Luca upstairs naturally hadn't heard the conversation of the people who had left, but at that moment, his thoughts weren't on them anyway.
Even though, in Luca's eyes, they were all glowing with the white light of "Core Components."
Captain America's shield, Iron Man's nanotech armor core and glasses, Ant-Man's suit, even Hulk's shorts, and so on.
Every one of these things seemed to be telling Luca that items belonging to characters connected to the plot were more likely to become "Core Components."
But he wasn't in the mood to care about any of that right now. His face had turned ashen.
It was because even he hadn't expected this place to be the unfortunate timeline that Tony Stark and the others had traveled to in Avengers: Endgame.
Why call this the "unfortunate timeline"?
To explain that, Luca had to go back to the Marvel series Loki, which he'd watched not long before crossing over.
This Marvel Cinematic Universe spin-off began because, in Avengers: Endgame, Iron Man and the others wanted to borrow the Infinity Stones from this point in time to save their own world.
But something went wrong along the way. The Tesseract, or rather, the Space Stone, fell into Loki's hands at this point in time.
Loki escaped by teleporting away with the Tesseract, causing history to deviate. He was then captured by an organization called the TVA (Time Variance Authority).
The purpose of this organization, the TVA, was to protect the so-called "Sacred Timeline" and ensure that everything unfolded according to its predetermined course.
However, Loki's departure and the events that followed at the TVA weren't important to Luca.
What mattered was a scene in the series that had left a deep impression on him.
At the beginning, after Loki was taken away by the TVA, its agents simply dropped a "Reset Charge" into this timeline, completely destroying the timeline that had "deviated."
That's right—the entire timeline was erased!
When he'd watched the series, Luca had even complained about this to his friends.
When Bruce Banner asked the Ancient One for the Time Stone, he'd solemnly promised that they would return it and wouldn't affect the course of that world. But then Loki took the Space Stone, and Iron Man and Captain America went to 1970 to get another Tesseract. In the end, this timeline was the one that got completely screwed.
He wondered who Captain America had returned the other two Stones to when he went back in the end.
Though Marvel's "parallel universes," "timelines," and "time branches" had always been a confusing, chaotic mess, Luca and his friends had discussed it for ages without reaching any conclusions.
But could Luca really afford to gamble on this?
Gamble that he was in the timeline the Avengers had traveled to in Endgame, but that Loki hadn't taken the Tesseract?
Or gamble that his very existence belonged to a special parallel universe that wouldn't be affected by the TVA, meaning the entire timeline wouldn't be pruned?
The more Luca thought about it, the worse his expression became.
"If the timeline's affected, does my existence count as affecting it? I haven't been taken away yet. Does that mean this world doesn't have a Time Variance Authority?"
"No! I have to go check! No— I have to stop Loki!"
Luca clearly remembered that after picking up the Tesseract, Loki had teleported straight to Mongolia, where the TVA agents captured him. Before leaving, they had dropped the Reset Charge.
If that was really what happened, then by the time it came to it, Luca wouldn't even be able to stop anything or confirm the truth. He could only wait in fear for the final verdict.
Rather than gamble on that possibility, he might as well stop Loki at the source.
If he hadn't known there was no way he could beat the Endgame team, Luca might even have considered killing all of them right there to keep them from affecting the plot.
Whether their timeline survived or not had nothing to do with him. Making sure he stayed alive was what really mattered!
With that in mind, Luca immediately gave up on staying home and waiting for the Battle of New York to end. He quickly checked the equipment on his person.
After thinking it over, he carried his mother, Gina, into the storage room and settled her there. Then he left a note and hurried out.
He headed toward Stark Tower.
In fact, the streets outside seemed nowhere near as dangerous as Luca had imagined.
By then, large numbers of National Guard troops had taken to the streets. Armored pickup trucks and soldiers carrying heavy weapons drew a great deal of the Chitauri's fire.
The battle was still difficult, but it gave New York's police officers and firefighters room to evacuate civilians.
If the Chitauri hadn't kept pouring out of the breach in the sky, New York's existing forces might actually have been able to hold out.
Of course, that might also have been because the heavily armed Chitauri Chariots and Leviathan warships were focusing most of their attacks on the Avengers.
In short, Luca was just an ordinary civilian, so inconspicuous on the street that the police nearly swept him up with the evacuees several times and took him to a nearby subway station.
But clearly, his good luck couldn't last forever.
The closer Luca got to Stark Tower, the more densely packed the Chitauri soldiers became.
If not for the fear that he might inexplicably perish along with the entire timeline, Luca might already have turned back.
"Whoosh—"
A rectangular grenade shaped like a walkie-talkie streaked through the sky and clattered down in front of an armored SUV.
A moment later, BOOM!
A strange blue fireball burst open, blasting the armored vehicle and more than a dozen soldiers nearby into the air.
Hiding behind an overturned bus, Luca couldn't be bothered to spare them another glance.
Instead, he found himself thinking:
That Chitauri grenade just now seemed to have a synthesized white glow on it? Too bad it blew up. I wonder if I imagined it.
Just as Luca was preparing to hide behind the bus a little longer and move forward once the Chitauri had left,
a violent explosion suddenly rang out overhead.
Huge chunks of stone came crashing down from the sky, along with several Chitauri Soldiers who had been desperately climbing toward the rooftop.
Fortunately, Luca's [Power-Enhancing Shoes] had been running at level one the whole time.
The instant he heard the explosion overhead, he drove off with his feet and shot into a nearby shop.
Crash!
The glass shattered.
His prosthetic right arm scraped and struck the floor.
Luca rolled twice before bracing himself against a shelf and steadying his body.
Then came several heavy thuds as objects struck the ground.
All the Chitauri who had fallen from the sky landed on the ground. They were clearly dead.
Luca glanced over and breathed a little easier.
Good thing I dodged fast~
But just then, a growl came from behind him, sounding more frightened than fierce.
"Kid! Get out of here!"
Before you continue