"Who's behind you?"
Drex Valen looked down at the surviving Precursors calmly.
That was the only question he truly cared about.
The alien creatures exchanged uneasy glances before answering immediately.
"Thanos."
Even now, they didn't dare lie.
Not because they thought Earth understood who Thanos was.
Most likely this remote little planet had never even heard his name before.
But fear still outweighed deception.
Drex narrowed his eyes slightly.
Thanos?
He genuinely hadn't expected the Mad Titan to be behind the Kaiju invasion.
Compared to the films, this universe's Thanos was clearly making far more aggressive moves.
"So the invasion orders came directly from Thanos?"
Drex folded his arms.
"Where is he now?"
If someone sent monsters to Earth, basic courtesy demanded a response in return.
"We don't know," a Precursor answered quickly. "Lord Thanos never reveals his location."
That part was true.
Thanos had too many enemies.
Across the galaxy, countless survivors dreamed of dragging him into mutual destruction.
Some civilizations wouldn't hesitate to fire planet-killer weapons the instant his location became known.
Star annihilation cannons.
Gravitational collapse bombs.
Dimensional weapons.
Without the Infinity Stones, Thanos remained "only" a being on the lower end of Skyfather-class existence.
Terrifying individually, yes.
But against civilization-level superweapons?
Still vulnerable.
Even if he survived personally, his armies would not.
That was why Thanos possessed no permanent homeworld.
No stable headquarters.
The Black Order's reputation spread across the cosmos, but in reality they were wandering destroyers constantly on the move.
Even resupplying required secrecy.
Most merchants only dealt with them for absurd profits and suicidal levels of risk.
Drex sighed lightly.
"Then you've lost your value."
Meanwhile, behind him, the superheroes had already entered the familiar phase of every large-scale mission:
Destroying absolutely everything in sight.
And just like that, the Precursor civilization collapsed.
To be fair, when superheroes were allowed to unleash themselves without worrying about collateral damage, they became terrifyingly efficient.
Eventually the heroes returned to Earth.
And Earth returned to crisis management.
Kaiju toxin clouds still lingered over damaged cities.
Blue blood flowed through sewers large enough to drive race cars through before spilling into the deep ocean.
Mountain-sized corpses lay scattered across quarantined zones.
The mobile natural disasters that had attacked Los Angeles were dead.
But because there had simply been too many Kaiju, nobody could afford precision during the fighting.
The city had suffered catastrophic damage.
At this point, Los Angeles genuinely needed rebuilding from the ground up.
Fortunately, civilian casualties remained far lower than expected.
Under the circumstances, the survival numbers almost counted as miraculous.
Still...
Tony Stark was furious.
First, Stark Tower in New York had been wrecked during the Chitauri invasion and the Monster Association conflict.
Then New York itself became S.W.O.R.D. headquarters.
So Tony relocated back to Los Angeles.
And now?
His rebuilt tower had collapsed again.
Sure, Tony Stark could afford to build a hundred more towers without blinking.
That wasn't the point.
He was still unbelievably irritated.
And Los Angeles wasn't the only casualty.
Coastal cities across the United States and the rest of the world had all suffered varying degrees of destruction.
The third Kaiju wave, consisting of nine monsters, had appeared less than a day after the second wave was eliminated.
And these newer Kaiju were worse in every possible category.
Larger.
Faster.
Stronger.
More durable.
Some even possessed electromagnetic attack capabilities capable of crippling human weapon systems.
Using the Pacific Rim classification scale, every single one of them ranked above Category Six.
New York's condition remained especially terrible.
The city was still burning in places due to toxic contamination.
Entire regions had been sealed off from neighboring cities.
Quarantine lines stretched across surrounding waters because of the Kaiju blue blood pollution.
Large-scale civilian relocation had already become unavoidable.
And if reconstruction began...
The required resources would be astronomical.
Humanity's sense of helplessness deepened further.
To be fair, recent months had been utterly insane.
Alien invasions.
Kaiju attacks.
Monsters.
The Monster Association.
Saiyans supposedly coming in even greater numbers later.
Even though S.W.O.R.D. kept winning, humanity still suffered psychological damage from the constant disasters.
Every invasion meant more evacuations.
More economic collapse.
More destruction.
Casualties might remain relatively low, but financial devastation alone was enough to shake nations.
Ironically, this time humanity actually owed Drex Valen.
If not for the repeated crises he'd already dragged Earth through, global evacuation systems would never have become this efficient.
People had learned to run immediately the instant alarms sounded.
Without that experience, the Chitauri and Kaiju invasions would have caused casualties thousands of times worse than what Earth had actually suffered.
And then, while global morale sat near rock bottom...
Drex stepped forward.
"We need our own monsters."
The statement left everyone stunned.
"...Our own monsters?"
Then Umbrella Corporation unveiled its newest product.
The Mass-Production Multi-Purpose Mobile Suit:
Zaku Units.
Twenty meters tall.
Armed primarily with a 200mm electromagnetic machine cannon.
Entirely coated in secondary Kryptonite alloy armor.
Propulsion systems capable of generating fifty tons of thrust.
Powered by second-generation new-element fusion reactors capable of sustaining combat operations continuously for an entire month.
Technically, the "machine gun" was closer to an artillery cannon.
But because it used electromagnetic acceleration instead of chemical explosives, the weapon maintained absurd muzzle velocity and range.
No propellant.
No conventional shells.
The ammunition consisted of pre-formed solid kinetic penetrators.
Effective range:
Three kilometers.
Projectile velocity:
1,800 meters per second.
Against Kaiju-sized targets?
Complete overkill.
The arrival of the Zaku units effectively announced the beginning of the end for traditional aircraft carriers.
Drex openly stated the mobile suits possessed full amphibious, aerial, and terrestrial combat capability.
Their firepower, mobility, and defensive systems surpassed every conventional weapon humanity currently possessed.
Of course...
They were expensive.
Three hundred billion dollars per unit.
Even so, demand exploded instantly thanks to the Kaiju crisis.
Even Shenzhou began large-scale procurement operations.
The Spear Bureau's enhanced operatives simply weren't effective against Kaiju-scale threats.
If monsters were attacking humanity...
Then humanity needed monsters of its own.
Honestly, people considered Drex surprisingly merciful.
If not for the superheroes constantly standing nearby keeping him vaguely ethical, he could've made incomprehensible amounts of money by deliberately prolonging the crisis through wormhole monopolies and wartime scarcity.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Earth...
London.
Jane Foster was unhappy.
As an astrophysicist, she had always loved observing celestial phenomena and exploring the mysteries of the universe.
That passion was what led her to Thor in the first place.
Back when Odin exiled the God of Thunder to Earth, Jane met him beneath the stars.
Eventually, they fell in love.
At the time, it had all felt wonderfully romantic.
But after Thor destroyed the Bifrost Bridge, seeing him became incredibly difficult.
Even after the Battle of New York, Thor had only briefly returned to Earth long enough to take Loki back to Asgard.
Since then...
He still hadn't found time to visit his girlfriend.