Luka, who was upstairs, naturally didn't hear the conversation of the departing group, but at this moment, his mind wasn't on them.
Even though those people, in Luka's eyes, glowed with a white light belonging to 'core components' from head to toe.
Captain America's shield, Iron Man's nanotech armor core and glasses, Ant-Man's suit, and even Hulk's shorts, among others.
All of these revealed to Luka that items on these plot-related characters seemed more likely to become 'core components'.
But at this moment, he was in no mood to care about these; in fact, his face was extremely grim.
Only because, he himself hadn't expected that this place was actually the unfortunate timeline where Tony Stark and the others traveled to in the Avengers 4 plot.
Why was this place called an 'unfortunate timeline'?
It had to do with the U.S. drama "Loki," which Luka had just finished watching not long before his Crossing (crossing over).
The beginning of this Marvel Cinematic Universe spin-off series was due to Iron Man and a few others in Avengers 4 wanting to borrow the Infinity Stones from this point in time to save their World.
As a result, an accident occurred midway, and the Tesseract, which is the Space Stone, fell into Loki's hands at this point in time.
And Loki escaped by teleporting with the Tesseract, causing a deviation in history, and he was apprehended by an organization called the Time Variance Authority (TVA).
The purpose of this organization called the TVA is to protect the so-called 'Sacred Timeline' and ensure everything unfolds according to its predetermined trajectory.
However, Loki's departure and his subsequent story within the TVA were not important to Luka.
What was important was a scene in the series that left a very deep impression on Luka.
That was, at the beginning, after Loki was apprehended by the TVA, they directly deployed a 'time-pruning bomb' on this timeline, completely destroying this 'deviant' timeline.
Yes, the entire timeline was directly erased!
When watching this series, Luka even complained about this to his friend.
When Bruce Banner borrowed the Time Stone from the Ancient One, he swore that they would definitely return the Stones and not affect the World's progression. As a result, the Space Stone was taken by Loki, and Iron Man and Captain America then went to 1970 to get a new Tesseract. Instead, this timeline was completely ruined.
He didn't know who Captain America returned the other two Stones to when he came back in the end.
Although Marvel's 'parallel Universe,' 'timeline,' and 'time branch' concepts were already vague and chaotic, Luka and his friend discussed it for a long time but couldn't come to a conclusion.
But could Luka gamble on such a thing?
Gamble that he was in a timeline where the Avengers 4 team traveled through, but Loki didn't take the Tesseract?
Or, gamble that his own existence was inherently a special parallel Universe and would not be affected by the TVA, leading to the entire timeline being pruned?
The more Luka thought about it, the uglier his expression became.
'If it affects the timeline, then does my existence count as affecting the timeline? I haven't been caught yet, so does that mean the Time Variance Authority doesn't exist in this World?'
'No! I must go and see! No! I must stop Loki!'
Luka clearly remembered that after Loki picked up the Tesseract, he directly teleported to Mongolia, where he was apprehended by the TVA, and those people left behind a time-pruning bomb before they left.
If that were truly the case, then he wouldn't even be able to stop or confirm it, and could only wait in dread for the final judgment.
Rather than gambling on such a possibility, it was better to simply stop Loki at the source.
If he hadn't been certain he couldn't defeat the Avengers 4 team, Luka had even considered directly killing them all right there to prevent them from affecting the plot.
Whether their timeline lived or died had nothing to do with him; ensuring his own survival was the real priority!
With this thought, Luka immediately gave up on continuing to stay home and wait for the Battle of New York to end, quickly checking the equipment on him.
After some thought, he moved his mother, Gina, into the storage room, settled her, left a note, and immediately went out.
He rushed towards Stark Tower.
In fact, the streets outside seemed far less dangerous than Luka had imagined.
At this time, large numbers of National Guard troops had already taken to the streets, and armored pickups and soldiers with heavy firepower drew away a large amount of fire from the Chitauri.
Although the battle was still difficult, it also created space for the New York Police and firefighters to evacuate civilians.
If it weren't for the continuous stream of Chitauri pouring out of the hole in the sky, it's possible that New York's existing forces might actually have been able to hold out.
Of course, this might also be because the Chitauri airships and Leviathan warships with heavy firepower focused their main targets on the Avengers members.
In short, Luka, an ordinary civilian, was so inconspicuous on the street; he was even almost pulled away by the Police evacuating people several times and taken to the nearby subway station.
However, such good fortune obviously couldn't last forever.
As Luka got closer to Stark Tower, the Chitauri soldiers around him became denser.
If it weren't for the fear in his heart of possibly perishing inexplicably along with the entire timeline, Luka might have already backed out.
"Whoosh~"
A rectangular grenade, shaped like a walkie-talkie, streaked across the sky, falling with a 'ding-ding-dang-dang' sound in front of an armored SUV.
Immediately after, there was a 'boom'.
An eerie blue flame exploded, and the armored vehicle, along with a dozen soldiers nearby, were instantly blown away.
Luka, hiding behind an overturned bus, didn't even have the slightest interest in looking over there.
Instead, what he was thinking was:
'That Chitauri grenade just now seemed to have a synthesized white light? Too bad it exploded directly; I wonder if I was seeing things.'
Just as Luka was about to hide behind this bus for a while longer, waiting for those Chitauri to leave before moving forward.
Suddenly, there was a violent explosion above his head.
Large chunks of rubble fell from the sky, along with several Chitauri soldiers who had been desperately climbing towards the rooftop, also tumbling down with them.
Fortunately, Luka's Power Enhancement Shoes were always set to the first gear.
The moment he heard the explosion above his head, he quickly exerted force with his feet, and his entire body shot directly into a nearby shop.
With a 'crash'.
The glass shattered.
His right prosthetic limb scraped and collided with the ground.
Luka rolled twice before leaning against a shelf to steady himself.
Immediately after, there were several 'thump-thump' sounds of heavy objects hitting the ground.
The Chitauri who had fallen from the sky all crashed onto the ground, clearly not surviving.
Luka glanced over, letting out a slight sigh of relief.
'Good thing I dodged quickly~'
However, just then, a low growl, which sounded somewhat blustering but inwardly fearful, came from behind him.
"Kid! Get out of here!"