Tony, Thor, Peter, and Harry were locked in a fierce battle in the sky.
Their attacks crisscrossed above Manhattan, weaving a dense net of firepower that shot down the Chitauri Flyers pouring out of the Portal one after another.
But the Chitauri Army was still an army. It was not something four people could completely hold back. More and more Flyers poured from that enormous deep-blue Portal, like hornets swarming from a disturbed nest. Some inevitably slipped through their defenses.
Those Chitauri Soldiers who got through flew into the streets around Stark Tower. Skimming low over the roads, they raised their energy rifles and fired downward, setting off violent explosions in the streets and inside buildings.
The Manhattan residents who had been watching, or even treating it as a spectacle, finally realized that this was neither a drill nor a performance.
The Flyers descending from the sky were real. The fireballs exploding in the streets were real. The people struck by energy blasts, collapsing to the ground and never getting back up, were real too.
Screams erupted everywhere as people fled blindly into nearby buildings.
Some fell while running, but no one stopped to help them. Everyone ran for their lives, wanting only to get as far away as possible from those monsters flying down from the sky.
A middle-aged man in a gray suit hid inside a convenience store. Leaning against a shelf, he gasped for breath, his glasses crooked on his face and his tie flung over one shoulder. He still clutched a briefcase in one hand, his knuckles white from the strain.
The convenience store owner crouched behind the register, holding her head in both hands as her body trembled nonstop. She muttered something under her breath, as though praying—or cursing.
Just as the Chitauri Soldiers rampaged