Chapter Thirty-Eight: Back in the Saddle
Fury called them in when pieces of Florida started heaving themselves out of the ground.
They'd had a quiet morning; none of them could quite believe how well they'd slept and it had lingered on through breakfast. Tony hadn't needed high doses of medications to keep him under and he was pretty sure Clint was in shock over getting twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. Thor looked insufferably smug and kept exchanging looks with Pepper each time she strode past during her morning routine.
So, Fury's interruption was decidedly unwelcome and the minion who brought the briefing packet cowered in the elevator.
Pepper kissed Tony on the cheek and escorted the junior Agent out while Tony glared at the security breach. Once the doors closed on Pepper's stern amusement and mouthed 'stay in bed', he snapped open the briefing packet and read over it while the rest climbed into armor and armaments.
"'Gravitational disturbance-' now that is just bullshit; BRUCE! Look at this, does that look like a shift in spacetime curvature to you?"
Bruce was a little behind. Tony couldn't blame him, not with those pants yet again failing to hide his skinny ass without assistance. "Uhh... The increase in volume... look, the holes in the ground are smaller than the projectiles," Bruce commented, leaning against the back of Tony's lounger to pause the video. JARVIS pulled a four-D reconstruction out for them and set it playing.
"Approximate increase in volume approaching 570% during observed ascent."
"Thank you, JARVIS. See? Gravitational anomalies would not do that. THAT is an increase in the volume without increasing mass. Model the ascent on that basis, J, calculate rate of expansion and extrapolate..." Tony twisted and flipped the projected wireframe, sending it out into the room, while it flickered and changed. Red for the sim and blue for the recording; the hologram went yellow; perfect match.
"HA!" Tony exclaimed, promptly pressing a hand against his ribs and equally promptly regretting that so hard. "Fuck. Yes. I was right, Fury's wrong; something's blowing things up, and not in the fun way."
"And the decrease in density is -"
"- causing a displacement differential; buoyancy."
"Wait," Clint grumbled, heaving on his secondary bow to get it into the stringer. "So those," he pointed at the rocks, "have the weight of those?" He pointed at the holes, where boulders the size of heads had been torn out of the earth.
"Yeah. They vary, but seven, eight pounds, probably." Tony twisted his head to make sure Clint wasn't abusing his nice, shiny new bow, but something pulled and he turned back again. Stitches. Rude.
"So, what happens when they come back down?"
"Still splat. Don't go splat, Barton, you owe me a pizza." Tony huffed and turned to ogle Steve instead. The new harness was working out; no way of saying whether the weirdness would affect outside objects, so Steve was getting a parachute hitched on. Natasha was very efficient.
And also horribly under-armored; her body suit would stop bullets, but they only had the KE of ... of a bullet. Maybe 2000 joules, at most.
Falling boulders would have more. A lot more.
And only Cap had a helmet.
"So, if you're done grouching about the science, who the fuck is ripping up my favorite jungle?"
"The Everglades are not a jungle, Clint-"
"Favorite jungle."
Bruce shut his mouth and shrugged, threading a new piece of elastic through his belt loops. Tony thought it might work better than the break-out thread method, but there was only so much a coefficient of restitution can do when the Hulk is in the equation.
"Uh, right... no visual on the centre of the whatsit. Neutron radiation; delightful. Don't get too close. EM and beta radiation... Levels aren't really high enough to do real damage. 'No suspects'. Fucking Fury. Sorry kiddies; won't know whose face to introduce to the floor until you get a better look." Tony flicked through the rest of the data Fury had included; clean bill of non-freakiness right up until eleven-hundred that morning, then blam, neutron spike and an EM wave detectable by satellite.
"Alright, shielded earpieces and radiation monitors."
"Check."
"Uhh.. yep. Hulk probably won't-"
"He'll be fine. Just hang on to it as long as you can. Natasha?"
"Check. And Clint's check too. We're go."
Tony frowned at them, kitted up and standing on the marble, checking each other's equipment. They were lingering.
"Alright, Avengers. Get out of my house. Shoo," he grouched, turning away from them and calling up the Ranger's control systems.
"See you later, Tony. You staying on comms?" Steve called as they stepped out to meet the quinjet.
"Do you know any other quantum engineers? No. Yes, I will be on the grid. Look after 'Ranger. It's his first time." Tony didn't look up, not until the jet was revving up to get some altitude. He just caught the moment the jet engines fired, dark blue 100% burn flashing, and it was away.
Wow. So that grated.
A deep breath was enough to remind him of a few pertinent facts; his ribs hadn't set (he blamed Bruce for that analogy, he was not concrete, thank you very much), he was due meds and the pain was at its highest ebb in days. The drugs to make him functional would make him ridiculous; not stupid, god knew he'd taken enough IQ tests drunk to show that, but not able to crank out the kind of quantum physics that could explain a change in the fundamental forces.
So he was letting the dose tail off.
He shook off the still moment and pulled a tablet into his lap; he had work to do.
"Alright, J; open the comms. And have fun riding 'Ranger."
"Of course, sir; the innate protocols are proving very effective. It is requiring very little input. Comms open; Avengers line, Op Com, Pepperony."
Tony frowned and looked up, flicking the pop-up comm controls to just the one channel for a second. "Pepper, what are you doing on the line?"
"Fury's emergency-contracted the Oracle grid, I'm riding herd on Satellite Management, aren't I, boys?"
There was a chorus in the background. "Don't go getting ideas, geek squad; I am still your king!"
"Yes sir!"
Tony snorted and switched back to allcomm. "Alright, conference call! Hello boys and ladies, this is your pilot speaking. You will be reaching your destination in approximately thirty minutes, anyone know what the fuck to do once you get there?" He grinned; this he could do. On the bank of holo screens surrounding him, Fury, Sitwell and Bruce popped up, the latter with Steve's blue head in the background.
"Stark, what the hell are you doing? You are benched." Fury was scowling. If Tony didn't live with Natasha, he might actually have found it intimidating.
"Sorry, Long John, you didn't revoke my consultant contract, and it's got a two-weeks-notice clause."
"He's right, you know," Pepper chimed in, audio only.
"Potts, now is not-"
"Iron Man, what've we got?" Steve, oh, Steve. Tony grinned blindingly.
"Don't touch the white light." Tony threw a JARVIS-assembled infographic into the shared hub. "Whatever field, any guesses as to which one we're dealing with, Bruce?"
"Not Higgs. Possibly electron probability matrix."
"Could work. The field is exciting atoms to the point of giving off photons. Which, is lucky because it means you can see it to not touch it."
"Science department have designated this a gravitational anomaly, is this matrix cau-"
"Sitwell, just no. Stop, you're lowering the IQ of the entire team. It's not gravitational."
On the monitors Pep was feeding them, satellite telemetry starts updated, showing a black swarm of anomalous-density rock high above the Florida swamps.
"That, boys and ladies, is something messing with weak nuclear force and Up, Down, Charm and Strange. Bottom and Top might get in on the action later." He grinned and flicked baffling quantum science journals at Sitwell's computer. Should keep him quiet for the next decade or two. "We've got Ups changing to Downs-"
"Beta decay?" Bruce queried, leaning on the back of Natasha's chair.
"Bing Bing! Give the man a science prize! Somethings changing the probabilities of decay; bunch of electron anti-neutrinos-"
"Alright, Tony, that's enough. JARVIS, put him and Bruce on a private line?" Steve ordered, grinning at the camera and pulling Bruce's comm out of the scientist's shirt pocket.
"Spoilsport."
"Just let Bruce translate the quantum physics, alright?"
"Copy that, mon Capitain. We'll have something for you in a few minutes."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Without the barrage of completely novel terms, Steve, Thor and Clint could settle down with a screen and the footage and work out a few logistical issues. The evacuation was nearly complete, only a couple of injured left to pull out. Medevac was primarily on foot; no one wanted to risk relying on the roads with chunks of tarmac blowing up so literally.
No deaths so far, but... some of the injuries were looking really suspicious; unless there was a pack of wolves on hunger march, something was running around taking chunks out of people. No sign of anything in the telemetry, not that Steve could see, but it'd be there, somewhere.
The light Tony referred to was only visible on the newest drone footage and it looped out from an epicentre in perfect arcs. Steve recognised them from his French curve, and Clint pointed one out that matched a parabolic trajectory; mathematically perfect curves. Thor, on the other hand, muttered something about Yggdrasil and the magic of bridges.
"You think it's a portal?"
"A path not from the Nine Realms," Thor said, nodding slowly with a dire frown. "This bodes ill, Captain; worse things than beasts roam such paths."
"We don't know that its a portal; it's got no 'port', for one." Clint swiped the screen in Steve's hands and the picture focused in on the epicentre. "Look, it's just a solid mass; the gate Loki made, you could see though, it was like a hole in reality. This is missing the gate."
"Aye, t'would differ; the laws that govern the Nine Realms are not ever shared elsewhere. T'were many an Aesir who died before such paths were forbidden."
"Do not go where Gods fear to tread," Steve muttered, frowning at the screen. "Alright, let's go with 'dimensional' uh... 'disturbance'. You seeing an origin point, Clint?"
"Nothing on this side... No generator or tech. Nothing for fifty miles. Must have one helluva guidance system though, hitting ground level from the other side of a different dimension."
Steve blanched and felt his heart ramp up. Of course. Of course this couldn't be a natural event, what was he hoping.
"Aye, such travel requires a fine hand on the reins; Heimdall Allseeing could speak further on this, but I know little more," Thor said gravely.
"No chance of a consult?" Steve asked, not particularly hopeful, given Thor's expression, but wanting to know why it wasn't an option.
"Nay; Heimdall's rules are strict, and while he bears me some sympathy, he would not risk hurting Midgard with the power of the Bifrost when she is already so injured."
Steve frowned down at the screen; the fragility that implied was worrying. Two out of four Avenger-level incidents had involved one of these gates and there was nothing actually stopping two from happening at the same time. Except, apparently, an alien's sense of responsibility over a planet pretty extremely far from his home.
It also implied that if Thor was off-world when something like this happened, he wouldn't be able to get to them before the fighting was over. They'd managed the Gulf incident and the Chinese sub without him, but portals were on a whole different level...
"Coming up on the first anomalies, anyone got anything worth reporting?" Natasha was at the helm, eyes fixed on a looming boulder the size of a small truck.
"Thor recognises it; looks a lot like a portal 'from outside the Nine Realms'. Negative on finding an origin point. Bruce?"
Bruce was still peering at his tablet, but he gestured them over with an absent hand. "No origin here either, but we're getting somewhere with the math. Looks like their dimension has a stronger weak nuclear force, so matter that's... infected, for want of a better term-"
"Biologist," Tony muttered over the comm.
"-by the seeping between the dimensions expands. The atoms don't pack as tightly. Unless they have some impressive containment on the other side, the reverse is going to happen to them; things shrinking, getting dense. It'll rip apart their planet in the same way as its hurting ours. Only in reverse. Maybe destroy their generator."
There were incomprehensible things going on on the scientist's screen, which had two cursors (one in green and one in red. Tony would never win any prizes for subtlety), and Bruce gestured at it like it showed something that anyone other than a PhD in physics could understand. To Steve, it looked more like a play-by-play baseball diagram than anything scientific.
(( wiki/Feynman_diagram))
"You think that's going to happen before or after Florida makes it into orbit?" Clint interjected, peering around Natasha at the swamp.
"There's nothing to say our space-time and theirs happens at the same rate, so I wouldn't bet on it going our way," Bruce prevaricated, shrugging and taking his glasses off. He went to put them in his shirt pocket, but changed his mind at the last moment and put them in the cup holder on the dash, where they joined the inevitable debris of pens, hair ties, paper clips and shell casings.
Steve had a moment of impatient frustration in which he stared at the cup holder with what felt like excessive irritation. "So what, exactly, are we expected to do?"
"We don't know that it's an attack," Tony replied over the Avengers comm, cutting off Sitwell's barely-started transmission with a squark of white noise. "We don't even know if it's intentional. Stuff like this is way beyond the scope of current cosmology; it could be a natural phenomenon that we just happen to never have encountered before! We don't actually know that it was a meteorite that caused the KT-mass extinction."
"Well, the evidence is really quite conv-"
Hawkeye rode over Bruce's comeback, patting the man on the shoulder in wordless apology. "How fast, through space, is the Earth moving? And how fast, exactly, is Florida spinning due to the Earth's rotation?"
Tony had a babble of numbers for that, but leapt onto Clint's meaning maybe three seconds in. "Oh. Oh. Shit."
"Yeah. I don't think I could hit something like that, and keep on hitting it for hours solid, without some serious guidance tech."
Bruce sat back in his chair, narrowly avoiding bumping into Clint's chin rather violently.
"Look, it doesn't matter; what can we do, Stark? In case you haven't noticed, there's nothing to hit!"
"That's not quite true; something's been chewing on the civilians. No deaths so far, let's not change that, hm?" Fury added, presumably over Sitwell's shoulder.
"That, and you need to burn off the hydrogen."
"What?"
Tony sounded tired and in pain and Steve grimaced that they weren't keeping up with him, even after all ... that.
"There's fission going on at the event horizon, look."
Steve peered at the screen, scrunching his forehead up and attempting to keep up with the false-colour images and comparing the to the landscape outside the quinjet. Boiling clouds of orange filled the screen, where clear air was in real life. The 'event horizon' looked over exposed and whited out, but you could see the way it gushed and belched the gas.
"There's ... stuff coming through. Anything, air, dust, whatever, and once ... it gets over here, our laws of physics rip it into hadrons. Hydrogen, helium, ... tritium, some other trace elements. Alpha particles. That builds up too much, we'll have a real explosion on our hands."
"Does that mean we're not getting invaded? Because that would be nice."
"Fingers crossed, Brucey- oh shit, DUM-E sto-" Tony cut off and Steve just caught Pepper laughing in the background.
"Alright, Clint; light it up. Anyone know how hydrogen burns?" The archer raised an eyebrow, 'do you even need to ask?', and stepped out, peeking at his radiation badge as the bay door dropped.
"Alright, ignition in three..." He nocked and pulled, "two," release, "one," the arrow flew, arching down, "boom."
The hydrogen burnt up with an immense pop that squeaked and collapsed in on itself in a ripple of crimson flame.
"I'm getting trace lithium from the spectrometer, patchy though..." Bruce muttered into his ear-piece distractedly, while Steve had Clint drop a slow-burning arrow near the event horizon.
"Sure Cap, give us a nice rolli- fuck!" Clint jerked and sent the arrow three meters to the left of his original target; something screamed and writhed and distorted the air around the arrow, but Steve's eyes burned when he looked and he turned away, shaking his head like a dog with canker.
"Hawkeye, report!" Hill barked over Sitwell's channel.
"Class seven incursion, cut the civilian feeds!" Clint demanded, already nocking a new arrow,
"Done, Agent Barton, I am reading seventeen signatures matching the one pinned by your arrow." If they couldn't have Tony, at least they had JARVIS; the Iron Ranger roared into their airspace, zipping down towards the eye-wateringly bright abomination and dodging rising boulders. It looked disturbingly like dodging very, very slow ak-ak guns.
Steve'd had enough of that for several lifetimes. "Alright. Stark, Bruce, I want a 'what' and a 'how', get to it. Natasha, Clint; stay in the jet, pick them off as you can. Thor?"
"Captain."
"Time to go."
They went.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Tony was left as the filter between the now-classified situation and the civilian feeds the moment Barton called it. Technically, Tony was a civilian himself at that moment but... Sitwell didn't really think Tony would include himself in a disinformation campaign, did he?
Pepper chattered in his ear, alarmed and trying to keep on top of the satellite telemetry team; she had to get them feeding the data through without looking at it too hard. Tony rerouted the processing to the Tower's more secure servers and took away the temptation.
"Count's up to twenty-five, Tony, we need to get a handle on this, now!"
"Breathe, Big Green, I'm watching. They're coming out of the event horizon in an annular pattern; weird arrangement for a gate." Tony flicked through the visible-spectrum cameras, tagging the optical distortions and getting a recognition algorithm going. It was like the portal was a... a smoke ring, self sustaining pressure fluctuati- ow. Ow, owww...
Tony carefully, so, so carefully, lay back and tried not to sound like a creeper over the comms. Using his left arm was... no. Warning; do not approach, live rounds in use. Fire in the hole. He fumbled for the IV push and swiped his thumbprint; instant cloudy fuzz. The math that had been so crystal clear a second before spun up into a mad whine of numbers that didn't make any sense.
"Hey, Bruce? Buddy, bro, don't look now, but... yeah, I'm dosing out, here..." He grinned at nothing, staring at the ceiling over his screens, waiting for the pain to be just another leaf on the wind.
"Tony?" Bruce's microphone hissed with contact interference and his voice rumbled underneath it; talking to Cap, maybe, not wanting Tony to hear. So much for 'bros before-' okay, no, Tony could not use that in reference to Cap. He'd get... snuggled to death by a puppy or... Invasion. Alien invasion.
And focusing.
"Alright, Tony, breathing exercises; hold for a five count, this time. I'll check your math." Tony drew in a deep breath, ignored the creaky joints, and held the air in, letting his inflated lungs support the rib breaks from the inside.
In between breaths, he wrote equations. Quantum mathematics could calculate the values of the universal constants in this universe; therefore, with a little tweaking of the input, it could work out the values in that universe too.
Leave the boys to playing whack-an-interdimensional-beastie. Tony was doing science.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Thor really was something; that hammer? Really, really shouldn't be able to fly. Clint knew all about conservation of momentum, and Mjolnir really didn't. Thor could jump, though; the guy was using the floating boulders as launch pads, sending them spinning away from the fight while he hurtled between and around the arcs of, apparently deadly, light. Who knew?
Nock draw aim... ease off, fire.
Whatever the things coming out of the portal were, they were pissed, destructive. An old Chevy shell ten yards out was disintegrating as they swarmed over it, barely visible as ripples in the air.
Can't say he approved of Cap's strategy, though... Sure, he knew theoretically, that the shield could take the blow, but he was still plummeting, head first, towards the ground. Chute in three... two... swear to God, Cap, I will shoot you in th-
The canvas billowed out and then collapsed, pulling just enough of Cap's momentum to stop him becoming paste before he slipped the lines and went in swinging.
"Five-two-two-eight, 'Tasha, blimp rising at ships-7."
"Copy; five-two-two-eight. We gonna need the cannons?"
"Yarrr, Cap'n; raise the mizzen mast!"
"Clint, I know where you sleep."
"Lies."
Nock draw aim... fire. POP.
Another pocket of hydrogen to JARVIS' left collapsed in on itself, before the backblow could catch the Ranger's jets.
"Bringing the guns round..." Natasha warned, and Clint stepped back from the hatch as he lost the shot. He'd have to talk to Tony about that, sometime; if they were going to use the jet like this regularly, he needed better sightlines.
The thought managed to hang around for three, maybe four seconds, before it was wiped out by the splash of black on Cap's back; blood, soaking through the blue fabric. Shoulder wound, damage to the trapezius, maybe the deltoid; Cap'd need hand-to-hand back up, soon. If Steve made a sound of pain, either the comms didn't pick it up, or Natasha putting holes in a massive swathe of rising boulders covered it, but Clint was pretty sure Steve was just that stoic. Clint brought his bow up without a second thought and kicked out the safety on his tether. The line was ten meters; he could handle a fall into harness that far. If he fell right.
He leapt into space, eyes snapping to the almost-invisible assailants swarming over Cap, their weird, dense bodies twisting the clean lines of the shield into a mirage.
Three with one arrow, nice of them to line up like that, while falling. Brace for im-
The line snapped taut, smacking against his side and digging the harness into his thighs and ribs. Four more before Natasha noticed and changed the 'jets trajectory. "You're throwing off my aim, Widow."
"BOULDER." Natasha managed to avoid smearing him against a floating heap of rock and he seized his chance.
"So there is. Thank you, Agent Romanoff. Cutting line in... three, two, one... Mark." He landed on a solid sheet of some crystalline stone, which crumbled under his boots. The resulting grit drifted upwards, which could get really annoying without goggles, but Clint's boots didn't start doing anything weird so, hey, gamble won.
"Hawkeye, report!" Steve could really bark sometimes, jheeze. "Why have you left your post?"
"Ask the uh... seven bugs not currently trying to eat you. Also, the massive blood stain on your shoulder." Somewhere in the distance, Clint caught Bruce's frantic attempts to calm Tony down and do more math, while Steve just grunted over the line, shield clanging loud enough to carry through the throat-mic.
Clint's new platform, lacking the mass to provide inertia, wobbled in a way eerily similar to that of a hot air balloon and thought about throwing him off. He didn't give it the time and took a running leap down to the next floating edifice.
"JARVIS, you free?" Clint grumbled, admittedly a little breathlessly, as he clung to an outcropping of his slowly-ascending perch. This one was a little more stable and he managed to take a second to get a bead on Cap; the stain wasn't spreading at arterial speeds, he had time to not die on his way down. Less than he'd like, but still.
"Indeed, Agent Barton. Approaching your position now. Thor claims he can hold the portal in the interim."
"Great, just like we practiced then. I'll get Steve, you get the bugs, yeah?"
"Agreed, Agent Barton. Beginning final approach."
The Iron Ranger's thrusters growled and hissed as JARVIS brought it around, slowing marginally. That was one thing you could count on JARVIS for; he wouldn't ever underestimate you. Clint's flying leap landed him squarely on the Ranger's hold-fasts, their velocities perfectly matched. If there was one thing Clint could do, it was hit a target spot on; good to know JARVIS realized what that meant in real terms.
The AI drew them around in a sweeping arc, avoiding the dangerous bows of physics-altering weird, and pointing them at Cap.
"Huh, that's weird," he muttered, nocking an arrow and sending it into the patch of eye-watering distortion at Cap's left ankle.
"We're listening, Clint. What're you seeing?"
"The bugs are coming out of both sides of the portal. Front and back. Why else would Thor and Cap be geting the same amount of..." he paused to fire again, "... heat?"
"That, that, does not make any sense. E-Ros events are bililililly ateral. But not the symmetrical kind, the math-"
"Tony, no opiates on mission. Private line, please."
If Clint wasn't honed in on keeping Steve's injured side clear of attacks, he'd have laughed; it was good to hear Tony's voice without the restraint and caution of pain. It helped that the blood had stopped spreading on Steve's uniform, too. Too many fucking injuries on this team, I swear to god...
"Cap, how's your visual ID'ing going?" Clint asked, primarily because looking at these things was making his eyes hurt, and he wasn't in the middle of a pack of them.
"Uh, terrible? Don't look at-" Cap grunted and flung the shield; working one handed was doing a number on his form, and the shield was intermittently in the way and utterly invaluable. "-them for too long, trust me."
"Alright; ready for pick up, Cap? 'Cause you're out of there whether you like it or not-" Clint pulled back instinctively as the portal throbbed. JARVIS turned with the movements, the ship under Clint's feet twitching and humming as the AI reoriented its sensors.
Something was coming through, something bigger than the bugs. "Shit, shit, shit... Cap, come on!"
JARVIS slalomed the last few yards, fetching up on Steve's uninjured side and turning the Ranger's repulsors on the nearest bugs.
"Bruce, Tony, update!" Steve tossed the shield up to Clint and hauled himself up one-handed, the grips shifting around to make a place for Steve on the Ranger's back, without compromising Clint's foothold.
"Something's coming through -"
"No shit."
" -different. Can't tell what it's going to be, but - - hydrogen -"
"Fuck, JARVIS, your control signal okay? We're losing radio."
"My controls are rather more sophisticated than-"
"Alright, JARVIS, get us out of here," Steve ordered, not so much as hesitating to cut JARVIS off mid-sentence.
Clint settled his feet and rained arrows down on the twisting miasma to either side of the bulging portal. Thor, on the far side, popped up into view as he drew down a blindingly large lightning bolt and flew up to pace them to the jet, batting rocks out of his way as they went.
"Cap, your turn. Gimmie an update." Clint crouched to reduce windshear once he was out of range and holstered his bow to look Cap over.
"Shoulder's out of commission," Steve said, craning his head to get a look at the injury. "Not too deep, though, don't think it hit bone."
Clint pulled the sliced piece of armor open, getting blood all over his fingers, and took a quick look. For Clint, it'd have been a career-stopping injury; it sliced through the tough shoulder muscles he used to draw a bow.
For Steve, it'd be healed in a few days. Bastard.
"Yeah, you're good. Bleeding's stopped already. Windshear'll do that."
"Good." Natasha growled, making Clint tense into his crouch, because that tone? Universally not good. "Tony, Bruce, got anything?"
"I don't - Tony's not making any sense, but he's onto something, but I don't have the quantum mathematics to-"
Tony's loose voice broke through, accompanied by a quiet apology from JARVIS. "THAT, is because you are not high. You should be high, it makes everything so much more interesting."
"Technically you're stoned, rather than-"
"ANYWAY. The portal wasn't open. It was chewing. Do you see it? All tiny bits of inbetween space leaking out like ice cubes. It was just... making a space for itself, bending our values of Epsilon-zero and Planck's constant until it could mesh, until the key could fit the lock."
Clint listened with one rather hopeless ear and concentrated on getting Steve from the Ranger to the jet.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"It's the things, Steve, they told me what was- well, not told me, told me, I'm not that high, but they came out of both sides of the portal; they aren't coming from the other dimension at all."
"Well they sure as hell aren't anything from God's green Earth, Tony."
"Well, yeah, they didn't come from here, either!"
"The portal's doing something, Tony, hurry it up," Clint barked, hauling on Steve's harness to get him to sit the fuck down, Cap, you feel blood loss the same as anyone. Steve resented the muttered cussing, but ignored it, because Tony was still talking.
"Alright, yeah, okay; the bugs come from in between. Vast probability space; once something starts self-replicating, doesn't have to be biological to be alive. Even if it's a fragment of an exploded universe. SO, bugs; bad, dimensional anomalies."
"They had teeth."
"Lots of things have teeth, not the point-"
"Take a breath, Tony," Bruce warned and Steve tensed up, making Clint's prodding all the more painful; Tony sounded like he was about to pass out from excessive amounts of excitement. Steve could ignore blood making his suit sticky for hours, but the portal was making ripples in the fabric of reality, which was very nearly the most stressful thing he'd experienced in... oh, at least a week.
"No time; something's coming through. Something clever enough to make a portal to our dimension, but thick enough to forget matching universal constants. Infinite multiverse states that-"
"Time, Tony."
"Do you have to use my name every ti- oh, Time. EM waves are the same on both sides. Matter works differently, but EM is independent of Epsilon-zero, and Planck's constant. We can EMP their lab, through the portal!"