The scarlet S across Clark's chest gleamed as he slowly rose into the air.
"Alright, Thor. I've seen your fearless spirit, so until you get your power back, I'm going to help you sort out a few family issues."
"I'll handle the big robot."
Clark lifted into the sky until he was face to face with the Destroyer.
In the throne room of Asgard, Loki gripped Odin's spear and, through the Destroyer's shared vision, looked down from above at the insect from Midgard who loved drawing attention to himself and who had, just a moment ago, apparently noticed him.
Of course, Loki could only glare at Clark from this far away. If they had actually been face to face, Clark would have planted him in the ground and introduced him to the educational value of a good old-fashioned family-corrective beating.
"A worm of Midgard," Loki sneered, "so desperate to die. Do you think wearing a tight little costume means you can stand against the wrath of the All-Father? If you want to play hero, then I'll kill you and Thor together."
The Destroyer's face split open, and a torrent of concentrated heat formed into a beam that slammed head-on into Clark.
"Get out of there, Superman!" Coulson shouted at the top of his lungs.
He didn't want a good man with real power dying because of his own overconfidence.
Missiles were one thing. The Destroyer's attack was on an entirely different level. Clark might not be able to withstand this.
Tony had already blasted free of the rubble and saw the scene unfolding before him.
Thor sprinted forward too.
This had all started because of him. Let Loki kill him if he wanted, but not one more innocent person needed to get hurt over it.
Thor had never seen anyone take a direct hit from the Destroyer. Even he, back when he still had his power, needed to use Mjolnir to redirect its energy instead of truly tanking it.
But in the next moment, nobody was worried anymore.
Because the beam hit Clark dead on.
And Clark simply took it.
No explosion.
No backward slide.
No sign of being pushed at all.
Clark just floated there in the air, not even a thread of his suit damaged.
"My God..." One of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents dropped straight to his knees and started crossing himself frantically. "God has come down... he was sent to save us."
"Holy..." Tony's jaw dropped so far it looked like he could fit a watermelon in there. For once in his life, he genuinely had no words.
He had thought what Clark had shown before was already the upper limit.
But the man was like an onion. Every layer you peeled back just made your eyes water more.
Thor stood there staring at Clark's back in a daze, and what remained of his pride as the Nine Realms' former top champion shattered into dust.
What did he count for?
This was what real power looked like.
Standing there and tanking the Destroyer head-on.
"Since when... did Midgard produce something like this?" Thor muttered. "He's almost at Father's peak."
As for Loki, he was genuinely rattled.
"No. Impossible. This is impossible! That is Odin's Destroyer! The ultimate weapon of the Nine Realms! How can a mortal ignore that kind of attack?!"
Loki poured more power into the Destroyer.
Clark kept walking through the growing beam until he stood directly in front of its face.
"So this is Asgard's ultimate weapon?"
"Your so-called All-Father sounds less like a god and more like an old blacksmith who enjoys building oversized action figures."
Then Clark drew back his fist.
"Let me teach you what real brute force looks like."
He punched.
The strike was pure simplicity. No flourish, no wasted motion, no technique for technique's sake. It just ripped through the upper air over the town.
The Destroyer, supposedly forged from indestructible uru metal, its surface so durable that even Thor's attacks had trouble leaving meaningful damage on it...
Took Clark's punch square in the chest.
The impact caved the armor inward and shattered the magical defenses layered over it.
The ten-foot metal giant flew backward, slammed into the earth, and buried itself in the ground.
The entire town stood frozen.
The contrast between Clark and Tony was almost absurd. One man had been flattened instantly. Then the other one flattened the thing that had done it.
All that changed was the lead actor.
But Clark wasn't done.
Red light glowed in his eyes as heat vision pinned the Destroyer down the moment it tried to rise. Then he landed with one foot on its body.
Back in Asgard, Loki tried to force the armor to counterattack, but it was hopeless. Clark outclassed him in every possible way. He could do nothing except watch while Clark dismantled the Destroyer piece by piece.
Clark bent down and grabbed one of the Destroyer's arms.
"Something this dangerous belongs in a scrapyard."
Then, using nothing but raw strength, he tore the arm clean off its torso.
Every enchantment inscribed across it collapsed under sheer violence. Loki, horrified by the level of strength Clark was displaying, immediately severed his link to the Destroyer.
"Midgard... what in all the realms has Midgard become these past years?"
He no longer had the courage to go after Thor or Midgard again.
Clark tossed the severed arm aside, then the second one, and turned around, dusting off hands that had no dust on them.
He looked up at Tony, hovering in the air.
"Well, Mr. Stark." Clark smiled, feeling impossibly cool. "Back at the diner, you said you wanted to find some time to test exactly how big the gap was between your armor and me..."
He pointed at the heap of divine scrap beneath his feet. The red glow faded from his eyes, leaving only that steady blue.
"So. Think you've got a rough answer now?"
Tony didn't have the slightest urge left to make big speeches.
He looked at the Destroyer, physically ripped apart, then down at his precious Mark III, the suit he had been so proud of, the same suit that couldn't even survive one blast from that thing.
Tony Stark, at that exact moment, became Clark's loudest unspoken supporter.
"JARVIS..." Tony swallowed hard.
"I'm here, sir."
"The minute we get home, I want blueprints started for the next fifty Mark armors. Every one of them stronger than the last. And my anti-Superman armor? Minimum armor thickness of ten feet, because right now I do not feel safe."
"Understood, sir. Would you also like me to schedule a therapist for post-traumatic stress support?"
"Shut up..."
At the same time, Fury's call had already come through to Coulson.
"Coulson! What the hell happened in New Mexico? Satellite telemetry says your energy readings just went off the charts!"
Coulson watched Clark rise up from the crater and, strangely enough, smiled.
At this point, he was beginning to feel vaguely detached from everything. It was hard to care too much when all your effort felt like it was worth less than pocket lint.
"Director... the good news is the alien metal giant has been neutralized, and there were no civilian casualties."
The moment Coulson led with good news, Fury knew the real problem was coming.
"And the bad news?"
"The bad news is... Superman was the one who neutralized it. And the method he used was extremely direct. Director, I think S.H.I.E.L.D. can probably retire. In front of that man, the agents and weapons we're so proud of look like toddlers who just learned to walk."
On the other end of the line, Nick Fury went completely silent for a full thirty seconds.
Standing out on the Arctic ice shelf, Fury slowly turned his head and looked at the body of Captain America, now fully recovered from the ice and being loaded into a transport aircraft.
Then he let out a long, tired breath.