Ok, a few words first.
Firstly, thank you all for coming back to the Godzilla|Marvel Saga, I hope that you all will enjoy these future additions at least as much as you enjoyed the first book.
Secondly: Get an account! If you are on here as a guest, and leave a comment with the expectation/hope I will respond, then you need to have an account with FanFiction. If you don't, I'm literally unable to reply to you. The site has nowhere to send the reply. So since I like responding to you guys so much, please, help me, help you, get a response to your comment.
Thirdly: Book 2 "AFTERMATH" Is a collection of different stories, and are not, I say again, NOT in chronological order. It will also not have the grand scope of characters and events that "WORLDS COLLIDE" had. WC was big for a reason. If you are wondering what a particular character is doing during these events, don't worry, their time will come.
Alright, I think I've covered my bases here. So without further ado...
The Godzilla|Marvel Saga continues.
AGENT GIGAN
Part 1:
Marvel Universe 115
2 days after Godzilla returned
Tall double doors slid away from one another, illuminating the long dark hanger from the outside. A woman in a tight black outfit stood in the light's path as the darkness parted, a serious face under her wavy red hair. The scope of the hanger did more than dwarf her, it reduced her to a speck of shadow against the yawning entrance. When the doors reached the end of their track with a clang, she did not move, instead she welcomed the incoming object.
"CLEAR!" She announced.
The roar of engines whined to life, dozens of motorized flatbeds working in unison at their massive task. Laying with the right side of its face upon the foremost vehicle, the head of a motionless creature was hauled into the empty space, the tall metallic spike that toped its cranium as long as a commercial plane. Passing over the threshold, its single red optic, cracked and spider-webbed in the center.
As the delivery of the titanic body continued, a charcoal-grey van bearing the eagle crest of the Strategic Homeland Intervention and Enforcement Division drove in beside it. Coming to a stop next to the woman with an abrupt break, the door panel opened, and out stepped Otto Octavius. Long metallic tentacles gripped onto the concrete floor to help carry him out, moving him forward with graceful strength even as his legs dangled uselessly. The man emerged, civilian clothes on over the body harness that anchored the tentacles, his attention transfixed on the cybernetic titan, his grand ambition laid out before him.
The red-haired woman greeted Octavius with a slight nod, but kept her distance. Not that he took the effort to notice as her, the locomotion of the artificial arms keeping him on a parallel course with the body.
Next out of the van was a blonde man in the standard SHIELD uniform, Agent Clay Quartermain supervisor of the transport mission flexed his spine after a long ride. The woman greeting him with a markedly more friendly nod of the head. He returned it with a gesture of his own and a smile of relief. Quartermain reached back into the van and extracted a briefcase likewise embossed with the eagle logo. Heaving it out with no small degree of grunting, he extended the handle, set it on the floor, and carted it off to attend his own business.
Last out of the vehicle, was another woman with red hair. Carrying herself sharply in a SHIELD uniform, she presented a near mirror image of the other. Her features were sharper however, having a more predatory gleam in her blue eyes. This new arrival waved a few polite fingers in her direction along with a tight smirk. Agent Claire Marion draped her right hand over the butt of her holstered sidearm before falling in behind the men.
The woman raised the corner of her mouth in an imperceptible half-snarl. But all the while the droning machine noise of the flatbeds behind her continued, and it was now she turned back to examine the awe-inspiring sight. Clad in twilight blue armor, bearing weapons comprised of interstellar metals, and bleeding and sparking from its several exposed wounds, Gigan, was all but dead. She wondered if such a thing could even be considered more animal than machine to qualify as dead.
"Our encounter with the monsters from the other side changed our world forever.
Wakanda no longer existed, Westchester, Connecticut and swaths of New York City had been leveled,
S.H.I.E.L.D. was a shadow of it's former self, spending as much time putting itself back together as it was maintaining operations. Since priority was focused on rebuilding civilian infrastructure, work on the Triskelion took almost a year to complete. A second Helicarrier had been in the manufacturing process when Godzilla destroyed the fist one, but progress on its construction was brought to a halt by the diversion of resources. It was only when repairs to the Triskelion was finished that the time and energy was reallocated, taking a further 4 months to complete.
Native threats too, reared their heads in the power vacuum. The paramilitary organization HYDRA took the opportunity to increase in size and flex their muscles overseas, becoming the shadow government to several cities and regions already known for corruption.
The Brotherhood of Mutants, having liberated their leader Magneto, staged several terrorist attacks against governments that had instituted harsh laws on Mutants, mostly in the Islamic nations and China. The X-Men tried to combat them, but the Brotherhood avoided direct conflict where they could. Choosing to strike and withdraw before counter-forces could be brought to bear.
Then there were the few incidents involving our own Kaiju, as we had adapted the term from our neighbors. Fortunately, Spider-Man was able to prevent a creature in New York City from causing more serious damage than it could have. The Fantastic Four also dealt with a bizarre alien life-form that had gotten loose in the Atlantic.
Without the reach of S.H.I.E.L.D. to intervene, foreign and private groups took their own measures towards protection. Justine Hammer, daughter of Justin and inheritor of Hammer Industries made a fortune with a revitalized Sentinel Program, having acquired the technology from the defunct Trask Industries. Using the death of her father as a selling point to portray herself as a crusader for security, she was able to sell hundreds of the androids to governments and corporations. Some were used to secure borders, some to guard certain installations, and some to crack down on dissidents.
All the while, the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury, had his own vision of the future of American security, a daring new initiative called 'Project Insight'. It was originally conceived as a program to identify and resolve hostile persons and events either before or as they happened. But the acquisition of the Gigan changed things, transforming the project into something much more ominous.
My name is Natasha Romanov, known to others as the Black Widow. I was tasked by Director Fury to oversee the security of the project. We had intercepted several bits of intelligence from groups like A.I.M., The Hand, and HYDRA concerning their interest in infiltrating the base where Insight was being put together, A.I.M. the most of all. Not to say I blame them, who wouldn't want a giant cybernetic war-machine at their control?"
FOUR MONTHS LATER
"Is it not fascinating?" Otto exclaimed, peering through the magnification goggles. On the table before him, was one of the cybernetic spider-droids suspended upon a thin pedestal that allowed its arms to hang down. "Its construction is seamless, more advanced that any terrestrial technology I've ever seen!" The cat-sized creation was a sleek black disk, fat in the center and rounded towards the edge, from ports on its sides came four segmented legs ending in walking spikes, and four more appendages from the top side ending in grasping digits.
Around the table, Nick Fury stood with arms folded across his chest, and Quartermain leaned forward, handling one of the lifeless tentacles.
"looks like one of those claws you use to grab a stuffed animal out of a prize machine."
Otto grinned, his own fingers tightening in anticipation. "A rudimentary observation, agent, but sufficient. The debriefing from Katherine Pryde and Mrs. Pym confirms that these magnificent creations served to maintenance the innards of the cyborg." He picked the thing up in his hand, cradling it like a piece of ancient pottery. "But even this incredible work is paltry compared to the monster itself."
"What have you learned Octavius?" Fury asked, breaking the stoic silence he had maintained since arriving. "What do we know about this thing?"
Otto handed the spider-droid to one of his tentacles, and pivoted towards the window of the room, which overlooked the main space of the hanger. Supported on multiple pillars, the space-kaiju Gigan lay prone, it's limbs, head and tail suspended by a forest of cables from the ceiling. Dangling like a marionette, tangled in strings. Dozens of scientists and workers bustling around him like termites on a mound.
"I could spend the next thousand years studying the Gigan. We have only scratched the surface, in a most literal sense."
One of the doctor's metallic arms reached over to a large glass cylinder with a chrome cap, inside of which was a pot of dark colored sand and dust. The claws clamped around the top and brought it over to Fury to hold.
"During our initial inspections, I discovered some encrustation lodged in one of the exposed artificial lungs, an accumulation of dust it must have inhaled."
"And what does it tell you?" Turning the jar over in his hands, Fury watched the material slide smoothly.
"What you are holding, Director, are compounds and elements that mankind has never seen before. What's more, after analyzing the compounds we were able to identify, the radiation and specific composition tells us that this creature is roughly six-billion years old. Give or take."
"Six billion years old?!" Agent Quartermain balked, staring at the dust incredulously. "How is that even possible!?"
The multi-armed scientist smirked, amused by the man's bafflement, his lack of scope. "My educated guess, is that the cybernetic altercations have extended its life, though, we have no way of knowing what this creature's natural life-span would have been."
On the window before them, Otto pressed his bare hand, activating the built-in computer. A series of data windows appeared across the pane, graphs of the monster along with various measurements and mathematical formulas.
"There is also of course the data provided by Reed Richards that he obtained on the other side."
Another series of pictures splashed on the glass, these ones depicting Gigan as he was in the early 1970's. Green skin, gold scales, and hook-like appendages instead of the metallic scythes.
"As we see, the armor he wears now is a recent modification, likely the hand of adoptive masters and not his original creators. See here before, its body was more organic. Curiously, and while I could be mistaken given the circumstances, I would further say that the modifications to its vital organs; brain, heart, aforementioned lungs, are original. Their technological signature is not just older than the exterior retrofitting, but, I think, far more advanced."
Fury noted the clear distinction between the design concepts, imagining the designers sacrificing the fluidity, reaction time, and instincts that came with a living breathing actor. Exchanging it for superior weaponry, defenses, and no doubt, control. He for one always preferred the human factor to micro-management. While there were downfalls like unpredictability, it proved the more efficient method for getting things done.
"Redesigned for combat, for war."
"Quite right." Otto summoned another data window, this one containing a video file. Playing, it showed Gigan raking its thin red beam across a cityscape, an armada of alien aircraft in the skies behind it. Then the scene cut to show it grappling with Godzilla, the atomic titan's hand pushing back the gnashing beak pincers. Gigan lashed out with the back edge of it's scythe, slicing into Godzilla's neck and ushering a gush of blood to come spurting out, Godzilla retaliating with a tail swing the bowled the cyborg over.
Watching the fight, Nick Fury thought back to the bombardment Godzilla had withstood from the Helicarrier, nothing in their arsenal doing so much as make him flinch.
"The metal weapons, do you know what they're made of?"
At this, Octavius waved his palm across the screen, removing all the cluttered data. Then his fingers maneuvered on the pane as if he were entering commands, after which a new series of windows appeared. The two in the center, featured molecular composition formulas, along with images of microscopic analysis. The details of the comparison were almost identical as far as Fury could tell.
"The one on the right is what the Gigan's scythes and buzz saw blades are made of. The one on the left is Adamantium." Otto pointed to each in turn.
"But they look the same." Clay remarked. "This thing is armed with Adamantium weapons, like Wolverine?"
"To the untrained eye, it would appear so." The doctor corrected. He laid a finger on each image, and moved them to the center where they overlapped. "There are however, slight differentiations in composition and molecular structure. A brilliant example of 'convergent metallurgy' if you will. I have dubbed this variation: Adamantium Giganus."
Quartermain raised an eyebrow. "Gig-anus?"
Fury grunted in the effort to hold back a chuckle, but Otto made a sound of something temporarily lodged in his throat. "Comical applications aside, agent, we still have quite a way to go to before we fully grasp the nature of the cyborg. I expect we will learn much more once we get the smaller machines up and running again to conduct repairs."
"You sure that's a good idea, Otto?" Fury asked. "Have a bunch of alien robots running around the facility?"
Octavius dismissed the data on the window with a wave, clearing the pane. "It is our best option, Director. We simply do not possess the materials or the details required to return the Gigan to its full functionality. The droids however…" The tentacle swung over, still clutching the black automaton. "They know everything."
THREE MONTHS LATER
The floor of the facility and underlying substrata had been steadily excavated for months, all in the service of installing a vertical support bracket tall enough for the cyborg to stand upright. Hundreds of tons of earth and stone removed by crews working day and night. It would have been enough to build a mountain on the salt lake outside the facility, but the Pym Particles used to shrink the shipping containers made concealing the massive amount downright convenient. The material was put to good use however, reinforcing the foundation of the Triskelion.
Gigan, now secured in the brace, was covered by catwalks and scaffolding, enabling the men and women to conduct their work no longer hindered by having half their subject inaccessible. Scientists in small mobile bucket lifts took samples from inside the open wounds, collecting gobs of tissue and mucus in sterile containers, and using hydraulic cutting tools to remove bits of armor.
One female scientist examining the broad red optic laid her hand on the surface and felt that it was, incredibly, still warm.
Lurking on a scaffold that spanned the roof of the facility, the Black Widow leaned over the railing, observing all that occurred below with a keen eye. Despite the vetting process that any of the crew or scientists had gone through to be here, the specter of a mole or saboteur could not be ruled out. Most of everyone seemed normal, a few having a personality quirk or two. But the doctor, the man in charge of the restoration project, Otto Octavius had the uncanny ability to creep out even her experienced nerves.
She took out a small telescoping lens from her beltline, flicking it to its extended position. Putting it to her eye, she spied down to his office, there through the wide window, she could see him in the midst of a delicate procedure.
The spider-droid was held aloft on its little pedestal, arms strung above it to keep clear of the things equatorial line. Another machine, built atop an adjoining table, looked something like an industrial laser, only scaled down. Aimed directly at the droid, were twin tubes no thicker around than the barrel of a .22 rifle.
Octavius slipped a pair of protective goggles over his eyes, and making extra sure the bores were aimed on target, laid his hand on a dial. As he turned it, a pair of brilliant blue lights beamed outward to strike the body of the droid on its equatorial line. A trail of smoke began to rise from the point of contact, and Octavius turned the dial a bit more. Satisfied by a newly erupting shower of sparks, one of his metallic arms reached out to manipulate a dial on the other table, this one operating the base of the pedestal.
As the lasers continued to bite, the droid was carefully spun in place, leaving a trail of white-hot superheated metal as it did. When the procedure had run its course, and the lasers has circumnavigated the entire disk, he turned off the rays and deactivated the engine at the control panel with an audible whine as the power cells ceased to feed. Moving the laser machine aside, two of his artificial limbs latched onto the top and bottom of the alien machine, and slowly peeled the halves away from one another, one side an empty shell. The inner circuitry exposed, he hastily removed his goggles and gazed on with awe at the work of the Vortaak war-engineers.
ONE WEEK LATER
Octavius hovered over the naked brain of the spider-droid, cradled as it was in the bowl-shaped holder. Strapped to his face he wore a set of microscopic goggles, capable of magnifying the tiny circuitry before him. A shiver of excitement went down his spine as he examined the alien craftsmanship, the shiver ending at the lumbar where all sensation was cut off.
Two of his tentacles lowered methodically, tiny instruments poking out from their palms to do the precision work. The reflection of the small sparks and arcs of power danced in the lenses of the glasses, a mind totally consumed with unlocking its secrets.
SIX MONTHS LATER
The two crewmen in their SHIELD overalls bearing sub-machine guns fired a few errant shots at their pursuers, their attempt to steal one of the android spiders foiled by a suspicious agent. Their superiors at AIM were more demanding than usual in acquiring specimens of the cyborg's technology, telling them to return with something useful or not at all. It was with this sense of urgency that had pushed the men to become sloppy.
Escaping blindly down a hallway that branched off the main chamber, the one in front, holding a droid in his hands, put his shoulder into a door to open it and rush through. His partner paused and turned at the threshold, raising his scorpion submachine gun. But it never went off.
The body of the weapon was pushed aside as Agent Marion pounced on him, striking with a kick to the outside of his right knee at the exact moment she moved out of the guns line of fire. She followed-up with a palm strike to his nose, shattering the cartilage and sending blood and snot in a violent spray. This man however was merely an obstacle, it was the other man she needed. Claire turned in place, putting her back into his chest, wrapping her right arm around his own to ensnare the weapon into her control.
Driving backwards, she used his body as a shield entering the room. The partner still holding the droid instinctively leveled his own weapon, firing a few shots into his former accomplice's back in hopes of killing the agent through him. A burst of six shots spat forth, puncturing the hapless thief across his back, and eliciting a series of choking gurgles, crimson bubbling up from his shredded lungs.
The burst came to an abrupt end when the hammer clicked on the final round, the magazine empty. The man fumbled into a hip-pocket of his overalls for a second, but before he could even draw it out, Claire dropped her center of balance, allowing the dead-weight on her back to roll off her. In control of his weapon however, she fired a short four-round burst that ripped into flesh.
The man's body jerked comically with each shot, before both his weapon and the droid fell from his hands. He collapsed to his knees, head leaning backwards, watching helplessly as she approached.
"Who are you working for?" Claire asked in a calm and callous tone
But he could do little else beside gurgle and choke, staring up at her with wide, terrified eyes.
"You're not HYDRA." She said. Suddenly a shimmer of motion swept of her face, exchanging white skin for blue, and the yellow eyes of Mystique narrowed. "I would know."
The commotion of boots coming closer from the hall made her twitch with irritation, forced to resume her disguise before getting the answers she wanted. She lashed out with the heel of her right foot, hitting him under the chin and snapping his neck with a sickening crack. By the time she turned around, the familiar mask of Claire Marion was back on.
The first to enter the room was Agent Romanov, carrying a black pistol whose size belied the force of the rounds it bore. She saw Agent Marion standing over the second man, a trickling cut across her cheek evidence of a struggle. A few feet away, the spider droid lay where it had rolled to a stop. Marion stepped to retrieve it, but Natasha was quicker, grabbing it calmly but firmly before the other woman could lay a hand on it. For a few moments the two women stared at one another.
ONE MONTH LATER
The spider-droid that had been opened was positioned in a frame designed to suspend it with minimal contact to the surface of the table, the brace constructed on non-conductive wood for protection. A dozen red, blue, and copper wires sprouted from the circuitry like a tangle of long hair, attached to specific places Octavius had deduced would stimulate the operating system.
He again wore his protective goggles, and a custom built suit of armored sections in case activation resulted in blowback of energy. Outside the room, watching through the window, Agents Quartermain, Romanov, Marion, and Director Fury waited with tight lips for the climax of the experiment. The reputed mad scientist had spent the better part of four months inserting his own hardware into the alien circuitry, hoping to override any programming that might prove hostile to humans.
The other ends of the numerous wires were coiled around one of four metal conductors, metal orbs the size of baseballs atop grounded cone-like spikes. Like the previous operation to open the droid, his hand was on a power control dial, ready to turn on the juice and bring this thing back to life. He gave his onlookers one final nod, which Fury returned, and turned the dial.
Arcs of electricity sparked between the orbs, increasing in succession the higher the dial was turned. The current traveled down the wires and hit the brain of the droid, illuminating the room with the glow of energy coursing into the circuitry. A throbbing sound accompanied the continuous power flow, soaking it in like water into a sponge.
The droid jerked suddenly, as if waking from a nightmare. Its burst of activity toppled it from the wooden brace, yanking itself away from the wires. Otto, stunned, recoiled where he stood, his metallic arms moving in front as an extra barrier of protection. On the other side of the window just behind him, the startled agents leaned a bit closer.
A red light appeared on the remaining half of the droid along the side as it righted itself onto its legs, the exposed half downwards. Otto watched the thing scramble somewhat haphazardly around the lab, hesitant to do anything to stop it that might earn its ire or disable it again. Finally, the spider came to a stop, its eye staring up to a series of plastic drawers. After a second it dashed over to the side of the room quick as a mouse, climbing up the desk, and up the wall of shelves.
Two tiny versions of Octavius' own arms sprouted from the top of the spider, and pulled the draw open. Reaching then inside, they extracted the other half of its carapace, clutching it to its exposed underside. A third arm slithered out from the body, the tiny digits separating to reveal what looked like a hypodermic needle. Craning over to the seam, a thin green beam shot out of the needle, the neck of the limb moving smoothly around the body. Reversing the work that Otto's laser had done, the spider-droid mended the separation without any outward sign of having been apart.
"Fascinating." Octavius muttered, the digit of one of his tentacles adjusting the goggles on his face.
Now made whole, the spider turned its eye towards Otto, crawling this time more methodically back onto the table where it had been resurrected. His metallic arms wavered ambiently as they usually did when not in active use, the man still marveling at the efficiency of the droid's artificial intelligence. The spider's own articulate tentacles began to sway in mimicry. It couldn't be seen behind the opaque lens of the goggles, but Otto's eyes opened in awe.
"Hello there my little friend."
From the other side of the window, Nick Fury watched the encounter play out with a tightened fist, not knowing whether to call for the room to be locked down or celebrate the milestone achievement in getting the cyborg operational again. Romanov and Quartermain stared intently at the machine, waiting for any sign that it could become a threat to the personnel of the facility. Agent Marion saw visions of a new world order being birthed.
An idea flashed into Otto's mind, a potentially risky one, but one worth a shot. There was a locked safe to his left, and he used one of his metal limbs to engage the combination dial. Entering the sequence of numbers with mechanical speed, when the lock clicked, the digits grabbed the handle and pulled it open.
The droids attention shifted immediately. Octavius' tentacle pulled out another of the crawling automations, holding it up for its counterpart to observe before setting it down on the table. For a few seconds the modified droid seemed to regard the other curiously, trying to figure out why it was not operational. It moved in close, using its arms to tilt the silent sibling so it could look into the glossy side. A beam of red light was suddenly cast from its eye, into the identical position of the other.
This interaction continued for several moments, then like a switch had been flipped, the legs that had been flaccid snapped to attention. A red light of its own appeared on the side of the second droid, signaling to its duplicate a successful activation. The two backed away from one another, the newly awakened drone pivoted sharply and heading towards the door.
Its leg spikes worked their way up the seam between the door and the frame itself, locating the handle half-way up. With a combination of limb work and extending its stalks, it opened the door.
The droid scrambled out of the room and onto the grated walkway, Romanov and Quartermain reached for their sidearms, prevented from drawing only by the outstretched arm of Nick Fury.
As if knowing instinctively where to go, the droid leaped from the edge of the platform, plummeting nearly a hundred feet until it landed on the railing of another catwalk scaffold, light as a feather. From there it skittered along the bar until it reached a new jump off point, heading inexorably in the direction of the titanic cyborg.
The SHIELD agents gawking over the railing watched the relatively tiny robot make its way home. Octavius however, was still transfixed by the sentient little android on his work table, staring back at him, curious, expectant.
THREE MONTHS LATER
SHIELD scientists and mechanical workers sat around a table in the break room of the facility, the sink and refrigerator kept tidy and clean by the staff or professionals. A few men eating sandwiches munched casually as they watched the news feed on the television in the upper corner of the room. Sentinel units in the employ of the Roxxon corporation had successfully repelled an assault on one of their south Pacific oil rigs by Eco-terrorists. Footage of the humanoid robots blowing a hole in the hull of the invasive ship with energy weapons from their palms played over and over. What had gripped the public's attention in the time since their re-debut, was not the speedy rate at which governments and corporations purchased units, nor was it the astronomical profits HAMMER industries was raking in. Rather, it was the design itself.
Standing 60-meters tall, they were clad in black armor, their head a simple glossy cylinder from which two red lights peered out. Their buyers could throw on whatever aesthetic decorations they desired, but coming off the assembly line, they resembled an army of mechanical riot control police.
China, the biggest buyer of the new Sentinels held a parade through Beijing, to celebrate and posture that the destruction wrought by the kaiju would never be allowed to happen again. The reaction of the public was much less enthusiastic, onlookers remaining silent as the faceless automatons marched past, bedecked in the colorful embellishments of Chinese culture meant to dampen the intimidation and get the populace to identify them as protectors of the homeland.
Despite international sanctions, North Korea was able to purchase an undisclosed number of Sentinel units.
Unbeknownst to these men in the break room, elsewhere in the facility, a truly revolutionary procedure was taking place.
A team of surgeons clad in scrubs and masks surrounded an operating table, spotlights encircling them like a choir. In the center of it all, four long and winding metallic tentacles stuck out from underneath a large white sheet. A square portion of it was cut out over the lower back region, and it was there the surgeons watched with astonished captivation. The spider-droid stood over the section of Octavius' lumbar that had been exposed by the doctors, his spinal column naked to the air.
The arms of the droid worked feverishly and without pause, slicing flesh, cartilage, and bone with two arms, the green beam of a third mending them back together in precise sequence. One of the doctors standing close to the table glanced sidelong to one of his colleagues, not sure what to make of the process going on before him. It was like watching the whole thing in fast-forward.
It took the drone a solid hour until the task was finished, reforging a section of vertebra in perfect congruence with the others. The red eye examined its work with a scan ray for a few seconds, locating nothing of further attention. Then its work turned to the partition of muscle and flesh, its diminutive digits grasping the halves and holding them together for the mending beam to go over.
A murmur of distress went up among the surgeons, unsure if they should intervene. But after seeing the efficiency with which the alien machine dealt with the injury, there was little doubt in their mind that they could not match its skill.
Hanging in the back, the tallest surgeon was the first to notice the twitching of Otto's toes.
A somewhat similar process was occurring in the main hanger of the facility, with hundreds of the spider-droids crawling over Gigan. Dump trucks, their beds filled with scrap metal drove in procession along an improvised road alongside the titan. They tossed their loads into a huge pile, fodder for the droids to come and sift through for suitable material. They would select a bit of metal, take it up to whatever part of the armor needed repair, and use a blue beam to solder it in place.
The engineers could not comprehend the process, but the beam had the effect of transmuting whatever metal was used into the same alloy the aliens had built the armor of. Literally rearranging the molecules.
TWO MONTHS LATER
In a separate facility, not far away, earthling mechanics and technicians had plenty of work to do. Standing side-by-side in the enclosed garage, the two modified Helicarriers awaited their debut, but much work remained to be done. They were the initial heart of Project Insight, but with the acquisition of the cyborg, they had taken on additional purpose.
On a catwalk that spanned the roof, much like his frequent partner Natasha, Clint Barton kept watch over things. Taking a bite of an apple skewered on an arrowhead, he wiped the juices from his mouth and set his cheek to rest on an upright palm. Hawkeye could remember being tasked to dull missions before, but this was turning into a life's work of boredom.
It was often stressed to him over his frequent objections and requests for reassignment, that the success of Project Insight was nonnegotiable as far as Director Fury saw it, and only those he trusted the most would be allowed positions of oversight. There were times that Clint wondered just what other fantastic perks came with being on Nick Fury's shortlist of friends.
He was glad construction was nearing an end.
ONE MONTH LATER
Claire Marion paced slowly along the scaffolding, looking down over the railing to all the work being done around Gigan's chest saw, androids and men alike putting the final touches on the lower half of the body. Directly to her right was the crimson visor, restored to pristine condition, as sleek as calm water. She looked into its dark surface, seeing the reflection of herself staring back. No matter how many times she saw a different face in the mirror, despite it being the one she wore, there was always a bit of fascination. All the little details about a person's face, a whole history of a person's life and ancestral line told in the features.
What was this monster's story? She wondered, stopping to rest her arms across the rail. Where was it from? What did it look like before two sets of extraterrestrial Doctor Frankensteins mutilated him? For what purpose was it altered; war, amusement, labor, defense?
"What do you think about?" Claire said aloud, peering into the eye. "Do you think anymore? Or is it just the programming?"
"Just as long as it does what we tell it to do, I'm happy." Coming from the other side of the walkway, Agent Quartermain with a styrofoam cup in his hand also had his attention on the monster. "Though taking the Chinese military down a few pegs was pretty helpful. Might save us some trouble down the road."
As he took a sip of his drink, she could smell the aroma of the coffee, kindling a desire in her own taste buds for a fresh brew.
"A weapon like this could be useful in a lot of situations." She mused. "In the right hands, the Gigan could conquer nations. Or wrong hands, depending on which side you're on."
"And who's gonna be the first to build the competition?" Settling on the rail beside her, Clay scratched above his ear as he admired the scale of the creature. "Just like the atomic bomb, it's only a matter of time before somebody comes up with an answer to this thing. Their own giant cyborg, a nuclear machine gun, something terrible that brings us all closer to Armageddon."
Now this line of thought struck her interest, and she spared him a raised eyebrow as she turned towards him.
"Sounds like your not a fan of our recruit. Some weapons too dangerous for anybody to have?"
He shook his head with an exhalation of dismay. "The arms race just took a quantum leap forward, but we didn't. As amazing as this flying WMD is, we're still not much more than hairless chimps in the shadow of the monolith. But instead of banging sticks around, we've got laser swords."
"So yes then." Claire finished for him. "Too dangerous a toy for us to play with."
"To put it bluntly." He agreed as he took a sip of his coffee.
"I didn't know you were such a deep thinker." Claire made an overt show of roving her gaze on Quartermain's backside, biting her lip.
"We've been stuck in this basement for so long, I'm surprised we don't know each other a little better."
Seduction, one of the most powerful tools known to womankind. Able to get things for free, bypass barriers, make others your pawn, and topple nations. It was an instrument she had used to great effect on many occasions, and even if it wasn't totally effective, it tended to leave doors open for later on.
Her flirtatious tone didn't go unnoticed, and he glanced back at her with a mix of caution and interest. "I guess everybody down here's just kinda secretive, given the nature of what we're doing. Those people down there for instance."
Quartermain pointed to some of the technicians looking at an array of charts and diagrams of the cyborg.
"I know who they are, I have to check their security clearance every time they shop up for shift, but I've never traded more than a few words with any of 'em. They come in, go about their business, and I go about mine."
Claire smirked. "So you're all business, huh?"
He was quite sure how to respond to her, and for a moment the two just stared at each other in silence.
Minutes later, the door to the supply closet was flung inward with a bang against the wall, Quartermain and Marion shoving themselves inside in a tangle of passion. Using her foot to maneuver the door shut, she allowed him to thrust her against a rack of cleaning supplies, and hooked her other leg around him. As Clay moved his mouth down her neck, Marion clutched the back of his head, gripping the hair between her fingers. For just a second when he couldn't see, she blinked, eyes turning from blue to a smoldering yellow. She blinked again, and they were normal.
TWO MONTHS LATER
Natasha Romanov stood on a balcony overlooking the line of SHIELD staff exiting the facility for the day. Since the great bulk of the work in repairing the cyborg had been completed, it had been decided to discontinue running double shifts. Tonight however, was a benchmark moment, after almost two years, Gigan was whole again.
Down at the exit, Agent Quartermain checked out each of the men and women personally, reclaiming their security passes, and using a tablet to remove them from the roster of authorized personnel. It would probably take the next hour to sort through everyone, then tomorrow would begin the in-processing of mission staff. Some of them would be carryovers from the previous teams, but many would be coming over from the Helicarrier crew.
The plan would be to have Gigan and the new gunships form a triumvirate of unparallel firepower, more destructive than an army, but far more precise than a nuclear bomb. The changes the hanger had undergone since the day she stood by the front door and welcomed the crew inside were night and day. Gone was the empty space used for experimental aircraft, replaced by a technological facility that NASA could only dream about. The Gigan stood like a sleeping giant, cocooned by catwalks and work platforms, secured to the walls and ceiling by cables. The sight reminded Natasha of Gulliver's Travels, when the man awakens on the beach of Lilliput, constrained by all the ropes and tethers of the tiny people.
She wondered what would happen if the cyborg woke up right now.
A small thing she was thankful for, was that all of the spider-droids had retreated inside Gigan where they belonged. She found it unnerving to have them scampering around the facility. But one had remained behind, the first one Octavius resurrected. It hung around him like a pet, due of course to the hardware he had installed into its circuitry, making it loyal to him. There was also the unsettling comparison to be seen, the writhing mechanical tentacles giving the grotesque suggestion of some sort of relation. He had even given his bizarre companion a name.
Up above Romanov, on the opposite wall of the hanger, Romanov could see Director Fury in Octavius' lab, the pair likely discussing what to do with the Gigan now that repairs were finished.
"The public won't like it."Fury said with a shake of his head. "The last time they saw this thing, it was laying waste to Beijing." Leaning against the workdesk, the Director had his arms folded across his chest. "It won't be a parade down the street like what Hammer did with the Sentinels, but we need to run the cyborg through a few tests before the next catastrophe. If it goes rogue, I don't want it to be at the worst possible time."
Otto sat in a large chair, his artificial limbs serving as arm rests, hands steepled together. "Director, I would stake my very life on the unsurpassed quality of my control measures." One of other arms came up from behind him, holding a clipboard for his brief inspection. "The same technology that gives me control over my artificial appendages, is also what gives me mastery of the alien droid."
Stalking across the table, the robot he had domesticated went straight to his waiting hand. He stroked his fingers over the spider's exterior, the red eye fixed on Otto's benevolent face.
"As you can see, my methods are quite effective. Isn't that right, Pulpo?"
Fury winced at the sight, not made any better when the arms of the droid emerged from its back to entangle themselves with his fingers tenderly.
"In any case, the master controls for the Gigan still require some refinement. You will have sufficient time to decide how you would like to debut your new instrument of world peace. I assume you'll blow something up."
Much had been said about Otto Octavius, about his genius, his drive, his megalomania. Fury was privy to a few of the more unsavory rumors that were more truth than fiction, things one might think was inspired by horror movies. But the fact is that Otto was very good at what he set his mind to, and Fury wanted that talent working for him, following his direction. At least under the supervision of SHIELD, there would be no more incidents like there had been in Cuba.
"And you put something similar in the head of the Gigan?"
"A modified application, yes." Reclining in his chair, Otto took Pulpo and placed him on his lap. "Controlling the cyborg is a much more complex process than the human mind is capable of, the sheer scope of willpower and multicognition involved is beyond even my brain. Besides, the creature is not an automation, it has a thinking mind, that I am sure of. It is far more efficient to guide and direct such a thing than to try and hold it with an iron hand."
To accentuate his words, one of the tentacles reached towards Fury, snapping its digits closed.
"So you give it some free will, but keep it on a short leash." Turning towards the window, Nick pondered over the possible worst-case scenarios of awakening the monster. Would it even obey commands from something not its true master? Would it even work?
"How much free will does this thing even have?"
Otto shrugged, pivoting his chair to the side so he could get out from behind his desk. "It is unlikely we will ever know, it would take decades of research and experimentation to test the boundaries of Gigan's metal capacity. Even if we had his full brain to work with, we do not possess the means to properly analyze the alien technology. But…"
Coming around the desk, Octavius stood on his own two legs, a mischievous smile under his tinted glasses.
"Who's to say what miracles might be possible?"
THREE WEEKS LATER
THE PEAK,
ORBITAL PLATFORM OF S.W.O.R.D.
(SENTIENT WORLD OBSERVATION and RESPONSE DEPARTMENT)
Activity on the bridge of the Peak continued to hum along as peacefully as it had for months. Little had occurred since the end of what the defense community referred to as the 'Kaiju-crisis', duty on the satellite one of the quieter places to be sent. Several months ago there had been a curious episode when they detected a number of unidentified alien ships moving just at the extremity of their observational range. What made them watch very closely, was the number of signatures in the formation, and their arrangement.
The sheer quantity suggested one of two possibilities, the first being an armada in route to wage combat. But that would require a tactical formation of the ships during movement. What they observed however, seemed to be a hodge-podge of scattered craft heading in roughly the same general direction. What one might expect to see from a group in flight, fleeing some devastation or pursuer.
SWORD Director Abigail Brand was still ruminating on the queer incident as she strolled onto the bridge, morning travel mug of coffee in hand. In her other hand was a holographic window projected out from a small rectangular device, featuring a list of summarized briefing updates. Most items concerned the logistics of running the PEAK; food and water rations, air production, daily living supplies, any issues during shift changers. Other notifications included any events on the ground that might warrant her concern, usually just advisories that made their way through the whole intelligence community.
"Blah, blah, blah." She muttered, swiping through the one data window after another with the pinky finger of her coffee hand. Striding to her workstation, she spared a side glance to the massive wall of windows that faced out towards the stars, seeing the familiar collage of twinkling lights amidst the endless void.
"Outer space…. Still there."
"Good morning Ma'am." One of her male staffers greeted her as he passed by.
"Morning, Stevenson." Abigail returned, dropping into the cushions of her swivel chair and taking a sip of her drink. Eyes still glued to the reports, she hadn't done more than put her elbows on the table when the sound of gasps began to spread though the bridge.
Behind the green glasses her brow pinched in confusion, attention lingering on a description about the X-Men having some strange trees growing on the property. She had consulted with Henry McCoy on several occasions after the Kaiju Crisis, and anything involving Xavier's team was usually an interesting read.
When she was finally able to peel herself away, Brand first saw the back of everyone's heads, the staff all transfixed in one direction. Where the curtain of stars had been, now there was a massive alien ship hovering in the earth's outer atmosphere. From their perspective it looked like a central construct from which protruded four forward pointing limbs. Just by eyeball estimation, it seemed to be about five-times the size of the PEAK.
Abigail looked down into her travel mug, and wondered if she had decided to add a little 'Irish' this morning and forgotten about it. Looking up again, the ship was still there.
"Somebody wanna tell me what a big-ass alien mothership is doing outside my window?"
"There was a portal, Director Brand." One of the female staffers sputtered out. "It just opened up and that thing came through!"
"A portal?" Brand said incredulously. "Another god-damn portal!"
"The energy signature is different, Ma'am." Agent Stevenson called out, hunched over his own workstation. A wire-frame model of the ship rotating on his pop-up display, a box next to it streaming through images. "This one is from our side of things. Running the ship through our database now."
Rising from her seat, Abigail downed the last of her coffee in one gulp, set the cup down and went into command mode.
"Get the FERG warmed up, but DO NOT initiate it!" She barked, pointing to the two staffers manning the controls for the Focused Energy Rail Gun.
"Contact SHIELD, tell them to start mobilizing forces and calling in all their super-friends! Get the WSC on the line and tell them we have a priority 1 alert! And get all external turrets pointed in that thing's direction!"
Agents began scattering about the bridge, getting defense systems activated, making contact with liaisons on Earth, and trying to analyze any data about the mysterious ship they could.
Brand took out her phone, turned it sideways, and snapped a picture of the ship. She attached the photo to a message to Nick Fury, adding the text: 'we have visitors.'
"We have a hit!" Stevenson exclaimed. Their database of extraterrestrial craft was largely thanks to the X-Men's diplomatic relations with the Shi'ar Empire providing them with some of their generic intelligence on other known space-faring races.
"What am I looking at?" The Director demanded, striding over to him.
"Chitauri, Ma'am." He stepped aside so she could examine the data herself. "A battle cruiser."
A wild cry went up from the depths of the Chitauri ship, the ends of the protruding arms yawning. From the top two arms the bays opened to unleash dozens of smaller, manta ray looking transport ships. From the bottom two arms, came pods of the Chitauri leviathan war beasts, serpentine creatures as long as three city blocks and plated in armor. Both fleets moving in tandem towards the planet's surface.
EARTH
Later
"The PEAK has been disabled?" Nick Fury asked into his phone. Hustling through the halls of the Triskelion, On the other end of the line was his right-hand, Assistant Director Maria Hill who was on the ground at the Insight Helicarrier facility. "How'd the hell they do that?"
"It's some kind of stasis field." accessing a SHIELD satellite with real-time feed, she gazed hard at the image of the dagger-like platform engulfed in a green sphere. "It's disabled their comms, and shut down their defense systems, it's our luck Director Brand managed to transmit her warning in time. Though her sending it was probably what got their attention in the first place, the Chitauri were just too late."
"Well thank god for small favors. Listen, Hill, I'm on my way to talk with the WSC right now, what I want you to do, is get those Helicariers ready to take off as soon as I'm done."
"You got it boss." Maria acknowledged. "How about the other one?"
"That's what I'm gonna sort out right now." Fury clicked his phone off just as he pushed open a door that seemingly led into a pocket dimension of darkness.
"As you may be aware, Nick." The stern voice of the Texan began. Columns of holographic people streamed down from the ceiling of the room in a bluish light. Fury entered the center of the encirclement. "I'm sure we all have very urgent matters to attend to."
"I'm sure you all do, and I don't wanna take up any more of our time doing this than I have to." Looking from one WSC member to another, Director Fury ran through a short list of events.
"As you know, the Chitauri forces are hitting us very hard. The Avengers are holding their own here in New York. The X-Men have established a beachhead in Washington D.C. where SHIELD forces are trying to retake the capitol. Even the new HAMMER Sentinels are doing a good enough job, but there just isn't enough of them to go around."
"Our forces are stretched very thin, Director, we get your point." The British woman cut in. "What do you need from us?"
"Insight." Nick answered, before waving his hand. "Not advice, the project. I want to put the new Helicarriers in the fight, they have the firepower to take on the carrier ships, the fighters, and the walkers. I can have them in the air within 20 minutes."
The Russian figure raised his hand. "And what about the mothership? How do you propose to deal with that?"
AREA 51
GROOM LAKE, NEVADA
The facility was in full motion as alarm klaxons and industrial machinery made the hanger nearly deafening. Maintenance workers rushed along catwalks, detaching cables and making sure nothing would be in the way of the launch. In the center of all the activity, the silent cyborg stood motionless. Today was the day Gigan would live again.
Agents Quartermain and Marion themselves hurried along up to the control bridge, where Otto Octavius was already in the process of bringing all the systems online.
"I just got off the horn with A.D. Hill." Clay informed her. "Insight Helicarriers are already en route from Alamogordo. They've already blown a few Chitauri fighters and walkers to bits. The red beam tech those boys adapted from the monster really do the trick, none of our conventional weaponry is penetrating their armor."
Marion smiled. "Then the Gigan should be able to cut through them and take out the mothership. Provided he listens to the little voice telling him what to do."
"Of all the voices you could have in your head…" Quartermain shuddered. "I hope Fury's right about him being able to control that thing."
"He'd better be." She snarled.
The command center, in stark contrast to everything outside, was a place of order and precision. Much like with the titan, all activity centered around Otto Octavius. He stood at the helm of a semi-circle of control panels, focused on a computer screen in front of him while his arms simultaneously manipulated panels to his left and right. Wearing a long double-breasted pale olive lab coat, he looked all the part of someone about to throw a switch and bring the dead back to life.
When Quartermain and Marion entered the room, the first thing they saw was the doctor's body bisecting the dark eye of the cycloptic cyborg.
"How's it looking Doc?" Clay asked.
"If you'll pardon the emotion, Agent Quartermain, I feel almost orgasmic. I'm almost finished triple-checking protocols for rules of engagement, identification of hostiles, collateral damage aversion, and assault capabilities of the Helicarriers. I will be finished momentarily, then, we launch!"
Marion came around the opposite side of the control panel, setting her hand on the rim of the machine. She recoiled however when she felt a creeping presence move over it, and saw the spider-droid crawling towards its master.
"You should get a leash for that thing Octavius."
"You know I gave it a thought." He said, taking Pulpo in one of his writhing arms and setting in on his left shoulder. "But he has no neck around which to place the collar."
The eye of the droid spun around to linger on her for a few seconds before rotating away. Marion felt a shiver go up her neck. She was trying to massage the revulsion from her flesh when her phone began buzzing, and slipping it out of her pocket, saw a text from a person designated simply as 'X'. The message itself was short: 'Hostiles approaching your location, advise?'
Glancing up to make sure Quartermain was still more interested in Otto's work than what she was doing, Marion quickly responded. 'CM', a shorthand for 'continue mission'.
At the same moment she pressed the send button, a window popped-up on the main control panel, overlapping everything underneath it. The video was a satellite feed of current Chitauri positions, using red dots to plot them on a live bird's eye view of their section of Nevada. More windows branched off of it, displaying models of the incoming enemy forces. Converging on the base was a multitude of the transport carriers, the insectoid resembling air fighters, and the lanky-legged walkers.
"It appears I am not the only one so eager to welcome our new agent back to the land of the living." Octavius cooed. "And with such succinct timing, we are ready to launch."
He raised a hand towards one of the technicians. "Open the roof."
The ceiling of the hanger split in half, daylight pouring in from above to bath the monster, gleaming off its spotless armor.
"Observe, agents." Otto lifted a headset bearing a microphone boom from the consol and placed it around his head with the somberness of a royal crown, closing his eyes and inhaling as he set it on, opening them aging with a dramatic exhale.
"Since it would take several brains acting in unison to manipulate the cyborg at combat speed, I have elected to merely give command directives, and let its natural fighting ability carry them out. All I need do, is issue the activation command."
On a nearby ridgeline, a section of desert camouflage netting was staked between two rocky outcroppings. Peeking out from between the shreds of fabric, a suppressor on the similarly patterned barrel of a sniper rifle. Laying in the concealment's shade, the burly figure of Brock Rumlow kept his eye focused behind the telescopic sight, beads of sweat rolling out from under the black mask.
Crossbones grunted when he witnessed a mountain breaking apart down the middle, a flock of birds scattering from the plume of dust that arose. Moving on either side of him, two Chitauri walkers crested the ridgeline.
"All stations prepare for activation."At the sound of the voice over the facility's loudspeakers, all crewmembers hurried out of the hanger's main bay. They disappeared into doorways that closed behind them, two layers of solid steel doors a foot thick, designed to withstand the blast of an intercontinental ballistic missile taking off. Or failing that, the propulsion back draft of a giant alien cyborg
"Let the world stand in awe of the superior scientific genius of Otto Octavius! I who makes slaves of the war-waging colossi! Now I command you!" The Doctor raised his arms, the tentacles behind him curling upwards. Still clinging to his shoulder, Pulpo's eye narrowed.
"GIGAN…!"
Agent Marion looked into the monster's vacant optic, waiting to see if her years of patience and restraining the urge to drive an ice pick through Quartermain's face were about to pay off.
Otto stared deep into visor on the other side of the pane, the breath hanging on his lips.
"RISE!"
For several seconds, everything seemed frozen in time, nothing moving, no one daring to blink for fear of missing the magic moment.
When the bright red light spread across Gigan's eye, it bathed them all in its crimson sight.