So it goes with saying that only things I own with any connection to MARVEL I bought on Ebay or Etsy. MARVEL COMICS & MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE are their own creatures and I have nothing to do with either of them aside from the fact I enjoy reading or watching them, and am grateful for the ability to play in their world. I claim nothing, and I receive nothing for this, expect the pleasure of putting something out into the world.
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Don't forget to check out the Photobucket album listed on my profile page too. (My apologies. I didn't realize FF removed the links. I have corrected the problem in what way I can, so for those who like the visual additions, feel free to check them out.)
DAY FIVE
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIX
SATURDAY, MAY 5TH 2012
1020 HOURS
ST LUKE'S AFRICAN EPISCOPAL
1854 AMSTERDAM AVE
CLINT
"So we're going to a church?" He sounds incredulous, like he is waiting for me to say I'm kidding, which I get because he doesn't know the history of the building.
"St. Luke's African Methodist Episcopal, used to be the 32nd precinct." My logic makes more sense to him now, and quells some of hesitation about conducting a warrantless search of a church. They may not use it for housing police officers and prisoners anymore, but that doesn't mean the building isn't still designed for that, and odds are there are still cells that were left in, and just repurposed into storage.
"And your people used it as a base? The confusion returns a little when I shake my head. "No, but if I was going to guard a kidnapped woman, it's definitely in a place that might have prison cells in the basement."
"And a semi crash with automatic weapons happened on this street." Having a cop with me already proved to my advantage, because it got me that information. I wouldn't have heard about that if I didn't have the officer with me, and think to ask if he could check into any strange reports prior to the attack. Apparently someone took out a semi with an anti tank weapon, and left quite a few dead in tactical gear, with way too much firepower for NYC. "And a semi crash with automatic weapons happened on this street."
I want to be in that building already, but even I know the sense of patience. If my suspicions are right, and they are in there Her guards will be carrying semi automatics at the very least. If they're outfitted like the men I led on the helicarrier attack, they will probably have grenades too, and bullet proof armor. I take that cop in there without waiting for backup, and I'll get him killed. I'm done getting people killed for the day.
However after he finishes calling for back up, the urge returns because I hear something I really don't want to hear come across the radio. "Get them to repeat that!"
The urgency in my voice makes him shift back in confusion, and furthers my impatience. "Make him repeat that!"
This time his confusion doesn't get in the way of following that order. "Officer Saunders here, say again."
"Calling all available units. Turtle pond in Central Park. We've cornered the alien commander. Do not approach, target has some kind of biological weapon. She's taken a hostage. Snipers requested."
"I thought it was a him, I thought you sent him back!" God dammit! I can't press the keys fast enough!
"WE DID! TELL THEM TO STOP!" Come on nat, PICK UP!
SATURDAY, MAY 5TH 2012
1021 HOURS
TURTLE POND, CENTRAL PARK
79TH ST
AR(NORA)
I can feel the water seeping over the edge of my boots and squish between my toes as I continue to back further into the pond, and away from the wall of guns aimed in our direction.
I found one of the alien's staffs along the path, absent of an alien owner that I could see, and I used it as cane.
I felt weak, and lightheaded. My vision was blurring at the edges, as if I was severely dehydrated. That wasn't even accounting for the dull burning ache still sitting on my chest, or the way it spiked every time I stumbled because of the splints sticking past my heel. I fell into a thorn bush too at one one point, opening up new cuts as my hands made the mistake of trying to grab something.
I hated that, but I suppose I also owe that bush something because that's when I realized I wasn't alone.
I'm not Loki, but that doesn't mean I'm not skilled. I served in his hall. I was his personal attendant, he disregarded my gender and said that 'it was a tradition for a prince to have males as servants, not a law' and I was his assistance when we created his beasts. I am no mistress of illusions, but in my service to him I learned how to create projections. They were necessary in our research, and even as out of practice as I am, they proved useful still.
I feigned ignorance about noticing them as I struggled back to my feet awkwardly, and then I cast a shadow behind the farthest one. It panicked him, as it has done many other men braver than he in the past. If I didn't know what it was, having an amorphous mass of black smoke rise up behind me would terrify me as well.
But I do know what it was, and I also know that when you swing a spear the momentum does more damage the the sharpness of the tip, and I wasn't even using that end. I hit one of them in the head, knocking him out, and making the other one lift his gun.
He hesitated though. He should have just shot me, instead he didn't squeeze the trigger because I was a woman and I was bleeding. Idiot. When the shadow lunged at him his instincts made him panic, so did the roots that shifted under his feet. I was missing a boot after all, there was nothing between my foot and the earth. The end of the spear made quick work of his consciousness.
I left him there, after I handcuffed him to a tree. I could of killed them, both of them. The pain I was in certainly wanted me to. It actually itched trying to keep my magick from sinking into their skin and stealing their lives. I was tired of killing people though.
That didn't stop me from dragging the smaller one away after I stripped him of his weapons.
This was a cop, and they saw me before I saw them. I have no doubts they reported that knowledge. I also have no doubts it's not the only knowledge they have.
The sun is in the wrong position. The last time I saw Duncan alive the sun was farther along its path then it is now, that means it's set and rose again since then. I was unconscious for almost a day, and things have happened. I need to know what happened, and I need him alive and alone to ask those questions.
I didn't succeed in the alone part. I made it down the hill past a statue of a king on a horse, and to the edge of a rocky outcropping by the pond. My goal was to get him in the water. I didn't plan to actually drown him, but I did plan to let the fear work for me. Then I head to change my plans because he was regaining consciousness, and there were bodies with guns coming down the hill.
SATURDAY, MAY 5TH 2012
1023 HOURS
TURTLE POND CENTRAL PARK
79TH ST
STEVE
I'd barely met up with Natasha and parked my bike before she pulled out her phone. The way her breath caught and her eyes widened was the only clue I needed that something was wrong, and when she started running through the park I wasted no time chasing after her. A chase that ended with at least a dozen pistols aimed at us and an awful lot of yelling.
"PLEASE, I GOT TWO DAUGHTERS, MEGAN AND SARA..."
"SHUT UP! WHERE IS HE?"
"PLEASE! I DON'T KNOW! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!"
"PUT THE WEAPON DOWN AND LET GO OF THE OFFICER, THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!"
The sight of Natasha and I running up on the back of the police barricade created a pause in the yelling, before it renewed with different direction.
"WHOA, HANDS UP!"
"FEDERAL AGENT! DON'T SHOOT, SHE'S ONE OF OURS, DON'T SHOT!"
And the tension didn't get any thinner when even more S.H.I.E.L.D Agents arrived on the scene, meeting guns with guns as they came to the defense of Agent Romanoff.
"EVERYONE STAND DOWN!"
"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? YOU STAND DOWN FIRST!"
But I had no guns, and my attention wasn't on the stand off between shield and the NYPD, it was past the wall of bodies, toward the two in the pond, and the set of green eyes fixed on mine.
She looks... I don't know what she looks like, other then different.
She's dressed in green and black, leather and metal. She's dressed like him! The collar is stiff and high, reaching half way up her neck, and the ridge of it is decorated in a line of square rivets that look like tarnished gold. There is a clasp of the same metal that rest over the center of her collarbone before the leather angles out to a gold medallion on the right side of her chest, I can't see the left because of the man she's holding but I imagine it's mirrored on that side too.
Her top is formed leather, that is cut like a wide sloping Y with two thin strps of green fabric, then it turns into alternating angled strips of more leather before it reaches her waist. I can see the sides are green and gold stripes though, that wrap around her ribs to her back.
She has a leather belt too, of the same black, decorated by gold medallions, at least three, and the shapes alternating between squares and rectangles. Then there's the skirt. Black leather with an asymmetrical flap of green, and another panel of leather set evenly in it, decorated with some sort of square mail.
It's a dress, Nora is standing there, looking at me as she's restraining a man and wearing a dress?! Nora's terrified of showing that much skin, but the expression in her eyes, it's not terror, it's, more like the inability to settle on a feeling and I know it has nothing to do with the fact she is in a skirt. "You're here?!" but it seems to have a lot to do with me.
SATURDAY, MAY 5TH 2012
1024 HOURS
TURTLE POND, CENTRAL PARK
79TH ST
NATASHA
We were about to start our searching our section, when I got Clint's message.
THEY THINK SHE'S LOKI, TURTLE POND, CENTRAL PARK.
It didn't make sense, but I didn't question it either. All I knew and cared was it meant we knew where Nora was, and we needed to get there fast.
I get why they think she is Loki know. A bunch of fuzzy youtube videos recorded with cell phones didn't exactly give the greatest pictures of his face when he put on that show in Germany, but the clothes she is wearing now are close enough it would be hard not to make the connection. The fact that she is holding a cop prisoner doesn't exactly help either.
They think she is Loki, the alien that tried to destroy their city, and most likely killed at least a dozen of their friends and family members. Reason is pretty much out the window, and even those who might have doubts about whether she is Loki or not, are probably still planning on shooting her just because of the obvious association.
Except Steve, Captain America, is in the line of fire, with his hands raised as he inches closer to the edge of the rock ledge. "Yes, Nora, I'm here."
SATURDAY, MAY 5TH 2012
1025 HOURS
TURTLE POND, CENTRAL PARK
79TH ST
STEVE
The scenes calmed a bit. The guns are still lifted and aimed, but both sides have taken notice of what's going on.
I'm not a hostage negotiator, but that's about what I'm doing now. Even before I donned the red white and blue costume, I had a way with words. I could bring out the better sides of people just by talking, and that's what I plan to do now. She was with Loki for four days, and I'm sure whatever he put in her head is making her do this, all I need to do is remind her who she really is.
But she is wary, and beneath the expression that looks like anger, I can detect the fear. It's not just in her. As she tightens her grip around the officer's throat and drags him back he all but whimpers out a short plea before she hisses at him to shut up.
"Officer, you're going to be alright, just calm down." He's young, somewhere between 20 and 25 if I had to guess, and I can tell that he is still green from the academy. But his response makes his nervousness all the more understandable.
"Please, don't let her kill me, I can barely move. Why can't I move?!" That explains why Nora is overpowering him. A police officer should have been able to break free of that hold easily, even an untrained civilian should have been able to manage it. Then there was also the fact that I knew Nora shouldn't be strong enough to physically restrain someone against their will. But if he's stuck in some sort of paralysis it makes much more sense.
"I don't know, but you need to trust me, I won't let her hurt you." My best guess is that she is drugged with something. But I don't dwell on that the possibility, because I'm more concerned with the certainties.
"You make no decisions for me!" Such is the look of rage that settles into her face. I've never seen her look so mad, so foreign in the face of my friend.
"No, you're right..." I offer, holding up my hands in a gesture of apology and surrender. " ...I don't, but I know you don't want to be a killer."
SATURDAY, MAY 5TH 2012
1026 HOURS
TURTLE POND, CENTRAL PARK
79TH ST
CLINT
"I AM A KILLER!" That's what I ran in on. Nora is in the pond with a hostage held at spear point and the Captain, surrounded by cops and guns, and if it wasn't for Natasha intercepting me, my own would have been out too.
She saw me arrive, I know she did from the way her eyes meet mine. She has tears in them as she looks at Nat rest her hands against my shoulders in caution. She answers the soft sound of her name on my voice with a morbid declaration. "I live on the death of others, of him."
No, not don't say that! She's still held under the barrel of a dozen pistols, and that sounds too much like a threat against the one she has in a headlock. I'm not the only one who thinks that. Steve's words all but mirror my thoughts.
"Nora, hey, no" He stops and gestures over his shoulder at the officers "Stand down." Before he acts on faith and gives them his back again to focus on her. "Don't say that, please. Just talk to me okay?"
SATURDAY, MAY 5TH 2012
1027 HOURS
TURTLE POND, CENTRAL PARK
79TH ST
OFFICER SAUNDERS
The woman in that water, I know she's loved. I know she's supposed to be sweet and kind. I know she is supposed to be gentle. I know she's been through hell. "I have nothing to say to you! You left me there, you let us die!" and I know she is probably a little bit insane right now. The way she is talking all but confirms it. Stress, mental illness, or some sort of drug, it doesn't matter. She's not thinking rationally.
"Us?" The Captain's eyes turn back toward us, seeking out the red head and the archer with confusion etched in his brow, but they return it with their own. They don't know why she used that word either. "Nora I didn't know Loki took you, I just..."
"I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT HIM! TELL ME WHERE HE IS?!" I don't have time to puzzle over the conflicting messages in those two sentences, because once again her shouting makes me have to re-order the men to hold their fire. The woman's a little crazy, but she is also with the government, and the heroes of our city.
"Nora, he's gone, Loki's gone. Thor took him back to Asgard. It's over, you safe." Then she is also calm.
Actually calm isn't the right word. A better description is slack. Her face, her arms, her whole stance, from her emotions down to her embrace. It just weakens and falls limp, along with the cop she was holding. He stumbles and almost gets a face full of water, the look in his eyes borderline terrified at the idea he might drown.
Its a concern that proves pointless, because his weak muscles seem to regain their strength by the second, and he is soon stumbling up the hill at the best run he can imagine, leaving the woman alone in the pond mud, chuckling. "He's gone. You...you idiot, you let him, leave, with...heh."
"Nora please, put the weapon down. You're safe. Its over" There's nothing visible, not with her face hanging the way it is when the Captain utters that sentence, but it raises my hackles.
"It is never over." She was silent too long, she was still too long. I saw it coming, just as sure as I see the smoke issuing out of my pistol. She lefted that weapon, and pointed it at him. I HAD TO, SHE WAS GOING TO SHOOT CAPTAIN AMERICA. The fist that cracks me cheek is worth it, I deserve it.
SATURDAY, MAY 5TH 2012
1028 HOURS
TURTLE POND, CENTRAL PARK
79TH ST
AR(NORA)
I'm sure I heard the sound, but my ears didn't really process it. Just like it didn't really register when two rounds of force sent me stumbling off my feet, and made me drop the spear, my fingers drifting away from a trigger they never even touched. They always say 'rip through you' when they talk about bullets, but it didn't feel like ripping. It didn't feel like anything. It's better this way. Finally, the pain doesn't hurt any more. Finally...
EPILOGUE
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NOTES FOR THE READERS:
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, and Goodbye. at least for a little while.
Yes, you guessed it. We have reached the end of this Story, but fear not, this is going to be a series after all. I am taking the month off from posting so I can get a stack of the sequel and prequels built up and will resume posting September 2016.
I hope you enjoyed reading this story is much is I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you join me on the next section of Arnora's journey through the MCU.