Chapter 6
The Quinjet roared through the stratosphere, a silver needle piercing the veil of the evening. Inside, the silence was heavy, broken only by the hum of the internal systems and the rhythmic clacking of Tony's armor plates as JARVIS ran final diagnostics. Steve Rogers sat perfectly still, his shield resting between his knees, his eyes fixed on the floor. Bucky stood near the rear ramp, his cybernetic hand clenching and unclenching in a steady, mechanical rhythm.
Aron sat in the center of it all, his eyes closed. To the others, he looked like he was meditating. In reality, he was a terminal.
"He's in Germany," Aron said, his voice cutting through the tension. "Stuttgart. He's at a gala. He wants an audience."
"A gala?" Tony scoffed, his faceplate sliding up. "What, does the God of Mischief have a thing for classical music? Or is he just looking for the best hors d'oeuvres in Europe?"
"He's looking for a distraction," Steve said, standing up. "He wants us to find him. It's a lure."
"Let him lure," Thor rumbled, his hand tightening on Mjolnir. "My brother has always craved the spotlight. If he wishes to dance, we shall provide the music."
Aron opened his eyes. They were no longer brown. A faint, swirling nebula of white and blue light moved within his irises—the residue of the Odin-Force and the Mind Stone energy he had processed. "Tony, take the lead. Steve, you're on crowd control. Bucky, stay on the perimeter. Thor, stay in the clouds until I give the word. We don't want to scare him off before we know where the portal is."
"And you?" Tony asked.
"I'm going to see what he's really hiding," Aron said.
Stuttgart was a sea of black ties and evening gowns until the screaming started. Loki stood in the center of the plaza, his golden horns gleaming under the streetlights, his staff glowing with a malevolent blue light. He had hundreds of civilians on their knees, his shadow looming over them like a dark god from a forgotten age.
"Is this not simpler?" Loki's voice echoed, dripping with honeyed poison. "Is it not the natural state of your kind? To be ruled? In the end, you will always kneel."
"Not to men like you," an elderly man said, standing up with trembling legs.
Loki smirked, raising his staff. "There are no men like me."
"There are always men like you," a voice boomed from the sky.
A streak of red and gold slammed into the pavement, skidding to a halt between Loki and the crowd. Tony Stark stood there, his palm repulsors humming. Simultaneously, a blue-and-white shield whistled through the air, clanging off Loki's chest and returning to the hand of Steve Rogers, who landed with the grace of a panther.
"Make your move, Reindeer Games," Tony said.
Loki looked at the two heroes, his smile widening. "The soldier and the merchant. How quaint. But where is the third? Where is the one who broke the Destroyer?"
"Right behind you," Aron said.
Loki spun around, but there was nothing there. Only a ripple in the air, a distortion of light that felt like a sudden drop in barometric pressure. Then, the space itself seemed to fold. Aron materialized inches from Loki's face, his hand already gripping the shaft of the scepter.
The blue gem in the staff flared, sensing a rival power.
Aron didn't flinch. He looked Loki in the eye, and for the first time, the God of Mischief felt a genuine prickle of fear. He saw the infinite cold of the void in Aron's gaze—a power that didn't come from a throne or a title, but from the very fabric of existence.
"You're acting, Loki," Aron whispered, his voice too low for the cameras to pick up. "You're scared. You're running from something bigger than us. Who gave you the scepter?"
Loki's eyes flickered toward the sky, a momentary lapse in his mask. "You are but a worm in a garden you do not understand, Stark. The Master is coming. And he does not kneel."
Loki swung the staff, but Aron caught it with his bare hand. The kinetic shockwave shattered the windows of the surrounding buildings, but Aron didn't move an inch. He simply squeezed. The gold plating on the scepter groaned.
"Drop it," Aron commanded.
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning crashed down from the clear night sky, striking the ground between them. Thor landed, Mjolnir crackling.
"Brother!" Thor bellowed. "Enough of this madness!"
Loki looked at the assembled team—the Archer (Clint, who had been watching from a nearby roof), the Soldier, the Knight, the God, and the Anomaly. He dropped the scepter, his hands raised in mock surrender.
"Fine," Loki said, his voice smooth. "If you insist on a tour of your flying fortress, I shall not decline."
The S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier was a marvel of engineering, a massive vessel suspended in the clouds by four gargantuan turbines. But to Aron, it felt like a tinderbox.
As Loki was led to his high-tech glass cell, Aron stood on the bridge, watching Nick Fury and Maria Hill coordinate the search for the Tesseract. The tension between the Avengers was palpable. Steve was looking at the S.H.I.E.L.D. weapon designs with growing disgust; Tony was hacking the secure servers; and Bruce Banner was huddled in the lab, trying to find the gamma signature of the cube.
"He's playing us," Steve said, walking into the lab. "He's sitting in that cage, smiling, while we tear each other apart."
"He's not the only one with secrets, Cap," Tony said, his screen displaying rows of Hydra-based weapon schematics. "Fury is using the Tesseract to build bombs. Phase 2. Just like the stuff you fought in '45."
"Is this true?" Steve turned to Fury, who had just entered.
"The world is getting crowded, Captain," Fury said, his eye fixed on Aron. "We found out last year that we're hopelessly outgunned. We needed an equalizer."
"An equalizer?" Steve scoffed. "You're using a power you don't understand to build weapons of mass destruction. That's not protection. That's an invitation."
Aron stepped into the center of the room. The air around him began to hum, a low-frequency vibration that silenced the argument.
"Enough," Aron said. "The Tesseract isn't a bomb. It's a door. And Loki didn't come here to steal it. He came here to use the Helicarrier as a beacon."
"Brace yourselves!" Aron shouted.
The explosion rocked the Helicarrier, tilting the massive vessel at a forty-five-degree angle. Alarms wailed as the deck plates buckled.
"The turbines are down!" Maria Hill's voice crackled over the comms. "We're losing altitude!"
"Tony, get outside! Fix that engine!" Aron commanded. He looked at Bucky. "Go with him. If Barton's team boards, they're going for the cell."
Aron didn't wait for an answer. He turned to the lab, where Bruce Banner was struggling. The stress of the explosion, the argument, and the proximity to the scepter was doing exactly what Loki wanted.
Bruce's skin was turning a sickly shade of green. His breathing was a series of guttural growls.
"Bruce, look at me," Aron said, his voice infused with a calming, bio-electric frequency. "Don't let him out. Not here."
"I... I can't..." Banner gasped, his clothes starting to rip.
"Yes, you can," Aron said. He reached out and touched Bruce's forehead. He didn't siphon the energy this time; he balanced it. He projected a wave of pure, stabilizing intent into Bruce's nervous system.
The green receded. Bruce slumped against a table, sobbing with relief. "Thank you... thank you, Aron."
"Stay here. Steve, protect him," Aron said.
Aron sprinted toward the detention level. He could hear the gunfire. Bucky was holding the corridor against a dozen mind-controlled S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, his metal arm moving in a blur as he disarmed and neutralized them without lethal force.
But Loki was already at the glass. He was talking to Thor, his voice a whisper of old grievances.
"You think this cage can hold a god?" Loki asked. He hit a button on the console.
The floor beneath Thor's cell opened. The God of Thunder was dropped into the void, falling thirty thousand feet toward the earth.
"Thor!" Bucky shouted, but he was pinned down by a fresh wave of reinforcements.
Loki stepped out of the cell, picking up his scepter. He looked at the chaos he had created and smiled. Then he saw Aron at the end of the hall.
"You're too late, little Stark," Loki sneered. "The portal is being opened. New York will be the first of your cities to burn."
Loki vanished in a shimmer of gold light.
The Helicarrier was a smoking wreck, barely staying airborne as Tony and Steve worked to restart the engines. But the real battle had shifted.
Over Stark Tower in the heart of Manhattan, Erik Selvig—his mind clouded by the scepter—was adjusting the settings on a massive machine. The Tesseract sat at the center, glowing with a light that challenged the sun.
A beam of pure blue energy shot upward, piercing the clouds and tearing a hole in the very fabric of space.
The sky over New York didn't just open; it bled. From the dark, swirling vortex, the Chitauri began to pour out. They came on sleek, golden chariots, their armored skins glistening, their energy rifles firing indiscriminately into the streets below.
"Here we go," Tony said, his voice coming through the comms as he streaked toward the city. "The party has officially started."
Aron landed on the roof of Stark Tower. He didn't look at the portal yet. He looked at Selvig.
"Dr. Selvig, stop," Aron said.
"I can't!" Selvig cried, his eyes blue and vacant. "It's beautiful! It's showing me the truth! The universe is so big, and we are so small!"
Aron didn't argue. He walked to the machine. The energy shield protecting the Tesseract was absolute—pure cosmic force.
Aron placed his hand an inch from the shield. He began to vibrate. Not just his hand, but his entire molecular structure. He was becoming a ghost, a phantom that existed between the ticks of the clock.
Slowly, his hand passed through the blue light.
He gripped the Tesseract. The stone inside pulsed, a wave of space-time energy surging through Aron's arm. It was enough to vaporize a planet, but the "Perfected Doomsday Gene" was a bottomless well. It didn't break; it evolved.
Aron pulled the Tesseract out of its housing.
The beam died. The portal above the city began to flicker.
But it was too late. Thousands of Chitauri were already in the streets. And from the hole in the sky, something much larger was emerging. A Leviathan—a massive, armored space-whale that dwarfed the skyscrapers. It roared, a sound that shook the island of Manhattan to its core.
"Aron, the portal's closing, but we've got a massive problem down here!" Steve's voice crackled. He, Bucky, and a recently-returned Thor were in the middle of a street battle on 42nd Street.
"I'm on it," Aron said.
He looked at the Tesseract in his hand. He could feel its hunger. He didn't put it in a box. He didn't hide it. He pressed it against his own chest.
The cube didn't crush him. It merged. For a heartbeat, Aron's entire body became a translucent blue, his veins glowing with the light of a thousand stars.
Aron took a breath. The air around him turned into a vacuum. He looked at the Leviathan.
"My city," Aron whispered.
He didn't fly; he simply was where he needed to be. He appeared on the nose of the Leviathan. He didn't punch it. He touched it.
A wave of pure white energy rippled out from his fingers. The Leviathan didn't explode. It began to turn into gold dust, its molecules being rewritten by the Tesseract's power. From the tail to the head, the massive beast disintegrated into a cloud of glittering sand that drifted harmlessly over the rooftops.
The Chitauri on the ground stopped. They looked up at the boy standing in the sky, his body radiating a light that pushed back the shadows of the portal.
"Tony, Steve, clear the civilians," Aron said, his voice echoing in the minds of every person in the city. "I'm going to close the door."
Aron flew toward the vortex. He didn't go through it. He stood at the threshold. He could see the Chitauri fleet waiting on the other side. He could see the dark, rocky throne of Sanctuary. And he could see a single, purple-skinned hand resting on a gold armrest.
Thanos.
The Mad Titan looked at the boy in the blue light. He didn't smile. He didn't frown. He simply acknowledged a rival.
"Not today," Aron said.
He clapped his hands.
The shockwave didn't just close the portal; it sealed the dimension. The blue light flared into a blinding sun, and then, with a sound like a closing book, the sky was empty.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Aron descended slowly, his feet touching the roof of the tower. The Tesseract was no longer in his hand; it was a part of him now, a steady, cooling core of energy that hummed alongside the Doomsday Gene.
The team gathered on the roof. Tony, his armor scorched; Steve, his shield scratched; Bucky, his suit torn; Thor, his cape ragged; and Bruce, who had finally arrived, looking tired but whole.
They looked at Aron.
"Did you... did you just eat a cosmic cube?" Tony asked, his voice a mix of awe and terror.
"I integrated it," Aron said. "It's safe. And so is the world. For now."
"Fury's not going to like this," Bucky said, looking at the sky where the S.H.I.E.L.D. jets were circling. "He wants his prize back."
"Fury can have the box," Aron said, opening his hand to reveal a perfect, empty glass replica of the cube. "The power stays with us. We're the ones who have to fight what's coming next."
Steve walked up to Aron, placing a hand on his shoulder. "What comes next?"
Aron looked at the team. The Avengers. The family he had protected, and the world he had saved.
"We build," Aron said. "We build a world where we don't need miracles. We build a future that can defend itself."
Aron smiled. It was a small, tired smile.
"Let's go get some shawarma," he said. "I'm starving."