowing it from books or movies was nothing compared to seeing this nightmare unfold live.
This cat was absolutely not normal.
Yon-Rogg reacted instantly, leaping back while firing his arm-mounted energy weapon at the writhing tentacles.
Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!
The blasts struck true, scorching black marks into the tentacles—but failed to sever them. They showed no sign of pain, only growing more aggressive, weaving through the air and sealing off every escape route.
Fury and Coulson were completely stunned.
They stared in disbelief as a cat unleashed tentacles ten times larger than its body, whipping a powerful alien across the hangar.
"That… what the hell is that thing?" Coulson whispered, his voice trembling.
Fury didn't answer. He stared at the cat, shock and terror mixing with a strange, undeniable excitement.
His understanding of the universe had just been obliterated.
"Meowrrr!"
The Flerken shrieked. One tentacle lashed around Yon-Rogg's guard and snapped across his face.
Smack!
Yon-Rogg staggered, blood streaking down his cheek.
He was furious.
"Damned beast!"
His energy flared, forming a blue shield that blasted the tentacles back. Abandoning Carol, he charged the Flerken, intent on killing it first.
As they clashed, Fury noticed something else—
The Flerken, annoyed that Fury was too close, casually flicked a smaller tentacle toward him.
Fury instinctively raised his hand.
Pain exploded in his left eye.
He groaned and clutched his face. When he pulled his hand away, blood poured between his fingers.
Three deep, parallel claw marks crossed his eye socket—one of them tearing straight through his eyeball.
The pain was blinding, but Fury didn't scream.
He didn't even look at the wound.
He simply stared at the surreal battle, burning the image into his memory.
From the shadows, Levi saw everything.
This was it—the true reason Fury lost his eye.
Not a heroic scar from saving the world—but a careless swipe from a cat-shaped alien monstrosity.
If that story ever got out, it'd become the joke of the century at S.H.I.E.L.D.
But for Levi, it was perfect.
The Flerken's appearance had completely shattered the battlefield. Yon-Rogg was tied down. The remaining Kree soldiers shifted fire to support him, easing the pressure on the agents.
The hangar descended into absolute chaos.
And chaos was exactly what Levi had been waiting for.
His eyes swept the area as his mind—boosted by the super-soldier serum—calculated at impossible speed. An escape route formed instantly: through the burning wreckage, around the far side of the hangar, to a ground crew maintenance tunnel. From there, into the base's drainage system.
Once inside, he'd vanish like a fish into the sea.
His body moved.
No dramatic flair. No glowing effects.
He hunched like an ordinary survivor, using firelight and smoke as cover, slipping step by step out of the heart of the chaos.
When he passed Fury and Coulson, their attention was fully on the Flerken. They never noticed the "corpse" in a white prison uniform move.
Bullets and energy blasts whizzed past his head, but he didn't blink.
At last, he reached the maintenance door—a thick steel slab secured with a heavy lock.
Levi glanced back.
Yon-Rogg had clearly decided the Flerken wasn't worth it. Feinting back, he retreated toward the Kree dropship.
"Retreat! All units, retreat!" he roared into his comm.
A beam of light enveloped him and the unconscious Carol, pulling them into the ship. Engines thundered as it ascended and vanished through the hole in the hangar roof.
With their commander gone, the remaining Kree withdrew rapidly.
The hangar fell silent, leaving only wreckage, shaken S.H.I.E.L.D. agents—
And the orange cat.
It retracted its tentacles, returned to its harmless appearance, yawned, licked its paws, and padded over to Fury, rubbing affectionately against his leg while purring.
Fury looked down at the creature that had just rewritten reality for him, his expression utterly conflicted.
Levi turned away.
Captain Marvel's story had begun.
And his own story was about to enter a new chapter.
He faced the locked door and extended his right hand.
A faint golden glimmer flashed across his palm.
Crack.
The internal structure of the alloy lock twisted and shattered silently.
Levi opened the door, didn't look back, and slipped into the deep darkness beyond—
On the path to freedom.
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