The shield rang like a bell.
Steve Rogers felt the impact travel up his arm, the familiar weight of vibranium absorbing kinetic energy that would've shattered bone. He shifted his weight, angling the shield down, and met Crossbones' eyes over the rim.
"Come on, Rogers," Rumlow snarled, circling. "That all you got?"
Steve didn't answer. His jaw tightened as another transmission crackled through his comm—more breaches, more civilians pinned down, more droids pouring through the city's broken defenses. Every second he spent here with Rumlow was another second people died three blocks over.
Crossbones grinned, reading the calculation in Steve's face. "What's wrong, Cap? Got somewhere better to be?"
Steve's knuckles whitened on the shield's straps. This was what Hydra did best—force you to choose between bad options and worse ones. The stalemate stretched between them like a drawn blade, both men waiting for the other to blink first.
Across the plaza, Aayla Secura's twin lightsabers hummed through the air in precise arcs, deflecting blaster fire as she advanced on Sey. The Acolyte moved like liquid shadow, his crimson blade leaving afterimages in the smoke-filled air.
On the eastern flank, Ahsoka's breathing came hard and fast. Sweat stung her eyes as she parried another strike from the blue-skinned Acolyte pressing her back. Beside her, Barriss Offee maintained perfect Form III defensive postures, but even her unshakeable calm showed cracks as their opponent's relentless assault continued.
The largest Acolyte drove Luminara Unduli back step by grinding step. Her elegant Soresu deflections met his raw power strikes with increasing difficulty. The ancient stone beneath her boots cracked with each impact.
"Is this how old friends reunite?"
Hope van Dyne twisted midair, shrinking to wasp-size as the red lightsaber blade hissed through the space her torso had occupied a microsecond before. She shot upward, wings blurring, and expanded to full size directly above Asajj Ventress's head. Her boot connected with Ventress jaw with a satisfying crack.
The Acolyte stumbled but recovered with disturbing grace, spinning into an elbow strike that caught Hope across the cheek. Stars exploded behind her eyes. She tasted copper.
"You know," Ventress purred, wiping green blood from her split lip, "it's been far too long since I've seen you. Or that handsome partner of yours." Her smile widened, showing too many teeth. "Where is he? I'm looking forward to our reunion."
Something hot and primal surged through Hope's chest. "Stay away from Scott."
She grew to fifteen feet, the sudden size change generating a shockwave that sent Ventress skidding backward. Hope followed, closing the distance, each step shaking the ground.
"Such passion," the Acolyte laughed, her eyes bright with malicious delight. "I hope you can maintain that intensity."
"You talk too much." Hope shrunk again, dodged under another lightsaber swing, and drove her fist into Ventress's solar plexus at full size.
The Dathomirian wheezed but somehow kept smiling. "And you have such anger issues."
The corridor stretched ahead of Matt Murdock like a corridor of sound—boot-steps behind him, eight clone troopers with elevated heart rates and sweating palms. Ahead, a singular presence. Still. Waiting.
Matt heard the man's breathing first. Controlled. The heartbeat slow, meditative. Hair moving slightly in the recycled air of the ventilation system—long, pulled back, secured with something metal. A cloth covered the man's mouth, but Matt could taste the scent of old fabric, feel the acoustic dead space where unseeing eyes absorbed rather than reflected sound.
"Ah." The man's voice emerged from behind the mask, cultured and curious. "How interesting."
Matt said nothing. He let his world paint itself through echoes and vibrations—the weight distribution in the man's stance, the calluses on his palms where they gripped the cylindrical object at his belt. A lightsaber hilt.
"You won't be the first blind warrior I've faced," the man continued. His head tilted, and Matt felt the weight of empty eyes studying him the way he studied others. "Though you're certainly the first I've encountered who fights without the Force. Tell me—how do you navigate the world without sight?"
"I manage," Matt said quietly.
"As do I." There was something almost pleased in the man's tone. "Unlike my fellow Acolytes, I retain certain courtesies. You may call me Prosset Dibs."
The name echoed in Matt's memory—recent intelligence briefs, captured Separatist communications. "The escaped Jedi. Sora Bulq freed you from Republic imprisonment."
"He liberated me from unjust captivity," Dibs corrected, and Matt heard the shift in his breathing, the micro-changes that spoke of old anger. "A disagreement with the Jedi Council over their interpretation of justice. They imprisoned me for my beliefs."
"And joining the Sith?" Matt's fingers found the billy club at his side. "Terror and murder—that's your solution? Of all the paths you could've chosen, you picked oppression."
The temperature in the corridor seemed to drop. Dibs' breathing changed—faster, shallower. Fury, barely controlled.
"You dare speak to me of oppression?" The lightsaber ignited with a snap-hiss that sent acoustic shockwaves cascading through Matt's senses. "You blind, arrogant Jedi, lecturing me about suffering?"
"I'm not a Jedi." Matt's billy club extended with a metallic click. He felt the heat signature of the red blade, tasted ozone and ionized air. "But I know the difference between justice and revenge."
Their heartbeats synchronized for one perfect moment—two blind men reading each other through sense and instinct, measuring the space between them in gradients of violence.
Then they moved.
South sector. Black Panther's claws sparked against an Umbaran's electro-staff, the vibranium absorbing and redirecting the energy back through the weapon. The soldier convulsed and fell.
Beside him, Natasha put three rounds through a droid's photoreceptor cluster with mechanical precision. "We're spread too thin," she said, her voice level despite the chaos.
Quicksilver was everywhere and nowhere, a silver blur that left disabled droids and confused Umbarans in his wake. "I count forty-seven more inbound, east quadrant," he reported, barely winded.
"Copy that," Commander Cody's voice crackled over the comm. His men moved with practiced efficiency, covering angles and firing in coordinated volleys. T'Challa watched a clone kick a thermal detonator back at its throwers with split-second timing. These soldiers knew their craft.
Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber hummed through the air in elegant arcs, each movement economical and precise. "The Umbarans are pushing for the power station," he observed, deflecting blaster bolts with minimal effort. "They're not just attacking—they're executing a strategy."
T'Challa was about to respond when the comm channel erupted with panicked voices.
"We can't hold—"
"Taking heavy casualties, we need—"
"They're everywhere, they're—"
His enhanced hearing picked out the specific acoustic signature beneath the shouting—the snap-hiss of a lightsaber, the wet sound of it cleaving through armor. Clone troopers, dying.
T'Challa was already running.
His suit amplified his speed, the Wakandan technology responding to his nervous system like a second skin. The city blurred past him—burning buildings, crashed speeders, bodies in white armor. He followed the sounds of death toward their source.
The lightsaber grew louder. Closer. Someone screaming. Someone falling silent.
T'Challa ran faster.