The Captain Fought Bathed in Blood! For the Brothers Behind Him, He Fought to the Death Without Retreating!

The terrible news spread swiftly from the European front to every corner of the world.

At first, there were only vaguely worded battle reports, buried among a deluge of military communications.

Cold and brief.

"Encountered unknown enemy unit. Characteristics: no pain response, high regenerative capacity, self-destructive attacks."

"113th Armored Division... completely wiped out."

"The Western Front has collapsed. Requesting support! I repeat, requesting..."

Those words fell far short of conveying the horrors of the battlefield.

Not until the first battlefield footage was rushed to Colonel Phillips's headquarters.

After watching it, the veteran who had fought his way through mountains of corpses and seas of blood felt his blood pressure soar.

His vision went black, and he nearly fell to the floor.

In the footage, the things called "Perfect Beings" were a group of soulless walking corpses.

They had no facial features, only faces as smooth as those of mannequins.

They marched in perfectly synchronized steps, ignoring the hail of bullets as they advanced.

Bullets striking them produced only ripples, and their wounds healed visibly.

When artillery fire tore them apart, something even more terrifying happened.

Their mangled bodies collapsed into blinding points of light, then exploded!

Everything around them, whether soldiers or tanks, was silently torn apart, devoured, and reduced to nothing.

There was not even time to scream.

The battlefield where Soldier Boy fought had become a bloody struggle.

He had become an enraged bull.

Time and again, he charged into the Perfect Beings' ranks, tearing the monsters apart with his shield and fists.

But every one he tore apart subjected him to a spatial explosion at point-blank range.

Even Soldier Boy felt waves of dizziness and nausea.

More importantly, there was no end to them.

He could kill a hundred, a thousand, but they poured out of Hydra's factories like a tide.

The Allied soldiers behind him were silently erased by those suicide attacks whenever they approached the fighting.

Not even a single intact body remained.

Soldier Boy found the situation tricky.

He could hold his own position, but he could not lead the mortals behind him a single step forward.

The war had become his alone.

On the Eastern Front, Human Torch was the only bright spot.

He hovered in the air.

The Perfect Beings could not reach him.

Intense heat was the only means of utterly destroying those damn things.

Battle reports flew to Red Skull's headquarters like snowflakes, every one of them detailing Human Torch's glorious results.

The fiercest fighting was in France.

Captain America and his Howling Commandos had become a thorn in Hydra's side.

Red Skull had issued an uncompromising order to crush this "symbol" completely, whatever the cost.

"Boom!"

Steve braced his shield firmly in front of him, but the shock wave from a violent explosion sent him flying.

He slammed into a ruined wall, tasted sweetness in his throat, and spat out a mouthful of blood.

"Captain!"

Dugan and several other squad members rushed over and helped him up.

"I'm fine."

Steve wiped away the blood, his gaze fixed on what lay ahead.

They were surrounded.

Perfect Beings poured in from every direction, trapping their squad in an abandoned village.

"Fuck!"

Bucky Barnes loaded a fresh magazine and fired wildly at a Perfect Being charging toward them.

The Perfect Being ignored Bucky. It had only one target-Captain America.

Steve knew that, of course.

The monsters charged him without fear of death, as though they had been programmed to do so.

"Cover me!"

Steve spat, then went to meet them head-on.

He could not retreat. His brothers were right behind him!

The Vibranium Shield collided with a Perfect Being's fist, producing a tremendous muffled boom.

Steve used his super-soldier strength to knock it back, but two more soon lunged at him from the side.

He turned and swung his shield, smashing one Perfect Being's head to pieces.

A point of light appeared.

Steve's pupils contracted, and he quickly raised his shield in front of him.

The silent energy blast made the Captain feel as though his internal organs were about to be squeezed out of his body. Pain blackened his vision.

"Steve!"

Bucky's startled cry was the last sound he heard before losing consciousness.

The next day, Stars and Stripes devoted its entire front page to a blurry photograph.

In the photograph was the Vibranium Shield, embedded deep in the earth.

The headline consisted of only two words.

"Fallen."

The public, who only moments ago had been caught up in the fervor of "the guardian angel's arrival" and "the three gods going to war," felt as though a bucket of ice water had been poured over them from head to toe.

Was their hero, Captain America, the man who represented hope and justice, dead?

People rushed into the streets and gathered aimlessly, their faces filled with fear and grief.

Countless people knelt in churches, praying that this was only a nightmare.

That symbol who would never fall, that frail young man from Brooklyn, that hero who had stormed an enemy camp alone to rescue his comrades... was he really gone just like that?

Hydra's Perfect Beings had shown the whole world what despair meant.

If even Captain America could not defeat this enemy, who could stop it?

The Alps, Hydra headquarters.

Red Skull, Johann Schmidt, held a glass of red wine as he admired the chaos in the Wall Street indices on the screen.

Dr. Zola and Professor Pyg stood behind him, their expressions humble and fanatical.

"What a wonderful piece of music."

Red Skull took a small sip of wine, his scarlet face filled with rapture.

"The cries of the people are the highest hymn of praise to you, my Führer."

Professor Pyg flattered him in his raspy voice.

"The fall of a symbol is more useful than destroying ten divisions."

Red Skull turned to look at his two right-hand men.

"Now the whole world knows that their gods can bleed and die."

"But our Perfect Beings are immortal and indestructible."

He drained the wine in his glass and smashed the goblet against the floor.

"Give my orders!"

"Have every legion of Perfect Beings converge on the fronts where Soldier Boy and Human Torch are fighting!"

A mad light shone in Red Skull's eyes.

"Since they like creating gods, I'll... personally put on a show for them-"

"Ragnarok!"

Across the ocean, in New York, lay the underground nerve center of Foresight Company.

Lynn Morris sat quietly on a sofa. The final image frozen on the screen before him was the Vibranium Shield, embedded deep in the earth.

The internal phone rang. It was Colonel Phillips calling from the front, with barely suppressed shouting filling the background.

"Lynn! Did you see that? We fucking lost!"

Lynn paid no heed to Phillips's roar. He slowly raised a hand and tapped the console.

The image on the screen changed, revealing Red Skull's scarlet, deranged face.

"Lost?"

"No."

"The game has only just truly begun."