"Let her go!"
The red staff was a blur, its crack against a looter's wrist sharp and final. The man howled, dropping a stolen bag of medicine.
"No killing!"
A soldier raised his rifle at a cowering figure. Ethan's hand shot out, not to harm, but to expertly pinch a nerve cluster in the man's shoulder. The rifle clattered to the broken pavement as the soldier's arm went limp.
"My turn!"
His own survival instincts screamed at him to stay hidden, to let the chaos play out, but they were drowned out by the Saiyan's simple, thunderous morality. It was like his conscience had been replaced by a righteous sledgehammer. Every act of heroism, every child pulled from collapsing rubble, was another tick of the clock he couldn't afford. Ethan was a passenger in his own body, one driven by a righteous, simple-minded idiot with a hero complex.
"Soon," he grunted, leaping between rooftops, the wind whipping at his wild hair. "Just get to the edge."
To prevent the template's heroic impulses from derailing him completely, he stuck to the desolate back alleys and rooftops, a flash of orange against the gray ruin. Finally, the war-torn heart of the city gave way to the bruised edges. The gunfire was more sporadic here. He could see fields just beyond the last line of houses. Freedom.
Of course, it wasn't that simple.
His eyes caught a silver glint—a miniature missile arcing gracefully through the sky. Its target: a small, two-story house directly in his path. Through a second-floor window, he saw the terrified faces of a man and a woman, frozen in fear.
"Seriously?" Ethan snarled, but his body was already moving.
He pulled the solid, familiar weight of the red staff from his back. With a powerful leap that carried him across the street, he bellowed, "Grow, Power Pole!" The staff shot forward, a crimson streak against the sky, and slammed into the missile. The resulting explosion was a harmless pop high above the house. Ethan landed lightly on the second-floor balcony, the staff shrinking back to its normal size in his hand.
"Oh… my God!" the woman inside gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
Before their relief could set in, their expressions twisted again, this time into utter despair. Ethan followed their gaze. Another missile was coming, this one from the opposite direction. It was larger, uglier, with an angry red warhead that promised total annihilation.
The Power Pole wouldn't stop that. A missile of that size would vaporize the entire house, the couple, the two children he could now faintly sense hiding in the basement, and even him. He felt a coppery taste of adrenaline; even with Goku's durability, a direct hit from that felt like a very bad idea.
There was only one option.
He planted his feet, the orange gi whipping around him as he drew his hands back to his hip. The air began to hum, to crackle.
"Ka… me… ha… me…"
A blinding azure light, a miniature star, formed between his palms. It radiated a scorching heat that made the balcony's iron railing glow.
"HAAAA!"
A colossal beam of pure energy erupted from his hands with a deafening roar, tearing through the air and slamming into the missile. For a single, silent moment, the world was white light. Then, the missile, the light, and the sound simply ceased to exist. Not even dust remained.
"Finally… settled," Ethan breathed, his arms trembling as he lowered them. He turned to leave, to make that final dash for the city limits, but the world tilted violently.
The power vanished—not like a candle being blown out, but like a star collapsing into a black hole. One moment, he was a demigod; the next, the universe yanked the scaffolding out from under him. The strength, the energy, the Saiyan confidence—all of it drained away, leaving a bone-deep exhaustion in its wake. His vision swam with black spots.
"Time's… up," was his last conscious thought as the world dissolved into blackness.
He woke to the smell of damp earth and the feeling of a scratchy blanket. A single, bare bulb cast a dim, yellow light over rough concrete walls. He was on a lumpy cot in what was clearly a basement.
A small, concerned voice pierced the groggy silence. "Are you okay?"
His brain, still rebooting, latched onto the first nonsensical thing it could find. He mumbled, his voice raspy, "Hello, thank you, why did you eat the thank you..."
He blinked, the fog clearing. Two children, a boy and a girl no older than ten, were staring at him with wide, confused eyes. The girl tilted her head.
"We do not understand what you are saying," she said, her English accented but clear. She turned to the boy beside her. "Pietro, do you understand?"
The boy shook his head decisively.
"Oh. Sorry." Ethan pushed himself into a sitting position, his entire body screaming in protest. The sudden power drain had left him feeling like he'd been hit by a truck. "My mistake." He switched to English, the language of his old foreign trade job flowing back easily. "My name is Ethan. Who are you? And where is this?"
"I am Wanda Django Maximoff. You can call me Wanda," the little girl in the red coat said softly.
"I am Pietro Django Maximov," the boy added, puffing his chest out slightly. "And this is the basement of our home. Papa and Mama went to find food. They told us to stay here after they brought you down."
The names slammed into Ethan's consciousness. Wanda. Pietro. A knot of ice formed in his stomach. He looked at them, truly looked at them, and asked a question he already knew the answer to.
"This country… what is it called?"
Wanda and Pietro exchanged a look, as if he were the strangest person they'd ever met. Together, they answered, "Sokovia."
Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
The confirmation hit him like a physical blow. Not just another world. Marvel. A universe where cities were collateral damage, where reality was a suggestion, and where cosmic entities could erase you with a stray thought.
His mind, the mind of a cynical corporate drone, began to race, calculating. He thought of his old life—divorced parents, a feeling of being perpetually dispensable. There was nothing to go back to. This was it.
He looked at the small girl in the red coat. Wanda Maximoff. He wasn't just looking at a child. He was looking at a living, breathing insurance policy against the apocalypse. A 'get out of jail free' card for a prison the size of reality itself. He had just saved the parents of the future Scarlet Witch.
"Well," he whispered to himself, a grim smile touching his lips. "That's not a bad opening move."
The gears of fate had turned, but he had just given them a hard shove in a new direction. A happy Wanda was a stable Wanda. A stable Wanda wouldn't shatter reality on a whim. The new objective was crystal clear.
Forget escaping the city. The mission was now to survive the universe. And his first step was to attach himself to these two children and never let go. An idea, desperate and audacious, began to form in his mind.