When the Chitauri army began bombarding New York, Thor finally arrived. The cage that had dropped him from several hundred feet in the air clearly wasn't enough to keep the God of Thunder down.
"Loki, shut down the Tesseract portal, or I'll destroy it myself," Thor growled, gripping Mjolnir tightly.
"You can't destroy it," Loki smirked from his perch, holding the Mind Scepter. "And you certainly can't stop any of this. All that's left for you now is war!"
"Then bring it on," Thor said, tired of the mind games. Loki had tricked him one too many times, and this time, he was ready to teach his younger brother a lesson he wouldn't forget.
"I've been waiting for this moment, my foolish brother," Loki sneered. With a flourish, he cast a few enhancement spells on himself using the scepter, then lunged at Thor.
Despite being known as a trickster and a sorcerer, Loki was no stranger to combat. Raised by the goddess Frigga and trained in magic and agility, he believed that with the power of the scepter in hand, he could match Thor blow for blow—even in melee.
The battle quickly became intense. Loki used the scepter like a duelist's blade—striking forward, sidestepping, deflecting hits.
He fought with precision and grace, momentarily pushing Thor back. He even took time mid-fight to blast a Quinjet out of the sky, sending Hawkeye spiraling.
But the sight of the jet going down seemed to snap something in Thor. Rage boiled in him like a storm.
He struck with renewed fury, knocking Loki hard into the rooftop. The fight was no longer balanced.
Just as Thor was about to land a final blow, he hesitated.
He looked down at Loki and saw a memory—two boys running across golden fields beneath Asgard's sunset. He paused, the hammer still raised.
"Look around you, Loki! Look at what you've done!" Thor shouted, grabbing Loki by the collar and pointing toward the carnage below. "This—this isn't ruling. This is slaughter!"
Loki glanced at the burning city, the screaming crowds. For a moment, he faltered. "It's too late to stop it," he said quietly.
"No, it's not!" Thor replied, desperate. "We're still brothers. We can stop this, together. We still have time."
Loki stared at Thor's earnest expression. His lips curled into a smile.
And then he stabbed Thor in the side.
"You're always so gullible," Loki whispered, twisting the blade. "Did you really think I would change because of a speech?"
The betrayal hit harder than the knife. Thor's expression darkened, his mercy fading.
He gritted his teeth, shoved Loki back, and brought down Mjolnir again and again. Not to kill—but to end the illusion that his brother could be saved.
But Loki was slippery. Timing it perfectly, he leapt onto a passing Chitauri skimmer and took off, smirking back at Thor as if he'd won.
Thor didn't chase him. Not this time. He watched Loki disappear into the sky, a heavy silence hanging over him.
The trust they once had was broken—perhaps forever.
Loki, unaware of the finality of what he had done, soared through the sky with triumph.
But then, the sky began to shift. Clouds thickened, darkened. The wind howled.
Loki's instincts kicked in.
He scanned the skyline and spotted Storm rising above a nearby building, her eyes glowing white as she summoned the storm.
Another glare was directed to Loki in the distance, Ethan just gave him a cold glance before turning away, unimpressed.
Loki wasn't his concern anymore—he'd already served his purpose.
Let the Avengers handle him now.
"This is the specially refined high-concentration X Crystal," said the White Queen, handing over a square metal case.
Inside, a large, radiant golden crystal pulsed with energy.
"It's truly a work of beauty," Magneto remarked, awe in his eyes. "The Brotherhood sacrificed a lot to get this made."
"It was worth it," Professor X added, his gaze fixed on the crystal. "Those resources were nothing compared to what this moment represents."
Even in the chaos of New York under alien attack, neither Magneto nor Xavier would miss this opportunity—after all, they had fought for decades for mutant survival and freedom.
Tony, standing nearby, couldn't hide his suspicion.
He had just barely recovered from being slammed around by Ethan, and now he was seeing all the top mutant leaders gathered with some mysterious glowing artifact.
"What exactly are you guys planning?" Tony asked warily.
The alien invasion was already overwhelming, and now this?
He couldn't help but think the crystal might be a biochemical weapon.
If he hadn't known he'd be shredded by the combined force of these mutants—even in his most advanced Mark suit—he might've acted on that paranoia.
Sensing Tony's unease, Magneto calmly lifted his hand.
Tony suddenly convulsed and hit the ground, paralyzed.
In that moment, Tony mentally added "build anti-Magneto armor" to his to-do list.
"Relax," Ethan said as he stepped forward. "This isn't about control. It's about giving people in this city a chance."
Then, without hesitation, Ethan hurled the golden crystal into the storm clouds swirling above.
"A gift for the new age of mankind."
"Boom!" A bolt of lightning struck the crystal.
In the blink of an eye, the crystal shattered into a glowing golden wave that spread across the sky.
Golden raindrops began to fall.
One drop landed on Ethan's cheek, and he felt his entire body react—his cells buzzing with energy.
The X-gene inside him was becoming hyperactive.
For others, especially those with dormant mutant potential, the effects would be even more dramatic.
"Fear, pain, anger—it's all flooding the city," said Dr. Stern, observing from a nearby rooftop. "And those raw emotions, paired with survival instinct, are exactly what the X-gene responds to. This city is a perfect trigger."
"Based on my calculations," he continued, "about 80 percent of the population has some latent gene compatibility. With the enhanced X Crystal formula, I estimate a 10 to 15 percent awakening rate. That's millions. By the end of this battle, most survivors in New York could be mutate and become mutants."
"Don't celebrate just yet," Ethan interjected. "The gene doesn't evolve everyone the same way. Those of us who awakened naturally were chosen by our genetics—we had the potential. The ones forced to awaken now? Most of them will have weaker powers, or struggle to control them."
He looked back at the others.
"All I did was give them a fighting chance. Whether they live or not is up to them. We don't have the numbers to protect everyone. What we can do—what we must do—is take down as many of the enemy as we can. Make them pay for the dead. Give the living a shot at survival."
As he finished speaking, Ethan spun and hurled a knife into the sky, cutting down a Chitauri flier headed their way.
Then, without a word, he leapt from the rooftop into the battle below.
"The real fight starts now."
"How are you holding up?" Captain America asked as he pulled himself from the wreckage of the Quinjet. The ship had just been shot down by Loki, and the crash had drawn in a swarm of Chitauri aircraft.
"Boom!" Energy blasts rained down from above.
"Take cover!" Steve raised his shield just in time to block a direct hit, but the shockwave still sent everyone sprawling.
Surrounded by enemies on all sides, things looked grim. Captain America held his ground, but Black Widow had to duck behind one of the fallen wings for cover, dual pistols in hand. Against heavily armored Chitauri, they were nearly useless.
Only Hawkeye's explosive arrows were doing real damage. Every shot found its mark, taking down a warrior with precision.
"Banner, how are you doing back there?" Natasha called out, glancing behind her.
Banner groaned, clearly struggling. "Sorry... I don't know why, but I'm having a hard time getting angry today. I might need a little more time."
"That's not great timing," she muttered. Just then, a raindrop hit her arm. She paused. The sky had darkened without her noticing, and the rain... it shimmered gold.
A chill crept up her spine. This wasn't normal weather. But there was no time to think.
Just as Natasha tried to move to a better position, her body suddenly staggered. Her vision blurred, and she fell to the ground. Something was happening—something inside her.
"Natasha!" Hawkeye's eyes widened in horror. He saw it—one of the Chitauri had locked its energy cannon on her.
Time seemed to stop. Natasha felt the world fade, everything around her going dark. She was falling... deeper and deeper.
She didn't want to die. A surge of will to live burst from within—and then she saw it. A faint blue spark.
"Boom!" The cannon fired, hitting the ground. But Natasha was no longer there.
In the blink of an eye, she had vanished—and a moment later, Chitauri began dropping from the air, bodies slashed by invisible blades.
Steve and Banner were stunned. They hadn't seen anything.
Only Clint had. He had watched her blur, surrounded by that strange blue glow, move like a phantom. She'd leapt over ten meters into the air, landed on a hovering craft, and sliced through the Chitauri with unnatural precision.
It was impossible. No human could move like that.
Wait—Clint realized something. If she was moving that fast, he shouldn't have been able to follow her… but he had. Every motion. Every detail. It was like time had slowed down for him.
"Where's Natasha?" Steve asked, running over.
Clint pointed. "There."
In the shadows, a blurry silhouette materialized. It was Natasha. Her stance was tense, her breathing heavy, and her expression dazed.
"You... you took out all those Chitauri. How?" Clint asked.
"I... I don't know," she replied. "I just... followed my instincts. My body—it changed."
Clint looked around. "You're not the only one."
His vision had expanded somehow. He could see the battlefield as if from the sky, every detail within miles laid out before him. And everywhere he looked, the rain had changed people.
A skinny man cornered by Chitauri suddenly rammed a truck into them, flipping their hovercraft.
An old man, bleeding and hunched, began to heal. His gray hair turned black, his muscles growing stronger. In seconds, he looked twenty years younger.
And most shocking of all—a little girl in a red hoodie snarled, transformed into a massive werewolf, and tore her pursuers to shreds.
Not only that, as Hawkeye scanned the area, he noticed even more bizarre transformations among the citizens.
Some people had sprouted wings from their backs, others had a third eye glowing on their foreheads, and a few had grown additional arms.
New York City looked like it had been ripped out of a fantasy or a nightmare—chaotic, wild, and filled with people who suddenly seemed part-human, part-something else.
"What the hell is going on with us? I feel like I'm turning into some kind of ghost agent," Black Widow muttered, staring at her hand as a swirl of blue energy pulsed in her palm.
"So what do we even call people with powers like this?" Banner asked, wiping golden rain from his face.
The downpour had left him dizzy before, but now he felt strangely alive—his strength returning and his aches disappearing.
"Mutants," Natasha said sharply, piecing it together. "We're mutants now. This rain—this golden rain—it has to be connected to Ethan and the mutants he's working with."
"Well, there's one way to find out," Hawkeye said, spinning on his heel and loosing an arrow upward.
It struck a Chitauri warrior mid-leap, just as it lunged out from the side of the building.
A second later, Ethan dropped down from above, landing effortlessly on the rooftop where the team had taken cover.
He was calm, casual—too casual.
"Funny running into you guys again," Ethan said with a half-smirk.
"This rain... it's your doing, isn't it?" Black Widow snapped.
Her body flickered with speed, and in the blink of an eye, she was behind Ethan with a glowing blue energy blade to his neck.
"Answer her," Hawkeye growled, bow drawn and aimed directly at Ethan's chest. The air around them buzzed with tension as energy hummed between the standoff.
Ethan didn't flinch. If anything, he looked almost amused.