Tony Stark might have looked imposing as he piloted the Celestial Armor, but his face was grim, as rigid as steel pushed to its limit.
Pain and helplessness churned beneath his steady expression. Only those who knew him best could have caught the slight downturn of his brow.
He stared at his old friend below, who had lost control and been utterly changed by the Tesseract's energy. His armor-enhanced senses swept across every corner of the Helicarrier in an instant.
His voice poured from the armor's speakers, steady and firm as a steel stake driven into bedrock:
"Steve, stop."
"I know something happened to you. I know you may even have reasons you can't explain.
I know you may not be able to tell truth from lies or right from wrong, but every life before you is innocent. If you destroy this carrier, you won't be destroying Hydra. You'll be destroying thousands of families and this city's peace."
Steve, still rampaging, raised his head toward the giant figure in the air.
His glowing blue eyes locked on the massive armor above. No trace of their old friendship remained in his gaze, only obsession honed to a cold, murderous edge.
His mouth twitched. Then a hoarse, distorted reply scraped from his throat:
"Another Hydra lapdog. You're all part of the lie. You all have to be destroyed."
The moment he finished speaking, Steve stopped holding back.
The Tesseract energy remaining inside him compressed to its limit. A translucent blue beam of Dimensional Energy over three meters wide erupted from his palm and pierced straight into the sky, as though carved from the depths of the cosmos.
The air in its path ionized into glowing plasma, while the airflow was crushed into overlapping white shock rings.
It split the clouds ten thousand