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"Luke, something's happening outside."
Evening at the villa. Luke was helping Tifa, Skadi, and Riven prepare dinner—which mostly meant stealing bites of food and making excuses to brush against them while they cooked.
Life was good.
Then sirens erupted in the distance. Gunfire. What sounded like explosions.
"Probably another bank robbery," Luke said dismissively, not looking up from the grill. "This is Los Angeles. You could set your watch by the crime rate."
He'd learned not to get excited about every disturbance. Early on, he'd rushed toward every commotion hoping for a major encounter. Now he knew better.
Random criminals weren't worth his time. If he killed some lowlife and accidentally spawned a hostile creature, the collateral damage would far outweigh any benefits. Better to target organized threats—groups he could eliminate systematically, in controlled environments.
"The sounds are getting closer," Skadi observed, tilting her head to listen.
"What—"
The ceiling exploded.
They weren't at Umbrella's underground headquarters. This was a rooftop barbecue at one of Luke's newly acquired properties—former vampire real estate, part of the Gitano inheritance.
The evening had been perfect. Open sky, premium ingredients, no mosquitoes because supernatural beings naturally repelled vermin. They'd been grilling king crab, wagyu beef, things that cost more than most people's monthly salary.
When you could earn back the price in seconds, why not enjoy the best?
Now there was a hole in the roof. And standing in the wreckage was a very large, very green problem.
"Hulk?"
The creature was unmistakable—three meters of gamma-irradiated muscle, rage incarnate, currently looking around with confusion as if unsure how he'd ended up in someone's dining room.
Luke's mind raced. Wait. I already dealt with Blonsky. The Abomination is a gauntlet on my arm. Why is Banner still being chased?
The answer to that question involved Dr. Samuel Sterns.
After creating the Abomination, Luke hadn't let Sterns go. The scientist knew too much, had too much potential to be useful.
So Luke had... upgraded him.
One face-first immersion in concentrated Hulk cells later, Sterns had transformed into something new. His skull had expanded grotesquely, swelling to accommodate a brain that now operated at superhuman levels.
The Leader.
Intuition that bordered on precognition. Perfect memory—total recall of every moment since his transformation. Analytical capabilities that made ordinary geniuses look like children. The potential to master every field of human knowledge, to comprehend concepts beyond normal understanding.
His intelligence had increased roughly a thousandfold.
Sterns had replaced Ivan Vanko as Umbrella's head of research. The Russian was brilliant, but the Leader was something else entirely—a mind without apparent limits, currently devouring every scientific discipline Luke fed him.
Which meant Banner couldn't have received the cure he'd sought in the original timeline. No Sterns to administer it. No resolution to his condition.
So why was he here, crashing through Luke's roof while clearly fleeing from—
BOOM.
A second figure landed in the yard. The impact cratered the ground, sending dirt and debris spraying in all directions.
"Red Hulk?"
Luke stared at the newcomer. Crimson skin instead of green. Heat radiating so intensely the air itself distorted. Short black hair. A physique that matched Banner's transformed state muscle for muscle.
General Thaddeus Ross.
Somehow transformed into his own version of the monster he'd spent years hunting.
"HULK!" Banner's alter ego roared, ripping a wall from Luke's villa and hurling it at his crimson counterpart.
Ross—Red Hulk—swatted the projectile aside contemptuously.
"That the best you've got?"
A kick connected with Green Hulk's torso. The impact was catastrophic—Banner's monster form was launched skyward like a ragdoll, limbs flailing uselessly as he tried to grab something, anything, to arrest his flight.
He crashed down a hundred meters away, carving a trench through the landscape.
"Timeline correction," Luke muttered, accepting a piece of grilled king crab from Tifa. She'd already shelled it for him. "I eliminated Abomination early, so the universe gave me Red Hulk instead."
He wasn't complaining. Ross would make an excellent Devil Arm.
The two Hulks charged each other again, their collision generating a shockwave that shattered windows for blocks around. Luke's group continued eating, treating the battle like entertainment.
"The green one can't win," Tifa observed after watching several exchanges. "Their strength is similar, but the red one has actual combat training. Technique matters."
"The green one fights like he's never been in a real battle," Riven agreed. "He'd lose to Mundo."
Dr. Mundo from League of Legends. A purple madman who threw cleavers. The fact that Hulk compared unfavorably spoke volumes about his martial incompetence.
"Wait," Skadi said. "The green one is getting stronger. His size is changing."
She was right. With each exchange, with each hit taken and given, Banner's rage was building. And rage was the Hulk's fuel source.
Military assets finally arrived—Black Hawk helicopters, tanks, armored vehicles, infantry who looked terrified but professional. Two monsters brawling through Los Angeles was an international embarrassment. Someone had to at least try to respond.
Luke pieced together what must have happened.
He'd confiscated all of Sterns' Hulk blood samples. Every milliliter. Ross couldn't have used those to transform.
But Banner himself was a walking source of gamma-irradiated biological material. If Ross had been exposed during a confrontation—blood spray, perhaps, while trying to capture the scientist—the mutation could have triggered spontaneously.
It was absurd. Normally, contact with Banner's bodily fluids would cause cellular necrosis, genetic collapse, immune system failure, and agonizing death. The gamma radiation concentration was lethal to baseline humans.
But comic book logic didn't care about "normally."
Ross had gotten lucky. Or unlucky, depending on perspective.
Either way, Luke saw opportunity.
When this fight ended, he'd claim the loser's body for another Devil Arm. And the winner? Well, accidents happened during chaotic battles. A stray attack could kill anyone, even a general.
Today's harvest is going to be excellent, Luke thought, biting into perfectly grilled wagyu.
The show continued.