Title: Classic-verse 1.6 - To the Ends of the Earth 2/4
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Hank/Jan. Some Steve/Tony subtext, because they're canon in our heads.
Warnings: Ants. Lots of ants. Crawling on people. Spanish phrases taken entirely from Babelfish.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Author's Note: Much delayed, and un-beta'd due to real life insanity.
Summary: Steve finally comes face to face with Baron Zemo. Also, there are ants.
Chapter Two
"Heads up, people," Tony said, as one of the numerous lights on the quinjet's control panel lit up. "We may have been spotted by Vespugian defenses."
Steve frowned. "What makes you say that?"
"For one thing, a targeting signal just locked onto us." Tony stamped hard on the left rudder and wrenched the yoke around as far as it would go, rolling the quinjet and pulling its heading around to the left. "I'm taking evasive action."
"Thank for the warning," Hank muttered. He was gripping the sides of his seat, knuckles white.
The little red light on the console had neither wavered nor dimmed; whatever it was that had its radar system locked onto them, it hadn't lost contact. "Sorry," Tony said, before throwing the quinjet into a steep dive.
According to both quinjet's instruments and the armor's own internal sensors, they were the only aircraft in a five-mile radius, which meant that whatever was trying to target them -- had already targeted them -- had to be ground-based.
"Zemo's been buying weapons from Hammer Industries, and with our luck, that will include top-of-the line surface to air missiles," Tony warned the others. "This could get rough."
On the heels of Tony's words, a beam of bright light materialized only a few feet from the edge of the quinjet's right wing. He swore inwardly and banked left, just managing to avoid it, and it winked out of existence as abruptly as it had appeared.
This was not good. Heat-seeking missiles could be dodged or diverted. Lasers, not so much.
"What sorcery is this?" Thor demanded, Mjolnir suddenly ready in his hand, not that it was going to do him much good from inside the quinjet.
"A giant laser," Hank said, voice dry. "That was a giant laser. Do you think he bought that from Hammer?"
Steve groaned, one hand covering his face. "No," he muttered. "This one's all Zemo. It's his old death-ray gun, only massive. The one he had during the war was hand-held."
Tony felt a sudden, sinking sensation in his stomach. Why did that sound familiar? "What did the ray gun do, exactly?" He had a vague memory of seeing mentions of Zemo's work in some of the articles on Nicola Tesla's teleforce theories he'd read while designing his repulsor technology. Heinrich Zemo had also been working on energy rays during the nineteen thirties, but his theories had been based on completely different and -- in Tony's estimation -- less elegant principles.
Steve caught Tony's eyes, his expression pained. "It disintegrated things."
The entire quinjet lurched, controls shuddering in Tony's hands, as the death ray was fired again, burning a perfectly circular hole some two feet in diameter through the aircraft's left wing.
A hole in the wing was no big deal, Tony told himself calmly, as he fought with the suddenly-far-less-responsive controls. He could handle a hole in the wing. The quinjets had been designed to take heavy damage and keep flying, and they were only at two thousand feet; landing wouldn't take very long.
The death ray materialized once more, momentarily whiting out one corner of Tony's vision, and then the end of the right wing was gone.
"We're going to crash, aren't we?" Jan said, with a surprising amount of calm, considering the circumstances.
Luckily, Tony was wearing the Iron Man helmet, so the other Avengers couldn't see him mouthing a string of silent profanity mixed with pleas directed at the quinjet as he struggled to keep its nose up. "We're going to have to bail out," he said out loud. He used his elbow to shove the throttle back, slowing their airspeed.
"Thor, you've got Giant-Man," Steve said, unbuckling his harness and standing up. "I'm with Iron Man. Wasp, are you-"
"I'm good." From the sound of her voice, suddenly both softer and more piercing, Jan had shrunk down. Tony didn't dare look away from the controls in his hands to check. "I've got my own wings."
Tony waited until Steve had grabbed hold of his shoulder, and then hit the button that opened the cockpit doors. He stayed seated at the controls long enough for Thor, Hank, and Jan to exit the plane, then let go of the yoke and stood. "Time to go. Grab me around the neck," he suggested, "and watch out for the jet boots."
He gripped the edge of the door with one gauntlet for a moment just before they jumped. The quinjet had been the first aircraft he'd ever designed and built entirely on his own -- every part in her had come from his lab, every piece of metal in the airframe and engine block machined by him. "Sorry, girl," he whispered, and then he fired the boot jets, propelling himself and Steve away from the plane.
Moments later, the heat and noise washed over them both as the quinjet exploded. Tony didn't look back.
When they reached the ground, Zemo's men were waiting for them.
Tony had expected that. He hadn't expected that there would be quite so many of them, or that they would have a hum-vee with a M256A1 anti-tank gun mounted on it.
They had two jeeps with M1 machine guns, too, but really, once you were already dealing with 120mm explosive rounds, .50 caliber machine gun bullets were practically irrelevant.
"Now would be a good time to have a plan," Tony said, as he reduced the thrust from the boot jets and landed. "Because either that gun has HEAT armor-piercing rounds, and I'm screwed, or it has anti-personal canister rounds, and we're all screwed."
"Take out their vehicles, first." Steve nodded at the jeep and the hum-vee. "And try not to kill them."
"First, get rid of the big gun," Tony paraphrased. "Good plan. I'm not a fan of the big gun. Well, save for the fact that M830A1 rounds are intellectually interesting."
"Fighting now," Steve muttered, as he unslung his shield and brought it up before him in a defensive stance. "Talking shop later."
Thor and Hank had landed several feet away from them, and Thor was now eyeing the dozen or so Vespugian soldiers in front of them grimly. He was slowly swinging Mjolnir about his head, gathering momentum.
Hank had already grown to twice his normal height. The Vespugians' officer was shouting at the rest of them Spanish, and as Tony watched, one of the machine gun crews swung the barrel of their weapon around to point at Hank.
"Giant-Man," Steve shouted, "shrink down. You'll just make yourself a target."
Tony sent a two-handed repulsor blast at the machine gun -- it wasn't enough to destroy the gun, because the full force of his repulsors would have killed the gun crew, but it sent the two soldiers handling the weapon flying, and the remaining man dove for cover behind the jeep. This kind of thing was what the armor had been built for, but the armor had been designed to be lethal, and right now, that was a handicap.
Hank was shrinking back to normal size, pulling something tiny and silvery from his pocket as he did so.
Mjolnir was a blur around Thor's head now, its flight creating a low, whirring noise that Tony could feel vibrating through the armor.
He had just brought his hand back to throw when the anti-tank gun fired.
There was a blindingly bright flash, and an ear shatteringly loud bang, and a slightly singed Thor stood there unmoved, Mjolnir grasped in both hands. From the look of things, Tony suspected he had actually hit the HEAT round with Mjolnir like a baseball.
And it was HEAT rounds, and not canister. It was a sad commentary on his life that that was actually a good thing.
Tony exchanged a swift glance with Steve. "It looks like Thor's got the anti-tank gun. You and Hank take the men. I've got the other machine gun." He glanced around, scanning soldiers, weapons, and the surrounding jungle so quickly that details blurred together. "Where's the Wasp?" She'd said she would be fine bailing out...
"Wasp's got the anti-tank gun," Steve said. He nodded to the hum-vee, then brought his shield up to block a stream of bullets as the Vespugians began firing their assault rifles at him. The force of the fire dropped him to one knee, but the shield wasn't so much as scratched.
Tony looked more closely at the hum-vee, and this time, registered the small, flying shape darting around the gun mount. One of the men reached for the weapon's firing mechanism, and was met by a brief flash of light. He drew his hand back, quickly.
Hank had donned his Ant-Man helmet -- that was what the shiny thing had been; he must have shrunk it down for transport -- and was standing motionless in the middle of the clearing. A dark tide of tiny bodies was sweeping out from the jungle toward him.
Hank was not bringing any of those things home in Tony's quinjet.
And then he remembered that the quinjet was gone, and at any other time, he might have sparred a thought to worry about how they were going to get home, but the second machine gun had started up, and a line of kicked-up dust and dead ants was being drawn across the ground as the bullets moved closer to Hank.
Tony didn't think, he just moved. The sound of the machine gun bullets clanging off the armor was deafening, and he could feel the impacts straight through to his bones. It was staggering, rattling the armor with too much force for him to even feel any pain, just bruising impact and then numbness. The pain would come later.
The armor couldn't stand up to this kind of assault forever, and all the gun crew had to do was swing their weapon a little further around to bring it to bear on Steve.
Tony braced himself, and started walking forward, ignoring the red warning light that started to flash on his helmet's visual display. The repeated impacts were staring to dent the armor; he was taking damage.
Walking into the machine gun fire took effort, more effort than Tony could exert on his own -- the armor's powered assistance was what kept him moving forward, kept him from staggering back as each bullet hit. The jeep was only ten feet away now. Eight.
He had to go slowly, keep himself between Hank and the others and the gun. Six feet...
The Vespugians jumped out of the way as he bore down on them, and Tony brought both hands up and sent the full force of his repulsor blasts towards the machine gun mount.
There was a bright flash as the jeep exploded, and then a wave of sound and heat struck him, much, much harder than the shockwave from the quinjet, and he was airborne. He had just enough time to think that this was really familiar before the ground came up to hit him.
Iron Man was motionless on the ground; arms and legs bent like a broken toy.
Steve slammed his shield into a Vespugian soldier's face, then yanked the man's weapon from his suddenly nerveless hands. He dropped the gun, kicked it away, and grabbed the man by the front of his uniform, swinging him around into the other two soldiers who were charging him. Steve had the advantage now; they couldn't use their guns as effectively with him this close, not without risking hitting one of their own, and when it came to hand-to-hand, Steve had the double advantages of mass and training.
Training was the only thing that allowed him to keep part of his attention on the men around him, rather than the far more important fact that Tony wasn't moving, and that he could no longer see Jan.
Steve ducked one blow, blocked another, and felt bone snap as he twisted the soldier's arm back. The man fell to his knees, cradling his arm to his chest and making small gasping sounds of pain, then abruptly stood again with a shriek, brushing frantically at himself with his good hand.
There were immense brown ants crawling all over him. They had completely swarmed the remaining jeep, Steve realized, making it entirely unusable, and were closing in on the Vespugians like a vast, crawling carpet. It was one of the most disturbing things Steve had ever seen.
The jeeps were down, the soldiers were immobilized if not entirely disarmed; now all that remained was the anti-tank gun, which was still firing at Thor. He was spinning his hammer in a circular blur in front of him, detonating the explosive rounds before they could hit him. The entire front of his breastplate was singed, and a corner of his cloak was on fire, but Thor looked otherwise unharmed beyond a few burns. He was effectively pinned down, though, unable to throw his hammer to take the hum-vee out without risking taking a direct hit from the gun.
Tony was still not moving. He couldn't see Jan, and Hank was standing stock still in the middle of the clearing; Steve could hear him muttering to himself over the communicator. "No, Iron Man's not prey. The jeep is our prey. The jeep is good to eat. Come on, you guys like leather."
If this was Hank as Ant-Man, Steve definitely preferred Giant-Man.
One target still live, and none of the others were in a position to deal with it. Steve dropped to the ground and half-slid/half-rolled through the Vespugians' legs, trusting to the leather and mail of his costume and to Hank to keep the ants off him. Once clear, with enough room to throw his shield, he sprang to his feet and hurled it at the anti-tank gun. It sliced into the side of the weapon and stuck there.
Third target down. Also, Steve was now unarmed.
There were several discarded automatic rifles on the ground, but they were all crawling with ants half the size of his thumb, and Steve wasn't about to pick them up, even with gloves on. Otherwise, he would have captured himself some firepower in a heartbeat. He hadn't intended to kill anyone but Zemo, but now Tony was...
Steve had insisted that they all come down here. Otherwise, Tony would be sitting in the Mansion's library right now with a technical journal, or out on the town with some girl.
"My thanks, Captain America," Thor called, with a nod in Steve's direction. Mjolnir was now dangling loosely from his wrist by its leather strap. "It is a pity we cannot speak to our attackers in their language. I would like to offer them a chance to surrender."
The handful of Vespugians lying unconscious on the ground were now entirely covered by ants. Steve didn't know if the ants were actually biting them or not, but he was pretty sure they were eating the jeep's seats. From where he stood, he could see holes forming in the leather.
"I don't speak Spanish," Steve said. "Just a little French and German."
Jan appeared atop the hum-vee, almost seeming to materialize out of thin air as she suddenly grew to full size again. . ""¡Entrega!" she shouted. "Entrega, y hacemos que las, um, ants," she waved a hand at the army of insects," van."
Nobody moved, though the men were no longer pointing their guns at any of the Avengers. Now that Steve had a chance to really look at them, the insignia on their uniforms was distinctly familiar. The uniforms themselves were green camouflage, but the men had pairs of silver lightning bolts at their collar, and one was wearing a pair of diamond-shaped insignia next to them. "Hande hoch, Oberscharfuhrer," Steve called, pointing directly at the man.
Zemo had been an SS officer. If he'd given his men Schutzstaffel insignia, chances were he'd given them the same rank designations, too.
The officer stared at him blankly, eyes wide with what looked almost like fear. Steve stared back.
The man dropped his gun, and slowly raised his empty hands to the height of his shoulders, snapping an order to his men in Spanish.
"I am impressed." The voice drifted out of the jungle, low, sensual and definitely female. "Well nigh a score of warriors, and you defeat them."
Thor stiffened, his normally open face going grim and set, lips a thin line, Mjolnir immediately at the ready.
"Truly," the voice went on, "the Avengers are mighty indeed. We shall see if they are mighty enough to stand against the power of a goddess."
A woman stepped out of the jungle and began walking toward them. Hank's ants pulled away from her as she went, creating a little circle of clear ground around her. She was tall, with hair the same wheat-gold as Thor's, and was dressed entirely in shades of green, including elbow-length green opera gloves and tall, high-heeled green boots.
She held something small and brightly colored in the palm of her right hand.
There was a faint groan, just audible through the communicator, and Iron Man stirred, one hand going to the center of his chestplate. There was a large dent there, and a gash in the metal extending all the way across the circular inset that Steve suspected had something to do with the armor's power supply. A piece of shrapnel must have hit him.
He wasn't dead. He was a little banged-up, but he wasn't dead.
"A goddess?" Jan snorted. "Since when do goddesses wear tacky green go-go boots?"
Steve felt himself starting to grin. His team was still together, still all right. Not dead. Not dead, a little voice chanted steadily in the back of his mind.
They had just taken on over a dozen men armed with weapons that could have taken out a Tiger tank. They could definitely take on one woman who was armed only with... a little yellow frog?
Iron Man sat up slowly, one hand still pressed against the dent in his armor, and the other cradling his head. "Who are you," he asked, voice wavering slightly, "and how come more of the people we fight don't look like you?"
"She is the Enchantress," Thor said, through gritted teeth. "She is a traitor to Asgard, and a foul weaver of deceptions. Do not look into her eyes, or she will ensorcell you."
Steve immediately dropped his gaze from her face to somewhere in the vicinity of her left shoulder. The last thing he wanted was to be turned against his team.
The Enchantress smiled -- Steve could just see it ought of the corner of his eye. "You're all going to put your weapons down and surrender. You don't want to fight me, do you?"
No, he didn't. She was so beautiful; tall, curvy, regal... everything a woman should be. How could he seriously fight a woman? It would be wrong...
Hank's ants were moving away from her, the circle of clear ground around her spreading. Tony had halted in his attempt to climb to his feet, and was frozen on his knees, hands held out before him, palms up.
Steve tightened his grasp on the straps of his shield, until the leather dug into his fingers. "No," he said. Saying it was easy, because it sounded as if he were agreeing with her that no, he didn't want to fight. "No," he said again. "We're not going to surrender." Getting the words out took an almost physical effort.
Iron Man shook his head, hard. "No. We're not." His helmet's faceplate was as expressionless as always, but Steve could hear the effort the words had taken in his voice.
Hank was shaking his head, too, and the ants were closing in again, their retreat halted. The Ant-Man helmet made his face an expressionless mask, much like Iron Man, but from Hank, the effect was eerie rather than familiar; Steve was used to being able to see his face.
"Your wiles will not work on me this time," Thor said, through gritted teeth. His grip on Mjolnir was so tight that it had turned his knuckles white.
"What's wrong with the rest of you?" Jan, still standing atop the hum-vee, was staring from one of them to next, frowning, her hands on her hips. "Of course we're not going to surrender. There's five of us and one of her." She turned back to the Enchantress, shrinking until she was hovering in mid-air again. "We're here to see President Zemo, and you're not stopping us."
"Foolish mortal," the Enchantress sneered. "Your will is no match for the power of the Enchantress."
"The hell it isn't." Jan flew at her, bolts of energy shooting from her hands.
They ought to have hit the Enchantress dead center, right in the middle of her shapely torso. Instead, a faintly glimmering shield materialized around her, and the energy from Jan's sting splashed against it harmlessly.
Jan pulled up sharply before she ran into the shield, wings fluttering fiercely to keep herself in place. "Any ideas?" she asked the rest of them.
The Enchantress laughed. It was a low, musical sound, like softly ringing bells. "Do not move," she said.
Steve immediately attempted to take a step forward, and found that this time, her spell was not something that could be overcome with a little will power.
The others were all frozen as well. Iron Man, Hank, even the Vespugian soldiers had stopped moving.
The Enchantress made a complicated gesture over the little frog she held in her left hand, and then began walking forwards towards Thor, the ants falling back as she came. "You see how easily my powers affect them. They are weak, unworthy of the attentions of one such as you."
"Release them." Thor cocked his hammer back, ready to swing it.
"We are all that there is of Asgard in this wretched place," she went on, still walking forward, her steps slow and unhurried. "We belong together. Together we could rule Midgard."
"I do not wish to rule," Thor said, and thunder rumbled in the distance. "And I had thought your desire was to rule with Loki at your side."
Her lips curved with a little, possessive smile. "With you beside me, I would have no need for Loki. Stay your hammer, thunder god," she added, "or I will order the soldiers to shoot your mortal friends. They would do anything to make me happy."
"My father was right to cast you out of Asgard. His only error was in not doing so sooner."
Steve could feel the air pressure dropping. He had heard from Iron Man that Thor could actually call and command lightening with his hammer, but he had never seen him do it. It looked like he was about to get his chance.
"I see you are resolved to oppose me," the Enchantress said, and there was regret in her voice. "Very well. Then I shall leave you with a token of my regard before I hand your friends over to Zemo, that you may know what it is to refuse the Enchantress."
And then she threw the frog at him.
Everything seemed to happen at once after that.
The Enchantress had to drop her shield to make the throw, and Jan, who hadn't been affected by her paralysis spell and had been hovering over head, waiting for her chance, sent a fresh volley of stinger blasts her way.
Thor, meanwhile, snatched the frog out of the air before it could hit him in the face. Then he went suddenly pale, hammer falling from his hand to land on the jungle floor with a resounding thud that seemed far louder than it should be.
The Enchantress shrieked as Jan's stinger blasts hit her, and the invisible force holding Steve's limbs in place suddenly vanished.
Thor seemed to fall in slow motion, like a tree being felled, and the sound when he hit the ground was even louder than that of Mjolnir's impact. His back arched for a moment, and then he was still.
"Thor!" Steve shouted. He wanted to turn, to go help his teammate, because nothing hurt Thor, Thor was supposed to be invulnerable, but the Vespugian soldiers had also been released from the spell, and they were getting either brave or stupid. One of them was bending to pick up his discarded gun.
"Don't move," Steve ordered the Vespugians, using German again. "You're still our prisoners." He hefted his shield threateningly, adding, in English, "I can throw this and break you in half before you have a chance to pick that gun up and fire it."
The man quickly straightened back up. It looked like at least some of the Vespugians understood English after all. "You know some English. Good. My German's a little rusty. It's been sixty years, after all."
"I don't care if she gives off electromagnetic energy," Hank was shouting. "Eat her! She's an enemy from another colony and she's going to eat all our eggs!" The ants were listening, creeping up onto the toes of the Enchantress's boots.
"What did you do to him?" Iron Man had regained his feet, and had his repulsors at the ready again. When the Enchantress didn't respond, busy trying to kick the ants away, her lips curled in a disgusted grimace, he fired both of them at her.
The repulsor blast hit her dead on, and she went sailing back toward the crawling carpet of ants, vanishing from sight a split second before she would have hit.
Iron Man let his hands fall back to his side. "I hate magic," he spat.
Steve gave the Vespugian prisoners a final threatening glare before turning back to his team. "You said you would make the ants go away," one of prisoners muttered from behind him, and then the oberscharfuhrer snapped something harsh in Spanish and the man fell silent.
"How's Thor?" Steve asked, ignoring them both. "What did she do to him?"
Jan shrugged, bobbing up and down once in midair as she did so. "She put some kind of spell on that frog and threw it at him." She landed lightly on one of Thor's shoulders, peering at his face. "He's still breathing," she said, and Steve's shoulders sagged slightly in relief. "Maybe it was some kind of sleep or paralysis spell."
Hank's head jerked around. "What does the frog look like?" he asked sharply. "And Jan, get off him. Don't touch anything."
Steve crossed the clearing in a few long strides, but Iron Man got there first. "I'll try removing it and see if that breaks the spell," he said, reaching down and scooping up the yellow frog in one gauntleted hand.
"I said nobody touch the frog!" Hank shouted. "Iron Man, get rid of that thing now!"
Iron Man closed his hand into a fist, crushing the frog between his metal fingers.
"You- What--" Hank sputtered. "Those are endangered!" He paused, then, "Those gloves are non-permeable, right?" There was a thread of worry in his voice suddenly, and a concerned tilt to the faceless helmet.
"Why?" Iron Man asked, in the tones of someone who wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.
"Because the frog you just squished was a Phyllobates terribilis, a Golden Dart Frog, and it contained enough toxins to instantly kill two African elephants."
That was... not good. Jan had said that Thor was still breathing, but Steve knelt down next to him to make sure. He could see Thor's chest rising and falling, so the frog hadn't killed him yet, but he wasn't moving, either. His eyes were closed and he looked pale.
Why hadn't he insisted that the others stay in New York?
"Oh." Iron Man opened his hand and dropped the pulped remains of the frog on the ground. Rather than falling upon it ravenously, the ants drew back from it, either from instinct, or because Hank had told them too. Tony stared at his glove for a moment, still covered in a faint sheen of bloody slime. "In that case, if the seal on the glove had been broken, I'd already be dead, so I ought to be fine. What do you need to make an antidote?"
"I don't think there is one," Jan said. "I think people usually die so quickly that there's no point."
"We shouldn't have come down here," Steve said softly. Thor looked every bit as massive even when this still, but seeing Thor still and quiet was unnatural. "I shouldn't have brought us down here." It hurt to say the words. He wanted Zemo to be brought to justice, wanted Zemo dead, but not at the cost of his friends' lives.
First Iron Man and now Thor. Iron Man would have been killed by that explosion if he hadn't been wearing the armor -- Steve had thought he had been for a moment -- and when he had groaned and sat up Steve had been so crushingly relieved, had thought they were going to get out of this without anyone being seriously hurt. And now Thor was...
Thor groaned, and opened his eyes. "What sorcery did she work on me?"
Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath. For the second time in a handful of minutes, it felt as if he had dodged a bullet.
Iron Man laughed, and even through the faint distortion caused by the armor, it sounded slightly hysterical. "I hate to break it to you, Goldilocks, but it wasn't sorcery. It was a poisonous frog."
"Technically," Jan said, "it was a frog she'd worked sorcery on."
"Technically," Hank said, "you ought to be dead. You grabbed one of the most poisonous things on earth in your bare hand."
"I have survived battle against a horde of frost giants," Thor said, voice stiff and almost offended, "against dragons and demons and all manner of loathsome things. It is not my destiny to be killed by a frog." He pushed himself up on one elbow, wincing as he did so. "For such a small creature, its venom is most potent." He rubbed at his neck with one massive hand. "All of my limbs feel as if the hammers of dwarven smiths have been beating on them."
There was a sudden, blood-curdling scream from behind them. Steve spun around, and dropped into a crouch, heart pounding and shield at the ready. He lowered his shield again when he saw what was actually going on; one of the Vespugians who'd been knocked unconscious by Tony's repulsor blasts had just woken, and was now screaming and thrashing and thrashing in an attempt to get the ants off of him.
His hands and face were red and swollen with bites, some of which were bleeding sluggishly.
They were actually trying to eat him, Steve realized, with a faint surge of nausea. Like in that story about the column of ants destroying a South American plantation. He swallowed hard. "Giant-Man, call off the ants before they actually do eat someone."
Hank tiled his head slightly, as if listening to something. "They don't want to leave," he said. "They're still hungry, and they don't usually move on until they've stripped a place bare."
"You mean they are wont to travel in groups like this?" Thor frowned about him at the masses of brown ants, which had left a clear space around his body. "Their number is as vast as the flakes on snow in a mighty blizzard."
"This is an entire colony." Hank gestured around them with one hand, taking in the carpet of insects. "I sent out signal to summon the closest one. Most colonies would only have sent their worker ants, but these are Ecitoninae; when they move, they take the whole colony with them."
The soldier's screams had reached the high pitch of hysteria.
"Well, tell them to take their colony somewhere else," Steve ordered.
Hank sighed, and turned to stare at the ants. There was a surge of movement as the ants seemed to go into a momentary frenzy, and then they flowed down off the jeep and away from the Vespugians like water, disappearing into the underbrush.
The man who'd been screaming went limp, making a faint sobbing sound.
Steve surveyed his team, trying to evaluate what kind of shape they were in. Jan and Hank were both still combat ready. Iron Man was still mobile, and his armor was still apparently operational, if a bit battered, but he was limping -- enough for it to be visible even with his inside the armor -- and kept putting one hand to his chest when he thought no one was looking. Steve hoped he was simply bruised where the shrapnel had hit him.
Thor was the biggest concern; he was still sitting on the ground, and looked just a little bit grey. On the other hand, he was conscious and talking, which was a major improvement on just a few minutes ago and a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
"Are you all right, Big Guy?" Jan asked. "You scared about three years off of my life falling over like that. I'm lucky it didn't give me wrinkles."
"It is of no moment." Thor waved a hand dismissively, and climbed to his feet. "I am not even injured. Zemo is obviously aware of our presence here, or they would not have fired on us. We should hasten to attack his stronghold before he was the chance to fortify his defenses."
Steve hesitated, not sure if he was relieved or disappointed that they wouldn't need to call off the mission. The chances of something else going wrong were only going to rise as they got nearer to Zemo, but they had come this far, and if they quit now, Steve's need to see justice done would have cost them a quinjet and very nearly their lives for nothing.
He dragged everybody down here with him, and they had already engaged the enemy. It was too late to back down now.
If they were lucky, Zemo might think they had been killed when the quinjet blew up.
They would have to tie up the prisoners; they couldn't take them along -- it would both slow them down and increase the risk of someone breaking free and warning Zemo that they hadn't died in the quinjet crash. Unless the Enchantress had already done so, a possibility they couldn't afford to overlook.
They would just have to keep a low profile going in and hope.
"Mayhap one of these prisoners could be persuaded to show us a way into Zemo's palace." Thor gestured at the Vespugians with the hand that held his hammer.
Steve shook his head. "He's not going to be in the palace. He obviously knows we're coming for him. He'll have a secret bunker or some other secure location to retreat to." Zemo had been influential in the Nazi high command, but he had never been the kind of fanatic who refused to cut and run when he needed to. And he always had a fallback plan, usually in the form of something large and explosive.
"I bet one of these guys knows where it is," Iron Man said. He approached the Vespugians, stopping directly in front of their commander, and held his left gauntlet up, inches away from the man's face. There was a faint flicker of blue light from the depths of the repulsor port as he activated it. "Wasp, tell them we want to know where El Presidente is, or I'm going to start frying people, and Hank will bring his friends back."
The commander stared into the repulsor's flickering light with wide eyes, but remained silent. Iron Man's repulsors could burn holes straight through human flesh -- they had killed the Carnelian ambassador instantly, and would probably vaporize half the officer's skull if Iron Man fired them at full force.
There was no way he would, not given the haunted look Tony had worn when he admitted to not sleeping since the ambassador's death, but the Vespugians didn't know that.
Iron Man moved his hand an inch or so closer, the repulsor glowing to full life, and the Vespugian officer, amazingly, broke.
"I will tell you!" he blurted out. "I will tell you. Just don't call back the ants! Kill us with your blasting weapon, touch us with the poison, just let us die cleanly!"
"With the-" Iron Man started, and then quickly recovered. "Good choice." He lowered his hand, the repulsor going dim once more. "Now, you're going to tell us exactly where Zemo is and explain how to get there and what the security is like, or Ant-Man is going to let your men get up close and personal with his little friends until you're the only one left. You, we'll leave, because I'm sure whatever reward Zemo has in store for men who lose an entire command is even more painful than being eaten alive."
It was one of the more convincing threatening performances Steve had seen, despite the innate ridiculousness of the threat -- it might have helped that Hank's Ecitoninae were legitimately terrifying. Moreover, Iron Man's helmet gave the illusion that they were dealing with an emotionless robot, something that couldn't be reasoned with and couldn't be counted on to possess either pity or mercy.
Zemo had apparently retreated to a bunker hidden underneath the Vespugian military's command center. The Vespugians gave them very detailed directions to it.
A mere half-hour after their battle with the Vespugian soldiers, the Avengers found themselves at the gates of Zemo's stronghold.
It was most impressively fortified, Thor concluded, as he surveyed the great metal door that barred them entry.
They had gotten this far unchallenged, thanks to Captain America's clever suggestion that that he, Giant-Man, and the Wasp don the garb of their Vespugian enemies, and thus pass unnoticed onto the "base."
Thor himself had followed behind them, with Iron Man, since the two of them would have made but poor and unconvincing soldiers. This had had the additional benefit of allowing Thor to keep a close watch over his armored companion; by the stiff, careful quality of his movements and the strained note in his voice, Iron Man was clearly concealing some form of injury beneath his armor.
If Thor were to mention this to Iron Man openly, Iron Man would of course have denied it, as he had denied being injured after Hammer had attacked him. Therefore, Thor would simply have to be ready for it were he to succumb to his wounds.
Zemo's stronghold had of course been guarded, but the guards had proven no hindrance; the Avengers had easily overcome them.
Even the mighty power of Mjolnir, however, was not going to get them through those doors. Thor had struck them a mighty blow, and his hammer had merely dented the surface slightly, when it ought to have rent the door asunder.
"Well," Iron Man observed, "we found out what Zemo's been doing with the all adamantium he hasn't been shipping to Latveria."
Captain America frowned. "Can we make our own door, or does this stuff run through the walls as well?"
Thor adjusted his grip on Mjolnir. "We shall see," he said, and swung the hammer with all his strength at the concrete wall to the left of the door. Mjolnir stuck something solid and unyielding, and a wide circle of concrete turned to powder and rubble, revealing yet more of the silvery metal behind it.
"Wonderful," Ant-Man observed, in a low voice. "Is anyone else thinking we should have gotten a little more information on this place before coming down here?"
The Wasp flew towards them around the corner where the corridor they were currently standing in yet another, wider hallway. "I've flown all over the building," she announced, as she came to hover in the air before Captain America's face. "There's no other way into this place, and it's entirely airtight. There isn't even a crack for me to squeeze through."
Captain America sighed, his shoulders sagging slightly. The responsibilities of command were clearly weighing heavily upon him on this quest. "Any suggestions?"
Iron Man tapped the door with a finger, creating the ringing noise of metal on metal. "Adamantium was created to duplicate the alloy in your shield, Cap. It was only partially successful. It might take a couple hours, but between your shield and Thor's hammer, we can get through that door."
"By which point," the Wasp said, "Zemo will have God knows waiting for us in there."
Giant-Man waved a hand at the door. "He's already got God knows what waiting for us in there. It's not like the exploding quinjet was subtle." He pulled his shrunken Ant-Man helm from his pocket once more, and returned it to its full size. "But breaking the door down isn't necessary. I can get us inside faster."
"No," Captain America said, pointing a stern finger at him. "No more armies of flesh eating ants."
"This would be a different kind of ant." Giant-Man spoke hastily, the faintest hint of offense in his tone. "Anything from the Ecitoninae family would be too big. All I need is enough of a gap in the door for an ant to get through, and I can have them short out the electronic locking mechanism on the inside."
Captain America frowned, brow drawing together as he considered this. He turned to Iron Man. "I don't suppose you can do that from here?"
"The lock's controls are on the other side of the door," Iron Man informed him gravely. "I can pick up the electrical signal it's giving off with the armor's sensors, but unless I suddenly gain the ability to mind meld with machines, I need an access point before I can hack something."
"Fine. Giant-Man, we'll do it your way. Thor," Captain America turned to Thor and gestured at the door with his shield, "she's all yours."
"It will be my pleasure," Thor told him.
There was a certain satisfaction to swinging Mjolnir with all of his might, in striking the kind of great, powerful blow that he rarely allowed himself to perform in combat with mortals. The metal of the door was more durable than the hardest stone -- even granite crumbled away under Mjolnir's blows -- and he struck the seam where the two halves of the door met several times before the metal began to warp.
He had not had the opportunity to wield his hammer against the Enchantress or against the evil businessman who had used Iron Man as a weapon against his will, but at least he would have the satisfaction of aiding Captain America in confronting his enemy.
Giant-Man's ants crept through the tiny seam Mjolnir had opened in an orderly file, and several long moments later, there came a dull clanking sound from inside the door as its lock disengaged. Almost simultaneously, a loud alarm began sounding, its notes ringing through the building.
Thor stepped forward and swung Mjolnir once more. It struck true, and this time the door flew open before them, rebounding off the concrete wall with a resounding crash.
There were a dozen Vespugian men-at-arms lying in wait for them in the corridor on the other side. This time, however, they had neither an extremely large gun with exploding shells nor the Enchantress to aid them. Several brief but violent minutes later, the Vespugians were all unconscious, and the Avengers proceeded onward in triumph, unharmed save for a small scratch across Thor's left arm where a bullet had ricocheted off Iron Man's armor and grazed him, and a large bruise on Giant-Man's face, where a Vepugian had hit him.
The corridor possessed a very low ceiling, the thick concrete walls clearing Thor's head by mere inches, so Giant-Man had been able to grow no taller than some seven and a half feet, which had proved a hindrance to him in the brief battle.
Captain America and Iron Man took the lead down the corridor, as their shield and armor gave them the best protection against firearms. Thor himself fell back to the rear, in case any of their enemies chose to try and take them from behind.
The alarm was still sounding as they moved forward, a monotonous clamor Thor did his best to ignore.
The corridor ended in a sharp turn to the left. Thor eliminated the much smaller steel door that stood before them with a single blow, and the Avengers beheld a large room, filled with computer and communications equipment. A red light was flashing on and off near the ceiling, bathing everything in a lurid, red glow.
Standing in the midst of the room was a tall, thin man of great age, his frame wizened and shrunken with his advanced years. He had the erect, commanding bearing of a great warrior, and the most malevolent smile Thor had ever seen.
"Captain America," he said. "I see you survived the destruction of your plane a second time. Most frustrating, but not entirely unexpected. Now you and your comrades will lay down your weapons and surrender to me, or you will all die."