Disclaimer: I don't own anything Marvel. I just own Anna and her peeps.
Chapter 23
Stepping Up
"Hey, Anna?" Tony asked, after the Avengers had a small meeting about what the game plan was. It had only been the Avengers. The Twin were still at the back of the jet conversing among themselves while Rey kept his eyes on them.
"Yeah? What's up?" Anna asked as she made sure her bet and leg strap were secured.
Tony pulled something out from one of the side compartments. It was a relatively normal sized metal briefcase with a simplistic eagle symbol plastered on the front. It looked a lot like the SHIELD bird, but a tad more feminine. Much more like a version Tony would come up with to stray away from the SHIELD one on her own uniform.
"I've been working on a new uniform for you. Something less SHIELD and more Avenger," he said. "It's not finished, but I figured now was as good of a time as any to give you the practical part of it."
"You didn't have to go to the trouble," Anna said, but watched him open the case and pull out fingerless gloves. The fabric was rather thin, but in the middle was a semi-flexible solid surface. They almost looked like the blasters built into the hands of his Iron Man suit. "You know I can handle things on my own with what I've got."
"I know, but eventually you'll run out of bullets, and sometimes that stick of yours gets away from you," he said. "These gloves allow for hand protection while still providing a full range of movement. I borrowed your stick thing-" ("I never let you borrow that!") "-and analized it so I could make a very specific magnetic charge that when you tap your thumb to the middle knuckle of your index finger on either hand, I'll automatically come back to you like Cap can do with his SHIELD."
"Well," Anna muttered, taking one of the gloves to examine it. "I can see how that would be useful. Why did you bring up bullets though?"
"I was getting to that," Tony said. "The middle of the glove is essentially a weaker rechargeable version of the blasters of the Iron Man suit. Between missions they'll get connected to the arc reactor power charger which will clearly recharge them. But they'll stay charged for about five hours of constant use, which we've never had so you should be fine."
"How do I activate them?" Anna asked as she spilled the gloves on. Tony was right. They fit perfectly and they really didn't get in the way of her having to close her hand around her gun or Jern Slange.
"You're going to put your hand up flat with your fingers separated slightly like with a high five," Tony said, showing her with his own hand. She couldn't very well copy him in that moment seeing as she'd already put them on. It was be dumb to blast a whole in the side of the jet they were currently flying in. "That will activate them so that they're ready to go off. To actually shoot, you need to bring all your fingers together."
"Simple enough," Anna said. "That's really thoughtful of you, Tony. Thank you."
"It was about time you had an upgrade," he said. "And, I mean, can't have my ward out there without something of mine to protect her."
Anna was touched, but she knew how hard it was for Tony to have said those words. In his own way Tony had practically just said that he needed to make sure his daughter was protected. "Love you too, Tony."
"Yeah, yeah, now go and tell the Shining twins the plan," Tony said, ushering her away as they grew almost to their dropoff designation.
Anna just chuckled as she moved away to grab the ear pieces for them. "Put one of these in your ear," Anna instructed as she held out her hand with two ear pieces resting in her palm. "You'll be able to stay in constant contact with the team. The plan is relatively simple. Tony and Vision are going to go in ahead of the rest of us to locate Ultron and stop him from escaping through the internet, and you know, maybe stop him before he does whatever the hell he's got cooking.
"Thor's objective is to figure out what Ultron's plan is. Bruce will go with him to look for Natasha. Cap, Hawkeye, you two, and myself will start the evacuation in whatever ways we can. Only you two speak Ukrainian Sokovian, but I know Russian and a few other things I can try, hopefully people will get the picture. Pietro," Anna said, turning to face him directly, "Could you go to the police and heavily populated areas and make an announcement to get people moving?"
"I can do that and so much more," he said with a swift nod.
"Wanda, how does your mind thing work?" Anna asked. "Do you have any ideas how maybe you can put that to good use here?"
"I can trance them," she thought. "Get people to leave their homes. They won't know why they did it after, but they'll at least be safe."
"That's perfect," Anna told her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "This is going to be harder than any fight you two have been in before," she said. "You're going to be tired. You're gonna be hurting, but no matter what you gotta keep going because the most important thing is making sure those innocent people get somewhere safe. Got it?"
The twins exchanged looks, but their eyes moved back to Anna as they nodded.
"You'll be scared. That's normal. But you two can do this. You care about these people, your home. Let's do everything we can to protect it, okay?" Anna gave them small smiles. "Now lets get to work, shall we?"
Things were going very well. It was slow moving at first, but people got the idea. The most effective of everyone was Wanda with her trancing. Mind control was never something Anna would condone, but in this instance she could definitely say it was an exception. The two Maximoff children were really stepping up. She could see them sticking around with the team after all this was done. With Sam, and then the twins, the Avengers was definitely expanding in a good way.
Rey had been sent off to, in a lack of a better way to describe his action, herd people like sheep towards the exits of the city. Had it not been such a dire situation the image would've been rather funny to watch, but there was no time to stand back and chuckle about it.
Anna stuck around the bridges helping direct car and foot traffic. She alternated between Russian and English. Between the two most people understood what she was saying. That, and with her large arm movements it wasn't too hard to tell that she was directing people a specific direction.
"This way please! Quickly, quickly! No-hey! No shoving! Everyone's going the same way. Quickly but calmly please! Hey, man! What the hell did I just say! No pushing!"
Things were amonous with the inevitable battle that was approaching, but it really started until the Ultron bots started crawling out of the woodwork. The woodwork being from underground and in the rivers, essentially anywhere they could've been hiding. The way they crawled out on their hands and feet was far too reminiscent of the girl in the ring for Anna's taste.
"Run!" Anna started to scream at the people as they panicked at the sight. "Run! Get out of the city!"
"Go!" Anna heard Steve instruct in the distance.
"Get off the bridge!" Wanda added as she came over to help Anna with the crowd she was directing on the stone bridge. "Run!" A few of the bots shot towards them, but Wanda created a barrier to protect the people.
Anna used that opportunity to usher the people back off the bridge away from the bots and the center of the city. "Go!"
Wanda cried out. Anna turned to see that she'd gotten struck by a penetrating blast through her shield. The bot drew closer, but there was no way they were going to let them get closer to the escaping innocents. Anna pulled out Jern Slange and threw it like a spear, nailing the bot right in the faceplate effectively disabling it.
Anna held out her hand and grabbed Wanda's to pull her back up to her feet. "You good?" she asked. Anna did the thumb to knuckle trick Tony had told her about, holding her hand off to the side a bit so she could catch Jern Slange as it flew back towards her. Okay, now that was really cool, she thought.
"Thanks," Wanda replied.
Just as Wanda was back on her feet, the ground began to shake as if an earthquake was rocking the city. The ground lurched up harshly, off balancing the SHIELD girl and knocking her on her butt. It was Wanda's turn to offer her a hand up. She took it gratefully.
"Do you guys get a lot of earthquakes like this?" Anna asked.
"Not like this," Wanda answered.
"Well, that's not good," Anna muttered as she rushed off to try and help more people. The bots were still coming, and as much as the people on that rising bit of land were most likely doomed, she couldn't just stand by and let them get slaughtered. "Get back to work!"
Running towards the aunslaught of robots, Anna took out her gun, returning Slange back to her thigh. If she was going to run out of bullets, she was going to do it now. There were so many of them clustered together that even if her aim was off and she missed who she was aiming at, she'd most likely get another bot that was behind it. It was the best situation for her to use that. She needed to save her energy with the blasters and the Asgardian weapon for when she really needed to get up close and personal with the bots.
After several clips, her reserves were empty. A lot of the bots that had been pooling there charging a here were now down due to everything she'd used on them, but now she was left with going back to Jern Slange and her new blasters (something she was really thankful for now).
One bot came up in front of her. He raised his left hand to blast. She dodged. In response he raised the other to throw a punch. While that hand was throwing a punch, the other hand recovered and grabbed her head. She moved her body back while it held on, but it managed to land a knee to her stomach. She backed away a little moreas one of the hands pulled back to punch her in the face. She kicked the stomach and moved the bot away from her, releasing her hair. She grabbed a hold of its arm and flipped them to the ground. She raised her hand and shot the bot in the head with her hand blaster.
The Ultron bots played Ultron's speech of his plan over every single one of their speakers so that they could all hear what he had to say. "Do you see? The beauty of it, the inevitability. You rise, only to fall. You, Avengers, you are my meteor, my swift and terrible sword and the earth will crack with the weight of your failure. Purge me from you computers, turn my own flesh against me. It means nothing. When the dust settles, the only thing living in this world will be metal."
"Cap, you got incoming!" Tony warned over comms.
"Incoming already came in," Cp groaned. "Stark, you worry about bringing the city back down safely. The rest of us have one job: tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed, walk it off."
The ground under her feet shifted quickly as a bot dug its way to the surface. Rolling backwards, Anna slid off the side of a collapsed piece of pavement that was inclined downwards towards the rapidly increasing ledge of floating landmass. Once back on her stomach Anna desperately tried to claw at the ground for anything to grab a hold of or to create more friction so she wouldn't go over the ledge.
Just as her feet and waist slid off the side, Pietro came out of nowhere and grabbed her arm. She was still dangling over the edge, but at least she wasn't going to continue falling over it. But before he could even pull her up with his speed, she raised her free hand and blasted the bot that had sent her off her feet and was charging at Peitro's back.
"Thanks," he said as he pulled her back to her feet.
"Back at you," she said.
"You good?" he asked.
"Yeah, go!" she instructed and she made her own way up the incline and back towards the rest of the Avengers. "-cleared," Anna heard the end of Clint's message.
"We are not clear!" Steve shot back quickly. "We are very not clear."
Once at the top Anna ran off towards the direction they'd landed. She wasn't looking behind her because the area was cleared now thanks to the help of Clint and Wanda who were already headed back as well. She should've been checking her back though, as the upper half of a bot with no legs reached out and grabbed her leg as she ran by. She fell flat on her chest. As she spun around and raised her hand to shoot, Rey jumped out and clenched his fangs into the skull of the robot and destroyed it.
"Watch your back," he told her. "Get on, it'll be faster." Anna hopped on and listened to the comms as they made their way to rejoin the rest of the team, keeping her eyes out for anymore half robots ready to kill them as they went.
"The next wave's gonna hit any minute. What have you got, Stark?" Steve asked.
"Well, nothing great. Maybe a way to blow up the city. That'll keep it from impacting the surface if you guys can get clear."
That doesn't sound like a fix, Anna thought. But it is a contingency, at least.
"I asked for a solution, not an escape plan."
Anna and Rey met up with Steve and Natasha at the edge. "About time you arrived," Anna teased, climbing off her alien companion. Nat didn't have the energy to do anything other than wave her off with a smirk and a roll of her eyes.
"Impact radius is getting bigger every second. We're going to have to make a choice."
"Cap," Nat said. "These people are going nowhere. If Stark finds a way to blow this rock…"
"Then we gotta take it," Anna finished. "It's not like we have any other solution."
"Not 'til everyone's safe," Steve said.
"Everyone up here versus everyone down there? There's no math there," Nat said.
"I'm not leaving this rock with one civilian on it," Steve pressed.
"I didn't say we should leave," Nat insisted. Steve turned to look at her as she glanced out to the clouds off below them as they continued to rise higher and higher. "There's worse ways to go. Where else am I gonna get a view like that?"
One more chapter with all the epic fighting and then the conclusion of Ultron. I hope you guys are excited! I know I definitely am.
Thanks go to the following for their review on the previous chapter:
Jedi Jesla777 - Hope everything is going better for you this week. And I also hope you enjoyed the chapter.