discordchick: Poor CLint just trying to survive. Now Natasha's caught up in the intrigue. what will happen now?!
amy. .9 I have officially finished part 2 and reeaaallllyyy need to start part 3, but part 4 is mostly done:)
Fury-Natalia: ohhhhhhhhh something specials gonna be happening!
TheKnuckleHead7: Awe, thank you so much for the review!
I Can Hear the Drums
Chapter 23
"Tony!" Pepper exclaimed, rushing out onto the landing platform to meet him. He caught her up in an embrace, tucking his chin into her neck as he breathed in the very scent of her. From the time he'd spent on and off Vanaheim, it seemed like years since they'd been together. According to Pepper, it had only been a few months.
Behind them, Rinon and his Elves exited the small star streamer and glided over with Natasha on their heels. He inclined his head slightly to General Trask, who'd been sent from the United Nations to greet the otherworldly fleet commander. Trask extended his hand, but it was Lirrie who shook it.
"I'm not sure how you prefer to be referred to, sir," Trask said, retracting his hand to fold them at his back.
"Rinon is the commander of the elven armies and admiral to their fleets," Natasha said, standing across from them. "They call him Le'lareme."
"Le'lareme, my name is General Trask. I represent the United States of America, home operations for the Avengers team. I'm here as an emissary of the United Nations, our collective body of countries, or regions. I'm told you aren't much familiar with our customs, and I've had considerable experience with previous off-world diplomats. I hope to make your stay comfortable."
Rinon inclined his head a second time, but Reylano spoke for him. "We accept this introduction, but we cannot stay. A great danger, we fear, is approaching and we must take immediate measures to counteract it."
Trask's eyes dilated. He sent an inquisitive look toward Stark, hoping for better answers than that.
Tony pulled away from Pepper. "He's right. We've sent two ships ahead of us already to scope out the area. I've been tracking the Hulk. He went AWOL after a surprise attack by the Kree. They're using foreign technology to cloak their ships, but I've found a way to hack around that."
"You're saying these Kree ships are planning to attack us?" Trask asked.
Tony's jaw set. "I'm saying they're already here, and a hell of a lot more are on their way."
Trask looked up at the elven admiral. "And you're here to defend us?"
Rinon shook his head slowly. "No. I am here to remove you."
The news fell like a blow from Thor's hammer. When they'd discussed the realities of their predicament on the Voiya Rose, a thousand questions came up all at once. How on the planet were they expecting to evacuate all of life on Earth? This wasn't Noah's ark. They couldn't just abduct everyone against their will, and expect them to sit on their hands on a moon in the Xandarian system for no reason at all. There were entire countries, continents, who would rather fight and die, rather than abandon the hunk of rock and soil they claimed was their birthright. They'd been fighting for thousands of years already. What possible difference would it make now? Somehow, evacuation was exactly what they needed. Somehow, Tony Stark, the Black Widow, and a race of light elves had to stand in front of a podium and convince the human race that the best way to escape the death to come was to leave everything they loved behind. It was a tough pill to swallow, but in a war like the one that the Kree declared, it was a necessary step to take. The only thing Tony could hope to do, was keep Clint Barton as far away from Earth and Nova Luna as possible.
The Kree warships were amassing just as Rinon thought. An entire line of them, hundreds of thousand strong, were back-building like a firestorm on the very edge of Midgardian airspace. Rinon's forces might be able to overpower them. He certainly could match their numbers with only half of his own fleet, but the result was always the same: Earth's complete and utter annihilation. Anyone left on that soil was going to be scorched in the battle to come. The lines had been drawn.
To destroy the back bone of the fighting force, the Kree warriors were prepared to destroy the very home of their adversaries. Scorched earth. Nothing left to return to. If there was one thing that was for certain about their empire, it was their utter devotion to efficiency. Rinon would stop them, but at what cost? Their best, and their only, option was evacuation.
Natasha sent a private sign toward Tony. She had this. He needed to get moving. Tony signed back, took Pepper's arm, and headed into the upper room of Stark Tower with her. He spoke quickly as he moved.
"Pepper, I don't have a lot of time to explain. Something really bad is coming, and we need to get everyone out of here. There is no defending, no avenging, it's survival. Tell me how much stores you've saved up with the Genesis Edict." Tony accessed the panel for his private elevator, and punched in his Tower code. The plans Bruce used to track the Tesseract were somewhere in their lab's data drives. He just had to go down and access them.
"Tony you're scaring me!" Pepper exclaimed. "What's happened? You show up out of the blue, and you just expect me to – "
Tony grabbed her shoulders in his hands a bit too forcefully. She could feel the tremor shake right through him as his dark eyes bore right into hers. "Pepper, please! You didn't just see what I saw up there waiting for us! We don't have time. I don't have time! I'm trying to do everything I can to keep you safe. How much food is there?"
Pepper caught her breath in her throat, folding under the pressure of the wildness in him. Finally, her voice seemed to make its way out. "We—Tony, there aren't any stores on the ground. I was told it might be better to move them. Somewhere no one could reach them."
The elevator door came open with a chime, but Tony ignored it. "If they aren't on the planet, then where are they?"
"Reed Richards helped make them. We converted the satellites, took away everyone's off-world capabilities so no one could plunder the food stores. The Genesis Edict is in space."
Tony let her go. Enough food to feed the human race for the next seven years, and all of it was orbiting the globe. It was the smartest thing he'd ever heard. He moved into the elevator again and, with a slight hesitation, Pepper followed after. They rode the car downward toward the lab in silence as Tony considered the theorems in his mind. The Mars portal had to be extended. One word to the World Council set that into motion instantly. Loki had built a failsafe into the models just in case they needed to fit something larger than a Blackbird through. The dwarvish technicians had the ability to enlarge it by a hundred fold, enough for even the Voiya Rose herself to squeeze through. On the other side of the galaxy, Xandar was performing the same feat. Once Earth was evacuated, the fleet would be sent through the portal and directly to Nova Luna. Already, the outlying moon was being fitted with supplies to house the incoming race. Tony had to get ahold of Clint. He needed to warn the archer to stay out of Xandarian airspace. Just in case for some reason this was the beginning of the events to come.
"Tony?" Pepper asked, daring to touch him.
Tony shook out of the confines of his mind to look up. "I'm sorry," he said instantly. "Pepper, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. It's just..." He opened his mouth to finish his thought, but nothing emerged. Some part of him needed to tell her the truth. Explain why his actions were frantic and hurried. He was at a complete loss.
She knew that look. The one which meant he was beginning to feel the walls closing in on him. That he was being backed into a corner without an escape route. Forgiving his outburst, she pulled herself against him again and felt the strength of his arms tightened around her.
"I love you. I trust you. Tony, if you say we need to go, I know that we do. I'll follow you. There's something I should tell you first, about the project." She pulled back a little to see into his face. "I've been storing up more than just food and necessities. It's our culture up there. Human beings. Who we are, what we are. I didn't think we'd ever need it, but just in case, it's all there. Your private data banks on heroes too."
The door opened to Tony's shared lab and he headed to Bruce's desk. Pepper's admission made part of him want to laugh. "Pepper, the only things I have in those data banks are all the samples Pym's collected over the years on his old mutant registration work. If you're worried about the data falling in the wrong hands, don't." He accessed the holographic table and instantly began sorting files. He forced a smile to try and put her at ease. "Seriously. I think they even have my sperm. It was a generous donation for science."
She looked over the information as he sorted it. "What are you looking for?"
"Things are going too quick. I don't know what's wrong. We need a way to get our hands on the Infinity Gauntlet, fast, before Galactus' Heralds do. Clint already ran into trouble with one of them. We tracked the Tesseract once with the power from the Mind Stone Loki's staff emitted. Clint has his hands on the Time Stone. If I can find our original data sets, I can reverse-engineer the process and repeat it. The Gauntlet might be easier to find, as it should be shooting out a greater frequency than just the Tesseract alone, but we still have six systems to cover. I'm not sure how much it can help, but I've got to try something."
"Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked.
"Pack. The minute I download this data, I'm getting you onto Rinon's ship and we're getting out of here."
:(:):(:):
Loki spied around the corner of the corridor, and analyzed the room before daring to enter in. If Barton wanted his space, he was prepared to give it to him. However, with Hank Pym's ship finally dipping through the atmosphere, it was about time for them to start moving. Clint stood across from him with his back facing the doorway. His hands splayed on the table Peter rested on while the injured man lay unconscious. A trail of blood leaked off the side of the table, and made a slow drip, drip, drip to the floor of the still off-kilter ship.
"Get out," Clint growled. His fingers separating, whitening. His shoulders tensed like an alley cat ready for war with a Rottweiler.
"I may prefer to, but I have come into this brooding hall of yours to say the indolent insect man has arrived," Loki replied. He gathered himself a little, formed the mask of indifference on his face, and strode inside. The very air had the feel of Barton's tension. Walking into it was like entering a field of lightning bolts. It was no wonder the other Guardians, despite their love for the wayward leader, chose to remain outside. None of them had a medical base. Barton was their best, and only, choice to keep Peter alive until help came.
"I'm serious, Loki, you don't want to do this with me right now." Barton sneered. Loki rounded the table to face him, and the Frost Giant felt a small influx of fear at the sight, though he hid it well.
"I see this fit of yours is not based solely on the potential for this man's demise," he said.
Clint's hand formed a fist, which lifted and slammed down into the table like a mallet. Loki jumped at the surprise. "If Pete wasn't at death's door right now, he would have never told me where the Gauntlet was. They would have just kept stringing me along out here. Keeping me busy, out of the way, and wasting my time! You have no concept of that, so don't you dare come in here and say that you do."
Loki opened his mouth, perhaps to calm him down, but the look of disinterest on his face only further fueled Clint's outrage.
"And let's not get started on you. You think I'm an idiot, I get that. Anyone who isn't you isn't worth more than what you can get out of them. You never helped save me on Alfheimr. You wanted me dead. Dead for what I did to you. For embarrassing you, imprisoning you. For knowing those secrets you always try to hide." Clint straightened, rounding the desk to close in on the Frost Giant.
Loki stood his ground. He was over a head taller than the Avenger.
"So what if I know that your heart isn't as black as you want everyone to think? That you loved someone once, and wont admit it to yourself. That she's standing right out there, and you wont do anything about it. And what about the dreams?"
Shocked, reeling for something to say, Loki's face flushed blue and he scrambled. "Dreams? What possible dreams?"
"The ones that keep you screaming into your arm at night, and clawing the floor to try and escape."
"I don't know what you – "
"Stop lying for once!" Clint shouted.
Something on their left crashed. Both of the fighting men looked over to see Hank Pym struggling over the debris to get inside. He smiled at them, his greying hair swept in a wind-tossed twirl. "Everyone can relax, the cavalry has arrived."
Clint took a final, poisonous look at the Frost Giant before shoving through him to come around the table. He grabbed his mission pack and the remainder of his gathered gear. "Pete's on one hit of morphine, dose written on his forehead. I started an IV and bandaged the wound. Groot and Drax will lift him out of the table to keep him steady. He's had one liter of fluids already."
Pym tried to keep up with the hurriedly spilled instructions as he watched Clint head for the new Milano exit. "Hey, where are you going?"
Clint didn't bother to turn around as he said, "I'm plotting our new course."
Sure, he cared about Peter's survival. The top of his priority list began with that exact notion, but Pym could handle his care from here. He needed to contact Stark or the Gateway, and update them on the strange series of events. The closest system he knew of with patient care was, unsurprisingly, Cross Lake. It would serve two purposes to get there as fast as he could. Pete would get the help he needed to survive, and Clint would have another ship to take off in alone.
No more teams. No more help. No more relying on others.
He was going old-school SHIELD operative. And he was finding the Infinity Gauntlet, and stashing it, alone.
The other Guardians moved aside as he stalked by. The remains of Galactus' Herald were smoldering in a distant fire, managed by Drax. Clint left his instructions for getting Quill moving with Rocket before he disappeared up the hatch of Pym's ship.
He'd brought one of the newly designed fighters. It wasn't a retrofitted Blackbird or quinjet. This had all of Alfheimr's sleek elegance and the infusion of dwarvish masons. She had more rooms than a hatch and a forward cabin to pilot from, which was better given the expanded company about to invade it.
Clint breezed through the polished metal bulkhead, and managed to slip into the cabin. He accessed the door panel, slid it shut, and looked around for the communications console. Tony decided to keep the ships as unidimensional as possible, so a single pilot might be at ease no matter what he decided to take into the sky. That decision helped not only stretch their forces, it also gave Clint a bit of an edge when it came to handling the systems of any ship he came across made by Midgardian specifications. The communications panel was exactly where he hoped, and after accessing it, the JARVIS adapted interface hovered before him.
There was a scuttle in the back of the ship while Groot and Drax managed to lift Quill inside. Clint watched through the small porthole style window. The Guardian had lost consciousness almost twenty minutes ago. While the external blood loss was minimal, Clint was more worried about what the bullet had done internally. Gut shots were notoriously deadly.
His communications console flashed with a typed message from the Gateway. Stark wasn't back yet. Apparently he'd taken off to Earth for his research on the Tesseract tracker. Clint considered whether or not he would resort to speaking with Steve instead, but in the end decided against it.
He shut down the Gateway ship-to-ship and typed in a new redirect address for Stark's lab. The system took a while to process the new data. He never knew exactly how the system worked, or how he could literally pick up the phone and talk to anyone across any expanse, without waiting for more than ten minutes to get a reply. That was the realm of scientific geniuses of which he did not consider himself a part. There was more movement in the back, and Clint noticed them loading a few of the Milano's supplies. It was almost time to get underway.
While the JARVIS interface tried to triangulate him a signal, Clint extracted the sphere from his pocket, and rested it on the navigation panel. All this time, he'd trusted Peter to know which way the Infinity Stone was guiding him, never assuming that Star Lord was in fact leading them farther and farther away from the source rather than closer to it.
Clint accessed the system map, and zoomed in on his small part of the galaxy. They'd been sweeping the area for almost a month already. A hundred planets, a thousand moons, all yielding no results. Maybe they had buzzed by Peter's buried treasure, and he simply declined to say it.
It was also possible that, in the nine months Quill already spent on the "hunt" for the Gauntlet, he'd stowed it someplace that might take Clint just as long to find again. It was a needle in a haystack the size of the universe. His best chance to find it, his only chance, was to get the location straight out of the Guardians. That would have to wait. Currently, Peter needed care. The easiest place to get that, was still Cross Lake.
Clint fed the information into his navigation console and plotted the course out. Pym's ship was faster than the quinjet or Milano. Most likely Rinon's technicians had a hand in that. It would still take them six hours, at the most, to reach the outpost.
"Cl—chhhssss… Clisshhhhhh… Clint?"
He typed in a few more keys and set the computer to run the navigation mock up before cruising back to the communication panel. He adjusted a few knobs, and tried to bring the Midgardian world into focus. Tony's face appeared on a backdrop of blue displays highlighting Bruce's old research. Seeing Clint, he seemed to relax.
"Clint, can you hear me ok?"
"You're a little grainy, but yeah. There might be a planet imploding between us setting off some interference," Clint joked. He sank back into his chair, and rubbed his face with his hand. His body decided that working on little sleep, being choked a few times, and falling out of a crashing ship might have been too much for one day.
"You look like you need coffee with a shot of bourbon," Tony remarked, sighing.
Clint chuckled. "No drinking. We talked about that."
"I might have broken that. I'm lying. I did, twice. I'll be honest, I feel slightly guilty."
"Cheater."
"Yeah, well, punch me for it when you see me next." Tony leaned into the screen so he could see Clint's room a little better. Apparently, he wasn't on the Milano any more, as he recognized the newer model ship. "Pym showed?"
They shared a private look. "Yeah. I know what you're thinking, Tony, I do. If someone else was out here, I would have asked for them instead. I'll try and keep him and the Infinity Stone as far away from each other as possible. Pete's in it bad. We found one of the Heralds. I don't think he's dead, but he's down for now." Clint waited for Tony to say something, but was surprised to see him rather distracted. His attention was fixed on someone in the distance.
"Tell Lirrie to scoop up the Genesis satellites and store them on Logan's ship. We're bringing them with us. All of them, yeah. I don't care how long it takes, and no, General Trask isn't getting more time. We're leaving in thirty six hours." Tony waved his hand, banishing whoever it was away. He returned to Clint with a slightly more panicked expression.
At Clint's back, the cabin door open slightly. Loki poked his head inside, as if testing to see whether or not Clint might decide to throw him out. Barton considered him for a moment, but said nothing. It was all the invitation he would afford. A few moments later, Pym slipped in also.
Tony noted the extra people. "It's starting here already. Earth, I mean. The Kree changed tactics, they can't touch the fleet now that it's in the air, not with the light elves backing us, so they're scorching the place. The invasion started about three hours after our first ship hit the ground. Dubai, Tokyo, San Francisco, and Wakonda have already been targeted. We're trying to fend them off, but they've swarmed us. They aren't attacking our ships, Clint, they're poisoning the air. Everything human on this planet is going to be dead by the time the wave spreads in three days."
Shock did strange things to a man. Some, it froze in place. Others, it triggered anger or disgust. Still more were driven insane by it. Clint had already resigned himself to a war that would destroy lives and uproot entire civilizations. He felt only numbness.
"What are you going to do?" He whispered.
"I'm clearing out. There are planet-wide evacuations in place now. Rinon's managing it personally. Pepper has the entire Genesis Edict in the air already. Apparently, our favorite Sarhorn paid her a visit and made the suggestion. It's a good thing she did."
Pym lowered down into the chair beside Clint. The entire planet. Earth itself, gone forever. All life completely erased. It was unfathomable. "To—Tony . . . Where are they going? How are we going to survive?"
Tony struggled not to stare at Loki when he answered. "Don't worry about that. Get Pete help, then send Pym back to Vanaheim."
"Got it," Clint said. "Tony, be careful. Don't stay longer than you have to. I don't want to face what's still coming without knowing you're watching my back."
Tony didn't smile, not like he normally might. He made a few curt signs to Clint, which Barton responded to, and the two of them said their traditional good-byes. In the silence of the ended transmission, everyone wondered just what might become of them. They were a race without a home, fighting a war they could never win, hinging all their faith on something they could neither see, touch, or feel. The Kree hadn't just taken away their security, they were trying to destroy the very heart of their opponents.
"It will take all of the Alheimr armada to remove the population of Midgard." Loki commented.
Clint agreed.
"If it is not destroyed when the World Eater comes, will Man hope to return there?"
"I don't know," Clint said. He shook his head a familiar weight on his back began to increase exponentially. Like a pallet of bricks, it thudded down among all the other fears and concerns he currently harbored there. He couldn't sit there and brood about his problems while Peter lay dying in the room next door. They had to get moving.
Loki fell seamlessly into his rehearsed role as Barton's navigator, while Pym contemplated the reality laying before them. After a while, it was all too much, and he got up to check on Peter instead, leaving Clint and Loki to themselves.
If the Frost Giant considered making conversation or to smooth over their fight, Clint didn't know it. He retreated into his own mind, and tried to formulate a mental list of exactly the things that his team was screwing up. They were playing right into Galactus' hand. The Twenty Predictions seemed to be coming true.
T'Challa would have a choice: save the woman that is his wife, or save Clint. They were planning to avoid that decision completely by separating T'Challa and her by forty-three systems at the very least. He was on one of those elven ships right now, helping to evacuate the planet.
Pym's childlike manipulation of an Infinity Stone created the catalyst for all the events to arise. Right now, Hank was sitting on a ship with free access to an Infinity Stone whether he knew it was there or not.
The mission was mismanaged at best, and a betrayal by his closest friend would be the last sight Clint would ever see. He was surrounded by friends, and mismanaged was the best word outside of cursing to describe what the Guardians of the Galaxy tried so desperately to accomplish.
A war would come to encompass every system, trillions of souls, and nearly all heroes. Friends and innocents die, planetary evacuations run rampant and Clint would find himself there. The evacuation fails, the only saving grace is a single perfect shot. Clint knows it means he will die, but he will make that sacrifice. Clint could have never imagined that threat would be home grown. The Kree invasion of his own planet.
Choice drives the events. Everyone's faced with their choices again. So far, everyone was playing their parts to the letter. But something in it all just didn't add up. Clint knew they had seven years. It had only been fourteen months. Why was everything moving so fast?
Then it hit him.
Manipulation. Changing. Choices.
He reached into his pocket and extracted the metal orb Peter had given to him.
The Time Stone.
Uh oh! What does this mean? Has Peter done something to manipulate time? Will Earth be destroyed? OMG TONY!
Next time: The Fallout, Thanos, and Loki repays his debt.
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