Author's Note – I do not own any of the characters, Marvel and DC do.
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Chapter Seventeen
Quest
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"Nice jet." Clark allowed as he sat down beside Tony Stark. The multi-billionaire grinned at him.
"You like? I was inspired by your Javelin, I considered calling it an Assegai, but the number of bad puns that it would cause… I eventually settled on Harpoon since this thing is way better armed than yours. That and it's bigger."
Clark nodded as he glanced round. The forward cabin (located just behind the cockpit) boasted artificial diamond windows stretching almost from the floor to the deckhead. The cabin itself was reminiscient of a five-star hotel room in the furnishings.
"A delta-wing space-plane powered by ARC reactors, thus removing the need for fuel tanks." Clark marvelled. "How did you get it to Asgard, anyway?"
"I got Heimdall to help me create a dimensional hyperdrive." Tony smirked. "This thing can go to all nine of the Realms. With the FTL drive I traded for from the Justice League, this baby can go anywhere."
"You've been trading with the Justice League?" Clark repeated. "Huh, that… didn't actually occur to me. What did you trade them?"
"Repulsor technology, way more efficient than what they had." Tony shrugged. "I'm keeping the ARC reactors to myself."
"Stark!" Thor shouted as he strode into the room. "We have a place to start, let us depart!"
"Sure thing." Tony said, pausing to gulp down his drink and throw the glass into the air, allowing JARVIS to use the ceiling-mounted tractor-repulsor array to catch it and whisk it away. "Everyone aboard?"
"We are." Sam Wilson said as he followed Thor through with Cir-El hot behind him. "You know, it's scary how much power we have aboard at the moment.
"I know." Clark agreed as Tony and Thor vanished into the cockpit, with Thor pushed out a moment later. "Ummm, what did you do this time?"
"I know not what thou doth speak of." Thor grumped as he exited the room, leaving three highly-amused people behind him.
"Falcon! Get your feathered butt in here! I need a pilot!"
Sam laughed as he vanished into the cockpit, leaving Cir-El grinning as Clark shook his head.
"So." Clark said after a long moment. "How are SHIELD and SWORD treating you?"
"It's interesting." Cir-El admitted. "Although, I seem to have gained the nickname Karate."
Clark blinked, then shook his head. "I… how?"
"Sam's fault." Cir-El laughed. "We were in a hostage situation and he quoted from a silly cartoon as he used those holo-wings of his to block the bullets being aimed at the hostages. His actual words were 'Your bullets cannot harm me for…"
"My wings are like a shield of steel." Clark finished with a laugh. "Some of Generation-X use that cartoon to tease Angel."
Cir-El giggled, then turned as Mystique entered.
"Hey, hubby." She smiled as Clark enfolded her in a hug.
"Sheesh, you two." Cir-El sighed. "Get a room."
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"Mon-El!" Doreen Green squealed and the startled Kryptonian found himself with an armful of excitable super-heroine.
"Squirrel Girl." Mon replied as politely as possible while mentally sweating buckets. The one who terrified Kal-El was hugging him!
"Doreen, can you please let go of Lar?" Captain Britain asked, using his pint of beer to hide his grin.
"Lar? Why did he call you that?" Doreen asked with a slight frown. "Aren't you Mon-El?"
"I am, and Lar Grand." Mon-El replied stiffly. "I don't really remember much of the night I got my new name… although apparently if you mix alcohol with cinnamon, it does affect us Kryptonians. How did we find that out, Brian? I… don't really remember."
"Cocktails." Brian shrugged, letting his grin show. "And no, I don't really remember much of that night afterwards, only waking up the next day dressed in drag."
Doreen started to giggle as Mon-El sighed. "At least you had proper clothes. All I had was a quarter of a bed sheet and a policeman's helmet. We never did track down my original outfit."
Doreen doubled up with laughter, only Mon-El's arm kept her from landing on the ground. As Mon-El looked pleadingly at Captain Britain for help, the plane shifted underfoot and suddenly Doreen was at the window, leaving Mon-El to stare at his empty arms in shock.
"Hey! We're taking off!" She squealed as Asgard dropped away beneath them. "Yay!"
Mon-El stared at her, then slowly sidled over to Brian.
"Did she… teleport?"
"No, she just scooted really quick." Brian responded, taking another sip. "Crisp?"
Mon-El stared at the proffered bag. "Aren't those chips?"
"English crisps are American chips, while English chips are American fries." Brian explained. "I guess that since you were taught by a Yank, you didn't quite get the differences between the two languages. When we get back, I'll have to run you through the differing slang. Goodness knows what you'd think of someone asking to bum a fag."
Mon-El stared at him in horrified shock.
"Captain." A new voice said and Brian nodded in greeting.
"Captain."
"Steve!" Doreen squealed as she seemed to blur across the room, glomping Captain America hard enough that he staggered into the wall. "Is it true? Are you going to propose to Kara?"
"What?" Supergirl asked in shock from the doorway and Steve sighed as he disentangled himself from Squirrel Girl.
"Yes, now that I have had the ring re-sized for her. I had hoped to surprise her."
"Oops." Doreen whispered, looking somewhat embarrassed.
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"Well, that's it for now." Tony sighed as he leaned back in the almost-sinfully-luxurious pilots chair, his eyes glancing between the touch-screens and projected holograms that had replaced the traditional array of instuments in a plane. "Jarvis, autopilot is yours."
"Very good, sir." Jarvis' voice replied.
"Yep, all looking good." Sam confirmed as he tapped one of the readouts, then nodded in satisfaction. "This is one hell of a plane. Energy shields, weapons turrets, advanced sensors, cloaking device, repulsor-engines… you really went all out on this."
"Thanks." Tony smirked, then he glanced at the closed door. "Just between you and me, I needed to build something awesome since Clark's Javelin and the almost-completed SHIELD Helicarriers were starting to make my old tech look outdated."
"Yeah." Sam nodded. "Have you seen the new Helicarriers? I swear, they're like flying battleships."
"Yup." Tony nodded. "Not sure why the Council wanted them given how well the original performs, but hey, new toys! Or at least, new toys in a few months or so."
"So, where exactly are we headed?"
"It's a piece of folded space containing a couple of hundred planets." Tony said, calling up the schematics on one of the holo-screens. "It's known to the locals as Acheron and is ruled over by our adversary, Thanos, the Mad Titan, from his throneworld Tartarus."
"Sounds pleasant." Sam noted sarcastically.
"He has his own army, the Chitauri. Apparently they're a militaristic offshoot of the Skrulls, a group who went for a cybernetically-augmented Hive-mind approach millenia ago. No-word on how they ended up working for Thanos, though."
"Sound pleasant." Sam agreed wryly, then he paused. "Hey, weren't they the ones that Loki commanded in that battle?"
"They were, which indicates that Thanos was behind it." Steve said from behind them. "Only this time, we have Kryptonians available and ready to aid."
"Yeah, Clark arrived just after the Portal was destroyed." Tony reminisced. "By the time he got the news at the rescue site, it was pretty much all over."
"Shame, he could have taken down those Leviathons by himself." Steve sighed. "Anything from the info packet Odin gave us?"
"Only a few extra details." Tony shrugged. "The location of Tartarus, the position of Thanos' Throne and a map of the star system. Did you know Thanos uses floating islands above a hyperspatial-portal generator as his primary Throne? He has his army assemble around him and then they drop down through the portal to where he wants. Huh, I wonder how much damage that nuke did."
"Probably all repaired by now." Steve shrugged. "Those Chitauri were tough let's hope that he hasn't managed to breed more to replace them yet."
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"The Aether!" Malekith gasped as Thanos strode through the portal, a shifting black-and-red gem-cloud in his hands. Thanos smirked, then frowned in concentration and the constantly-moving cloud compressed into a rounded gem of shifting yellow hues before Thanos placed it into one of the previously-empty settings on his gauntlet.
"Three of the six." Thanos gloated, clenching his fist as he admired the gems, the former Tesseract nestled at the base of his thumb, the green centered on the back of his hand and the yellow gem at the base of his first finger. "The Grandmaster will fall before me next and his Gem will be mine."
"It shall be as you command, my Lord and Emperor." A voice rasped and Malekith turned to glare at the cloaked figure known as The Other, the leader of the Chitauri Hive-Mind.
"How goes the rebuilding of your forces, my General?"
"Better than expected, Lord Thanos." Malekith replied, staring at the Gauntlet and the limitless power it represented. "The Chitauri have proven most capable of manning the weapons systems and make adequate troopers, although they are not able to pilot the craft as well as those of my race. More pilots are being trained even as we speak to man the ships under construction."
Thanos turned as a formation of the blade-like starships raced past before they rippled into invisibility.
"Excellent, my General. Your forces will see combat soon and those who survive their assaults shall flee merely from their names."
"Yes, Lord Thanos." Malekith said with a deep bow.
The laughter of the Mad Titan echoed across the plain.
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The alarm sounded in the cockpit and a moment later, Tony Stark rushed in, clad in his latest armour. Flinging himself into the pilots seat, he synchronised his armour with the systems of the plane.
"We almost there?" Sam asked as he dropped into the co-pilot's seat and Tony nodded.
"We passed through the spatial-fold a little while ago and will be emerging from FTL outside the Tartarus system, going to stealth mode as we do so."
Sam nodded as he scanned the data on the screens, then he tapped a button to tie his headset into the jet's systems.
"This is The Falcon to all heroes. If you aren't suited up, do so now as we are approaching emergence. All who are not space-capable, make sure that you're wearing a nano-suit device, better prepared than dead since I don't want to haul your carcasses back to Earth. Falcon out."
"You'd make a wonderful flight attendant." Tony snarked as his eyes darted across the screens.
"Hey!" Sam protested, turning to glare at Tony, only to find that he'd snapped his faceplate closed.
"Hate it when you do that." He grumbled, turning back to the display. Beneath his helmet, Tony smirked at Sam's grumbling.
"I heard the alert." A new voice said and Tony waved.
"Hey, Brian. You may want to take a seat."
Captain Britain nodded and dropped into one of the remaining two chairs, glancing at the control screens.
"You don't seem to have an armband." Brian noted and Sam shrugged.
"I had my gear upgraded by Superman, my nano-suit's integrated into my flight harness."
"Ah, I had wondered." Brian admitted as the light-tube outside seemed to fragment and shatter into a starfield.
"We're sublight now, all stealth systems activated." Tony said. "Jarvis, how are the scans going?"
"Passive and optical scanners are fully active, sir. Preliminary scans now ready for perusal."
A schematic of a solar system filled the largest screen in front of Brian, then one of the planets started flashing.
"Destination located, sir."
"Excellent, Jarvis." Tony replied, his fingers seeming to twitch across empty air as he used the feedback of his armour to manipulate the plane's controls.
"I have also placed the results on the main screen of the deployment bay, sir." Jarvis added.
Tony nodded, then took a closer look at the system schematic.
"There, that's his throneworld. The one with the giant moon around it… Brian, you've gone pale. What is it?"
Captain Britain swallowed twice, then spoke, his eyes fixed on the screen.
"I always thought that I'd enjoy having the chance to say this but… that's no moon."
Sam and Tony turned to stare at him, then they both spun back to examine the display, showing the satellite around the throneworld.
"Bloody hell." Sam finally managed. "Please tell me it doesn't have a superlaser."
Tony raised his faceplate and leaned closer to the screen before sighing. "I hope the stealth systems are good enough, I'd hate for us to be detected by that thing."
"You and me both." Sam muttered. "You and me both."