Immediately after, the golden light that filled the sky vanished, snuffed out like a candle flame.
"AAAAHHH!!!"
A scream of absolute misery tore through the clouds.
Under the terrified gaze of everyone watching, an arm—still encased in a golden energy gauntlet—fell from the sky, trailing a spray of blood.
It was Captain Marvel's right hand!
Carol clutched the wound where her arm had been severed. The cut was smooth as a mirror. Her face was twisted in disbelief and horror.
"My hand... MY HAND!!"
Blood rained down, staining the ruins below crimson.
"See?"
Frieza flicked the few drops of blood off his hand, looking utterly helpless.
"I told you to think it over before making a move, but you just wouldn't listen."
"This is the price of impulsiveness, Ms. Danvers."
"No... this isn't possible!!"
Carol fought through the agonizing pain. The fury in her eyes didn't extinguish; instead, it burned even more madly.
She was Captain Marvel! She was the strongest warrior in the universe! How could she lose to some villain on Earth?!
"I'll kill you! I'LL KILL YOU!!"
Having completely lost her mind, Carol ignored the injury of her severed arm and roared, charging forward again.
She gathered the last of her photon energy into her remaining left hand, desperate for a final, suicidal strike.
Watching the woman rushing at him like a rabid dog, the playfulness in Frieza's eyes vanished.
It was replaced by the cold indifference one uses when looking at trash.
He gently shook his head.
"I said it before."
"If you don't know how to show respect to a Galactic Emperor..."
"Then your fate will be the same as that island nation."
"And that is—destruction."
As his voice fell, Frieza didn't strike out physically.
Instead, he slowly raised his left hand.
Instantly, a burst of purple Ki exploded outward.
HUM—!
A vast, boundless spatial fluctuation instantly enveloped all of New York, and even the entire Western Hemisphere!
"Since you claim you can push planets..."
Frieza glanced up at the sky. Although it was daytime, a massive satellite hung hidden there.
"Then let's have you get up close and personal with it!"
"Celestial Transposition!"
RUMBLE, RUMBLE—!!!
At that moment, the entire atmosphere of Earth screamed.
The Avengers on the ground watched in horror as the bright sky suddenly darkened.
A massive, gray planetary shadow was expanding at a speed that defied the laws of physics!
No! It wasn't expanding!
The distance was shrinking!
Using his immense power, Frieza had directly folded the spatial distance between the Earth and the Moon!
In the blink of an eye, the crater-filled Moon looked as if it had been forcibly dragged right outside Earth's atmosphere!
The immense pressure made everyone feel like they were suffocating.
If Frieza hadn't been controlling the gravity, this action alone would have triggered massive tsunamis across the globe!
"Is that... the Moon?!"
Tony Stark collapsed onto his backside, completely dumbfounded.
Plucking stars with bare hands?
Is this something a carbon-based lifeform can even do?!
"Ohohoho..."
Frieza laughed arrogantly as he looked at the crowd, who were petrified by the spectacular sight.
"Just standard procedure, hold your applause."
He waved his hand casually.
An irresistible force generated by his Ki instantly wrapped around the one-armed Carol.
"Since you love flying so much, go cool off on the moon!"
PEW!
Carol was launched like a cannonball, thrown directly into the massive folded space zone.
The next second, visible even through the atmosphere, Carol's figure slammed heavily onto the lunar surface, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"And now..."
Frieza slowly raised his right index finger.
That despair-inducing dark purple Destruction Ball formed once again.
This time, it was twice the size of the one that had destroyed the island nation!
"Goodbye, Captain Marvel."
"And you too, Moon. Without you, I won't have any more damn monkeys turning into Giant Apes."
Frieza flicked his finger.
The massive black sphere of destruction, carrying the grim reaper's grin, shot into the sky.
It vanished into the folded space zone, heading straight for the Moon!
A few seconds later, anyone in the world who looked up saw a scene they would never forget for the rest of their lives.
The gray-white moon in the sky...
The moment that black sphere sank below its surface...
It exploded from the inside out!
BOOM————!!!
No sound traveled back to Earth.
But the explosion's brilliance, beautiful to the extreme, instantly lit up the entire sky of the Western Hemisphere (blinding everyone even in broad daylight).
The Moon...
Shattered!
It turned into countless fragments, drifting in the cosmos!
Along with Captain Marvel, the so-called "Hope of the Village," it was all reduced to cosmic dust.
The Avengers stared blankly at the sky, their eyes hollow.
It was over.
It was all over.
A monster that could crush a moon with a wave of his hand...
How could they possibly win?
[Ding! Detected global collapse of belief! Fear Points +500 Billion!]
[Ding! Fear Points breaking the limit...]
Listening to the System's frantic notifications, Frieza spread his arms, bathing in the afterglow of the lunar explosion, smiling with incomparable elegance.
"This... is the price of disrespecting the Emperor."
At this moment, the sky was no longer the familiar sky.
The gray-white satellite that used to hang there, the moon that had witnessed countless human nights and carried the romantic fantasies of countless poets...
Was now a grand, tragic meteor shower.
Countless burning meteorite fragments dragged long tails of fire, scattering into space.
Though sound could not travel through the vacuum to Earth, that blinding fire was deafening than any thunderclap.
It took the woman who glowed with golden light, the one hailed as their greatest hope, with it.
She had become just another speck of dust in the universe.
Frieza hovered ten thousand meters in the air, arms wide, as if embracing this feast of destruction.
He took a deep breath, as if he could smell the nonexistent scent of burning in space.
"What a beautiful view..."
---
On the ground.
Inside the Anti-Frieza Armor, Tony Stark's world was collapsing.
BEEP— BEEP— BEEP—
Jarvis's shrill alarms were still blaring, but to Tony, they sounded more like a death knell tolling for a genius who thought too highly of himself.
"Sir, detecting residual high-energy signatures... Lunar gravitational field gone... Tidal forces will undergo drastic changes... Earth's rotational axis may shift..."
Jarvis calmly reported a series of data points, each enough to destroy human civilization.
But Tony wasn't listening anymore.
He slumped in the cockpit, his faceplate open. His bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the empty spot in the sky.
Just a minute ago, he had naively thought that by gathering all of Earth's superheroes, plus Wakanda's Vibranium technology, they might stand a chance.
When Captain Marvel appeared, he actually thought the tables had turned.
But now?
"Ha... haha..."
Tony suddenly let out a dry laugh, his voice raspy and filled with despair.
"What are we doing?"
"What the hell are we doing?!"
Tony slammed his fist onto the console.
"Is this a problem technology can solve? Is this a gap tactics can bridge?!"
"That was the moon! That was the goddamn moon!!"
He was an engineer. He was a scientist.
He believed in the principle: "Give me a lever, and I can move the Earth."
But that monster hovering in the sky didn't need a lever. He had just reached out and crushed the Earth's partner!
This absolute, brute, unreasonable power directly shattered all of Tony Stark's pride and rationality.
Resist?
How do you resist?
Even if he built ten thousand Anti-Frieza suits, in front of a monster who could destroy a planet with his bare hands, they would be nothing more than a pile of scrap metal!
"We lost... We lost completely..."
Tony lowered his head weakly, looking at the ruins beneath his feet, his eyes as empty as a dried-up well.