"You'll handle it? How? We just received word that another wave of reinforcements was sent to New Mexico, and that gorilla wiped them out in minutes!"
The Council member representing the United States spat the words out, his face reddening with fury.
Nick Fury checked his phone. A new encrypted report from Hawkeye had just pinged his device. The contents confirmed the Councilman's claim—and then some.
"Tell the Pentagon to cease all ground and air assaults immediately. S.H.I.E.L.D. is taking over. We will neutralize the target," Fury replied, his voice a pillar of calm.
The situation had spiraled, but S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't helpless. They possessed experimental technology far beyond the military's standard kit. According to the observations from Romanoff and Barton, the Great Ape appeared to be mindless, driven by pure instinct.
It was still a hundred miles from Alamogordo. Fury's plan was to lure the beast away from population centers, using sonic decoys or thermal bait to buy time. Then, they would deploy specialized aerosol sedatives. No matter how thick the hide, a creature still had to breathe. If standard gas didn't work, they'd move to neurotoxins.
And if all else failed, he still had the pager. He could call Carol Danvers.
"That won't be necessary," a Council member said, shaking his head. "We have already voted. We are authorizing a tactical nuclear strike to end this now."
Fury's brow furrowed. "I don't believe we're at that stage yet. There are still civilians in the fallout zone, and my agents are on the ground."
"The sacrifice of the few is necessary to save the many," the Council representative countered.
They didn't care about the collateral damage. They cared about their political survival. If a giant monster leveled an American city on their watch, their careers—and the careers of their rivals—would be the only thing that mattered. A controlled nuclear "accident" in the desert was a much easier narrative to manage.
As the argument reached a boiling point and the Council prepared to bypass Fury to issue the launch codes, every screen in the room flickered. A new high-priority alert flashed across their devices simultaneously.
"The Great Ape... it's gone!"
...
On the battlefield a hundred miles from Alamogordo, the landscape was a graveyard of smoldering steel. The "Iron Flow" of modern warfare—tanks, APCs, and mobile artillery—lay twisted and broken. Humanity's pride had been proven fragile against the Oozaru.
General Ross had stopped calling for reinforcements. It was useless. If the Ape had shown even a scratch, he would have found hope in the idea of overwhelming force. but the beast hadn't lost a single hair. It wasn't even tired. It was playing a game of destruction, and the military was the toy.
High above, the cloaked S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet remained invisible. Hawkeye and Black Widow watched the carnage in grim silence.
"The Council has authorized a nuclear strike," Hawkeye relayed, his voice tight. "The Director is trying to stall them, but he's ordered us to clear the area immediately."
Natasha's face paled. "A nuke? Is it really that dire?"
"The Council doesn't gamble," Clint sighed.
They were helpless. Hawkeye's arrows, no matter how specialized, wouldn't do more than a cruise missile. Widow couldn't exactly drop down and perform a head-scissors takedown on a fifteen-meter primate. They were witnesses to a god's tantrum.
As the pilot banked the Quinjet to flee the projected blast zone, they saw a flicker of orange light on the ground below.
A massive, sparking ring of fire—a circular portal—suddenly opened beneath the Great Ape's feet. Before the beast could even roar, the ground vanished, and the Oozaru plummeted into the golden void. The portal snapped shut, leaving behind nothing but scorched sand and the wreckage of a lost battalion.
...
The Mirror Dimension.
The Ancient One, Sorcerer Supreme of the mystic arts, stood in her yellow robes, watching the Great Ape tumble into the crystalline reality of the Mirror Dimension.
Moments ago, at Kamar-Taj, she had peered through the Eye of Agamotto. The Time Stone had revealed a new, sudden branch in the timeline—one where the Earth was reduced to a cinder by a moon-bound terror. She had moved instantly to intercept the source of the cataclysm.
She raised her hands, weaving the golden threads of Eldritch magic to bind the beast. She prepared to cast a series of high-level containment spells to subdue a creature that seemed to possess infinite physical power.
But then, the "impossible" happened.
The Great Ape began to shrink. The fur receded, the massive muscles collapsed, and the towering monster vanished. In its place stood a small, naked boy with a monkey's tail, curled into a ball on the shifting floor of the Mirror Dimension.
Before the Ancient One could even process the transformation, the boy flickered. Like a ghost passing through a wall, his physical form blurred and simply... vanished.
The Sorcerer Supreme stood alone in the silence. Even with her mastery of space and time, she couldn't sense where he had gone. He hadn't used a portal; he hadn't moved through the Astral Plane. He had simply ceased to exist in this reality.