Minor Temporal Displacement
As an Avenger, Sam had flown a good many missions. None of them had ended like this.
Pairing: Minerva McGonagall & Sam Wilson
Rating: general
Warnings: none
Tropes: Meet-Ugly, Time Travel
Words: 1,329
Original Release Date: 04 Aug 2018
Square: B5 - Sam Wilson
Sam spun and somersaulted through the air in an attempt to lose the green demon-thing with giant wings that was tailing him. He looked back and shot at it but it was quick, spinning and dodging the bullets with ease. He'd already radioed to the team that he couldn't shake the thing but he knew they were all busy on the ground with this thing's big brother.
His guns clicked empty and the demon was catching up. He really didn't want to know what it felt like to be swiped out of the air by the foot-long claws on the first two hands—or were they feet?—of the thing.
What he needed was speed and the thrusters weren't up to the job it seemed. He deactivated the wings to start a freefall and then flattened his body to make it more streamline. The demon behind him roared with irritation and followed, shooting something shimmery and green ahead of them both. Sam had no chance of avoiding it but when he went through it, nothing seemed to happen. Whatever it was didn't even stick to his goggles. Ten feet from the ground, Sam pulled out of the drop and spun to watch if the demon would be able to pull up fast enough.
It didn't.
It ploughed right into the ground and he whooped when it didn't look like it was getting back up. He reloaded his weapons as he rose in altitude and looked for his teammates. He didn't see any of them. In fact, besides the demon that was lying in the torn up terrain, there was no one else. He swooped around again, surely they hadn't flown that far away.
The park the Avengers had hoped to keep the monsters contained in as they fought was completely empty. There were no upturned trees from where the demons had surfaced, no weird iridescent blue goop-blood from the first flying thing that went down. It looked pristine.
A quick glance around at the city beyond the park had Sam feeling vertigo so strongly he might have tumbled to the ground if the EXO-7 suit hadn't had stabilizers in it. The skyline was wrong. Admittedly he wasn't that familiar with the small British town they'd landed at but he knew there had been a few skyscrapers to the south that weren't there now. He would have heard those come down. What the hell was going on?
There was a pop on the ground below and he swooped down to investigate the sound and to get his feet back on the ground.
* . * . *
"Get down this—Oh," Minerva called even as the man started to descend. She'd never seen a wizard fly with wings before but she knew when she got the call that something strange was happening. Her senior Auror partner had set off to direct the Obliviation Team to cover up this grievous break of the Statute of Secrecy.
Once he was on the ground in front of her, the wings seemed to tuck back into a contraption on his back. He was wearing goggles and very odd clothes, even for a wizard. She held her wand tighter and aimed it at the ground. No need to threaten the fellow. "You've broken the Statute of Secrecy, sir, you will be fined."
"Excuse me, what?" he asked stepping closer to her. He reached up and removed the goggles. He was handsome without them obscuring his face. He glanced down at her wand in her hand and stopped. "I'm not sure what you think I've broken but I'm an Avenger, ma'am. I was just doing my job."
His American accent caught her off guard but she persisted in her duty to inform him of his crimes. "A what?" She shook her head and questioned him, "You've broken the Statute of Secrecy by flaunting your magic in plain view of Muggles. What were you thinking?"
"Umm, first off," he said, raising his hand like and gesturing to the contraption on his back. "This isn't magic. This is tech. Even Thor says magic is just advanced tech, so I don't know what you're talking about. What's a Muggle?" before she could answer him—she was sure her jaw had gone slack at his question, how could he not know what a Muggle was?—he continued, "A group of us just put a stop to a demon attack." He pointed behind her shoulder and she turned to see what he was talking about.
Laying in the turned up dirt and grass like it had crashed and slid was the strangest magical creature she'd ever seen. Actually, she wasn't even sure it was magical. It was a brilliant green with enormous, leathery-looking wings. It was lying on its side with its head down so she couldn't see its face, but she could see its legs, six of them, two with several foot long claws on either hand.
"Now, I've been calling it a demon but it could be an alien. I'm not sure. Bruce Hulked out before he and Tony could make a determination one way or the other. In any case, I got that one, and the rest of the team was right here fighting it's bigger, meaner, older brother and now they're not."
Minerva walked closer to the creature and raised her wand, casting spells to try and determine what it was and how no one had seen it. There only been reports of a man with wings flying over the park. About fifteen feet above the impact was a mysterious, shimmering green substance. Her detection spells determined that whatever it was, was messing with the temporal energy of the place. She looked back at the oddly-clad man and opened her mouth to ask him something when the creature beside her growled and swiped one of its deadly-looking claws in her direction. She jumped out of the way and cast defensively at the same time as the winged-man pulled out two guns and shot the creature multiple times.
Iridescent blue gel-like blood splattered from the bullet wounds in the creature and covered Minerva. The silence after the man stopped shooting and the creature's death throes was loud to her. She turned and looked at him. A gloop of blood dropped off her shoulder to land on her flared skirt. It stained her Auror-red robes violet and sparkly.
"Sorry?" he said.
"You're not a wizard, are you?"
"Nope. Just a man," he said, smirking.
"Did you fly through that temporal energy?" she pointed at the shimmery green cloud above them; it was starting to dissipate.
He looked up at it and squinted. "Yeah... wait, temporal? Are you saying I—time travel—or uh..."
The cloud had disappeared completely and with it, the dead creature faded out of sight as well. The jelly blood didn't, though. Minerva hoped that would come out in the wash.
The man looked back down at her and asked. "So, umm, what year is it?"
"1955. What... no, I probably shouldn't ask."
"2015," he told her anyway. He bit at his bottom lip and brushed a hand across his head as if pained. He muttered, "Never gonna tease Steve about his age again." He returned his attention back to her, "So, wizards, huh?" He didn't seem too surprised.
"I should probably take you into the DMLE," Minerva told him, "I'm not sure we'll be able to recreate whatever brought you here to send you back. You might have to... stay. Or it might just be a minor temporal displacement and time will correct itself." Even as she said it she had a feeling it wasn't going to be that easy.
"'Minor temporal displacement.' Right." He sighed but nodded and then asked. "Can I get your name, then, kid?"
She scoffed at his words and stiffened her spine. "I'm not a child."
"Sure, you're not."
"I'm nineteen and my name is Minerva McGonagall."
"Nice to meet you, Minerva. I'm Sam Wilson."
