Marvel MK: CH 161 – Look Up

The nameless moon was a graveyard of silence. Its cratered, barren surface stretched out under a star-dusted, airless void. When Amaterasu and Susanoo arrived in a shimmer of divine energy, the stark stillness was the first thing that hit them.

“Akhakhakhakhakha!” Susanoo’s booming laugh, a sound like cracking stone, shattered the quiet. “Sister, cheer up! It’s good brother-sister bonding.”

Amaterasu, her pristine robes a stark white against the grey desolation, did not look amused. “We are following a trail of divine blood across the cosmos, brother. This is not a family outing.”

Her gaze settled on a ruined structure in the distance—an ancient, forgotten temple, its pillars crumbling, its roof long since collapsed.

Susanoo, ever impatient, unsheathed his legendary blade, Ame-no-Habakiri. The sword hummed with the energy of a contained storm. He grinned, a wild, eager light in his eyes, and with a single, fluid motion, he swung.

The slash was a clean, almost silent arc of light. For a second, nothing happened. Then, the entire top half of the temple slanted, sliding off with a low groan before crashing into a cloud of silent, slow-motion dust.

“Akhakhakhakha! Look!” Susanoo roared, pointing with his sword. “Another of his fragments!”

From the fresh rubble, a smudge of black could be seen. Amaterasu facepalmed, a gesture of profound, centuries-old exasperation. “That’s just dust, you moron. Haaahhh.” She began to walk toward the ruin, determined to search for clues, if her brother hadn't already obliterated them.

As she drew closer, she heard it. A faint, raspy whisper, almost lost in the silence.

Susanoo, his initial excitement forgotten, began to dig through the rubble, tossing aside massive chunks of stone with ease. Pinned beneath a collapsed pillar, they found him. A god, his form faint and flickering, his golden ichor pooling around him.

Susanoo gasped, his face a mask of theatrical horror. “Sis! Did you kill him?!”

“You sliced the entire temple in half, you idiot!” Amaterasu shot back.

The half-dead god’s eyes fluttered open, his gaze unfocused. “Be… careful… of the dark…” he whispered, his voice a dry, cracking thing. “It was not his fate… but he charged through it… The Black Winter… will not be happy…”

With a final, shuddering breath, his body dissolved into a shower of golden dust that scattered on the airless wind.

Susanoo, watching the last of the golden motes fade, finally spoke. “So… he was already dead before I did that, right?”

Amaterasu ignored her stupid brother. “It’s Amatsu,” she whispered, her voice cold with a dawning horror. “He’s not just killing these outer gods. He’s absorbing their divinity.”

A loud, dry laugh suddenly echoed from the void around them. “Zekhakhakhakhakha…”

Susanoo spun, his sword held in a ready stance, his eyes blazing. “Who’s there?!”

“It’s Amatsu,” Amaterasu said, her own spear of sunlight materializing in her hand.

“Come out, you ugly fucks!” Susanoo roared, his challenge echoing into the silent, empty dark.

Susanoo roared, unleashing a heavy slash toward the void. His storm divinity, a tempest of raw power, struggled to manifest in the vacuum of space, the blade cutting a silent, empty gash in the fabric of the cosmos.

“Show yourself, Amatsu!” Amaterasu commanded, her voice a sharp, clear note in the dead silence.

Amatsu’s voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere, a dry, ancient sound like grinding stone. “My, my. You’ve strayed far from home, children.”

“We are not children!” Susanoo roared, unleashing another futile slash.

The void itself seemed to coagulate, the darkness gathering, twisting, and solidifying. In a blink, Amatsu’s true form stood before them, a being woven from starlight and shadow. Thin black tentacles writhed from his body, his claws were long and sharp, and his empty white eyes held the chilling indifference of a dead universe.

“Happy now?” he hissed.

“Yup,” Susanoo said, a wild grin spreading across his face. “Still ugly.”

He struck the first move.

With a battle cry that was swallowed by the void, Susanoo charged. But Amatsu was a god of chaos, a being born from the nothingness between worlds. The vacuum of space was not a hindrance; it was his domain. He simply raised a hand, and a tsunami of pure darkness erupted, swallowing Susanoo’s attack whole.

From the swirling chaos, Amatsu’s army emerged. Hulking Oni lumbered forth, their spiked clubs silent but deadly. Shadowy Shinma demons slithered through the void, their forms insubstantial and terrifying. Spectral horrors, their faces a blur of forgotten nightmares, drifted toward them.

Amaterasu and Susanoo were hopelessly outmatched.

Amaterasu’s spear of sunlight, usually a brilliant, blazing weapon, felt thin, starved. The nearest sun was a dead, distant star, and her divinity had no fuel. Susanoo’s storm-wrought blade felt sluggish in his hands. He was a storm god without a storm, a force of nature without air to command.

They fought back to back, a desperate, beautiful dance of light and steel against an endless tide of darkness. Amaterasu parried a scything claw from a Shinma demon, her spear leaving a sizzling, golden scar on its shadowy form. Susanoo shattered an Oni’s club with a brutal, close-quarters strike, but another immediately took its place.

They were being overwhelmed. A claw raked across Susanoo’s back, tearing through his divine armor. A blast of chaotic energy from Amatsu himself sent Amaterasu reeling, her shield of light cracking under the strain.

They were losing.

With a final, desperate roar, Susanoo unleashed a maelstrom of slashes, clearing a small pocket in the horde of demons. Amaterasu stood beside him, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her light a flickering candle in the oppressive dark.

“Brother,” she said, her voice tight with urgency. “We have one last chance. I will focus all of my remaining divinity into a single, piercing strike. You must create an opening for me.”

Susanoo stood before her, his back to her, a silent, unyielding shield. “Just be quick about it, sister.”

But as Amaterasu began to gather her fading light, a shimmer of green and gold appeared in the void behind them. A figure, silent and unseen, a phantom in the chaos.

It was Loki.

He reached out, the tip of his scepter glowing with an ethereal, cold blue light, and touched it to the back of Susanoo’s heart.

“Behave,” he whispered.

A web of cold, blue energy spread across Susanoo’s back, his veins glowing with an unnatural light. It reached his eyes. They went dark for a moment, then reignited, no longer the blazing, wild eyes of a storm god, but the cold, empty, and utterly obedient glowing blue of a puppet. His expression went blank.

Amaterasu, her own power nearly gathered, felt the shift behind her. She turned, her eyes widening in horror at the sight of her brother, his form now a cold, unmoving statue.

She made a gut-wrenching choice.

With a final, desperate prayer, she unleashed her remaining divinity, not as an attack, but as an escape. Her divine essence erupted, tearing a hexagonal rift of pure, golden light in the fabric of the void. Without a moment’s hesitation, she leaped through it, the portal snapping shut behind her, leaving her brother alone in the darkness.

Loki looked at the now-mind-controlled Susanoo, a slow, appreciative smile spreading across his face. A boisterous, muscle-bound god of storm… easily broken, easily tamed. He looked like a fine specimen.

…

Deep in an underground facility nestled within the Adirondack Mountains, the air hummed with contained power. Maria Rambeau and Nick Fury stood on a shielded upper observation deck, looking down as Dr. Erik Selvig made the final adjustments to a massive, circular apparatus—a lattice of wires and humming energy converters built around the glowing Tesseract.

Clint Barton stood nearby, his posture relaxed but his eyes missing nothing.

“Initiating sequence,” Selvig’s voice announced over the intercom.

The Tesseract awakened. A low hum escalated into a high-pitched whine, and the air in the chamber crackled with raw energy. A brilliant blue beam shot from the cube, striking a focal point at the center of the room. The space at the focal point warped, tearing a hole in the fabric of reality and opening into a swirling vortex of impossible blue.

A gale, a howling storm, erupted from the portal, blasting equipment and sending unsecured papers flying. Clint reacted before anyone else could, moving to shield Fury and Maria with his own body as the force of the wind slammed against the observation glass.

The storm stopped as suddenly as it began.

From the portal, two figures emerged. One, a comically large man built like a mountain of muscle and divine presence, stood holding a sword the size of a man. The other, dressed in regal Asgardian armor, knelt, a scepter in his hand, a cruel, triumphant smile on his face. It was Loki.

S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.W.O.R.D. agents scrambled, surrounding the figures, their weapons raised.

“Sir, please put down the spear and sword,” Fury’s voice boomed over the intercom.

Loki looked at his scepter, then gave a slow, mocking smile. He casually aimed the scepter at the observation deck and fired. A crackling beam of blue energy shot toward them.

“GET DOWN!” Barton roared, tackling Fury and Maria to the floor.

The blast vaporized a section of the reinforced wall behind them. All hell broke loose. Susanoo, a living wall of divine flesh, absorbed the hail of bullets meant for Loki. Loki himself leaped with serpentine grace, the scepter in his hand glowing as he touched agent after agent. Their eyes went vacant, then reignited with a cold, blue light. They turned their weapons on their own comrades.

…

Meanwhile, New York City was bustling, a symphony of horns and traffic under the bright noon sun. Perched atop the south tower of the World Trade Center, Jack Hou was eating a slice of New York pizza.

“Hmm,” he mused to himself, “nothing better than avoiding the smell of New York while eating New York pizza.”

As he ate, he looked directly into the sun. He sensed something wrong. A flicker in the cosmic rhythm, a celestial cry. It was coming his way. Fast. A golden streak, a falling star in the bright noon sky.

“Zeph,” Jack said calmly, “ready to catch.”

Zephyr, his loyal cloud, instantly formed itself into a giant, fluffy, cloud-shaped baseball glove. The projectile hit with a dull thump. Jack leaped from the tower and landed on Zephyr, the body of Amaterasu steaming in the cloud’s soft grip. Her divine robes were tattered and scorched, and golden ichor, the blood of the gods, seeped from a dozen wounds.

“Amaterasu,” Jack said, his voice a low, serious thing. “What are you doing here?”

She weakly, slowly, reached out a hand. Jack knelt, trying to support her head. She placed her hand on his face. “It’s a beautiful day to die,” she whispered.

“You’re not gonna die,” Jack said, his voice firm. “What happened?”

He took a peach from his sleeve and crushed it over her mouth. The shimmering, golden juice flowed into her, and she slowly began to absorb the sun’s energy again.

“What the hell happened?” he asked again.

“It’s too late,” she said, her voice a defeated whisper.

Jack looked up. The sky was darkening. Not the natural dimming of a storm, but a creeping, absolute blackness, a void incarnate shrouding the sky.

Jack’s face hardened. “Amatsu.”

…

The main hall doors slid open, and Loki, Susanoo, Selvig, and Barton walked calmly toward the exit, the entire building still rattling from the experiment. Maria Hill, her face a mask of grim determination, walked past them, heading deeper into the chaos.

“I need that car,” Barton said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual warmth.

As they passed, Hill turned back. “Who’s that?” she asked, her gaze flicking to the two imposing, otherworldly figures.

“He didn’t tell me,” Barton replied without breaking his stride.

Hill continued to walk, suspicion a cold knot in her gut. Then, a voice crackled in her ear comm. “Hill! Do you copy?! Barton has turned!”

She spun, her hand already reaching for her gun. But it was too late. Barton had already raised his weapon, a calm, chillingly precise aim, and began to fire. Hill leaped for cover behind a concrete pillar, the air around her filled with the shriek of ricocheting bullets. But Loki and his entourage were already gone, the sound of a stolen car peeling out of the underground garage their only parting gift.

Nick Fury’s voice was a low, urgent growl in her ear. “They got the Tesseract! Shut it down!”

Hill didn’t hesitate. She sprinted toward a parked S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle, threw herself into the driver’s seat, and floored the pedal, the tires screaming as she shot after them.

The chase was a blur of high-speed chaos. Hill, a master of evasive driving, weaved through the facility's access tunnels, her car a sleek, black missile. She saw them up ahead, the stolen vehicle a dark shape in the gloom. With a move of pure, audacious skill, she spun her car into a reverse J-turn, trying to block their path.

But Barton, his eyes a cold, empty blue, didn’t even flinch. At his side, Susanoo, with a bored, casual flick of his wrist, summoned a gust of wind. The wind, a small, contained tornado, lifted Hill’s car, sending it spinning harmlessly out of the way as they shot past.

As Nick Fury and Maria Rambeau dodged falling rubble, they finally arrived at the helipad. The chopper was already waiting, its rotors a frantic blur. They barely made the jump, their feet hitting the skids just as the ground beneath them collapsed, the entire facility sinking into a cavern of its own making.

From the air, they saw Loki’s car speeding away, but there was no sign of Hill.

“Follow Barton,” Nick commanded the pilot. As he leaned out, his own weapon raised, Susanoo’s wind slammed into the helicopter, sending it into a sickening, upside-down spin. Fury and Rambeau leaped, their training taking over as they hit the ground in a roll.

Loki sped up and was gone, the Tesseract with him. Maria and Nick began to fire their guns toward the disappearing car, but every bullet was deflected by an invisible wall of wind, Susanoo’s silent, effortless shield.

Coulson’s voice crackled through Fury’s comm. “Director! Director Fury, do you copy?!”

Fury stood, brushing dust from his coat. “The Tesseract is with a hostile force,” he said, his voice a low, grim thing. “I have men down. Hill?”

From the rubble, Maria Hill emerged, her face bruised but her eyes sharp with a cold, controlled fury. “A lot of men are still under. Don’t know how many survivors.”

As Nick was about to say something, Rambeau pointed at the sky. It was darkening. Hill looked up. Coulson, from his own location, looked up. The whole world looked up.

A creeping, absolute blackness, a void incarnate, was swallowing the sky.

Nick’s voice was a final, absolute command in Coulson’s ear. “Coulson, back to the base. This is a Level Eight. As of right now… we are at war.”