Marvel: The Awakened One

Hawk had no idea how other Saints trained.

The ones he remembered were from an anime, after all.

This was reality.

And as everyone knows...

Stories need logic. Reality doesn’t.

And so...

Hawk, who had thrown ten thousand punches a day for a thousand consecutive days, had long since mastered this simple movement to the point of perfection.

What was that Bruce Lee saying?

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

Hawk had thrown and retracted his fist more than ten thousand times. Now that he had completed the activation of his Cosmo, that simple punch had undergone a fundamental transformation.

The Sonic Fist.

It was a technique that allowed his punches to reach the speed of sound. By burning his Cosmo, he could even shatter that barrier.

What does that mean?

It means that by the time you feel the impact of my fist, you will only then hear the sound of me throwing it.

That is the Sonic Fist.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

As the flyer exploded in the sky above, the Chitauri captain—who had jumped to safety at the last possible second—heard the sonic boom rip past his ears. He pulled a weapon from his back, a spear-like weapon that glowed with the same eerie green light, and fixed his gaze on Hawk, who now stood before him, bare-chested, his physique like that of a Greek statue.

It couldn’t be helped.

During the Chitauri’s carpet bombing, Hawk had been unharmed, but the t-shirt he’d worn for years had been shredded by flying debris.

It didn’t matter.

Now, dressed only in a pair of gray sweatpants and old sneakers, Hawk felt even stronger.

And it wasn’t an illusion.

Everyone knows the rule.

A little battle damage is a power-up.

”HUMAN!!”

The Chitauri captain gripped its glowing energy spear, its oversized green-bead eyes locked on Hawk from behind its faceplate.

On a monitor aboard the Chitauri mothership, deep within the wormhole, Hawk’s image now appeared.

Hawk looked at the captain and its glowing spear and cracked a slight, crooked smile.

The next second.

He extended his right hand, palm open, then curled his fingers, beckoning the Chitauri captain forward.

No more words were needed.

”Come on.”

”You will die!”

The Chitauri captain, seeing Hawk’s dismissive expression and insulting gesture, remained emotionless. With a CRACK, it stomped its foot, shattering the ground, and launched itself forward like a missile. As it closed the distance, the tip of its spear glowed, firing off a volley of energy blasts.

Hawk pushed off the ground as well. The asphalt beneath his feet spiderwebbed and collapsed as he shot forward, transforming into a streak of golden light that tore through the air, directly at the Chitauri captain.

In his memories, once a Bronze Saint awakened their Cosmo, earned the recognition of their guardian constellation, and donned their Saint Armor, their bodies became terrifyingly powerful.

Their durability was incredible. Their punches and movements reached the speed of sound.

Even their lifespans far exceeded that of a normal human.

Although Hawk had only just awakened his Cosmo, had yet to ignite a single constellation, and didn’t even have a hint of a Saint Armor, it didn’t change the fact that, in a very real sense, he was no longer human.

And so...

Squelch!

The Chitauri captain, who had been rocketing toward Hawk, trying to pin him down with ranged attacks before closing in for the kill, suddenly froze. Its expression twisted, and it coughed up a spray of green blood.

The force of the eruption was so violent it blew the metal faceplate clean off, revealing the grotesque, insectoid face beneath.

The next moment.

The sound of the punch arrived, exploding next to the captain’s ear.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The Chitauri captain dazedly looked down, seeing the arm that had punched clean through its hardened armor and was now buried in its chest.

It let out an incomprehensible, gurgling shriek, trying to lift its impossibly heavy head to get one last look at the human who had killed it in a single blow.

But...

It was out of time. Just as it raised its head, the arm was pulled from its chest, and an infinite darkness consumed it.

Thud.

Without Hawk’s arm to support it, the Chitauri captain collapsed to the ground like a dead insect.

As the captain fell, Hawk casually hooked his finger, catching the energy spear before it could hit the ground.

A green, liquid-like energy flowed within the weapon, causing the spear to glow.

Hawk hefted the spear in his hand.

A thought suddenly occurred to him.

If he were to sell this energy spear, and the other rifles from the soldiers he killed, on the black market... how much would they be worth?

Alien weaponry...

That had to be valuable, right?

Thinking this, Hawk instinctively glanced toward a corner of the ruined apartment building.

When he had been arranging the bodies, he’d tossed the four energy rifles he’d collected into a large crater.

Just then.

A brilliant flash of blue light from the direction of Manhattan caught his eye.

He snapped his head up.

He looked toward the sky over the city.

The colossal pillar of blue light that had stretched from earth to sky was gone. At the same time, the tear in the sky was closing at a visible rate.

”That’s it?”

”It’s over?”

”The Chitauri invasion event is already finished?”

”Somehow it feels...”

Hawk blinked.

He was tempted to say that if he’d known the Chitauri invasion would be this pathetic, he wouldn’t have been so worried.

But...

Hawk’s gaze returned to his surroundings. He looked at the utter devastation, the war-torn ruins of his neighborhood, where he could still see the mangled remains of his neighbors. He swallowed the thought.

It wasn’t that the Chitauri were weak.

It was that he had become strong.

”If I hadn’t awakened my Cosmo at this exact moment, a piece of me would probably be lying in that wreckage right now.”

Hawk’s eyes fell on the gruesome remains scattered across the rubble. The thought solidified his resolve.

He had to get stronger.

And keep getting stronger.

Not for fame, not for glory, but for one simple reason.

For the right to say one single sentence.

My Fate Is My Own!

But for now, Hawk had a more immediate problem to deal with.

Namely...

Finding a safe place to stash the five alien weapons he had just earned from his hard work, and then figuring out how to sell them for enough cash to improve his life.