Nick Fury POV
Smoke rose over Midtown like a funeral pyre. Buildings crumbled. The sky crackled open above Manhattan, spilling out monsters with metal skin and cruel eyes.
The invasion had begun.
Nick Fury stood at the edge of the Helicarrier's command deck, jaw tight, one eye tracking every failure happening in real-time.
Loki had played them all.
He'd walked into their ship in chains, mouth gagged, smug smile barely restrained. Fury had watched it all unfold. But the mind-controlled agent—Barton—had slipped through the cracks. One sabotaged engine. One explosive arrow. The Helicarrier spiraled into chaos.
In the smoke and confusion, Loki escaped. Security footage showed him reclaiming the Tesseract, vanishing into the storm with it. Barely an hour later, that damn portal opened right above New York City.
A hole in space. A gateway.
And the Chitauri flooded through.
Fury watched the feed from the tower.
His good eye narrowed.
The man was still in the chamber.
Still sitting.
The one they pulled from the ice months ago. No ID. No prints. Not even a name. Pale skin. Barefoot. Covered in strange blood-vein scars. No speech. No memory.
He hadn't moved in hours.
Not since they brought him up from the Arctic.
Not since he—whoever he was—opened his eyes, looked at Steve Rogers, and said nothing.
He remained unnamed. Unreadable. Untouched.
For most of them, he was a ghost. A stray. A tactical unknown.
For Tony, he was "Growl."
For Thor, "Wolfie."
Emma had only ever called him "White."
Now, as the Chitauri rained down onto Earth and heroes scrambled into formation, the cell sat quietly beneath it all.
Until the lights flickered.
The Helicarrier shook violently. Screams echoed through the metal skeleton of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s pride and joy as explosions rocked its underbelly. Fire bloomed from the lower deck.
Loki had been captured. That much had gone according to plan. But the mind-controlled Hawkeye had been the real key.
A single arrow.
One blast.
And now the Helicarrier buckled mid-air.
Hulk rampaged through the engineering level.
Thor and Iron Man vanished into smoke.
Captain America ran through fire.
And Loki smiled inside his cell.
He vanished minutes later with the Tesseract in tow—a stolen Quinjet slicing into the storm above.
In the tower, the chamber lights dimmed.
Emergency protocols kicked in across the sublevels as power rerouted to upper floors. But here—buried beneath Stark Tower—systems sputtered. The cell's magnetic field shimmered once, flickered, and died with a low crackle.
No alarm sounded.
He opened his eyes.
The man stood slowly. His bare feet touched the cold floor without hesitation. He tilted his head toward the glass wall.
Then, without warning, the reinforced door let out a soft mechanical hiss.
It didn't shatter. It didn't explode. It simply... disengaged. Like the system forgot it was supposed to hold him.
He stepped into the hall.
Security footage caught four frames: one of him walking, one mid-turn, one with three Chitauri bursting into the corridor—and the fourth, their bodies lying in pieces at his feet.
No recorded strikes. No sound.
Just motion. Then ruin.
On the street, the Avengers struggled to regroup.
Tony flew point, intercepting Leviathans. Natasha worked surgical strikes. Thor dropped from the sky with lightning in his veins. Steve cleared corridors of civilians.
Then a Leviathan buckled mid-air.
Not from weapons.
From within.
High above the skyline, the armored beast twisted violently, its flight path faltering. A faint cracking sound echoed as one of its plated ridges bent upward from the inside.
On the rooftops below, Steve Rogers looked up. "What the hell...?"
The ridge split.
Something was climbing out.
White.
He wasn't flying. He wasn't leaping. He was climbing—bare hands gripping the Leviathan's armor, feet digging into segmented plating like it was scaffolding. He moved fast, but not recklessly. Every step had purpose. Every motion was a calculation.
Chitauri onboard screeched and scrambled. One fired.
White twisted, dislocating his body mid-motion. The bolt missed. He caught the shooter's wrist, yanked it through the air, and hurled it into the curve of the Leviathan's tail. The armor dented with a sickening crunch.
He climbed higher.
The Leviathan roared and dipped toward a tower, trying to shake him. White flattened against its spine, driving his fingers between two ridges. He didn't lose ground.
He advanced.
With one final pull, he reached the creature's armored crown.
And drove his fist straight into it.
The skull gave way. Not instantly—but with pressure, with force that built like a cracking dam. His hand pushed until the plating split. Chitauri inside screamed.
Then—he slipped inside.
A beat passed.
Then another.
Then the Leviathan shrieked. Its flight spasmed. Lightning arced off its back as internal energy systems fried.
It plummeted, screaming, and hit the Hudson like a meteor.
Steam exploded into the air.
And from the center of the smoke, White walked out.
Soaked. Bruised. Calm.
He didn't look back.
He just kept walking.
The comms buzzed.
"Did anyone else see that?" Tony's voice cut in, sharp. "Tell me that wasn't our quiet little pet."
Steve responded through static. "It was."
Natasha, panting, ducked behind cover as a plasma bolt scorched a wall beside her. "He wasn't supposed to be out."
"We all knew he wouldn't stay in," Bruce added, his voice low.
Thor let out a booming laugh in the background. "HA! The little wolf joins the fray! Let the beasts of war run together!"
Tony hissed, "J.A.R.V.I.S., track him—"
"Unable to establish predictive path," the AI replied. "His movements do not conform to pattern recognition."
"Shocking."
The Avengers watched as the pale figure vaulted a downed skimmer, tore through a Chitauri squad without breaking stride, and vanished again into the smoke.
"Still think we should've kept him locked up?" Steve muttered.
"No," Natasha said.
None of them did.
.....
30 min ago...
The first time White stepped into open view, he didn't announce himself.
He tore through a Chitauri squad on 45th and Lexington with such speed that half the observers thought they were watching a weapons malfunction. A helmet rolled into the gutter. A rifle was bent at the neck like it had been throttled.
Then came the second squad.
This time, cameras caught it.
He moved like a glitch in space. Not teleporting, not blinking—just accelerating faster than the eye could track. One soldier lunged; White stepped aside. Another fired; he caught the bolt with his bare hand and drove it into the shooter's chest.
A nearby civilian cowered behind a car door, filming through a cracked screen.
"He's not human," someone whispered. "He's not with them… but he's not with us either."
The footage would later go viral. No sound. Just the image of a pale, barefoot man walking through a wall of fire and dragging a Chitauri into the ground with one hand.
Avengers comms buzzed with chatter.
"Northwest perimeter's collapsing," Steve snapped.
Tony's voice came sharp and quick. "Yeah, no kidding—he's already there. I just saw him rip a speeder out of the sky."
"He's not using any weapons," Natasha muttered.
"He is the weapon," Bruce said.
A third Leviathan tried to reroute over Bryant Park.
White was waiting.
He launched himself from a crushed Humvee, caught the edge of the skimmer with one hand, and somersaulted into the Leviathan's path. As it passed overhead, he grabbed a rib of exposed armor and swung his body upward, landing feet-first on its armored back.
The beast writhed.
He drove his hands into its frame.
Sparks flew.
Lightning burst from its spine.
And then, he rode it down like a falling god, guiding it with raw leverage until it collided with a hotel on 44th, burying half the block in flame.
He stepped out of the crater.
Unburned.
Unbothered.
Unstoppable.