Hi everybody! I feel like a broken record, always apologizing for how late my updates are, but I really do mean it! The timing is tough; the product of two jobs and college student life. We're getting close to the end of the story, though, so bear with me just a little longer! (If I didn't have a health report to write for Physiology, I'd probably put two chapters up tonight. You see the struggle.) I'm hoping to get the next chapter up sometime this week, but I can't make any clear promises. Thank you, as always, for reading, and please feel free to review or PM me with any questions/comments! I always reply to reviews and PMs, even if it is a while after the fact! For now, I give you Chitauri Battle: Part II!
"That was merely the prologue to a much more dramatic show."
Loki had always had a keen sense for impending disaster. Now, Thor repeated his brother's ancient words in his deeper, chestier voice that somehow didn't feel right speaking them. It was moments like this – when corpses piled high in the streets and there was no promise of living out the day before joining them – that brought his brother to Thor's mind.
He recalled many a night spent awake, wandering aimlessly down the hall to a thick, stately door that just barely creaked when it opened. Beyond the door, a world stained green and gold – a mystifying place where candle flames had once flickered until they guttered, making even the darkest of shadows seem warm and even friendly; a place where most of the walls weren't walls at all, but shelves fashioned to hold as many books as possible, the thick, leather-bound volumes lined up perfectly, just like everything else in Loki's life had been.
How Thor had cried in that room.
How he wished his brother would return to occupy it once more.
At his words, Sif and Elizabeth both had turned to him, eyes hard and sharp, as though he had said what they had been thinking, and yet, they loathed the sound of it.
Thor had never been exceptionally gifted with words. So he borrowed one more of his brother's sentiments: "One day, Valhalla will welcome us as kings and queens, and we shall never have need of any weaponry or armor ever again. I, however, feel certain that I am not yet ready to part with mine."
He glanced over at Sif; a muscle was working in her jaw. She knew he quoted Loki. Placing a hand on her shoulder, Thor got her attention. She swallowed. "For Loki," she murmured. "Wherever he may be."
Elizabeth just stared ahead, steely as the dagger in her hand.
Natasha and Clint had just dragged the final Chitauri corpse out of their way when they saw the sky darken with enough Chitauri to block out the sun.
Clint swore.
Natasha stared.
His calf still hurt, though not nearly as badly as it should have. Now, as Steve watched the Chitauri converge on the city, the muscle felt as though it might give out.
He grabbed his shield, whispering, "God help us."
Tony hovered over a building, slowly stopping the jets so he could touch down. Before he got the chance, though, he saw the fleet rushing through the portal.
He fell from the sky into an ungainly landing.
Now there were those flying machines he remembered.
The Hulk growled at the creatures flying over the skyscrapers some distance off.
The more of them that came down, the more he could swear that they growled back.
None of them were certain as to how it began; they only knew that they had all held to Elizabeth's instructions: they were not the ones to fire first. But, then, it didn't take the Chitauri very long to start things on their own.
They had initially tried to be talkative on the comms just to let each other know that they were still alive, but, as the fight grew fiercer, they one by one fell silent. Now, as Tony listened to the resounding nothing in his ear, he was forced to believe with all his might that the rest of his team was still swinging.
As he shot a Chitauri out of the air, he scoffed derisively. No one could ever call him faithless again; his faith that his friends still lived was all that kept him going.
That, and the fact that these alien bastards needed to die.
He took out the engine of a Chitauri skiff, sending its two occupants plummeting to the ground. There, they would be at the mercy of the other Avengers.
A quick survey of his immediate vicinity told him that he would have to be judicious about how many soldiers he felled; if he put all of them down at once, his team would be completely overrun.
But if he let them all stay in the sky, the city itself would be overrun. And it wasn't likely that he would be able to dodge their bullets forever. Something had to give.
He fired at two more Chitauri skiffs, this time aiming for the pilots. He wasn't about to give them the satisfaction of beating him out of the sky.
He rocketed upward, getting to the back of one of the skiffs. It was a hunch, but his hunches had a pretty good track record.
Hovering behind the chariot-like machine, he shot the two Chitauri driving it – his energy pulses searing a matching pair of holes right through the middle of their backs. Rather than falling out of the vehicle, they crumpled to the floorboard.
Excellent, he thought. A self-contained massacre.
But there was a flaw in his plan.
Now, the skiff started weaving, dropping out of the sky with nobody to pilot it.
Great.
He made a beeline for the capsizing vessel, getting beneath it and pushing upward. "Hey, anybody need a ride?" he asked.
"We would be grateful for it," Elizabeth replied.
"Location?"
"Right where you left us."
Tony grinned in spite of the current situation. "What good little soldiers you are."
"We can't help it; we're blocked in."
"Alright then," he said, scanning the area beneath him, looking for her. She would be with Thor and Sif, and they would be surrounded with Chitauri. "Okay, I've got eyes on you. Coming in."
"I see you too. Come when you're clear."
Tony scoffed. "Forget clear. Do you want this pod-thing or not?"
"Yes."
"Great. Meet me halfway."
"On it."
He watched from afar as her small, dark form rushed forward, knifing a Chitauri in the process and using its body as a springboard. She leapt from its head to the top of an abandoned car, placing her knife between her teeth and grabbing hold of the "walk/don't walk" sign. She pulled herself up and stuck her knife into her belt.
"Okay," she said, "bring it right under me."
"You got it." And then, a thought occurred to Tony. "Do you know how to fly these things?"
"Well enough."
For once, he didn't bother to ask where she had acquired this knowledge. "Good."
He flew the thing directly beneath her, and, when he felt her weight drop into the cab of the skiff, he let go. "Thanks very much," she said, glancing over her shoulder at him and giving a little nod.
"Just go and do what you do, Killer."
Elizabeth quickly kicked the two corpses off the back of the skiff and then swung it around, heading straight back to Thor and Sif. As she passed over the Shieldmaiden, she reached an arm down, and Sif grabbed it, swinging herself into the cab.
"What is this?" Sif asked, eyeing the craft around her.
"The Chitauri have them," Elizabeth replied, pointing toward the sky. "Up above. Stark is shooting them down." Elizabeth pointed to the joystick-like fixture under her palm. "See this? Push forward to fly higher, pull back to go lower. Right and left to turn accordingly. This one –" she indicated a lever poking out of the dash "—controls speed. Up to go faster, down to go slower. Being that it's such a small vessel, it shifts quite a bit with body weight alone, but, should you require more definite control –"
"Should I require more control?" Sif scowled at Elizabeth. "Where will you be?"
"I am of more use on the ground with Thor," Elizabeth returned.
"Well, here, take my glaive –"
"No," Elizabeth interrupted. "Trust me; you'll need it. Go help Stark. I want to see Chitauri corpses raining down upon us. Can I count on you to deliver?"
For a tense moment, Sif didn't respond, only staring bewilderedly at Elizabeth. Then, she blinked the clouds from her eyes and nodded.
"Swear to me on your office as Warrior of the Realm Eternal that you will not let any Chitauri pass alive should it be within your power to kill it."
Again, Sif nodded, a bit of the legendary warrior returning to her face. "I swear."
"Good," Elizabeth said, climbing up onto the bow of the vehicle and dropping to one knee. "Go and make your princes proud."
With that, she leaned back, tucking both of her legs into a controlled fall.
Steve's shield bowled over a horde of Chitauri before returning neatly to his hand. He turned and used its edge to uppercut the nearest soldier, breaking its neck with a crack.
"Nice one," Clint told him, shooting arrows in rapid-fire.
"Thanks," Steve replied. To his right, Natasha had picked up a Chitauri gun and was riddling an oncoming platoon with bullets. Soldiers dropped steadily, but it wasn't enough.
Natasha's left arm oozed blood, but, on the dark canvass of her sleeve, it was hard to tell if it was hers of the Chitauri's. The precise curl had long since fallen out of her red hair, leaving it a tangled mess; strands of it stuck to her damp face, blending in a bit too well with the combination of dust and blood that speckled her skin.
Clint wasn't much better off. Something had torn partway through his bulletproof vest, leaving a gash in the Kevlar. His bare arms had taken a hit, both scratched up and one boasting a sizable cut in the triceps region. There was something vaguely resembling blood dripping slowly down his right shin, and Steve hoped it wasn't caused by shrapnel.
His calf still hurt from the earlier injury, but, all things considered, it felt infinitely better than any other part of his body at the moment, so he hardly thought of it.
The Chitauri kept coming; Steve wondered if the entire planet had turned out to help bring earth down.
They had been fighting for hours.
Eight people against an entire race.
It was no secret that his punches just weren't quite as strong as they had been at the outset. They were all tiring – fading fast like stars at dawn. And they weren't even making a dent in the Chitauri army.
But this did not even strike them. They were far too busy fighting for the right to live.
Thor could summon all the lightning and thunder in the world, and it still wouldn't stop the onslaught of Chitauri. And he had tried. He had tried to flatten them all at once, just as he had done to the Frost Giants in Jotunheim so long ago, back when he and Loki had been on the same side.
The last fight he had ever had with Loki at his right hand.
He had never quite gotten used to staring down the battlefield into those cool, clear green eyes.
He swung Mjolnir, using the weight and force to drive the Chitauri back in waves, felling as many at a time as he could.
The power of the storm that swirled within him – echoed in the sky above his head – was too vast to unleash on the densely constructed city. He had attempted it once, trying to let it off in small segments; it had nearly collapsed every building within a half-mile radius.
Not worth it, he told himself. Though he was beginning to question his own judgment.
His brother would know what to do.
He glanced around, looking for Sif and Elizabeth. They had flown off in a Chitauri skiff not moments ago, and he was already hurting from their absence.
Beyond the Chitauri swarm that encroached on him, he saw the women, soaring away. Elizabeth crawled onto the front of the skiff, kneeling. Then, she pushed off, letting herself fall. As she landed on the pavement, taking a hard hit to her shoulder and rolling a couple of times before regaining control enough to stand, Sif guided the craft upward toward where Tony took on the air fleet.
Thor glanced away to crush some oncoming Chitauri, and, when he looked over his shoulder again, Elizabeth was running back to where Thor stood. Her battered body was moving as quickly as it could. An arm was folded protectively around her ribcage, and the way she bent forward slightly made Thor wonder what all had suffered in the fall. Still, she didn't slow or stop; they were all in pain, and Thor got the feeling that she would be the last of them to admit to being hurt.
She yanked a dagger from a corpse's side, weighing it quickly in her hand as she pressed onward. She made a face. The knife was less than ideal, Thor guessed. But its blade was sharp, so she rammed it into the back of the nearest soldier, repeating the gesture on another before the first had even hit the ground.
Thor saw her path unfolding, intentionally giving it more attention as he cleared a way for her. He needed her at his side. Now more than ever.
She finally cut her way through the Chitauri, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. "Thought I'd left you?" she asked, going to work on the adversaries around them, instinctively lining her back up with Thor's.
He almost managed a smile, but the desire to go through with it left him as immediately as it had come. "For only a moment," he replied. He threw Mjolnir, the power behind it knocking an entire line of Chitauri out of the battle in an instant.
Behind him, he could hear Elizabeth's daggers slice through the air, whizzing in every direction. "Reasonable to doubt me, I think."
Thor heaved a shrug that felt far heavier than it should have. "And yet, I still cannot bring myself to do it," he told her.
"You hold onto something that is not there."
"So you've said." Thor was using every battle trick he knew. All of his efforts were concentrated on the Chitauri coming at them like a plague. "But I still believe."
"Why?"
Thor swung Mjolnir into the stomach region of a Chitauri, listening to the sound of bone and metal snapping with the contact. "Because of times like this."
For a long moment, she didn't speak, only knifing Chitauri like it was her sole ambition in the world. And, at the moment, it likely was. Finally, she said, "I'm fighting for my life, Thor."
"And you could have left me to fight for mine."
"No I couldn't," she replied. When he glanced back at her, she had her dagger driven up to the hilt into the heart of a soldier. She offered no more, but inside, Thor smiled a bit.
Sif joined Tony in the air, dodging Chitauri as she went. She felt like a coward for it, but how did Elizabeth honestly expect her to pilot the skiff and use her glaive at the same time? If she let go of the controls, she would surely fall out of the sky.
The first thing she saw of Tony was a blazing blue light shining in his palm, aimed straight for her. She didn't need to know what it was to know that it was dangerous.
"Don't shoot!" she cried, holding up one hand in surrender. "It's only me."
Tony hesitated for only a second before redirecting the energy pulse at a different skiff – one that actually carried Chitauri. "Sif, right?" he asked.
"Yes," she returned, edging closer to him. The skiff moved in an ungainly manner at such a slow speed.
Tony didn't say anything more, only shooting down Chitauri after Chitauri. His armor was scuffed and dented. Within it, he was probably just as badly off.
As she watched him work, she felt utterly useless. Why had Elizabeth sent her up here? Surely she was meant to kill Chitauri, but how? With one hand on the controls and the other on her glaive, she was hardly effective.
A vessel with two Chitauri rose up directly in front of her, perhaps twenty feet off.
Seeing her, they set their skiff on a collision course with hers. Before she understood what she was doing, her glaive was tucked under her left arm, one of the blades sticking over the bow of her vehicle. She threw the skiff into motion, pointing her blade directly at the oncoming craft – even more specifically, the pilot thereof.
With a sky-rending crash, her blade pierced the pilot, knocking him backward into the co-pilot and, when she pulled away, they both plummeted out of the vehicle. She watched them grow smaller and smaller until they collided with the concrete, shattering.
Sif looked at her glaive, still wedged securely under her arm. Perhaps Elizabeth was cleverer than she had initially thought.
High above the city, Tony could see everything.
He surveyed his team every chance he got, though he knew what he'd see every time.
He'd see his friends, tired and weak, streaked with blood and dust, fighting with everything in them – despite the injuries that would have stopped anybody of a fainter will. The sight of it broke his heart.
In the air with him, the Asgardian called Sif jousted with the Chitauri, risking her place in the sky of a planet that wasn't even her own in an effort to bring them down. Tony admired her spirit, but it killed him to see her trying so hard when they both knew how futile it was.
They were all going to die.
As he shot at the Chitauri closing in on him, he thought of Pepper. She was back at the tower. Even if she looked out the window, she probably wouldn't be able to see any of what was happening. All she knew was that her family had run headlong to the frontlines for the sake of people like her. All she could do was wait until they came home again.
Tony's gut wrenched at the thought of being in her position.
"Sir, power level at fifteen per cent."
JARVIS had been chirping messages like that at him for so long now. First fifty per cent, then forty, then thirty-five . . . slowly dropping and tolling in his ears like the voice of death itself. He looked around himself at the sheer numbers of Chitauri.
Hundreds. Possibly thousands, if he included those on the ground.
Power level at fifteen per cent. And falling.
Tony closed his eyes for half a second, listening to the wailing and gnashing of teeth that surrounded him.
Unless something unprecedented and earth-shattering happened very, very soon, this was the end. For all of them.
A/N: Actually, I've decided to go ahead and double-feature this chapter with the next one, so, despite what I said in the note at the beginning, there will be a new chapter within the hour! Yay! Chitauri Battle: Part III! Bring it on!