Most of this chapter takes place concurrently with the final scene of the previous one. There are cues throughout to hopefully keep that straight for everyone, but have a heads up anyway.
Happy Hogan had arrived at Yankee Stadium like a whirlwind. The security team and the NYPD were very wrong if they thought this thing was locked down tight enough. Tony Stark and the CEO of Stark Industries were going to be out in the open, and that wasn't happening without a dozen extra plainclothes officers sitting in the stands, a counter-sniper on the roof, and extra eyes on all the camera feeds. It still didn't seem like enough. It did help that Romanoff would be in the crowd and Colonel Rhodes would be there in the War Machine suit. He also had the repaired and upgraded briefcase suit in case Tony changed his mind.
He spent the last hour before Tony and Pepper showed up reviewing chain of command and radio channels with everyone. The stadium's head of security would be answering to him, and only he would have access to Tony over the comms. To finish up his preparations, he buzzed in with each individual security officer to triple-check that they were in position and their walkies were working. Everything was gonna go perfect.
X
"A couple kids squabbling over seats on the fourth level, but nothing else to report," said the soldier into a walkie talkie.
"Check," said the security head.
The soldier screwed the suppressor onto the muzzle of the rifle and looked over his shoulder at the field. He'd thrown War Machine a salute when he got to the counter-sniper's post on the edge of the awning over the highest section of stands behind home plate, and he hadn't flown his way since.
The stolen second walkie-talkie crackled. "Rooftop, sound off."
"All clear up here," said the soldier, injecting more of a New York accent into it and changing his pitch somewhat.
"Check," said the security head again. The soldier snapped the magazine in place.
So far, the mission was going as planned. He'd gotten in with his fake stadium security uniform and ID, and the SWAT counter-sniper was hanging in a utility closet near the soldier's assigned post on the fourth level without his windbreaker and cap. All there was left to do now was wait for the mark to get up on that stage.
There was something about this place, though. They'd never sent him to a baseball field before, but so much about it still felt familiar. He could see the whole thing from his perch in the shadows behind the floodlights. He knew the English names of all the positions, he knew the rules of the game, he knew the kinds of food they sold at the concessions stands. He could picture himself swinging a wooden bat, and he could feel the vibration in his hands and the thrill in his stomach when the ball cracked off it.
He flexed the metal fingers of his left hand. He existed for the mission, and he never failed. He never thought about his childhood. It wasn't worth thinking about and it wasn't relevant. It definitely hadn't included playing an American sport.
He kept an eye on the War Machine flying in and out of the stadium as he continued to set up his equipment. What he was here to do would only take a fraction of a second, and then he would swap the SWAT disguise for a civilian one and disappear back into the crowd of people as they erupted into panic. But getting to that second would be risky. The War Machine might register that his weapon wasn't one used by SWAT, even if Colonel Rhodes couldn't see it unassisted. The soldier had to keep the VSS mostly hidden until it was time to take the shot.
Finally, the mark arrived on the field, surrounded by reporters and film crew. This would have been easier to do in a less public location, but his mission was very specific. It wasn't just about eliminating the mark; it was about creating chaos in the American public at a critical moment to prevent them from trusting an extraterrestrial power.
The War Machine still had a possible line of sight on his position, so he waited. The mark invited the three Asgardians onto the stage. The soldier hadn't received much information on them, but his instructions were to not engage them at any cost.
Then they started talking, and the soldier lost all concentration. Somehow, the voices booming over the stadium's speaker system were simultaneously speaking Russian and English. Preparations forgotten, he listened, bewildered, wincing at an unpleasant pressure building in his temples.
"You're dressed like you came here from a Renaissance festival, and you're speaking English," said a reporter.
"You're hearing English," said Thor, and again the soldier heard both languages at once. "We're not speaking it."
"Ask anyone here with a different mother tongue," said Loki, "and I think you'll find they aren't hearing the same words you are."
That made no sense. The soldier's mother tongue was Russian. Was he hearing English because he also spoke it? Why not Bulgarian and German too, then? Why only English?
It didn't matter. The Asgardians weren't the mission. He had to ignore them.
X
Rhodey knew Pepper was good for Tony, but damn. If anyone had asked him a month and a half ago whether Tony was the right person to organize First Contact (at least for the public), he'd have sent them in for a psych eval. He would've expected the evening to be a disaster in which Tony kept the spotlight on himself and eventually wrecked half the stadium with some ill-advised display. Instead, Tony was simply using his own clout to give the Asgardians a better starting position to win people over. Not bad.
There were now several junkyard cars (arranged in the shape of a pyramid), a few I-beams, and a couple hundred feet of heavy chains laid out in center field, and that was probably enough toys for Thor, Loki, and Loki's girlfriend to entertain the crowd with. He reduced the output on his repulsors and made a mostly quiet landing on the topmost car. "Need anything else, Tony?" he asked into their open channel once Tony ceded the podium to Thor.
"Maybe stick around in case they want you to race the big guy or something," said Tony, looking around at him.
"You don't wanna do that yourself?"
"Can't sell the concept of friendly aliens if I put a layer of armor between me and them."
"Yeah, yeah. You just don't want to be the one Thor leaves in the dust."
X
One of the most important skills that set a Valkyrie apart from the rest of Asgard's warriors was her battle sense. The Einherjar focused all their seidr into enhancing their strength, but the Valkyrior found better use of it in honing their perception and reflexes. It was harder to master but well worth the effort. Whether on foot or in the air on horseback, a Valkyrie would always be the first on the battlefield to identify incoming threats, locate concealed enemies, and adjust her position to respond.
Brunnhilde hadn't made much use of her battle sense in about a thousand years—not since the only time it hadn't done her or her sisters any good. Most days on Sakaar, she'd been too drunk to use it, though it wasn't like there was much on Sakaar that was a match for a Valkyrie at the top of her game anyway. But she was sober now. While Thor and Loki argued about the wisdom of Loki showing off his Jotun form to the humans, Brunnhilde's attention was caught by an odd sound amid all the noises of the crowd. A sort of hiss, then a thump.
Time stretched out. She turned away from the podium, looking for the source of the noise. In the reddish earth behind the platform, there was a small plume of dust over a little raised mound, like the dirt there had just been disturbed by something striking it at a high speed. From the shape of the mound and the direction the dust was falling, Brunnhilde could picture the object's trajectory in reverse. It had come from the top of the stadium and it had gone right past Stark's head.
X
"черт возьми," the soldier growled under his breath. The pressure in his head was reaching the point of pain. He'd never felt so thrown off, and it had cost him the shot at less than a hundred meters from the target. He was lucky all eyes were on Loki, who had just turned blue. He was using subsonic rounds with a suppressor, so what little noise it made was completely lost in the roar of the crowd, but still he couldn't afford to miss again. Making the most of the moment when the Asgardians weren't bombarding him with that double language effect, he got the mark back in his crosshairs and squeezed the trigger. In the third of a second it took for the bullet to travel from the rifle to its destination, something blurred into its path, blocking the soldier's view of his mark through the scope.
He blinked. It was the clenched fist of the Asgardian woman. She was looking directly at him, and she was pulling something thin and sharp out of a fold in her leather armor with her other hand.
"Вот дерьмо!" He threw himself flat, left arm forward to cover his head. There was a chink and a burst of sparks. He stared at the small dagger buried between the metal plates. Across the stadium, War Machine was quickly drawing level with his position. Time to go.
X
Steve didn't need any additional convincing to believe Thor and Loki weren't from Earth, but watching one of them turn blue made that hit home a little harder.
"Oh, wow!" shouted Ben Parker's nephew, which was on the more positive end of the spectrum of reactions.
"Something's wrong," said Romanoff, grabbing Steve's arm. "Look at Brunnhilde."
Startled, he tore his eyes from whatever ice magic thing Loki was doing just in time to see Brunnhilde's left hand snap up to a spot a couple feet in front of Tony's face and a foot or so higher. Then, at the same moment that a cloud of snowflakes billowed over the stage, making it difficult to see, she made a throwing motion with her other hand. Something silver shot through the air towards the top of the stadium. Steve cricked his neck following the movement, and he could just make out a dark shape dive out of sight under the row of floodlights above their section.
"Come on," he said, leaping to his feet. Romanoff didn't need telling twice. There was enough room between these rows that they didn't have to trample anyone to get out of theirs, and they were sprinting up the aisle before the crowd could fully react to what Loki had done.
"Did you see that, Rhodes?" said Romanoff, one hand on her earpiece.
Steve had forgotten about those. He tapped his left ear and caught most of the colonel's reply: "—jumped off the awning onto the roof. I didn't reach him before he made it back inside, but I'm locked on his heat signature for now. He's on the fourth level, headed to the stairs on the southeast side of the building. White, about six foot, brown hair just past his chin. Dressed like SWAT. Something tore up his left sleeve, and it looks like he's got a metal prosthetic arm under it. He left the rifle on the roof, but I wouldn't count on that being his only weapon."
Steve and Romanoff skidded into the corridor behind the stands, narrowly avoiding a guy with a crate of iced soda pop bottles strapped to his chest. "You head to the southeast stairs," she said. "I'll go this way and try to cut him off."
He heard her voice over the comms device as they separated. "Any accomplices?"
"None that I could find," said Rhodes, "but I'll do another sweep."
"Do we need to call for an evacuation?" said Steve.
"Only if we're sure he's not working alone," said Romanoff. "An evacuation now would just flood the exits with civilians and make it easier for him to slip past us."
X
"From who, Jack Frost?" said Tony. Loki gave him a nonplussed look before rejoining Thor at the podium. The blue skin wasn't half as weird as the red eyes, but the overall effect was basically just a Warhol painting come to life. Which was kinda nifty.
"Oy, Stark," said Brunnhilde. "Are assassins a common problem for you?"
"What?" said Tony.
She tossed something at him, and he caught it without thinking, then immediately hot-potatoed it. After juggling it between his hands a couple times, he realized what it was. It was a little squashed, but it was unmistakably a bullet. His insides went cold. "That thing would've hit you in the head. Figured you should know, since it's your head."
"Wh—did you catch this in your bare hand?" were the only words that made it out of his mouth.
"Yeah. I chucked a dagger at the shooter and he ran off. I don't think he had help."
Tony was suddenly back in that Humvee in Afghanistan when it started taking fire. It felt like he wasn't getting any air even when he tried to breathe faster.
"You alright?" said Brunnhilde, reaching for his arm.
"Tony?" Pepper was there on his other side. "What happened? Is he okay?" She'd been the first thing he saw when he got back to the U.S., and the sight of her now made it easier to remember how to breathe. The flashing lights were just cameras. The noise was just a crowd.
"I'm okay," he lied before Brunnhilde could answer. He kissed Pepper on the cheek and dropped the bullet into his jacket pocket. "We can talk about it when the whole world isn't watching."
Pepper wasn't convinced, but Brunnhilde nodded and turned back to the podium.
"What planet—uh, artificial planetoid—are you from?" a reporter asked. Fifty thousand people and a full press pool watching this stage, and Tony's brush with death seemed to have gone unnoticed by just about all of them. Did that make it better or worse?
"Hey Tony, did Brunnhilde fill you in on what just happened?" said Rhodey in Tony's earpiece.
"Yep," he said. Pepper frowned at him. He shrugged and tried to act nonchalant. "You taking care of it?"
"Rogers and Romanoff are in pursuit. It doesn't look like the shooter had backup but I'm keeping my eyes peeled."
"Good to know."
"You sure you don't want to call it all off?"
"We'll never get another shot this good," said Tony. "The crowd didn't notice, so I say we keep going, but I can suit up if it'd make you feel better."
"It very much would. Please do that."
Tony tapped his earpiece to switch channels. "Happy? Can you bring the briefcase down to the field?"
So when I posted the previous chapter, I legit was worried the press conference was going to be a load of bland fluff. At that point, I had zero ideas for good conflict to throw into it but I knew it needed something. I'm really glad I left off where I did last time so that there was still room to move in this direction. I had a lot of help from both of my brothers. The one who's less of a Marvel fan used to work stadium security at his university, and that's how I learned that counter-sniper dudes are a thing at sporting events, even at the college level. (Which, holy crap.) Both brothers also know way more about guns than I do, so I was very pleased when they signed off on everything here.
I thought I was done researching Yankee Stadium. Hahahahaha nope. The more I do, the less I like the business side of the franchise. It seems incredibly snobby and apathetic towards the game and the locals who've loved the team for generations. So yes, I seated a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and a family of Mets fans in your stupid overpriced Legends Suite for free. I'm not sorry. (I have much stronger feelings about this than make sense, considering I've never been within hundreds of miles of NYC. I'm gonna be the weirdest tourist if I ever go there.)
Compared to Thor and Loki, there's not much Brun can do to show off for the humans, so it was really satisfying giving her the most important thing to do at this whole event: casually preventing Bucky from going 3/3 on Stark assassinations. (Valkyrior have a class feat that gives them super high passive perception, I decided.) This is only the second time I've written Bucky and it's definitely the first time I've written a brainwashed assassin character. I don't think canon ever makes it clear what he thinks his backstory is when he's the Winter Soldier, so I just gave it my best guess. He's conditioned not to think about it too hard but to mostly assume he's Russian, since the point of him is to be a catalyst for increasing tensions between the US and Russia to push things towards Hydra's eventual fascist takeover. Bucky's Russian lines are supposed to be mild/moderate swears of first frustration and then alarm, if my internet research was accurate.