A/N: WOO AVENGERS INFINITY WAR TRAILER! I saw it like four times and then wrote this in a frenzy. Spoilers for stuff in the trailer, and warnings for character deaths.
Allie called her parents later that night. "How is it going?" she asked.
Clint smile at her. "So far so good, sweetheart. Vision is back-"
Vision poked his head into the camera field. "Hello, Allie."
"And the others are still trying to get the last stone," Clint finished. "Tony and Peter and Bruce are working on shielding and containment options. How are you, Allie?"
She tried not to cry. "I'm okay. I miss you a lot, but Nila is taking care of me and I had rice'n'beans'worms for dinner."
"Worms?" Natasha asked, smiling briefly.
Nila cleared her throat from behind Allie. "They are a Wakandan staple," she told the super spies.
"I wanted to try some and they were crunchy, like kettle potato chips," Allie said. "Except they don't have mustard in this country so I had to eat them with this purple sauce but it was really good. And guess what? I can sleep in a hammock!"
"That's really cool," Clint said.
Allie nodded, and then sobered. "You'll call me when something happens right?"
"We will."
Rocket barreled past, and then paused in front of the screen. "Hey, dwarf," he said cheerfully.
"Hi." Allie waved, and then her eyes narrowed. "Is that my dinosaur robot?" she asked, pointing to the metal contraption he was dragging behind him.
"I needed the lasers," Rocket replied. "You do good workmanship, dwarf." he gave her a salute and dragged the robot out of the room.
Natasha grimaced. "We'll get you a new one, baby."
"No, that's okay. I'll build one myself later."
Clint glanced back at where Sam was gesturing. "Okay, baby, we need to go," he said. "Jane needs the power grid for her satellites."
"Okay. Stay safe."
"You too sweetheart."
Allie signed off, and turned into a puppy to console herself. It didn't quite work. She looked up at Nila beseechingly.
Nila picked her up and smoothed her ruffled fur. "Come, I will take you to the kennels and you can play with the real puppies."
A~A~A~A
A day later, portals appeared in New York and the Wakandan wilderness, disgorging hordes of eight-foot tall aliens upon the world. The superheroes split to take on the foes, and the Wakandans went out en masse to fight. Allie was taken to the basements of the palace with the rest of the servants and families to hide.
Allie huddled into Nila's side. They didn't know what was happening, who was winning, or how close the alien armies had come to the city. It could be the end of the world, and they wouldn't know.
Finally, the all-clear was given, and people began to file out of the basements. The downtown city was unscathed, but further out the fields and the forests were on fire. Literally, on fire. The tired Wakandan soldiers were returning to the city, some of the Avengers in the lead.
"Mommy!" Allie broke away from Nila and ran to hug Natasha.
Natasha dropped to her knees and embraced her. "Hey, sweetheart."
"Did we win?"
"The first wave."
The ominous words made Allie pause. "What does that mean?"
"They came to weaken us," Natasha said tiredly, "test our defenses. Thanos hasn't arrived yet, and we're already tired."
"Uh-oh."
"Yeah." Natasha stood up and slipped her hand into Allie's. "Come on, sweetheart, let's go get cleaned up."
"Kay." Allie broke off to go over to Steve and Bucky and hug them. "You guys okay?" she asked.
"We're okay," Bucky assured her, scooping her up with his metal arm and kissing her forehead. He set her down.
Bruce straggled into the city, shirtless and exhausted from being the Other Guy. "Hey," he said, shrugging off a Wakandan medic. "No, I'm fine. I'm fine."
Allie held up a baked sweet potato. "Eat this. It has complex carbs."
He smiled slightly. "Thank you."
She grouped all her Avengers together and with Nila's help, guided them to the showers. "We need lots of food," she told Nila. "But not the worms. I don't think Steve or Bucky would like the worms."
"I don't think so, either."
A~A~A~A
The Avengers left the cleanup to the Fantastic Four, and removed to Wakanda with T'Challa's permission. They needed the space to fight.
Only someone who had not been empowered by the Infinity Stones could hold the gauntlet. They had it in a box while they worked on breaking the stones out of their containers. Drax was working on the Tesseract, trying to pry it open through sheer force, and Tony was trying to solve the puzzle box that was the Orb. Strange was working on the Time stone, trying to mind-ify it into revealing itself, and Jane was working on making the Aether cohesive, so it would dump out the stone. Peter and Bruce were working on Vision's forehead, trying to figure out how to take it out without giving him a lobotomy. They hadn't heard back yet from Thor about the Soul stone.
Allie hung around the labs, curious, even though they told her to stay back. She could help. She knew it. "What if we use the gauntlet to crush the cube and then put it in the knuckle bit?" Allie asked Drax.
Drax shrugged gamely. "We could try that." He put on the gauntlet, and grabbed the Tesseract with it. He squeezed with all his might.
The cube glowed brightly, and shattered, sending pieces of radioactive glass everywhere. Allie turned into a pebble to avoid the fragments, and then popped up again in human form to see what was going on.
Drax couldn't pick up the glowing blue stone to put it into the knuckle without killing himself. "We did not think this far ahead," he said nervously. "This is why Peter and Gamora shouldn't leave."
Allie frowned. "You know... if I could hold the Time stone in its container..." She reached out, and picked up the blue stone.
It tingled, like getting menthol on your fingers, and she dropped it into place hurriedly. It glowed, once, and sat there.
Drax clenched his fist reflexively, and the stone began to glow.
"No, no," Allie said, tugging at his other arm. "Take it off or you'll break something on accident."
He put it back on the stand, and announced, "We did it!"
Nobody was happy about having to use Allie as a carrier for the stones as they slowly assembled the gauntlet, but she was happy doing something to help, and the scans Bruce took didn't show anything wrong with doing it.
The only one they couldn't get was Vision's. It wasn't possible to take it out of his forehead without killing him and that simply was not an option.
So, four out of six on a gauntlet against a Mad Titan who may or may not have the Soul stone. "We've got this," Pietro said confidently.
But everyone still looked worried.
Then it happened. Only six hours after the appearance of portals, six more appeared. In Tokyo, in New York, in Sao Paulo, in Mexico City, in Shanghai, and in Moscow. And there, on the plains of Africa, a seventh portal appeared. Iron Man and War Machine headed to try and break it, to stop the portal from fully materializing. But they weren't powerful enough, and it engaged, showing them a dark wasteland of what used to be Xandar's home world.
The Mad Titan and his armies came through, undaunted by Iron Man's opening salvo. "Give them to me," he demanded of Earth's mightiest heroes, and they said no. "Then you will know what it is to lose everything," he snarled, and attacked.
Even without a single Infinity Stone, he was powerful.
Allie didn't see much more, because they were evacuating the city. Hawkeye was arranging the evac, leaving the main fight to the superpowered ones, and he had a tight hold of his daughter as they hurried out. Throngs of people surged through the streets, trying to get away from the madness.
There was a flash of light so intense it left everyone blind, and even over the chaos, Allie heard a scream that she recognized. "VISION!" she shrieked, struggling to turn around in Hawkeye's grip.
Thanos lifted the jewel with his bare hands, and placed it in his own gauntlet. One.
With the Mindstone, he could stop Wanda, Pietro. Vision lay lifeless on the ground, already defeated. Scarlet Witch stopped mid-blast and seized, prey to the visions in her mind that Thanos cast upon her. Pietro ran, ran so far and so fast he was gone within seconds.
Captain America pulled the gauntlet on, with the four stones, and met Thanos head-on.
On the fields of Wakanda, time, space, and reality twisted like a sick illusion of itself, landscapes changing and time distorting as the air itself seemed to writhe.
Allie watched as if in slow-motion (or maybe it was) as the fake gauntlet shattered under the pressure, and she let out a scream of terror as the infinity stones flew in all directions.
Iron Man plucked one out of midair, diving out of the way of an alien creature. Strange picked up the other, holding it with his quantum force. T'Challa caught the other one using Captain America's shield as a lacrosse pocket, and the other one-
The power stone flew at the panicked civilians as they ran. If it hit them, it would be over.
Allie jerked out of her father's grasp, turned into a dragon, and caught it in her claws before it could hit Nila. She tumbled to the ground thirty feet away in a clear spot, and transformed back into herself, still holding the power stone in her grasp. "Daddy!" she cried, scared, as her hands began to glow purple, sensing her adrenaline surge. "What do I do with it!?"
Thanos saw the little girl holding the orb, and grinned. He batted War Machine out of the way like a fruit fly, and marched forward. He directed a beam of energy at the power stone to call it into his gauntlet. The little girl who was holding it began to dissolve.
Allie saw Thanos, saw his grin, and saw a bright light. That was all she knew, and then everything stopped.
A~A~A~A
A/N 2: Remember the doctrine of Marvel, and I'll see you in a couple of days for the next chapter.