As the disguise faded, a face that made Gravik's very soul tremble was clearly revealed before his eyes.
His golden hair was slicked back, meticulously groomed.
He had chiseled features and that perfect, chilling smile that often played at the corners of his mouth.
Gravik's mind exploded at that moment.
"Home... Homelander?!!!"
Indeed, it was Homelander.
After receiving news from Skynet that Jessica was leading the old crew from Vought, fully armed, toward the Nullarbor Plain...
Homelander knew their strength well. After weighing the options, he decided to take the field himself to avoid any exposure or unforeseen accidents.
He wanted to use true despair to set the stage for a glorious descent.
"Impossible! This is impossible! Didn't you die in deep space?!"
Gravik let out a terrified scream, his body recoiling as if struck by an electric shock.
Homelander watched his terrified, pathetic display and couldn't help but let out a hearty chuckle.
"Dead?"
"Why don't you take another look at exactly who provided you with that 'top-secret intelligence'?"
Gravik was struck dumb by those words.
He hurriedly turned his head to look at the Skrull high command seated there.
Then, the most horrifying scene of his life unfolded.
All the 'Skrull high command' in the meeting room, including Pagon, who had just slapped him...
A series of mercury-like ripples suddenly surged across the surface of their skin.
Distinctive Skrull features like green skin and pointed ears quickly dissolved under the wash of silver ripples.
In just two short seconds.
Dozens of Skrulls, who originally had various forms, all transformed into expressionless humans with cold gazes.
What made Gravik's skin crawl even more was... these dozens of people all shared the exact same human face!
As if they were molds produced from the same assembly line...
"Ah!! No!! This is impossible... absolutely impossible!"
"You're all fakes?! Where are my subordinates? Where are my people?!"
Gravik slumped to the ground, his brain completely frozen.
Homelander looked at the crumbling Gravik and sneered, "What? Is it that hard to accept?"
"When you rats from the sewer were wearing human skins to blend into society, stealing their lives and usurping their positions, didn't you think it was a masterful strategic art?"
Homelander walked over to Gravik and tilted his chin up with the tip of his boot.
"From your gene splicing to your so-called human enslavement plan..."
"It was all a script I tailored specifically for you."
"Your pathetic little ambition was nothing more than a toy I used to pass the time."
Gravik's eyes glazed over; he knew he had lost completely, utterly humiliated.
"Just kill me..." He closed his eyes, waiting for death in despair.
"Kill you?"
Homelander moved his foot away and smiled slightly.
"Don't worry, I won't let you die here."
"As a Skrull general and the big bad villain, I will give you the grand entrance you deserve..."
...
Above the vast plain, three Nightingale Fighters emblazoned with the 'V.G.D.' logo tore through the clouds and landed steadily on the scorched earth that had once been baptized by nuclear bombs.
Before the fighters' hatches were even fully open, hundreds of small black shadows swarmed out from the belly of the aircraft.
This was Skynet's newly upgraded swarm of Hummingbird Drones.
Each drone was coated with Vibranium and equipped with top-tier ultra-high-definition optical lenses and directional microphones. They quickly dispersed in the air, not missing a single camera angle.
She needed to ensure that Homelander's meticulously choreographed drama would be transmitted flawlessly to the retinas of seven billion viewers worldwide.
At this moment, countless screens across the globe lit up once again.
Everyone involuntarily held their breath, their eyes locked onto the familiar figures on the screen.
"They're here..."
"Vought's heroes! Blow that green-skinned monster's head off!"
The live stream's bullet comments instantly flooded the screen like snowflakes.
"Hiss—"
The hatches of the three fighters lowered simultaneously.
Jessica, Steve, Tony, Thor, Jane, Banner, and the rest of Vought's core heroes stepped out of the cabins one after another.
Most of them were wearing anti-radiation suits and fully enclosed life-support helmets.
Jessica looked around, her brow suddenly furrowing.
The ground beneath their feet was covered in large patches of smooth, glassy crystals. A thick layer of topsoil had been stripped away, and the massive crater-like terrain signaled that a terrifying nuclear explosion had indeed occurred here yesterday.
But what was surprising was...
There were no sun-blocking clouds of radioactive dust, nor the dim and deadly weather anomalies characteristic of a post-nuclear blast.
The sky was azure and cloudless, with sunlight gleaming across the wasteland.
"Jarvis, report environmental data," Tony Stark ordered.
"Sir, the Geiger counter shows a current environmental radiation level of 0.12 microsieverts per hour. Air composition is normal, with no residual radioactive isotopes," the AI Jarvis reported calmly.
"That's impossible," Tony said in disbelief. "A nuke was dropped yesterday, and today this place is a vacation resort? Has physics ceased to exist?"
"Click."
Tony flipped up his faceplate, revealing his bewildered expression.
He took a deep breath of the outside air; there was no burning sensation, no pungent chemical odor.
"Stark! What are you doing? Put your helmet back on!" Steve snapped in a low voice when he saw this.
"There's no radiation here at all, Captain," Tony tapped on Steve's helmet. "It's as clean as the Alps."
Following Tony's confirmation, Steve removed his enclosed helmet. Seeing this, the other heroes also began to shed their anti-radiation gear.
They looked at each other, seeing the same confusion in everyone's eyes.
"Are you surprised?"
An arrogant voice drifted over from the open space ahead.
Everyone looked toward the source of the sound.
They saw a figure slowly descending in mid-air.
It was Gravik—or more accurately, Homelander playing the role of Gravik.
He held his hands behind his back, chin tilted slightly up, mimicking the arrogant alien's tone and demeanor.
"The ultimate weapons you think are enough to destroy the World are, in our eyes, nothing more than outdated and laughable toys."
He spread his hands indifferently.
"I could have easily left this radioactive dust behind, as it has zero effect on us Skrulls. Yet, I cleared it anyway..."
"Because I wouldn't deign to use such petty tricks to torment you. I want you to clearly realize... what an insurmountable gap in power looks like."
The heroes' expressions turned extremely grim.
For the opponent to clear the battlefield obstacles so openly proved he possessed absolute, invincible confidence.
Of course, in reality, it had nothing to do with Skrull technology; Homelander had contacted Ego, who was lurking in the Earth's core absorbing the God baby, before coming here.
For the current Ego, clearing some surface nuclear radiation was just a matter of a single thought.
After all, an environment shrouded in radioactive dust would severely impact the filming quality.
This was something Homelander wouldn't tolerate in the slightest.
"Stop putting on airs, you ugly green-skinned rat!"
A thunderous roar rang out as Thor, the most hot-tempered of them all, was the first to lose his patience.