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Chapter 71: An Exercise in Humiliation
🕑 Added 2025-10-04 16:24:21 +0000 UTC"And how much, exactly, is this costing me?" Fury's voice was a low, dangerous growl in General Ross's ear.
"I'm not paying you to invite… her," Ross spat back, his pride still stinging.
"You're not paying me at all, General," Fury said, his voice as cold as the grave. "You're paying her. And trust me, you can't afford her rates. I'm telling you for the last time: stand down. Do not interfere. This is not a suggestion. It is a warning. You anger her, you are on your own."
Ross went silent. It was the first time in his long, decorated career that he had ever heard Nick Fury sound genuinely afraid.
On the battlefield, Hermione watched the two naked, gamma-powered behemoths ignore her and charge at each other again. Her eye twitched. The sheer, unadulterated disrespect was astounding.
"Fine," she muttered to herself, her brief moment of amusement curdling into a familiar, cold annoyance. "If you won't pay attention to me, I'll make you."
She pointed her wand at the Abomination. "Expelliarmus!"
The same, insignificant jet of red light shot out. The Abomination, having seen it do nothing but shred a pair of shorts, didn't even flinch. He was wrong to be so confident. While he had no weapon to disarm, Hermione's spell, in its infinite and literal wisdom, identified the single most disarming and humiliating thing it could possibly do.
His loincloth, a tattered piece of military canvas he had tied around his waist, disintegrated into dust.
Now they were both naked.
A new, even more profound silence fell over the battlefield. The two monsters, who had been locked in a primal, world-breaking struggle just a moment before, now stood frozen, two giant, naked statues in the middle of a ruined street.
The Hulk looked down at his own bare body. Then he looked at the Abomination's equally bare body. Then, they both turned and looked at the small, floating girl on the broomstick. Their eyes were red.
"ROOOOAAAAARRRRR!!!"
It was a roar of pure, unified, and deeply personal rage. Their previous animosity was forgotten, replaced by a singular, common enemy: the tiny witch who had stolen their last shred of dignity. Together, they charged.
"That's more like it," Hermione said with a satisfied smile. She fired off another volley of Blasting Curses, not to harm them, but to halt their advance, giving herself a moment to prepare her real trap.
"Speculo Spatium!"
She waved her wand in a complex, slicing motion. The world around the Hulk fractured. The air itself seemed to crack like glass, the buildings and fires folding in on themselves into a dizzying, crystalline kaleidoscope. With a final, silent implosion of reality, the Hulk vanished, swallowed by the Mirror Dimension.
The Abomination skidded to a halt, his massive feet tearing up the asphalt. He looked around, utterly bewildered. The Hulk was gone.
"HULK! COME OUT!" he roared to the empty sky. He then turned his furious, reptilian gaze on Hermione. "Tiny witch! What did you do with him?!"
Hermione just smiled, a sweet, innocent, and utterly terrifying expression. "You like to fight so much?" she asked. "Don't worry about him. You've got me. If you can beat me, I'll let him out so you two can finish your little slap-fight."
"I'LL CRUSH YOU!" he bellowed, and with a mighty leap that cracked the very pavement beneath him, he launched himself at her, his massive, clawed hands reaching out to snatch her from the sky.
He was a foot from her, his cruel smile widening as he imagined the satisfying crunch of her small body in his grip.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
The spell hit him in mid-air. His body went instantly, unnaturally rigid. His limbs snapped to his sides, his forward momentum carrying his now statue-like form in a perfect, horizontal line until he slammed, face-first, into the side of a skyscraper with a deafening GONG. He slid down the building, leaving a massive, Blonsky-shaped crack in the facade, and hit the ground with a thunderous crash.
He lay there for a moment, stunned, his brain struggling to process what had just happened. He shook his head, the concrete dust from the building showering off his shoulders, and got back to his feet. He roared again and leaped.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
GONG. CRASH.
He got up again. Leaped. Was petrified. And crashed. Again. And again. And again. The huge, terrifying monster was being turned into a yo-yo, a plaything for the bored, black-robed child hovering in the sky.
"It's you!" he finally roared, pointing a trembling, accusatory finger at her. "What are you doing to me?!"
Hermione just made a small, dismissive "can't touch this" gesture with her wand. The insult was so profound, so infuriating, that the Abomination let out a scream of pure, impotent rage.
This isn't working, Hermione thought with a sigh. The Body-Bind Curse was a great party trick, but against a creature with this level of raw, physical power, it was only a temporary solution. It was time to stop playing.
"Sectumsempra!"
The curse was a whisper. There was no flash of light, no beam of energy. But in the next instant, a series of deep, vicious gashes appeared all over the Abomination's body as if he had been slashed by an invisible sword. Greenish-yellow blood, thick as oil, erupted from the wounds.
"AAAAHHHHHH!!!" he screamed, a sound of genuine, agonizing pain this time. He staggered, clutching at the wounds that had appeared from nowhere, a look of pure, horrified disbelief on his face. I'm… bleeding?
Before he could even process the shock, Hermione cast her next spell. "Slugulus Eructo!"
A jet of sickly green light hit him square in the chest. He froze. His eyes widened. His already-yellow face turned a shade of pale green. He made a horrible, gagging sound.
"Uuuurrrp—BLEGH!"
A thick, writhing torrent of sticky, oversized slugs began to pour from his mouth. He fell to his knees, his massive body convulsing, racked by waves of violent, uncontrollable nausea. As he vomited, his form began to shrink, his muscles receding, his bony spurs retracting, until the monstrous Abomination was gone, replaced by the pathetic, human form of Emil Blonsky, lying naked on the ground in a pile of his own slimy ejecta.
Hermione let the Mirror Dimension collapse. The Hulk burst forth with a roar, ready to continue his fight, only to see his hated enemy reduced to a weak, pathetic, vomiting human. He charged at Hermione.
"You want some too?" she asked with a grin. "Slugulus Eructo!"
The Hulk, for all his rage, was not immune. He too began to vomit, but his indomitable will and sheer, gamma-powered rage allowed him to keep advancing.
More stubborn than the other one, she noted. She pulled a small, corked vial from her pocket and, with a flick of her wand, sent it flying directly into the Hulk's roaring mouth. He swallowed it instinctively.
The effect was instantaneous. The red haze of his rage was washed away by a cold, chemical clarity. He was still the Hulk, but Bruce Banner was now in the driver's seat. And he was still vomiting slugs. The combination of the nauseating curse and the sudden, horrifying self-awareness was too much. He collapsed, the last of his strength gone.
He looked over and saw Blonsky, also lying on the ground, also suffering the same, grotesque fate. Their eyes met, two former titans, two brothers in abject, slimy humiliation.
Brother… Banner's eyes seemed to say, hold on…
"Wow—!" they both moaned, and then vomited a final, sympathetic slug at the same time.
