Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel or the characters. I own nothing here except for the plot.
Surviving
Boom. Boom. Boom!
"Run!" a voice shouted out.
"No, no, no!"
"After them."
Boom!
Peter ducked down under a wrecked car. He clenched the rifle in his hand tight. A blaster shot missed him. He looked down at the magazine of the weapon. Four. There were five Kree warriors in the alley, shooting at them.
Boom. Another explosion.
He saw an opening, the bastards turned their backs. Steady. One. Two. He fired right into their heads. Again and again. Four of them fell dead. His adrenaline surged. One more block away and he'd be safe. He ran.
They had seen him. A Kree pursued him. Nothing was on his mind, but evading and escaping from his pursuer.
Bang. Bang. Boom.
He didn't look back. A piece of debris made him stumble, he ran again. Then. Breathe knocked off, a hand grabbed him into a dark ruined shop. Instincts kicked off. He punched into the dark, flesh collided with his fist. He moved to strike again.
"Fuck off! Penis! I fucking saved you."
It was Flash.
"What are you doing? Standing? Hide."
Peter scrambled to hide. More explosions boomed outside. The place was once a restaurant, he observed. He dove under a hollow cabinet sink. Darkness concealed him and Flash from the pursuing enemies. One. Two. Three. He slowed down his breathing.
Figures rushed passed the ruined store. He counted the remaining enemies from the shadows made as they pursued them. Seven. Intel supplied them that it would be small contingent, but the bastards were many. Toomes wouldn't like this.
There were two more clips of ammo left in his vest. With great care, he reloaded his rifle. Flash glared at him across his hiding place. Their options were small, and to survive, they need to fight back. He crawled out towards the large window.
"Do you want to die, Penis?" Flash whispered.
"I'm fighting to live," he whispered back.
The Kree forces were far from the store now. They were still searching for them. Peter settled near the left of the window. Shadows covered him. The rifle in his hands felt heavy. There was no hesitation in his mind. He needed to survive.
Steady.
A chair moved. Peter glanced back to the source of the noise. It was Flash, crawling.
"What are you looking at?" Flash scowled. The other boy gripped his gun. Ready.
"Nothing. Look, we got some blues, two o'clock from here. Another at twelve, we're surrounded. Ready," Peter relayed the information to Flash.
"Got it. I'll take two, and you'll get twelve. Okay," Flash was preparing to aim.
A moment of silence passed. Steady. Steady. One down. Two. Three. They were picking them off one by one. Arrogance embodied the blues. The Kree on the streets were gone. The two boys ran outside in an unspoken agreement. A chance to retreat. They both turned left as they hear a whirring sound. Something was following them.
A Kree patrol ship.
They couldn't risk having the ship to follow them- they continued running.
Their legs were burning in exhaustion. Right. Right. Left. Swoosh. Boom! A big shockwave threw them to the ground. Peter's ears were ringing. Something was running down his face, blood. His vision blurred. Go. Go, his mind echoed.
He struggled to get up. Flash was unconscious, bleeding. Blood was dripping from his torso. He couldn't leave Flash. Mustering all his strength, Peter carried him with his right arm. He grabbed his rifle with his left.
The day was turning worse. If he survived today, he'd punched Dan from analytics. A small mission, they said. It was all simple: infiltrate a small Kree outpost and rewire the jamming signals. They did rewire the signals but at the costs of lives.
Peter continued to escape the streets with Flash. A swooshing sound caught his attention. It sounded like arrows whistling through the air. Then he saw it, a person firing arrows. Or was it two persons?
"Peter. Flash, he's bleeding! Your bleeding! What happened?" a high-pitched voice questioned. He looked to see Betty. She's still alive.
They were safe.
"Explosion, I think we might have help..." he mumbled. His eyes were darkening. Exhaustion had taken a toll on his body.
"Okay, hey. Mark come here! Peter and Flash are bleeding. Help me, help them..."
His vision turned pitch-black...
He couldn't keep it up anymore...
Yellow light burned his eyes in aching brightness. He tried to get up from the bed when he felt a hand stopped him. A blurry face came into view.
"Lay back again, Mr. Parker. You need to rest. I took out some shrapnel from your shoulder," a stern voice commanded. It was the Doctor. The man was one of the leaders of the New York coalition, Stephen Strange.
They were in the base.
"Flash?" Peter asked the doctor. Aching pain convulsed his body. He tried to move again.
"Careful. Mr. Thompson is alive, but he needs more time to rest. You're both lucky making out there in one piece. We lost nine fighters today," Strange stated. He was busy filling out some forms besides Peter's bed.
"The signals?" the boy inquired.
"You were successful. Right now, we are contacting the others across the pond. We are hoping for good news."
"What will be our next action, sir?"
"Depends on the information we'll get. You and the others are good soldiers, Mr. Parker. Beth would watch your condition. Please rest, your one of our best out there..."
Dr. Strange left the room after. The make-shift ward looked cramped with other soldiers like him. There was Beth, the aging nurse, she was with Flash. He glanced to find familiar faces with them.
Peter thought back again the mysterious person, persons, that saved them. He forgot to tell Strange about them, but bow and arrows? Most people used guns or reverse-engineered Kree weapons. The archer(s) and their equipment were also strong enough to pierce the Kree ships. Someone new was out there killing off Kree.
But an Avenger once used bow and arrows, Hawkeye.
"Strange, good to see you. We're getting a lot of progress," Toomes greeted him. The man was reading several files on a large table with the world's map.
"Tell me, what went through your mind sending them out there!" Strange demanded. His fist clenched.
"A chance of fighting."
"Nine are dead. Four are critically injured!"
"We will mourn for them. I don't like it either, but this was our chance. One chance. Don't worry, Dan will move from analytics to supply. This would not happen again."
"You said it the last time, Toomes."
"Good news, Strange. We got some good news. Everything worked out. Aside from contacting other human rebellions. We managed to crack into the Kree servers, guess what we found?"
Stephen could see the smugness from Toomes radiating. Together, the two of them led the surviving New York population from the blues. Throughout the years they had earned grudging respect for each other. But Toomes would push too far some times. Revenge clouded the man, everyone in the base knew, how the aliens killed his daughter. Everyone, who survived lost someone close to them.
He didn't want to think about her.
"What? These better be worth it," he humored Toomes.
"The bastards are having trouble in Europe. Someplace called Sokovia. They're unable to go further in there. Something is stopping them. Weapons classified as Scarlet and Silver. If we got some of those weapons, we could destroy them here in New York. Stephen, one chance," he elaborated his plan to the doctor.
"How?" The doctor started. "The skies are under their control. We're holed up here. No aircraft could take us there. It's pure fantasy."
"The engineers are trying their best to create a vehicle to take us. The others are also considering hijacking a Kree ship. It's hope. A month or two we'll be ready," Toomes asserted.
Hesitation flitted in Strange's mind. But Toomes was right. One chance. If those weapons do exist, they would have a fighting chance.
Four years had passed since they came to Earth.
Dad would be proud of her. She had survived those days in the wilderness, fighting. The encounter on the streets of New York had lowered her supply of arrows. She couldn't stand there and not help.
The piece of map in her hands was full of red marks. Safe houses. Some of them were gone, but the one she's hiding in was still intact. The others might also survive. But she's more interested in the still hidden secret SHIELD base. Her dad noted they have some prototype weapons, quinjets, and military-grade equipment. A destination.
Lila took another bite of a ration bar. Another day tomorrow. Maybe she'd met those freedom fighters again.
"Miracles! I want more results! We can't only have two!"
"Baron, we tried to replicate the results. But... But..."
A glass flew above his head, crashing to the walls. Baron Von Strucker was angry. The success of the Twins made him feel successful, they did it. But they couldn't replicate them. Failure. Hundreds of volunteers had died. Then the damned aliens ruined Hydra's plans. Now they were their only weapons against the invaders.
Sokovia had remained out of reach from the Kree. They were impenetrable due to the twins.
"But we made them stronger. The girl is powerful. The boy is an efficient killing machine," a scientist emphasized, stammering. "It might be biological. Their genetic make-up is very different from us. We postulate that we seek out people like them. The results show there's a gene that made them survive the tests. A latent potential. If we can unlock it, the results would be unimaginable..."
The other scientists in the room all nodded in agreement.
"Move the next phase, we need them to be stronger. The serum, is it ready?" Baron asked them. He stared at the portrait of the Red Skull in his office. The scepter gleamed at its perch. Hydra must triumph.
"Sir? I thought we will-"
"I said to make them stronger. The Twins! I don't want to be stuck here, at this barren tundra! Hydra must expand its territories. Do it! Go!"
Thud. Thump. Slam.
Outside the meeting, two figures were fighting against some grunts. The twins' bodies trained to take down the aliens. Their sanity was fraying from the constant chatter of the scientist and grunts. Experiments after experiments tortured them, making them more powerful. Their only solace was each other.
Scarlet red crushed the necks of the grunts, splattering the walls with blood.
Silver-blue streaks weaved around the others, their throats were slit with a knife.
"Wonderful children."
"They were weak," a silver-haired boy commented. He wiped the blood off from the knife on his shirt. "They're not worth the use of my powers."
"You need to train against them," their trainer reasoned. "It is essential to our cause."
"Well I could cut you down, and you wouldn't notice it. See," the boy was right next to the man. The knife pointed to the man's throat.
"Pietro," the brunette girl warned. Her eyes were flashing red.
"Then I suppose you could outrun this," the man said menacingly. He pressed a button inside his pocket.
The girl and the boy felt the electricity coursing to their veins. Their bodies convulsed with pain. Their screams echoed out. Rage filled them, but they couldn't unleash it.
"Wanda, keep watch of your brother. Another session is set tomorrow," he commanded as he left . They remained in the room in pain. Their minds were oscillating between sanity and insanity.
One day, they'll kill them all. Hydra. The Avengers were gone, Tony Stark dead. They would kill the aliens that had taken their revenge from them. Nothing would stop them.
One day, but not today.
They would survive.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Finally, we got to see our principal characters. Maybe I'll add the other characters in the later chapters.
1. Peter doesn't have spider-powers, because this was before the Oscorp trip. I'm still debating on giving him one or not. What do you guys think? Spider powers or no spider powers, comment on it?
2. Toomes is kinda a good guy here. He and Strange are the leaders of the freedom fighters. We might see familiar faces later on, but I'm still on the fence. I want those who survive to be random.
3. Pietro and Wanda will be much powerful, stronger here, especially the years of using their powers and experiments. But their sanity. Also, I'm low-key, giving them a special gene and some others might possess it. Its teased in canon that both may have latent potential, but no X-Men as much as I love them. 'Cough' Rogue, Cyclops, Storm 'Cough' Maybe? Maybe? I don't know...
4. The Infinity Stones of this universe are intact, and the Mind Stone might have more fun this time, toying the minds near it.
Constructive criticism is appreciated. 🙂
