The last thing anyone expected was for the fireball to split midair.
Just as the downed gunship erupted in a roaring inferno above their heads, Daniel—still shielding Betty Ross in his arms—stopped running.
His eyes locked onto the falling blaze.
Then, in a fluid motion, he raised his wand.
No chant. No dramatic incantation.
Only a whisper of will.
An invisible edge surged forth—an unseen blade of force that cleaved the fireball cleanly in two. The explosion parted in the air, as if obeying some higher command, and crashed down in twin arcs on either side of them.
The charred remains of the helicopter slammed into the earth with two massive thuds. Steel tore. Flame surged. Debris scattered in a storm of twisted metal and molten shrapnel.
Yet not a single ember touched them.
All of it—every shockwave, every jagged scrap of burning wreckage—bounced off an invisible barrier.
Daniel stood tall, unmoving, wand still raised.
A dome of magic encased them, shimmering faintly against the light of the blaze.
Betty Ross, still in his arms, didn't move.
She didn't struggle. Didn't flinch. Didn't even speak.
She simply shrank into him, her breath tight in her throat, her mind blank from the sudden cascade of noise, heat, and death. And yet…
Somewhere in the chaos, in the scent of his coat, in the rhythm of his heartbeat—she felt something oddly familiar.
Safe.
She had always known Daniel was a mage. In the quiet moments they once shared—discussions about the theory of magic, lost civilizations, arcane patterns—she had sensed something deeper beneath his calm surface.
She had envied it.
A small part of her had once longed to wield magic herself. Not for glory or power. But to help Bruce. To be more than just the woman left behind by the man she loved.
Now, in this very moment—cradled in the arms of a mage as war machines rained fire around them—she realized something else.
She could never go back to what once was.
Hulk had seen it all.
He'd been mid-lunge when the broken rotor from the falling chopper whirled toward him—its deadly blades spinning with such force they could've split stone.
Even for him, it was too much.
He veered sideways, instincts driving him to dodge. But his eyes never left Betty.
And through her, Daniel.
There was no mistaking that barrier. The calm composure. The magic pulsing invisibly in the air.
Hulk may not have recognized Daniel—but Bruce Banner did.
He'd watched the man from afar, long before his reemergence. Studied him quietly from hidden rooftops. Knew he had some bond with Betty, one forged while Bruce was a ghost.
But even Bruce hadn't imagined he was this powerful.
From the field's perimeter, General Ross stood frozen.
The full weight of the moment crashed into him when he realized—
His daughter wasn't beside him anymore.
He spun—just in time to see her standing out in the open, opposite Hulk, in the exact line of fire from the gunship that had just released a full barrage.
"BETTY!"
The word ripped from him, raw and broken.
He was too late.
The bullets had already fallen like hail, the explosion already crashing down. He had condemned her. His own daughter.
Then he saw it.
Him.
That man—Daniel. The one who had appeared like a phantom between Betty and death. The one who took the hailstorm of bullets to the back and stood unfazed. The one who held her like something priceless, as flames devoured the air around them.
And not a scratch.
The fire raged—and it simply bounced off.
General Ross stared. His mouth moved, but no sound came. His military-trained mind tried to catalogue the event: barrier magic, no incantation, high-level reflex casting. Tactical shielding capable of negating hypersonic ballistics and explosive impact.
But the truth was simpler: he had no idea what he was looking at.
He had only learned of Daniel days ago. With Bruce gone and Betty's emotional state stabilized, the detail he'd placed around her had been withdrawn. He thought she had moved on.
Apparently not.
Ross had even commissioned a quiet background check. The man was clean. Enrolled in university at 19. Brilliant, but not flagged. No prior military ties. Just a whisper of oddity about his academic record. The kind of anomaly you ignore—until it throws a fireball in your face.
And now?
Now Ross knew this wasn't just some boy his daughter had mentioned.
This was something else entirely.
The fireball he had feared smashed into the street, but Daniel parted it like wind through cloth. And Betty stood unharmed in the epicenter.
Ross felt his chest tighten—not from grief, but calculation.
He stopped seeing Daniel as a danger.
He started seeing him as an asset.
The U.S. military had chased the dream of super soldiers for decades. Stryker had his mutants. S.H.I.E.L.D. had their secrets. Stark had his tech. But mages?
Magicians didn't leave blueprints.
Magicians were myth made manifest.
Hard to find. Harder to replicate.
And impossible to kill—if today was any indication.
If Daniel could be persuaded—recruited—weaponized…
Ross didn't finish the thought.
He just watched as the flames finally ebbed.
And standing in the center of the scorched pavement, untouched by fire or steel, was Daniel—his cloak scorched at the edges, but eyes calm, wand lowered, Betty Ross still trembling in his arms.
And yet Daniel's focus wasn't on Ross.
Wasn't on the soldiers now slowly surrounding the field with rifles lowered.
Wasn't even on Betty.
No—his eyes were fixed on one man.
The emerald colossus standing a stone's throw away.
The Hulk.
There was no mistaking what came next.
For all the chaos, all the destruction, all the fire and thunder and death… this was the true center of the storm.
Not the army.
Not the machine.
Not the politics.
Two titans. One born of science. One cloaked in sorcery.
And the space between them was rapidly shrinking.
Daniel gently lowered Betty to the ground, her legs wobbling beneath her, her eyes still wide with awe.
Then, without turning, he spoke in a voice soft but clear.
"Stay behind me."
She didn't question it.
Because in that moment—between the wreckage and the wind, between the smoke and the sky—there was something in Daniel's stance.
Something ancient.
Something inevitable.
And somewhere, deep in Hulk's smoldering mind, Bruce Banner whispered—
This just became a very different fight.