A/N: So I think this is the longest I've gone without updating this story; and after a week filled with seizures, bomb scares, hospital visits, power outages and almost setting the house on fire, I'm not surprised. Luckily I've reached the weekend and nothing terrible seems to have happened, so I've finally gotten around to writing this up. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!
As it turns out, the SHIELD agents at the hospital were far more capable than I thought they were; everything was set up and ready to go long before any action occurred; all I could do was sit atop the hospital roof, tug my gloves on and off in anticipation, watching as the city bustled on below me completely unaware of what was about to happen.
The earpiece I had been given on the Helicarrier had been gifted to me again; while now it was tuned in to JARVIS, who would alert me to any urgent 911 calls coming in, it had earlier been tuned in to the SHIELD feed. Mr. Rolf and I had a lovely conversation.
"My company designed SHIELD's Helicarrier, along with many of it's other vehicles and gadgets," he told me, "and should you wish, I would like to offer you a cadetship with me."
I was understandably ecstatic. (I may have cried a little bit.)
"Thank you so much, Mr. Rolf," I sobbed.
"Please, call me Peter," he hushed. "And it is nothing. Just make it out safe, Mevrouwtje."
As if on cue, a bolt of glowing blue something – that could only be the same energy the Tesseract emitted when it activated at the old SHIELD base – shot up high into the sky, turning and broiling and expanding until the deep darkness of space peeked through. For a short moment, I was baffled by the utterly clear view of the stars; of a place so far away it was doubtful any human eye had seen it before today.
And then, they came.
"Molly?"
"Captain?"
"We're flying in now. Get people off the streets and underground; cellars or the subway."
"Acknowledged."
I stood, tugged my gloves up a final time, spotted my target, and displaced.
Alice Carmen liked to think she'd seen a lot of weird things. Being a police officer in New York, you could even say she was used to weird things. But if someone had told her that morning that by 3:30 she'd be fending off an armada of alien invaders from getting near the Baxter Building, she would have told them they were crazy.
And she would have been wrong.
"Stay behind cover!" She shouted, pulling, as gently as she could, a heavily pregnant blonde woman away from the opening in their cover. Pushing the woman away from the pile of overturned cars, Alice warned her to move closer to the building; she didn't wait to see if the woman made it to the steadily growing group of survivors now huddled under the awning, aiming her sidearm at a group of the aliens, for God's sake pushing through debris and firing.
'There's nothing I can do about the one's that are flying, but I'll be damned if I'm letting any if the ground troops get in here,' she thought. She turned fully on her heel,
Two small boys, possibly only 8 or 9, toppled out of the back seat of a nearby Subaru, running over to her and clutching her legs. She knelt, smiled as truthfully as she could, and put guiding hands on their back as she gestured to the Baxter Building doors; dusty and broken, but open, allowing
"I can take them."
Alice shot up, firearm aimed straight at the totally calm face of a young, red headed woman in a blue uniform. The patches on her shoulders resembled flying eagles; the anagram told little more than the organisation she worked for was called S.H.I.E.L.D.
"What the hell? Don't sneak up on me like that, woman!" Alice swore. The woman tried to gaze around the gun, which Alice swung about to train on her face.
"I work for SHIELD; we've been brought in to take care of this, Ironman and Captain America and all of us 'remarkable people'. It's my job to get people to safety, and I'd rather help you than fight you, ma'am." The woman was calm and collected, though seemed eager to move, raising a hand near the gun but not touching it.
Alice nodded, and the woman pushed the gun away.
"Take anyone who isn't injured into the cellar of the Baxter Building; I've got no idea where the people who live in that building are, but I'd assume that building is damn near indestructible, so it's the safest place nearby. Keep an injured people where I can get to them, I'll bring them to the hospital." Alice nodded again, ushering the two small boys by her side over to the woman.
"Do I get to know your name?" Alice asked, taking the time to reload her sidearm. The red headed woman smiled at her.
"Now would be a really good time to have an awesome codename, but sadly I don't." She reached her hand out to shake. "Molly Hunter."
"Thanks, Hunter."
"Hey, this is my job. Thank you."
Hunter reached out, grabbed the boys by their shoulders, blurred like a bad CCTV clip, and vanished.
Well. It wasn't the weirdest thing Alice had seen that day.
It was chaos; I wasn't even out there for longer than 2 minutes and I knew this was something New York had only seen once before. Already I had moved both the boys, a pregnant woman (who was unfortunately forced into labour by the effects of displacement) a man with what looked like a crushed arm, a young girl with a broken foot and an elderly couple who had refused to separate when the wife had hit her head on a piece of flying concrete.
It was taking its toll. Before all that I had only ever displaced twice in succession; wherever I went and back. While I hadn't randomly displaced since arriving in New York (I assumed it had something to do with my constant use of the power) I had been voluntarily displacing almost non-stop, and the feelings of vertigo, nausea and drowsiness were almost overpowering. I had been taking longer and longer breaks in the hospital, curled up on the floor with my eyes crunched shut breathing heavily into the carpet.
"Maybe you should stop," one of the SHIELD agents asked, crouching down and laying a hand on my shoulder. I brushed it off lazily, groaning and pushing myself up, shaking the sleepiness away.
"No, I can do it. If they can do it, so can I." I stepped away from him, closed my eyes and found myself out in the middle of the street – which street, I didn't know – a street that was dusty and destroyed and mostly abandoned, at least where I was standing.
I was standing in a piece of broken concrete. At least, once of my feet was; I could see my ankle disappearing into the stone, blood seeping out onto it's surface, before it seemed to slide down, and then I was falling.
I can't remember hearing myself scream, but I knew it must have happened. Nonetheless, I was out for the count, lying in the street with one foot mysteriously missing, staring up into the sky as it exploded into a ball of fiery orange and red, only to close in on itself, to close itself up into a perfect, untouched blue. Only a tiny speck, falling from the heavens, blotted out the perfectness of my view.
For a moment, everything was blessedly silent. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, pulsing about my body, gushing blood from my foot out onto the road. My breath stuttered, half formed chuckles making their way through. Then, darkness came.
When I next, woke, someone was carrying me. I could feel the jostle, the hard points of armour, the strong arms wrapped about my knees and waist.
"You will be healed, Shield Maiden," a voice rumbled, deep from the chest of the person carrying me, "for you have fought valiantly."
The steady rocking of each thundering, rolling step lolled me into unconsciousness.
A/N: This was a lot longer in my first draft, but I just felt like it needed to be more fractured and vague to fit the situation. I'd love to know what people think. Also, I'd love to hear if any of you spotted the incredibly obvious reference to another Marvel superhero group! I find references amusing.