Chapter 1
Ruins
General Schmidt
It's been two months since the bombing of District 12. We set out almost immediately afterwards – the voyage had been planned for years, but the revelation that that buffoon Haymitch Abernathy can wield Mjolnor forced our hand and we set out earlier.
It took only two weeks to cross the Atlantic and make landfall in what was once Portugal – far longer than the record of 3 days, but not bad, considering the history of transatlantic ship crossing. The real difficulty was crossing the landmass. It was easier because we had hovercrafts – our progress is slowed by the remnants of civilization. We stop and send scouts to the cities before we dare fly over them or even close by – we don't know who has survived and what capabilities they may have.
So far, even though most of the old cities are habitable or habitable with only a little work, they are all abandoned by humanity.
Not that human life is entirely absent from the continent – from the air we see signs of active crops, and when we land to check the hovercraft and unload the barrels we brought for refueling, sometimes we stumble on camps that can only be from humans. In happier circumstances, we would seek discussions with them (does any trace of English remain here?) and find out why they've never attempted to retake their cities. My suppositions include a fear of radioactivity or some superstition that has grown out from this very real fear in the generations since the Devouring.
In less urgent times, I would have stopped in the great ruined cities in hopes of discovering that some of the artwork and architecture have survived the bombings and storms that almost destroyed humanity and years of decay. There will be time enough when the rebellion is put down, I remind myself when I think of all the possible wonders we have passed by. As it is, I am content to fly over and try to spot some of the sculptures and notable buildings from the air.
There are also physical obstacles – mountains are difficult to manage for hovercrafts. The Alps provide some tension – the ride over them is rough and there are a few times I'm not sure the hovercraft will make it, and the mission will fail far from home.
We arrive in what was once Tønsberg, Norway. It was never a huge city, with a population of less than a quarter million at it's most populous, but it is old, perhaps the oldest city in Norway. Who knows how long the Tesseract has been here?
It will be a shame if we have to raze Tønsberg, considering its history. I hope that any residents who are left are reasonable.
We disembark from the hovercrafts and are immediately aware of the presence of other humans. We don't see them right away – but we hear the unmistakable sounds of whispering and of shod human feet hurrying away when we turn in the direction of the whispering. I admit the effect is somewhat eerie, but we are all soldiers here – we press on to the old church without hesitation.
Apparently, some of the running feet warn the keepers of the treasure that we're coming, because there is an old man waiting for us in front of the church. "Greetings," he says to us, and the fact he greets us in English surprises me. "Do you speak English?" His own English is stiff and oddly accented, clearly learned from books. But it's more than passable.
"We do."
"You hail from America," he says stiffly, and I wonder how he would have happened upon enough knowledge of spoken English to guess this. Perhaps through some kind of recorded media, if a player survived. He must have been waiting for this moment for years – who knows how many languages he has mastered, just in case someone should land here, looking for the jewel he is protecting?
"We call what's left of it Panem now," I say gravely, and he nods solemnly. "We have come to look for a tool. A powerful tool to help us rebuild our nation, and yours when we are able."
"Your goal is noble, my friend, but you don't know the power of the Tesseract …"
"I am afraid you misunderstand me, Keeper," I say. "We intend to return home with it, and while I would prefer to obtain your consent, it doesn't matter to us either way." The soldiers grip their guns, and it makes a good show.
"You don't understand what it will do – it can rip holes in …"
"I'm well aware of the danger, Keeper," I say impatiently. "Please, events in Panem have forced my hand, and I have no time for niceties. Lead me to your jewel, or we will be forced to take drastic measures." He catches my drift, but doesn't step aside.
"Please don't do this – you'll destroy yourself," he begs. "You will burn!"
"I already have," I answer coldly, having to stop myself from stroking my face when I remember how my skin burned.
He leads to me a tomb and tries to trick me – I glare at him sharply and note my skepticism. You wouldn't bury the crown jewel of Odin deep in a tomb somewhere. I look around and find an elaborate carving which depicts scenes from the Norse religion – I examine it closely, and after a little time, I find a knot, disguised as the eye of a serpent, and when I press it the wall yields. All the while the old man continues pleading – for his town, for me to see "reason" about the Tesseract. "With all due respect – my nation retains enough science and technology to study this artifact, rather than bury it," I insist, realizing I will calm him down if I make it seem as though we only intend passive study for the time being. I've played my hand too soon on that, by expressing how urgently I need it, but I can blur the lines. "We hope to put it to use rebuilding – if it's safe," I add softly, as though I've just realized I was misunderstood. I bluffed about taking the village, and my men could do it, but it would cost time and resources I will not lose lightly. He has no choice, so he only nods reluctant consent as I take the Tesseract and carefully place it in a glass tube – that tube will not do much in case of malfunction, but it's still no doubt safer than handling it barehanded.
The odds should be in our favor now.
Cover Image
(Amazing) cover image created for this story by Peter Grønbech. You can find him in deviantart under the name Billebryn.
Author's Note
… And we're back!
Previous Stories:
Something to Avenge: s/9775871/1/Something-to-Avenge
Fire and Lightning: s/9800136/1/Fire-and-Lightning
I've made a couple of changes to Something to Avenge and Fire and Lightning. The relevant chapters if you want to read for yourself are 31, 37, and 38 of Something to Avenge, and chapter 38 of Fire and Lightning. If not I'll summarize – instead of Rue getting killed by shrapnel in Something to Avenge, Cato threw her during his fight with Peeta and she sustained a head injury which killed her eventually. I did this so that her death was more directly connected to the Games. The changes to Fire and Lightning were mainly just so certain developments in part III don't come out of nowhere – I have Schmidt speculate that he may have been the one who ordered Stephen's parents killed, and also refer to Tony as a "half-breed." Since I see District 3 as being predominantly composed of people of Asian descent (I don't put it beyond the Capitol to separate people based on race) it makes sense that Tony, though mostly of European descent, has some Asian heritage on his mother's side. Nothing bothers racists more than interracial couples – they may hate a given race, but they hate "traitors" even more. Even though obviously it's a different setting so he's not actually a Nazi, I still wanted to maintain the bigoted aspect of his character.
I get the impression that Schmidt had a good case of what the folks at tvtropes would call "Wicked Cultured" going on, at least in the MCU, considering that his whole mission in life is based on Nordic mythology, we hear him listening to opera at several points, and he had his portrait painted in classical style. This was par for the course for Nazi leadership, but also goes into his role as nemesis to Steve (who is an artist – in comics he's sometimes said to have work as an illustrator and in the movie you see him making a pretty impressive drawing when Peggy goes to talk to him). Schmidt also strikes me as a very pragmatic villain – if he had the men to spare, he would totally kill a bunch of the townspeople like he does in the movie. However, I don't think he'd be the kind to be evil to the point of being self-destructive, because he doesn't strike me as a madman. Which is chilling in it's own way, if you think about it.
So after reading some of the suggested changes to make Mockingjay less depressing in adaptation to film on a Buzzfeed article (here's the link adambvary/hunger-games-mockingjay-problems) and the overwhelmingly negative response to it, I want to clarify something.
Mockingjay is a wonderfully dark, depressing, and psychologically realistic book. It is a harrowing read. I hope they don't change any of it when they make the movie.
But that's not what I'm writing.
I'm not Suzanne Collins. I don't have anything important to say about war and the waste of young lives by the government. For that, please go read Mockingjay or read it again. I've tried to echo her themes as best as I can but I know I fell short, especially in this installment.
When I set out to write this, I thought I would blend the light-hearted Avengers and grimdark Hunger Games tones for something in the middle. So far my tone has skewed much closer to Hunger Games, all though I have already spared a ton of characters by the adaptation (or have I? They're not out of the woods yet). Don't get me wrong, this story will go to some dark places, but it will not get as dark as Mockingjay, not because I'm untalented (all though that may also be the case, I'll let you judge) or because I don't have the stomach for it (my original fiction is all about eating disorders, suicide, and terminal illnesses because I have some experience with the former two [as a witness] and I do research that will hopefully help people with the latter, so I feel like I do have something to say about those) but because of what the Avengers characters represent and what Katniss and Peeta represented in the first two books, and continued to represent in a tarnished way in Mockingjay. Hope. Power used for good. Courage despite the odds. It's still a dark setting, and this is probably a betrayal to the original intent, but I let those things infect my crossover at a much higher rate than they did in canon. I don't think that's a bad thing (all though you may disagree – let me know in reviews). Just … radically different from canon. So … if you haven't read Mockingjay yet go read it but brace yourself for tears. I'm hoping you'll cry at this too but … not nearly as much.
