In the end, Hawk suppressed the fire surging in his chest.
He chose not to head into the chaos of the main battlefield in Manhattan.
Bursting through the portals in snarling roars, the Leviathan war-beasts of the Chitauri bio-fortresses loomed towering monstrosities wrapped in heavy alloy plating.
Even setting aside the question of whether he could defeat one, the size difference alone was staggering it was like comparing the earth to the heavens.
And besides…
If he already had a Cloth of the Phoenix, maybe he would have gone to join the action.
But right now? No thanks.
Besides, Queens had its fair share of Chitauri soldiers swarming through the borough like a plague of locusts. There was no need to chase after Manhattan's spotlight.
That battlefield belonged to the original Avengers.
Not him.
Yes, he had grown stronger.
But it was just that stronger. Not invincible.
Awakening his Microcosm was just the beginning.
It was a spark, not the final blaze.
It wasn't the end.
It was the first step.
So, Hawk didn't go anywhere.
He didn't even take the initiative to hunt down enemies.
Instead, he crouched quietly just outside his apartment, like a predator lying in wait. He knew that once the nearby Chitauri received the signal that their comrades had been killed, they would come searching. Straight into his trap.
Letting the prey come to you was a hell of a lot easier than chasing it down.
Especially when they could fly, and he couldn't.
More importantly…
His neighborhood was a slum.
And what did that mean?
Let's put it this way
If someone in this district dialed 911, it would take at least thirty minutes for an ambulance to show up. But in the wealthy areas of Manhattan?
They'd be there in under three.
The surveillance situation was just as bad.
In rich neighborhoods, even the alley trash cans had security cameras aimed right at them. But here?
Even the main roads barely had any functional cameras.
And if by chance one was installed, it wouldn't even last the night some local kids would rip it down and sell it for parts before the sun came up.
Soon enough, hiding in the shadows, Hawk spotted two Chitauri soldiers flying in his direction on their grotesque gliders, responding to the death signals from their fallen comrades.
His eyes lit up.
Two minutes later
Thud.
Thud.
Two more mangled alien bodies hit the ground beside the previous pair he had left deliberately visible in the open atop the apartment rubble carefully posed so that other Chitauri would definitely see them.
And just as he expected, the two new enemy gliders, now riderless, auto-piloted themselves in a preset direction, searching for commands.
Hawk silently stepped back into the shadows.
One minute later.
Due to the rapidly increasing Chitauri casualties in Queens, a new signal was fired down from the Chitauri warship hovering above the Manhattan wormhole.
In an instant
The nearby Chitauri foot soldiers, who had been joyfully rampaging through Queens blasting buildings, vehicles, and helpless humans abruptly stopped and turned in unison.
They had received orders.
They were being redirected to the source of the echoing screams that had just thundered across Jackson Heights.
With screeching roars, the alien soldiers formed up behind their squad leader who was taller, bulkier, and flew a more menacing glider than the rest.
They soared over the rooftops and descended above the ruined apartment block.
And there they saw it.
Four of their own
their grotesque corpses lined up in the rubble, limbs broken, torsos mangled.
"Krrrrk! Zzzzzz!"
"Ssskrrreeehhh!"
The Chitauri squad leader and his six subordinates froze at the sight.
Then, as if receiving new orders, their gliders flared to life again.
In the blink of an eye, the seven scattered into a loose circle formation around the neighborhood.
Their cold, reptilian eyes glinted with no emotion as they each pulled the triggers on their gliders' cannons.
No hesitation.
No mercy.
No restraint.
A mechanical barrage began.
Energy blasts rained down like a net from hell
exploding in brilliant flashes across the streets and buildings.
Boom!
Boom!
BOOM!
Old buildings crumbled.
Pavement split apart.
Cars burst into flames one after another.
And those Chitauri?
They didn't flinch.
They didn't blink.
Like soulless machines, they kept their claws on the triggers until every last round was spent, only releasing when their commander ceased fire.
Only then
did they all stop, synchronized like factory-built automatons.
The neighborhood had become a cratered wasteland.
Buildings were reduced to splintered ruins.
Burning cars still popped with delayed explosions.
It looked more like a war zone in Iraq than an American city.
Hovering above, the squad leader his large, emerald eyes scanning the now-silent ruins finally received the all-clear signal from command.
In their minds, there was no way anything could have survived that onslaught.
Especially not the primitive lifeforms of this planet.
Thus, the command ship, orbiting above the wormhole, sent its final instruction: disengage and move on.
The squad leader turned his glider.
His six troops followed, one by one, banking to retreat.
But just as the last soldier began to turn
Something went wrong.
His body jerked forward like a boiled shrimp
only it wasn't heat.
It was a fist.
Squelch.
His armored chest exploded outward, ruptured from within.
One heartbeat later
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
The remaining soldiers didn't even have time to react before their chests detonated in sequence, each one punched clean through from behind.
It looked as if someone had driven a fist straight through their backs, punching through their hearts with terrifying force.
And almost half a second later, the sound of the punches finally caught up
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The squad leader turned, wide-eyed, at the sound of thunderclaps behind him.
Without hesitation, he leapt from his glider.
A second later
KA-BOOM!
The leader's special glider, more grotesque than the others, exploded mid-air as if struck by an invisible hammer.
And then…