This battle didn't seem large-scale, and no one appeared to have died, yet it was the most devastating outcome for the Avengers.
The final scene showed Zemo imprisoned in a high-tech prison, indicating that he had also been judged.
Secretary Ross looked at him coldly and said, "Breakfast at eight, dinner at five! Two bathroom breaks a day! Speak loudly, and you get zapped! Touch the glass, you get zapped! Do anything out of line, and I'll make sure you regret it. Go ahead, try me!"
He didn't want this guy, who had caused him so much trouble, to have a moment's peace.
Colonel Zemo, however, remained expressionless, showing no reaction.
Seeing that his threats had no effect, Secretary Ross was also annoyed. He stepped forward and said, "How does it feel? After all that time, all that effort, and in the end, you failed, utterly defeated!"
Colonel Zemo just smiled faintly and said, "Did I really fail?"
Everyone watching understood the meaning of Colonel Zemo's smile and those words.
This seemed like a failure for him; even the mastermind was caught. But was the problem really solved?
No!
Because the Avengers had already been infiltrated from within!
The Avengers, so powerful they could defeat aliens, had been dismantled from the inside out by him.
The scene shifted again to the Avengers' headquarters, which was unusually empty. Tony Stark was helping War Machine Rhodes with his rehabilitation training.
"This is the first training session. Give me feedback, anything!" Tony Stark said, supporting War Machine Rhodes. "Shock absorption, lateral movement, cup holder?"
War Machine Rhodes was now disabled, but Tony Stark had developed a special exoskeleton armor for him.
"Maybe we should consider installing air conditioning underneath!" Rhodes joked, but the next second, he fell to the ground.
He struggled to get up. After a moment, he said with a wry smile, "One hundred and thirty-eight missions. I flew one hundred and thirty-eight combat missions, Tony, every time possibly never to return, but I still went because those were battles that had to be fought! The Accords, too, I signed them because it was the right thing to do. This thing is really bad, this is bad, but that doesn't change my mind. I don't think so!"
At the end of the video, Stan Lee made a cameo appearance delivering a package, and Tony Stark permanently received a title.
Tony Stark!
This video is finally over, and so is today's diary entry.
But for the people at S.H.I.E.L.D., this might be the most agonizing experience of their lives.
Watching the atmosphere grow increasingly bizarre, they had no choice but to endure it all.
After a moment, Nick Fury spoke first, breaking the silence. "This incident is a huge wake-up call for us. We need to be more careful during our missions to save the world, to avoid harming people. Even if we only hurt one person, we could destroy a family's hope.
For every person who dies because of us, the world's anger grows.
It's not just us who have normal human emotions; ordinary people do too. Their accumulated rage can consume everything."
Everyone nodded in agreement.
The incident with Colonel Zemo served as a reminder: a commoner's fury can spill blood.
A regular special forces colonel. Yes, for them, someone like that was just ordinary, yet he'd outmaneuvered them completely, directly tearing apart the Avengers in that timeline, even impacting the people and events of their own.
Their current Avengers might even be torn apart.
If they didn't know that an even more terrifying enemy, Thanos, was coming, and that the Big Three would still team up to face him, the Avengers might have disbanded already, everyone going their separate ways.
"The Sokovia incident might have been an accident. We need to figure out why it blew up..." Hawkeye Barton began. "It feels strange to me. Don't you think? That ship in the video from before, it didn't seem like a conventional vessel."
"Of course, it wasn't a conventional vessel," Nick Fury replied. "Since we're all here, and there are no outsiders present, I'll just say it. That ship was developed internally by S.H.I.E.L.D., a flying ship designed to work with the Helicarrier, for convenient personnel transport."
"The Helicarrier project? The same Helicarrier you were on during the Chitauri invasion, from the previous video?" Tony Stark inquired.
Nick Fury nodded.
The others clearly weren't authorized to know about this.
"So, you're saying... that the city we were in, it... flew?" Tony Stark immediately grasped the situation.
Since this airship was used to transport people to and from the Helicarrier, its purpose was very clear.
Adding to that what Colonel Zemo had said about blowing up Sokovia...
Putting things together, it immediately became clear: Sokovia had flown into the air, which was why they had to destroy it. After all, what would be the consequences if such a large city fell from the sky?
It would probably make a crater on Earth, and then there would be another mass extinction event. It might not wipe out everything, but wiping out about ninety percent wouldn't be a problem.
Everyone else reacted quickly, understanding the situation. If Sokovia fell from the sky, the consequences wouldn't be much less severe than the asteroid that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct.
"But how did a city fly? Is that even possible?" Hawkeye Barton couldn't help but ask. "Is it another supervillain? But it's only been a few years since the Sokovia incident. Could someone really have developed anti-gravity systems or some other sci-fi technology in just a few years?"
Everyone nodded, agreeing with him.
To lift a city into the air would require an unimaginable amount of energy.
If it could really be done, then why would Earthlings bother building rockets and spaceships?
Just build a city and push it directly into space to be a colony.
Wouldn't that be better than any technology? "But no matter who did it, no matter what method was used, it's obviously a reality," Tony Stark didn't want to marvel at how absurd the technology was.
Didn't Nick Fury's S.H.I.E.L.D. already develop the Helicarrier?
You don't really think it was achieved with a normal engine, do you? There must have been some breakthrough in new technology.
"Yes, Tony's right. No matter who, no matter what methods were used, it has obviously happened. There's no point in dwelling on it," Bruce Banner said. "The key is, how are we going to face this? If we encounter this again, will we still choose to blow up Sokovia? The resulting debris will cause countless deaths, even if we don't hit Zemo, does it even matter?"
Bruce Banner pointed out a very important question.
If that supervillain appears again, how should they handle it?
The biggest warning this incident gave them was the immense destruction they caused during their actions, which might even backfire on them.
The Avengers, of course, didn't just pat themselves on the back and head back to New York after saving the world, as Colonel Zemo claimed. In reality, both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Tony Stark had follow-up organizations to handle the aftermath.
Tony Stark even established a related foundation for this purpose. But aside from whether the money was enough to compensate for the losses, could money really solve the problem of those who died?
Thinking about this, everyone felt a headache coming on.
"The best approach now is to find out in advance which supervillain caused all this, but only Lin Feng knows. So, if we want to know, we can only try indirect methods to see if we can influence him and get him to record it in his diary," Black Widow Natasha said.
Everyone thought about it and realized this was indeed the only remaining option.
It would be too late once Sokovia went up in flames.
"I think the culprit is very likely in Sokovia, probably a local supervillain. Otherwise, they wouldn't have chosen Sokovia," Coulson suddenly chimed in. "I wonder if it could be HYDRA? After all, that was their base. If anyone is most likely, it would probably be them."
"Impossible!"
Captain America Rogers shook his head firmly and said, "HYDRA, though they are crazy and ambitious, wants to rule the world and be on top. If, according to our analysis, dropping Sokovia from high altitude could cause a mass extinction, then who would they rule?"
In Captain America Rogers's understanding, though HYDRA was evil, they should be classified as an evil lawful alignment. They wanted to rule the world, but they shouldn't have the idea of wiping out the world.
"That's hard to say. For example, aren't there often such villains in some novels? They launch a world-destroying plan, then prepare in advance, survive unscathed after the world is destroyed, and then gather the remaining people, appearing as a god-like savior." Hawkeye Barton shrugged, suggesting a possibility.
Captain America Rogers opened his mouth. He originally wanted to say it was impossible, at least in his era, there were almost no such insane views of destroying the world and then ruling the remaining humans.
But it wasn't impossible!
-----------------------
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