Marvel x Genshin: Mavuika, The Sun Goddess Rules Asgard — Chapter 85

Chapter 85: Attack

Thinking back now, recalling his father’s strangely deferential attitude toward Mavuika—that peculiar blend of respect, courtesy, and even a sliver of caution… Tony suddenly understood.

His father had known all along.

Howard had known about Mavuika’s abilities. He had known she was no ordinary person, that she possessed a power far beyond human comprehension.

That was why he had acted that way.

And in all this time, not a single person had told him. Not his father, not his mother, and not even Mavuika herself. It was as if they were all custodians of some colossal secret, and he, Tony, had been left standing on the outside, completely in the dark.

A tangled mess of emotions surged through him—the sting of betrayal, the warmth of shared memories now cast in a new, strange light. But just as quickly, a far more urgent feeling washed over everything else, cold and sharp.

For Mavuika to reveal her power so openly, to take to the skies without any regard for exposing her identity… could something terrible have happened?

Tony’s heart hammered against his ribs. He spun on his heel and rushed back to the workbench, snatching the phone from its cradle and punching in Howard’s number with a trembling finger.

The receiver buzzed with a busy tone—once, twice, three times. No answer.

He slammed the phone down, took a breath, and redialed. Still nothing.

He tried his mother’s number next, his knuckles white as he gripped the receiver. The result was the same; Maria’s phone was unreachable.

A cold dread began to settle in Tony’s stomach. It felt like icy vines wrapping around his heart, tightening with every silent, agonizing moment. He dropped the phone back into its cradle and began to pace the workshop, his mind racing, a thousand worst-case scenarios playing out at once.

He couldn’t just stand here. Grabbing his car keys, he bolted from the workshop. He had to get to the villa. He had to see if his parents were home. He had to know.

…

At that very moment, on a secluded country road in the remote northern reaches of New York State, the night was a blanket of oppressive darkness.

The moon was smothered by thick clouds, leaving only the faint pinpricks of distant stars to offer a meager, ghostly light. This was a secondary road, a quiet artery connecting two small towns, and traffic was sparse even during the day. At this hour, it was utterly deserted. Dense woods pressed in on both sides, the wind whispering through the leaves with a sound like a thousand hushed, urgent secrets.

A sedan was wrapped around a thick tree at the edge of the road.

The impact had been violent. While the car wasn’t completely destroyed, the front end was brutally crumpled, the hood buckled upwards like a broken jaw. The windshield was a spiderweb of fractured glass. Inside the dim cabin, the deployed airbags sat like two pale, deflated mushrooms.

Wisps of white smoke curled from the mangled engine—the tell-tale steam of leaking coolant. The headlights, miraculously still functional, flickered weakly, pulsing like the last breaths of a dying creature.

Inside, Howard and Maria Stark were slumped in the driver and passenger seats.

Howard’s forehead had slammed into the steering wheel, opening a deep gash. Blood trickled down his cheek, dripping onto the white nylon of the airbag and blooming into small, dark red flowers. His glasses were shattered, the broken lenses scattered across his lap. A searing pain in his chest told him he had at least one fractured rib, maybe more.

Maria’s condition was slightly better, but not by much. Abrasions marked her face, but her eyes were open, and she was conscious.

“Howard…” Her voice was a thin, trembling thread of pain and fear. “Are you alright?”

Howard tried to answer, but the moment he opened his mouth, a wet cough wracked his body, and he spat a mouthful of blood. He shook his head weakly, a gesture meant to reassure her that he was fine—or at least, still alive.

He fought through the pain, struggling to lift a hand to fumble with his seatbelt buckle.

Just twenty minutes ago, everything had been normal. He and his wife had left S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters and were on their way home. No one was supposed to know he was carrying a small, cryo-cooled case containing five vials of the original Super Soldier Serum.

It was a top-secret S.H.I.E.L.D. directive. The serums, a legacy of the “Project Rebirth” from the war, had been sealed in a deep-storage vault for decades. But the facility was scheduled for a security overhaul, requiring the temporary relocation of its most sensitive assets. As one of the project’s original scientists, Howard had been tasked with overseeing the transfer personally.

The operation was meant to be airtight. The route was carefully planned, the transfer scheduled for the dead of night, the vehicle itself armored. They even had a contingency route.

But halfway home, they were attacked.

It was sudden, precise, and brutally effective. A motorcycle had shot out from a side road, its rider a black-clad blur, and slammed directly into the side of their car. The impact sent them spinning out of control. Howard wrestled with the wheel, but the momentum was too great, and they plowed head-on into the tree.

The attacker was a professional. The angle, the timing—it was all perfectly calculated to disable the vehicle without instantly killing its occupants.

And now, he was walking toward them.

The motorcycle lay on its side in the middle of the road, its single headlight cutting a flickering cone of light through the darkness. The attacker’s pace was unhurried, terrifyingly calm, as if he were taking an evening stroll rather than closing in on his prey.

Howard summoned what little strength he had left, his right hand creeping toward the inner pocket of his suit jacket. His fingers closed around the smooth, cool surface of a crystal. Without a second of hesitation, he clenched his fist, putting the last of his energy into crushing it.

There was no sound, no shattering of fragments. It was like a piece of solidified light that simply dissolved under the pressure, breaking apart into countless motes of luminescence that swirled between his fingers for a moment before vanishing into the air.

‘Hopefully, it’s in time…’ he thought, his mind hazy with pain.

Howard let his head fall back against the seat, closed his eyes, and waited. Every second stretched into an eternity. He could hear the crunch of the attacker’s boots on the asphalt, Maria’s suppressed, terrified sobs beside him, and the frantic, desperate thudding of his own heart.

A sliver of moonlight broke through the clouds, illuminating the approaching figure.

He was tall, with a powerful build, his muscles solid and defined even beneath his dark gear. He moved with the fluid, coordinated grace of a cheetah. He walked right up to the driver’s side of the wrecked car and stopped.

Howard forced his eyes open, peering at the man through the fractured glass.

The attacker raised his left hand.

In the dim, flickering light, Howard saw it clearly. It was a thick, powerful arm made entirely of metal, segmented with precise, complex joints. It wasn’t an exoskeleton or a piece of armor. It was a prosthetic, a complete limb of gleaming, silver-gray metal.

The metal hand reached out and gripped the handle of the car door.

Then, with a single, brutal motion, the attacker tore the entire door from its frame.

The shriek of rending metal was an ear-splitting scream that set Howard’s teeth on edge. The reinforced door, designed to withstand gunfire, was ripped away as if it were made of paper. Hinges snapped, bolts sheared off, and the door was tossed aside. It clattered onto the road, rolled a few times, and came to rest in the grass.

The attacker leaned down, his metal arm reaching into the car. Cold, unyielding fingers clamped around the collar of Howard’s shirt.

With a grunt of effort, he was yanked from the driver’s seat. The metal grip was like a vise, constricting around his throat until he could barely breathe. He was lifted effortlessly into the air, his feet dangling uselessly above the ground, like a lamb being led to slaughter.

Caught between the pale moonlight and the dying headlights of his car, Howard finally saw his attacker’s face.