The Quinjet was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s primary means of transport. Its extensive modular design allowed its functions to range from transportation to fire support, integrating light personnel and cargo transport, heavy firepower, supersonic flight, vertical takeoff and landing, and even extraterrestrial flight. As S.H.I.E.L.D.'s physicist and mechanic, Leopold Fitz and Mike knew very well how sturdy a Quinjet's armor plating was. Aside from the rear turbine engine and jet engines, an up-armored Quinjet could withstand a considerable amount of firepower. Yet this reliable transport was now floating up unsteadily, surrounded by a layer of scarlet, amorphous glimmer like a transparent dark-red mist.
Before Fitz and Mike could figure out what was happening, the Quinjets armor plates let out a dreadful groan beneath immense force. The sturdy alloy began to cave in. Its folded wings bent at destructive angles. The rear jet engines, along with their fuel lines, were brutally squeezed out. The armored glass of the cockpit burst into white flakes, as though the entire Quinjet were an empty can being crushed flat. Electrical sparks and burning fuel erupted one after another, but every accident was completely contained by that scarlet energy. Fitz and Mike, standing near the Quinjet, felt nothing at all.
Yet there was more than one change. Besides deforming under external force, the Quinjet was undergoing another terrifying transformation from within, one even more incomprehensible. The flame-wreathed engines and even the entire aircraft were not simply compressed into thin sheets of metal. Instead, they transformed within the flames—transformation, not deformation. Baptized by fire, the nose extending from the fuselage began to lengthen and split apart, forming a lizard-like head and neck. Orange-red flames burst from that evil head as it tried to throw its head back and roar, only to be swiftly clenched back down by the scarlet energy.