The large holographic projection on the study wall flared to life.

It showed the towering skyline of Manhattan under a bruised, darkening sky. The Chitauri armada had flooded towards the city in a screeching, chaotic swarm of metal chariots and cybernetic foot soldiers, spreading across the city like locusts descending on a field.

Loki watched the screen with a dark, expectant gleam in his eyes. He waited for the screams. He waited for the familiar, intoxicating sight of millions of fragile mortals scattering in mindless terror.

Instead, he saw completely empty streets.

There were no massive traffic jams clogging the avenues. There were no panicked crowds trampling each other in the intersections. The iconic yellow cabs were parked neatly out of the way. The city looked like a ghost town.

The NYPD and a small army of SHIELD agents had been methodically evacuating the central boroughs for days. The only people left in the strike zone were the few stragglers actively being pulled into subway stations reinforced by heavily armed tactical units.

"When you know an army is coming," Arthur said, "you do not wait for them to knock before you clear the house."

Loki's grip tightened on the golden Scepter. "A cleared house changes nothing. Buildings burn just as easily as flesh. My army will turn this city to ash, and your little heroes will be buried underneath it."

"Let's watch," Arthur offered politely, gesturing to the screen.

On the screen, the first wave of Chitauri gliders dove toward the empty avenues, firing their plasma weapons blindly into the storefronts.

They expected no resistance. They expected a slaughter.

Instead, they hit a solid brick wall of highly organized, overwhelming violence.

Iron Man shot out from the lower cloud cover like a red and gold missile. Tony Stark was not just flying. He was dominating the airspace. The Mark X armor hummed with power, moving with a speed and fluidity that defied basic aerodynamics. Tony did not even bother using his primary repulsors for the foot soldiers. Dozens of smart micro-munitions deployed from his shoulders, tracking multiple targets simultaneously.

A dozen Chitauri gliders exploded in a synchronized bloom of orange fire before they even reached the rooftops.

"JARVIS, keep tracking those flight paths," Tony's voice crackled cheerfully over the audio feed Eve had tapped into. "I want to be the one with the most kills today. Do not let anyone beat my score."

Down below, Natasha and Barton held a rooftop overlooking 42nd Street. Barton was firing with mechanical precision. Every arrow found its mark. Every shot was a kill. He moved with the sharp, relentless focus of a man making up for lost time.

Three chariots came through a gap between buildings in tight formation. Too close together. Too fast for a single shot. Barton nocked an arrow, calculated the angle, and released. The arrow passed through the energy housing of the lead chariot, detonated the fuel cell, and the resulting fireball swallowed all three.

Natasha glanced at him. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"Showing off?"

"Making up for lost time."

"Taking down three with one arrow is definitely showing off."

"Then yes."

Down on the ground level, Steve Rogers stood in the centre of Park Avenue. He was not alone. Flanking him on both sides were platoons of elite SHIELD operatives armed not with standard rifles, but with the heavy, glowing Phase Two weapons Fury had commissioned. Tesseract blue. Bulky. Devastating.

A squad of Chitauri foot soldiers landed on the asphalt, snarling and raising their energy rifles.

"Fire," Steve commanded calmly.

The street lit up blue. The Phase Two weapons discharged concentrated cosmic energy that vaporised the alien soldiers on contact. It was not a desperate defence. It was an execution.

"Right flank, Hulk!" Steve called out, pointing toward a crumbling bank building where more aliens were landing.

Hulk leaped from the roof of a nearby brownstone. He did not look like a mindless beast raging out of control. He looked like a precision weapon someone had finally bothered to aim. He landed squarely on a cluster of alien chariots, crushing the metal beneath his boots, grabbed two Chitauri soldiers by their throats, smashed their heads together, and tossed them aside without breaking stride.

"I cannot believe he listens to you," Tony said over the comms, zipping past a skyscraper and cutting a glider in half with his wrist laser.

"We respect the chain of command here, Stark," Steve replied, blocking a stray plasma bolt with vibranium. "You should try it sometime."

—

In the study, Loki stood motionless. His jaw was clenched so tightly it looked painful. This was not the chaotic, desperate scramble he had envisioned. The mortals were not breaking. They were actually coordinating.

"A commendable display," Loki sneered, though his voice lacked its earlier warmth. "But your Avengers cannot be everywhere at once. The city is the target. All of it. My forces will bypass your heroes, spread through the boroughs, and then across the planet."

"They will certainly try," Arthur agreed mildly. "But the Avengers are not Earth's only defenders."

The camera feed shifted smoothly to the rooftops surrounding the main battlefield.

—

Figures in sweeping dark cloaks stood perched on the ledges. MACUSA Aurors. Wands drawn. Deployed in the open for the first time in modern history, visibly eager for a fight that did not require hiding in the shadows.

A wave of alien gliders broke from the main swarm, diving toward the undefended eastern perimeter.

They never made it.

Dozens of wizards raised their wands in unison. A translucent shield flared to life across the sky, interlocking hexagonal panels shimmering with layered enchantments. The Chitauri plasma bolts hit the barrier and ricocheted in a shower of sparks.

A tall wizard with a neatly trimmed beard laughed. He pointed his wand at the sky. "Bombarda Maxima!"

A shockwave of highly concentrated magic slammed into the alien formation. Five gliders shattered into pieces, sending the riders plummeting toward the pavement.

But the wizards were not done. They were having fun. Several Aurors Apparated directly from the rooftops into the air, landing perfectly on the backs of the passing Chitauri chariots. A swift stunning spell to the pilot, a graceful leap to a neighboring glider, and another loud crack of displaced air. They were treating the alien invasion like a highly competitive sporting event.

"Nice dress!" Tony shouted over the external speakers as he flew past a MACUSA Auror who had just transfigured an alien rifle into a flock of angry pigeons.

"Nice tin can!" the wizard shouted back with a grin, waving his wand to catch a falling civilian car with a precise levitation charm.

—

In the living room, Arthur took another unhurried, deeply satisfying sip of his tea.

"You underestimated Midgard, Loki," Arthur said simply. "Badly."

Loki's eyes burned with denial. He refused to accept defeat. He gripped the golden Scepter tightly, pointing it toward the screen as if he could command the battle from afar.

"Do not be so confident, wizard," Loki said, his voice low and venomous. "You rely on insects to fight cosmic monsters. But you have forgotten who controls the hive."

On the screen, a massive, terrifying shadow fell over the sunlit streets of New York.

A Leviathan emerged slowly from the portal.

The creature was a colossal, armoured beast that swam through the air the way a whale moves through deep water. It dwarfed the skyscrapers. Its metal fins sheared through brick and glass as it descended, ripping the upper floors off buildings without slowing down. Hundreds of fresh Chitauri soldiers clung to its armoured flanks, firing down at the defenders below.

Spells struck the creature's thick golden plating. Blasting curses. Cutting hexes. They bounced off in harmless showers of sparks. The beast roared, a sound so deep it shook the camera feed and made the audio crackle.

Loki watched the Leviathan descend, and the dark smile came back.

"There," Loki said softly, pointing the Scepter. "The real, unstoppable power of the Chitauri armada. Your pathetic little spells cannot pierce that armor. Your flying metal man cannot possibly stop that mass. The proud wizards and the brave soldiers are going to break completely against it."

"Keep watching," Arthur said, not blinking.

The sky above the Leviathan suddenly darkened. Heavy, unnatural storm clouds gathered with impossible speed, swirling aggressively directly over the massive beast.

Thor had arrived.

The God of Thunder did not descend to fight the beast on the ground. He flew straight up, red cape whipping in the gale, and raised Mjolnir above his head. His eyes burned white.

Lightning did not just strike the hammer. The entire storm funneled directly into it.

Thor swung Mjolnir downward, unleashing a blinding, continuous torrent of raw, branching lightning directly into the incoming army. The unearthly voltage fried hundreds of Chitauri soldiers before they even breached the atmosphere.

Below him, the Leviathan roared and charged down the avenue, crushing everything in its path.

The Hulk leaped directly from the street, meeting the colossal beast completely head-on in mid-air.

He slammed his massive green hands into the creature's armored snout. The sheer kinetic impact of the Hulk's enhanced strength stopped the Leviathan's forward momentum entirely. The massive beast crashed heavily into the pavement, its tail flipping up into the air from the sudden halt.

"Tony!" Steve shouted over the comms. "Hit the joints!"

Iron Man dropped from the sky, charging his unibeam to maximum capacity. He fired a continuous, searing beam of pure light directly into the exposed, unarmored gaps in the creature's neck.

Thor descended in a flash of lightning, landing heavily on top of the beast's head. He drove Mjolnir down with the force of a falling meteor. A massive shockwave of thunder cracked through the avenue, and the Leviathan went completely, permanently still.

The beast dropped dead. The entire sequence had taken less than ten seconds.

Thor stood on the carcass, spinning his hammer and laughing. "Is that all you have, brother? I am barely warmed up!"

—

Arthur looked over at Loki with a raised eyebrow. The God of Mischief was staring at the screen in absolute silence. The confident sneer had completely vanished from his pale face.

"It seems the big ones fall just as easily as the small ones," Arthur mused, leaning his chin on his hand. "Your grand invasion is a complete failure, Loki. It is over."

Loki swallowed hard. His knuckles were bone-white around the Scepter. He refused to look at Arthur, keeping his furious eyes locked on the screen.

"I have not lost yet," Loki hissed through his teeth. "Midgard will still be mine."

"Still so confident," Arthur smiled warmly. "I admire the delusion. Tell me, are you currently thinking about your second point of attack?"

Loki went rigid. He took one involuntary step backward before he caught himself. His eyes widened.

"How could you know about that?" The question was barely a whisper.

"I know everything, Loki. I thought we had firmly established that by now."

Arthur tapped a button on his desk console.

The high-definition feed on the wall shifted seamlessly to a new view.