Abomination threw his head back and charged straight through Mr. Blue's house, smashing it apart. The man himself was sent crashing to the ground, his head split open and bleeding.
"ROOOAR!!!"
Abomination lifted his head and bellowed. He could feel the difference immediately. Compared to what he had been before, this was night and day.
"Ha ha ha ha! This is it! This is the feeling! Where's Hulk?! Get out here and die!"
The soldiers outside noticed the situation turning bad at once and sent word to General Ross.
"Sir! Blonsky is out of control! He's turned into a monster even bigger than the target!" came the desperate voice over the radio.
Ross stared at the surveillance feed showing Abomination standing in the street, ripping part of a roof off like it was cardboard, and his face went pale.
It was over...
The military had screwed up again...
He had wanted to restore their reputation, and now... now it was wrecked for good.
But for the sake of the civilians, Ross still ordered his men to hold Abomination in place and keep him from leaving.
"The second he moves, open fire!"
Abomination, meanwhile, was completely lucid.
He only wanted Hulk.
Everyone else meant nothing to him.
Bruce Banner happened to be in Harlem too. In fact, not far away at all.
He heard Abomination's roar clearly. It was a call for the Hulk inside him. And from the sound of things, Mr. Blue had already been hurt. Whatever cure there had been was probably gone now.
Looking at Abomination standing in the street, Banner made up his mind.
Just then, a tall young man stepped in front of him, holding a slip of paper and looking around as if he were searching for an address.
"Hey, do you know where this store is?" Clark asked Banner.
"Uh... it's my first day around here too," Banner said, staring at how calm Clark looked while civilians were running for their lives. "But... are you insane? Don't you see what's happening?"
Abomination was right there in the street, squaring off against the military.
Banner forced himself to breathe slowly, trying to keep his heartbeat down. The last thing he wanted was the Hulk surfacing and accidentally pounding this poor kid into the pavement.
He quickly pointed toward an alley on the right. "That place you want is probably somewhere over there. Trust me, you need to leave. Right now. Go as far as you can. This place is about to turn into hell."
Then he could no longer fight the thing inside him and ran against the flow of the crowd, straight toward Abomination.
"As far as I can?" Clark stood there and sighed helplessly. "Come on. The store is literally right there. And you two fighting in the middle of a city is just not okay."
The situation changed fast.
Hulk and Abomination crashed into each other within moments, and Abomination grabbed a chunk of debris and hurled it into the rotor of an armed helicopter, sending it spiraling down from the sky.
"Hulk! Smash!"
"Bruce Banner! Die!"
Their fists slammed into each other's chests. The impact actually hurt both of them, forcing them back and sending a shockwave through the street that shattered every window nearby.
"New York glass really does sell well... maybe skipping college and opening a glass business wouldn't be such a bad career move."
Clark had already switched into his suit and shot up into the air, catching the falling helicopter with one hand.
Abomination only skidded back a few yards. Hulk stumbled back a few steps too. Then both of them grinned like maniacs.
"Ha ha ha ha! That's it! That's the power! But you're still not enough, big guy!"
Abomination grabbed Hulk by the wrist and, using his larger frame and the combat training Blonsky had learned as a soldier, threw him with a clean shoulder toss.
Meanwhile, Clark was hauling slower civilians out of the area and moving them to safety.
The street caved in. Water mains ruptured. Jets of water burst up into the air.
Now Hulk was truly furious. Roaring, he clawed himself out of the crater and ripped a traffic light out of the ground, swinging it like a baseball bat at Abomination's head.
And just like that, the two gamma monsters tore into each other in the middle of the street with absolutely no restraint.
Cars were tossed around like toys. Tanks too. It was as if everything in sight existed solely to be thrown.
Ross, after being saved by Clark, was furious, but there was nothing he could do. None of their weapons made a dent in either monster. Every shot was like scratching an itch.
Every car and tank Hulk and Abomination hurled away got caught by Clark and set down safely somewhere else.
Finally, the two monsters in the middle of their slugfest both noticed him.
"?" Hulk's little brain practically showed a question mark over his head. What was this thing? Since when did flying humans catch cars out of midair?
"Sorry, guys," Clark said, "bad time for introductions, I know, but wrecking up New York makes my friend's dad's life way harder... and the store I need is right over there. So maybe don't do this here."
Abomination stopped too.
He thought he remembered this guy...
Ross looked at Clark like salvation had descended from heaven. "It's him! He's actually here!"
"What are you supposed to be?" Abomination snarled, muscles bulging and brain fully drowned in battle-lust. "You think you can interfere in my fight?!"
Clark flew between the two of them and caught both their fists.
"This is a residential area," he said flatly. "If you want to fight, go do it somewhere else."
Then, as both muscle-brained monsters lunged again, he simply threw them apart.
After that, the whole scene got very weird.
Clark lifted one in each hand.
A human-looking young man, maybe six-foot-three, floated in midair with Abomination, a three-meter-tall multi-ton gamma monster, hanging by the neck in his left hand, and Hulk, another several-ton monster, held by the throat in his right.
The two creatures who had just been tearing through the city like forces of nature now dangled in Clark's grip like a pair of angry dogs, thrashing and roaring and getting nowhere.
"How... how is this possible... my strength..." Abomination's eyes widened in terror. Then it came back to him.
The S.
Clark looked into the distance. "I'm taking you two somewhere better for wrestling."
And in front of General Ross and every soldier present, all of whom looked like they'd just seen a ghost, Clark Parker took off.
Left hand: Abomination.
Right hand: Hulk.
Speed: over Mach 20.
He tore through the clouds above New York and vanished from sight almost instantly.
"Sir... they're gone..." one of the soldiers said, sounding like he no longer trusted anything he had ever learned in life.
This did not fit his values, his schooling, or his understanding of science.
"Jesus... physics really is dead..." Ross muttered, staring with his mouth hanging open. Even after everything he had seen before, this hit differently.
The Hulk he had chased for so long, the monster who had ripped through military forces again and again, had looked like a misbehaving dog in the S-Man's hands.
And yet instead of fear, the obsession in Ross only burned hotter.
The U.S. government needed this.
Needed a power capable of crushing monsters like these.