"All personnel, prepare for station keeping," the pilot's voice crackled through the cabin intercom. "We are decelerating. Approaching designated coordinates."
Inside the command compartment, both the Avengers and Chisei Gen's strike unit pushed off their seats, moving in unison toward the primary optical periscope and sonar consoles.
"Well, looks like the mystery is finally about to unravel," Tony Stark remarked, a spark of scientific curiosity in his voice.
Though barely forty-eight hours had passed since Scott Lang's confession in San Francisco, the rapid escalation—from black-market artifact heists to subterranean Japanese labs and localized Pacific tsunamis—had kept them constantly on edge. Now, at the bottom of the ocean, the curtain was finally lifting.
Yet, while the Avengers felt a surge of adrenaline, Chisei Gen's unit remained completely, chillingly silent.
There was zero excitement on their faces. Yasha silently adjusted the scabbard of his heavy blade, Sakura checked the seals on her tactical harness, and Chisei's jaw was set like iron. They hadn't come to recover stolen property or arrest a rogue scientist.
They had come to slay a dragon.
And in the ancient history of their bloodline, no Dragon King had ever fallen without drowning the world in blood. Worse still, if Herzog's ritual had already progressed, they might be facing more than one awakened sovereign in the abyss.
"You look remarkably tense for a recovery op," Tony observed, his sharp eyes narrowing as he leaned against the console. "Even at the finish line, Mr. Gen, are you still planning on keeping the classified files to yourself?"
"For certain truths in this world," Chisei replied without turning around, his voice frigid, "the less you know, the greater your chances of dying of old age."
Tony was no rookie. The sheer, rigid wariness radiating off the Japanese unit was palpable. Chisei's curt dismissal confirmed every suspicion Tony had harbored since Hawkeye pulled those bio-scans from the skyscraper.
CLICK.
The subtle shift in tone caused the Avengers to instinctively adjust their footing into defensive combat stances.
Yet the paranoia in the room was entirely mismatched. Chisei Gen and his executioners were hyper-focused on the crushing, invisible threats lurking outside the titanium hull, while the Avengers were bracing for an internal betrayal. The fragile partnership—built on mutual suspicion and unverified intel—instantly plummeted to a freezing standoff.
"Boss, if our American friends are this desperate for a bedtime story," Crow's lazy voice cut through the silence, "we might as well just lay the cards on the table. We're already parked at the gates of hell. We're all locked in the same tin can anyway."
A side hatch slid open, and Crow strolled into the observation lounge with his hands tucked casually into his pockets. He seemed completely indifferent to the weapons half-drawn around him.
Chisei offered no verbal objection, simply turning his focus back to the sonar feed.
Crow sauntered over to Tony Stark with an easy grin, gesturing toward a pair of bolted-down leather deck chairs. "Pardon the boss. He's a bit old-fashioned about family secrets. But if it's the target you want... I can give you the unredacted dossier."
Tony took a seat opposite him, crossing his arms.
Without a shred of hesitation, Crow laid bare the reality of their hunt in plain, brutal terms.
"..."
Tony sat in silence for several seconds, his brow furrowing as the words settled into his mind.
"You're telling me... the entity we've been chasing across the Pacific isn't a human rogue scientist, but an ancient dragon?"
"Bingo," Crow smirked, tapping his temple. "His name is Dr. Herzog. Or rather, the abomination that crawled out of the Siberian ice."
"Like Hebe Shikai?" Natasha interrupted, stepping closer with her arms folded. "The monster that nearly leveled Hell's Kitchen?"
The name of the target was meaningless to the Avengers; their operational focus was locked entirely on the threat. They had witnessed Hebe Shikai's horrific rampage firsthand in New York. On their current roster, perhaps only an unleashed Hulk could go toe-to-toe with a beast of that physical density.
"Hebe Shikai?" Crow chuckled, waving his hand dismissively. "No, no, no. That freak wasn't a true dragon. He was merely an unstable Hybrid—a mortal who underwent extreme dragon-blood grafting to prolong his rotten lifespan."
"A Hybrid?" Tony repeated, his voice dropping an octave.
"A crossbreed. Human physiology carrying dormant draconic genetic sequences," Crow explained casually.
Tony had braced himself for high-level corporate espionage or bioweapon smuggling, but Crow's revelation dropped like an orbital strike.
They weren't hunting an enhanced human. They were diving headfirst into the lair of a primordial Dragon King—an apex predator whose power dwarfed the monster that had terrorized Manhattan.
Tony glanced back at Chisei, Yasha, and Sakura.
Suddenly, their cold, ritualistic silence made sense.
'No wonder they look like men marching to the gallows,' Tony thought, a distinct chill running down his spine. The sensation of his hair standing on end was almost electric.
Tony leaned forward, staring directly into Crow's relaxed eyes. "Then who the hell are you people? Why is a Tokyo syndicate dedicating its private military to hunting mythological gods? That shouldn't be your jurisdiction."
Tony tapped his smart-watch, projecting the classified photos Hawkeye had captured inside Genji Heavy Industries: glass containment tanks holding scaled monstrosities and mutated fetal specimens.
"And these abominations," Tony pressed. "You're the ones breeding them, aren't you?"
"Oh? You guys actually managed to slip into the 19th-floor sub-labs?" Crow's eyebrows raised in genuine, appreciative surprise. "Not bad for an overnight job."
CHING.
Across the room, Yasha's thumb snapped the guard of his blade, exposing an inch of gleaming steel. The air in the cabin grew suffocatingly dense once more.
"Stand down, Yasha," Crow said without looking back. He turned to the Avengers with a relaxed shrug. "Look, since I've already spilled the dragon lore, the dirty laundry at headquarters doesn't really matter anymore. You know what you know."
Crow's complete lack of hostility allowed the Avengers to subtly ease their stance. With a cataclysmic threat waiting outside the hull, nobody had the appetite for a civil war in the cockpit.
Crow leaned back, his eyes sweeping over the assembled heroes.
"People like us... in our world, we are called Dragon Slayers," Crow said, his tone carrying a rare note of solemn weight. "As for everything else—the bloodlines, the college, the history—if we manage to climb back to the surface alive, I'll buy the first round and answer every question you've got. You've seen my cards. So... let's focus on surviving the next hour together."
HISS.
The submarine's primary ballast tanks hissed as the massive vessel settled into a stable hover several meters above the ocean floor.
"Prep the high-pressure diving rigs," Chisei Gen ordered, stepping away from the periscope. He turned to Tony and the Avengers. "Stay inside the airlock until we clear the perimeter. The ambient hydrostatic pressure at this depth will crush standard human physiology before your feet touch the silt."
As Hybrids possessing heavily reinforced skeletal structures and elevated metabolic thresholds, the Execution Bureau operatives could withstand the crushing abyss far longer than mortals. The Avengers offered no argument; it was simple biological physics.
While the strike team suited up in the auxiliary bay, the murky waters surrounding the trench began to churn.
A vanguard of armored warriors mounted atop massive, bioluminescent deep-sea beasts glided swiftly through the dark currents.
"The primary tectonic resonance originated dead ahead, Sire!" a scout reported, gesturing with a glowing bone spear. "The structural damage to our outer spires traces directly to these coordinates!"
"Advance," King Namor commanded, his dark eyes burning with imperial wrath as he gripped his golden trident. "I will tear apart whatever surface abomination dared to shatter the peace of Atlantis."
Riding at the head of the formation, Namor surged forward.
Within seconds, the murky gloom parted, revealing the titanic, black titanium hull of the S.H.I.E.L.D. nuclear submarine resting silently above the trench floor.
"Surface-dwellers!"
"It's a human war vessel!"
"Did their military unleash a seismic weapon against our city?!"
"Are the air-breathers declaring open war on the oceans?!"
Chaotic shouts of outrage erupted through the ranks of the Atlantean vanguard.
Unlike the isolationist monarchs who preceded him, Namor had walked among the surface world in his youth. Yet that intimate familiarity had not softened his heart toward humanity; if anything, witnessing the greed, industrial filth, and destructive nature of surface civilizations had only deepened his hatred for them.
Seeing a human military vessel hovering directly over the epicenter of his kingdom's devastation, Namor's lip curled into a lethal, merciless sneer.
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Give me powerstones.
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