Here's a new chapter. I really worked hard for writing this one, so I really hope you'll find time to leave a review and tell me if I did a good job.
I wish you a good read!
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Chapter 9:
Peter landed gently on top of a building, Carol's body still firmly held in his arms. Once on the ground, the woman let out a pained groan, which pushed the vigilante to gently place her against the wall of the roof.
"Let me take a look", he said with a worried tone, receiving a sharp look from the woman.
"I'm fine, I can still fight ..."
"Carol!" Peter replied, interrupting her before she could finish the sentence.
The superheroine flinched, surprised by her partner's sudden outburst. He let out a sigh, grabbing both her hands reassuringly.
"Let me have a look", he said with a gentler voice, trying to put her at ease. Carol was a very proud woman, he knew it well. She hated to appear weak in front of others, but being stubborn in such a situation would certainly not have helped her.
The blonde looked away, nodding just to give him her tacit assent.
Peter proceeded to lift part of the suit, revealing the Avenger's stomach. It was completely covered in bruises, and a deep wound ran down her side, from which streams of blood were pouring out.
"We must take you to a hospital", the boy said, after a careful analysis.
Carol made a couple of coughs.
"N-no, no hospital", she whispered with a low voice.
The vigilante stared at her incredulously. "Carol, it's really bad ..."
"They wouldn't know how to help me", she retorted through clenched teeth, trying to stop another wave of pain.
Peter then understood: she was not refusing the possibility of receiving treatment. It was very unlikely that any hospital would have the necessary equipment to patch someone like her, whose alien biology made her very different from any normal human being, starting with her blood.
"What do you need?" he asked, after a moment of silence.
Carol seemed to consider the question.
"Energy. A LOT of energy", she answered, and then burst into another cough attack. A few drops of blood dripped from her lips, spilling onto the ground. It was a vision that managed to shake Peter to the core.
"There should be a power plant nearby", the boy said, rising her once more in his arms.
The woman nodded satisfied.
"Take me there", she ordered with a tired voice, while numerous roars began to resonate from the city centre.
Peter glanced quickly in that direction. The battle with Ghidorah had started again ... and he seriously doubted that it would end soon.
XXXX
Rhodey advanced, while the ground trembled at every step.
He threw the fleas that crowded the driveway into the air, raised his arms and the armour highlighted seven hundred and thirteen possible targets.
The first passage with the M-2 turned a dozen of these beasts into hamburgers.
The man watched the ammunition counters plummet with three-digit numbers, while a second passage destroyed twenty more of those deals and breached the intersection. At that moment, a flea at least three times larger than the others jumped on him, making him crash onto the asphalt. The interior of the armour began to turn red.
Getting up with difficulty, the man noticed that the insect was just a few meters away from him, ready to complete the work.
Without wasting time, Rhodey grabbed a Black Cadillac and threw it on the animal, flattening it on the ground. The hero leapt into the sky and landed heavily on the roof of the car. All four wheels exploded and the Cadillac fell apart.
Under the vehicle, the creature let out a deafening cry. Part of the head and one paw were stuck under the passenger door and were covered in broken glass.
The creature began to open and close its jaws, staring angrily at the Avenger.
"God, you are really ugly", he commented.
The monster moved and extended a claw to grab him, but the movement was slow and clumsy. The machine creaked as the creature tried to push it away.
Rhodey raised his right arm, ready to finish the opponent. However, just before he could do it, a bristly paw clung to his leg and slammed him off the vehicle.
The new flea, as large as the one under the transport, threw the Avenger onto the sidewalk. The hero's head hit the road surface with a loud thud.
Then, the man's body was thrown into the air by the jaws of another insect, before being slammed to the ground once again. His ears began to hum.
The third flea pushed the car aside and looked at him. At that point, Rhodey activated the suit's ventilation mechanisms, defying gravity, and struck a punch with all his might, straight against the opponent's skull.
Dozens of gigantic teeth fragmented and flew in all directions as soon as the monster's jaws fell apart.
Rhodey turned and launched a second blow that destroyed the rib cage of another flea, spilling green blood on the road surface.
The hero struck a third blow against the last enemy, and then a fourth and finally a fifth, until the insect began to recede. With another surge of energy, the man managed to take its back in one hand and its tusk in the other.
Then he clung to the monster's chest and turned the head of the arthropod. The skull turned to the left ... and stopped moving.
"This will be a long day", he muttered.
Two blocks away, Bucky continued to fight from the ground while trying to reload his guns and clear his mind.
He made a slip to the ground ... and fired. The insects' bodies fell one after the other, with each shot fired, and, until he got back on his feet, the man certainly didn't stop to check how many of those bullets had been fatal to the beasts. Too few, judging by the fact that they kept coming after him.
He emptied the magazines to take a breather and then inserted new ones. They were the last.
Sam was busy fighting with other fleas about twenty meters away. Among them there was an opening filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of those animals.
The Avenger's guns fired once more, eliminating a whole row of those deals, until the man managed to reach an abandoned pick-up truck in the middle of the road.
The fleas saw him coming and they growled. They launched towards him, charging like a herd of angry bulls.
One of them fell instantly against the soldier's blows and Bucky used the corpse as a springboard.
While suspended in mid-air, the man rearranged his weapons in the holster and kicked one of the bugs out of the pickup. Then he placed himself on the vehicle and punched another flea with his metal arm.
The beast stumbled backwards and bumped into another insect, making it fall on the road.
Bucky shot straight into the creature's jaws, tearing them apart.
With the prosthesis he blocked a claw that was about to hit him in the stomach, folded the flea's leg and with a well-aimed blow to the sternum he managed to pierce its exoskeleton.
The creature screamed in pain and Bucky kicked it, knocking it onto its back. Then he shot into the bare belly of the being, killing it instantly.
He glanced briefly behind him: Quake and Wanda were still busy fighting against Ghidorah, whose attacks had become more aggressive and persistent.
The monster's right head jumped towards Wanda who managed to dodge it. The dragon's teeth shattered on the ground right next to the woman's feet.
Scarlet Witch seized the moment: she telekinetically grabbed one of the fleas and hurled it against the face of the beast. She took two more and, using them as maces, she hit the monster's skull three times before the insects completely crushed.
The middle head snapped forward to bite her, but Wanda had already moved.
She launched a telekinetic wave against the dragon's back, causing it to crash heavily on the road.
She prepared to launch another attack. However, before she could do it, a flea attacked her from behind, causing her to fall on the road.
The young woman got rid of it with a rapid telekinetic attack, but was attacked by at least a dozen of those insects.
A hundred yards from her, Ghidorah decided to take advantage of the difficult time the ex-Avenger was having. He took aim, opened its jaws wide and ...
A sound wave slammed its left head against the building next door, causing the monster to stumble backwards.
The creature's neck moved back and forth, like that of a snake, before something in its distorted face focused on Quake, launching a snarl.
"Hi, there", the woman said. "Did I catch your attention, big boy?"
The hydra's answer came in the form of a electric beam, which Daisy was forced to dodge.
Below her, Wanda had managed to kill most of her assailants.
One of them hit her from behind, while two others launched into a frontal charge.
Scarlet Witch reached out her right hand and mentally delivered a blow of psychic energy against the arthropods. She shrugged off the one that was trying to bite her and blew its jaws. Then, she heard a warning cry from Quake.
She turned, just in time to see Ghidorah's three heads leaping forward. The creature's mouths resembled a carnivorous plant armed with teeth and tusks.
Instinctively, Wanda raised both hands to protect herself, evoking a telekinetic shield from nothing.
The dragon snarled and snorted, while sharp teeth snapped the scarlet barrier in an attempt to overcome it. Despite this, the superheroine appealed to all the strength she had in her body to maintain that position, her lips tightened in a grimace, her eyes lit in red.
She planted her feet on the ground and let out a scream of pure anger, starting to push the monster back. Needless to say, Ghidorah found itself quite surprised by the young woman's actions.
Here, in front of it, for the first time in countless millennia, a mortal was proving to be a real challenge. Its attempts to hit her with its electric beams were worthless, the telekinetic powers of this human were proving to be a real challenge. She was powerful, the middle head had to admit to itself. Very powerful.
And yet ... something unusual attracted the attention of the dragon. It heard a mass of indistinct and confused thoughts making their way into her mind. And, after paying more attention to it, the monster realized that it was that woman who projected them.
Initially it thought it must be some kind of mental attack, perhaps a clumsy attempt of a mental intrusion. However ... it soon realized that those thoughts were too messy, full of anger, pain ... and regret.
It was then that the monster came to a surprising realization: that woman, whose mind was strong enough to generate telekinetic attacks capable of fighting the destroyer of worlds.. had a completely exposed mind, without any kind of defence. She was projecting her thoughts into Ghidorah's brain ... without even realizing it.
"For what reason?" it was the first thought that passed through the middle head of the hydra.
There were several possible hypotheses. Maybe she was less powerful than it initially thought, but it doubted it strongly, especially after that incredible display of offensive skills. Or no one had ever taught her to properly develop her powers, the use of which was limited to self-taught learning.
The latter option aroused an evil smile from Ghidorah. Now the beast knew exactly what the most suitable course of action would be to reverse the fight in its favour.
The middle head motioned for the other two to step back, which prompted the couple to look at it confusedly. However, knowing well that it wasn't in their interest to disobey the orders of their 'leader', the two heads did as commanded.
At the same time, the middle head lowered itself to the ground, meeting Wanda's gaze.
She narrowed her eyes and prepared to attack once again. At the same time, Ghidorah's pupils seemed to light up ... and the young woman's world began to collapse.
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Dark. It was the first thing Wanda saw once her eyes opened. The world around her was dark ... and it was cold.
Then ... the light came. And the reality around her changed with a swirl of colours and shapes, leaving room for a rather familiar scenario.
A room completely covered with shards, rubble and broken wooden planks. On the sloping floor, slightly lower, there was a grenade, on whose cylindrical surface a single and simple word stood out: Stark.
This was a dream. It didn't seem like it, but it had to be. First, she had already lived through July 15th 2005, and it felt terribly unfair to have to relive it. Because that was the same day her parents died.
Second, she remembered a lot of things going on in the past few months, especially her conversations with Dr. Banner.
The image suddenly changed.
This time no darkness: the path of memories, for better or for worse, was illuminated by arc lamps. But the movie was confused, as if the editor had raised his elbow a little at lunchtime and could no longer remember the common thread. In part, this was due to deformations in temporal terms.
Wanda had the impression of living in the past, in the present and in the future, all at the same time.
There was Pietro holding her, whispering gently that it would be all right.
Another shot: now there were several people crowded around her.
On the ambulance she was unconscious, but she could still contemplate herself, as if she were out of her body. Then there was something else: while cutting her trousers, showing the hip that looked like it was made of two clumsily joined handles, a cardiac arrest occurred. She knew exactly what it was, because she and Pietro had never missed an episode of Doctor House, and here the various people gathered tried to revive her.
One of the paramedics wore a crucifix around her neck that touched her nose.
Why hadn't anyone ever told her that she had died during transportation? Did they think she was too young to know such a thing?
"Ready!" the other paramedic shouted, and just before the electrostimulation, the driver turned and Wanda saw that he was one of the scientists who years later would introduce her to Strucker. How long had they been keeping an eye on her?
Then they fired a volley ... and her body jumped. And although Wanda didn't have a body outside, she still received electricity, a hot blow that ignited the tree of her nervous system.
The part of her on the stretcher wriggled like a fish out of the water, then subsided.
The paramedic slumped behind looked at the monitor and said: "Nothing, try again."
And when the other performed the action, a clean cut took place in the vision and she found herself tied to a hospital bed. She was completely alone.
With difficulty, she pushed aside the covers and put her feet on the ground and, while feeling the points on her hip and on her belly pulling and tearing, pouring what must have been blood transfused along her leg, she crossed the room without limping, overcoming a ray of sunshine who cast a fleeting but very human shadow on the floor, and came to the door.
Unseen, she entered the corridor, passing a stretcher and two nurses. They didn't even notice her.
The corridor lights began to flicker.
Blood ran down her leg, the bottom of her pyjamas were red, but she felt no pain. She feared no kind of infection. She was safe, enclosed in her mind, and nothing could have hurt her.
She opened a sliding door ... and entered.
Another hospital room, complete with television ... and Ghidorah was waiting for her inside. Or rather, an image of Ghidorah's head. It wasn't even an image, it was too distorted, with indefinite outlines. Maybe some kind of projection.
Scarlet Witch didn't have time to dwell on the thing, since, just two seconds after her arrival, the creature began to speak.
"Greetings, Wanda Maximoff. It's a pleasure to meet you in person", the beast said.
The voice, though powerful, was mild. The voice of something that brought death, calm as the ice of a lake when the wind blows over it.
The former Avenger looked around, swallowing hard.
"Where am I?" she asked with a low voice. At the same time, Ghidorah seemed to smile at her.
"You know very well where you are", it replied with a background of fun.
And yes, Wanda definitely had an idea by now. They were in her mind. Or, at least, in a representation of her unconscious.
The young woman clenched both hands into fists, staring intently into the hydra's intangible eyes. "Why did you bring me here?"
"Who is Vision?" the beast asked. It didn't receive any answer.
"See?" it said with a mocking tone. "We both ask questions that the other doesn't want to answer. Let's just forget it, shall we? We put them aside like the spare cards of that game of yours ... what's its name?"
"The spare cards of the cribbage", Wanda replied, walking slowly to the opposite wall of the room and suspiciously peering at the floating head. It wasn't attached to anything, not even to a neck. It was all muzzle, jaws, teeth and horns.
"Where are you from?" she asked, after having circumnavigated the whole of that projection.
"From planet X", was the dragon's answer. "We come from an endangered planet to eat pizza, buy on credit and learn French."
Wanda started. That ... was Pietro's voice. That monster was using his voice! But how the hell ...
"This world is really strange", Ghidorah continued, readjusting its own language ... only that, as Wanda noted with evident disbelief, the voice of the thing had become that of Wanda herself. All that was going on ... was some kind of mega hallucination, now she knew it.
Once she had achieved that realization, the room vibrated with many red roots. They grew on the floor, on the windowsill, on the Venetian blinds. They spread on the lamp and along the ceiling, on the glucose bottle, on the perch beside the bed.
Small scarlet bars hung from the handle of the bathroom door and from the crank to operate the mechanism to adjust the inclination of the bed. Ghidorah's floating head ... was now gone, as if it had never been there.
Wanda turned to the room exit ... and stopped. A cold shiver ran through her spine.
In front of her, a figure more than five feet tall began to make her way out of the darkness.
The figure stepped forward, spreading its limbs. A pair of red eyes opened, twinkling briefly, and stopped on her, forcing her to take a step backwards.
Wanda would have recognized those appearances everywhere. It was the same unstoppable, invincible and insensitive Ultron responsible for so many deaths and so many risks that she and the Avengers had faced in the past.
An artificial intelligence created for the protection of the world. Seeing humanity itself as the root of every problem, he had identified extinction as the only possible option for preserving such coveted peace.
When she last saw him inside a train, she blew his chest open. All in all, it had been a big deal. Any human would die ... but not a creature like him. And now the homicidal android's chest looked fine: cybernetic medicine had made great strides, she thought ironically.
The robot raised a hand in a kind of weak greeting. The limb had five fingers, ending in claws, from which a red substance dripped. Probably blood, or maybe just oil.
"Hi, Wanda", he said with his unmistakable metallic voice, an echo of death mixed with the scratching sound of a radiator just turned on.
Scarlet Witch took several steps backwards, while the android sat comfortably on the hospital bed.
"This is impossible", the woman whispered, receiving an amused smile from the machine. She had forgotten how expressive this thing could be, despite not being human.
"Only if you think it is", Ultron replied, conspiratorially.
At that moment, a small figure pawed on the floor of the room, causing the woman to stumble.
The intruder climbed up on the bed, to the figure of the android, revealing itself for what it was: a miniature version of those fleas that Wanda had fought until a few seconds before.
The little beast crouched between Ultron's legs, who began to caress it almost with affection.
"The Itsy Bitsy Spider", Wanda's mind whispered, remembering that old song that her mother always sang to her as a child.
Panicked, she turned to the door ... but it was gone, replaced by a spotless white wall.
The young woman screamed in anger and slammed a fist on the plasterboard wall, producing no visible damage. Then, she turned her head towards a visibly amused Ultron.
"You ... you're dead. I saw you die", she hissed through clenched teeth.
The android merely shrugged, a movement that caused a groan of displeasure from the flea.
"By now you should have understood, love", he said mockingly. "You can't kill me. I am inevitable ... like taxes!"
Then, he indicated Scarlet Witch with a dramatic gesture, his red eyes flashing in the twilight of the room. "I'll always be there for you."
"Get out of my head!" Wanda cried, unleashing a wave of scarlet energy.
However, both Ultron and the flea remained completely unaffected by that display of power, and even the room came out immaculate.
The robot simulated a genuinely surprised expression.
"Now, why should I do that? We have so much time to recover! But how should we spend it?" he muttered almost to himself, while the arthropod began to chuckle.
After what seemed like an endless time, the machine snapped the fingers of his right hand, splashing small drops of blood (oil?) On the mattress of the bed. "I got an idea! We will watch television together."
"I don't want ..."
"There's a movie that I would like to see. You will like it too. It's called 'I Have No Strings!'. Itsy Bitsy, the remote control!"
The flea gave Wanda a particularly hostile look, then paw on the pillow with a rasping noise. On the bedside table there was a remote control covered in dust.
Itsy Bitsy caught it between its teeth, turned and crawled back to Ultron, who grabbed it and pointed it at a television that appeared out of nowhere.
On the screen, visible although clouded by the roots that covered the glass, the image of Sokovia appeared.
A titanic battle was taking place in the centre of the screen. Hundreds of robots as tall as a man who raged through the streets of the city, fighting against the Avengers. And even before the door of a home opened and Wanda saw herself come out with her hands illuminated in red, it was clear to her that those events had already occurred.
In the background it started playing 'I've Got No Strings', directly from the 1943 Pinocchio movie made by Disney.
"Well", Ultron commented, speaking from the centre of Wanda's brain. "We missed the opening titles, but the movie has just begun."
This is exactly what Wanda feared. "Please ..." the young woman whined. "I ... I don't want ... I don't want to see it again."
"Shush", Ultron ordered, and Itsy Bitsy showed its terrible teeth, as if to suggest her not to be rude. "I love this song. Do you like it?"
"How can I like it?" she asked, ignoring the flea's grin, which, as they both knew, posed no real danger to her.
"It was the song you sang while you ... you ..."
"Shut up and watch the movie", the robot ordered abruptly, making her jump. "The beginning is a bit slow, but later it improves!"
Wanda put her hands on her lap and looked at 'I Have No Strings'.
And then ... the moment that she had tried to forget for so many years. Clint Barton, who grabbed a defenceless child in his arms ...
"No ... no ..."
Pietro Maximoff, her brother, who ran towards the man, while the Quinjet flew at full speed towards them ...
"Pietro!"
Ultron activated the aircraft's weapons, which fired on all three. Pietro saved Clint and the child ... dying in the attempt.
Wanda raised a hand to her mouth to hold back a desperate scream, as copious tears began to flow from her eyes.
"Pietro ..." she whispered softly, while the room began to change once again.
She looked up at Ultron and jumped back. Now, the android looked like some sort of failed genetic experiment. Partly robot ... part Ghidorah, whose head had replaced that of the murderous machine. Itsy Bitsy pawed on its shoulders, rubbing its long jaws on the dragon's horns.
The hospital room was replaced by a seemingly endless black void.
"It must be really frustrating to be caged like a cricket in a limited mind", Ghidorah commented, then snapped the fingers of its right hand.
That world of nothing and darkness gave way to hundreds of images. Moving pictures depicting peoples, individuals ... diseases, poverty, wars ... death and pain. Humanity.
"They believe to think. They don't have a global vision, a total system, only vaguely similar patterns. They no longer have an identity", the hydra said, attracting Wanda's attention. "They launch themselves into the abysses by attaching themselves to a spider's web. And sometimes they make it, and because of that they are convinced that they have solved the problem! I could tell you a thousand tedious stories of the absurdity that characterizes you mortals, especially humans."
The monster gave the woman an evil smile, its red eyes flashing in the shadows. At the same time, Wanda's gaze rested on a specific scene. And, for a while, Scarlet Witch was tempted to run and not look back.
That was the testimony to her failure. The death of the Wakandan ambassadors, which as a consequence had led to the creation of the Sokovia Accords, and the consequent Civil War between superheroes.
She put both hands on her head and collapsed to her knees, while the cries of horror and pain of the witnesses echoed like gunshots inside her head. All under the amused eyes of Ghidorah.
"You are a single race, with the same goals, the same dreams, the same fears. Eat the same food, all sleep in the same way. So you have to find a way to differentiate yourself ... to justify you killing each other", it said vaguely disgusted, while its body began to change. "Borders, nations, neighbourhoods, religions, names, fashion. You would kill for a pair of shoes. Your leaders exploit you for their thirst for power, and you are happy to allow it, so that they can kill those who have decided that they are not like you."
Now, large wings had taken the place of the metallic arms, a long forked tail protruding from the back of the body, no longer metallic, but made of flesh, bones and golden scales. Three long heads started directly from the top of the bust, adorned with cruel and smiling faces.
"You are a race of fools", the middle head of Ghidorah ended coldly.
And as the sound of the screams grew louder ... the figure of Scarlet Witch began to tremble.
Red roots, like those in the hospital room, began to protrude from the darkness, wrapping around the young woman's defenceless body.
In front of her, the dragon smiled satisfied.
"Listen to me well, Wanda Maximoff: what you are feeling now is not death, it's life ... a new type of life. Free from pain", it hissed through its sharp fangs.
The skin of the former Avenger was now completely covered with those tendrils. Her figure was completely immobile.
"Open your eyes Wanda. See, what I see. Feel, what I feel ..." the beast resumed, grinning maliciously. "And let's go howling at the moon... together."
And it was after the hydra uttered those words ... that Wanda's mind shattered.
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A grave silence passed through the entire Times Square.
Although Wanda had been trapped in her own mind for about an hour, in reality only a few seconds had passed in the outside world.
"Wanda, are you ok?" Quake asked, approaching the Scarlet Witch with an air of concern. Ghidorah was just few steps away from them, but was making no attempt to attack.
When the former Avenger began to slowly open her eyelids, what she revealed later, at the sight of the other superheroine, caused an intense shiver down the woman's spine.
No more red pupils, as they had been during the entire battle ... but yellow eyes like the sun, sometimes black and soulless, revelations of a new and fearful darkness.
Quake took a couple of steps backwards, while Wanda slowly turned to her, with almost mechanical movements.
At the same time, Ghidorah's middle head lowered to the ground, flanking the figure of Scarlet Witch.
"You've been given a precious gift. Freedom ... from your fears and ties", it whispered with a persuasive voice, snapping its forked tongue. "You can now see the infinite intelligence and salvation that I've brought. Are you ready to serve me?"
"Yes", the woman replied monotonously, making Daisy jump.
The smile on the dragon's face seemed to get bigger. "Are you ready to be an instrument of my will?"
"Yes", repeated Wanda, while her body began to glow with an intense red glow.
Ghidorah set its eyes on Quake, who took a step backwards.
"Then ... kill them. Kill them all!"
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BOOM!
Yes, Wanda is now under Ghidorah's mind control ( like Lora in Mothra 3 ). I hope you liked the mental battle between her and our three headed dragon, and the Ultron cameo ( I love this guy , I just wanted to have him in the story ).
In the next chapter...Ghidorah will cause MASSIVE destruction!
