I stared straight ahead at the array of strewn cars and people running, my mind a blur as I tried to think about what was going on. I was running as fast as I could, dodging past other fleeing civilians and hearing nothing but screams and sirens and the thundering wind from the large spaceship that hovered in the sky above us. My heart was hammering as a strange sense of déjà vu washed over me, brought on by the current situation I was in.
"Look out!" Dan suddenly shouted, pulling me around the corner of a building as a nearby lamppost fell down as a result of a car spinning out of control into its base. We both ran down the next street, this one nearly empty of people, but equally littered with abandoned cars. We were nearly right underneath the giant circular spaceship, and I looked straight up at the bottom of it in wonder as Dan tried to drag me forward.
"Dan, we've gotta get back!" I shouted at my friend as a bright beam shot down from the undercarriage of the alien ship. I immediately pulled us both out of harm's way and ducked behind a car as the beam hit the road behind us with a deafening boom that shook the ground.
Dan and I sat crouched behind the vehicle, breathing heavily as adrenaline pulsed through our veins. Silence filled the street, everything suddenly unmoving around us. Afraid to even breathe I just stared at my friend for a long time, waiting for the moment that we would both very probably meet our demise.
I held my gaze on him for a few seconds longer, a feeling surfacing about a time when I had been without my right hand man. I shook it off, telling myself that we had been by each other's side since that morning when I had picked him up on the way to school for the field trip and that we had just spent the last ten minutes running in a fearful panic from what only could be described as a scene from a horror movie.
"Hear me, and rejoice…" An odd voice said from behind us. I threw a panicked look over my shoulder and scooted closer out of sight, still not seeing the source of the voice. "You are about to die by the hands of the children of Thanos…"
"Oh my God…" I hissed fearfully, cringing before the impact I expected would happen any second now. Dan was crawling away from me, wanting to see the source of the threatening voice. He suddenly stopped, straightening slightly and turning to tap me on the arm.
"Alex…look!" He said hopefully, pulling me forward.
"I'm sorry, Earth is closed today! You'd better pack it up, and get out of here…"
I stared past the hood of the wrecked car we hid behind, hardly believing what I was seeing in front of me.
"That's…that's Tony Stark!" I hissed, shaking Dan in disbelief. "And…and Doctor Strange!"
"And Bruce Banner!" Dan nodded knowingly and slowly pointed out who and what the assembled heroes were facing. Just a few yards away from us, their backs thankfully turned to the cowering kids behind them, were a couple of the strangest looking beings I had ever seen. There was a large hulking one with what looked like a dangerously heavy axe and a shorter, skinnier one who was doing the talking for the pair of them.
"Stonekeeper!" The thinner alien called. Doctor Strange nodded, acknowledging the alien's attention. "Does this chattering animal speak for you?"
"Certainly not, I speak for myself." Doctor Strange stepped forward decisively conjuring up glowing golden discs over his fists as he spoke. My eyes widened in surprise as I realized what was about to go down just a few yards from us. "You're trespassing in this city and on this planet."
"He means get lost Squidward!" Tony Stark called as an afterthought when neither of the threatening aliens made a move. Dan arched his neck a little higher to see what the smaller alien really looked like to cause Tony to name him after one of the characters of the most annoying show on Earth.
"Get down, or they'll see us!" I hissed, dragging him backward as the larger alien made a shuffling move in preparation for their battle. The big guy growled a warning and slammed his weapon into the ground, causing the car Dan and I were hiding behind to rock violently.
"Alex, look he's going to turn into the Hulk!" Dan said once we had regained our balance behind the car. Dan was on his knees, peering through the side window of the car to see the big alien guy stalking menacingly over to the four men down the street. I looked where my friend was pointing and could see indeed that Dr. Banner looked like he was trying to flex his muscles, turning a light shade of green.
"Woah…" I said in surprise as the ordinary sized man seemed to grow slightly larger and then shrink back to his normal size. After a moment, I squinted seeing that Tony Stark was tapping his own thigh agitatedly as he waited for his fellow Avenger to turn into his alter-ego.
"I don't think it's working…" Dann said, ducking a little lower to remain out of sight, but still wanting to see the action down the street. That's when I noticed that the talkative alien with the other worldly accent was still right in front of us, watching his giant alien buddy trudge over to the waiting heroes.
"Dan, we've gotta move!" I said quickly, pulling him away from the wrecked car. "We're too close to this!"
"Alex, wait!" Dan protested as an explosion of sorts sounded from where the few heroes were. I looked up quickly as Dan and I shuffled away from our hiding spot, seeing that Tony Stark had been replaced by Iron Man, his gleaming metal suit shining in the afternoon sunlight. The big alien, even angrier than before shook itself and once more ran at the waiting group.
"Run!" I said as Iron Man fired at the big guy once more. Dan didn't argue this time, weaving over the debris and between the cars as we scrambled for another hiding place. We were interrupted by another loud boom as the giant alien was thrown into the car we had just been hiding behind a moment before.
For a few seconds there was nothing but the sound of grating metal as the alien skidded to a stop and tore through the road, collecting a few cars along the way. I pulled Dan around the corner of the nearest building just as the few trees along the sidewalk were suddenly yanked out of their places in the ground. My head jerked around wildly to find the source of the flying trees and I spotted the other thinner alien moving his fingers, causing the trees to fly towards the heroes with his movement.
"Telekinesis!" Dan breathed, impressed. I shook my head, refusing to be excited about this battle we were both witnessing. I watched in disbelief as Doctor Strange set up a floating car for Iron Man to blast towards the other waiting alien and held my breath in anticipation as it flew speedily towards him. With a casual wave of his hand, the car split in two, just barely missing the thinner alien.
Iron Man shot himself towards the still standing alien and was suddenly thrown backwards as the giant alien had regained his composure. He shot out a huge chain that propelled the hero all the way down the block towards the park nearby.
Doctor Strange still stood alongside his other magical friend, creating large glowing portals that sent the thinner alien's flying bricks right back to him. Dan pulled me back around the corner of the building as the debris shot into car windshields and the sides of the building we were hiding behind.
"We're going to die here!" Dan suddenly exclaimed, fear causing his voice to squeak. I whirled around in surprise as I could see Doctor Strange fly past the alleyway, his red cape catching my eye.
"The Avengers are here, they're gonna take care of this! We are not gonna die…"
I once more leaned out of the alley to see where the cloaked hero had gone. My eyes widened as I caught the sight of him hanging upside down from the building right above us, the pale, thinner alien floating right in front of him and reaching for something around his neck. The bricks were formed over the magician's body, encasing him in a tight grip.
"Okay…yeah, we might." I relented before leaping back as the alien guy yanked Doctor Strange roughly out of the bricks and threw him angrily to the street below, just a few feet from where Dan and I were hiding. Doctor Strange landed with a pained grunt before pulling himself up and motioning with his hands across his chest, and the golden necklace around his neck started to glow an otherworldly shade of green. I stared in awe as magical green bands of light appeared around his wrists, rotating with the pulses of energy the man was conjuring as he kept his eyes trained on the alien above him. Suddenly his gaze flicked thoughtfully back down and I froze as I felt his eyes land on me. I blinked in surprise and then hurriedly ducked back into the alley while Dan still looked eagerly around the side of the building like he hadn't noticed the magician's astonished stare.
"Oh my God!" Dan whirled around from the corner of the alley a millisecond later, shoving me forcefully in the opposite direction. I frowned in confusion and could see that the magical hero had been strangled to unconsciousness by telekinetically controlled metal bands from the street. The powerful man was now lying on the ground by the mouth of the alley, unmoving.
"What do we do?! We should help him…" I said unsurely as Dan gave up on pushing me back and ran for the safety of the shadowy end of the alley himself.
"Alex, no! There's no way we can get past that!" Dan called over his shoulder. I turned back to stare in horror at the downed hero and as I uncertainly moved toward the opening of the alley, the ground cracked and seemed to rise up beneath him, hoisting Doctor Strange's unconscious body up into the air and out of sight in mere seconds. I looked up to see the pale alien guy floating in the air alongside it and my heart skipped a beat when I saw what looked like Strange's lifeless body soaring through the air away from the threat.
"No!" The alien growled angrily, gesturing with his hand abruptly before he flew through the air after the magical sorcerer. A second later, the huge chunk of concrete that had lifted Doctor Strange into the air crashed to the ground across the street from us. Two feminine screams rang out simultaneously from the impact point and I stared in that direction in confusion, thinking that Dan and I had been the only ones stupid enough to be this close to the very real battle between the Avengers and the two alien threats.
"Alex!" One of the voices screamed shrilly, echoing throughout the now deserted street corner. Dan was suddenly at my side, peering across the street as well where the debris had landed.
"Jillian?!" I called back in hesitant recognition. Over the huge mountain of upended concrete, I saw two hands waving in our direction frantically.
"I don't believe it…" Dan muttered in halfhearted amusement. I glanced over at him questioningly before I noticed the smirk spreading across his face. He slapped my shoulder and moved past me toward the mouth of the alleyway to look out at the seemingly empty street. "The girls from the bus…they followed us!"
"We're coming – stay there!" I shouted in reply to the two girls. I followed Dan to the edge of the building, each of us peering in opposite directions to make doubly sure that the aliens and the Avengers were out of the area and occupied elsewhere. I made a dash out of the alley unthinkingly and lunged for a car that had jumped the curb right in front of us. Dan followed a beat later and we paused for a moment against the vehicle, waiting to see if our movement had struck the attention of anything in the nearby vicinity.
"This doesn't feel real…" Dan murmured as he moved back into a crouch, edging along the side of the car we hid behind.
"I know…" I agreed, mentally trying to prepare myself for the next jump across the street. We both hesitated for another second or so before I led him away from the safety of the car's shield.
The whole street was deserted, though it definitely looked like a war zone. The concrete for yards and yards was stripped away in several places, and dozens of ruined vehicles were spread every which way as far as my eyes could see. Even the buildings lining the street were damaged, with their windows shattered and doors ripped off of hinges.
"Watch out!" Dan hissed, pulling me down to the ground as what sounded like a jet zipped by overhead. I caught a flash of red armor shining in the sunlight before Iron Man disappeared over another nearby building. I heard a metallic rumble and I whipped my head around in time to see a street lamp, bent dangerously forward by the previous battle, edge slowly closer to the ground from the vibrations of Iron Man's supersonic passing. The two girls behind the huge heap of rubble screamed as the light fell the rest of the way forward and landed over the mountain of concrete by where they were hiding.
"Come on!" I shouted at Dan who had watched the towering street lamp fall in disbelief just as I had. We both leapt over the wide base of the downed light and rounded the upended chunk of road to find both of the girls crouched against the backside of the rubble, sobbing hysterically. Upon seeing that we had arrived, Jillian threw herself at me, her face a waterfall of tears.
"Oh my God, what's happening?!" She sobbed into my shoulder. The other girl had wrapped her arms around Dan in the same way and his eyes were wide with surprise as he slowly tried to come up with anything to say that would comfort her.
"It's okay, I think it's over…" Dan murmured to her. The girl shook her head and swiped a hand under one of her eyes where the mascara had started running down her face.
"They're gone?" The blonde girl asked, almost pleadingly. I glanced up at the huge circular spaceship, noticing that it had moved away from where it had previously been spinning right over our heads moments before.
"Yeah, it looks like they're leaving…" I said thoughtfully, squinting up into the sky where it hovered ominously. For a millisecond of a moment, I thought I could see a tiny human shaped figure struggling along to outside of the alien spaceship but when I blinked again, the sun prevented me from seeing anything more than the general outline of the huge thing.
"Did you see the Avengers? Gosh…I'd only ever seen stuff like this on the news after it happened!" Dan said lightly, his excitement starting to resurface.
"Those were real aliens, weren't they? They were so close to you guys!" Jillian said, pulling away to look up at me worriedly.
"Yeah…it definitely wasn't a good idea to come this way…" I said sheepishly, looking her over for any bruises or scrapes. "Are you girls hurt?"
"No, I don't think so." The blonde girl spoke up from where she had her head on Dan's chest in a super tight embrace.
"Why did you follow us?" Dan asked, glancing down at the girl in his arms. "That was pretty dangerous…"
"We didn't know where else to go…everyone was running in every direction so we figured we might be safer with you guys…since we know you and all." Jillian answered him, glancing away from me for only a brief second before looking back up at me sheepishly. I felt a warmth spread across my face and she smiled shyly as she noticed it, looking away as a blush colored her cheeks too.
"We'd better get to somewhere safer." I said, clearing my throat abruptly. Dan nodded and slowly peeled the blonde girl's arms off of him, exchanging it for a firm grasp of her hand.
"Right, the ship seems to be leaving, but there may still be some aliens down here we should watch out for." Dan chipped in smartly, making a show of peeking over the side of the concrete mountain behind us. "You girls stay back while we try to scout the area before we move."
I followed Dan's hand wave and when I had moved to a crouch by his side I couldn't help but smirk playfully at my friend. He responded with a light punch to my shoulder and he then pulled me close to whisper in my ear, looking as if we were actually making battle plans.
"I've got a problem…" He hissed to me. I frowned and nodded back to the girls who were standing fearfully together a few yards behind us. Surely the fact that the attractive girls had followed us into danger from the bus clouded any other problems we may have.
"Look out!" Jillian screamed suddenly. I glanced back at her and found that she had one hand pressed to her mouth and the other pointing above us. When I whirled back around, I noticed that the street lamp that had fallen just a moment before was sliding dangerously down the heap of rubble and down towards where Dan and I were crouching.
"Dan!" I exclaimed, jerking my friend into motion. Instead of running, we both braced ourselves against the sidewalk beneath our feet and caught the massive street lamp as it rolled down onto us. We held it together just by our combined strength alone before we both heaved it back over the peak of the concrete mound, hearing the echoing metallic tone as it rolled back down the opposite side of the rubble.
Dan and I looked at each other in disbelieving surprise for a breath before both girls swarmed us once more, holding us tightly as if they'd thought we were really going to be crushed by the cheaply installed New York street light. I felt my relieved blush creep over my face once more as Jillian planted a kiss on my jaw and nearly let out a burst of laughter when I caught a glimpse Dan whose hair was being clenched and unclenched by the blonde girl as she warbled on and on about how worried she had been when that lamppost had fallen.
"Hey…is everybody okay back here?!"
The four of us froze as a thin, disheveled looking man rounded the side of the concrete mountain, his face a mask of confusion as he caught sight of the scene playing out on the ruined sidewalk. I was the first to say anything, recognizing the scientist before even Dan could.
"Dr. Banner?"
"Y-yeah. Are you kids alright?" The man responded, glancing behind him timidly before he moved closer to our group. In his hand he held a vintage looking cellphone which he must have been about to use to make a call before the amount of noise and screaming we had just done had called his attention over to us.
"We're fine now," Dan said, wrapping his arm around the blonde girl who had ceased her dramatic tears when the adult had come upon the scene. Bruce Banner considered us all for another moment before he thumbed over his shoulder.
"Well, let's get you all out of here. I'm sorry you had to be that close to all this…mess" He said slowly. We filed past the man to find that other civilians were now starting to emerge from their hiding places, all with haunted, terrified looks on their faces. Dan and I walked side by side with Jillian on my right and the blonde girl on his left. After a few seconds, he leaned back over to whisper in my ear.
"What I was trying to say before...I still don't know what her name is!"
"That's your problem?" I tried to stifle my grin as I cleared my throat and glanced over at the blonde girl who still wiped her hand in an attempt to clean off her ruined makeup. My smile faltered as a voice spoke through my head distantly, a voice that I seemed to know but also didn't.
"…Her name is Emma."
I frowned in confusion, trying to grasp at any other memories that tried to break through. A vision of swirling red cloaks, flailing weaponry and antique architecture flashed briefly through my mind along with a familiar golden glow. When I hesitated for perhaps a bit longer than I intended, Dan nudged me gently and I flipped my attention back to my waiting friend.
"Emma." I repeated softly to my friend who raised his eyebrows in surprise. He stared at my face for a moment questioningly and then turned to his left where the girl was now trying to fix her hair.
"Are you sure you're alright…Emma?" He asked slowly, his voice rising on the last word of his question. The girl smiled widely up at him and hooked her arm through his fondly.
"Yeah, I'm totally fine now that you're here." She murmured sweetly. I smirked as Dan mouthed a word of thanks to me and I turned to Jillian who was watching the scene beside us too. She followed her friend's actions and looped her arm with mine and leaned her head on my shoulder as we followed the crowd to a row of waiting rescue vehicles.
"Alex…do you think it's possible that the attack on New York happened just to bring us together?" Jillian asked me quietly, mimicking Emma's swooning of Dan. I looked at her in surprise and she broke into a teasing smirk and nudged me jokingly. I pulled her closer to my side and nodded in consideration, suddenly serious through the lighthearted bantering.
"Yeah, you know…I think anything is possible."
~ End ~
Hope you guys enjoyed my first Avengers fanfic! I'm hoping to do another in the near future maybe, but for now, I'm moving back to Ghostbusters to sustain my frustration at the release of the new movie being postponed for another year because of this virus scare...so if you don't mind, please keep a lookout for my next fanfic which is going to be a crossover of Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice. Thank you again for sticking with me through my inconsistent updating schedule on here and I thank you for the many reviews and messages I received from you guys! Don't hesitate to stay in touch, I'm always looking for ideas on how to better my writing! Thanks again, love you all! :D