Only ten more chapters left ladies and gentlemen. (Well technically eight chapters, an epilogue, and a timeline of the chronology of each scene, but I digress.)
Chapter 32: The Winter Soldier:
Titan's Refuge – Throne of Thanos:
The cold breeze of the artificial atmosphere of the Titan's Refuge, more commonly known to its former inhabitants as Sanctuary, swirled around the legs of the newest arrivals as asteroids tumbled through space overhead. This was a world that had been a lifeless, sterile shell long before Thanos first carved out his seat of power here. And it would remain that way long after the visitors had returned from whence they came. Once, this crumbling artificial world of asteroids and warrens had been the command center of the infamous Mad Titan, one of the most feared warlords in the known universe, his might and ambition dwarfing even that of Maleficent and Xehanort themselves. Which was why the latter had hired Sephiroth to assassinate the alien madman to eliminate any potential rivals.
A pity he didn't consider Maleficent worthy enough to be a rival, Loki thought bitterly to himself as he marched through the gravel of the Refuge towards Thanos' throne, Malekith and Nebula flanking him as the Nathalis loomed large and imposing behind them. I might not even be in this position if he had. Of course, without Maleficent to offer him an alliance, Malekith may have attacked Asgard. And my family would surely have been slain. But now was not the time to dwell on what might have been. He forced himself to focus on the task at hand as he marched up the steps towards the imposing chair of the being who had once managed to terrify, torture, and brainwash the prince of Asgard into submission.
He needed to figure out a way to avoid handing the hundred or so Chitauri still living in their carved out warrens beneath Sanctuary's rocky surface over to Maleficent. The Chitauri were all that remained of Thanos' empire, and without the Mad Titan and his lieutenants there to command them, they had gone into hibernation, steadily breeding to keep their numbers up as they waited for orders that would never come. And Maleficent wanted to add them to her growing army, in preparation for the day when the inner circle needed to throw the Dark Elves under the metaphorical bus. Coming back here alone was enough to almost give Loki a panic attack. He had no idea how he was going to deal with interacting with the Chitauri on a daily basis.
He reached the top of the stairs and sat on the throne, feeling around for the buttons he knew were there from the last time he kneeled before this floating chair. The button that allowed Thanos' to summon the Chitauri from out of the catacombs they'd burrowed into the asteroids beneath his feet. Nebula stood on the top step looking around nervously at the planetoids scraping and crashing against each other overhead. Clearly she enjoyed being back here as much as Loki did. Malekith stood a few steps down while his Dark Elves stood in formation at the bottom of the stairs. With a calming breath, Loki found the button and pressed it, sending out a signal that only the Chitauri would be able to hear, giving them a primal command to report to their master's throne.
They came out of the caves in droves, the first ones crawling, then a few more came flying out on their nimble hovercraft as the swarm emerged from the tunnels. The Dark Elf army parted down the middle to offer the insectoid warriors a clear path to throne as the Chitauri legion crawled and scrambled along the gravel pathway up the stairs. When they reached the top of the stairs and found Nebula standing beside the throne and Loki sitting in their master's chair, they all stopped as one. Inwardly, Loki was desperately scrambling to figure out what to do or say that would stop these creatures from joining the ranks of the Hellfire Club's growing army. Fortunately, (or unfortunately, depending on how one looked at it) he needn't have worried. The Chitauri were well aware of Loki and Nebula's betrayal, and reacted accordingly.
The prince and the assassin dodged with reflexes that would have made lightning look slow as the Chitauri began opening fire on the duo and the ones on the ground turned their plasma guns on the Dark Elf army assembled below. As the Chitauri opened fire, Malekith gave the order to attack, and the battle began. Well that was easier than I thought it'd be, Loki thought as he ducked to avoid a piece of a Chitauri hover sled that had been sliced in half by one of the Dark Elf space-craft launched when the beasts began targeting the Nathalis. Of course, Malekith was probably trying to destroy them for much the same reason that I was, to keep them out of Maleficent's control. No matter, every once in a while my enemies do my job for me.
Loki dodged a head shot from a Chitauri plasma rifle before taking off the offending warrior's head. Behind him, Nebula had leaped from the top of the stairs and began wading through the swarm, cutting down Chitauri two at a time while Malekith's legion cut off the army's retreat. Loki meanwhile, took up the job of keeping the insectoid warriors from escaping up the stairs. Within an hour, every last Chitauri in the Titan's Refuge had been killed. A few Kursed were sent into the catacombs to root out the handful that hadn't answered the summons, having stayed to look after the nest. With the mission accomplished, Loki sat on the throne that had once belonged to Thanos as he waited for word from Maleficent. He had kept the Chitauri from helping Maleficent, but now, it would seem that Nebula and Malekith might be suspicious of his motives.
Vienna, Italy – HYDRA Compound
"What did you find?" Captain America asked as Sora, Natasha and Pietro returned from scouting the defenses of the HYDRA base. The Avengers had arrived in Vienna an hour ago and had followed S.H.I.E.L.D.'s intel to the enemy's lair hidden in the heart of Vienna. Recognizing that rushing in blind would only allow the terrorist group to scatter and regroup elsewhere once again, Steve had sent out Quicksilver and the Black Widow to sweep the base's perimeter defenses and analyze the security of the place. Sora had gone along, and thanks to the Vanish spell Ven had taught him after the Xehanort War, the three of them had managed to walk through the entire base undetected.
"This base is just a small staging area for local HYDRA operations," Black Widow explained. "Also doubles as a training facility for new recruits. No sign of any Leroy clones or Dark Elves, but that could change at any time. The base is only lightly defended, with only one entrance about thirty-something guards. Communications are easy to jam, but they have a direct line to the Siberia facility. That's where they're still keeping the Winter Soldiers. So if we can listen in on the next call, S.H.I.E.L.D. can trace the coordinates of the Siberian HYDRA facility. Once that's done, we can sneak three of us in there and launch a sneak attack from the inside while Stark, Sam, Wanda, and Banner create a diversion outside and draw their attention off the infiltration team."
Steve nodded his head in agreement before beginning to strategize where each team member would be deployed. The team was split into three groups Two to launch a full-frontal assault on the base, while a third would sneak inside the base and cause havoc from within. As Natasha suggested, Iron Man, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Captain America, and the Hulk would be part of one team, while Black Widow, the original Winter Soldier, Kim, and Ron would be part of the other. Sora, Black Panther, Quicksilver, and Stitch would use the Keyblade Master's invisibility spells to infiltrate the building undetected and sabotage the other defenses and apprehend the HYDRA agents. All they were waiting for now was the signal to go.
Ten minutes later, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Daisy Johnson called to let the Avengers know that the Vienna base had called for help and that S.H.I.E.L.D. had a lock on the coordinates of the Sibera facility, and they were a go for "Operation Overlord." Steve smiled a little at the name. Borrowed from the codename for the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II, it now referred to an international collaborative protocol thrown together by S.H.I.E.L.D. after the destruction of the Triskellion in 2014. It gave the international security network the authority to bypass bucket loads of political and jurisdictional red tape to put together an operation designed to eliminate HYDRA's agents in a single, surgically precise swoop.
So while the Avengers had been fighting the HYDRA bases across Europe, S.H.I.E.L.D. had been busy tracking down every last HYDRA base on the planet. Monitoring the terrorists' movements and gathering up the necessary military forces in preparation for the opportunity to strike once and burn the entire organization to the ground. Sora's arrival and the attack on Nigera finally gave them their chance. While the Avengers charged into battle in Vienna, Italy, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the rest of the world moved in for the kill.
In London, Daisy Johnson led her team of Secret Warriors in an attack on a HYDRA base near Battersea Power Station. Fire, lightning, and liquefied metal flew through the air as Lincoln, Joey, and Shego fought their way through the base with the force of a jackhammer pounding on concrete while Elena "Yo-Yo" Rodriguez flicked across the room incapacitating HYDRA agents in a rapid blur. At a HYDRA base hidden under a bank in Switzerland, Lady Sif cut her way through Dark Elves like a hot knife slicing through butter as bullets and I.C.E.R. pellets flew through the air around her. Back in Vienna, Black Panther moved through HYDRA's troops with the speed, grace, and strength of a predatory jungle cat, his claws downing one agent after another.
In less than two hours, the battle was over. Between S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, and a little help from the Defenders in dealing with the New York base, HYDRA's forces had all been routed. Only the Winter Soldier base in Siberia remained. And that was where the surviving terrorists were all gathering even as everyone was debriefed. While S.H.I.E.L.D. was busy doing post-battle debriefs, the Avengers all boarded their Quinjet and made a beeline for the coordinates they'd been given for the Siberian compound. If they hurried, they had a chance to end this threat once and for all and make sure HYDRA's "heads" never again grew back. Steve just hoped they made it there in time.
Radiant Garden – Spaceport Docking Bay #5:
Rose couldn't help but feel a sense of wonder as she stepped off the gangplank of Captain Amelia's ship, the R.L.S. Legacy, and into the surprisingly efficient chaos of Radiant Garden's spaceport. After the destruction of the Huntsclan, her knowledge of this corner of the universe was at least a decade out of date. Fortunately, Captain Amelia had been to the Daybreak Coalition before and was able to fill in what she knew of the alliance's history. Once the feline spaceship captain had filled out docking and customs paperwork, she lead the former Huntsgirl through the throng of people boarding and disembarking large gelatinous looking spacecraft towards a train station deep in the mountainside caverns.
As they boarded the train, Amelia explained where they were going. Rose had told Amelia, Delbert, and Sarah the story of what had happened to her (leaving out the Legion's connections to her past, of course) once she'd regained consciousness, and they'd immediately offered to help her find her way home. Amelia and Delbert had some friends here in Coalition Space, the cat-like captain explained as the two women sat in the crowded metal tube of the train as it raced through the spiraling tunnels carved into the mountains outside Radiant Garden's walls towards the city's Market District.
And one of them had gone missing. Rose guessed that this was the young man who had landed in her bedroom from the Tesseract portal. Since It would take at least a week for the Legacy to get to Earth at top speed, an agent of Coalition Intelligence had hired Amelia to transport some friends of her and her husband's associate to Earth and bring the man home. Since she and had stopped on Montressor to drop her family off at the Benbow Inn on the way to meet her new passengers and were going to Earth anyway, she invited Rose to come along on her journey. While Earth had been part of the United Galactic Federation for three years now, not many aliens visited Earth. Which, Rose supposed, was a bit of a relief for S.H.I.E.L.D., since they had to monitor Earth's major spaceports on top of dealing with extra-normal threats like HYDRA, rogue Inhumans, etc.
Still, Earth was beginning to make waves in the intergalactic community, gaining itself a reputation as a planet of resilient warriors, particularly after the Chitauri invasion almost a decade ago. Some other federation worlds looked down on Earth because of its status as a low-tech (by intergalactic standards at least) newcomer, but thanks to the political savviness of Earth's representative Lilo Pelekai, most extraterrestrials left Earth alone. Every attempt made by the criminal underbelly of the galaxy was quickly thwarted by S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, or both. Rose pinched the bridge of her nose to focus herself back on her current situation as the train slowed to a stop and the doors began to open.
Captain Amelia grabbed her passenger's hand to avoid getting separated in the crush of bodies pushing their way out the doors of the train car. Once the stampeding herd of departing passengers had thinned out enough to move freely, Amelia and Rose exited the train and climbed up the stairs up to the city Marketplace. Rose took a moment to survey the changes made to great city since her last visit in awe. Directly before the ledge rose the great castle of Hollow Bastion. To the right, the city's famed Fountain Court stretched across the city as the laughter of children playing in the fountains echoed all the way to the marketplace.
Farther to the left, the Boroughs spread across the circumference of the city, peppered by flashes of green indicative of small gardens set up to keep the city more in tune with nature. The city's power stations had been moved underground to allow the Restoration Committee more room to install more housing for returning survivors of the Fall, and the Palace Gardens spread up and down the steps along the high-walled path leading to the Castle Gates. Beyond the city walls, rivers flowed outward into the mountains across what used to be a desolate and dull, rocky blue landscape but now sported rich soil and lush green grass. And far beyond the city walls was the Dark Depths, the cliff that once overlooked Maleficent's ruined lair at Villain's Vale but now served as the entrance to the spaceport's docking bays.
Chuckling at her guest's slack-jawed wonder, Amelia gently convinced Rose to tear her attention away from the breathtaking beauty of Radiant Garden and follower her down to the Marketplace. Amelia had arranged to meet her client at a local restaurant to discuss the terms of her charter over lunch. They only had to wait about fifteen minutes before a red headed young woman about five years younger than Rose herself walked up to the table. She wore a pink hooded jacket with black lining and fox ears attached to the hood over a white tank top. It was difficult to tell from what she was wearing that she was someone important, but the two grey-clad bodyguards flanking her were a dead giveaway.
And now Kairi and Rose finally meet. Next chapter will have the three ladies working out the terms of Kairi chartering Amelia's ship to take her, Riku, Donald, and Goofy to Earth while Sora and the Avengers finally get to the Siberian HYDRA base where the other Winter Soldiers are kept. This chapter title was a reference to the second Captain America film, so naturally given the subject of the chapter, the next chapter will be titled "Civil War." Expect more little shout outs and mythology gags to that movie there too. For those who noticed, Kairi's outfit comes from Tetsuya Nomura's recently released Kingdom Hearts X 3rd anniversary artwork that apparently reveals Riku and Kairi's new outfits for KH3. I didn't mention the color of her pants because the artwork only shows Kairi from the torso up so I'd rather not speculate on what the rest of the outfit looks like.
The "Operation Overlord" bit is another reference to Child of the Storm, where Nick Fury had a similar protocol in place. The same also goes for the HYDRA base in London, only in that fanfic the base was in a pocket dimension attached to Battersea Power Station, rather than simply near it. The Switzerland base is a reference to Red Skull's Alps HQ in Captain America: The First Avenger.
For those who have never seen Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or aren't caught up, the Secret Warriors are a team of Inhumans crated by Daisy "Skye" Johnson to help S.H.I.E.L.D. deal with HYDRA and other threats. It's members on the show included Lincoln, Daisy's love interest and an original character; Yo-Yo Rodriguez, a woman from the comics with super speed, and Joey, another original character with the power to liquefy all metal around him. In this universe, Drakken and Shego joined S.H.I.E.L.D. after the Kim Possible series finale, and Shego and her brothers are all Inhumans in this verse, so she was recruited when Daisy started up the Secret Warriors.
Anyway on to this chapter, I wanted to write the Chitauri out of the story as far as threats go, so I decided to go with Loki killing them all to preserve his cover. But it looks like in the process certain people may be suspicious of whose side he's really on.