Tony Stark wanted in on the project.
Drex Valen refused imdiately.
Absolutely not.
If Tony got involved, there was no telling what kind of nightmare the future tiline would mutate into.
One minute it would be a planetary defense ship.
The next it would turn into sothing ridiculous involving a transforming super battleship fighting alien giants in orbit.
Tony misunderstood the rejection completely.
He assud Drex simply believed he could handle the project alone and didn't need help.
It irritated him a little, but not enough to start an argunt.
Instead, Stark quietly decided to compete.
Without informing Drex, he secretly dragged Bruce Banner into developing their own super battleship project behind the scenes.
Fortunately for them, Drex normally kept his super-hearing and enhanced vision restrained during daily life.
Otherwise existing would beco unbearable.
Constantly processing every sound and visual detail on Earth at once would drive almost anyone insane.
So Tony's secret project escaped detection.
Truthfully, Drex could have assembled his "invincible warship" in the blink of an eye if he wanted to.
But that would have shattered humanity's remaining sense of sanity.
Instead, he deliberately slowed the process down.
There was no rush anyway.
S.W.O.R.D. still needed architects, engineers, and urban planners to redesign New York into its future headquarters. Even if the warship were completed imdiately, there was nowhere suitable to dock sothing of that scale yet.
Three thousand miles from Earth.
A colossal warship drifted silently through the darkness of space, its bow pointed directly toward the blue planet ahead.
Inside the command chamber, a figure stood before a massive projection display showing Earth suspended among the stars.
A crimson cape hung behind him.
His hands rested calmly behind his back.
His expression never changed.
An alien officer approached respectfully and bowed.
"My lord, we are nearing the planet called Earth. The Chitauri coordinates were accurate."
"I know," the man replied calmly. "You may go."
"Yes, sir."
Half an hour later, S.W.O.R.D. satellites detected the approaching vessel.
Right now, the word "alien" hit Nick Fury almost as hard as the word "monster."
Just hearing it gave him headaches.
"Notify the Director," Fury ordered imdiately. "And contact the superheroes."
This was firmly within the category of problems requiring specialists.
Once the heroes learned about the incoming warship, they reached the sa conclusion almost instantly:
They couldn't allow another invasion to begin on Earth itself.
One destroyed city was already too many.
Which created a new problem.
Satellite scans showed the alien ship remained over three thousand miles away from Earth.
How exactly were they supposed to reach it?
Tony's newest Mark armor could theoretically operate in space for limited periods.
Thor obviously didn't care about space exposure at all.
If Banner transford into the Hulk, surviving in space probably wouldn't be an issue either.
Unfortunately, Hulk couldn't fly.
Nobody expected him to leap three thousand miles off the planet and land on an enemy warship.
Earth still lacked true spacefaring vehicles.
Tony Stark was a genius engineer, but aerospace developnt wasn't exactly sothing you mastered overnight. Given enough ti, he could absolutely build an interstellar craft.
Right now, however, ti was the one thing they didn't have.
Thankfully, soone quickly rembered Drex Valen existed.
The greatest scientific mind in human history listened to the situation...
And his first thought was:
Who the hell is stealing my storyline?
Because according to Drex's own plans, Earth wasn't supposed to face this kind of threat yet.
He had an entire progression prepared.
First, Frieza's empire would target Earth.
The Ginyu Force would arrive ahead of the invasion and utterly overwhelm the heroes, forcing them to understand that the universe contained bizarre powers and combat abilities far beyond their current experience.
Then Vegeta and Nappa would appear.
Then the Dark Matter Thieves led by Boros.
He had pacing.
Structure.
Escalation.
Now so random alien warship had jumped ahead in the script.
Still, Drex handed over a spaceship without hesitation.
At this point, even he was curious who had arrived.
Once they received the vessel, the heroes rapidly finalized a battle plan.
Their strategy remained deeply rooted in classic superhero logic.
Simple.
Aggressive.
And extrely Arican.
In short:
Hit them first.
Using the ship's cloaking system for cover, they would board the enemy vessel directly, locate the command center, overwhelm the opposing leader at maximum speed, and force answers out of them before the situation escalated further.
If possible, they would use the commander as leverage to force a retreat.
Of course, soone eventually raised the issue of language barriers.
Drex had already solved that too.
He provided them with a universal translator.
The technology apparently combined neural-wave interpretation and psychic decoding systems.
The details sounded absurdly complicated, but the end result was simple:
Any language translated automatically into English.
And English translated back into the listener's native tongue.
Aboard the alien warship.
The caped figure still stood silently before Earth's projection when the alien officer returned.
"My lord," the alien said carefully, "the humans appear to have detected us."
"Oh?"
The figure barely reacted.
"A human spacecraft is approaching our position."
The officer hesitated briefly.
"They're using primitive optical camouflage technology to conceal themselves. Presumably they believe we cannot detect them."
"Mmm."
The caped man responded lazily.
Another pause.
"Should we destroy them before they reach us?"
"No."
The figure waved a hand dismissively.
"I was beginning to get bored anyway."
A faint smile appeared.
"Let them board the ship. We'll deal with them personally."
"Yes, sir."
When Tony confidently declared that "there's no way aliens can detect this ship," everyone had remained skeptical.
According to Stark, he had integrated his optical camouflage systems into the spacecraft and designed adaptive electromagnetic cloaking capable of dynamically adjusting to incoming light frequencies.
In simpler terms:
Invisible space magic engineered by Tony Stark.
Shockingly, it actually worked.
The heroes crossed deep into enemy detection range without triggering any alarms at all.
At least, not until they landed.
The mont the boarding party touched down on the enemy deck, hundreds of alien soldiers erged from every direction as though they had been waiting for them the entire ti.
The heroes instantly found themselves surrounded.
At that point, there wasn't much left to discuss.
They fought.
Because that was what superheroes did.
In terms of interstellar firepower, Earth couldn't compete with advanced alien civilizations at all. A true planetary warship could probably flatten Earth from orbit without much effort.
But close-quarters combat?
That was a completely different story.
Across the universe, there honestly weren't many forces that could overpower Earth's top superheroes in a direct fight.
The heroes imdiately slipped into familiar rhythm.
Clear the minions first.
The alien deck erupted into chaos as Earth's champions unleashed an avalanche of wildly destructive attacks, explosions, energy blasts, lightning, and brute force across the battlefield.
A distinctly Earth-style welco party.
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