On the bridge of the Dark Aster, Ronan stared at the main screen.
On it, the figure floating in space was so small it looked like a speck of dust.
Around him, the Kree officers stood in dead silence. Even the sound of breathing had vanished. Hundreds of life-signals disappearing into nothing, a target that could not be locked onto—everything they had learned at the academy had just been shattered.
"H–He… is he waving at us?" a young officer asked hoarsely, his throat dry as sand.
That casual gesture, light as a feather, felt like a red-hot iron rod stabbing straight into Ronan's heart.
This was provocation.
The most naked provocation possible—made while standing alone before the Accuser's full fleet.
"All units," Ronan said quietly, his voice grinding like metal on metal. "Target that man. Open fire at will. Erase him from this universe entirely!"
The order was given.
The Dark Aster, along with dozens of escort ships, brought every weapon system that hadn't yet cooled back online. Energy cannons, missile bays, kinetic artillery—hundreds upon hundreds of gunports swung in unison, all trained on that lone figure.
The next second, an energy storm capable of scouring an entire planet's surface tore through the vacuum.
A dense torrent of beams and missiles surged toward Levi from all directions, an unavoidable flood of death.
Yet the smile on Levi's face never changed.
He simply raised both arms slowly, as if welcoming a grand fireworks display.
Then something strange happened.
Within several hundred meters of his body, space itself began to visibly distort—not a violent tear, but a smooth, rhythmic curvature, like invisible ripples spreading across a calm lake.
The first energy beam entered the region.
Its trajectory bent slightly, grazing past Levi and shooting off into deep space.
Then the second. The third. Hundreds. Thousands.
Every attack—energy weapons and physical missiles alike—was dragged into an unseen orbital path the moment it entered the curved space. Their trajectories were forcibly redirected, bent away from the storm's center where Levi stood.
No explosions.
No impacts.
No sound.
From the Dark Aster's bridge, it looked like a magnificent meteor shower—
and Levi was the star around which all things revolved.
"Report! All attacks… missed!" the weapons officer cried, panic and disbelief bleeding into his voice. "The target hasn't moved, but our weapons can't hit him! All lock-on systems are failing!"
"That's impossible!" another officer shouted. "Ballistic calculations say the paths are correct—they're just… turning on their own!"
Ronan's pupils shrank to pinpoints. He didn't understand what he was seeing—but he felt a deep, instinctive chill clawing at his soul.
Levi seemed to have grown bored with passive defense.
His raised hands slowly closed.
The curvature of space around him intensified severalfold. The attacks still circling him were bent even further—no longer flying off into deep space, but curving into grotesque U-shaped arcs and slamming straight into a nearby Kree escort ship.
Boom!
The ship's energy shield shattered instantly. A massive explosion blossomed in the void like a flower of death. The hull was blown clean in half, plasma and debris spraying outward.
That was only the beginning.
More and more attacks were redirected, refracted, and sent screaming back into their own formation.
"Imperial Blade has been hit! Engines down!"
"Temple Guardian shields overloaded! Requesting support!"
"Evasive maneuvers! Evasive maneuvers! Those are our own torpedoes!"
The Kree formation dissolved into chaos. Explosions erupted one after another—not from enemy fire, but from their own weapons.
"Cease fire! Stop the attack!" Ronan finally roared, hysteria breaking through his composure.
Too late.
In barely a dozen seconds, more than a third of his prized escort fleet had been turned into drifting wreckage by friendly fire.
And just as the fleet scrambled to halt their assault—
Levi vanished from the main screen.
"Target lost! Where did he go?!"
"Not on radar! No signal on any band!"
The bridge erupted into panic.
Ronan spun around violently, a sense of imminent doom raising every hair on his body.
Behind his command throne—
Levi was standing there.
Quietly. Calmly.
As if he had always been there.
He was still wearing ordinary Earth clothes, a faintly amused smile on his face. In his hand was a steaming cup of coffee, conjured from nowhere.
"Hey," Levi said casually after taking a sip. "Nice view you've got here. Bit noisy, though."
The bridge fell into instant silence.
Every Kree officer froze, petrified, staring at the intruder. Hands hovered over consoles, eyes bulged, minds went blank.
Even the intrusion alarms lagged by several seconds before shrieking belatedly to life.
Ronan's body trembled—not with rage, but with fear. A fear he hadn't felt in a very long time. Every instinct screamed at him to flee.
But he was still Ronan the Accuser. Fanatical devotion to the Kree Empire crushed that fear beneath it.
"For the Kree!"
He roared, lifting his universal weapon with both hands and bringing it down with all his strength toward Levi's head.
The blow could have shattered mountains.
Yet the massive warhammer stopped—less than ten centimeters above Levi's skull.
Levi didn't even put down his coffee.
He simply raised his left hand and casually pinched the hammer between two fingers.
"…That's it?" he said, raising an eyebrow in disappointment.
Ronan strained with everything he had. His face turned purple, muscles bulging, veins standing out like cords—yet the hammer did not move an inch.
It was like pushing against the universe itself.
As he stared at Levi's relaxed expression, at those slender fingers holding infinite strength, Ronan's faith and pride collapsed completely.
"W–What… what are you?" he asked, voice trembling, on the verge of tears.
"Me?" Levi released the hammer, letting it clatter uselessly to the floor. He thought for a moment—then smiled.
"I'm here to teach you some manners."
With that, he raised his right hand and casually drew a line in the air behind Ronan.
Space split open like a slashed canvas, revealing a pitch-black rift. On the other side—no light, no sound, only absolute nothingness.
Ronan stared at the spatial裂缝 in terror, his body locked in place by Levi's control.
Levi walked up, coffee still in hand, and with his free left hand, flicked Ronan's chest armor as if brushing off dust.
Ding.
A light sound.
Then an overwhelming force hit.
Ronan was hurled backward uncontrollably, tumbling headfirst into the rift. It snapped shut behind him, as though nothing had happened.
The bridge was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Levi finished his coffee and casually tossed the empty cup aside. It dissolved into points of light midair and vanished.
He looked around at the terrified Kree officers.
"Well," he said, clapping his hands lightly, "your captain's gone to cool off in space. This ship's mine now. Any objections?"
No one spoke. Heads bowed. Eyes avoided his.
---
Several days later — Earth, S.H.I.E.L.D. Secret Headquarters
Nick Fury's office was suffocatingly tense.
Fury sat behind his desk, the one good eye bloodshot. On the screen before him played a classified military satellite recording on loop.
A man, alone, facing an alien fleet.
With a wave of his hand, the fleet destroyed itself.
Then he vanished—reappearing only after the enemy commander was gone and the fleet fled in panic.
"We've assigned him a codename," Phil Coulson said stiffly. "Internal files. Highest clearance only."
Fury didn't respond.
"Heavenly Father."
The name made Fury's chest tighten. This wasn't a hero designation—it was a threat classification.
A god walking among men.
Just then, the office door opened.
Levi strolled in wearing casual clothes, a toothpick in his mouth. He flopped onto the couch across from Fury and casually grabbed an apple off the desk.
"Director Fury. Long time no see," he said around a bite of apple. "Your place is a pain to find."
Fury took a slow breath, forcing himself to calm down. He shut off the screen, folded his hands on the desk.
"We need to talk."
"About what?" Levi crossed his legs. "About how you've had people monitoring my investment accounts 24/7? Or how you tried to crack my firewall and fried three of your servers?"
Fury's eye twitched.
"We're not enemies, Mr. Chen. Or… Levi," Fury said gravely. "Earth needs power like yours—but it also fears it. We need to know you're not a threat."
"So?"
"So we make a deal," Fury said quickly. "S.H.I.E.L.D. provides you with the highest-level identity cover. We erase any records you don't want existing. We give you access to wealth, information, channels—anything we have. No one interferes with your life."
"One condition," he added. "If one day a threat appears that we cannot handle—one that could end the world—we want to be able to contact you. As a transaction. You name the price."
Levi chewed his apple in silence.
Fury was offering everything he could—turning an uncontrollable god into a contractor was the best outcome imaginable. Levi knew it too. He was powerful, but not yet ready to challenge civilization-scale entities like the Supreme Intelligence head-on.
"Deal," Levi said at last, tossing the apple core neatly into a trash can five meters away. "But I have a condition."
"Name it."
"Let Carol go be a cosmic cop. I named her Captain Marvel. Don't make her babysit Earth—she doesn't owe this place anything. And leave the Skrulls alone. Find them somewhere to settle."
"…Agreed," Fury said after a pause.
"Good." Levi stood and stretched. "I'll be going then. Oh—and don't call me. I'm busy."
He turned to leave, then paused at the door and smiled back.
"Heavenly Father? I like the name."
With that, he vanished on the spot.
Fury leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply, his back drenched in cold sweat.
From that day on, Carol Danvers became the cosmic guardian known as Captain Marvel, occasionally returning to Earth to visit old friends.
And Levi—or Anthony Chen, as the world knew him—vanished entirely from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s sight. Like a true ghost, he silently built a vast business empire, enjoying a rare stretch of peace.
…
Ten-plus years passed in the blink of an eye.
The world entered a new millennium. Technology advanced by leaps and bounds, and the age of heroes began to feel like distant legend.
Until one day in 2008.
On a private island in the South Pacific, Levi was lying back and enjoying the sun when a satellite phone—encrypted for over a decade and never once used—suddenly vibrated in his pocket.
The caller ID displayed only a symbol.
An eagle.
Levi frowned and answered.
"It's me," Nick Fury's voice came through—familiar, but noticeably older, laced with restrained urgency.
"We've got a problem."
Levi sat up slightly.
"A weapons supplier of critical importance to the military," Fury continued,
"has gone missing… in Afghanistan."
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