Cast Aside Armor and Flee

The Chitauri army was nothing more than a cannon fodder force in Thanos’s hands. The Outriders were the true regular army of Thanos’s forces.

The Chitauri might have spacecraft, but their combat strength did not even rank in Thanos’s eyes.

In Thanos’s view, the Chitauri army alone was enough to deal with Earth, a world that had yet to enter cosmic civilization.

But now, the Chitauri had failed to make progress for so long that Thanos’s forces could no longer hold back. They directly dispatched their regular army and prepared to launch an attack on Earth.

As the Outriders joined the battle, a black tide surged between the skyscrapers. Whether ordinary civilians or America’s ground forces, they were like bubbles that shattered at a touch, suffering devastating losses in an instant.

The Outriders were beasts through and through. Their minds held only one thought: slaughter. In their eyes, civilians and soldiers alike were targets to be attacked.

Thus, with the Outriders’ appearance, America’s casualties became even more unimaginable.

"Move, move, move! Get our people off the ground!"

The moment Nick Fury saw the Outriders, he gave Hill the order to withdraw without hesitation.

Though she could not bear it, Hill still obediently sent the order to S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to preserve its strength.

Well then, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Quinjets had already been slacking off amid the chaos in the aerial battlefield. Now the ground forces were doing the same, putting in appearances without putting in effort. No matter what happened, their own safety came first.

"Captain, retreat! We can’t hold them off!"

Rumlow had received the order as well and immediately said this to Captain America Rogers beside him.

He had had enough. He was a senior Hydra agent, so why did he have to keep helping those civilians?

Was this some kind of joke?

Those American people could die for all he cared. He did not give a damn!

After hearing S.H.I.E.L.D.’s order, he wanted to leave immediately. To hell with this shitty task of protecting civilians. Whoever wanted to do it could do it!

"No. We are soldiers. We must fulfill a soldier’s duty!"

Captain America spoke with a righteous expression. "Even if we die, even if we have only one breath left, we must protect the people from every threat!"

Compared to Rumlow, Captain America was clearly far more "noble." He had received S.H.I.E.L.D.’s order too, but he had no intention of truly following it. At this moment, he genuinely wanted to fight until the very end.

"Rumlow, stay. For a soldier’s honor, protect these unarmed civilians with me!"

Captain America even tried to persuade Rumlow, speaking with utter righteousness and a face full of justice.

"I don’t want to die here!"

Rumlow’s face darkened as he said bitterly, "Besides, I’m an agent! Not a soldier! Got it? An agent’s job isn’t to fight the enemy head-on on the battlefield!"

That was true enough. Rumlow was not a soldier at all, so how could Captain America use a soldier’s honor to morally pressure him?

For a Hydra agent like Rumlow, saving even a few people was already unbelievable. Don’t push your luck too far!

"Besides, do you think America’s military is China’s military? Talking about sacrificing for civilians?"

After Rumlow said that, he pointed at the American troops ahead. Before he could even finish speaking, the small squad of American soldiers in front of him, just like the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, either received an order or were simply afraid of dying. The entire squad turned around and ran, speeding away in an armored vehicle and leaving a trail of dust behind.

This scene left the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents stunned.

They had merely been slacking off in the chaos, but were still fighting at least. Seeing the American troops simply run away, they could only marvel in disbelief. Then the agents drove off as well.

"…"

The rest of Rumlow’s words were choked back by that sight.

"This…"

Captain America was dumbfounded. When he had fought the Nazis back then, American soldiers had certainly feared death, but not to this extent.

Moreover, back then, there had been many heroes among the Allies, including in the Soviet Union, who sacrificed themselves for civilians. Soldiers of that era had truly deserved the title of "soldier." But faced with this squad of American troops now, he was utterly speechless.

"Stop being foolish, Captain!"

Rumlow took a deep breath. Looking at the dozen or so civilians following behind Captain America, he said resentfully, "Captain, can you have at least a little self-awareness? How many people do you think the two of us can save? Look at it. After all this time, we’ve only saved these dozen people!"

A dozen people? What did that amount to?

In this battle, more than a thousand people had died.

A dozen people were nothing but a drop in the ocean!

How could he even bring up a dozen people as if it meant anything?

"Even if you save these dozen people, at the same time, at least hundreds or thousands of others will die!"

That was Rumlow’s view, and it made a great deal of sense.

The strength of Captain America and himself alone could not make any real difference in a war. The two of them had just risked their lives fighting the scattered Chitauri soldiers, but their results had been minimal.

Any one Leviathan that slipped through could bring hundreds or thousands of Chitauri soldiers down with it. There were already more than a dozen Leviathans that had landed in New York, and tens of thousands of Chitauri troops. Their weapons were vastly more advanced than America’s military equipment, and they had already beaten America’s forces into a panicked rout. Now, with the Outriders descending, every American soldier had lost the will to resist and turned to flee without hesitation.

"But no matter what, we still have to do our part and protect civilians as best we can…"

Captain America felt miserable, yet he still tried to persuade Rumlow.

At a time like this, he would not blame Rumlow. After all, fear was only human; no one could calmly walk toward death.

Still, Rumlow’s words had indeed struck him to the core.

It was true. Since the battle began, he and Rumlow had come down to the ground to evacuate the crowds, but once the Chitauri army appeared, they had been overwhelmed. He did not know whether the people they had evacuated earlier had run into danger. In any case, all they could protect were the helpless civilians right before their eyes.

So, when it truly came down to it, the only people he could count as having "saved" were these dozen or so people in front of him.

And now that they were about to retreat, if they could not take these dozen people with them, then these people would likely have no choice but to die as well.

What they faced was merely a microcosm of the entire battlefield. Most American soldiers had also begun to cast aside their armor and flee, exposing even more civilians to the enemy.

Whether Chitauri troops or Outriders, neither had any notion of sparing the unarmed. Without the military’s protection, civilian casualties instantly became catastrophic.