While Spider-Man stood on the sun-baked tarmac processing the revelation of the Kree Empire and the Cosmic Cube, a high-stakes aerial pursuit tore through the upper atmosphere.
Michael Korvac was a jagged streak of volatile blue light, rocketing erratically through the Caribbean clouds. He didn't fly with the practiced grace of a superhero; he thrashed through the air like a drowning man fighting a riptide.
"We cannot let him act recklessly!" Adam Warlock shouted over the howling wind, his golden skin glowing as he flew in parallel with the God of Thunder. "He has absolutely no control over his cosmic output. If he panics, he will shatter the Earth's crust!"
Thor Odinson's expression hardened. He gripped the leather-wrapped handle of Mjolnir, channeling the storm. "Then we shall calm the storm."
With a deafening sonic boom, Thor accelerated. He closed the gap in a heartbeat, pulling up directly alongside the erratic human bomb.
"Korvac!" Thor's voice boomed, carrying the heavy, commanding resonance of Asgardian royalty. "Yield! We are not your enemies! We will not hand you over to Kang the Conqueror! Stop your flight, and the Avengers will aid you!"
Korvac's bloodshot eyes darted wildly. He clutched his own head, his gray hoodie flapping violently in the slipstream. "Help? Where is your help?!"
He didn't throw a punch. He didn't fire an energy blast. He simply screamed.
A localized supernova of terrifying, blinding blue cosmic energy erupted from Korvac's chest. The shockwave vaporized the surrounding cloud cover instantly. A mile away, Adam Warlock threw his arms over his face, conjuring a dense golden shield. The sheer concussive force pushed the sorcerer backward through the sky, his shield cracking under the strain.
The blue flash faded into the thin atmosphere. Adam lowered his arms, his golden eyes wide with absolute dread, expecting to see nothing but a smoking crater where the thunder god had been.
Instead, Thor was hovering in the exact same spot.
The Asgardian's red cape was slightly singed at the edges, and thin wisps of smoke curled off his silver chainmail. But otherwise, he was completely unharmed. He had simply stepped into the epicenter of a cosmic nuke and taken it squarely on the chest.
Thor reached out, wrapping a massive, heavily muscled arm around Korvac's shaking shoulders, pulling the terrified man into a firm, reassuring embrace.
"The Avengers are not your enemies, Michael Korvac," Thor said, his voice entirely devoid of anger. "You came seeking our aid. I am right here."
Korvac's hyperventilation hitched. The blinding light bleeding from his pores sputtered and dimmed. He stared up at the towering god, his fractured mind struggling to comprehend what had just happened.
Adam Warlock flew closer, dropping his cracked shield. He stared at Thor in genuine astonishment. "I have traversed the cosmos, Odinson, yet I have never witnessed such resilience. Korvac just unleashed enough raw energy to crack a planet. You are entirely unscathed."
"The vitality of the Asgardian people extends far beyond the frailty of mortal flesh," Thor replied humbly, offering a small, reassuring smile. "Though I am by no means invincible."
With his panic momentarily subdued, Korvac's glowing aura vanished completely. Without the ambient cosmic energy holding him aloft, gravity instantly reasserted its hold. He began to plummet.
Thor simply reached out and caught Korvac by the back of his collar, hoisting him up like a wet kitten. "Come. Let us return to the surface."
But before they could descend fifty feet, Korvac shrieked. It was a high, terrified sound that scraped against Thor's eardrums.
The wind died instantly. The clouds stopped drifting. A flock of seagulls froze in mid-air, their wings locked in place.
Time had stopped.
High above them, breaking through the frozen atmosphere, Kang the Conqueror descended. He sat upon a massive, hovering Time Chair—a throne woven from impossible thirty-first-century temporal technology.
This time, Kang wasn't aiming a stasis pistol. A heavy, multi-barreled chronal cannon deployed from the armrest of the throne. It hummed with sickly green energy. Kang intended to completely bypass containment. He was going to shatter Korvac into a billion sub-atomic fragments and scatter his ashes across the chaotic flow of the timestream, erasing the anomaly from reality forever.
Kang squeezed the firing mechanism. A blinding beam of green chronal energy lanced downward.
But Korvac's terror was absolute.
"NO!" Korvac roared.
Pure, unfiltered cosmic power tore through the frozen spacetime. The sheer localized reality-warping energy of the living Cube shattered Kang's chronal lock. Time snapped back into motion.
The sudden return of gravity yanked Korvac downward just a fraction of a second before the green beam struck. The lethal chronal energy harmlessly grazed the fabric of his hoodie.
Thor reacted with thousands of years of combat instinct. He rolled mid-air, dodging the residual green energy, caught the falling Korvac, and instantly leveled Mjolnir at the Conqueror's floating throne.
"Kang!" Thor bellowed, lightning arching wildly across the sky. "Whatever your dark purpose may be, you bring ruin to this realm! Abandon your hunt, or face the wrath of Asgard!"
Kang sneered behind his translucent blue faceplate. "You do not comprehend the stakes of this equation, Odinson! That broken man in your arms will cause a devastation far beyond your primitive understanding! He is the catalyst that will destroy the entire structural framework of the universe!"
Kang leaned forward on his throne, his voice booming through external speakers. "In the year 2015, a multiversal collision crisis will tear reality apart! The Incursions! Entire universes bleeding into one another until nothing remains but the void! And the energy signature responsible for that final, apocalyptic collapse is an exact, undisputed match to the man you are currently protecting!"
Thor and Adam exchanged a rapid glance. Multiversal collapse. Incursions. The words sounded like absolute madness to the Asgardian, but the utter conviction in the time-traveler's voice was chilling.
"You base your execution on future hypotheticals, Kang!" Adam challenged, placing himself between the Time Chair and Korvac. "Your actions here are the only current threat. You are destabilizing his mind!"
"The energy readings do not lie, Warlock," Kang shot back.
But Kang's tactical HUD was already flashing red warnings. Korvac was an impossible variable. The man possessed the raw power to passively shatter localized time-stops. If Kang engaged in a direct firefight against Thor, Warlock, and a sentient Cosmic Cube, the odds of a lethal miscalculation were catastrophically high. And since Kang existed outside of normal linear time—ruling from the chronal fortress of Chronopolis—he could simply retreat, recalculate, and strike at a more opportune point in history.
Without another word, Kang's Time Chair folded in on itself, shrinking into a pinprick of quantum light before vanishing entirely from the sky.
"He refuses to negotiate," Adam sighed, his shoulders dropping in frustration.
"Cowards rarely do," Thor grunted, adjusting his grip on Korvac's collar. "Let us seek ground. The Man of Spiders will wish to hear of this."
Down on the Puerto Rican tarmac, Peter Parker shielded his eyes as a massive, wedge-shaped hovercraft broke through the clouds. It looked like a highly stylized, futuristic bathtub, propelled by four glowing anti-gravity turbines.
The Fantasticar touched down smoothly on the asphalt, right as Thor and Adam Warlock landed beside it.
"Is this the backup you called?" Gwen asked, stepping up beside Peter. She eyed the sleek vehicle as the gull-wing doors hissed open. "Can Mr. Fantastic actually handle thirty-first-century time-travel tech?"
"I don't know for sure," Peter said, retracting his mask to run a hand through his sweaty hair. "But if the absolute smartest guy on the planet can't fix this, then nobody can."
Standing near the perimeter fence, Major Carol Danvers wasn't looking at the Fantasticar, the God of Thunder, or the glowing golden alien. Her sharp blue eyes were locked directly on Cindy.
Cindy had pulled her silk mask up slightly to drink from a water bottle. Carol recognized the jawline. She recognized the specific build. More importantly, she recognized the girl from the cramped aisle of the Midtown High charter bus just a few hours ago.
Carol's mind rapidly connected the dots. If the highly classified S.H.I.E.L.D. agent 'Silk' was secretly a high school student on a field trip... what did that mean for the guy in the red-and-blue spandex who had shown up right beside her?
"Wait a minute," Carol muttered, her eyes darting to Spider-Man.
Mar-Vell stepped up beside her, noticing her intense stare. "What is it, Carol?"
"That girl over there. Silk. She was on the civilian bus," Carol said, her voice dropping into a harsh, disbelieving whisper. "She's a high schooler on a college tour. Do you think Spider-Man is just some teenager too?"
Mar-Vell frowned, glancing at Peter. "Why does that matter? Are you planning to dig into his civilian identity? How would that possibly help our current situation?"
"It doesn't help at all," Carol rubbed her forehead, a deep, exhausted military frustration bleeding into her tone. "I just... I cannot believe we're actively relying on a bunch of high school kids to save the literal universe."