New York City — Viken Avenue.
A gold-and-red Iron Man suit shot into the sky at high speed.
Behind him, a massive green figure—Hulk—was sprinting wildly, carrying Captain America and Ant-Man under his arms.
Behind Hulk, several S.H.I.E.L.D. agents ran for their lives, led by a man in a long black trench coat whose bald head was impossible to miss.
These were Iron Man Tony Stark, Hulk Dr. Bruce Banner, Captain Steve Rogers, Ant-Man Scott Lang, Director Nick Fury, and his S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.
BOOM!
The burger restaurant behind them erupted into a sea of fire. From the flames, something enormous burst out—a machine with a single red eye that rotated twice before locking onto the fleeing group. It accelerated instantly, the shockwave of its speed creating a sonic boom.
Whoosh!
The Sentry closed in on the two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents at the very back. Its cutting-wind sound made the agents feel Death breathing down their necks. Terrified, they spun around and threw grenades in desperation.
BOOM! BOOM!
The two grenades froze in mid-air in front of the Sentry, then detonated—only to have the explosion blast the agents themselves backward instead.
"F***! Fire!"
Nick Fury snarled, turning mid-run and firing his weapon. A blue beam shot straight toward the Sentry.
BZZZ—
To his shock, the Sentry absorbed the energy completely—then fired the exact same beam back at him from its eye.
BOOM!
Fury rolled instinctively. The ground where he had stood simply vanished, vaporized. Sweat poured down his forehead.
"Target identified: Former S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury. Eliminating."
The Sentry's cold mechanical voice rang out. Energy surged through its body as its right hand reshaped into a blade of red energy. It strode directly toward Fury.
"Alright, big guy—your enemy's here!"
Tony Stark skidded to a stop. He spun around and unleashed a storm of repulsor blasts at the Sentry, forcing it back several steps.
Captain America leapt from Hulk's grasp, landed beside Fury, grabbed him by the collar, and hurled him toward Tony.
BOOM!
A crimson beam fired from the Sentry's eye. Captain Rogers raised his vibranium shield just in time—but was still blasted clean off his feet.
"Got you, Cap! Sometimes Hulk is good!"
Banner—Hulk—charged in, caught Rogers mid-air, and slammed a fist into the Sentry. The punch sent the mechanical giant flying.
"Hulk detected. Activating gamma-ray charging module."
The Sentry hovered in mid-air.
A mechanical voice sounded—
Then its body erupted with terrifying gamma radiation.
The silver metal darkened, turning green. The machine's body expanded rapidly.
In seconds, the Sentry had transformed into a five-meter-tall gamma-powered monster—like a mechanical Hulk, muscles bulging beneath metal plates, its mass increasing by the ton.
"That makes no sense—robots can't withstand gamma radiation!"
Dr. Banner stared in disbelief. A metal robot turning into a Hulk? The past he'd time-traveled into was getting crazier by the minute.
"Mother of—what kind of insane tech IS this?"
Tony floated above the street, stunned, his voice unusually grave.
"Veronica—cluster armor deployment!"
At his command, the nanoparticle count in the Blood-Edge Armor skyrocketed. Clouds of nanoparticles streamed out, rapidly coating Hulk, Rogers, Scott, Fury, and the agents in full nano-armor. Mechanical clicks filled the air as multiple suits assembled simultaneously.
Since the Blip, Tony had spent five years upgrading his nano-armor. Cluster deployment was one of his greatest innovations.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
Facing the monstrous Sentry Hulk, Tony didn't hesitate—he immediately ordered all nano-armors to retreat, blasting upward into the sky at maximum speed.
"So THIS is Tony Stark's nano-suit… convenient as hell."
Nick Fury muttered, wrapped in the armor for the first time. The HUD data flooding his vision showed him exactly how terrifying Stark's technology truly was.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents inside their armors were even more relieved—they finally didn't have to rely on their legs. The nano-armors had broken the sound barrier, leaving skyscrapers shrinking behind them.
"Target retreat detected. Activating super-duplication module."
The Sentry Hulk halted mid-air. Its red eye flared—
Then multiple Sentry clones burst out of its body, like Tony's nanotech duplication—but far more monstrous. This was the Sentry's super-duplication module.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Nine armored figures streaked through the sky, leaving air waves in their wake. In moments, they had put several kilometers between themselves and the pursuing Sentry Hulk.
"Whew—finally shook it. Hey, Nick, what the hell WAS that thing?"
Tony stopped and hovered mid-air, turning to face the others.
"Tony… behind you."
It wasn't Fury who answered—it was Captain America.
And his voice shook with shock.
"Huh?"
Tony frowned, rotated his armor—
—and froze.
A blue circular portal opened silently in the air behind him.
Inside it, the giant Sentry stared out with its glowing scarlet eye—
—directly at Tony Stark.
"F***."
Tony barely had time to curse.
The Sentry fired.
A massive beam erupted from its eye and smashed Tony out of the sky.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔥 Want to Read Ahead?
You can support the series on Patreon and unlock advanced chapters before everyone else.
📖 Up to 10+ chapters ahead available
👉 Patreon.com/PhoeniXcel
Your support helps keep the story going!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📢 Check out my new Naruto fanfic!
[Naruto: I Don't Want Recognition]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━