"You!" Thanos wanted to say something else.
Android 18 did not let him finish.
Her right hand, the one that had caught his fist, released his left wrist and curled into a fist.
She threw a right punch into Thanos's abdomen.
Thanos's body folded over like a bent iron bar.
The contents of his stomach, the fluid remnants of what he had eaten,
poured from his mouth, mixed with purple blood.
His eyes bulged, his pupils contracted to their limit, and his body lost all strength from that punch.
Android 18's left hand released his left wrist.
Thanos fell from the air, hit the ground, bounced once, and then lay still.
He was not unconscious. Every strike Android 18 had delivered had been precisely controlled to avoid killing him.
But they were enough to throw his nervous system into temporary paralysis.
His eyes remained open, and his mind was still clear, but his body no longer obeyed him.
His limbs sprawled across the ground as though their bones had been removed, his fingers trembling faintly.
But he could not clench them, lift them, or do anything at all.
Android 18 crouched and looked at him.
"Your Infinity Gauntlet," she said. "I'll take it."
She reached out with her right hand and grabbed the Infinity Gauntlet on Thanos's left hand.
The gauntlet had been forged from Uru Metal and fit tightly against Thanos's skin, almost like a part of his body.
But Android 18 did not care.
Her fingers slipped into the gap between the gauntlet and Thanos's skin, a gap no wider than a strand of hair.
But before Android 18's fingers, any gap was wide enough.
Her fingertips cut through the fused flesh like surgical scalpels, without mercy.
Thanos let out a low roar—not from pain, but fury.
He