"Clark, what's wrong?!" Diana watched as Clark suddenly activated his overload mode, a look of concern flashing across her face. She immediately realized something was wrong—Clark was in trouble.
"Is he okay?" Although they knew guns wouldn't help, both Nick Fury and Natasha instinctively pulled theirs when they saw Clark behaving abnormally.
Everyone else in the lab—Tony, Thor, Banner—also turned toward Clark, concern written all over their faces.
Beep!
At that moment, the Tesseract tracking software, developed by Banner's company, suddenly went off with an alert.
"Looks like the Tesseract has been found," Tony said as he glanced at the alert on the screen. "Time to suit up."
"The Tesseract is going back to Asgard. You couldn't protect it before, and you won't bear the consequences if it's lost again," Thor said firmly.
Having just learned that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been secretly weaponizing the Tesseract, Thor no longer trusted Earth's governments with it. He might not know why Odin left the cube here in the first place, but now he was determined to take it back. He didn't want to return one day and face a human army armed with Tesseract-powered weapons.
Unfortunately, no one was really listening to Thor.
Just as Tony was about to head off to don his armor, Steve Rogers stepped in and grabbed his arm.
"You can't go."
"If you can stop me, try." Tony shoved Steve back.
"I don't want to hurt you. But once I'm suited up, I'll show you what I can really do!" Steve had reached the end of his patience with Tony.
While the others continued to argue, Clark felt the energy invading his body begin to subside. As it faded, his awareness of his surroundings returned. Once the energy flow stopped, Clark realized something strange—there was now a golden energy inside him.
"This… is this the Mind Stone's energy?!"
Looking at the golden energy within him coexisting with the blue energy of the Space Stone, and recalling how something had been affecting his mind earlier, Clark instantly understood what had happened.
Finally regaining control, Clark turned toward the lab, where everyone was still arguing under the stone's lingering influence. He raised his right hand and summoned the golden energy, releasing it with a calming intent.
A golden wave of light pulsed outward from Clark's palm, rippling across the room. Everyone it touched felt an overwhelming sense of calm.
"Huh? What just happened?" Tony blinked. Something felt off—he wasn't usually this irritable.
"Clearly, something was affecting you," Clark said as he reached out for Loki's scepter, then enveloped it with his own Mind Stone energy.
Though Clark's energy wasn't as strong as the stone's original source, it was enough to contain its influence temporarily and stop it from affecting the others. After all, no one was actively controlling the Mind Stone right now.
The lingering influence was simply a fail-safe Loki had left behind.
"Didn't Loki use this to control Barton and Erik Selvig before? I think this thing can manipulate people's minds."
"I think you'll all want to hear what I found," Banner said, glancing at the location now displayed on the Tesseract tracking software.
"What is it—"
BOOM!
Suddenly, a massive explosion rocked the Helicarrier. A powerful shockwave surged through the lab, knocking nearly everyone off their feet.
Only Clark and Diana remained standing. Clark was completely unfazed, while Diana had raised her arms in a defensive stance, shielding herself from the blast.
As for Thor, the explosion had blasted him clean off the Helicarrier and into the sky. Clark could feel the entire carrier tilting in the air.
"Tony, go get your suit—now," Clark said. After all, of everyone here, Tony was still a normal human without his armor.
Fury and Natasha were heavily trained, Steve was a supersoldier, Banner was the Hulk, and Clark and Diana… well, they were far from human.
"Hill, what's the situation?" Fury barked into his communicator as he regained his footing.
"The explosion came from outside the carrier—the left engine is down. Thankfully, the turbines aren't destroyed, but we can't reach them for repairs. And worse—we're going down!"
Hearing Hill's voice through Fury's comm, Clark looked at the slowly descending Helicarrier, which was tilting more and more.
Clark leapt out into the sky, flying beneath the massive airship.
"Fury, I'll try lifting your carrier—maybe Tony can repair the turbines. If not, I'll gently land it on the ground for you."
Clark positioned himself underneath the colossal ship and reached up to push it from below. But the moment he did, he noticed something was very wrong.
For a craft weighing over 8,000 tons, the contact surface between his hands and the ship was far too small. The localized pressure caused the hull to start collapsing inward beneath his palms.
"This won't work…"
Unlike the DC version of Superman, Clark found he couldn't just lift a structure this massive with his bare hands. The stress he was placing on the narrow contact points was too high. If the Helicarrier had been made of vibranium, maybe it could withstand it—but this one was just regular steel.
Then Clark remembered something he used against alien ships before: magic to expand his contact area. Only this time, the goal wasn't to destroy—but to save.
It would consume a lot of energy, and with no sunlight to replenish him, he'd have to make it count. Still, compared to Ronan's warships, this Helicarrier was hundreds of times smaller.
So Clark figured he could handle it, even without sunlight.
He willed it—and the moment his hands touched the hull, invisible lines of force fields rippled outward from his fingertips, enveloping the entire ship.
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