The Battle Of New York

Close your eyes and picture the tallest, shiniest tower in all of New York City — the one with the letter S glowing at the top, visible from miles in every direction. Stark Tower. One hundred floors of glass and steel, lit up against the night sky like a candle.

Now picture that same tower, with a glowing blue machine spinning on the rooftop — powered by the Tesseract, pointed at the stars.

And picture the sky splitting open.

CRACK. Like a mirror breaking above the whole city. The portal tore the clouds apart in a ring of blue fire, and through it poured the Chitauri — an alien army on flying vehicles like metal eels, thousands of them, screaming down into the streets of New York City.

The Battle of New York had begun.

On the streets below, people ran. Taxis overturned. Windows shattered. The alien soldiers fired crackling energy bolts — ZAP ZAP ZAP — down every avenue and alley. The city was in trouble, and it needed someone to look after it.

Captain America landed on a police car, shield on his arm, and took charge like he had been born for exactly this moment. "All right," he said to a circle of police officers who had never taken orders from a man in a blue star-spangled suit before, "listen up."

He gave everyone a job. The police protected the people. Black Widow and Hawkeye fought at street level, moving from block to block, covering each other's backs. Thor called lightning from Mjolnir — KRAKOOM — and it struck alien ships from the sky one by one, each bolt leaving a zigzag scar across the clouds.

And Iron Man? Iron Man was everywhere. WHOOSH — up over the Chrysler Building. WHOOSH — across the East River. WHOOSH — down through a canyon of skyscrapers, dodging beams and firing repulsors. The red-and-gold suit blazed through the city like a comet.

Then something enormous moved in the sky above.

It was a Leviathan — a flying Chitauri warship as long as a city block, armored like a whale, roaring through the clouds. It dove toward the streets like a falling mountain.

A motorcycle pulled up at the end of an empty street. A man in a plaid shirt and brown trousers climbed off. He looked up at the Leviathan barreling toward him.

"Doctor Banner," said Captain America through the comms. "Now might be a really good time."

Bruce Banner smiled, very quietly. "I'm always angry," he said.

And then Bruce Banner became the Hulk.

He leaped — a WHOOOOSH of green muscle and green sky — straight at the Leviathan's head, and punched it. BOOM. One punch. The whole enormous creature crumpled and crashed into the street in a tangled heap of alien metal.

The Hulk landed, roared at the sky, and immediately ran toward the next thing that needed hitting.

For a moment, it looked like they might actually win this. The team was working together. Every hero in their place. Every strength covering a weakness.

Then came the worst news.

High above the city, in a secret bunker, a council of very frightened, very powerful people decided they were going to solve the problem themselves. They authorized a nuclear missile — a single enormous bomb — to be launched at Manhattan. If the city was gone, the aliens would have nothing to invade.

The pilot launched it before anyone could stop him.

Tony Stark turned in the air and saw it coming — a white contrail arcing down through the clouds toward the city he had been fighting so hard to protect.

"I've got it," he said quietly. And nobody argued, because there was nothing to argue about and no time to argue anyway.

He flew straight at the missile. He wrapped his arms around it. He pushed his thrusters to maximum — VREEEEEEE — and aimed straight up, toward the portal in the sky.

The Chitauri portal was shrinking. It was going to close.

Tony pushed harder. The missile was heavy. The portal was closing. The city was far below him now, glittering and small and full of eight million people who didn't know what was happening above their heads.

He punched through the portal.

Space was silent and very cold. Tony could see the Chitauri command ship, enormous and gleaming, a thousand miles from any star. The missile struck it. BOOM.

The command ship exploded.

And on Earth, every single Chitauri soldier — every alien in every street, every flying eel in every sky — dropped instantly. All of them. The command ship was gone, so they were gone.

Natasha Romanoff ran up the side of Stark Tower and plunged Loki's scepter into the machine on the roof. ZAP. The portal sealed shut.

The sky closed.

And Tony Stark fell.

He plummeted back through the sealed sky, armor dark, unconscious, falling from the edge of space toward the concrete streets of New York City fifty stories below —

The Hulk exploded out of a building window and caught him. One green hand wrapped around the suit. He hit the ground and absorbed the impact with his knees and roared at the sky, shaking Tony awake.

Tony blinked. "Please don't do that again," he said.

The Hulk roared again, a little more quietly.

Loki was still there, sitting in the rubble of the tower penthouse in his golden armor, looking extremely tired. He asked for a drink.

The Hulk smashed him through the floor seven times. That was probably not what Loki had expected.

And then it was over. The Chitauri were gone. The sky was blue. New York City was battered and smoky and dented, but it was standing.

On a quiet rooftop, six heroes sat together — a soldier, a genius, a god, a monster, a spy, and an archer — and shared shawarma, because someone had insisted.

They hadn't known each other a week ago. They had argued and fought and nearly broken apart.

But they had also saved the world. Together.

Can you imagine anything better than that?