Chapter Two
… …
Arella walked around the bridge, flexing her wings irritably. Hill cast glances at her occasionally but most of the SHIELD personnel ignored her. Her hand kept going to her sword then back to her side at a glare from Hill. She was unnerved, something was wrong and she could just feel it. Tony was in the lab trying to work out what the massive storm clouds gathering for no reason above them were made of, it certainly wasn't water droplets. Steve was on the ground overseeing the evacuation and she hadn't kept track of where Clint and Natasha were.
"Miss Brand?" Hill asked finally, using the surname Arella had chosen. She hadn't been able to resist using a name from the same book as Bruce's pet name for her, Arell. The agent could almost have looked friendly if not for the cold gaze in her eyes.
"If something is troubling you I would suggest you discuss it with your team." Arella gave her a flat look.
"Something's coming, Hill. It feels like someone's been walking on my grave. I'm going to take a closer look." She ignored the woman's muttered curse and left the room. Outside the wind blew at her skirt and hair, not quite high enough for her to need an oxygen mask but chilly nonetheless. She took off, her large white wings beating the air down around her as she left the runway behind.
"Arella, don't you dare get yourself stuck in there," Tony warned her through the link he had moved from her helmet to her shoulder to stop her losing it so often.
"I'm not a hatchling, Tony. I know what I'm doing." She circled the storm, oddly focused in one place until she had done a full circle. Something was still bugging her, like when she had seen the face of someone but couldn't remember where from.
"You done, feathers?" Tony asked curtly. Arella sighed and headed back towards the helicarrier.
"It's not natural," she said. He snorted over the line.
"Well done bird brain. It's not natural, it's not like the portal the Tesseract opened and it's less dense than your stunt in Paris. So, where does it go and who's on the other side?" Arella landed, going straight inside towards Tony's lab.
"I don't know. I'm guessing it's another world, dimensions are too unstable to keep open this long."
"I don't get this. You haven't got electricity but you have steam power and dimensional portals. That's just messed up. Steampunk angels."
"You spend too much time on the internet," she told him, making him jump violently as her voice went from being just over the link to being in stereo.
"And you spend too much time around Natasha," he bit back. "Okay, so now go and do that shadow hunter stuff like in Paris and we can all go home." She rolled her eyes, if only it was that simple.
"I can't close something that's only open on one end. Try closing a door that doesn't have a handle on your side. Besides, where's the fun in that?" Tony returned her grin, bouncing around again.
"That's not the attitude, Miss Brand," Fury's unimpressed voice chided. "The citizen evacuation is complete, what is the cloud's status?"
"Uh, cloud like," Tony answered brightly. Even with one eye Fury managed to convey a huge amount of annoyance.
"It hasn't changed since we got here," Arella began only to be cut off by a loud beeping coming from a monitor. "I spoke too soon. Tony?" He pulled a screen towards them, flicking through the graphs.
"The static pattern changed, became more regular. Recognise that pattern?" Arella shook her head.
"Don't get distracted," Fury ordered as he turned to leave. Tony took advantage of his blind spot to show Arella what he thought about the director. With a perfectly straight face she watched him leave before shoving the billionaire away.
… …
Natasha sat, poised on the edge of her bed tensely. If she had been anyone else she would have been pacing but that wasn't her style. The whole situation was too similar to Loki's first invasion. She half expected to be informed that a maniac demi-god had gone after Clint or Bruce. Here they were, their two experts working on the unnatural disturbances and underlying tension ready to rip the group apart. She hoped that they wouldn't need to call Bruce in; she didn't think he would come.
"Go talk to her," Clint said from his perch, his eyes never leaving her as he watched the faintest flickers of emotion cross her face. "If you don't, Steve is going to give her the Spanish Inquisition."
"After, when this thing's gone. We don't need another argument in the team."
"Natasha Romanoff, a team player?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.
"Apparently so," Natasha answered, getting up and leaving. She told herself it was to check up on the lab's progress. Clint knew better.
… …
"Okay, this thing has pissed me off. Is it just going to sit there all day?" Tony threw himself across the room on a swivel chair, blueberries in hand.
"Maybe it's charging. Or waiting for something. It's been there for seven hours, Tony, that's hardly that long." He yawned at her, moving the fruits out of reach as she tried to take one.
"There's a pattern, in the static electric waves coming out. Surely Fury should be able to match it to something, SHIELD monitors everything. Somewhere, there must be something."
"We're looking, Tony. Nothing connected with Loki's invasions, Thor's appearances, anything remotely similar," Arella reminded him, succeeding in grabbing a blueberry.
"Then why do I get the feeling that we're missing the obvious, something stupidly obvious?"
"Because being a billionaire superhero with the ego the size of the moon has turned you paranoid."
"Playboy, philanthropist, did you not hear my opening speech?" She shook her head, sighing.
"No, of course not. I didn't understand anything for ages remember? Wait…" Tony was up before she could finish, tapping away at the screen.
"Geneva, May, two years ago. Here! That's it!" he clapped himself on the back. Arella frowned.
"What's it?" He pointed eagerly, grinning.
"It's the same as a minor disturbance over the place you landed, just bigger," he explained. Arella's face dropped as she finally understood.
"You mean, it's from my world?" Tony nodded. "Shit."
