On Luke's side, the situation had taken a sharp turn.
Thor and Captain Marvel had them surrounded, their undead faces watching with eager hunger, ready to tear into them.
"Cuties," Carol said, tilting her head with sothing that might have looked playful if her eyes weren't sunken and dark and fixed on them the way a predator fixes on sothing it has already decided belongs to it. "Why don't you just let eat you? I promise it'll be quick."
Luke and Daniel looked at each other.
Then they both raised their hands at exactly the sa ti, flat palms out, absolute refusal, no hesitation.
"Nope," they said together. "We're family n."
The synchronization was completely unplanned, which sohow made it worse, and Daniel felt sothing dangerously close to a laugh rising in his throat despite the rotting Asgardian god standing ten feet away from him.
Thor looked between the two of them. Sothing moved across his face briefly — not quite amusent, not quite recognition, just a flicker of whatever was left underneath the hunger before it got swallowed back down again.
Carol's eyes narrowed.
The mont of almost-humor passed.
And then they attacked.
"I'll take Thor, you handle her," Daniel said, the Black Scythe materializing in his grip before the words were fully out of his mouth.
Thor's hamr ca down like a judgent, lightning screaming along the arc, and Daniel caught it dead on — the clash sending a shockwave outward that cracked the already ruined street beneath them in every direction, darkness and lightning bleeding against each other between the two weapons, neither giving an inch.
Thor looked down at him with sothing that wasn't quite surprise but was close to it.
"Are you a god, little one?"
"I happen to be one, yeah," Daniel said, holding the hamr's weight without buckling, the clockwork pattern already creeping back into his eyes.
Thor's expression shifted into sothing worse than rage. Sothing closer to appetite.
"Then I will eat you," he said, pulling back and swinging again, this ti faster, the lightning doubling in intensity. "It has been a long ti since I ate one."
Daniel didn't retreat. He stepped into it, redirected the angle of the hamr with the flat of the scythe, let the montum carry past him, and drove the handle hard into Thor's ribs before spinning back to distance.
On the other side Luke was already dealing with Carol, who ca in fast and bright, energy blazing from both fists, her speed still everything it had ever been even with half her mind gone to hunger.
Luke sidestepped the first blast without moving his feet, the energy passing close enough to feel the heat of it.
"I don't really like persistent won," he said conversationally, ducking under a second beam without breaking his posture. "I already have one at ho and she's considerably better looking than you."
The thought of Esdeath crossed his mind briefly. Genuinely briefly, because Carol was already swinging again.
"I don't care," Carol said, lunging forward with both hands reaching. "Just let eat you."
She was fast. Genuinely, terrifyingly fast, the kind of speed that had leveled battlefields before the infection ever touched her.
Her hands cut through the air in every direction, grasping, blasting, changing angle mid-motion, not fighting with strategy exactly but with sothing worse — pure instinct married to power, relentless and completely without hesitation.
Luke slipped every single one.
Carol snarled.
"You bastard — die!"
She lit up like a star going supanova, energy pouring off her in every direction at once, plasma tearing through the air in overlapping streams that left the ground beneath them scorched and cracking, not aid anymore, just everywhere, the kind of attack that didn't need precision because there was nowhere left to go.
Luke's hand ca up.
Lightning began gathering around his fingers, not crackling and wild but concentrated, dense, pulled tight into a single shape — a lance that humd with a temperature so extre the air around it warped and bent, reality itself flinching away from the heat at its core.
Plasma Lance.
He pointed it directly into the incoming storm.
The beam that left his hand split on contact, fracturing into dozens of smaller streams that threaded through Carol's attack like needles, intercepting each blast, killing their montum one by one before they could reach him — and what was left of the lance's energy didn't stop there.
It kept going, straight through the gap it had carved, and caught Carol directly across the face.
She went backward fast, spinning twice before hitting the ground and skipping across.
Luke looked at the Lance as it dissipated from his hand, the last of the lightning curling away into nothing.
"Have to say," he said quietly, "these lightning skills are genuinely good."
"You son of a bitch—"
Carol ca off the ground on all fours and launched herself straight at his throat, teeth first.
Luke dropped his weight and drove an undercut straight up from his hip, catching her clean under the chin the mont she reached him.
Her teeth cracked together on impact, several shattering outright, jaw wrenching open from the sheer force of it as the shockwave rolled outward and split the street in every direction.
Carol left the ground spinning, shrinking into a dot against the grey sky before disappearing into the clouds entirely.
Luke straightened and rolled his shoulder once, glancing over toward Daniel and Thor.
"How are you doing over there?"
*****
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