But even that was barely a drop in the ocean.
New York had beco a bottomless pit of destruction. You could lt down fortunes, empty national reserves, and strip billionaires to the bone and still fail to fill even a fraction of the hole the city had beco.
Rebuilding it would take years.
Maybe decades.
The President looked like a man being slowly strangled by destiny.
Everyone knew the presidency was basically a temporary contract position. Four years of surviving endless disasters while half the country blad you for everything from inflation to rainstorms.
But this administration had been uniquely cursed.
Monster Association attacks.
Supervillains.
Alien invasions.
And now New York itself had practically been erased from the map.
At this rate, by the ti his term ended, the city still wouldn't be restored, and history books would probably rember him as the president who lost Manhattan to aliens.
The public didn't care whether the invasion was technically his fault.
Disaster happened during his presidency.
That was enough.
Financial collapse, mounting casualties, reconstruction chaos... political comntators were already sharpening knives.
Then, just as the White House descended into despair, salvation appeared.
That was one of the strange constants of comic-book worlds.
Whenever a catastrophe leveled a city, eventually so absurdly wealthy genius with a surprisingly functional conscience showed up to clean up the aftermath.
In another universe, that role belonged to a billionaire playboy with a habit of dressing like a flying rodent at night.
Here?
It was Tony Stark.
The reinvented version.
Stark arrived at the White House carrying massive funding proposals and detailed reconstruction plans. He volunteered to spearhead New York's recovery personally, leveraging both Stark Industries and his own global influence to pull investors into the project.
Unexpectedly, one of the first people to answer the call wasn't a politician or philanthropist.
It was Wilson Fisk.
The Kingpin himself.
Out of everyone involved, Fisk seed almost irrationally invested in rebuilding New York. Other than Stark, nobody contributed more money or manpower.
Which made perfect sense when you thought about it.
Wilson Fisk ruled New York's criminal empire.
But now New York barely existed.
Being king of the underworld didn't an much when the entire kingdom had turned into a crater.
Stark Industries already stood at the top of the corporate world, and Tony's reputation as Iron Man had never been higher.
Once he committed publicly, more investors quickly followed.
Not because they trusted governnt promises.
Nobody trusted those.
They trusted Tony Stark.
The White House nearly celebrated like it had won a war.
As far as the President was concerned, Stark had practically resurrected his political career from the dead. For the first ti in months, even Tony's smug face looked beautiful.
anwhile, New York itself remained pure chaos.
Every street.
Every district.
Every shattered block.
The entire city was tangled in disaster relief operations. Rescue teams continued digging through ruins searching for survivors while casualty numbers climbed higher every day.
Official statistics still hadn't been released, but everyone already knew the final numbers would be horrifying.
The U.S. military had taken devastating losses during the battle. Beneath nearly every collapsed skyscraper, more bodies waited to be found.
And then there was cri.
The city's law enforcent system had practically collapsed.
New York now resembled a post-apocalyptic wasteland more than a functioning tropolis. Criminals flooded into the streets hoping to profit from the chaos.
Most of the major superheroes were busy handling their own crises after the war, leaving street-level defenders like Daredevil and Luke Cage struggling to maintain order.
Gwen helped whenever she could, patrolling daily and assisting civilians, but the scale of the disaster dwarfed what a handful of heroes could realistically manage.
Then, to everyone's disbelief, the person who restored order wasn't a superhero at all.
It was Kingpin.
Apparently, Wilson Fisk hadn't been exaggerating when he talked about wanting a better New York.
At this point, neither the governnt, the police, nor the superheroes possessed infrastructure remotely comparable to Fisk's criminal network.
So Fisk issued an order.
Effective imdiately:
No looting.
No arson.
No robbery.
No gang wars.
Every criminal operation in New York was suspended indefinitely.
All manpower would assist in disaster relief efforts.
Anyone who defied the order would be treated as challenging Kingpin's authority directly.
Punishnt ant death.
And just like that, New York's underworld transford overnight into an ergency response force.
Sotis desperate civilians trying to steal food or supplies would suddenly get tackled by aggressively civic-minded gangsters appearing out of nowhere.
Other tis, heavily tattooed mobsters smoking cigars could be seen hauling rubble aside to rescue trapped civilians.
It was surreal.
But effective.
Unfortunately, another massive problem remained:
Where exactly were New York's residents supposed to live?
Structurally, the city was ruined.
The Monster Association had hollowed out enormous underground regions beneath New York, destroying sewer systems and excavating massive subterranean chambers extending thousands of ters below the surface.
How were they supposed to fill that much empty space?
Reconstruction itself was already a nightmare.
Relocating millions of civilians made it even worse.
Countless people had lost everything overnight.
Hos.
Businesses.
Savings.
Entire lives erased.
So residents couldn't ntally process the loss and attempted suicide.
To make matters worse, insurance companies refused to cover most damages.
Their reasoning was brutally simple:
Policies did not include "alien invasion" or "monster attack" clauses.
Therefore, claims were denied.
Tony Stark found himself cornered despite all his efforts, while the U.S. governnt began preparing a new agency dedicated specifically to cleaning up after superhero-related disasters.
A Damage Control departnt.
Then Drex Valen stepped forward.
He publicly announced that New York would beco the permanent headquarters of S.W.O.R.D.
Which also ant sothing else:
The rebuilt New York would belong to S.W.O.R.D.
As for the displaced civilians, S.W.O.R.D. itself would provide compensation.
With one declaration, Drex effectively pulled the world's major powers into the reconstruction effort.
The President nearly cried from relief.
After reviewing Drex's proposal and his justification for why S.W.O.R.D. required an entire city-sized headquarters, the world powers ultimately approved the project.
Once the reconstruction beca a global undertaking instead of an Arican one, the financial burden suddenly beca manageable.
Then Drex unveiled another invention.
Bedrock molecular compounds.
The material could be injected directly into underground voids, where it rged with surrounding geological structures and stimulated rapid bedrock growth.
Within an astonishingly short period, New York's massive underground cavities were stabilized and filled.
According to Drex, the rebuilt foundations might actually beco stronger than natural bedrock itself.
Earthquakes would no longer be a concern.
And that was only the beginning.
Drex revealed the true purpose behind the reconstruction project:
He intended to build an invincible warship for humanity.
A colossal planetary defense vessel capable of resisting future extraterrestrial invasions.
Saiyans.
Chitauri.
Or whatever else erged from deep space next.
According to the early plans, the vessel would operate across land, sea, and air.
A true tri-environnt super battleship.
...
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