AN: Thanks to TheNaggingCube for reviewing the last chapter.
Pepper already had the quinjet initialized and prepared for takeoff when the elevator dropped the group of Avengers and Asgardians off on the 121st floor less than five minutes after the battle ended. Clint immediately ran past the now-human Bruce up the ramp to take his place at the quinjet's controls, and Natasha tried to follow him.
"Where do you think you're going, 'Ms. Rushman'?" Pepper demanded, putting a hand out to stop her.
"We need to rescue Tony, remember," the other redhead replied, arching an eyebrow at her.
"Considering that you took a bullet in the leg and nearly bled out in the middle of the street ten minutes ago, you are staying right here," Pepper insisted forcefully.
"I'm fine," Natasha stated with as much force as she could muster, though she swayed slightly on her feet as she said it.
"You are staying here in the medical lab," Pepper said, grabbing her arm and dragging her back into the Tower despite her protestations.
Steve, Bruce, and the six Asgardian warriors filed into the back of the quinjet and grabbed onto the handholds along the ceiling. Clint turned around, looked at them, and said, "Without Romanoff, we've got a problem: I need a copilot/gunner to fly this thing, especially since we're heading into a possibly hostile situation."
Steve quickly activated his communicator and ordered, "Vision, we need you to copilot the quinjet for us… You know how that works; you downloaded the operation manual, right? Of course you did… Yes, this is still an extension of your programming to protect the Tower and its inhabitants… Right."
Less than a minute later, the VISION android stepped onto the quinjet's loading ramp, walked between the two rows of people, and slid into the copilot's seat next to Clint. The two silently worked the plane's controls, and took off twenty seconds later.
The instant the motor hit the hidden trapdoor, the floor under their feet began to shake like there was an earthquake. The trapdoor began sliding open along an invisible seam, and Rhodey was surprised to notice that the seam extended along the floor of the entire factory. The factory floor was separating, leaving a gaping chasm in its place. On the other side of the split, Rhodey saw Danny give Bobbi a boost to reach the catwalk above them. As soon as she was up, she reached down with her staff and pulled him up after her. Farther away, Carol leapt into the air to hover above the widening crack in the floor.
Rhodey activated his thrusters and looked over at Luke, who was still standing next to the widening crack and hadn't moved. The floor was about to disappear into the wall of the factory and knock him into the hole. Without more conscious thought, Rhodey grabbed the other man's arm and lifted him off the ground. He placed him on the catwalk, and finally looked down into the gaping hole where the floor had been.
Staring out of the hole were hundreds upon hundreds of Hammer Drones with their own mini-guns and mortars aimed up through the hole at his team.
"What the hell are those things?" Danny shouted into the radio.
"Hammer Tech," Rhodey replied. "Drones designed to replace live troops in combat. Tony and I fought about 30 of the prototypes a couple years back. I didn't think he'd managed to build any more, particularly while sitting in a jail cell."
"Evidently he did," Bobbi observed wryly.
Rhodes made a mental note to thank Tony for putting a supply of repair nanobots in his suit during the last remodel; his mini-gun's targeting control wire was already repaired. He also made a mental note to reinstall the mini lasers that he'd taken off the suit last time around because he hadn't been using them. "Hopefully Tony is down there somewhere, and these guys are Hammer's last defense around him. Team, I think it's fairly obvious what we need to do now: Attack! Marvel, you and I draw their fire. Bird, Fist, Power, take advantage of our distraction. Aim for the necks; last time around that was their weakest area."
A glance at the ordnance level indicator on his heads-up display showed that he was getting dangerously low on mini-gun rounds and missiles. He pointed his right arm at the nearest drone and fired his built-in shotgun, the weapon for which he had the most remaining ammunition. The drone collapsed as its head exploded when the spray of shot connected and tore through the armored outer layer. As one, the drones turned toward him and began firing their shoulder-mounted mini-guns at him. Rhodey pushed more power to his foot thrusters and shot through the factory ceiling as mortars exploded all around him and shrapnel deflected off his armor, followed by a hundred drones.
When she saw Rhodey fly away, Carol turned to follow after him and the drones on his tail. She waited until the last drone had left before she held both hands out in front of her in a more aerodynamic position and willed herself to fly faster to catch up to the aerial battle ahead of her.
As she came within 20 feet of the closest straggler, she bent her right arm back and punched it out in front of her, shooting a bolt of bright blue energy straight through the drone's body. It exploded in a shower of metal and plastic
By now Carol had drawn level with two more stragglers. She reached out and grabbed the arm of the one on her left, and used her grip to kick both legs straight through the chest cavity of the drone on her right. The glowing light behind its eyes went out, and it fell away. Her legs slipped out of the hole in the drone's chest as it did so.
As soon as she kicked the first drone, she twisted the arm she was holding out of its socket and used it to club that drone in the head. Finally, she pulled the now-loosened head off of the drone's neck. The drone joined its companion in its fall from the sky.
Above her, she could see War Machine fighting desperately. One drone grabbed him around the back, but his mini-gun shredded the drone's head. Two more dove from above and caught hold of his arms. Rhodey fired off rockets from his legs that embedded in the drones' backs and exploded. The force shorted out the thruster on Rhodey's left foot, and he turned over and started falling from the sky along with the remains of those two drones. JARVIS quickly rebooted the thruster system, and he began to regain altitude.
A dozen drones flew towards him, and he fired off his last two arm-mounted missiles trying to fend them off. The eight undamaged drones out of that group grabbed hold of him, and cut all their thrusters. The War Machine suit tried to compensate for the increased weight, but could not. The eight metal drones and one metal-clad man plummeted from the sky.
By then Ms. Marvel had nearly caught up to him. She ducked out of the way to avoid being hit by the mass of drones. As they fell past her, she grabbed War Machine's right hand flight stabilizer, which was still lit, with her left hand. She began channeling the energy through her body, directing it out at the drones who had latched onto him. She destroyed the drone in front of her, then moved around War Machine in a circle. The last one finally exploded in a shower of sparks when they were less than 75 feet above the ground. Rhodey reactivated his thrusters, and the two Avengers rocketed back into the sky toward the drones still hovering in the air 200 feet above them.
When War Machine and Ms. Marvel flew out of the factory through the ceiling, the drones still inside the factory continued to follow their ascent for several moments afterward. Seeing the momentary distraction, Power Man glanced over at where Mockingbird and Iron Fist were still standing on another catwalk near the wall. They both nodded back to him, and he leapt over the catwalk railing with a roar. All of the drones suddenly turned to follow his fall with their guns.
Iron Fist and Mockingbird jumped from their catwalk at the same time. Iron Fist began concentrating his chi energy in both fists as they fell.
Power Man kicked out with both feet as he drew level with the drones' heads. He kicked the nearest one hard in the chest, and it fell backward into the one standing behind it. Luke landed heavily on the floor of the hidden chamber, but forced himself to rise to his feet as quickly as he could. He grabbed the arms of the nearest drone and dodged out of the way as it attempted to fire missiles from both arms at him. The missiles flew past him and hit another drone standing behind him, which had also been preparing to fire. Luke yanked on the drone's arms and ripped them out of the socket. He spun to his right and brought the two ripped-off arms around to crack into the drone they had come from. The force knocked the drone over to its left.
Luke glared at the countless drones still crowding around him, flexed his arms, and let out an enraged bellow.
Danny punched out with both hands a moment before he landed on the ground. The chi-infused punches connected with the chests of the drone on his right side and the drone on his left. The two drones were flung backward into the columns of drones standing behind them, which were all knocked backwards to the ground. Danny landed in a crouch with his right hand on the ground as the drones fell like dominoes on either side.
Bobbi, meanwhile, swung her bō-staff like a helicopter blade the moment it was at the same level as the drones' necks. One drone's head popped off as the staff struck the spot where the head connected to the neck. When she reached the ground, Bobbi immediately sprang back into the air, using her staff to gain more height. She landed on the balls of her feet on a drone's head; it reached up to grab her. She dodged out of the drone's grasp by leaping behind it and using her staff to springboard away. Her body weight and the force of her leap made the drone lose its balance and stumble into the drone next to it. Bobbi swung her staff like a baseball bat in midair, cracking it against another drone's head.
Bobbi landed on the ground next to Danny, whose right fist was glowing like an electrical current was flowing around it. The drones surrounding them brought their weapons to bear against the two Avengers. They fired.
The instant before they did so, Bobbi planted her staff on the floor and pushed herself up to balance on the tip. Danny dropped to the floor and rolled into the crowd of drones. The hail of bullets, mortars, and missiles that the drones fired missed Iron Fist and Mockingbird, and struck the drones on the edge of the circle.
The surviving drones adjusted their aim to concentrate on Bobbi, still balanced in the air on her bō-staff. Bobbi shifted her weight so she started falling to the ground out of the drones' aim, but pushed off to land on a drone's back. She reached down into the space where the head and neck parted, and found a cluster of wires. With a pull, she ripped the wires out, and the drone collapsed to the ground. Before it had even reached the ground, she jumped onto the next drone's back.
Rhodey held both arms out toward the drones on either side of him. Carol floated behind him facing away from him, fists glowing with barely-restrained energy. At a signal, both Avengers fired into the swarm of Hammer drones surrounding them..
Rhodey rapidly shot off his shotgun shells, careful to aim them as best he could. 130 shots and 10 drones later, his chamber clicked empty. He was completely out of ammunition. Behind him, Ms. Marvel had melted through a dozen of her own drones. But there were still more than 60 drones left in the air to attack them.