{Are you the reader because you're here, or are you here because you're the reader?"}
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In the original timeline, it was Gideon Malick who authorized the nuclear strike on Manhattan, but with him dead, Ethan realized he could no longer rely on a nuke to end the fight.
He could no longer count on an external force to turn the Chitauri mothership into a miniature sun, thereby severing the head of the hive and instantly eliminating the remaining Leviathans and foot soldiers.
Maybe the nuclear strike will still be authorized; after all, those entrenched in power will always prioritize their own perceived safety above all else. However, Ethan knew he could not afford to base the survival of Manhattan on hope alone.
Ethan shot toward the Stark tower, and as he landed, the three-sectioned staff and Nue's wings dissolved back into his shadow. In their place, he now gripped a spear with purple lightning flickering violently around its tip.
He had earlier released autonomous, levitating Hati and Sköll cursed blades, imbued with the essence of the Divine Dogs, to prowl the battlefield.
Alongside them, his swarm of 100,000 moth shikigami worked tirelessly, clearing out Chitauri foot soldiers and chariots with clinical efficiency.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Rabbit Escape shikigami stood guard over the New York Public Library, maintaining a massive healing sanctum through the synchronized use of RCT disks.
With Mahoraga, Tora, and Po intercepting the heavy-hitting Leviathans, Ethan's flank remained perfectly secured, allowing him to focus entirely on the God of Mischief.
Though Ethan couldn't use his unique Cursed Energy Trait in public, he could still utilize his cursed tools.
Nue's spear had been optimized to the point where even someone with the negligible cursed energy of a regular civilian could wield it effectively.
Ethan scanned the area, but the Scepter was neither in Loki's hand nor anywhere in the immediate vicinity. A pocket seal, perhaps? he mused. He knew it wasn't hidden by a simple illusion; if it were, his Kitsune would have sensed the magical fluctuation instantly.
"Where is that Scepter, Loki?" he asked, his voice low and grim.
"Ethan Park," Loki spat the name out as he struggled to stand after the impact of Hawkeye's explosive arrow.
"It seems Jogo is dead. I don't know what I expected from such dull creatures... but given how confident he was that he could kill you, you must be winded from that fight."
Loki observed him for a moment, his eyes narrowing. "Or not," he finally conceded.
"I asked you a question," Ethan spoke. Before Loki could react, Ethan was standing beside him. With a singular, blurred motion of the spear, the God of Mischief's left leg was severed.
"Ahhhhhhh!" Loki screamed frantically, collapsing to the floor. Ethan reached into his shadow, retrieved an RCT disk, and slammed it onto the raw stump.
Loki's sobs of pain subsided as the tissue knit itself back together in a clean stump, but he still glared up with venomous hatred.
If looks could kill, Ethan would be dead.
"Next time, it will be your hands," Ethan said coldly. This wasn't a movie where a charming persona made Loki look endearing; or the future were one out of trillions of Loki became the God of stories.
Looking down at the destruction and sensing the slaughter below, Ethan saw only the truth.
This Loki was evil.
"Make a binding vow," Loki gasped, his pragmatism overriding his pride.
He could sense that Ethan's killing intent was real—he would actually kill him, unlike Thor, who still viewed him as a brother who had simply gone astray.
"What is stopping you from killing me the moment you get your hands on my Scepter? Make a binding vow that you won't kill me after I hand it over."
Ethan thought about it, his need to protect overriding his need to punish.
"Hmm... fine."
Ethan Park entered into a Binding Vow with the God of Lies. The terms were simple: as long as Loki surrendered the Scepter, Ethan would not kill him today.
Ending the war by closing that portal was far more important than executing a lone commander.
Loki manifested the Scepter from a pocket seal and handed it over. Ethan didn't wait for a preamble; he immediately summoned forth Toad Reversal: The Corrosive Widow. A giant, grotesque spider manifested from his shadow.
"Wait, wait, wait... what is that creature?" Loki spoke frantically, appearing more disturbed by the presence of the massive arachnid than his own recently severed foot. Perhaps the RCT disks had worked too well.
"She is here to keep an eye on you," Ethan replied coldly.
That finally made Loki snap. "I AM A GOD, SORCERER, AND I WILL NOT BE BULLIED BY A—" He didn't get to finish before the Widow launched a massive, sticky web at the rogue prince, pinning him firmly to the wall.
These were no ordinary threads; the webbing was strong enough to restrain Tora if the tiger didn't utilize Mystic Arts—a fact they had experimented with much to the feline shikigami's displeasure.
As Loki continued to screech, Ethan stepped out into the clearing holding the Scepter. He looked upward toward the swirling wormhole and then at the summit of Stark Tower. Pivoting on his heels, he leaped with explosive force, leaving spiderweb cracks in the concrete behind him, before landing directly in front of the Tesseract's portal generator.
He looked to the side; Dr. Selvig lay there with blood streaming from the left side of his face, having lost consciousness from a severe head injury.
Ethan approached the doctor and placed an RCT valve over the wound. The injury began to visibly knit together, and soon, Erik Selvig regained consciousness.
"The Scepter... Loki's Scepter..." those were Selvig's first words. He looked at Ethan and the weapon he held, but his next words were unexpected. "It won't work... he... he made me remove it. The failsafe. There is no safety to cut the power source... once the portal is opened, it cannot be closed. I am... sorry... I am so sorry..." Dr. Selvig spoke between bouts of sobbing.
What!?..No safety cut off...that's different form movie...that means The Scepter is useless, Ethan thought with apunched nose.
"It's alright. It wasn't your fault," Ethan assured him calmly. At those words, Erik began to weep uncontrollably, the weight of his forced actions finally crashing down on him.
"Sleep," Ethan whispered, touching Selvig's forehead and infusing it with a gentle pulse of Cursed Energy to induce a deep, dreamless slumber.
He then summoned dozens of Rabbit Escape shikigami. The flurry of white fur surrounded the unconscious scientist as Ethan ordered them to carry Dr. Selvig safely to the New York Public Library, ensuring he would remain protected within the healing zone.
"Heh... so that was your plan? You really thought I would let him build a failsafe?" Loki's voice drifted from behind him—clearly a projection. Even without looking Ethan could tell, He was smirking as if he had already won the war in its entirety.
Up above, fifteen more Leviathans could be seen breaching the event horizon of the wormhole, their massive, armored frames eclipsing the sun as they descended toward the city.
Loki must have realized I needed the Scepter to interfere with the Tesseract, so he tricked me into a binding vow to ensure his survival... Heh, a final, desperate gambit from a dying god, Ethan thought, his eyes hardening as he let go of the scepter.
"What do you find so entertaining? Such disregard for human life... what is so amusing about this?" Ethan asked rhetorically with his back turned toward the illusion.
"Until I can close that portal, I will simply kill anything that crosses it."
" Witness the pinnacle of Jujutsu, Jötunn" Ethan said, finally turning toward Loki's image and forming a sovereign seal with his hands.
"DOMAIN EXPANSION: CHIMERA SOVEREIGN GARDEN!"
The surrounding rooftop was flooded with a thick, liquid-like, negative-palette shadow, transforming the entire environment into a extension of his Ten Shadows Technique as a 100 meter of domain took hold.
"Illusion?! No... this is no mere illusion," Loki thought, his mind reeling as the reality of the Domain settled over him.
From the depths of Ethan's shifting shadow,
Nine Tora pounced forth, followed by hundreds of Dragon Ryujin and hundreds of Gravity Sheep, Aries.
The sheer scale of the manifestation was staggering;
meanwhile, the number of his moth shikigami continued to multiply until the swarm reached nearly 500,000.
A shimmering cloud of death that blotted out the remaining light on the terrace.
Ethan ordered his Moth Psykhe to form a suffocating, dense cloud around the aperture of the portal; anything attempting to cross the threshold was instantly drained into a hollow husk.
Should any survivors manage to slip through using a Leviathan as cover, they would find a legion of Tora waiting to drag them into the Mirror Dimension.
There, the invaders would encounter his Ryujin—shikigami capable of massive-scale Wood Release that leeches life force from any organic being—or his Aries, capable of generating localized gravity wells to crush opponents into paste.
Upon realizing the Scepter could not offset the Tesseract's accelerator, Ethan enacted two spontaneous Binding Vows to recalibrate his Domain.
First Vow: In exchange for forgoing the ability to summon multiple versions of Mahoraga within the Domain, the singular General's adaptation speed would be increased tenfold.
Second Vow: In exchange for limiting his Tora summons to single digits rather than hundreds, the shikigami's prowess in energy manipulation would increase by a power of 3. = ( Tora original prowess)³
Both vows took hold instantly. He planned to use the hyper-accelerated Mahoraga to cleave through the Tesseract's energy shield once the adaptation was complete.
Simultaneously, having the buffed Tora on standby was a necessary precaution; their enhanced energy control would be vital to containing the fallout should the excited Space Stone react violently to their interference and attempt to detonate.
Five minutes later:
"What is happening at the portal?" Natasha asked Steve. They had just been discussing her hitching a ride there via a hijacked Chitauri chariot, but the plan seemed suddenly redundant.
The relentless army that had been pouring through the rift had ceased their advance entirely.
"Is it over?" Barton's voice crackled over the comms from his rooftop vantage point.
"Odin's eye! What are those creatures...?" Thor exclaimed as he touched down beside the Captain and Natasha. Even for a God, the sight of the shimmering swarm moths was unsettling.
"What creatures? More aliens?" Tony asked, joining the group as Hawkeye descended to meet them.
The fighting on the street level had reached a sudden, eerie standstill; the Swarm Moths were systematically scouring the ruins, leaving only the husks of any remaining enemy soldiers in their wake.
Thor looked at his teammates, realizing the disconnect. He spoke without much hesitation: "Ah... I forgot that most Midgardians lack the sight to perceive Cursed Energy or Cursed Spir..."
Thor didn't get to finish his explanation as the Hulk made his entry, slamming into him with enough force to launch the God of Thunder into the rubble of an adjacent building and then let out a grunt of approval.
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A/N: So how was the chapter?
What will be the RCT of Shadow Manipulation? Comment Suggestions here.
Hey, Readers.
This fanfic was inspired by 'As Gojo in MCU' by Kazuma_Trash
So Yesterday we discussed the possibility( nothing is confirmed yet) of doing some multiverse type story.
You get the gist..Gojo and Ethan in the same story.
Here.If you like the idea.
Here. If you don't.
If you enjoy the story, please leave a Review and Power stones!
Join my [P].[A].[T].[R].[E].[O].[N] if you want to support me and for early updates.
Link is in the Author's note.
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