Disclaimer – Anything you see and recognise does not belong to me. Harry Potter is JK Rowling's; The Avengers and other related characters belong to Marvel. I'm simply playing in their sandboxes.
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Heroes Assemble!
Chapter 10 – We Have An Enhanced In The Field!
Seeing the tables all but empty, Harry decided to take advantage of it. He was the lone staff member in the Den today – David, his chef, having needed to take the day off to look after his sick fiancé and it still being too early for Gwen and his other High School staff to have arrived yet.
Grapping up a tray and throwing a cloth over his shoulder, he began buzzing about the tables, collecting empty plates and cups, wiping down the tables and replacing the small menu card and condiments in the little racks that he'd fashioned for the centre of the tables. Meanwhile, he kept an eye on the two couples and three lone individuals finishing their late lunches or their coffees. He also kept an ear out for the tingling of a bell, the sound that would announce someone entering the Den.
For now, the café was near empty, but he knew that in an hour or two it would be almost filled to overflowing with the afternoon crowd and especially with the teens from Midtown High who'd seemed to decide that the Den was the place to be.
It was when he was just over half-way through his task that a distant sound made him pause. He half-straightened and almost unconsciously turned towards the door, a slight frown on his face.
It came again, the distant sound of an explosion, only this one sounded louder. He was more than familiar with that sound – he'd gone to school with Seamus Finnegan, after all, not to mention that he'd fought in a war.
When a set of explosions went off in concussion, a small rumble of the ground accompanying it, he dropped the rag to the table and quick-stepped to the door.
The instant that he opened the door, the sounds of explosions multiplied. Screams of terror and cries of pain drew his eyes left. What he saw caused his wand to instantly drop into his hand.
People were running, tears of terror and screams of pain coming from every which way, even as dozens of flying things zipped past just above the nearby buildings, shooting bright blue bursts of energy into the people and buildings below, destroying everything in their path.
A dozen arms raised, pointing far up overhead had Harry looking up. What he saw there was beyond his comprehension. There appeared to be a … hole in the sky. A hole through which the inky blackness of space could be seen. And a hole from which hundreds more of the weird flying bike-like things were appearing.
"Aliens! Aliens!" a terrified woman screeched as she huddled behind a nearby car, her hands on her face in her disbelief and panic.
The sight of small explosions happening far above, all emanating from a speck of red and gold, told Harry that Tony Stark's Iron Man was fighting back.
Harry's eyes darted between the hero fighting way above the city and the people down below being shot at, injured and killed. He'd made his decision in an instant.
Racing back inside, he slammed the doors open, instantly gaining the attention of his few customers.
"New York's under attack!" he blurted. "Aliens! From the sky. Iron Man's fighting them but we're in danger down here. You need to get out of here and somewhere safe. There's a subway entrance around the corner and down a couple of hundred feet. Get there and stay safe. The streets aren't safe."
The flicker of the television in the corner flashing in with breaking news showing the beginnings of the destruction emphasised his point, accompanied by the real-life sounds of explosions drawing closer had his customers deserting the Den within seconds
A tap of the door to his apartment unlocked it and Harry wrenched it open, only to simply point his wand up the stairs. A couple of seconds later, the blue-grey cloak made from the hide of a Swedish Short-Snout shot down the stairs towards him. Swinging it around his shoulders, he snapped the clasp near his throat closed and pulled up the hood.
It wasn't much, but he thought that the cloak should be enough to protect him – the dragon hide from whatever those aliens were shooting and the hood to hide his face when he broke every one of the International Statute of Secrets laws.
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Finding people to protect had been easy; actually doing the protecting and helping, that had been hard.
Harry flung himself at the fleeing people, slid to a halt with him between them and the three flying bikes, which he now realised were more designed like a chariot and raised his wand.
"Protego!" he yelled, just as the first of the bolts of energy raced towards him.
The impact caused his arm to buck but the shield charm at least held, the energy splashing harmlessly against it. A quick glance behind him assured him that the people had kept going.
Shielding, though, he realised, wasn't going to be enough.
The instant that the energy beam let up, Harry dropped his shield and cast, his arm a flurry of movement.
"Bombarda!" That took out the middle chariot, dropping it from the sky in an erratic pattern that had it slamming into the side of a nearby building.
"Sectumsempra!" The driver of the chariot to his left lost his arm.
"Protego!" starved off the attack from the last chariot, before with a quick twirl of his wand, "Incarcerous!" put that last chariot out of action.
Seeing that he'd bought the people some time, Harry raced after them. There had to be nearly two dozen in the group and thankfully, the ones in the lead actually had some sense. When the subway entrance came into sight, they doubled their pace, almost flinging themselves down the stairs in their haste.
Kaboom!
Harry spun around, dropped to one knee and sent out his most powerful banishing charm. The ball of light smashed into the chariot that had appeared from out of nowhere, sending it careening into the side of a building.
The instant that it was gone, Harry raced across the short distance to the car now on its side. Flames were licking around its engine and he wasn't sure how long it'd be before the petrol tank ignited. A quick glance through the windscreen showed him a groggy-looking young woman blinking about her.
Quickly, Harry vanished the glass, leant in and cut through the seatbelt with a low-powered cutter. A levitation spell later, and he had her out. From what little he could tell, she seemed alright, although there was a cut on her forehead that was bloody. Scooping her up, Harry dashed back across the street towards the subway entrance to give her to someone there to look after.
He'd barely finished passing her off to an older gent when the sound of a motorbike caught his attention. The guy riding it was completely unprotected – no helmet or anything and worse yet, he was headed straight towards the centre of the battle.
"Hey! Not that way! You'll get killed going that way!"
But Harry's cry of warning was either not heard or ignored.
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Tony was trying hard not to panic. His scans showed dozens more of these aliens, these Chitauri, coming through the wormhole by the minute. Shutting down the power source was a priority. But not quite as much of a priority as getting the half-dozen chariots off of his tail.
"Stark, you got a lot of strays sniffing your tail," Hawkeye's voice said into his ear.
"Just trying to keep them off the streets," he replied, dodging a concentration of energy blasts by mere inches.
"Well, they can't bank worth a damn. Find a tight corner," Hawkeye advised.
"I will Roger that," Tony replied.
Instantly, he changed direction and altitude, taking the group down and amongst the buildings where they'd have less time to react.
Noting a small, curved tunnel between two buildings, Iron Man shot between them. He was in and out in barely a few seconds, but that was enough for him to ensure that they were committed. And once they were, he used his extra manoeuvrability to jink around, shooting off a couple of repulsar blasts before taking off again.
Unfortunately, that manoeuvre only knocked out one of the six.
"Oh, boy," he groused.
A second tunnel attracted his attention. This one had civilians near it, but it couldn't be helped. Hoping that he had the chariots' full attention, he continued with his plan. Energy blasts shot past him, slamming into the buildings and raining debris towards the civilians.
Foolishly, one man in a ridiculous cloak stepped forward and raised his hand towards Tony and the pursuing chariots.
Tony could only blink as a series of dark red, blue and yellow bursts of energy shot from the man's hand, missing him and slamming into the chariots behind him. He watched his scans as four of the five remaining chariots either exploded or careened away to slam into the buildings or ground.
"Jarvis?" Tony asked.
"I am at a loss, Sir. Energy readings are inconsistent with anything in my databanks," his A.I. replied.
"Log it for later analysis," Tony ordered.
With silent thanks to the man on the ground, he shot into the tunnel as planned, ready to deal with his last pursuer.
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This, Hawkeye decided, was exactly what he was born for.
From this position, he could track the entire battle, well, maybe not all of it, but enough to be able to help out his teammates.
Noting a squadron of chariots coming in from the west, he used the controls on his bow to select his next arrow. Acid, he decided.
A quick draw, aim and, when the distance and position was correct, he released, tracking its trajectory. As he knew it would be, his aim was true, striking right between the main part of the chariot and the driver's spot. The acid did its job wonderfully, eating through the coupling and sending the two parts of the chariot in two different directions.
Hawkeye tracked the parts only until his sharp eyes locked onto the next part of the battle.
There were a pair of chariots harassing a group of civilians, shooting energy blasts down towards them. A low growl escaped him as he realised that there was nothing that he could do from here. He was just about to call in for back-up from Thor who was the closest, when he saw something inexplicable.
A golden dome appeared above the pinned-down civilians. The cloaked individual responsible for stopping the attack motioned behind him and the civilians scampered away, seeking what little shelter that he could find.
The instant that they were clear, the done disappeared as the man rolled away, coming up on his knees and returning fire with coloured energy blasts of his own.
"We have an enhanced in the field," Hawkeye announced over the radio.
"Seen him. He's a friendly," Stark replied. "At least, he's protecting the people and dishing it back out to the Chitauri."
"Noted," Hawkeye replied.
An extra person to keep an eye out for made his job that little bit harder, especially when this one, just like Thor and Hulk, didn't have an earpiece to communicate with.
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"Who are you?" the older, bald man gasped even as he threw his arm over the cloaked figure.
"Just a friend," Harry replied. "Now, can you walk? We need to get you and your family to safety.
The man nodded.
Slowly, Harry helped the man limp his way along the side of the building, his wife and three small grandchildren sticking close enough to them that Harry suspected that if he stopped, they'd run straight into the back of him.
He'd found the family of five huddled in a small bakery. Around them, buildings had been smashed and crumpled to pieces by one of the giant leviathan-like creatures when it'd been killed. The old man's leg had been pinned by fallen rubble and it seemed that his wife refused to leave him and neither of them would even consider sending their grandchildren out into the midst of a battle.
It's taken a simple wingardium leviosa to free the man.
Thankfully, they were only a block from the nearest perimeter barricade that the police had set up. This far out from the battle, Harry didn't even need to cast any protection spells to get them there safely.
As he'd been helping more and more people, he'd gradually made his way further and further away. It wasn't that he didn't expect there to be others in deeper in the battle, it was simply that he went from group to individual to group as he saw them.
"I suspect he's got a broken ankle," Harry stated to the officer who left the safety of the police cars to help the six across the last stretch of road.
"Thank you, thank you," the old woman said, grasping at his hand.
"It was my pleasure," Harry smiled, gently disengaging himself so that he could return to where he was most needed.
"You're not going back in there?" the officer asked incredulously.
"There are others that need help," Harry replied simply.
Then, with a sharp turn and a loud crack he apparated away.
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Harry arrived back near the battle and instantly looked around, to not only assess his safety, but to see if there were some people in need of some help.
What he found, though, wasn't quite what he was expecting.
A short distance away, a masked man wearing a blue uniform with red and white stripes around his midriff and a star on his chest, carrying a similarly adorned shield, was in a slugfest with a group of aliens. Nearby, a red-headed woman in a black body suit was flipping around, alternating between shooting the aliens with her gun and shocking them with some sort of blue TASER-like thing attached to her wrist.
Noting a group of a dozen aliens creeping up on the occupied pair, obviously preparing to catch them in a cross-fire, had Harry instantly leaping into action.
Noting their exact position, he apparated to just in front of them and whipped his wand up.
"Lumos maxima!" he screamed, flicking the end of his wand forward to force the intensely bright light directly into the faces of the aliens, instantly blinding them.
And then he went to work before they could recover, his wand a blur of motion, spells zipping out at an insane speed.
"Bombarda Maxima!"
"Flippendo!"
"Diffindo!"
"Levicorpus!"
"Bombarda!"
"Sectumsempra!"
Every spell did damage. Aliens were blasted away, sent careening into walls and half-destroyed cars. Two were left hanging upside-down in mid-air. Others dropped where there were, vicious cuts littering their bodies.
A crackle of energy zipped by him and Harry spun about.
"Expelliarmus!"
The alien's weapon was ripped from its hands to go clattering down the street, before a silver shield spun out of nowhere into the alien's head, knocking it out.
Harry shot a grateful look at the star-spangled man and nodded. He nodded back, all the time that they had before they were once more being inundated with aliens to battle.
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Exactly what the giant green troll-like monster was, was anyone's guess. The fact that it was smashing aliens and their chariots left, right and centre, though, was enough for Harry to class it as an ally. But then, anything from earth should be classified as such against an alien invasion. It almost made him wish that there were some dragons nearby; now that would have made this battle interesting.
At the moment, though, the great green guy looked as though he could use a little help. A squadron of twelve chariots were sitting just above the buildings, firing a continuous stream of blue energy projectiles at the … guy.
Harry took exception to that. His eyes narrowed as he tried to work out the best way to help. The chariots were too far away for accurate spell fire, or at least spells that would have any kind of punch to them.
If he could only provide enough of a distraction, he thought that the other guy could throw things at them or leap from building to building to get to them that way.
Throwing things, though, that was an idea that he thought could work.
Harry eyed the couple of dozen cars in a nearby carpark. A dozen featherlight spells later and he was ready. One by one, he levitated them off the ground until they hung just above him. Taking a peek out, he breathed a sigh of relief. The big guy sure seemed to be able to take a beating. And he hadn't yet been noticed.
Gathering up his magic, Harry prepared to release it in one massive burst. As he felt the magic pool, he snapped his eyes open and jabbed his wand forward.
"Depulso!" he screamed.
Instantly, the dozen cars shot away into the air at the chariots.
Four smashed straight into the aliens, destroying them before the others were aware of the danger. Three more veered straight into each other, sending them spinning away behind the nearby buildings where Harry heard the fantastic sound of explosions. The remaining five were forced to pull up and away.
And that, as Harry expected, was all that the green guy needed. In one massive bound, he'd leapt from the ground half-way up the nearest building. From there, a second leap took him in range to swing a massively powerful arm to catch a hold of one of the chariots, pulling it down with him as he landed on the nearby smaller building. The remaining three retreated.
Harry grinned and waved at the big guy. Instead of a returning wave, though, the great green monster flung the chariot towards him. Instinctively, Harry ducked, only to realise that it was going nowhere near him.
Instead, the wreckage of the chariot slammed head on into a chariot that was attempting to sneak up behind Harry. An instant or two later, and he suspected that he would have been shot in the back and from that distance, he had to wonder if the dragonhide would have saved him.
"Thanks!" he called.
The other guy gave a menacing grin in return before bounding off to find something else to smash.
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The instant that Thor noticed the cloak of blue-grey in the midst of a group of Chitauri, he changed direction. Steve had mentioned one such as this, one who was an ally, fighting for Midgard, just as they were.
The man was bobbing and weaving, ducking and spinning about in a poetry of motion as he mixed attack with defence. But Thor could easily see that he was close to being overwhelmed. The battle had been going for some time now and those of Midgard were bound to be getting tired.
Thor dropped to the ground amongst the battle, instantly swinging his hammer up to block a blow before twisting about to dodge a shot. Throwing his hammer caught two, knocking them out and away from the battle; recalling it, dispatched another.
The Midgardian hadn't wasted the opportunity his arrival and distraction had provided. Energy blasts erupted from a tiny stick in his hand, something that jogged a memory deep in Thor's brain. But this was not the time for such thoughts; this was battle and only the battle mattered. To dwell on such things could easily lead one to being caught unprepared and being defeated.
When all of their opponents were down, Thor took one last look down at the small man and nodded, swung his hammer in a circle and took off, rocketing into the sky once more.
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Harry was getting tired. He couldn't remember ever having performed so many spells in such a short time. He didn't think that he'd even done it during the Battle of Hogwarts. Still, it'd been worth it. He'd helped dozens and dozens of people to safety, not to mention battling and taking down a whole bunch of aliens.
The problem was, they simply kept coming. That hole in the sky was the problem and the key. Something had to be done to close it, not that Harry even had a clue what would be needed for that. No, he'd leave that sort of thing to those others – Iron Man and the rest of them who seemed to know what was going on.
He'd done his part and he'd keep doing it until he dropped. Currently, he was taking a short breather before he'd have to start again. Just so long as they could keep the fighting here.
A sudden roaring sound rocketed by overhead snapping Harry's head up. He frowned in confusion as Iron Man sped past, a large white rocket of some kind on his back.
He watched as Iron Man sped towards Stark Tower before taking a sudden sharp upturn and vanishing into the hole in the sky.
Harry stood there, watching, waiting for him to return. When the chariots and aliens suddenly dropped as though their power or strings had been cut, Harry started, taking a couple of steps back.
Suddenly, the bright blue beam of energy emanating from the top of Stark Tower and disappearing into the hole in the sky cut off. The hole stuttered once before collapsing in on itself, leaving only a single speck in the sky, a speck that resolved itself into Iron Man plummeting towards the ground.
If Harry'd had his broom with him, he would have considered racing off in an effort to catch him. Fortunately, though, the great green guy came flying out of nowhere to catch the falling figure and using the side of the nearby building to slow its descent before being lost to Harry's view.
With a soft smile, Harry dropped his head. The battle, it seemed was over. Everywhere that he could see was a disaster. Buildings were either toppled or smashed beyond repair. Alien carcasses and chariots littered the streets. The wrecks of cars dotted the streets, some in more than one piece, others still with flames licking from them. Debris littered the roads – chunks of buildings and glass and what have you.
Knowing that he was in no condition to apparate home without possibly splinching himself, Harry took a look around, orientating himself before beginning to pick his way deeper into the zone of destruction.
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"Director Fury," Maria Hill called.
Fury turned, instantly noting the look of confusion on the face of his second in command and quick-stepped across the deck of the helicarrier.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I've been monitoring civilian coverage of the battle and we have a potential problem," she said. "News reports and coverage are stating that there were seven members of the team of heroes working against the alien invasion."
"Did I hear that right?" Fury asked. "Seven, not six?"
"That's correct, Director," Agent Hill confirmed.
Playing her monitor like a piano, she brought up an image of a hooded figure, a blast of red energy leaping from his hand towards the nearby Chitarui warrior.
"So far, this is the best image we have of him," she said.
"Scour the news reports and any other footage available. I want a file on this individual created yesterday," Fury ordered.
"Yes, Sir," Agent Hill replied.
Fury stared at the image on the monitor. Something about it seemed familiar, perhaps from a briefing he'd once had a long time ago. He'd check his own records, by then, Hill should have compiled a report that would go a long way to unravelling this mystery man.
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"I do not think that we are going to find this shawarma that you speak of here," Thor stated.
There was no denying Thor's conclusion. The restaurant that Tony had led the group to had a Chitauri chariot lodged in its front door.
"You promised us food, Stark," Natasha reminded him.
"But I feel like shawarma. How was I to know it'd been shish kababbed?' he whined.
"Really, anything's good," Bruce commented.
Of the six, he appeared the most tired, but how much of that was because of his Hulk-ing out and how much was because of the wrong-sized clothes that Tony had lent him was anyone's guess.
"There's a small café just around the corner," Steve suggested. "It serves good food."
"Let's do that," Clint said, before turning and beginning to trudge off in the direction that the Captain had indicated, forcing the others to follow.