Marcus raised his head, gazing up at the blazing meteor descending from the Sky—the "man-made" asteroid that was, in fact, The Thing himself. A bitter smile crept across his face.
Above him, Invisible Woman continued to manipulate her invisible force fields, fine-tuning The Thing's trajectory. There was no hope of him missing his mark—Marcus had to find a way to escape Mr. Fantastic's elastic restraints now or be crushed to oblivion.
The Bloodflame burned brighter, hotter, roaring to life as Marcus's temperature climbed to inhuman levels. The air distorted around him, a red mirage of molten heat, but the shimmering barrier coating Mr. Fantastic's rubber-like body refused to yield.
No matter how fierce the flames became, they couldn't pierce that invisible armor.
After all, Invisible Woman, the elder sister of the late Human Torch, had long since mastered the art of heat resistance. Years spent restraining Johnny's uncontrollable Nova Bursts had forced her to perfect defenses capable of withstanding temperatures exceeding fifty-five thousand degrees Celsius.
Against such mastery, even Marcus's Bloodflame couldn't melt her force fields.
Realizing brute force wouldn't work, Marcus tried a different approach—sheer strength. He tensed his muscles, his veins glowing red beneath his skin, and strained to tear free from Mr. Fantastic's elastic web. But Reed Richards' body was no ordinary flesh—it was an elastic structure immune to physical damage. No matter how much power Marcus unleashed, his efforts were useless.
Mr. Fantastic's elasticity could withstand strikes stronger than The Thing's punches, and The Thing himself could lift entire battleships. By comparison, Marcus's tenfold-enhanced strength wasn't enough to make Reed flinch.
The three heroes worked together seamlessly, their coordination frighteningly precise.
And now, their combined assault—the terrifying meteor strike—was descending fast.
Through the clouds, The Thing, engulfed in flames, spun violently as he fell, a burning sphere of living stone. Under Invisible Woman's direction, his descent sharpened—straight toward Marcus's position.
At the last possible instant, Mr. Fantastic released his grip, retracting his limbs before his teammate struck, avoiding mutual destruction.
A blazing orange meteor slammed into Queens with apocalyptic force.
The impact obliterated everything within several hundred meters. Streets splintered into craters, shockwaves rippled outward, and soil erupted in waves tens of meters high. Buildings collapsed like toy blocks, crumbling into dust and debris.
Within seconds, the entire block was reduced to chaos.
Near the epicenter, Mr. Fantastic transformed his body into an enormous, balloon-like shield, wrapping himself around Invisible Woman to absorb the shockwave. Countless shards of rock and steel rained down, ricocheting harmlessly off his elastic surface, even as the explosion hurled the two of them across the street like tumbleweeds.
When the storm of dust and rubble finally settled, the "balloon" abruptly expanded, bursting outward to scatter the debris. Reed's body snapped back to normal shape, and he gently lowered the exhausted Sue to the ground.
She leaned weakly against him, breathing heavily, barely able to speak. The effort she had expended in both boosting The Thing's fall and maintaining the defensive fields had drained her completely.
From beneath the cracked earth, a massive orange hand suddenly burst out, gripping the ground. Slowly, The Thing hauled himself back up, his rocky body coated in dirt and ash. He shook himself off and trudged toward his teammates, a wide grin on his rugged face.
"Phew! Just like you planned, Reed," he said with a chuckle. "One solid hit and he's done for. Seriously though, was all that overkill really necessary? The guy didn't look that tough to me."
Reed exhaled in relief, though his brow furrowed. "Don't underestimate him, Ben. Based on the footage from the Raft Prison incident, he was the toughest opponent Hydra and AIM ever fielded. Even now, I still can't fully analyze his abilities. It was safer to take him out with everything we had."
Their combined meteor strike was on par with a full-force attack from an Alpha-level mutant, perhaps even breaching upper-Alpha-class territory. By Reed's calculations, Marcus's body should have been vaporized—his cells reduced to dust, fused with the very soil beneath them.
Dead and buried in one move.
Their plan had been near-perfect—a coordinated strategy specifically tailored to neutralize Marcus's regenerative and fire-based powers. From the start, he'd had no chance to fight back.
If Marcus had truly been alone, the battle would have ended here.
But there was one critical detail Reed hadn't accounted for.
He had forgotten the fourth presence on the battlefield—one whose power eclipsed even Sue's.
The Scarlet Witch, stationed atop the New Umbrella Tower, still linked to the battlefield through the Psionic Amplifier.
Her psychic senses swept through every corner of New York, and of course, she had noticed The Thing's flaming descent.
She couldn't stop the meteor strike outright—but she could alter its course.
Invisible Woman had been struggling to guide The Thing's trajectory using her force fields, which operated like air walls to adjust flight direction. But her constructs were clumsy compared to Wanda Maximoff's raw telekinesis—refined, pure, and absolute.
The two women's powers clashed midair, invisible waves of force colliding high above the battlefield. In the end, Sue could only manage to prevent The Thing from hitting them—not to ensure that he hit his intended target.
The meteor missed by mere meters.
Instead of a direct impact, Marcus was struck by the edge of the shockwave—buried, battered, but very much alive.
Sue felt the truth the moment the dust settled. Her lips parted to warn the others, but her strength was gone. No sound came out.
"Sue? What is it?" Reed asked, noticing her distress. Concern filled his face. Something wasn't right. She had used this same maneuver before—why was she so drained this time?
He never got his answer.
The ground beneath them cracked—splitting open with a deafening roar.
A hand, wreathed in crimson fire, shot upward.
Marcus exploded from the shattered earth like a dragon bursting from the abyss. His right arm blazed with Bloodflame, and before Reed could react, his claws plunged through Invisible Woman's chest.
The heat was so intense her blood evaporated instantly.
The glowing, blood-red flames flared brighter as Marcus's hand tore clean through her body, gripping her heart in his palm. For an instant, it still beat—then he crushed it to pulp.
Sue let out a strangled gasp, eyes wide in disbelief, before going limp in Reed's arms.
The blood-colored inferno crackled around them, painting the ruins of Queens in hellish light.
The plan that had seemed flawless—calculated, clinical, foolproof—had just failed catastrophically.
_____
T/N:
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