"As we all know, no matter how powerful and ferocious a beast it may be, it has a fatal vulnerability."
"Once its mouth is sealed, it can no longer devour anything."
The Controller gestured toward Garfield, who was hovering mid-air using the immobilized Loki as a living shield, and continued addressing the Supreme Intelligence.
"This so-called 'Great Devourer' appears incapable of flight and shows no signs of spellcasting."
"After analysis, this limitation is almost certainly due to the specialized armor it wears."
"How long until the fleet under EI's command arrives?"
"Approximately ten minutes."
"Excellent. Here's the plan, First, occupy Thor and that exceptionally swift Asgardian woman, keep them pinned down with suppressing fire."
"Meanwhile, concentrate our assault on that dark green armored guy, forcing him to focus solely on his own defense rather than protecting the Devourer."
"This creates our window, dispatch an elite strike team to neutralize the beast."
"And then?"
"Then we open negotiations, offer them safe passage in exchange for releasing our people."
"I thought we were aiming for unconditional surrender?"
"Use your logic for once. These are beings clever enough to employ a cat as an assassin. You think cornering one of them would make the others surrender?"
"More likely, they'd fight to the death. The Controller's approach shows at least some tactical nuance."
"What did you say to me?"
As the two Controllers bristled at each other, their subordinates wisely retreated, forming a loose circle in anticipation of watching their superiors come to blows.
The Supreme Intelligence interjected with calculated urgency: "Masters, this is a critical moment for the Kree Empire's survival."
"Internal conflict must wait. If word reaches the broader galactic community that we've provoked Asgard, an act of aggression that could unite our countless enemies, the consequences would be catastrophic."
"Alone, our enemies pose little threat. United under the banner of vengeance against Kree aggression..."
The Supreme Intelligence transmitted its strategic assessment directly to the Controllers' neural interfaces.
The data was sobering, during millennia of expansion, the Kree had accumulated enemies across half the known galaxy.
Individually insignificant, together they represented an existential threat, especially if Asgard provided both the rallying cause and the leadership for such a coalition.
At that moment, the Controllers put aside their differences. The plan was set, execution belonged to the Supreme Intelligence.
Space itself seemed to fracture as Kree warships executed their coordinated maneuver.
A detachment broke formation, interposing themselves between Thor, Angela, and their allies.
Precision fire created a corridor of plasma and kinetic rounds to separate and isolate.
Thor and Angela, initially confused by the tactical shift, found themselves forced to evade rather than advance.
This was the opening the Kree needed.
A swarm of vessels converged around Loki's position, saturating the area with suppressing fire.
Through this storm descended dropships carrying the Kree's most unconventional asset, not their own soldiers, but an assemblage of the galaxy's most dangerous beings.
The strike team that deployed near Loki defied easy description.
They were a living menagerie of evolutionary nightmares… chitinous horrors, energy beings barely contained by physical forms.
Each had been captured from some distant world, broken through the Kree's brutal re-education process, and reforged into weapons serving their conquerors.
The moment the strike team touched down, they surged forward as one.
Their target, Loki, who stood exposed in the open, seemingly oblivious to their approach.
But Loki was never where he appeared to be.
The figure they rushed was already dissipating into emerald smoke, a phantom conjured the instant he'd stepped through the portal.
The real Loki had long since relocated to a high-rise overlooking the battlefield, its structure deliberately spared from the Kree bombardment.
From this vantage, he calmly manipulated his duplicate like a puppeteer, observing the enemy's formations with cold amusement.
When the Kree warships began their tactical repositioning, the pattern became clear to him instantly.
Divide and conquer. How... predictable.
This was no longer a skirmish. Asgard's standing in the cosmic order hung in the balance, and Loki, for once, had no interest in games.
He reached out through the battle-sense that bound them.
"Brother. They mean to separate us."
Below, Thor wrenched free from the hull of a Kree corvette he'd just demolished with Mjolnir.
He kicked the wreckage aside, sent two pursuing fighters spiraling into each other with a contemptuous flick of his hammer, and answered with characteristic thunder in his voice.
"Loki, Angela, Garfield. I, Thor, will not let them have their way."
He hovered in the air, hammer raised.
From the void, a colossal bolt of silver-white lightning answered, tearing across the sky, illuminating half the battlefield in an instant.
Inside the Kree command, the Supreme Intelligence watched readings spike beyond safe parameters. Alerts flashed across every screen.
"WARNING."
"WARNING."
"WARNING."
"High energy signatures detected in upper atmosphere."
"All units, evade immediately."
Thor's lightning descended. Within seconds, hundreds of small Kree warships were erased from the sky.
But the onslaught didn't end there.
Angela had been waiting. Fury coiled tight, she launched herself skyward, unfurling her massive white wings, each span over ten meters wide, luminous and terrible.
"All who bear evil," she intoned, "face the Sword of Holy Light."
The sky split open.
A blade of pure radiance, hundreds of meters long, descended from the rift, blazing with the weight of divine judgment.
Angela swept her arms wide, and the sword followed.
Where it passed, Kree soldiers and everything dissolved into nothing.
Loki saw his moment.
He swapped his dagger for the staff, and the air around him flash-froze.
Ice coalesced in the sky, forming a storm of jagged spears that rained down like shrapnel.
If Thor's thunder and Angela's light brought instant oblivion, Loki's ice brought a slower, more agonizing end.
The screams didn't last long.
Less than a minute later, the battlefield fell silent, save for the thud of ice piercing earth and the crackle of dying flames.
Garfield, who'd been... strategically uninvolved, watched the icy carnage from a safe distance.
He glanced at the destruction, then muttered under his breath:
Princess Starlight, you totally held back in the movies. That was not your final form.
Thor and Angela touched down, the air still humming with residual energy.
"Nearly done," Thor said, surveying the ruins.
Angela scanned the horizon, wings folding slowly behind her. "We've shown them our strength. Now it's time to show them true destruction."
Loki nodded, a faint smirk curving his lips. "Agreed. Let's finish this."
The ground shuddered.
Loki stumbled, then vanished in a shimmer of seidr.
Garfield didn't have time to react.
Before he could even blink, massive hands erupted from the earth beneath him, closing around his body and dragging him down into the dark.