The raging energy and killing frost crashed forward like a flood, only to slam into an immovable invisible wall.
Forced apart, they split into two furious blue waterfalls that roared past Saitama's sides, tearing into the streets and buildings behind him.
The ground behind him was plowed into two massive trenches, billowing with icy mist and sheathed in thick blue ice. Several buildings that had already been on the verge of collapse finally gave way under this onslaught, falling into ruins and freezing over in an instant.
Saitama himself stood on a little "island" of absolute safety carved out in the center of the torrent.
Not even the edge of his red cape fluttered.
He even had time to cover his mouth and let out a yawn, as if this big flashy light show in front of him was starting to get boring.
The deep-blue energy torrent howled for several seconds before finally dying away and dissipating.
At the edge of the smoking, ice-rimmed crater, Saitama dropped the hand scratching the back of his head. He blinked in mild confusion, glanced at the icy trenches gouged into the ground at his heels, then lifted his eyes toward the balcony where Loki was standing, slightly out of breath from his all-out blast.
Saitama's brows drew together, a faint annoyance finally creeping into his expression.
"Y'know… you're kind of in my way," he said, tone as flat as if stating the time, eyes finally sharpening just a little. "And that light show was way too bright. Hurts my eyes. Makes it hard to find the hotpot place."
"…"
The battlefield sank into a silence even deeper than before.
The rage and murderous intent on Loki's face froze over, like someone had shoved a ridiculous mask onto him. His fingers trembled on the scepter, knuckles cracking audibly. For a heartbeat, even the Mind Stone's glow seemed to dim.
He stared down at the bald man below him, and in that moment, the tricks, magic, and silver tongue that Asgard's second prince had been honing for thousands of years all felt like the punchline to a cruel joke.
"Uh… JARVIS?" Tony's voice came out dry and hoarse, with a tremor he didn't even notice himself. "Those energy readings just now… what's the analysis? And don't you dare say 'cannot be parsed' again."
"Sir…" JARVIS's voice sounded like an electronic groan, drained and distorted. "Peak energy output… exceeded the Mark VII's maximum safe load by approximately… four hundred seventy-eight times. Energy type: composite—containing high-density gamma-level psychic interference, manifested absolute-zero frost-law attack… and unknown spatial distortion effects. Target individual… received direct impact… measured energy dissipation rate… zero percent. Defensive mechanism… unobservable. Logically… not possible. Conclusion: known physical laws… may not apply… to the target individual."
The AI's words stuttered out, full of static and logic errors.
Steve Rogers took a deep breath, forcing himself to claw his way back from sheer shock to something like clear thinking.
He snapped his shield up and bellowed with everything he had, his voice cracking across the dead-still battlefield like thunder:
"Everyone, clear away from that area! He is not the enemy! Repeat, he is NOT the enemy! Prioritize wiping out the alien ground forces!"
He didn't know what that bald guy was or where he came from. But right now, at least, he was hitting the Chitauri. They needed to stabilize the line and make the most of this impossible wild card.
Captain America's order hit the silence like a stone dropped into a frozen lake, shattering the paralysis.
Hawkeye and Black Widow were the first to react. They shoved their shock down by force, their eyes snapping back to razor focus.
Clint's bowstring thrummed rapidly, firing off a stream of specialized explosive arrows that slammed into Chitauri sky-bikes still stuck in "standby" confusion.
Natasha moved like a black panther, leaping from on high. Her batons crackled with lightning as she drove them into the joint of a Chitauri soldier's armor, dropping it in an instant.
Hulk, jolted back into motion by Steve's shout and the renewed sounds of battle, felt the red haze of rage roll back over his mind.
"Hulk… SMAAASH!"
He stopped wondering where the "little bug" had gone. Those huge green fists swung again, smashing straight into the nearest Chitauri foot soldier and pounding it—and the chunk of ground under it—into rubble.
Tony gave his head a sharp shake, dragging his gaze away from the bald walking physics exploit below. The faceplate snapped shut with a click.
"Okay, JARVIS, bookmark that as 'humanoid physics bug.' We'll study him later. Right now—let's take out the trash."
He kicked his thrusters, turning the armor back into a streak of red and gold. Repulsors and micro-missiles screamed toward the dense swarms of Chitauri aircraft in the sky.
The battle, briefly frozen by Saitama's unbelievable "defense" (or rather, complete disregard), flared back to life.
But this time, the Avengers' rhythm was different.
They were no longer just gritting their teeth and enduring wave after wave of attacks. They began deliberately clearing the outer ranks, pushing the chaos back, as if unconsciously leaving the center of the stage—the space around Loki—open…
Or more precisely, leaving Loki to the inscrutable bald man in the middle of it all.
On the balcony, Loki's chest heaved. His handsome face twisted, not just with fury, but with a sliver of raw, shivering fear he didn't want to admit even to himself.
He glared down at Saitama, the Mind Stone pulsing faster with frantic light. Invisible tendrils of psychic power surged out from the gem, lashing toward Saitama's mind like a storm.
Charm him. Control him.
Force him to kneel.
Make him tear his allies apart.
Drown him in an eternal nightmare.
Loki roared inwardly, driving the Mind Stone to its limit. That power was enough to twist the will of an entire army, enough to turn the bravest warriors into raving lunatics tearing each other to pieces.
But when that godly, rule-bending psychic force touched Saitama—
It vanished.
No… it was even more thorough than that.
It was like trying to shake the Himalayas with a single spider thread. There wasn't even the faintest ripple.
Saitama didn't react at all. He didn't feel anything.
He was a bit impatient, that was all.
He kept glancing left and right, squinting through the smoke and dust to get his bearings on the ruined street. Under his breath, he muttered:
"Man… I swear I saw a signboard before… Was it over there? Or that way? This smoke is really getting in the way…"
"No. No. Impossible!!"
Loki's shriek ripped free at last, edged with panic. The sound was high and sharp enough to grate on steel. The Mind Stone's power had never failed him. Never.
This was completely outside anything he understood.
That bald man… was his mind solid steel?
No—even steel bent under the Stone's influence.
Unless… there was nothing to affect. Unless that consciousness didn't exist in a form the Stone could touch.
Or…
It was so vast that the Stone's rules simply didn't apply.
The thought sent a cold spike of terror lancing down Loki's spine.
And in that instant of shattered focus, as Loki teetered on the edge of his own spiraling doubt—
A gigantic green shape slammed into the balcony like a runaway battering ram, shattering the reinforced glass and hurtling straight at him.
Hulk.
The humiliation of being poked, prodded, and flung off the tower with Loki's scepter burned in his mind. After swatting aside a few more "little soldiers," Hulk had zeroed in on the one who'd made him feel so stupid—this "little Bambi" in green.
"Bad god! Hulk… smash you flat!"
Hulk roared, his massive fist carving through the air with the kind of raw, uncompromising power that didn't care about magic, tricks, or royal lineage.
If that punch landed clean, even an Asgardian god would be reduced to paste.
Loki's pupils shrank to pinpricks. In the face of Hulk's pure, directionless brutality, his magic and schemes felt utterly useless.
In a panicked reflex, he could only jerk the scepter up across his chest like a stick, trying to block.
Boom!
The impact sounded like a freight truck slamming into a wall at full speed.
Loki's body shot away like a rag doll, a smear of dark-green tumbling through the air. Golden god-blood flew from his mouth in an arc that flashed briefly in the sunset.
The scepter was torn from his hands, spinning away. The huge blue Mind Stone at its tip flickered strangely as it cut through the air, tracing a perfect arc as it fell…
Right toward Saitama.
"THE SCEPTER!" Natasha shouted.
Tony's armor whipped around so fast his inertial dampeners squealed. "The Stone!"
Steve's heart leapt into his throat. He had seen enough of that gem to know how dangerous it was. They could not let it fall into another enemy's hands.
In the blink of an eye, the scepter was almost on top of Saitama.
The glow from the Mind Stone washed over his bald head, making it shine even brighter.
Saitama finally paused his hotpot search, looked up, and saw the odd-looking rod about to smack him in the face.
"Hm?"
Some simple instinct to catch falling objects kicked in—or maybe he just thought the big shiny blue gem on top looked kind of interesting. Either way, he reacted the same way someone would when a can of soda slips off a supermarket shelf.
He casually lifted his right hand.
Clack.
The scepter—housing one of the Infinity Stones born from the primordial universe—dropped neatly into his palm. The metal shaft was icy cold. The gem at the top glowed softly, its light deep and mysterious.
Saitama weighed it thoughtfully. The balance wasn't bad, but the big gem on top was a bit hard on the eyes.
He lowered his head to study the stone… then glanced in the direction it had flown from. Smoke and dust were still billowing where Loki had crashed through the wall and into the opposite building.
"Oh, you dropped this?" Saitama said, sounding like he'd just put two and two together. He raised the scepter slightly in Loki's direction, voice as casual as if reminding a neighbor they'd dropped their keys. "Want it back?"
He even shifted his stance like he was about to casually toss it over.
"Don't throw it!" Tony's shout and the whine of his thrusters came at the same time. He dove at nearly suicidal speed.
Was this bald guy seriously about to toss the scepter with a universe-level power source like it was trash? Who knew what kind of catastrophic mess it would cause if it hit something the wrong way?
Steve forgot all about command and tactics. He sprinted with his shield held up like a traffic cop's sign.
"Wait! Sir! Put the scepter down! It's extremely dangerous!"
"Huh?"
Saitama's throwing motion paused. He looked up, puzzled, at Tony hurtling toward him with his repulsors still flaring, then over at Steve charging in with his shield up and eyes dead serious.
"Dangerous?"
He glanced back down at the scepter in his hand, at the weird design and oversized blue gem. Aside from looking flashy, it didn't seem like anything special.
"This thing? How?"
He even reached out with his other hand and poked the Mind Stone with his fingertip, curiosity plain on his face.
Zzzap.
The instant his finger touched the gem's surface, a tiny but unbelievably dense arc of deep-blue lightning snapped out of the stone.
It carried a mental shock potent enough to shatter the mind of the toughest agents in an instant—and it stabbed straight at Saitama's fingertip.
This was the Mind Stone's instinctive defense, a backlash fueled by the primal will of the cosmos itself.
How dare a mere mortal touch it?
Tony and Steve both went pale.
But the next heartbeat turned all that fear to stunned silence.
The electric-blue arc that could have snapped a human psyche like a twig hit Saitama's skin and… fizzled out.
It was like a raindrop hitting an invisible, absolute barrier. Not even a ripple. Then it simply… ceased to exist.
The gem's glow flickered weakly, as if it had just tried to punch a mountain and sprained its own wrist.
Saitama just felt a tiny tingle, like a mild static shock. He pulled his finger back and frowned, muttering:
"Leaking electricity? What cheap junk."
Tony: "…"
Steve: "…"
Natasha and Clint: "…"
Half-buried in rubble, body screaming with pain, golden blood still at the corner of his mouth, Loki happened to look up just in time to see this.
His vision went black around the edges. He almost spat up another mouthful of blood on the spot.
The Mind Stone… had launched an autonomous counterattack… and been written off as a piece of shoddy, shorting-out garbage.
"You… what are you?!"
Loki's voice was ragged and cracked, tinged with a fear he had never felt before. His magic, godly power, centuries of scheming—all of it had been useless against this bald man.
Even the Mind Stone itself was helpless.
That was beyond anything he knew. Beyond anything he wanted to know.
Saitama finally tore his attention away from the scepter and looked at Loki, beaten and filthy among the ruins.
His brow furrowed again, irritation flickering across his face.
"Man, you're a handful," he said flatly. "First you block the way, then you start dropping stuff, then everyone's yelling questions because of you."
He hefted the scepter once, decided it was more trouble than it was worth, and casually tossed it toward a pile of wrecked Chitauri machinery like a useless firewood stick.
"Hey—!"
Tony only got half a protest out.
The scepter traced a neat arc through the air and came down point-first into a heap of twisted metal, shaft burying itself deep. Only the Mind Stone remained visible, the gem's eerie light still pulsing faintly above the junk.
Saitama clapped his hands together as if dusting off nonexistent dirt, like he'd just finished taking out the trash.
Then he turned his gaze back toward the smoke-choked streets in the distance, a stubborn glint rekindling in his eyes at the thought of discounted hotpot.
"Okay. Nobody's bothering me now… So, where was it again?"
He squinted toward a half-collapsed block where a signboard hung at a crooked angle.
"I swear I smelled something good from over there…"
He lifted his foot and started walking in that direction, completely ignoring the cosmic artifact sticking out of the rubble beside him, the fallen "god" on the balcony, and the half-crashed Chitauri soldiers still trying to reboot their systems.
As if everything that had just happened—erasing the Leviathan, shrugging off Loki's full divine power, turning the Mind Stone's backlash into a "static shock"—
Were nothing more than minor hiccups on his way to find a hotpot place.
(End of Chapter)
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