Marvel's Kryptonian Scientist Chapter 236 236

Once the events of Thor: The Dark World began, Drex Valen intended to take the Reality Stone as well. That would give him four Infinity Stones in total.

Unless this universe sohow hid the cosmic entity known as the Nesis, he had very little to worry about once the Stones were gathered.

anwhile, Loki got to enjoy the sa treatnt Thor had once suffered in the original tiline.

A fall from nearly thirty thousand feet.

Followed by imprisonnt.

Well... the prison part barely mattered. Loki escaped the cell with trivial ease using magic.

The fall, however, had nearly shattered every bone in his body.

Leaning against the wall and clutching his lower back, Loki glared venomously at the sky.

Back aboard the Helicarrier, things had stabilized quickly.

Because the carrier itself hadn't suffered catastrophic damage, and because Drex Valen personally stepped in, Emil Blonsky had been put down within seconds.

Most of the Avengers were already numb to displays of Drex's strength.

Thor, however, was another story entirely.

The God of Thunder stared openly at Drex with surprise.

"Who is he?" Thor asked Tony.

Tony folded his arms. "He's our boss. You can think of him as the strongest man on this planet."

Coming from Tony Stark, that statent carried weight. His ego was legendary, but after being repeatedly humbled by Drex, he'd long since accepted reality.

Thor's eyes lit up instantly.

If even Stark admitted that much...

Then this Midgardian was worth fighting.

"Dr. Banner tracked the Tesseract's location," Natasha said, bringing everyone back to business. "But before Loki was captured, witnesses saw him, Barton, and Blonsky stealing iridium."

"Iridium?" Tony and Bruce both reacted imdiately.

Natasha turned toward Thor.

"What exactly is Loki planning?"

Both Hawkeye and Blonsky were unconscious, leaving Thor as their only source of information.

Thor hesitated briefly before answering.

"He plans to use the Tesseract to open a gateway... then bring an army to Midgard."

At that mont, Drex spoke.

"My satellites detected an energy surge in New York. It matches the Tesseract's signature."

"New York?" Steve frowned.

No one expected Loki to move that quickly.

Drex looked over the room calmly.

"Fury, you have authorization to mobilize every registered superhuman asset."

"Natalia, alert the United States Air Force and put them on imdiate combat readiness."

Then his gaze hardened.

"The war starts now."

He could have stopped this before it began.

But he chose not to.

The Battle of New York would beco the catalyst that pushed Earth into a true technological revolution.

Before this battle, advanced technology still belonged to isolated geniuses and hidden organizations.

Afterward?

Earth would drown in black-tech innovations.

New York CityManhattanStark Tower

Loki stood atop the tower with the remnants of his forces.

Under mind control, Dr. Erik Selvig completed the Tesseract gateway device and activated it.

The sky tore open.

A massive portal split the heavens apart, revealing deep space beyond.

The Chitauri invasion force surged through instantly.

Wave after wave poured from the portal like steel locusts.

The Chitauri resembled biochanical drones, eerily similar to the machine swarms from The Matrix. Disposable soldiers directed remotely by a centralized command network.

In the original tiline, their arrival caused catastrophic civilian casualties before the Avengers finally responded.

This ti was different.

Long before the portal opened, Drex Valen had used Sentinel units to trigger a Dragon-Class Disaster Alert across New York.

The entire city had already evacuated into underground shelters.

By the ti the Chitauri descended, Manhattan was nearly empty.

The United States Air Force received the alert imdiately.

If anyone else had issued those orders, bureaucracy would've delayed the response for hours.

But when the command ca from Drex Valen?

No one hesitated.

War Machines deployed.

Iron Mongers launched.

The Decepticons entered combat.

Arica's military demand for War Machines had exploded in recent years. Umbrella Corporation's expanding industrial chains and automated production systems had allowed mass manufacturing on an unprecedented scale.

Thousands of War Machines flooded the skies.

Unfortunately...

Reality hit hard.

The Chitauri from the movies had looked laughably weak, to the point where Natasha Romanoff could gun them down with pistols.

The real invasion force was another matter entirely.

Drex frowned as battlefield data stread across his vision.

War Machines required sustained autocannon fire just to kill a single Chitauri soldier.

anwhile, one direct plasma hit from a Chitauri weapon nearly disabled a unit completely.

"Right..." Drex muttered to himself. "An army that conquered worlds isn't supposed to fold like cardboard. The original version was probably held together by CGI budget constraints."

He'd expected a complete stomp.

Instead, the exchange ratio was hovering around three War Machines lost for every Chitauri eliminated.

The Iron Mongers perford far better.

They were built as heavy armor platforms, packed with oversized weapons and reinforced plating. Chitauri plasma weapons were powerful, but they couldn't penetrate Iron Monger armor quickly enough.

And Iron Monger weapon systems were specifically designed to annihilate armored targets and fortifications.

Against the Chitauri, they were devastating.

The Decepticons were even more terrifying.

Freshly upgraded by Drex, they carried a terrifying range of weaponry. Anything below heavy-caliber output barely mattered.

Their true arsenal carved through the Chitauri like industrial shredders through wet paper.

Each Decepticon racked up hundreds, sotis thousands, of kills.

With micro-dinsional storage systems supplying ammunition and energy reserves, they could sustain combat almost indefinitely.

Then the Helicarrier arrived.

Hovering above Manhattan like a floating steel continent, it unleashed its full arsenal.

"Open fire," Drex ordered.

The Helicarrier answered instantly.

Its close-in defense batteries roared to life.

Radar systems locked onto airborne targets automatically as streams of high-velocity fire filled the sky.

Explosions erupted everywhere.

Chitauri flyers shattered midair by the dozens.

Then the hundreds.

The invaders launched return fire against the Helicarrier...

And accomplished absolutely nothing.

Nick Fury stood on the command deck, watching the battlefield with undisguised satisfaction.

This.

This was the future he had always wanted to see.

Why should humanity always fear alien civilizations?

Why should Earth forever play the role of the weaker species?

Watching humans crush extraterrestrial invaders...

Felt pretty damn good.

Then sothing enormous erged from the portal.

A Leviathan.

The massive biochanical war beast pushed through the dinsional opening, its armored body stretching across the skyline like a moving fortress.

In the films, the Leviathans had mostly served as giant transports.

Reality was much uglier.

Its mouth began glowing with gathering energy.

Target locked:

The Helicarrier.

At that exact mont, Drex vanished.

One instant he stood aboard the carrier.

The next, he appeared directly in the sky before the Leviathan.

A colossal energy beam erupted from the creature's mouth.

Drex calmly spread his hands.

An energy barrier unfolded before him like a transparent wall forged from starlight.

The beam slamd into it.

The sky trembled.

Energy flooded across the barrier for several seconds in a blinding torrent...

Yet the shield never cracked.

Never even wavered.

Eventually, the Leviathan's attack sputtered out, dispersing into fading particles of light.

And Drex Valen remained floating in the air completely unhard.

Like a god standing between Earth and the stars.