Chapter 7: A Reckless Decision

Upstairs, Luca naturally did not hear the conversation of the few people walking away, but at this moment, his thoughts were not on them. Even though, in Luca’s eyes, those individuals radiated a white light belonging to the “core components” throughout their bodies. Captain America’s shield, Iron Man’s nanotech armor core and glasses, Ant-Man’s suit, even the Hulk’s shorts—none of these failed to signal to Luca that items related to these key characters in the storyline were more likely to become “core components.”

Yet, he had no mood to dwell on these things; his expression was dark to the extreme. The reason was simple: he never expected that this place was actually the unfortunate timeline from the Avengers: Endgame story, the one Tony Stark and the others had traveled through.

Why call it an “unfortunate timeline”? To explain, one must go back to Luca’s recent viewing of the TV series Loki, a Marvel Cinematic Universe spin-off. The series begins because, in Avengers: Endgame, Iron Man and the others attempted to borrow the Infinity Stones at this very point in time to save their world. However, an accident occurred—the Tesseract, or Space Stone, fell into Loki’s hands at this moment. Loki then escaped by teleporting away with the Tesseract, causing a deviation in history, which led to his capture by an organization called the TVA, the Time Variance Authority.

The TVA exists to protect the so-called “Sacred Timeline,” ensuring everything unfolds according to the predetermined path. Yet, the departure of Loki and the subsequent events at the TVA were not what concerned Luca most. What left a deep impression on him was a scene early in the series: after Loki was captured by the TVA, they planted a “time pruning bomb” to completely destroy the timeline that had deviated.

Yes, the entire timeline was erased!

When Luca first watched the show, he had joked with friends about this. Bruce Banner, when borrowing the Time Stone from the Ancient One, had solemnly promised they would return it and not affect the flow of that world. Yet, the Space Stone was taken by Loki, and Iron Man and Captain America went back to 1970 to retrieve another Tesseract. In the end, that timeline was ruined.

Luca didn’t even know who Captain America returned the other two stones to when he came back. Marvel’s concepts of “parallel universes,” “timelines,” and “time branches” were notoriously confusing and chaotic. Even after much discussion, Luca and his friends never reached a conclusion.

But would Luca dare to bet on this? Bet that he was in the timeline where the Avengers had traveled but Loki never took the Tesseract? Or bet that his very existence was a unique parallel universe unaffected by the TVA, and thus the timeline would not be pruned?

The more he pondered, the darker his face became. “If my existence affects the timeline, then does that mean I’ve already altered it? I haven’t been captured, so does this world even have a Time Variance Authority?”

“No! I have to check! No, I have to stop Loki!”

Luca clearly remembered that after Loki took the Tesseract, he teleported directly to Mongolia, where the TVA captured him and left behind the time pruning bomb. If that were true, Luca wouldn’t even be able to prevent or verify anything—he would only be able to wait in fear for the final judgment.

Rather than gamble on this possibility, he decided it was better to stop Loki at the source.

With this resolve, Luca abandoned waiting at home for the battle in New York to end, quickly checked his gear, moved his mother Gina to the storage room and left a note before heading out immediately toward Stark Tower.

In fact, the streets outside were not as dangerous as Luca had imagined. Large numbers of National Guard troops had taken to the streets, armed pickups and heavily armed soldiers drawing much of the Chitauri’s firepower. Though the battle remained intense, it created space for the New York police and firefighters to evacuate civilians.

If it weren’t for the constant stream of Chitauri pouring through the tear in the sky, perhaps the existing forces in New York might have been able to hold. Of course, this was likely because the heavily armed Chitauri airships and Leviathan warships focused their main attacks on the Avengers.

In any case, Luca was an ordinary civilian, all but invisible on the street. Several times, police trying to evacuate the crowd nearly pulled him away to a nearby subway station.

But such luck could not last.

As Luca drew closer to Stark Tower, the density of Chitauri soldiers increased. Were it not for his fear of vanishing along with the entire timeline, he might long since have given up.

“Whoosh—”

A rectangular grenade resembling a walkie-talkie zipped through the sky, clattering to the ground in front of an armored SUV.

Then came a loud explosion.

A strange blue flame erupted, blasting the armored vehicle and a dozen nearby soldiers into the air.

Hiding behind an overturned bus, Luca didn’t even spare the blast a glance. Instead, his mind was occupied with one thought:

“That Chitauri grenade just now seemed to have synthesized white light on it? Too bad it exploded right away—I wonder if I imagined it.”

As Luca prepared to stay behind the bus a while longer, waiting for the Chitauri to leave before moving forward, suddenly a violent explosion rang out above.

Chunks of stone fell from the sky, along with several Chitauri soldiers who had been desperately climbing the rooftops—they all tumbled down.

Fortunately, Luca’s enhanced footwear was set to its highest level.

At the sound of the explosion, he sprang aside, darting into a nearby shop.

Crash!

Glass shattered.

His prosthetic hand scraped against the floor as he rolled twice before steadying himself against a shelf.

Then came the heavy thuds of the fallen Chitauri hitting the ground—none of them would survive.

Luca glanced over and breathed a little easier.

“Good thing I dodged quickly.”

But at that moment, a low, threatening growl sounded behind him, trembling with suppressed menace.

“Kid! Get out of here!”