Luca, who was upstairs, naturally didn't hear the conversation of the people walking away, but at this moment, his thoughts weren't on them anyway.
Even though, in Luca's eyes, those people were glowing all over with the white light unique to "core components."
Captain America's shield, Iron Man's nano suit core and glasses, Ant-Man's suit, even the Hulk's shorts and all of these things seemed super important and tied to the story.
However, Luca didn't care about any of that right now.
He looked really upset because he hadn't expected at all that this place was actually the same time as Avengers: Endgame when Tony Stark and the others travelled back to borrow the Infinity Stones.
Why is that so bad?
It goes back to before Luca crossed over that he had just recently finished watching the TV series Loki.
That spinoff series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe began precisely because, in Endgame, Iron Man and the others tried to borrow the Infinity Stones from this timeline to save their own world.
However, an accident occurred, and the Tesseract ended up in Loki's possession at this very moment.
Loki had teleported away with the Tesseract, causing a deviation in the timeline, and was subsequently captured by an organization known as the TVA — the Time Variance Authority.
Loki used it to teleport away and escape, causing a deviation in the timeline, and was later captured by an organization known as the TVA—the Time Variance Authority.
The TVA's purpose is to protect something they call the "Sacred Timeline," ensuring that everything happens exactly the way it's supposed to.
However, Loki's escape and the events that followed during his time in the TVA weren't what mattered to Luca.
What really stuck in Luca's mind was one scene in the show...
Right after the TVA caught Loki, they dropped a Reset Charge on that timeline, which completely destroyed the timeline Loki had messed up.
Yes, the entire timeline was erased like it never existed!
Back when he first watched the show, Luca had even joked about it with his friends.
Bruce Banner, when borrowing the Time Stone from the Ancient One, had confidently promised that they would return all the stones and that nothing in that world would be affected.
However, in the end, Loki took away the Tesseract, and Iron Man and Captain America had to travel back to 1970 to retrieve another Tesseract.
As a result, this entire timeline ended up being doomed.
Later, when Captain America returns the other two Infinity Stones… no one even knows who he gave them to.
Luca and his friends discussed it for a long time, but Marvel's concept of "parallel universes," "timelines," and "branches in time" was always confusing and messy.
They had discussed it, but they couldn't figure out what actually happened.
'Should I gamble and hope I'm in the version of the timeline where Loki didn't take the Space Stone?'
'Or… am I in a special kind of universe where the TVA doesn't exist, so they won't erase this timeline?'
The more Luca thought about it, the darker his expression became.
'If my presence here affects the timeline... would that be enough for it to be considered a deviation? And if I haven't been captured yet… does that mean the Time Variance Authority doesn't even exist in this world?'
'No! I have to go check it out. No—wait! I have to stop Loki!"
Luca clearly remembered that after Loki picked up the Tesseract, Loki teleported straight to Mongolia.
That's where the TVA caught him, and before they left, they dropped a reset charge to erase the timeline.
If that's really going to happen, Luca wouldn't even have a chance to stop or confirm anything by the time it happened.
He'd just be stuck waiting in fear until the TVA showed up and made their decision.
Instead of gambling on that kind of uncertainty, Luca thought it would be better to stop Loki before anything bad happened.
With that in mind, Luca immediately gave up on his plan to stay home and wait for the Battle of New York to end.
He quickly checked over the equipment he had on him.
After a moment's thought, he moved his mother into the storage room to keep her safe, left a note, and then headed out without hesitation.
He was running toward Stark Tower.
In fact, the streets outside weren't nearly as dangerous as he had imagined.
The National Guard was already deployed in large numbers, with soldiers armed with heavy weapons and armoured trucks fighting the alien Chitauri, taking a significant amount of the heat off the city.
Even though the battle was still really fierce, the police and firefighters now had a chance to evacuate civilians.
If it weren't for that giant hole in the sky where Chitauri kept pouring out, the soldiers might have actually had a chance to hold the line.
Of course, this was likely because the Chitauri's heavily armed aircraft and Leviathan had their main attention focused on the Avengers themselves.
In any case, Luca was utterly discreet on the streets.
Moreover, the police officer even tried to pull him into the crowd they were helping escape, telling him to go hide in the subway station.
However, he refused and continued his way on the Stark Tower...
If he wasn't so scared about what could happen, like the whole timeline getting erased, Luca probably would've given up and gone home by now.
"Whoosh—"
A rectangular grenade, shaped like a walkie-talkie, flew through the air and landed in front of an armored truck with a clatter.
"BOOM!"
A strange blue explosion erupted, and the armored vehicle, along with more than a dozen soldiers around it, was blasted away instantly.
Hiding behind an overturned bus, Luca didn't even want to look at the explosion that had just happened.
'That Chitauri Grenade just now… I think it had some of that synthetic white glow on it. Unfortunately, it got blown up right away, or maybe I was just imagining things.'
He planned to stay behind the bus a little longer and wait for the nearby Chitauri to leave before moving forward again.
Suddenly, a thunderous explosion sounded from above.
A huge chunk of rubble rained down from the sky, and along with them fell several Chitauri who had just moments ago been desperately climbing toward the rooftop.
Fortunately, Luca had his Power-Enhancing Kick Shoes turned on low-speed mode the whole time.
The moment he heard the explosion above, he pushed off the ground with his feet and dashed to the side, diving into a nearby shop.
"CRASH!"
The glass shattered as he smashed through the window.
Luca's right prosthetic arm scraped against the floor, and after rolling twice, he finally landed against a shelf and stopped himself.
"Thud!"
"Thud!"
Then came a few heavy sounds of bodies hitting the ground.
The Chitauri who had fallen from above all slammed into the floor.
Luca glanced at them and let out a small sigh of relief.
"Good thing I moved fast…"
But just then, a voice came from behind him with a low, aggressive growl sounded.
"Kid! Get the hell outta here!"