Marvel Brave: A power-lacking boy aims to be the strongest in a world of heroes. - Proof of a Fool — A Victory Without Heroes

Lili's lab, sixty-second floor. The air was cold and dead. Only the main monitor of Workshop Beta—a lab floor spanning four hundred square meters—cast a pale blue glow. The screen displayed the hell unfolding on Park Avenue. Buildings in flames, people fleeing in panic, swarms of Chitauri blanketing the sky. Lili sat before the keyboard. Her left hand moved across the holographic keyboard projected in midair at terrifying speed. Her other hand worked a secondary monitor, analyzing the data stream coming from Haruto's blood-soaked communicator. A small window sat in the corner of the monitor. Haruto's vitals. Heart rate, blood oxygen level, body temperature. All of them had entered the danger zone. "...Idiot." Her voice trembled. The Chitauri command signal. Its structure was a far more primitive swarm-control protocol than she had imagined. Simple frequency-hopping modulation, encryption based on a worn-out Caesar cipher variant. (*This... this is something I could crack in five seconds.*) For a genius with an IQ of 198, it was easier than a magazine crossword puzzle. But that wasn't the problem. Haruto's heart rate dropped further. A sharp, twisting pain shot through the depths of Lili's chest. (*Why... why does it hurt this much?*) It was a sensation she had never felt before. Even when her parents died in an accident when she was little, she hadn't cried. Emotions were inefficient. Logic and calculation were the only ways to survive in this world. But now. A single tear traced its way down her cheek. The tear fell onto the keyboard. The screen warped for an instant. Lili roughly wiped her tears with the sleeve of her lab coat and moved her fingers. Her trembling fingertips typed the final command. "...False friendly identification code, generation complete." She looked at the main monitor. The program's execute button blinked on the screen. This was the first time in her entire life she had used her talent for someone else. For Haruto—that incomprehensible idiot. "...Go." With a trembling index finger, she pressed the button. In that instant. The sky changed. --- Park Avenue. Iron Man—Tony Stark—noticed something was off as he slammed a missile into a Leviathan's back. "Jarvis, what's happening?" *"An anomalous command signal has been detected. Origin point... Workshop Beta, Stark Tower, sixty-second floor."* "Sixty-second floor? That's the intern lab, isn't it?" The moment Tony looked up, an anomaly unfolded in the skies above. The Chitauri fighter craft suddenly changed direction. One. Two. Three. All of them began firing their beams at their own mothership. "What the...!?" Pale blue beams exploded against the mothership's armor. Explosions. More fighter craft began turning on each other. The sky became a crucible of chaos. On the ground, Chitauri soldiers fired on one another, collapsing one after another. *"The Chitauri fleet has begun engaging in friendly fire due to misidentification of allied codes,"* came Jarvis's calm voice. *"The mothership's command protocol has completely collapsed."* Tony stared up at the sky in disbelief. Captain America—Steve Rogers—also halted his combat on the ground. Shield still raised, he looked up at the sky and stood frozen in astonishment. "This is... who did this?" Thor, too, stopped swinging Mjolnir and descended from the thunderclouds. "A warrior of Midgard pulled off something like this?" None of the Avengers could comprehend what was happening. They could only watch in stunned silence as the Chitauri fleet destroyed itself in the skies above. --- Sixty-second floor. Lili stared at the main monitor. Haruto's vitals in the corner of the screen were weakening further. His heart rate had already dropped beyond the danger zone. "...Stop it." She reached out toward the monitor. Her fingers touched the cold LCD screen. As if Haruto's body heat could possibly reach her through this display. "Don't die... If you were going to die, you should've just not done anything stupid from the start..." The tears wouldn't stop. For the first time in her life, she wished for someone to live. She had never imagined her talent could be useful in a way like this. At that moment. The portal above Stark Tower began flickering unstably. The pillar of pale blue light blinked erratically, its diameter gradually shrinking. The mothership had begun to self-destruct. The enormous hull bent and twisted from internal explosions. A thunderous roar shook the air. The screeching sound of metal being torn apart echoed through the city. *DOOOOOOOOOM!!!* The mothership exploded. Simultaneously, the portal closed completely. The pillar of pale blue light stretching from the roof of Stark Tower into the sky vanished as if severed. Chitauri wreckage rained down from the sky like meteors. Shards of metal, burning debris, the husks of deactivated fighter craft—all of it crashed into the buildings along Park Avenue one after another. Every Chitauri soldier on the ground stopped moving in an instant. Some still clung to buildings. Some remained frozen in the posture of firing beams at fleeing civilians. Some lay wounded from friendly fire. All of them ceased to function, collapsing as nothing more than empty shells. The battle was over. --- Underground parking garage. In the stench of blood, only the emergency lights flickered slowly in red. Haruto was crawling. He no longer had the strength even to stand. He clawed his way across the bare concrete with blood-soaked fingers, inching forward, bit by bit. Blood flowed from his entire body. His suit was torn to shreds from burns and lacerations, his skin exposed. Even so. He didn't stop. The shadow of the pillar at the very back. There, she lay. Sakura. The pool of blood spreading around her had grown larger than before. Her black hair was matted with blood, plastered to the concrete. Her skin was pale, her lips beginning to turn purple. "...Sakura." Haruto called her name with a hoarse voice. His throat was already wrecked. His voice came out as nothing more than the sound of leaking air. He crawled beside her and grasped her cold hand. "...I'm back..." With his blood-covered face, Haruto tried to force a smile. It was a bad habit of his—forcing a smile when things were at their worst. The small scar at the edge of his right eyebrow was hidden beneath the blood, invisible. Sakura's long eyelashes trembled. Slowly, her eyelids opened. Her large, slightly drooping, gentle brown eyes looked up at Haruto, unfocused. "...Haru...to...?" Her voice was as faint as a mosquito's whine. "Yeah." Haruto tightened his grip on her hand. His fingers, too, were stained black with her blood and his own. "...You... did something reckless again...?" Tears spilled from Sakura's eyes. The clear droplets traced down her blood-smeared cheeks and fell to the concrete. "Of course I did." Haruto pressed his forehead against hers. Their blood mingled. Her cold skin and his feverish skin touched. "I decided I'd protect you." "Thank you... thank you, Haruto..." Sakura repeated the words in her hoarse voice. Her tears fell onto Haruto's cheek. They were lukewarm. Proof that she was alive. "...Good." Haruto murmured quietly. The terror and despair that had consumed his entire body crumbled away with an audible sound. All he could think was that he was glad Sakura was alive. That was all. What he had done wasn't anything special. He had simply done what he had decided to do. But that "what he had decided to do" had saved the world. --- Park Avenue, now a mountain of rubble. The battle was over. A single woman walked through the streets littered with Chitauri wreckage. Her medium-length, fiery red hair was not pulled back as it was during missions—now it flowed freely in the wind. Her emerald-green eyes, full of deep insight, had softened their usual sharpness just slightly. The scar on her left wrist was hidden beneath her long-sleeved suit. Black Widow—Natasha Romanoff. She found Haruto and Sakura at the entrance to the underground parking garage. Haruto, his body covered in wounds, was supporting Sakura as they walked step by step toward the surface. His legs trembled, looking as though he might collapse at any moment. Even so, he did not let go of the hand supporting Sakura. "...You've crossed the wall." Black Widow let her cold, ruthless expression slip just slightly as she spoke quietly. Haruto looked up at her face. He tried to say something, but his throat wouldn't move. "You're just a high school student. You have no power. The me of the past would have dismissed an existence like yours as 'worthless.'" She took a step closer to Haruto. "But you proved it. That power isn't the only way to protect someone." Her emerald-green eyes wavered, just barely. That was all. But within that flicker in her eyes, Haruto sensed the highest respect a professional like her could offer. "Thank you." Haruto spoke with a hoarse voice. Black Widow said nothing more. She turned her back and walked away toward the rubble-clearing operation. Her back looked just a little smaller than usual. "Haruto!!" A girl's scream echoed through the ruins. Lili burst out from the collapsed entrance of Stark Tower. Her long platinum-blonde hair was a mess, her lab coat crumpled, one shoe missing. Her pale blue eyes were drenched and swollen with tears. "Idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot!! I thought you were dead!!" She ran up to Haruto and gripped his hand with both of hers. "I... for the first time in my life, I cried for someone else...! I used my talent for someone else...! I can't calculate this feeling... It's your fault my rationality has completely bugged out!!" Lili sobbed as she continued to hold Haruto's hand. Her hands were trembling. Haruto gazed at her blankly, and then, with his blood-covered face, he smiled once more. "...Thank you, Lili." "Of course... This doesn't settle the debt... From now on, I'm going to prove I can be even more, much more useful..." Still holding Haruto's hand, she continued to cry like a child. --- Stark Tower, lobby. The Avengers had assembled. Iron Man restrained Loki. The Asgardian god of mischief no longer resisted. His pride shattered to pieces, he simply sat on the floor in a daze. "How's it going, Reindeer Games?" Tony Stark stood despite his severe injuries, a new arc reactor fitted into his chest. A report from Jarvis streamed across his helmet's HUD. *"The signal that triggered the Chitauri self-destruction originated from our company's sixty-second-floor lab. The sender was Researcher Lili. However, the one who devised the operation and collected the data was the intern, Haruto."* "...What did you say?" Tony spotted Lili and Haruto standing at the rubble-strewn entrance. He opened his faceplate and approached them. "Lili, you did this?" Lili wiped her tears and raised her head. She pointed at the wounded Haruto standing beside her. "...If it weren't for this idiot, I couldn't have done anything. Coming up with the plan, going out to collect the data—all of it was this... this incomprehensible idiot..." Tony Stark's gaze shifted to Haruto. The intern he had passed by countless times without ever noticing. A mere high school student with no power whatsoever. But now. Tony recognized Haruto as a person for the first time, studying him with eyes full of interest. "...You. What's your name?" "...Haruto." Haruto answered with a trembling voice. "I see. Haruto... You've got good eyes." With just those words, Tony turned his back. But how much those words meant to Haruto—Lili, crying beside him, let out a small laugh. --- Amid the ruins where everything had ended. The S.H.I.E.L.D. retrieval team secured Loki's scepter into a specialized containment case. The long, narrow metal case closed quietly. The retrieval agents swiftly carried the case away to the Helicarrier. At that moment. For just an

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Episode 7

Name: Marvel Brave: A power-lacking boy aims to be the strongest in a world of heroes.
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