"Thank you for doing this."

Peter looked back at the police captain and shrugged. There were people scattered everywhere around them. He'd never seen the subway look as busy as it did today, and that was saying something. Men and women dawned their professional uniforms if they were emergency relief workers, and the rest were dressed for battle, their skin covered and faces wrapped in scarves. They were just like him in that moment—they were masked and fighting for a general cause, and it almost made him proud of his city.

He and Johnny met up with a large team of workers at about eight-thirty that morning, and they spent the next few hours moving boxes of canisters into the subway system. He wasn't sure how Captain Plymyth decided who got a canister and who didn't, but that wasn't really his issue to deal with either. He also knew that some groups would be getting their gas cans from Ben and Loki at the surface level. Many had crowbars and bats in hand. The weapons were sent out amongst the underground crowds, and those ready to fight were practically chomping at the bit to get out there. Those who weren't moved farther into the tunnels, leaving a few security personnel to man the entrances and exits.

Johnny left at eleven, leaving Peter to finish up with the captain and his men. He had a place to be, and Peter decided he'd start his work for the day at Grand Central Terminal. According to Captain Plymyth, there was a massive security force outside the station, and they had been trying to breach barriers for weeks now. The aliens wanted in, and today was the day they were going to let them—to a certain extent, anyway. From the security footage, Peter saw a number of armored trucks, clusters of soldiers in black uniforms, and men and women who dressed like head honchos around the building itself, flooding down onto the road. A gas strike was imperative here: it would knock out a good chunk of the militant aliens in the city, while Sue's attack in Central Park would take care of another substantial force.

He was ready for all of this to be over. He was ready to crawl back into Gwen's arms, and go for dinner at Aunt May's house. He was ready to know that they were both okay—or not. His arms felt strong today, his mind clear. He might not have the experience that the Fantastic Four had in the field, but he was ready to prove that Spiderman was just as much of a player as the rest of them.

"Really."

"It's not something I need thanking for, Captain," he said, arms folded as they loitered behind a barricade in Grand Central's expansive terminal. The windows had been blocked up to keep the enemy guessing, but they planned to break them for the first wave of gas attacks. There was a box of homemade grenades nearby, and police officers dispensed them amongst themselves. Peter accepted one from the captain.

"It is." The old man looked him dead in the eye, an impressive feat with the mask on. "I know the police force in this city and you haven't exactly been on the best of terms."

"All of bunch of miscommunication and misunderstandings," he insisted, waving the idea off. "We've always been on the same side."

A crackly voice sounded from the walkie-talkie on the captain's belt. "Moving to the next barricade."

The unit moved collectively to the makeshift wall of desks and lockers and benches in the middle of the main concourse, Peter amongst them. When they stopped, the officers around him started checking their personal weapons over, pocketing grenades and giving the canisters a few experimental squeezes. They all worked, just as Peter suspected they would.

"You're a good kid, Spiderman," the captain said, approaching him one last time to shake his hand. "We won't forget it."

"Good." He chuckled, scratching at the back of his head, slightly awkward at the display of open affection from a man who was a stranger a week ago. "It'll be nice not to get shot at when I'm swinging down Park Avenue."

"I'll see that it becomes city law…" Captain Plymyth clapped him on the shoulder, and Peter smiled.

"Oh, before I forget…" He looked at the mammoth clock hanging nearby—two minutes to go. "Make sure there's a large medical evac team heading to Central Park. There's going to be a lot of people in need of it."

"We've got it covered, but I'll confirm it," Plymyth muttered. He stepped aside, and Peter bounced on the balls of his feet. His adrenaline picked back up, and he watched the clock, swinging his arms and jumping to move the energy around his body. Almost time. Almost time to go.

Noon struck without a sound outside. Inside the terminal, however, Peter leapt over the barricade and used his webbing to wrench the wooden boards away from the windows across the main entrance. With each window that opened up, a single shot was fired to shatter it, and a police officer was there moments later to hurl a smoking bomb into the security forces awaiting them outside. He chose to go through the main doors, out onto the small steps and sidewalk that separated the terminal from the street level. Aliens were already on the ground, but he spotted those he considered big wigs speeding away in an open-top jeep.

Swinging from lamp posts and signs and balconies, Spiderman pursued the escaping criminals, feeling very much at home in that moment. If he tried really hard, he could pretend this was just a regular day and he was stopping just a regular, petty couple of criminals on Manhattan's streets.

Settled atop a construction crane, Peter latched on to the jeep's bumper, and then tied the sturdy webbing around a nearby building's column. The vehicle lurched forward and stopped, its wheels spinning in place and bumper threatening to break off completely. Aliens scattered on the sidewalks, shrieking and taking cover as chaos erupted behind him back at the station. Gunshots, smoke bombs, screams.

Peter tiptoed along the suspended wire, arms up for balance despite it being perfect already. Once he was close enough, he shook the smoke bomb in his hand and gently chucked it into the jeep, whose occupants hadn't tried to make a run for it yet. They tried once it exploded, engulfing the vehicle in a thick white-green haze. Nodding, he cut the cord around the jeep's bumper and started pulling the gasping aliens out. Once he was finished, he waved over a couple of officers, who happily commandeered the vehicle and sped off into the distance.

The gas spread in the light summer breeze, and Peter used his mask to wipe the sweat off his face. Nearby, frightened civilians got their first whiff of Tony Stark's serum, and Peter watched them drop like flies. This might actually work. Sure, there were aliens outrunning the gas's reach, but there were plenty more bombs to set off across the city, and soon, the blue sky would be blotted out by white-green smoke.

And then it would be over.

There were more people in Central Park than any of them had anticipated.

After dropping Reed off at the UN building at ten, Sue wove her way back to Central Park, running through the streets unseen by those around her. She bypassed security, slipped through barriers, and darted around guards who patrolled the once busy paths in Manhattan's largest green area. The people inside were fenced in, surrounded by rusted chain-link barriers, and there were dozens of them across the park. She couldn't determine how the aliens did the grouping—there was no clear-cut pattern amongst the clusters of people. All she could tell was that there were very few bathrooms, one food tent pumping out mush, and several black large tents that people screamed when they were dragged toward.

Noon couldn't come soon enough.

She situated herself in a location she thought was fairly centralized near the 79th Street Traverse. The three metal cages full of dirty, beaten down humans were her targets, along with several structures that she assumed belonged to the guards. All the windows were open, which was a bonus, along with the doors, and for a good ten minutes or so, Sue debated actually placing a few smoke bombs in the rooms themselves. However, she decided against it, preferring to save the few hand grenades she had for later. Instead, she carefully removed the massive bomb that Reed had designed specifically for Central Park. It would emit a steady stream of gas once detonated, and he had estimated it would cover the entire park if left untouched.

Once she was set up, Sue crouched over her bomb and waited. She watched the comings and goings of the camps, invisible and impatient. She watched people cry in the cages and guards stroll by, uncaring. When the alarm on her watch went off, she clicked the latch to silence it. Max would be shooting Carl now. Peter would be taking out the sentry by Central Station. Reed would be gassing the UN. Johnny would be taking out aerial patrols.

Sue detonated the smoke bomb, coughing a little when its first spurts hit her right in the face. She stayed invisible for a few minutes, watching the greenish-white gas trickle toward the nearest guards. When it hit, they doubled down, coughing and pulling off their helmets. The makeshift houses started shutting windows, but gas permeated anything in its way. It would slip through cracks and creases, and as Sue made a run for the nearest cage, she could hear aliens gasping and gagging all around her.

The first cage she got to was near a softball triangle, and Sue made herself visible after she shoved the hacking guard out of the way. The few people gathered near the front of the cage gasped at her sudden appearance, but she held a finger to her lips—there was no need to panic or shout.

"My name is Sue Storm," she said as she searched the guard for his keys. She managed to find a whole slew of them latched to his belt so securely that she had to take off the belt itself to get them. "I'm a member of the Fantastic Four, and I'm here to get you out. My friends and I have a serum that kills the aliens, and we're in the process of dousing the city."

Fumbling through the keys, she tried shoving a few in the lock, but none seemed to fit.

"It's this one," a thin woman stated, pointing to a small brass key that Sue would have tried last. "I'm sure of it."

Sue nodded and rammed the key in, and when it clicked securely to open the massive lock, a few people let out giddy cheers. A sharp look quieted them. Voices echoed behind her, and she could only hope it belonged to the crew that Captain Plymyth designated to Central Park. They'd come in behind the Met and fan out from there—she couldn't handle all these people by herself.

"Here, take this," she said, shoving hand grenades into several hands as they passed. "There will be police officers making their way in from the Met. Head there, and you'll be escorted to a safe zone."

"Thank you." A man touched her arm on his way through, gingerly and softly. She nodded, trying to smile, and then turned when she heard shouting behind her. Right on schedule, a small group of men in old police uniforms broke through the treeline, beckoning for the prisoners to join them. It was a relief not to be alone. People always assumed the Fantastic Four managed everything alone, that they didn't need help from anyone.

"Go, go, go," Sue urged, hurrying the group along. The black uniforms were crawling around the grassy field, coughing and wheezing and squirming, and Sue stepped around them to get to the next cage. However, before she could get more than two strides across the field, the cage erupted in a swirl of flame and noise, knocking her off her feet from the force behind the blast.

Body parts flew everywhere. Metal and chain cut across the earth, and Sue shielded herself from the rainstorm of blood that fell from the sky. The second explosion made her ears ring, and she covered her head, face in the grass. A third explosion made her teeth rattle, her hearing temporarily gone, and when the ground stopped shaking, she looked up in horror. They had blown both cages, scattering the bodies and leaving nothing but piles of human pieces across what would normally be a softball field. The security huts were also destroyed. The ground was upturned, trees knocked over. The tops of her hands were bloody, mixed with her own and that of someone else.

Arms trembling, Sue slowly pushed herself to her feet. She heard no other explosions across the park, and she lumbered toward the upturned smoke bomb. Luckily enough, it hadn't been damaged much, just hurled across the field. In fact, it was still forcing out puffs of smoke when she approached, and Sue turned it around so that the gas would disperse properly.

It burned the tips of her fingers, and she sucked on them quickly, eyebrows wrinkled and breath uneven. When she tried to straighten up, she stumbled, and she blinked rapidly in an attempt to regain her balance. Ears ringing and eyes unfocused, she noticed a man running up to her, and she braced herself for an assault. She was almost invisible by the time he reached her, but when she spotted the police uniform, she stopped.

"Are you okay?"

His words didn't make sense. Eyes narrowed, she stared at him, trying to watch the movement of his lips to get a clue what he was saying. When he touched her arm, she seemed to snap out of it, though the ringing in her ears didn't seem to be going away anytime soon. Shaking her head, she gestured back to the carnage behind her.

"They…"

"We have to move on to the rest of the park." She knew what he was saying. She had some vague awareness of how pressing it was to move on and rescue the rest of the prisoners. But she couldn't. She couldn't just turn away, not when there was moaning coming from the heap of strewn body parts.

"We should check for survivors," she croaked, shaking him off and hurrying toward the explosion site. The smell was overwhelming, tickling the back of her throat and making her stomach knot. There were fallen aliens too, but there was no telling whether the gas or the explosion killed them first. A swift look over her shoulder told her that the gas was wafting through the trees surrounding the open space, moving up and out on the light breeze.

Blood. It coated the grass, squished beneath her shoes. She stepped over a foot, a femur, a bicep. Her hearing had cleared up at last, but she knew that any normal person would have been deaf for at least a day in such close proximity to the blast. But, Sue wasn't normal. She'd never be normal again, and she'd always find herself here, stepping through the carnage and the blood until the day she died. There'd be no escape.

Today she'd prove to herself why it was worthwhile. All the people running back to the Met, the ones the police force was moving toward with gas canisters she helped make, would be saved. And so would the body she saw wriggling on the ground amidst dead prisoners. Both of the woman's legs were bloodied, as were her clothes and face. The skin and bone below her knees was wrecked, probably beyond saving, but Sue fell to the ground and crawled toward her anyway.

"It's okay, it's okay," she whispered, touching her gently. The woman started hyperventilating, definitely in shock—she'd die without proper care. She waved her police officer over, and then pressed two fingers to the woman's neck, a pulse firing slowly beneath the tips. "Call for a medic."

"Any units near Central Park, we need immediate medical assistance…."

He said the name of their area a few times, and Sue vaguely heard a crackling response on the other end. She helped him move the woman away from the other bodies, and they used his blue officer's jacket to apply pressure to the wounds.

"They'll be here soon," he said. Her eyes flickered down to his breast pocket, as though she'd find a name tag there—she wanted to know his name. "You should go."

"I'd like to stay." She jostled the woman, who had suddenly gone very quiet, but stopped when the officer placed a hand on hers.

"You can do more for everyone somewhere else." There were more cages—hopefully none were rigged like these ones were. "I've got her."

"But—"

"I'll take care of her."

On her way to the next set of cages she decided to tackle, she passed a trio of men in white EMT uniforms, the letters emblazoned in red across their backs.

Reed had always thought that the UN Headquarters on FDR Drive could have looked better. It was supposed to be the meeting place of international delegates in the city, a place where global issues could be dissected and worked through—it was supposed to be beautiful. He disliked the reflective exterior. He hated the shape. He hated the perfectly even grass in the front. It was so boring and bland and pointless, just like international politics had been these last few years.

That was bound to change once today was over. A lot of things would change when this was over.

Personally, he intended to give Sue and the kids the time they deserved. He knew he had been a hermit these last few weeks—he wasn't as oblivious as he once was. He planned to marry Sue as soon as possible when this was over. She'd be his wife at last, not just someone he cohabitated with. He wasn't sure if she'd take his last name, but that didn't really matter. He'd take Franklin to science museums—when they were up and running—and he'd let Valeria take him wherever she wanted to. Both of them had grown up so quickly during the invasion, and he wanted to see them as kids again.

He hated seeing them as tiny adults, working alongside the rest of the Baxter Building occupants to play their part in the new cycle of life they had started. He hated that. He hated that he let Sue down repeatedly, and he hated that she left him at the UN headquarters that morning without smiling when she told him she loved him. He knew she did—she always had and she always would. She was his other half, but his other half was angry with him, and for once, he knew why. He'd been absent, distant—sometimes a little cold. He'd done it to her, to the kids, to Ben.

It all ended today. He'd start anew tomorrow. If the beautiful, tranquil skyline of captive Manhattan was a sign: there were better horizons on the way.

Or so he'd like to think. He wasn't a romantic, never had been, and he expected too much from people.

Still, they could have made the UN look nicer.

An alarm sounded on his watch. Five minutes to go. He set it to noon now, his bag of gear at his feet as he sat above the main ventilation duct on the roof. In five minutes, he'd gas all the key players he had been watching on computer monitors for weeks. He'd kill them all inside the ugly UN building, and then he'd find Sue and give her the support she deserved.

Five minutes ticked by faster than he would have anticipated, and he actually jumped when his wristwatch shrieked at him for a second time that morning. Afternoon? It was officially afternoon now, wasn't it? Licking his lips, he turned off the alarm and removed the duct covering, which he had unscrewed after Sue disappeared. Then, he retrieved a small but potent smoke bomb from his bag of goodies and placed it in the duct, extending his arm all the way down until it reached a thin metal surface below. He set off the bomb, which made no sound once it started expelling gas.

He then reattached the duct and closed it just enough to let a draft in, but keep the smoke from being sucked out. On his touch-pad, he activated the building's air conditioning system, turning it up to a full blast—it'd suck Stark's serum right out of the air ducts and into the entire building. With that done, he launched Johnny and Max's video, hacking in to local radio and television station. With his coding, he'd be able to keep outsiders—and insiders, really—from breaking the loop he set for the next twelve hours.

He was in the process of placing two beautiful mines in front of the main doors, mines that would be activated when stepped on, when an explosion rattled the entire city. And then another. The third made him drop one of the mines, and it went off, coating the front courtyard in smog. He groaned, retracting his arms as quickly as he could, and then found the source of the explosions: Central Park.

"Sue…" Her name tumbled from his lips, a soft cry amidst the calamity that was starting around him. There were voices down below, screams that weren't human. Reed couldn't give them any attention.

But he had to. He had to trust that Sue could handle herself. That was what being on a team was all about—trust. Hell, that was what marriage was supposed to be about, and if he couldn't trust and hope that she got herself out of the way, how was he supposed to take her down the aisle?

The second mine detonated in the courtyard, and that snapped Reed back to reality. He turned his eyes away from the black smoke pluming out of the park, and then dropped down from the top of the UN building. He raced by those ugly reflective windows, expanding his body to be a parachute, and landed somewhat ungracefully in the midst of scattering, coughing aliens. He reached into his sac and pulled out a balloon filled with serum, and took aim.

He got the idea earlier that morning, and with some of the remaining liquid serum, he filled up a few water balloons, thinking back to Johnny and Loki and Max's fight with the kids last month—the one that took hours to clean up after, but had left his kids grinning from ear to ear.

He turned and faced the door, and squished a balloon into a woman's face. She shrieked and fell to her knees, crawling away from him in her pricey suit and her kitten heels. Reed nodded, pleased.

Bruce arrived a little late to the party, but it was better than not arriving at all. By the time he was jogging out of Stark Tower, the streets were crawling with people—people he'd seen in the city's underbelly, people coming out of other seemingly vacant towers, people who only looked like people. Tony's serum pervaded the air. The street had a dank smell to it now, one that stuck to the back of his throat the moment he stepped outside.

It was effective, at least. People who looked like people, but weren't, were dropping all around him, crawling for doorways and chugging back on their water bottles or smoothies like that would make a difference.

Thus far, he'd been sprayed in the face twice now by subway marauders. Each time the Hulk stirred, and each time Bruce kept him at bay. They'd wait for a response, hoping that they had spritzed another one of the creatures. But, when Bruce merely coughed and shrugged it off, no words were necessary. The hordes raced on, leaving him behind with what felt like a bottle of spray paint in hand. It wasn't long before he heard gunfire, and he wasn't surprised by it either. He assumed the leaders of the revolt hoped for a peaceful uprising, but if the trio of explosions that rattled the pavement said anything to him, it was that the aliens weren't going down easily.

Natasha had been merciless in the east. Thor spilled black blood across Europe. Barton… Well, no one really knew the specifics of what was happening in his region, but there was no alien chatter recorded about taking Africa or the Middle East, so he must have been doing something right. With all that said, there was no way the Cap could have expected things to go off here without a hitch, especially when all these people had been stuck in hiding for almost two months.

People were relentless when they were given the chance to be cruel. Bruce saw all their inner beasts today just as plainly as they could see his. He watched gang trample a man to nothing, its black blood sloshing into the gutters. He'd seen emergency medical workers step on fallen hands and faces in their mad dash to help a woman with a gashed elbow, preferring the red to the black. Aliens were run over by commandeered cars. Spiderman swung by and blasted a door shut, giving a mob an opportunity to pummel a scrambling alien to death.

But this was the order of things. This was their planet, and they'd defend it to its last breath—now that aliens weren't a product of bad science fiction, that is. Bruce wondered, as he headed toward the blast sites, what would happen when the general population got sick of super-humans.

The smoke curled up into the sky, mixing with Tony's serum to give a surreal, stormy effect. Otherwise, the weather was quite pleasant, a sharp contrast to what was happening on the ground. While the otherworldly display of evaporated matter whirled upward at the north end of the park, all the commotion seemed to be coming further south, and that was where he went. Bruce pushed through bushes and around trees. He sloshed through small ponds to avoid black uniforms, and then popped out of nowhere (usually from behind a tree, the clever man he was) to spray them down.

It wasn't until he reached an open field, beyond the Beethoven statue he liked to sit near with a book on fall mornings, that he saw the sheer number of people who needed to be evacuated. Cages were plied open, and he saw police officers and medics in white racing around to herd the crowds. In the center of it, he saw a woman in blue, her hair blond and her expression calm—face and hands covered in blood. He saw the number on her uniform, and he saw the way she used her power to throw a black uniform down from the tree it hid in. It was pounced on the moment it touched the grass.

People were hurt. Some had been trampled recently—he could see it in their bruises—and others had wounds that looked old and infected. Bruce made a beeline for Sue Storm, sidestepping and jostling around people. Some needed to be carried by two emergency workers.

"Sue Storm?"

She turned sharply, nearly running straight into him, and he held up his hands, palms forward.

"Yes?"

"My name is Bruce Banner…" They both stepped out of the way as a pair of white-clad hospital workers hurried by with a teen on a stretcher. Sue shouted for them to go the other way, insisting that they had set up a triage center in a building nearby. He wasn't sure where they acquired the medical supplies, but apparently the Fantastic Four and Loki weren't the only ones sneaking around the city these days. "I'm a doctor."

"That's great," she breathed, dragging her matted blonde hair back and somehow managing to get it to stay behind her head. "We could use doctors."

"Yeah, I figured as much." Something grabbed his foot, and Bruce flinched back. Black uniform, twitcher. He stepped out of its reach. "But the thing is—"

Gunfire cut him off, followed by screams. He whipped back just in time for Sue to shove him out of the way. She erected an impressive force field to block out the oncoming invaders, but Bruce shared her horror when he realized what they were wearing: gas masks. How many of them had those now? How many had died before they realized what was seeping into the lungs of their fallen?

"I think you should help them," she said over the clamor. He looked in the direction she nodded, and he spotted a few emergency workers down, shot and bleeding. Others raced to their sides behind Sue's protection, and he made a choice in that moment.

"I am a doctor." He sighed, shaking his head. "But I'm also part of the Avengers… I've been called the Hulk by Nick Fury and the press…"

She looked at him slowly, hands trembling as intense gunfire pummeled her protective barrier.

"Who do you need more right now?" he asked. "Doctor or Hulk?"

The answer was in her eyes—she didn't need to say it. Nodding, Bruce tore across the grassy pitch, clothes shredding and skin expanding, and Sue dropped her force field just long enough for him to barrel into the squad of masked soldiers.

Not him. Not Bruce. Hulk. Hulk barrel in. Hulk destroy.

It wasn't normal to watch the man you loved fling himself off the edge of a building. It wasn't normal to watch him land either, perfectly unharmed, with the ground shattering around him, but that's what Max did. Her breath caught in her throat for his quick descent, and she let it out through her nostrils once he was down there safe and sound—relatively speaking, anyway. He told her to go back inside. Those were his parting words, and she knew she should have listened to him. Helicopter blades chopped through the air somewhere nearby again, and she was sure she'd be a pretty visible target to anyone looking for a shooter, but she couldn't just leave him down there alone.

Well, he wasn't alone necessarily. Max watched him knock a soldier off his feet, a faint light coming from the palms of his hands. It surprised her that he had such an accurate shot—from what she remembered, he sucked at paintball. Still, the bullet struck the alien in the face, and Max took care of the other one racing toward him. She had the bullets to spare now that her job was done, and she didn't see why she couldn't help Loki and Ben out before she locked herself in the tower for the day.

Her bullets struck true each time, just as they did with Carl's driver. She didn't realize she was biting the insides of her cheeks as hard as she was until Ben came flying out of the lobby, slamming into the tank and knocking it on its side. She tried to relax her jaw, but without clenching, it shook. Everything shook. Adrenaline made her knees knock and her hands sweat. It made her teeth chatter and head light.

How could Nolan do this for a living? How did he fight if this was what he felt like? If Max had it her way, she'd never see another battlefield again—even paintball would be out for at least five years. She'd want peace and quiet after this, with limited excitement and lots of alcohol.

Shaking her head, she pressed her eye back to the telescope. Carl was running, a full-tilt sprint down the street, and she rotated the sniper rifle without thinking and opened fire. The first shot sunk deep into the sidewalk, but the second managed to nail him in the leg, just below the knee. Max licked her lips, smiling a little. She took her hands off the gun and massaged them, focusing on her trigger finger. It was sore, stiff, like the rest of her body, but the heat of the moment made her forget about her little aches and pains. Naturally, they'd all come flooding back once she was down with the kids, spending the next few hours doing homework and shooting little looks outside—as if the rest of the day was going to be any less stressful.

A part of her was happy that Loki offered to finish Carl off. What if she had missed? His points had been valid, and as she peered through the telescope again, she wondered how he'd get the job done. Unfortunately, she wasn't left wondering for long. Max watched in horror as Loki dug the end of his spear into the creature's neck, then moved on to cracking his chest open and digging through the insides. She wanted to look away. She wanted to retract her gun and disappear inside, but she couldn't.

It was like a car crash, and she gawked with unbridled fascination—and disgust—as Loki pulled the alien from the human shell, holding the squirming creature in one hand. He stalked back to the convertible, a car that would be beautiful in any other circumstance, and tried to impale the little grey body on the antenna.

She finally reacted when the tip of the small spire broke through skin, piercing the alien's body. Unable to watch a second more, Max stepped back, dragging the rifle with her, and then doubled over, dry heaving under the summer sun.

That was unexpected. Loki had a plan to stick to, and he veered so far off it to brutally murder Carl—and it made Max want to throw up. Not that she didn't already want to puke out her pancakes, but that was a step too far. She didn't want to see the violence, and she was glad that she wasn't down on the ground with him: she liked to think that Loki carried the act through with a grim sense of duty, but a little part of her told her that he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

She wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about that.

The tripod was left on the roof—Max disconnected it from her rifle with trembling fingers, but it wasn't until she was through the door and shutting it behind her that she realized she left it out there. Now that she was in the security of the tower again, in that little hall that connected the two doors, she took a moment to cry. Her knees buckled, and she used her gun to prop herself up, fat tears rolling down and over her cheeks. She took deep, gasping breaths, feeling the colour drain from her face, and then fell back against the cement steps.

She found no comfort here. The hall itself was too warm, like many of the upper levels in the building, and she could feel her shirt clinging to the sweat across her back. Time had no meaning in the hall, and she wasn't sure how long she sat there before she realized that she had another job to do. Swallowing down her nausea, Max stood, using the gun as a crutch until her legs moved properly again.

The rifle didn't need to go with her to watch the kids. She leaned it against the wall in the stairwell, knowing that if she really needed it at some point, it wouldn't be hard to find. Then, Max took a minute or so to decompress completely. She waited until she assumed the red would be out of her eyes, and she took some calming breaths, pushing and pulling on her cheeks to get some of the colour back into them. Franklin and Valeria were smart kids, and they were bound to have questions when they saw her. She knew Sue had gone over the basics of what would be happening today, but Max prepared herself for extra questions that would probably pop up.

Their floor was quiet when she pushed the door open, blowing down the front of her shirt in an effort to cool off. Naturally, the kids had perfect AC on their floor, and she took her time wandering between their bedrooms, bathrooms, and spare rooms.

Nothing.

"Franklin? Valeria?"

Peter's cuffs were starting to cut into her skin, and she loosened them a little as she repeated her quick scan of the floor. This time she checked closets and under beds, and still there was nothing.

"Guys? Everything's okay… You can come out."

She stood still, straining to listen to the slightest of sounds. Suddenly, the building shook. It wasn't much, but it was enough for her to feel it in her bones. She grabbed the back of Valeria's chair: three rumbles.

"Guys?!"

Thinking they had gone down to get something to munch on, Max jogged out of their suite and into the stairwell, bypassing the rifle's bulkiness for speed. Unfortunately, when she got down to the kitchen, she found they weren't there either. She searched through the cupboards and in the storage room, behind curtains and under the small table by the elevator opening.

Nothing. Shaking her head, she popped down to Johnny's floor, then Ben's, and then back up to Peter's. She called their names as she went, growing progressively more winded with each floor she climbed. By the time she was done looking through the laundry room, she felt a cold chill gripping her shoulders—a cold sweat now. No longer uncomfortably hot, she raced up to her floor, and doubled over when she didn't find them.

Her fitness level was not conducive to running up and down all these stairs. Panting heavily, Max started back down again, stopping at the kids' floor to do another sweep. Maybe, while she was looking on one floor, they were climbing back to theirs, and it was all a horrible misunderstanding.

Or they were playing a prank on her, and it definitely wasn't a very good one.

She didn't have the breath to yell for them anymore. Leaning against the doorway to Franklin's empty room, Max had to take a serious moment to calm down. When she finished, her chest felt less constricted, her head's pounding eased up. Sighing, she went further onto their floor, poking around and calling for them.

It was when she walked by a full-length window at the end of the hall dividing the siblings' areas that her heart actually skipped a beat.

"What?!" She pressed her hands against the glass, her forehead leaving smudge marks. There they were.

Out-fucking-side the tower.

"Are you fucked?" Mailboxes were tipped over. A flipped tank. Black blood coating the sidewalk. And fucking Franklin and Valeria standing in front of something that was definitely alien, but not one in a human suit.

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" She was only half aware of the words coming out of her mouth as she banged on the window. No air—she couldn't breathe. Max watched for a moment as the creature, who had to be pushing eight feet at least, advanced on the kids. A mailbox suddenly knocked it off its feet, and she noticed Franklin had his hands up.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Her legs almost gave out beneath her as she ran back through the hallway, trying to think of when and how and why the kids would be outside. She fumbled over her rifle, and then made it halfway down that set of stairs before she realized there was a faster way to reach them.

Faster and stupider.

She checked the magazine clip as she scrambled back to the window, a string of profanities flying from her mouth. The rest of the day was supposed to be spent indoors. She wasn't a hero, and she never wanted to be one, but she was a decent human being, and she wasn't going to let Franklin and Valeria die outside.

She wasn't a hero, but she wasn't a coward either. Unfortunately for her, she was somewhere in-between—wracked with terror, but not enough to stop her from taking a leap.

"Fuck," she hissed, raising the rifle and firing twice at the window. The glass shattered after the second bullet hit it. The creature was back on its feet by then, tossing the mailbox aside, and she heard Valeria shriek as it ran at them. It was moving too fast, too close to the kids, and she didn't want to risk the shot. So, she didn't hesitate, didn't waste any more time: Max slung the shoulder strap across her body and ran straight out the window.

She screamed as soon as her foot left the ledge.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

OMG YEAAAY TWO UPDATES IN ONE WEEK YEAAAAY! I don't regret breaking these two chapters up. It would have been 13,000+ words in one sitting, and no one wants to do that. This chapter is a bit too long for me too, but I don't make a habit of rewriting my fanfic updates—I just don't have the time, honestly. I know it's bad writing practice not to revise and rewrite, but I just… no. Not with fanfiction. I do edit before I post (as best you can when you edit your own work), and I change dialogue around and section POVs and whatnot to see what works best, but I can't rewrite.

That being said, I'm happy with lots of things here, but unhappy with a number of other things. I dunno. I'm in a weird space about this chapter, and maybe I've just stared at it for too long. I won't say what I think was strong and what was weak, because I don't like to make people look for weakness, but… yeah. Anyway.

There's still so much moar to happen, guys! I always wanted Max to have a heroic moment, and I wanted her to have it without Loki prompting her, or coaching, or being there at all really. It's a chance for her to be brave all on her own, and I like that. Because even if she's brave, she's going to be a hot mess about it.

Okay, I'll throw a little author bias in here… Bruce's scene was my faaav of this chapter. I'd love to see it happen on screen.

RIGHT. I'm off! My next week has some stupidly long shifts at work because high schoolers are on March Break, and we get a new kids movie, and it's going to be madness (Is it? Is it?). So, my goal is to plug away at the next update slowly, as it'll hopefully be somewhat shorter than these first two, and have it done for the end(ish) of next week.

MUCH LOVE TO YOU ALL!