Chapter 36: Chapter 36: The Mutated Abomination 

The next day, Pepper Potts took a very rare day off from Stark Industries, and Luke conveniently made himself scarce, leaving the Malibu mansion entirely to Tony. 

After wandering around Los Angeles for the entire day, Luke sat on a park bench and pulled out his Stark Phone prototype. 

"JARVIS, are you absolutely sure you don't have visual access to the mansion's interior right now?" 

"I apologize, Mr. Luke. Mr. Stark informed me he had an incredibly important date today and explicitly ordered that no one, including artificial intelligence, was to interrupt them. My internal sensors have been temporarily deactivated." 

"He thinks you're a person? That's a terrible joke," Luke shook his head. 1

He sincerely hoped everything was going well. Yesterday, he had spent half the day helping Tony plan the perfect date, literally exhausting every single romantic trope he could remember from the anime he used to watch. 

Staring up at the starry night sky, Luke watched the pedestrians walking by, lost in thought. 

Tony should be able to pull this off. In the original MCU timeline, he successfully locked Pepper down anyway. Though Luke wondered if Tony would actually hit a home run tonight; right before he left this morning, Luke had given Tony another quick dark energy 'detox' session just to make sure he was feeling his best. 

Luke smirked to himself. Suddenly, his phone rang. 

Checking the screen, he saw it was Phil Coulson. 

As soon as he answered, Coulson's panicked voice blasted through the speaker. "Consultant Luke! We have a massive, yellow, reptilian monster rampaging through Broadway in Harlem!" 

Luke froze. 'Wait, what? Didn't I deploy my Shadow Ninjas to monitor Dr. Samuel Sterns? Why the hell did the Abomination still appear?!' 

"Can you get here immediately? I'm trying to contact Iron Man for backup right now!" Coulson yelled over the sound of screaming and sirens in the background. 

"Tony has a critical emergency today! Do not call him! I can handle this alone!" Luke ordered quickly. While he knew Coulson would never be able to get through Tony's absolute communication blackout, he didn't want S.H.I.E.L.D. ruining the billionaire's date. 

Luke hung up the phone. He quickly ducked into an empty alley, drew a Sling Ring portal to the Stark Expo construction site to instantly recall his entire Shadow army, and then immediately shadow-stepped to the coordinates in Harlem. 

Emerging onto a rooftop overlooking the chaotic streets, Luke frowned deeply. Logically, his Shadowkhan should have been more than capable of assassinating Emil Blonsky before he forced Dr. Sterns to inject him with the Hulk's synthesized blood. Why did the Abomination still exist? 

Calculating the distance, Luke decided to just shadow-step closer rather than running, so he didn't accidentally overshoot the target with his 16x superhuman speed. 

Arriving at the main Broadway intersection, Luke finally saw the massive, yellow monstrosity tearing through the street, casually tossing cars aside like toys. 

A few dozen of his Shadow Ninjas were already engaged, desperately swarming the beast to prevent it from slaughtering the fleeing civilians. But despite their efforts, the collateral damage was severe, and several people had already been crushed under falling debris. 

Seeing the injured civilians, Luke's frown deepened. With a mental command, the true might of the Dark Dimension was unleashed. 

Hundreds of pitch-black ninjas materialized out of thin air, shocking the fleeing crowds. The highly agile assassins immediately vaulted over cars and rubble, charging straight at the giant monster. 

Standing on a nearby rooftop, Luke watched his standard ninjas efficiently evacuate the injured civilians from the immediate kill zone. Breathing a sigh of relief, he finally took a good look at the Abomination. 

"What the hell is that?!" Luke muttered, entirely baffled. 'Why does he look completely different from the movie?!' 

The Abomination in front of him bore absolutely no resemblance to the vaguely humanoid creature from the films. 

While its skin was still a sickly, pale yellow, its entire anatomy was monstrously deformed. It was running on all fours like a grotesque, oversized gorilla. Its head wasn't attached to a neck; instead, it protruded forward from the center of its chest, connected by a thick, exposed spinal column that constantly whipped around. Its entire body was covered in jagged, bone-white spikes, making it look like a terrifying alien bioweapon. 

Luke was deeply confused by the drastic mutation, but he didn't hesitate. He deployed his heavy hitters. 

In an instant, the previously empty street was flooded with the Dark Dimension army. 

A dozen massive Troll Ninjas immediately formed a defensive perimeter around the Abomination, while hundreds of Razor Claws and standard ninjas took up tactical positions on the surrounding rooftops and fire escapes, boxing the monster in. 

This mutated Abomination seemed to possess significantly lower intelligence than Blonsky's original form. Seeing the massive army surrounding it, it didn't strategize; it simply let out a deafening, beastial roar and charged mindlessly at the largest, most obvious targets—the Troll Ninjas. 

The Trolls didn't back down. Forming a solid phalanx, they charged forward to meet the beast head-on, their sheer momentum matching the monster's. 1

BOOM! 

The two forces collided with absolutely no attempt at evasion. The resulting kinetic shockwave was so intense that every single glass window within a two-block radius instantly shattered, raining a deadly shower of glass down onto the empty streets. 

The Abomination's momentum was terrifying. Its jagged bone spikes impaled the leading Troll Ninja, instantly shredding its magical construct body and reducing it to harmless shadows. 

Luke frowned slightly. He hadn't expected this mutated version to hit so hard. But it didn't matter. The Troll would respawn fully healed in exactly five seconds. He severely doubted the Abomination could out-endure an infinitely respawning, tireless army. 

While the Abomination had managed to instantly kill one Troll, the sheer impact had completely halted its charge. The surrounding Trolls immediately swarmed it, dogpiling the massive beast. 

Ignoring the bone spikes tearing into their own flesh, the heavy-hitters grabbed the Abomination's massive limbs and, with a synchronized heave, lifted the multi-ton monster entirely off the ground. 

Then, they slammed it brutally onto the pavement. 

The concrete street instantly cratered under the impact, burying the Abomination waist-deep in the asphalt. But the Trolls weren't done. 

They turned into relentless, merciless pile drivers. Massive, boulder-like fists rained down on the trapped monster in a localized meteor shower. The sheer, concussive force of the blows forced a series of pained, guttural shrieks from the Abomination. 

Watching the stable situation below, Luke sighed in relief. While the Abomination had received a massive, unexpected buff, his own army was no joke either. 

The Trolls were successfully suppressing the beast through sheer numbers and weight. There were even a few Trolls standing awkwardly on the sidelines, unable to find room to squeeze into the brutal beatdown. 

Luke mentally commanded the Troll that had just respawned. The massive creature backed up to the edge of the five-story rooftop, took a running start, and leapt into the air. 

Falling like a literal meteor, the Troll brought both fists down directly onto the Abomination's exposed spine. 

CRACK! 

The deafening impact echoed across Harlem, drowning out the sirens. The sheer kinetic force actually sent a visible shockwave through the air. Standing on the nearby roof, Luke felt the concussive blast push against him. 

Down in the crater, the Abomination stopped struggling. 

Luke relaxed slightly, though he wasn't entirely convinced the beast was dead. To be safe, he ordered the Trolls to try and physically rip the bone spikes out of the monster's back. 

In the original movie, those spikes were sharp and dense enough to pierce the Hulk's impenetrable skin. Luke figured they had to be harder than diamonds; he could probably use them as weapons to stab the Abomination to death. 

While the Trolls began their grisly work, Luke mentally connected with the specific squad of ninjas he had assigned to monitor Dr. Sterns, demanding an explanation. 

Through the telepathic link, the ninjas quickly conveyed the sequence of events. 

When Bruce Banner arrived at the lab, the ninjas followed Luke's standing orders and didn't intervene, knowing the plot required Banner to cure himself of the Hulk temporarily. However, the moment Blonsky entered the lab and threatened Sterns to inject him with the synthesized Hulk blood, the ninjas attacked, splitting into two teams. 

They had successfully assassinated Dr. Sterns, slicing him into several pieces, completely preventing the birth of the 'Leader.' But things went wrong with Blonsky. 

When they tried to decapitate Blonsky, they discovered his spine was already artificially reinforced (likely due to the earlier Super Soldier Serum injections from General Ross). The katana strike failed to sever his neck and instead launched him backward, sending him crashing directly into the massive, pressurized containment vat holding all of Banner's synthesized blood. 

The vat shattered. The highly concentrated, irradiated blood poured directly into Blonsky's open wounds. 

The massive overdose of gamma radiation triggered a violent, agonizing mutation. He didn't die; instead, he began to rapidly expand, his skin turning a sickly yellow. 

The ninjas continued to attack him, but his skin quickly became impenetrable. Their katanas only managed to inflict shallow cuts, and horrifyingly, the massive bone spikes began protruding directly out of those open wounds. 

Driven completely insane by the pain and the sheer volume of gamma energy, the newly mutated Abomination began rampaging. The ninjas tried to kite him toward an unpopulated area, but the monster was distracted by the blaring car horns and screaming crowds on Broadway, dragging the fight straight into the heart of Harlem. 

'So the timeline basically forcibly corrected itself, but made him even worse in the process...' Luke sighed, massaging his temples. At least the beast was currently pinned down. 

Just as he thought that, a terrifying, earth-shattering roar erupted from the crater. 

Luke snapped his gaze downward. 

The Abomination was visibly expanding again! Its muscle mass doubled in seconds. 

The Troll Ninjas, who were normally half a body taller than the original Abomination, were suddenly dwarfed by the mutating behemoth. 

One of the Trolls, who had been trying to rip out a bone spike, was suddenly lifted effortlessly into the air as the beast stood up. 

The Abomination's head, protruding from its chest, swiveled a full 180 degrees to look at the hanging Troll. The Troll bravely tried to punch the beast in the face, but the Abomination simply shook violently, throwing the massive ninja to the ground before casually stomping it into shadow. 

"Are you kidding me?!" Luke yelled in disbelief. 

The Troll Ninjas were his absolute top-tier heavy infantry. The fact that the Abomination could just casually one-shot them now was absurd. 

'Mid-battle power-ups are an anime protagonist trope, not a villain skill! Unless you're an alien overlord!' 1

Watching the giant Abomination effortlessly swatting his heavy infantry aside like annoying flies, Luke immediately ordered every single ninja in the area to swarm the beast and stall for time. 

Hundreds of assassins threw themselves at the monster, only to be instantly crushed, sent flying, and reduced to shadows before they even hit the ground. 

Luke grit his teeth. He dropped into a low crouch on the rooftop, his hands hovering over the concrete. 

He stopped funneling his passive energy regeneration into the Dark Dimension. Instead, he forced the raw, unadulterated dark energy directly into his physical body, letting it slowly accumulate. 

Because he was operating in the material plane, the ambient physical laws of Earth constantly eroded the magical energy, meaning the accumulation process was agonizingly slow and highly inefficient. But the power was building. 

He just needed the Shadowkhan to buy him enough time to charge his ultimate attack. 

He briefly considered directly opening a massive dimensional rift to flood the street with dark energy, but when he tried to connect to his realm, he felt a powerful, invisible barrier resisting him. 

'Right, the Sanctums' magical planetary shield! It limits massive extra-dimensional incursions!' 

Realizing he couldn't bypass a barrier that literally kept Dormammu out, Luke focused entirely on manually charging the energy within his own body. 

High above the battlefield, inside a military helicopter. 

Bruce Banner stared down at the chaotic street, watching the army of black-clad figures being systematically slaughtered by the yellow behemoth. He frowned deeply. 

"They can't kill it. They're just distracting it. Once it gets bored of them, it's going to tear this entire city apart. I'm the only one who can stop it!" Banner yelled over the sound of the rotors. 

Staring at the Abomination, Banner could feel a familiar, primal consciousness roaring furiously within his own mind. The Hulk was absolutely enraged that some insignificant thief had stolen his power. 

"So, you didn't disappear after all," Banner whispered to himself, feeling the familiar hum of gamma energy beneath his skin. 

Betty Ross didn't hear him. She lunged forward, grabbing his arm desperately. "Bruce, don't! You're cured! We fixed it!" 

Banner turned to look at Betty, the woman he loved more than anything in the world. He cupped her face and kissed her softly, but firmly. 

Behind them, General Ross stood silently, his hand resting tensely on the grip of his sidearm. 

Banner gently pushed Betty away. He gave her a sad, determined smile, then leaned backward, falling out of the open helicopter door. 

"BRUCE!" Betty screamed in absolute agony, lunging for the door. Her father rushed forward, grabbing her around the waist to stop her from falling out. 

CRASH! 

The sound of a heavy body hitting the concrete echoed up to the helicopter. 

For a terrifyingly long moment, nothing happened. 

"No... Bruce... BRUCE!" Betty sobbed against her father's chest. 

Suddenly, a deafening, familiar roar shook the very foundations of Harlem. 

Ross leaned out of the helicopter, his eyes widening in a mixture of shock and morbid relief. A massive, heavily muscled green giant erupted from the cratered concrete, sprinting furiously toward the yellow monster. 

'Goddamn cockroach refuses to die,' Ross muttered to himself. 

The Hulk didn't even glance up at the helicopter. His eyes were locked entirely on the thief. 

He could smell his own power radiating off the yellow beast. The "cure" Sterns had injected him with had heavily suppressed his strength, but the Hulk's rage was infinite. He didn't care about strategy or collateral damage. He just wanted to utterly destroy the thief! 

Down on the street, the Abomination paused its slaughter of the Shadowkhan. The grotesque head swiveled on its spine, locking onto the approaching green blur. 

A primal, instinctual hatred flared within the Abomination. Completely ignoring the annoying, immortal ninjas hacking at its ankles, the beast let out a thunderous roar and charged straight at the Hulk. 

BOOM! 

The two gamma-irradiated titans collided with the force of a tactical missile. The resulting shockwave was so powerful it physically blew several abandoned cars down the street. 

A green figure was instantly launched backward, crashing through the brick wall of a nearby apartment building. 

This was not the relatively evenly matched fight from the original timeline. The heavily mutated, fully juiced Abomination was nearly three times the Hulk's size and possessed significantly greater physical strength. 

The Hulk shook the rubble off and stood up. Feeling his own strength being artificially suppressed by the 'cure', his frustration and sheer fury skyrocketed, completely overriding whatever tiny shred of Banner's intellect remained. 

'HULK SMASH!' 

"Oh, for the love of—!" Standing on the rooftop, Luke groaned in pure frustration. "I finally managed to pin the aggro, and you just had to jump in and ruin it, didn't you, Banner?!" 

With the two titans now wrestling through the streets and collapsing buildings left and right, Luke's carefully controlled kill-box was ruined. He immediately ordered his Shadowkhan to completely abandon the fight and focus entirely on evacuating the remaining civilians from the expanding warzone. 

Meanwhile, Luke continued to furiously gather dark energy. 

This mutated Abomination felt significantly stronger than the micro-dimension Lord he had fought recently. He needed to stockpile a massive amount of energy to guarantee a one-shot kill. 

The battle raged on. The two colossal beasts slammed into each other over and over, each collision echoing like a thunderclap and generating visible shockwaves that shattered the surrounding architecture. 

The Hulk fought with unrelenting ferocity, refusing to stay down no matter how many times he was brutalized and thrown through buildings. 

The Abomination mercilessly hammered the smaller green giant. While its intelligence had degraded to that of a rabid beast, its instinctual hatred for the Hulk fueled its relentless assault. 

All around them, Luke's shadow army frantically darted through the collapsing rubble, rescuing trapped civilians and carrying them to safety just seconds before buildings caved in. 

The brutal slugfest continued for several long minutes. Eventually, the Abomination grew bored. Beating up this stubborn, relatively weak green dwarf wasn't nearly as satisfying as smashing the annoying black ninjas. 

As the Hulk charged blindly forward again, the Abomination easily sidestepped, grabbed the Hulk by the throat, and slammed him brutally into the pavement, pinning him down with a massive foot. 

The Hulk thrashed wildly, but against the sheer, overwhelming weight and strength of the mutated beast, his struggles were like a toddler fighting an adult. 

The Abomination's head lowered, its spine flexing as it brought its face close to inspect its defeated prey. 

The Hulk seized the opening and delivered a devastating uppercut squarely to the Abomination's jaw. 

RRROOOAAARRR! 

A deafening bellow erupted from the beast's chest. Lacking a proper neck, it couldn't articulate its pain, only roaring mindlessly. 

Taking advantage of the momentary stun, the Hulk violently threw off the pinning foot, scrambled up the beast's body, and latched firmly onto the exposed spinal column. With a furious roar, the Hulk began pulling backward with all his might, attempting to literally rip the spine out. 

The excruciating pain sent the Abomination into an absolute frenzy. Roaring in agony, it began sprinting wildly down the street, intentionally slamming its back through entire apartment blocks and office buildings in a desperate attempt to scrape the Hulk off. 

Buildings crumbled like sandcastles. Massive plumes of concrete dust and debris filled the air. The terrified screams of civilians trapped under the rubble echoed through the streets. 

High above the city, hidden in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. 

Nick Fury watched the catastrophic live feed, his single eye cold and calculating. The collateral damage was reaching unacceptable levels. Conventional military weapons were entirely useless against these monsters. 

The Director looked down at the modified pager resting on his desk, his thumb hovering over the activation button. 'Is it time to call her? Or... should I deploy the prototype?' 

Suddenly, a massive, terrifying energy signature spiked on the Helicarrier's tactical sensors. 

"ENOUGH!" 

Luke's voice boomed across Harlem, amplified by raw magic. 

He had finally finished charging. Nearly a million Energy Points were densely packed around his physical body, violently distorting the air and giving him the terrifying, imposing aura of a true Dimensional Lord. 

The sheer density of the dark energy allowed him to achieve unassisted flight. Levitating off the rooftop, Luke locked onto the massive dust cloud where the monsters were thrashing and shot forward like a black comet. 

He extended his right hand. The violently roiling dark energy instantly condensed, forming a sleek, pitch-black spear of pure annihilation. 

"STOP!" 

A voice laced with strange, resonant energy echoed through the street, causing the Abomination to physically stutter in its rampage. 

In the next fraction of a second, Luke materialized directly in front of the beast. Without a single moment of hesitation, he thrust the spear forward. 

The concentrated dark energy completely ignored the Abomination's impenetrable hide and dense bone armor, sinking effortlessly deep into the monster's chest. 

"Detonate." 

Luke released his absolute control over the construct. 

Instantly, nearly a million points of highly volatile dark energy violently erupted inside the Abomination's body. The corrosive, all-consuming energy flooded the beast's veins, forcefully suppressing and devouring the chaotic gamma radiation fueling its mutation. 

The seemingly invincible Abomination instantly collapsed to its knees, paralyzed by the sheer, internal destruction. 

The Hulk, who had been clinging to its back, was thrown violently to the concrete. 

Shaking his head, the Hulk stood up furiously, fully prepared to resume the beatdown. But he froze. 

Standing atop the paralyzed, dying Abomination was a comparatively tiny human. However, the sheer, suffocating volume of pitch-black energy radiating from the human was terrifying, pouring endlessly into the yellow beast's chest. 

The Abomination let out a horrific, gurgling roar—a sound completely devoid of rage, filled only with unimaginable agony. 

"Piss off," Luke growled, turning his head to glare at the Hulk. 'Is this idiot seriously going to try and interfere again?!' 

The Hulk, currently running purely on primal rage and instinct, met Luke's glowing eyes. To the Hulk's animalistic senses, the terrifying, world-ending energy swirling around the tiny human screamed one absolute truth: DANGER. PREDATOR. FLEE. 

Suddenly, the suppressed, cowardly consciousness of Bruce Banner surged forward, screaming at the Hulk to run away before they were annihilated. 

For the first time in his existence, the Hulk agreed. Without a single roar of defiance, the green giant turned around, leapt into the air, and sprinted away into the night as fast as his legs could carry him. 

Luke blinked in confusion, watching the Hulk rapidly disappear over the horizon. He had fully expected to fight the green giant next and had already mentally prepared his Troll Ninjas for the assault. 

'Well, that makes things easier.' 

Feeling the Abomination weakly twitch beneath his boots, Luke returned his full attention to the execution, ruthlessly funneling more dark energy into the beast's failing body. 

The Abomination thrashed wildly, desperately trying to stand up, but the dark energy was violently corroding its musculature from the inside out. It could only let out pathetic, wet gasps. 

At a cellular level, the dark energy was systematically erasing the beast's biology, leaving behind only the deeply ingrained gamma radiation. 

The massive reserves of gamma energy violently clashed against the invading dark energy, annihilating each other in microscopic explosions. 

A brutal, unseen war was raging within the Abomination's body. But fueled by Luke's near-infinite reserves and passive regeneration, the dark energy easily overwhelmed the finite gamma radiation, consuming it entirely. 

Once the last trace of gamma energy was erased, the Abomination simply ceased to exist. 

Blonsky's original human DNA had completely collapsed long ago due to the experimental Super Soldier Serum and the forced mutation. The only thing holding his physical form together was the ambient gamma energy. Without it, the physical body instantly disintegrated into nothingness. 

'Perfect. Didn't even leave any blood or tissue samples for Ross to secretly weaponize later,' Luke thought, satisfied. 

He let out a long breath, realizing the unique properties of Gamma radiation. It was incredibly potent and destructive, acting almost identically to a magical energy source, heavily resembling his own dark energy. 

'Wait... is there an actual Gamma Dimension in the multiverse? I hope not...' 2

Shaking off the wild theories, Luke stretched his aching muscles. He had forcefully channeled nearly a million Energy Points through his mortal body in a matter of minutes. He was completely drained and physically exhausted. 

'Wait... I used up all the active dark energy I had summoned...' 

Luke suddenly froze in panic. 

The pitch-black cloak and the shadowy mask he usually wore to conceal his identity during combat operations were entirely constructed from active dark energy! 

Luke slowly turned his head. 

Dozens of news reporters and civilians, who had survived the rampage thanks to his ninjas, were standing behind the police barricades, frantically snapping photos of him with their high-resolution cameras. 

"Oh, son of a—!" 

In a fraction of a second, Luke forcefully drained his newly regenerated passive energy, instantly conjuring a thick shadow mask over his face. 

He stomped his foot. Shadow Ninjas materialized next to every single reporter, violently snatching their cameras and tossing them directly into the Dark Dimension. 

"Actually, this one has good lighting. I'll keep it!" Luke snatched a particularly flattering polaroid from a stunned photographer before instantly shadow-stepping away into the night. 

What he failed to realize, however, was that in his desperate rush to chase the Abomination across Harlem, he had flown directly past several dozen high-definition traffic cameras and NYPD surveillance feeds. 

Back in the Helicarrier. 

Director Fury slowly released his grip on the modified pager, exhaling a long, shaky breath. 

He rewatched the surveillance footage of Luke instantly annihilating the unstoppable monster, his expression unreadable. 

After a long silence, Fury opened a secure drawer in his desk and pulled out a thick, heavily classified file. 

If Luke had been there, he would have instantly recognized the bold emblem printed on the cover: The Avengers Initiative.