Boom!
Blinding lightning shattered the night over Hell's Kitchen.
The bolt was so bright that Jane instinctively closed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was no charred corpse before her, no alien soldier.
Only Thor.
His blood-soaked plaid shirt was gone.
Silver scale armor hugged his sharply defined muscles, and a scarlet cape snapped in the downpour.
He held the ancient, short-handled war hammer down at his side, blue arcs of electricity racing wildly across its head.
The Chitauri soldier before him had a gaping, charred hole smashed clean through its chest and was sliding to the ground like a heap of mud.
"Thor..." Jane covered her mouth.
Thor turned and glanced at her. His usual arrogance was gone. His eyes now carried the true weight of Asgard's crown prince.
"Wait for me."
Without another unnecessary word, he bent his knees.
Bang!
His feet blasted a crater three meters wide straight into the asphalt, sending filthy sewer water and rubble exploding skyward.
Thor became a thick bolt of lightning and shot upward, heading straight for Stark Tower in central Manhattan.
At the same time, high above Manhattan.
"Sir, the left thruster has completely overloaded. Energy reserves are at seven percent."
Inside Tony's faceplate, the alarms had become one continuous, piercing wail.
He gritted his teeth and shoved the thrust control all the way forward. Trailing black smoke, the Mark Armor struggled through the dense rain of laser fire.
The clouds ahead suddenly burst apart.
A half-mechanical Leviathan more than a hundred meters long bore down on him like a moving mountain of steel.
It opened its abyssal maw, lined with razor-sharp teeth. The foul wind made the armor's outer shell creak.
There was no dodging it.
"JARVIS, send that last seven percent into the chest-"
Before Tony