"Ah!"
"Oh my God!"
"Lord Heisenberg is so handsome when he's violent!"
"That poor guy, Lord Heisenberg is slamming him around like a pillow!"
"He's actually pretty tough. He's barely even bleeding after all that!"
"Heisenberg's strength is seriously insane!"
"That guy looks so weak. Didn't he just call himself a god?"
"Mhm, a weak god!"
The moment Heisenberg started swinging Loki around like a sack of rice, the whole situation completely changed.
Originally, all the spectators watching the fight believed Heisenberg would win, but they were still nervous about the process.
But now...
The crowd around them was in an especially cheerful mood. Who was still worried about some so-called god? They could just sit back and enjoy the show!
Very different from them was the Ehrenberg Restaurant, about two kilometers away...
...Three minutes earlier...
The moment Heisenberg punched Loki flying away, the trouble for the social elites inside the restaurant had only just begun.
Heisenberg taking Loki away had indeed spared the restaurant from becoming the main battlefield.
But there was still a Black Widow inside!
To be honest, when it came to an elite agent like Natasha...
Even if she had an absurdly impressive feat in the movies, like trading blows with Proxima Midnight.
In Heisenberg's eyes...
If you did not come looking for trouble with him, then great. You would be happy, he would be happy, and every now and then everyone could be happy together.
But if you came to stir up trouble...
A person who could be beaten to tears with one punch simply was not worth taking seriously.
So Heisenberg did not care about Natasha at all and left her behind in the restaurant.
The instant Loki was blasted away by Heisenberg, the upper-class guests in the restaurant who still had the strength to watch instinctively burst into cheers.
But after the cheering came chaos.
Blood, screams, and the tangled misery of the scene instantly shattered the composure of most of the women who had still been clear-headed.
"Ahhhhhh!"
"Oh God!!!"
"Fuck! My ribs are broken!"
"Nice one, uh, I mean, Heisenberg!"
"That attack came way too suddenly, there are a lot of injured people here!"
"Damn it, call an ambulance!"
Shouts and cries rose one after another. There was no trace at all of the elegance they had once displayed.
In the face of disaster, these so-called upper-class Americans had none of the morality or calm one might expect from their status.
Women?
Children?
The elderly?
No one cared about the people who should have been the first to receive aid.
These rich people, one after another, used every ounce of influence they had to call their family doctors or pressure hospitals into sending ambulances immediately.
Some of them, or rather, a few idiots who clearly had water in their brains...
Even in the middle of disaster, they still could not stop putting on airs!
One fat man in a custom-tailored suit, with pearls decorating his bow tie, rubbed his chest and stomach while viciously kicking a maid.
"You stupid bitch, don't you know you should be calling the police?! What the hell is Ehrenberg thinking, hiring useless trash like you?!"
The moment he kicked her, he immediately began cursing furiously, jolting the maid out of her dazed state.
The pain and fear in the maid's heart were instantly buried beneath the habits drilled into her over years of training.
She actually bent respectfully at the waist toward the fat man while standing in a pool of blood.
She had intended, after bowing, to apologize to the famous Wall Street investment tycoon standing before her, then hurry to call the police.
But after bending down, she realized she could no longer straighten back up.
She only felt countless tasteless liquids surging up from her abdomen and lungs.
They passed through her esophagus, flooded over her windpipe, and sprayed out across the floor in an instant!
Only then did the maid remember why she had been gripping the tray so tightly all this time.
It was because she had given up far too much to finally earn the chance to carry the first auction item onto the stage!
But now...
She stared blankly at the tray.
The item it should have been carrying, the crystal slipper prop used in Disney's live-action Cinderella film.
The pair of shoes she had dreamed of trying on, even just once.
Was shattered.
And along with it, her dream shattered too.
That pitiful dream of hers, where even in fantasy she only dared secretly imagine trying them on, never daring to dream of actually bidding on them.
Poor woman.
A woman whose whole life had been spent being exploited, and even as she died, she never remembered how she had flown more than twenty meters from the auction platform and slammed into the man who had kicked her.
As for the man who had kicked the maid, he was first terrified by the blood-spraying servant collapsing in front of him.
Then blood began pouring from his own mouth as well.
Every action had an equal and opposite reaction. When the maid crashed into him, he endured almost the same force she had.
So after barely lasting a dozen seconds, the rich man collapsed onto the floor as well, too weak to stand again for the time being.
As pain consumed him, he had only one thought left.
He wanted to kick that maid again.
He had done nothing, so why the hell should he die because of a servant?!!
Amid this chaotic portrait of humanity, Tony fought desperately to shield Pepper as they tried to push through the crowd.
He even took two punches to the face, which ensured he would remember exactly who had hit him. Once today was over, that bastard's company was absolutely going bankrupt!
But just as he was about to lead Pepper out of the banquet hall, the crack of gunfire and the incoming bullets forced him to stop where he stood.
Those bullets all slammed into the banquet hall doors not far from him!
At the distant stage, Natasha swept her gun toward the crowd under countless horrified screams.
Then, in a voice loud enough for most of the room to hear, she said to them,
"I've been trained since I was seven years old. I have killed nearly a thousand people in my life. So do not try to dodge my bullets!"
The moment she finished speaking, she twisted her waist and leaped aside, dodging two bullets fired at her.
At the same time, while still in midair, she adjusted her posture and casually shot two security guards in the head.
"See?"
Natasha landed and shouted loudly at the crowd.
"That is the price of bravery!"
As she spoke, she slowly walked toward the most densely packed part of the crowd, the area near the banquet hall doors.
As she walked, she lightly gestured with her gun toward the hesitant security guards.
At the same time, she softly advised them.
"Put down your guns. Doing that might cost you your jobs. It might make you face compensation claims. It might even make certain people hold you responsible!
But I think all of those possibilities depend on one thing first.
You still being alive!"
When she finished speaking, she shook her head with slight dissatisfaction.
Most of the armed people at the scene had only lowered their weapons toward the ground for the moment.
Natasha understood their unwillingness to abandon their final shred of hope so easily.
But more than that, she wanted to become everyone's final hope, the hope that she might still spare them in the end!
So she simply raised her gun toward the nearest socialite.
"I understand that none of you want to give up your weapons. After all, they are your only source of courage.
But do you really want this poor girl to die instead?"
She walked straight toward the panicked young woman and grabbed hold of her.
Her hand clamped around the terrified girl's neck, so frightened that she did not even dare run.
"You are all security personnel for this banquet, correct?
Then believe me!
The responsibility of failing to protect these important people tonight is far less serious than being the reason these important people die!"
After saying that, she smiled coldly, then lifted the girl by the neck and aimed the gun at her...
That sight gave everyone only one feeling.
Cold.
Bang!
Natasha fired without warning!
The bullet tore through the girl's internal organs, and her expression shifted from fear and shyness into the blank stillness of utter disbelief.
Natasha, her eyes completely black, pressed her lips together and shoved the dying girl to the floor.
"That makes one.
But the cost of one dead person is far lower than the cost of two dead people!
So drop your weapons!"
This time, the moment her words ended, the entire hall erupted in a chorus of clattering impacts.
Who knew how many weapons hit the floor in that instant!
But Natasha was still not satisfied. She raised her gun and blew the head off the second-closest person to her, an old man.
"You!!!"
"Damn it!"
"Shit, we did exactly what you said!"
"You lunatic!"
The security guards shouted and cursed in terror, but Natasha only smiled at them.
"I said everyone drops their weapons.
Everyone!!!"
She roared the last word, and that was enough to silence every insult in the room.
Everyone immediately started looking around, and at last they found two people far off in a corner still holding guns.
Those two were instantly surrounded by countless icy stares, and under the weight of those gazes, they panicked and threw their weapons away.
Not far from Natasha, the family of the second dead old man had gone nearly insane.
His wife and daughter now looked like they wanted to eat people alive, furiously screaming at the two guards in the distance who had not thrown away their guns earlier.
"You two devils, I'll kill you! My husband died because of you!!!"
"My father was a senator! He gave his whole life to this country, and you killed him!!!"
Listening to the curses from the senator's family, Natasha smiled cruelly.
Only after being controlled by the Mind Stone had she finally seen clearly that humanity was just this kind of hopelessly selfish species!
But humanity was such a vast collective, and among countless ants, there would always be those who dared shake a tree.
At the back of the crowd, Tony first gripped his lover's hand tightly, then resolutely let it go.
"Wait for me. I'll take you home."
That was what he said to Pepper.
Then he turned around and, under Pepper's utterly unwilling gaze, walked back into the crowd.
He passed through the sea of people, taking in countless hateful and indifferent looks, until he finally arrived in front of Natasha.
He spread his arms as if going in for a hug, then said in a frivolous tone,
"Wow, Natasha, when you were my secretary, I had no idea you were this hot!"
"So it's you, Anthony Edward Stark.
Arrogant, conceited playboy. Lonely spiritual drifter. Iron Man who lives for applause!"
As Natasha spoke, she carefully observed Tony.
A moment later, she confirmed that Tony was not carrying any little gadget that might ruin her plans.
Her powers of observation were top-tier.
So she stopped walking, pointed the gun at her own head in a mock-suicide gesture, and asked Tony,
"You rushed over here. Are you volunteering to die?"
"No, no, no. Of course not!"
Tony smiled with perfect ease.
"I just understand you, Natasha. I know the reason you're doing all this is to leave your new boss an escape route!
Because we all know your new boss, that guy with the little Bambi antlers on his head, absolutely cannot be Heisenberg's opponent!"
As he said that, Tony turned and pointed around at everyone in the room.
"But look around, Natasha. If he cared even a little, then the casualties here would never have reached this point!
So if you think the lives of these people can make Heisenberg hesitate, then you're gravely mistaken!
Our Heisenberg of New York is not Clark Kent of Metropolis. The two are fundamentally different.
If Clark were here, he would definitely lower his head for the sake of your hostages.
But the one you're facing is Heisenberg.
And Heisenberg will only seek vengeance, vengeance upon you and your new boss, for every life lost because of you!
And the reason I'm standing here is to make you a deal, Nat.
Let Pepper go. She should be at home waiting for me to marry her!
In exchange, I'll become your hostage. And I'll also give you a way to make Heisenberg spare you and your new boss.
Believe me.
I have the ability to do that!"
/-\
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