Divergence Point: Pennsylvania Skies, 10,000 feet
The wind howled like a dying god.
Luca's fingers closed around the thumb-sized blue cube—Stark's private jet, Tony, Happy, Green Bull, everyone inside—safe. For one heartbeat, victory tasted sweet.
Then the second F-35's cannon barked.
A 25mm round punched through the thin [Tuxedo] fabric at his shoulder, spinning him like a leaf. The cube slipped.
"No—!"
He lunged. Fingers grazed cool plastic. Missed.
The cube fell.
Below, the wasteland rushed up. Luca activated every anti-gravity setting the [Tuxedo] still had, but the wound was bleeding too fast, vision tunneling. He saw the white smoke bloom far below—POOF—Tony's jet materializing at terminal velocity.
Metal screamed. Glass exploded. A fireball the size of a city block lit the night.
Luca hit the ground thirty seconds later. The impact didn't matter; he was already gone.
---
Avengers Tower – 47 minutes later
Tony Stark stood on the roof in the Mark XLII, helmet retracted, staring at the orange glow on the horizon where Pennsylvania used to be.
JARVIS spoke softly. "Sir… the satellite confirms. No life signs. The boy's vitals flatlined at 22:41."
Tony didn't answer. He just kept staring.
Steve landed beside him, shield dented, uniform scorched from the New York prison break. "Tony… I'm sorry."
"Sorry?" Tony's laugh was jagged glass. "He jumped out of my plane to save me, Rogers. He turned the whole damn thing into a toy cube and caught it like it was nothing. And I let him."
He turned. The arc reactor in his chest flickered once—twice—like it wanted to go out too.
"He was seventeen."
---
New York – The Next Dawn
Without Luca's last-second satellite hack, Project Insight's threat algorithm stayed online.
The Helicarriers finished their barrage.
Washington D.C. burned for six hours. The death toll hit six figures before the sun came up.
In New York the otherworld prisoners—freed by Hydra—rampaged unchecked. Sandman buried half of Queens. Rhino leveled three blocks of Hell's Kitchen. A photographic-negative man from some dead timeline walked through Avengers Tower and simply erased half the building from existence.
Harry Osborn—Venom screaming in his head—fought until the symbiote was shredded by Centipede soldiers. He died whispering, "Senior… I wanted to be like you…"
Gwen tried to hold the line at the Brooklyn Bridge. She lasted eleven minutes.
Banner… well. Hulk never stopped roaring.
---
Six Months Later
Tony Stark sat alone in the ruins of Stark Tower (the second one). The Mark LXXXV was half-built around him, but he hadn't touched the armor in weeks.
On the workbench lay a single object: a perfectly smooth blue cube the size of a baseball.
He had spent every resource, every favor, every sleepless night scavenging the crater in Pennsylvania until he found it.
Inside that cube: the jet. The bodies. The last place Luca Aurantius had ever been alive.
Tony rested his forehead against the cool surface.
"You stupid, brilliant kid," he whispered. "You were supposed to outlive all of us."
He never opened the cube. Some things hurt less when they stayed Schrödinger's.
---
Epilogue – A quiet rooftop somewhere in what used to be Sokovia
A single Haro—red and white, dented, one arm missing—hovered above a small unmarked grave.
Fifth Haro had carried Luca's body here itself. No one else knew.
It played the same three-second voice clip on loop, night after night.
"Good job, kid~"
The little robot's single eye dimmed, flickering like it was crying.
Somewhere far away, in a universe that no longer had its counterfeit inventor, the story ended the way all stories end when the main character dies too early.
Badly.
New York – 72 hours after Pennsylvania
The otherworld invaders weren't just prisoners anymore.
They were an invasion.
With Project Insight's full barrage uninterrupted, the Helicarriers had turned Washington into a smoking crater. No government. No reinforcements. Only Hydra's ground forces and the freed "aliens" — beings ripped from a hundred broken realities — spilling out of the ruined SHIELD base like a plague.
And the Avengers were the only ones left standing in their way.
---
Bruce Banner
Hulk had been fighting for thirty-six straight hours.
He tore through Sandman again and again, but every time the living desert reformed, it brought friends: a slime-thing that dissolved vibranium, a photographic-negative man who erased matter with a touch, and a swarm of mirror-skinned duplicates that copied Hulk's strength.
Hulk roared, smashed, regenerated.
Until the negative man walked straight into his chest.
Hulk looked down.
His own heart… simply wasn't there anymore.
The green giant staggered two steps, eyes wide with something almost like confusion, then toppled. The roar that followed shook the ruins of Times Square… and then silence.
Banner never woke up again.
---
Natasha Romanoff
She made it to the Brooklyn Bridge with a stolen Quinjet full of civilians.
Black Widow against an army of alternate-universe killers.
She danced through them like she always did — Widow's Bites, precise shots, misdirection.
Until the woman in the red cloak (Crimson Cowl, Justin Hammer's twisted counterpart from another world) teleported behind her.
The living cloak wrapped around Natasha's throat.
No trick this time. No escape.
She looked across the bridge, saw the civilians she'd been protecting screaming as Centipede soldiers advanced, and smiled bitterly.
"Guess the student finally surpasses the teacher…"
One clean snap.
The Red Widow fell into the East River. The cloak drank her last heartbeat and kept hunting.
---
Clint Barton
Hawkeye had been in the air when it started.
He never made it to New York.
His Quinjet was torn apart mid-flight by a flock of winged, acid-spitting creatures from a dead timeline. The last transmission SHIELD (what was left of it) received was Clint's calm voice:
"Tell Stark the kid was right. We should've used the water tanks…"
Static.
---
Steve Rogers
Captain America reached the Triskelion ruins at dawn on the fourth day.
Shield dented, uniform in tatters, blood in his eyes.
Hive stood on the deck of the last remaining Helicarrier, surrounded by Inhuman thralls and otherworld horrors.
Steve charged.
He lasted eight minutes.
Every punch he landed, Hive simply absorbed it, smiling with that octopus mouth.
Every time Steve fell, the alien god grew stronger — feeding on the despair of a world losing its last symbol.
Finally, Hive's tentacles pierced Steve's chest, lifting him high.
"Captain America," Hive whispered. "Your shield belongs to Hydra now."
Steve looked at the burning city one last time.
"…Avengers… assemble…"
He never finished the sentence.
The tentacles tightened. The star-spangled shield clattered to the deck, cracked in half.
---
Harry Osborn & Gwen Stacy
They fought together until the end.
Venom Harry went full monster mode, screaming about "protecting Senior's city."
Gwen webbed, flipped, cracked jokes through tears.
They took down Rhino. Took down the toad-thing. Took down thirty others.
Then the swarm came.
Venom was shredded apart molecule by molecule by the negative man.
Harry's last words, whispered through black tar: "Tell Luca… I became a real hero…"
Gwen lasted thirty seconds longer.
She died saving a little girl from a collapsing building — web-line snapping, body crushed under concrete.
Spider-Gwen's mask stayed on. No one ever saw her cry.
---
Tony Stark
He arrived last.
Mark XLII scorched black, arc reactor flickering like a dying star.
He found the broken shield. The empty Widow's Bites. The cracked spider mask.
He found the blue cube still in his gauntlet — the last thing Luca ever touched.
Tony looked up at the sky where three Helicarriers still hovered, now painted with Hydra's octopus.
Hive floated down to meet him.
"Iron Man," the god-thing greeted. "You are the last."
Tony didn't quip.
He just raised both repulsors, reactor overclocked to critical.
"For the kid."
The blast lit up the ruined skyline like a second sun.
It wasn't enough.
Hive walked out of the explosion untouched.
Tony's armor fell apart around him in pieces.
He collapsed beside Steve's broken shield, blood bubbling from his mouth.
With his last breath he whispered to the cube in his palm:
"…Sorry, Luca. Couldn't keep the promise…"
The arc reactor dimmed… then went dark.
---
Epilogue – One Week Later
Fifth Haro hovered alone above the mass grave in the Sokovian mountains.
It had carried every body it could find.
Now its single eye was cracked, voice module glitching.
It played the same clip on endless loop:
"Good job, kid~"
"Good job, kid~"
"Good job, kid~"
Below, a single line had been carved into the stone by the little robot's remaining arm:
Here lie the Avengers.
They died protecting a world that never got to thank their youngest hero.
In this timeline, Earth fell within the month.
Hydra ruled the ashes.
The counterfeit inventor never got to grow up.
And somewhere in the multiverse, a little red-and-white robot kept waiting for a boy who would never come home.
Omake End.
(…but in the main timeline, Luca lived, Tony got his hug, the Haros saved the day, and the kid kept breaking reality just to make sure no one had to die alone. Because some protagonists refuse to let the story end in darkness.)