SHIELD Helicarrier
Tony lay on his back in the smoke-filled Helicarrier corridor beside the unconscious hostile he'd just knocked down. His suit flickered and died, nearly torn apart from the violence of the engine rotors.
Agents over the comms celebrated as the Helicarrier regained altitude. The hostiles seemed to have rabbited, too.
Steve, panting and sweaty, made his way along the gantry.
And then Fury's low voice came over the comms.
"Agent Coulson is down."
Tony went cold. He sat up, then slowly got to his feet, awkward in the busted suit.
On the gantry above him, Steve let out a soft: "Oh god."
"A medical team is on its way to your location," said another agent.
"They're here," Fury said flatly. "They called it."
The grief and shock that hit Tony then was almost a surprise - it hit him like a gut punch and his breath left him. Coulson.
And then he realized.
His hand flew to his commpiece. "Where's Maggie?"
There was nothing but silence in response.
Tony glanced around wildly and met Steve's eyes. The Captain's brows were pinched and his eyes dark.
Finally, Agent Hill responded. "We don't know."
Tony felt as if his heart had dropped through his feet and plummeted down, down, to the earth below.
The bridge was quiet. The air smelled like smoke and gunpowder, and no one had swept away the shattered glass yet.
Tony sat at the command table with his head in his hands, staring down at the empty glass surface. He hadn't made the conscious decision to sit in the same chair Maggie had been in when they were last on the bridge, but now he'd sat he could think of nothing else.
It was just him and Rogers at the table now. Fury stood opposite them, his face grave.
Tony had scoured the Helicarrier for Maggie. He'd found wounded and dead agents, smashed rooms and corridors, but he had not found his sister. There was no sign of Thor or Banner either. Loki had escaped along with the scepter.
Tony had J.A.R.V.I.S. hunting for Maggie through any means available, and he sent half-hourly signals into the secret comms channel that they had set up last year. Still, he got back nothing but silence.
She went to the detention level. Coulson's body had been found down there. And the glass containment unit was gone. The possibilities sickened Tony.
"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket," Fury said solemnly. He tossed a set of bloodied collecting cards on the table. "Guess he never did get you to sign them," he said to Steve. Steve reached out and turned over one of the cards.
"We're dead in the air up here," Fury sighed. "Our communications, location of the cube. Banner. Thor. Ms Stark."
Tony released his grip on his hair and slowly leaned back, looking downward. When she'd left him out on the Helicarrier engine, he'd thought she was leaving the danger. She'd told him to be careful.
Fury went on talking. Tony only half listened, until he said his name.
"There was an idea - Stark knows this." Tony did not look at him. "Called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could." Tony looked down at his hands. When Fury next spoke it sounded like he was right behind him.
"Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes."
Tony was brought back, almost violently, to the day he had found out about the Wyvern. He had asked Maggie why.
Because… because I could. He could almost see her, looking out over the gleaming ocean, wind in her hair. Because I saw that I could help the people who needed help, and stop the people who needed stopping. Isn't that why you became Iron Man?
Then, as if his grief for Coulson had conjured the image he saw a younger Maggie: seven years old, in a black dress and a shiny new prosthetic leg, holding his hand as they stood at a grave.
Whatever happens, it'll be okay, she told him. He would never forget how sure she'd sounded.
Aren't I meant to be the one comforting you?
He shot to his feet. He couldn't take it anymore. Without looking back at Fury, he strode out of the room.
As he left, he heard Fury murmur: "Well. It's an old-fashioned notion."
In a field of overgrown wildflowers, Thor held his hand out for Mjolnir. It did not come.
Bruce Banner, naked as the day he was born, pulled on a pair of trousers offered by a surprisingly blasé security guard.
"Thank you," he murmured awkwardly.
"You an alien?" the guard asked.
"What?"
"From outer space, an alien."
"... No."
"Well then, son, you've got a condition."
SHIELD Helicarrier
Clint eyed Natasha as they sat together in his holding cell. He still felt shaky and torn apart, but he was back in his own mind. Nat had told him about the attack, about Thor and Banner and Maggie going missing. And now she was telling him that she wanted to fight.
"You're a spy," he said. "Not a soldier. Now, you want to wade into a war. Why? What did Loki do to you?"
Natasha's expression shifted slightly. "He didn't… I just…" Clint stared. It wasn't like Natasha to stutter. She glanced down.
"Natasha," he murmured.
"I've been compromised." Her eyes flicked back to his. "I got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out."
Connecticut
Maggie trudged down the double yellow lines of a road under the hot midmorning sun.
Wide green fields and leafy trees stretched away to either side of the road. She still wore her flightsuit, though she'd removed the cowl and unzipped the top half of the suit to tie it around her waist, leaving her in a dark tank top that exposed the ugly blue bruise blooming over her chest and shoulder. Her wings hung at her back - one whole and folded neatly, the other shredded and glitchy, the metal tip scraping along the tarmac. The sun beat down on her face, making her squint, but she could just make out buildings ahead. Finally.
Maggie had no idea where she was. She didn't remember the first few seconds after she tipped out of the Helicarrier to escape Loki and his glowing scepter, but she had come to in midair, plummeting through the clouds. She'd tried to fly, only to find that one wing barely moved and her engines were glitching. Luckily, she'd built a parachute into the back of her flightsuit years ago. It had been a disorienting and windy trip down to the ground, and she landed in a field in the middle of nowhere. She'd cut herself free from the chute and followed a fence until she found a powerline, then followed that to this road.
Loki's attack had messed with her HUD so now she was left with no comms, damaged wings, and no clue what had happened on the Helicarrier.
But now, it seemed she'd come up to a town. She jogged up the road, passed a sign that read WELCOME TO DURHAM: FOUNDED 1699, and knocked on the door of the first house she found.
The door opened a moment later to reveal an elderly woman in a paisley housedress. The woman's eyes widened at the sight of Maggie's sweaty, soot-streaked form in the half-unzipped uniform and wings.
"Hi," Maggie said with her best attempt at a polite smile. "There wouldn't happen to be a mechanic in town, would there?"
SHIELD Helicarrier
Tony stood in the empty detention level, hands behind his back as he stared, unseeing, down at the closed hatch in the floor. The room held signs of the violence that had occurred: a gaping hole in the wall, which Hill had informed them was the result of the weapon Coulson had been found with. And then the bloodstain on the wall.
He heard Steve approach, which meant that Steve had wanted him to hear. The Captain kept his distance though, folding his hands and leaning against the far wall.
"Was Coulson married?" he asked.
"No." Tony knew Steve's game - draw him into talking, making him feel human again. "There was a, uh… a cellist. I think."
Steve kept talking, and then somehow that turned into arguing. Tony was angry - angry at Loki, at Coulson, at Steve, at himself. Steve… well, he was keeping his cool.
"Is this the first time you lost a soldier?"
Tony barely felt how furious he suddenly was until he whirled on Steve and spat: "We are not soldiers." The force of it seemed to overtake him then, and he had to fight to catch his breath back.
Steve seemed to see this, and he softened. "Listen, I'm… I'm sure Maggie's fine," he said in a lower voice. "She's smart, and quick-"
"I know that," Tony snapped. "But she's also an idiot, and she'd have gone straight for Loki if she thought-" he bit off the words.
He couldn't stop the horror reel behind his eyes: Maggie with a gaping, jagged hole in her chest like Coulson. Maggie falling through the sky in that glass containment unit, like a bird in a cage, only to be smashed apart on the ground.
Or that other image: Maggie's eyes glazing over black and then icy blue; a mindless puppet.
He flinched and met Steve's eyes. "I'm not marching to Fury's fife."
"Neither am I," Steve agreed, his eyes hard. "He's got the same blood on his hands that Loki does. But right now we've gotta put that behind us and get this done."
Tony's jaw clenched. His gaze drifted, and then he was looking at that damned bloodstain again. Someone had tried to clean it away.
Steve and Tony tossed ideas back and forth, trying to puzzle out Loki's twisted game. He needed a powersource, but he'd also been taunting them, trying to defeat them...
"That's just previews," Tony thought out loud, electrified as his mind raced. "This is… this is opening night. And Loki, he's a full tale diva! He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a - a monument built to the sky with his name plastered-"
Tony ground to a halt, one hand held aloft and his eyes wide.
Steve raised his eyebrows.
Tony dropped his hand. "Son of a bitch."
Durham, Connecticut
Maggie sat on a squeaky, rusty stool in a prefabricated shed, hunched over an old radio. Her wings lay a few feet away on a wooden table. She'd assessed the damage and she figured that twenty minutes with a welding torch, a bit of scrap metal and a precision tool would put her back in the air. But she had something else to do first.
The radio crackled as she prised a wire from its housing and readjusted its position. She checked the alignment, then reached around to the front of the radio and twisted one of the knobs.
"Don't go breaking my radio, now."
Maggie glanced over her shoulder to eye the silver-haired woman leaning in the doorway.
Margo, the closest thing the town had to a mechanic, was a suspicious and grouchy war vet who had pulled a gun on Maggie when she showed up at her door. Maggie had explained herself as best as she could, and Margo had begrudgingly agreed to let Maggie use her workshop.
When Maggie had walked in to see that Margo's cluttered 'workshop' also doubled as an armory, she had stared at the woman.
"I was an engineer in Vietnam, one of the only women out there," Margo had explained as she nodded at the arsenal of guns, knives, ammunition, and even what looked like a few grenades. "Knew I'd find a use for these one day."
But as helpful as Margo was, it was clear she wasn't willing to leave Maggie alone in her workshop for a moment.
"I'm not going to break the radio," Maggie reassured her. She twisted the plastic knob again. "It just needs a little configuration so I can get onto - ah, I think that's it." She dropped her screwdriver and picked up the microphone, blowing off the dust. Margo frowned.
Maggie hit the mic button. "Tony, come in Tony. Are you there?" She waited a few seconds, glancing back once at Margo. She tried not to think of everything that could have gone wrong. She felt sure that Tony wouldn't have forgotten their secret comms channel. "Tony, come in-"
"MAGGIE!"
Maggie flinched at the loud, staticky shout from the radio, and jumped to turn down the volume.
"Shit, Maggie, Maggie is that you?"
She fumbled for the mic. "It's me, I-"
"Are you okay?" She didn't know if all the shakiness in his voice was down to the ancient radio.
"I'm fine, Loki grounded me. Tony, is Coulson..." she trailed off. The image of Coulson's agonized eyes and bloody mouth had haunted her every second since her chute had opened.
There was a pause. "He… didn't make it."
Maggie bowed her head and closed her eyes. She heard a rustle, and looked up to see that Margo had left. She let out a heavy breath. "Is anyone else…?"
"The helicarrier lost six other agents. Everyone else we know is okay, but Thor and Banner are missing too. Loki escaped with the scepter." There was no mistaking the heaviness in his voice. "Maggie, are you safe?"
"I'm in Connecticut. I've got to fix up my wings, but it shouldn't take too long."
"Good, because we've got a fight ahead of us Mags."
She grit her teeth. "Where?"
"Well, the good news is that you know the address."
SHIELD Helicarrier
"Got a suit?" Steve asked Clint and Nat.
They nodded.
"Then suit up."
Steve strode down to the armory, and the moment the doors slid open his eyes fell on one of the only things he had brought with him into this new world: the shield.
Clint slid his quiver of arrows into place on his back, and its weight felt like a piece of himself returning.
Natasha powered up her Widow's Bites and clenched her fist.
In the busy underbelly of the Quinjet, Tony did a rush repair on his armor. It wouldn't hold for long, but it would fly.
When the eyeslits flickered to life, he allowed himself a grim smile.
Overseen by a crotchety veteran, Maggie welded together the rips in her wing. She closed the last gash and ran the flat of her thumb over the smooth edges. When she turned, Margo offered her a bag full of weapons.
Thor lifted Mjolnir and lifted it to the sky with a roar. A bolt of lightning scorched down through the air to meet his call.
SHIELD Helicarrier Bridge
"We have an unauthorized departure from bay 6!"
Fury glanced up just in time to see a Quinjet and the unmistakable figure of Iron Man streak away into the clouds beyond the Helicarrier.
"They found him," he realized. "Get our communications back up, whatever you have to do," he ordered Hill. "I want eyes on everything."
"Yes sir."
Stark Tower, Manhattan
Tony eyed the dark-haired Asgardian who had broken into his home. Loki seemed unsettled by the casual approach Tony had taken to meeting him again, and was now peering out at the city below. Arcing silver spires and busy streets, full of people with no clue of the malevolent God staring possessively down at them all. "The Chitauri are coming, nothing will change that," he warned, his eyes glinting. Tony had already seen the Tesseract up on the roof, with its impenetrable barrier.
Loki turned back. "What have I to fear?"
"The Avengers." Tony unstoppered a carafe of whiskey. Loki frowned, and Tony waved a hand. "That's what we call ourselves. Sort of like a team. Earth's Mightiest Heroes type thing." He poured himself a tumbler of whiskey.
"Yes," Loki smiled. "I've met them."
Tony returned the smile wryly. "Takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one. But let's do a head count here - your brother, the demigod," Loki's face flashed with irritation and he glanced away. Tony reached for the Mark VII bracelets he'd left on the bar. "A supersoldier: a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend. A man with breathtaking anger management issues, a couple of master assassins, my kid sister, and you," Tony pointed at the smirking Loki, "big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them."
Loki just kept smiling. "That was the plan."
"Not a great plan. When they come - and they will - they'll come for you."
"I have an army," Loki replied coolly.
"We have a Hulk."
Tony kept talking, trying one last-ditch effort to reason with this angry, jealous god who had proven time and time again he could not be reasoned with. Finally, he said: "Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure that we'll avenge it."
And then Loki tried to use the glowing scepter on him. Well, Tony thought, when the tip just clinked against the surface of his arc reactor. I always knew this plan wouldn't end well for me.
For the first time in her life, when Maggie caught sight of New York City she felt afraid.
She was rocketing through the sky on her newly-repaired wings, which were performing remarkably well given her limited time and tools. It was a beautiful day, with the sun shining down warm on the city and a cool breeze against her wings, but Maggie's gut churned and her skin prickled the nearer she drew to Manhattan. She'd just sent a Wyvern information packet to the NYPD telling them to evacuate the area around Stark Tower; she didn't know what Loki had planned, but she'd seen how he treated civilians.
She soared over the Hudson, no longer caring who below might spot her, and zoomed her HUD in on Stark Tower as soon as it came in view.
She first spotted the strange device on the very top level: she saw immediately that it was some kind of improvised arc reactor, hooked up to the building's power and glowing a brilliant blue from within. The Tesseract. She scanned downward, searching for Loki or his men, and her stomach plummeted when she finally spotted him: Loki stood in the wide window of the tower penthouse, physically holding another figure in the air by the throat. She recognized the figure when Loki hurled him straight out the window.
"Tony!"
Glass rained down around Tony like a hailstorm as he plummeted. Maggie angled her wings and throttled her engines to full power, but she already knew she was too late - she'd only just cleared the river and she was fast, but not that fast. A sick coil of dread tightened around her heart. She pushed herself anyway, eyes fixed on Tony's flailing, falling form, and then -
Something smashed out of the penthouse window after Tony. It rocketed downward, gleaming scarlet, and then unfolded itself and appeared to swallow Tony whole. The metal shifted and moved, surrounding him, finally resolving itself into the shape of the Iron Man armor.
Tony flung out his hands and blasted his repulsors moments before he hit the ground. Maggie let out a relieved breath. He halted his momentum, turned, and then blasted back upwards.
Maggie reached the Tower just as Tony rose level with the penthouse window again, lifted his hands and said:
"And there's one other person you pissed off. His name was Phil." Loki glared and lifted his scepter, only to go flying back from a repulsor-blast to the chest.
Maggie flared her wings to avoid crashing head-first into the Tower and came to a hovering stop beside Iron Man in the air. "Holy hell, Tony, that was close!" she panted.
Tony turned to look at her beating her wings to stay level in the air beside him. "Mags, hi." He gestured to his armor. "This is the Mark VII, I built it while you were in Honduras and I was going to surprise you with it after the Tower… anyway. You okay?"
"Yeah," she breathed, then peered in at Loki's fallen figure. "No thanks to him, though. He tried to brain scramble me."
"Same. Apparently it doesn't take on Arc Reactors."
Above them a concussive, ringing blast sounded. Maggie and Tony's heads jerked up to see a beam of blue light streaking up into the air from the top of Stark Tower. The light stretched up to the clouds and then condensed, swirling into darkness. The darkness crackled like thunder and expanded; a hungry maw opening wide in the blue sky. Maggie saw distant, alien stars in that dark void. And then gleaming figures streaked out of the portal and into the sky over New York City.
They moved fast: gleaming gold airships of some kind, piloted by some kind of… of creatures.
"Right," Tony breathed beside Maggie. "Army."
Maggie realized that her mouth had dropped open. "Fuck me."
Below them, police sirens wailed. So the NYPD got my message. But she did not have time to think about that, or about how calling the police had been such a monumental underreaction.
As one, she and Tony shot upwards. They flew parallel to the glowing blue beam and lifted their hands to face the airships arcing downward. Maggie's HUD focused in on one of the frontronners of the pack and she nearly flinched back from the detail: a golden chariot of strangely intricate make, piloted by a grey figure that seemed to be hooked into the very ship, with two passengers: humanoid figures with gold armor that covered grey, reptilian looking skin. One opened its mouth to reveal sharp gnashing teeth.
Maggie did not hesitate. She fired off two energy bolts that impacted against the chariot and sent it spinning out of control, then she had to veer into a spin of her own to avoid an onslaught of scorching laser fire. Tony let one of the purple bolts impact against his armor with a grunt, then went back to firing repulsor blasts. Maggie's skin prickled at the proximity of the Tesseract's glowing beam of energy. Hundreds of feet over her head, another part of the universe peered down through a throbbing black portal.
At first Maggie aimed for the airships at the front of the pack to prevent them from getting past her and down to the city. But as she fired on one, ten more flew past her in a gleaming blur. A panic she had never known before rose in her stomach like acid. She pulled one of Margo's machine guns from her back and started firing indiscriminately, swathing fire across the aliens descending through the sky.
The aliens - Chitauri, she remembered - screamed and died, but so many more kept soaring past. Their chariots moved like schools of fish in the air, weaving and swirling, breaking away from her and Tony. Tony let off a volley of targeted grenades and they detonated against half a dozen of the chariots, sending their remains streaking down to the ground. Another chariot almost collided with Maggie and she twisted, beating her wings to get away when the Chitauri on the back of it gnashed its teeth at her. She aimed her gun down after it and ripped the chariot apart with gunfire.
Maggie's ears were filled with the battlecries of the Chitauri, the humming beam of light from the Tesseract and the blasts of explosions and gunfire. She could not imagine what the people in the city below must be thinking at the sight of the things descending from the sky. She could not imagine what the future looked like now.
She heard explosions and looked down. Chitauri chariots had made it to the city and were firing on the streets below: purple streaks of light slammed down into roads and cars and people. Screams echoed up into the sky, followed by plumes of smoke.
Maggie dragged her eyes away from the flames blooming below so she could aim her weapon back up at the chariots descending from the gaping black portal. There had to be a hundred of them now. She twisted and climbed, her engines burning at the base of her outstretched wings. For a moment the panic threatened to overwhelm her. It rose up her stomach, her chest, her throat, and then - it caught fire.
But instead of overwhelming her, the inferno that rushed through her body and wings filled her with nothing but blinding, burning purpose. Because she would not allow this shrieking army to win. She would not allow them to raze and burn and kill. She knew she would fight with every shred of her being and every breath of her body and every drop of her blood until either they were dead, or she was. And though there were hundreds of them and just one of her, for a moment it felt like enough.
Because Maggie was the Wyvern. And she was not alone.
Maggie snagged the barbs of her wing into a passing Chitauri chariot pilot and bodily swung it about, slamming it into the path of another descending chariot. Both gleaming airships erupted into flame, knocking Maggie back in the blast wave, and plunged to the city below.
"Tony," Maggie panted as they both tried to surge up to the portal. If they reached it maybe they could bottleneck the oncoming chariots. But even as Maggie picked off a pack of three with a missile, she and Tony were both pushed down another hundred feet by a fresh swarm. "We need reinforcements-"
"They should be here!" Tony called back, his voice tight.
She heard a strange clashing blow and glanced down for a moment to see Thor's unmistakeable red cape on the Stark Tower flight deck - he was fighting Loki.
A Chitauri chariot slammed against Maggie's side and she dropped. It had only been a glancing blow but it sent her spinning, and when she looked up there was a whole squadron of them racing toward her, the Chitauri on board aiming those glowing lasers at her. Maggie cast one helpless glance up at the black portal and then dove. I need cover. Besides, this wasn't a battle for the portal any longer - the Chitauri were everywhere, swarming over the city, and the people on the ground needed help. She'd lost Tony somewhere, though she could hear him breathing hard over the comms.
Maggie streaked past the crown of the Chrysler tower and then swerved, twisting down around the skyscraper and then into the jungle of the city, trying to lose the squadron chasing her. Her reflection blurred across the gleaming windows. Below her people ran screaming for cover. The streets were already an unrecognizable mess of flames and upturned cars and rubble.
Natasha's voice suddenly broke into the comms: "Stark, Wyvern, we're on your three headed northeast."
"What, did you stop for drive through?" Tony shot back. "Swing up Park, I'm gonna lay 'em out for you."
A streak of purple laser blasts impacted the building ten feet to Maggie's left and she swerved once more, pulling into a narrow alleyway. Glass shattered down behind her. She whisked through the shadowy alley and peered backwards. The Chitauri chasing her swerved too - one slammed into the corner of the building and exploded in a bright fireblast, but the others roared upward to chase her over the rooftops. She pulled out of the alleyway onto Park Avenue and spotted the Quinet a few blocks down, flying through a fireball - they must have taken out Tony's pursuers.
"Loki and Thor are on the Tower," she called, "I can't get-" she turned in the direction of the Tower, only for the squadron of three chariots chasing her to dive practically on top of her. She had to pull away, but the Quinjet rose up toward the tower.
Maggie pulled down Park Avenue, lined up her pursuers, and then pulled another of Margo's firearms from her back and shot them out of the sky. They fell onto the burning street below, and she glanced quickly around to make sure there were no civilians in the blast zone. When she turned and glanced around she saw, to her dismay, the Quinjet falling out of the sky trailing sparks and smoke. Maggie followed it down to Park Avenue, firing at Chitauri and gaining a few more following chariots on the way. The Quinjet came down with a crunch, carving a deep furrow in a concrete city square before colliding nose-first with an office building.
Maggie winced, then let out a breath of relief when the loading bay ramp opened and she saw Steve's colorful uniform and shield. But she couldn't exactly hang around to chat. She rocketed overhead, firing behind her.
"Steve they're everywhere, we need to set up some kind of containment-" One of the alien chariots chasing after her exploded and plunged to the street below. Maggie blinked and looked down to see Clint lowering his bow. "Hey, you're back!"
"Good to see you, Wyvern," he nodded. And then Maggie had rocketed down the street and out of sight, chasing a Chitauri chariot of her own.
"We've gotta get back up to the Tower!" Steve called.
"The fliers aren't letting me get close," she panted.
The air rumbled with a metallic groan, and Maggie almost faltered in midair. She fired an energy bolt at a chariot, sending it spiralling into a nearby carpark, then angled her wings upward until she'd cleared the top of a gleaming office building. She looked around for the source of the sound.
A massive shape had appeared in the portal in the sky. At first Maggie thought it was an airship.
But then the thing spread two massive, sail-like fins and opened its jagged mouth to roar. Maggie's stomach twisted. The thing undulated out of the portal, and the sun caught the gleaming gold of its armor and the shifting spiked fins on its spine. This was not humanoid, and it was not comprehensible. It seemed to sail through the air, down the length of Stark Tower to the city below. When it flew down Park Avenue, Chitauri vaulted from its sides from tethers and plunged toward the nearby buildings like a raiding party from a ship.
A purple blast scorched through the air by Maggie's face and she jerked back into motion, though she couldn't help but stare at the massive airbound creature as it rippled and heaved through the air like a bloated undersea monster. One of the fins by its tail took out a whole line of windows on a skyscraper, showering glass down on the street below.
"Are you guys seeing this?" came Steve's tense voice.
"Seeing," Tony replied. "Still working on believing. Where's Banner, has he shown up yet?"
"Banner?"
"Just keep me posted."
Maggie flew parallel to the horrific creature as it moved down Park Avenue, picking off Chitauri wherever she could. They weren't easy to ground, but a well-placed energy bolt or a particularly vicious shove could knock one off course and into an obstacle. The problem was how many there were: every turn Maggie took and every street she flew down there were fires, and people running and screaming, and Chitauri smashing into buildings, firing on civilians. They had footsoldiers on the ground now. Maggie tried to stop every one she saw, but the minute she paused to fire on a chariot or dive on a footsoldier attacking civilians, seven more Chitauri came snarling down on New York City. And still more streamed out of the portal above. Sweat trickled down her back under her flight suit, between the wing ports on either side of her spine. Her breath rasped in her throat as she flew harder than she ever had done before. Her home had become a battleground.
She saw an eruption of fire a street over and she banked down 38th street - a squadron of Chitauri chariots were screaming down the middle of Park Avenue, raining down laser fire on the trapped cars and civilians below. They left a surge of fire and black smoke in their wake. Maggie spotted a flash of golden horns and she careened after it: Loki piloted the foremost chariot, his teeth bared in a grim smile as he led his followers. His emerald cloak streamed behind him like a war banner.
Maggie punched through a wall of orange flame and fired a missile at Loki's back. He swerved at the last second, somehow sensing the projectile, and then the pack of Chitauri following him swarmed on Maggie. The speed of their direction change startled her and she had to flip upwards to evade them - it was as if Loki had commanded them with his mind. She caught a glimpse of Loki's chariot as it rocketed away, and cursed under her breath.
Distantly, she overheard Clint and Nat battling on the ground and Steve giving orders to the police.
"Hey Maggie," came Tony's voice, "come give me a hand with this thing."
Maggie checked Tony's position on her HUD and then angled her wings in his direction. Her left wing shivered slightly at the change in air pressure, before adjusting. She'd just yanked a Chitauri footsoldier off the edge of a roof when she turned a corner and spotted Iron Man: he flew right past the open maw of the massive Chitauri sky beast, firing off a volley of flares that made the creature roar and turn after him. It smashed a plume of glass and dust from the side of a skyscraper as it turned.
"Oh, that was clever," Maggie called as she flew up to Tony.
"Well, we got its attention," he said, hovering in the air to stare back at the massive roaring creature. "What the hell was step two?"
"Fly!"
Maggie and Tony fled down the street away from the monster. When they'd gained some distance, Maggie flared her wings and dropped behind it as it chased Tony, looking over its alien form. Every time it flew between two buildings its outstretched fins crashed through the windows and bricks, raining debris on the street below. It roared and gnashed its teeth like an angry bear. "J.A.R.V.I.S., have you got anything?"
"I am still analyzing the creature, but I have not identified any weak spots thus far."
"Damn." The creature was clearly armored, nearly every inch of its pale grey flesh shrouded in thick metal. But it was animal in nature - it felt, and heard, and saw. Perhaps they could confuse it? Since its attention was focused on Tony's burning red and gold form, Maggie inched closer and closer, her eyes darting over the beast for any sign of reaction. But it could not hear her quieter wings. So she flew over the beast, cut her engines and then glided down, landing lightly on one of the dark gold metal plates on its back. She wobbled, trying to find her footing on the undulating creature, then wrapped her claws around the front ridge of the armor.
Ahead, Tony looked over his shoulder. "Maggie, what are you doing?"
"Getting a closer look." Once she felt steady - a little like getting her sea legs on a ship, she thought - Maggie hopped lightly along the monster's back, peering at the joins of the armor and trying to see the flesh below. Her wings fluttered to keep her steady. Buildings rose and fell to either side of her as she rode the monster.
Maggie pulled one of Margo's grenades from the pouch on her hip. "Lets see what this does." She hopped up to the next plate of armor, armed the grenade and rolled it into the gap between armor plates as the creature's body rolled. Seconds later she heard a concussive boom and the armor beneath her feet juddered. The creature let out an angry scream and twisted so violently that Maggie had to reach for one of its spine spikes to stay on its back.
The monster kept flying, now thrashing and smashing into more windows.
Tony looked back. "Well that just made it angry."
A minute later, Maggie heard voices over the comms again - the others seemed to all be in one place.
"What's the story upstairs?" Steve asked.
Thor responded: "The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable."
"Thor's right, we gotta deal with these guys," Tony called as he fired another repulsor blast at the monster to keep its attention focused on him. Maggie darted along its back, dropping grenades and firing her blasters and guns at every crevice and soft spot she could see. It kept rolling and thrashing, trying to shake her off.
"How do we do this?" Nat asked, sounding, as ever, remarkably calm.
"As a team," Steve said.
"I have unfinished business with Loki," Thor growled.
"Yeah?" asked Barton. "Get in line." Maggie had never heard that dark note in his voice before.
"Save it," Steve said. "Loki's going to keep this fight focused on us and that's what we need. Without him, these things could run wild. We've got Stark and the Wyvern up top, they're going to need us to-"
He abruptly cut off, and Maggie frowned as she slammed her heelspur into the base of the monster's front spike. It did not roar, which meant she'd only hit metal. She checked her HUD, and realized that Tony was leading the beast in a very specific direction.
She understood Steve's silence a moment later when Bruce's voice filtered into the comms, mild-mannered as ever.
"Stark, we got him," Steve called.
"Banner?"
"Just like you said."
"Well tell him to suit up," Tony called. "We're bringing the party to you."
At the end of his sentence Tony rocketed around the corner of the last skyscraper at the end of Park Avenue, angling to face the group of grounded Avengers on the road below. A second later the beast smashed through the corner of the building, roaring as it snapped its jaws at Tony. Maggie jerked at the impact but held steady: she was hooked on to the armor around the creature's head like a bug clinging to a dragon, her wings beating as she worried at its head and jaw. She stabbed indiscriminately with her heel spur and fired into the gaps between the armor, trying to find the creature's eye.
"I don't see how that's a party," Natasha murmured.
Maggie glanced up and realized she could see the others, up the other end of Park Avenue by Grand Central Terminal: Thor, Steve, Bruce, Natasha and Clint stood staring at the oncoming monster.
Maggie gripped the top of the monster's faceplate and swung her legs down. Her heelspur slammed into one of its long, sharp teeth and she felt it crack. The monster roared in fury and plunged downward, scraping its long belly along the cars and concrete of the road below. Maggie heaved herself up just in time to avoid getting her legs caught in the monster's roaring mouth. Metal and glass sprayed up over the Chitauri's head, dashing against her flightsuit and wings. Tony rocketed ahead, out of range.
"Doctor Banner - now might be a really good time for you to get angry," came Steve's voice.
"Well, that's my secret Cap."
Maggie glanced ahead, narrowly dodging a lightpost that the monster hit, and saw Doctor Banner walking calmly down the road to meet the beast. She yanked her heelspur free of the armor and soared upwards to get clear.
Banner glanced back at Steve. "I'm always angry."
If Maggie had blinked, she would have missed it. Banner turned back to the Chitauri and simply grew: his skin flushed green and expanded outward, his shirt giving way to the mass of muscles and flesh of his torso. In the next second Banner's mild features had transformed into the snarling, furious Hulk - and he swung one massive fist right into the face of the oncoming Chitauri monster.
Maggie's mouth dropped. She had not seen the Hulk this close before, and nothing could have prepared her for the way his punch had simply stopped the monster in its tracks - it skidded along the debris-filled ground, howling in pain, and its whole body seemed to crumple in on itself with its momentum. It bowled over, armor snapping open and tail flailing, and Tony and Maggie took their chance: they fired.
Two missiles hit the exposed, raw flesh of the monster as it fell forward and it lit up like a spark to an oiltank. Flame burst from the monster's body in a shower of sparks, metal, and burning flesh.
Maggie dove, her wings flared behind her like a shield, and skidded down by Clint's side. He sheltered beneath the protection of her wings and they both shuddered under the blastwave. Maggie winced against the flare of heat. She could hardly see for the flames, but she knew that Steve had shielded Nat a few feet away. Shards of armor and hunks of burning alien flesh rained down around them.
There was an almighty crunch as the front half of the Chitauri monster slammed to the ground below the overpass, and the wash of heat and sparks faded. Maggie rose, backing up beside Clint, and stared upward at the sound of screams. But for the first time it wasn't civilians screaming - every single Chitauri in the vicinity had halted and they were screaming at the sight of their fallen monster, furious and afraid. Maggie felt their alien gazes turn to the seven strange individuals standing in the middle of Park Avenue. A few pale civilians faces peered out from the eaves of the surrounding buildings at them.
Her feet steady on the debris-strewn ground, Maggie's wings rose and fell with each breath and she bared her claws at the roaring and screaming, glaring up at the Chitauri with burning red eyes. To her right the Hulk roared back in defiance, and behind her Tony lowered down through the air to stand with them. Maggie did not look at the Hulk, Thor, Steve, Natasha, Clint and Tony standing beside and behind her but she could feel them - her team - readying themselves for battle.
For a moment, she knew that the raging inferno inside her had been right.
But then Natasha murmured: "Guys..."
Thor's cape brushed Maggie's arm as he turned, and when she turned to follow his gaze upward she saw two more snarling, massive creatures snaking their way through the portal in the sky. Dozens more gleaming chariots zipped out behind them. Her stomach fell.
"Call it, Captain," Tony said curtly.
Steve didn't take his eyes off the sky. "Alright, listen up. Until we can close that portal, our priority is containment. Barton, I want you on that roof" - he pointed - "eyes on everything, call out patterns and strays." He turned and pointed to Tony. "Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out you turn it back, or you turn it to ash."
"Can you give me a lift?" Barton asked.
"Right," Tony nodded. "Better clench up, Legolas." As he strode to Clint, he nodded once at Maggie. She nodded in return. In the next second he'd seized Clint by the back of his uniform and they both blasted off the ground.
"Thor," Steve went on. "You gotta try and bottleneck that portal. Slow 'em down. You got the lightning - light the bastards up."
Nodding grimly, Thor whirled his hammer in a tight arc before he swung it and it lifted him up into the sky. Maggie realized that she stood about six feet away from the massive Hulk, who breathed heavily and shifted his enormous feet, making the hairs on her arms stand up. She was afraid to look him in the eye.
Steve turned to Nat. "You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here." Nat tipped her chin in a nod, and then Steve turned to Maggie. "You're with us. Stay in the perimeter, keep the fighting close and bring the fliers down."
Maggie nodded her acknowledgement and sprang off the ground with a blast of her engines. She streaked up the side of the nearby building and bared the hard ridges of her wings. She angled for the Chitauri abseiling down the side of the building and swept them off their tethers with the edges of her wings. They went tumbling down to the hard concrete below, roaring.
"And Hulk?" Steve continued over comms. "Smash."
Moments later Maggie nearly jumped out of her skin when the Hulk came hurtling past with handfuls of shattered concrete, roaring as he leaped into the path of oncoming Chitauri chariots. He smashed one in Maggie's direction and she blasted it out of the sky.
I can work with this.
I just had to split the battle into two, sorry!
Also sorry for leaving you guys on a cliffhanger for a whole week, and for being slow in replying to reviews - life has been busy recently. But I am so stoked you guys are still enjoying this story and thank you for your patience! Starting next week I'll be posting on Saturdays instead so I have more time to respond to you guys.
Reviews
DBZFAN45: The Wyvern is (was) down! As you can see she's done well saving herself and now we're in the thick of the Battle of New York! And I agree, Maggie should be in the MCU movies haha. Sorry for making you wait all week on a cliffhanger!
The1975Love: Haha your trust in Maggie is well-placed, she was fine in the end. And yes, TFATWS is getting crazy!
Don't touch Lola: I know, the cliffhanger was mean! And this chapter is kinda a cliffhanger too. I'm glad you like Steve and Maggie's growing friendship :) Oh and absolutely, John Walker is a monster and I can't wait for Sam to beat his ass. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, see you next week!