"Luca! Luca!"
Luca stared out the window at the hellscape unfolding beyond the glass. Even he—someone who'd weathered storms in his past life—couldn't suppress the chill of fear creeping up his spine at the sight of a full-blown alien invasion.
But his parents' frantic shouts from downstairs snapped him back to reality. He had to act.
Before he could even call out in response—
Whoom!
A deep violet beam of energy lanced through the sky and struck his house with terrifying precision.
The explosion hit like a freight train.
BOOM—
Luca was hurled backward, his body slamming into the wardrobe behind him. Pain didn't register first—instead, a high-pitched buzzing filled his skull, drowning out sound and thought alike. Dizziness swam through his mind like thick smoke.
Gritting his teeth, he braced himself against an overturned desk and forced himself upright. His vision swam, but what he saw stole his breath.
A gaping maw had been torn through the exterior wall of their duplex—stretching from the second floor straight down to the first. Half of the upper level, including his bedroom, had collapsed inward, crushing everything beneath it.
Smoke and dust choked the air. The acrid tang of gunpowery residue stung his nostrils. Chunks of brick and concrete groaned as they shifted, still settling into ruin.
"Gina! Herman?! Are you okay?!" Luca coughed, his voice raw even through the ringing in his ears.
Silence answered him.
Though Luca was a transmigrator—having inherited only the memories of this body's original owner—he hadn't truly known his parents. Not deeply.
But that didn't mean he wanted them hurt. Not for their sake… and not for his own.
Without hesitation, he yanked open the wardrobe behind him, grabbed his backpack, and slung it over one shoulder. Then, he slid down the jagged slope of rubble into what remained of the first floor.
The devastation below was total.
Before he could even begin searching, two Chitauri soldiers—screaming in guttural alien tongues—crawled through the gaping hole in the wall and lunged at him, weapons raised.
Too close. Too fast.
There was no time to deploy his [Pencil Missile] or activate his [Strength-Enhancing Shoes].
But then—
Bang! Bang!
Two sharp reports cracked through the haze behind him.
The Chitauri's heads burst like overripe melons—spraying ichor and bone fragments across the rubble.
Luca spun around.
There, leaning against a splintered doorframe, was his mother—Gina. Blood streaked her temple, but her grip on a sleek, high-caliber pistol was steady. It gleamed with the unmistakable shimmer of experimental tech—still in the prototype phase at their family's defense company.
"Mom! Where's Dad?!" Luca sprinted to her side.
Only then did he see it: the lower half of her body was pinned beneath a slab of collapsed wall. Miraculously, the debris had formed a precarious lean-to, sparing her from instant death—but not from agony.
And just beyond her, half-buried in dust and stone, lay Herman. Luca reached out—checked for a pulse—then froze.
His father was gone.
Ignoring Gina's weak protests, Luca dropped to his knees and shoved at the slab pinning her. His right arm—fitted with a civilian-grade mechanical prosthetic—strained uselessly. It wasn't the Winter Soldier's military-grade bionic limb. Hell, it barely matched the strength of an average human hand.
"Luca! Listen to me!" Gina gasped, her voice sharp with urgency. "Take the gun! You know how to use it—Mom and Dad taught you!"
She thrust the weapon toward him. "Don't worry about me! Get to the storage room—it's reinforced! Stay there. Don't come out!"
Luca hesitated. The pistol pulsed with that same soft, white luminescence he'd come to recognize—core component tech.
But as he reached for it, a realization struck him like lightning:
The Strength-Enhancing Shoes don't just boost explosive power—they channel sustained kinetic output too!
Without a second thought, Luca dropped into a crouch and twisted the white activation knob on the side of his right sneaker.
A jagged arc of electricity crackled across the red-and-white fabric. In an instant, his entire foot shimmered with iridescent energy—like liquid light coiling around his limb, ready to unleash.
Feeling an unprecedented surge of power thrumming through his leg, Luca carefully slipped his toes into the narrow crevice beneath the rubble.
As he slowly pressed down with his right foot, the collapsed wall—previously immovable even when he'd strained with all his might—lifted effortlessly. To his surprise, he felt almost no pressure on his instep. Even his left foot, untouched by whatever strange energy now coursed through him, seemed to grip the ground with unnatural stability, eliminating any risk of losing balance.
Thoom.
With a thunderous crash, the massive slab of debris flipped sideways and slammed into the earth.
Before the dust could settle, Luca snatched up his mother and yanked her away from the unstable wreckage.
"Luca… what was that?" Gina asked, still trembling but now wide-eyed and alert. Her gaze locked onto the boulder her son had just hurled aside with a single foot.
Luca shifted awkwardly. "Just… one of my little inventions."
He couldn't explain the "golden finger" phenomenon—not in the middle of a warzone—so he glossed over it and steered her toward the storage room she'd mentioned earlier. Staying put was suicide; another Chitauri wave could hit at any second.
But they hadn't taken three steps when a streak of gold and red blazed across the sky—and then crashed through the outer wall.
THUD.
The impact cratered the already-ruined floor, carving a smoking trench straight to their feet before the armored figure skidded to a halt.
Iron Man.
Heart pounding, both Luca and Gina instinctively raised weapons—Gina drawing a sleek prototype pistol from her jacket, Luca yanking a modified pencil case from his backpack. With a click and a whir, it unfolded into something far deadlier: a compact launcher bristling with pencil-shaped micro-missiles.
"Oh, relax, relax, ma'am!" Tony Stark's voice crackled through the helmet—cool, casual, but slightly distorted by the suit's filters. He pushed himself upright, palms raised. "Technically, this isn't trespassing when Earth's kinda… on fire?"
Seeming to catch the unease in their stances, the helmet split open with a hiss, revealing Tony's tousled hair and trademark smirk. "Seriously, you two—find cover. Those knockoff Predator wannabes outside? Already on my to-do list."
He winked at Luca. "And hey, kid—next time? A pencil case won't save you."
The mask snapped shut.
Iron Man blasted backward toward the hole—repulsors flaring—
BOOM!
—a searing blue laser struck him square in the faceplate.
The explosion hurled him backward faster than he'd left, and he crashed down between Luca and Gina in a tangle of scorched armor and sparking circuits.
Outside, Chitauri hovercraft swarmed the house like angry hornets, each bearing two or three scaly warriors. A dozen plasma rifles trained on the breach.
Without a word, mother and son ducked behind cover, then rose in unison—weapons ready.
Gina fired first. Her prototype round punched through a Chitauri pilot's skull mid-swoop.
A heartbeat later, Luca triggered his invention.
The pencil case unfolded. Panels slid open, revealing a row of slender, graphite-gray missiles. Grips and barrels extended like mechanical petals, forming a compact, ergonomic launcher. He didn't aim—just swept it across the sky.
Beep-beep-beep.
Lock-ons confirmed.
He pulled the trigger.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
A dozen pencil-thin missiles spiraled skyward, trailing fire like serpents uncoiling. They struck every Chitauri craft—but instead of detonating, they burst into thick, viscous globs of polymer gel.
The alien soldiers shrieked as the sticky substance blinded them, gummed their joints, and shorted their weapons. Hovercraft wobbled, spun, and plunged to the ground like stunned birds.
One of them, flailing mid-fall, let out a confused gurgle:
"Wardfa?!"