(Matt Murdock)
To Matt, the world was nothing but a series of sounds, flashes of images, and smells so rich that hounds would be jealous of him if they had known. The experience wasn't entirely transferable to the way that normal people viewed the world.
Things like natural color were lost to him, though artificial colors left a mixture of smells and texture that came together with trial and error to reveal themselves to him.
It was those things that made finding people around the Kitchen hard for him, it wasn't like he could spot a person off in the distance. He needed to hear their voice, smell their scents, or literally walk into them in order to find them.
But that didn't mean it was impossible for Matt to find someone, just unlikely.
In fact, his capability to find people meant while it was hard to find someone. It was impossible for him to lose a person.
Running into Octavius while she was shopping in some mall store was such a luck of the draw thing that Matt knew it to be suspicious. So he did the most reasonable thing he could at the moment, he called in back up.
Doyle and he had spent more than a few times over the past few months, exchanging numbers, handing each other burner phones, and talking about the raw danger that this woman presented. Matt wasn't the type of person to hunt such a dangerous person, not usually, but this was in his wheelhouse.
So with backup a phone call away, he was more than willing to keep a metaphorical eye out for Octavius.
But in all the conversations with Pat, with all their talks about the danger of this "Doc Ock's" experiments, what never came up was the idea that Pat could be busy when Matt needed him to help take down the Doctor.
Busy with a Norse God's Scepter? That sounded like it was an innuendo to him, but Matt wasn't the type of Catholic to judge a man for such behavior.
"Call in SHIELD?" Matt was only vaguely aware of the organization from a conversation with the other man, something about them being some secret security organization, a long reach with some high tech toys. And not a group that Matt was interested in interacting with."Well, I've got nothing better to do, better tail her to her current home. Then I'll stand back and keep my distance."
Matt threw his cane into a bin, it wouldn't be collected for another two days so it should be safe there. Then he started a run-up to a fire escape, leaping up and then taking to the roof. It was a good way to keep out of the woman's sight, the rooftops nearby allowed him more than enough space to tail her, and even would give him the vantage point for whenever Octavius crossed streets, where he needed to catch up to her.
And it did all that, let him tail her for a full hour till she entered an alley and disappeared into a wall.
It was only because Matt had been down that alleyway before that he knew something odd was about to happen, the last time he had been here a wall had been at its end. Now, Matt couldn't sense the presence of a solid wall from the echoes in the alley, something that was confirmed to him when the doctor walked through where it had once been. .
His hand reached into his pocket, taking out the burner phone and he dialed.
"Found it."
(Pat Doyle)
"I'll personally lead the team," Morse replied when I explained how an informant, Matt, had managed to find Dr. Octavius's current dwellings."I've studied the way her tech operates in regards to movement and weaponry. Besides you, I'm the most capable person to bring her in."
"I hope SHIELD plans on getting you more than manpower and a few ballistics in regards to backup?"
While I felt that whatever deranged plans Loki was currently up to needed my attention more than Doc Ock's own mad schemes. I'd have trouble sleeping if anything happens to the agents sent to apprehend her while I was off staring at one of the two loons that were locked up.
"Don't worry," Morse smiled, brushing back a strand of blond hair out of her face. "Our techies managed to find an open wireless exploit in the drones that she uses. So we only need to stay our distance to take her out."
"Still, you might want to get her talking," I waved an arm right, for some reason thinking it would emphasize my point. "Once you got her doing that, she will talk your ear off and even I will be distracted if I'm talking your ear off."
"What, do I make a bad science claim?"
"Tell her… something about how wormholes don't work and it's a moron's field."
Morse sighed, shaking her head downwards before raising it back up so our eyes met.
"I'll come up with something better than that," she told me with a sly grin, before turning around and starting to walk away. "Didn't spend half-a-decade in the academy and not pick up some shit."
I couldn't help the slight drift in my own eyes going downwards as she left, but that only lasted a few seconds… only a second. In that second, I wondered about a few things, one of them was who did Morse remind me of?
Some prolific tv actress?
The other thing that I thought about was her ass… but those thoughts didn't linger for long as I heard a loud coughing noise come out from my side as the elevator doors closed on Morse. I turned my head, seeing Black Widow herself smirking up at me with a raised brow.
"Miss Romanoff, you got a bit of a cold?"
"No, I just from a cough that I get up at this altitude," She responded slyly, before throwing a folder at me. "Some of the things that we've gleaned from the further talks between Loki and Thor. You were right, he just can't stop running his mouth."
Flipping through it fast, my keen eyes picked up several details.
"Right, so the attempted murder was a suicide according to Thor," I read off in a rushed voice, my pitch going high as I speed up. It was good to know that my odd fascination with Thor being a brother murder was wrong. "Going to be difficult to estimate what someone like that is planning, it's not like he values his own life."
"People like Loki are easier to figure out than you think," Widow responded as we walked toward the elevator, heading back down to meet with Fury and Rogers. No doubt, the good Captain is giving that man a piece of his mind. "These Would-Be-World-Conquerers aren't that complicated, they want validation, they want control, they want power but most importantly they want to feel safe."
"And what we've got is a man that tried to commit suicide, came back with mind control powers, and to finish that up wants to rule the world through brute force." I rebutted with a smile as the lift went down. "If he wanted control, he's got that all mighty control stick. Nah, we're looking at a human drone strike."
Black Widow glanced at me with an expression that screamed about being both impressed and amused. The elevator door opened, and we started to walk down, we were heading towards the section of the Helicarrier that held those Tesseract weapons.
This was going to be so cool, I wondered if I would hear a Captain America speech.
"The idea behind drones is that they're not manned, no loss of your forces," She started to explain, even as we began to hear a roar from some man. "even if they're shot down, you don't lose a valued member of your forces."
"You're making the mistake in thinking that Loki is valued at all," My ears picked up a second voice talking, not Fury's but instead it was Thor, talking about how the weapons were like a beacon calling out to the rest of the galaxy that Earth was ready for a level of war that they weren't actually prepared for yet. "That's what makes him so dangerous, any disgust, hell any sympathy we feel for him. It'll cause us to underestimate what he's capable of."
"And what do you think he's capable of?"
"When dealing with someone that's willing to kill themselves, the question should always be how many people does he plan to take with him?"
That caught her up short, making her pause mid-step in the hallway so we could face each other probably.
"You think this is just an elaborate suicide attempt," It was almost a whisper that came out of Widow's mouth, I wasn't sure if she was playing up her response, acting as if this shocked her to get me to underestimate her. "Interesting theory, I've got another."
"What's that?" I asked, knowing that this woman while lacking the little bits of meta-knowledge that I had, she also had more experience in dealing with Loki's ilk that I had. It goes without mentioning that she'd far more training in deducing motive as well.
"He's an egomaniac psychopath wanting a bunch of ants to step on."
(Bobbi Morse)
She had the jet stealth land on the roof across the location they had been fed. Two agents surveyed the area themselves, they weren't going to rely purely on some outside source that they couldn't verify personally.
While she had another two hold virgil with sniper rifles from two different locations, and another agent each were working as spotters and guards. Bobbi herself was going to enter the building through the front door with four agents backing her up.
Typically, these sorts of missions were handled by a larger team. Sadly, several members of SHEILD that would normally be part of this operation were needed elsewhere, dealing with missions and assignments that would've otherwise been handled by those like Coulson, Barton, and Romanoff.
Two out of three of those agents were faster and more capable than the majority of teams that SHIELD had, they could do the work at twice that needed to be done at twice the rate. While Coulson and Romanoff were either handling the Avengers or working as an Avenger currently, Barton was busy being brainwashed.
So all this meant that she needed to make the best of the rest. Just taking anybody with her to this mission mightn't have ended well. So she limited the numbers that were going to work with her.
A team of this size, and filled with people that were used to working with each other, would limit any messy miscommunication issues that could pop up.
They didn't enter the building from the entrance that Doyle had informed them off, deep imaging scans revealed that there was a normal access point to that section of the place. It was a standard low-rent apartment building, so it had four exits on the ground floor alone that they could consider.
But the front door was the safest.
If they were to sneak in, it was possible that Octavius had set traps that she monitored by the other doors. Given the raw traffic that goes through the building's front door, it would be incredibly unlikely for the woman to bother to trap it.
Too scatterbrained to bother paying attention to everyone that could possibly come from that floor.
So with the exits being watched, and even places that some wouldn't believe to be exits watched, Morse led her team into the building. EMP pulse rifles were their main weapon for this operation, a weapon designed to scramble computers from a distance on espionage missions but the SHIELD techies had managed to boost the power of the weapons so that they should take down the unshielded drones that Doc Ock liked to use.
Perhaps even those tentacles.
They also had more standard arms to use for less mechanical targets.
The Morse lead team managed to get to the midsection of the apartment when there was a loud rumble, then a pair of doors fell down to the floor. Out of the empty doorways, a pair of Doc's signature Ock Bots came stomping out.
Being the highly trained agents of SHIELD, it only took them a moment to start firing at them.
They dropped like flies being hit by a swatter.
When a keen sense of awareness, the agents continued down the hall, now with increased guard for any new threats that could be set against them. But instead, they faced nothing, there weren't any defenses showing up after that drones to stop their progress.
When they arrived at the door of Doc's apartment, Bobbi set the charges herself.
But the door burst open the second she took a step back, a deadly claw erupting from the wood. It was only the instincts of years of training that let Morse fall back, ducking under the claw and rolling away from the rest of the tentacles that came for her position.
"Open fire!" Bobbi barked orders to the rest of the men, taking her pistol out its holder after being forced to drop the rifle. The EMP blasts did nothing to the cybernetic limbs of the doctor as she stepped out of the apartment.
Revealing in turn that it wouldn't be easy to hit her with standard rounds either as Octavius appeared to be wearing some sort of purple body armor. Not exactly Iron Man grade armor but it appeared to be more advanced than what SHIELD had managed to supply Captain America with currently.
"So… ants are sent after me," Octavius's voice spoke, full of clear glee but distorted by virtue of a helmet. "Do you think so highly of yourselves that you could complete a task that took a god before?"
"Phrenology is the only correct science!" The agent yelled out, causing a rant to erupted from the other woman's mouth automatically.
But Octavius's rant didn't get far, Bobbi's pistol shot out four rounds, expertly hitting the visor of the helmet. It didn't break through, but it did leave a rather sizeable series of marks that blocked the woman's view of the outside world.
"Oh no," Came the rather understated reaction from the woman, even as the other agents dropped their EMP guns and swapped to their own pistols. Something that put Morse on edge, so she reached into her pocket and grabbed a gadget. "Do you know how long it took to create this helmet, this will take hours to fix."
One of the agents was grabbed by a claw, picked out, and thrown into another. While the claw that once more went for Bobbi herself was quickly dodged, after which Morse threw a gadget out into the air.
A burst from some sort of miniature rocket erupted from the back of a small disc, threads exploding out, and capturing two of the tentacles in a tight grip of titanium make. Before the final two could make their way back to defend their master, Bobbi had already drawn her gun to the gap in Octavius's armor, right below her helmet and above her collar bone.
"Don't move," Bobbi warned her. "It only takes a nanosecond to take you out."
Octavius didn't say a word, so Bobbi pressed on her comm unit, opening the channel to the men waiting outside.
"I'm going to need backup," The SHIELD agent growled. "I've got agents down, but I've acquired the target, but I repeat, agents are down."
There wasn't a response.
"I repeat, agents are down," Bobbi held the gun to Octavius's neck harder when the woman started to giggle. "I'm ordering you to abandon your posts and back me up."
Suddenly… Morse fell to the ground as if she was a puppet with her strings dropped. Bobbi didn't even feel the arrow stabbed into her back. Though she could still hear the world around her.
"I'm sorry Bobbi, ain't going to any backup, I've dealt with it," Barton's voice spoke up, his feet clacking against the floor was the only thing that the agent could use to tell that the man was coming closer. "But Octavius is needed for my mission to be completed. Doctor, if you're now willing to join us?"
"Of course, Mr. Barton," Came the sweet, almost sinister voice of the Mad Scientist. "I'm always ready to join a cause in the pursuit of scientific progress."
There was the sound of scaping, then nothing but silence for a few moments before Octavius spoke up once more.
"What about the leftovers?" She asked Barton. "They could constitute a problem."
"Not part of the plan, we leave them be," he countered her. "There's nothing that they can do now. We have everything we need in place."
"Well… still," Octavius started, one of her claws picking up Bobbi's motionless form. "We can at least keep them for hostages, less likely to shoot first and ask questions never if we've got some bodies in front of us."
(Steve Rogers)
There were only two of them in the room, Stark and Rogers. The doctors, Banner and Ross, had escaped the lab to take a break. The two of them had worked on finding the Tesseract for longer than Stark had.
Meanwhile, Doyle and Romanoff were currently discussing Loki's relevant history with Thor. The two thinking that they could create something called a character profile? Roger's wasn't sure what the point of it was, it seemed to be a diversion when they should've focused on the Tesseract.
Not giving the mad man the attention he wanted.
The American War Hero stewed in rage, quietly sitting in the corner of the room. He'd moved away from the Tesseract based weapons when Fury revealed all the dirty details on them. It wasn't the fact that they existed that bothered him, at least in theory. It was the mass production of weapons that seemed unneeded in the world.
It was an escalation of power that other nations, that other organizations would feel the need to meet soon enough. Which could turn into disasters in a number of ways, it could have foreign powers haste the experimentation process, leading to cut corners, to safety measures being removed.
And trying to make weapons that can match Tesseract ones?
Would take a lot of power, mistakes with that sorta thing could end up on a Nuclear level.
It didn't sit right with Rogers, nor did the outright lie told to him about it. It was one thing to keep it from the general public, he'd been part of a similar project in terms of secrecy, but it was another thing to tell the soldier fighting to get the Tesseract back a lie on what they were going to use it for.
A man is willing to give their life to a mission, to a goal.
Steve Rogers thought that they should be told why they were potentially giving their lives away. Fury taught otherwise. It was a chafe, a chink in the way SHIELD operated to Rogers. If you couldn't trust your men with your secrets, you shouldn't trust them with your lives.
"Still sulking Ice Cube?" Stark called from his spot, he was still sorting through the Gamma readings they were receiving from around the world, searching for abnormalities that would reveal the Tesseract's location to them.
Rogers ignored him, there wasn't anything gained from engaging the odd pettiness that Howard's son seemed desperate to lob on to him. It was hard not to be disappointed that this was the man to inherit the Stark Legacy.
At least in terms of personality. Tony Stark was more than smart enough from what Rogers had seen of the man to be worthy.
He was just an asshole.
"Come on," Stark tutted, a noise made from walking over to the Captain with his hands in his pockets. "You didn't really think that they wouldn't get their hands on it and not turn it into weapons? That's basically the bread and butter of SHIELD, secrets, death, and spying."
It was spoken with this gloating tone, the kind of timbre that you'd expect from someone that was shoving their lottery win into the faces of their worst acquaintances.
"I'm not sure what you want from me here?" Rogers finally spoke up. He kept his voice low, he'd done enough yelling to do him two weeks. "I've been up and about for a few weeks. Do you want to be more like Fury or something?"
This finally got rid of Stark's rather sharp grin, replacing it with an expression that was more tense than joyful.
"I don't want anything from you," he replied, his eyes hard with a type of energy that reminded Rogers' of a mirror, and the younger, sickly man that used to stare back at him. "I'm just not sure it was smart to bring you out of retirement, old man.," It was a deflection, one that Rogers' let the other man have. He could tell that whatever issue Stark had was personal, but the blonde had enough on his plate without adding Stark's shit. "World's changed; a whole new ball game and you don't know the rules."
Rogers smiled, his perfect smile seemed to infuriate the other man further. But that felt fine at the moment to Steve, he wanted to annoy him.
"Well, at least I play by the rules," He let his shoulders roll into a shrug that appeared more nonchalant than the man felt. "You think rules exist to be broken."
The Super Soldier was talking about the flagrant disregard for the national security laws that Stark broke. Hacking into SHIELD's files could end up revealing a lot of sensitive operations if the information got to the wrong people and that was without even including a lot of the international files that SHIED had on hand.
This could get a lot of people hurt, a lot of innocent people that weren't involved in making Tesseract weapons.
"Get a grip," Stark frowned, his arms exploding up into a wide wave. "Everyone is breaking the rules, SHIELD's broken the rules,. Loki's breaking the rules. Even Doyle breaks the rules. It's the game now, I'm just playing along."
"So… " The blonde chuckled after trailing off or a moment. "You're saying that if they jump off a bridge you'd follow."
"Well, I can fly."
"Right, listen here," Rogers stood closer, the comment somehow causing the otherwise common man. So worked up he even grabbed Stark by the collar of his shirt, picking him up by it as if he was a small child rather than a fully grown adult. "I don't kno-"
"-am I interrupting?" Came Ross's voice, the tension in the room dispensing instantly. When the woman came in, her clothes dirty from a full two days of wear, Rogers took a hop back from Stark, shame spreading across his face.
But it was Stark that kept Roger's attention though, something had changed in the other man's expression. It had gone from one of the triumphs to one of horror as if he'd achieved some enlightenment that had made the rest of his life he'd spent worthless.
He bit his lip as he turned back to the display cycling it back to the images of their bodies. There was a representation, one that wasn't meant to be taken literally, of the amount of minute Gamma radiation going into their bodies.
It was two times the amount that had been there the last time he'd looked, but also it was decreasing as well.
"Shit," Stark growled, his keen mind having internalized the information and had come to a conclusion. "Papa Smurf was right, the scepter's been messing with our heads," he revealed, walking back towards the item with a har glare pointing right at it. "I mean what were we even fighting about? Both of us disagreed with SHIELD making weapons out of shit like this. But we were so worked up by little differences here that we were about to throw down."
Rogers leaned back onto an empty counter, his hands grasping at his face. He could feel the tension just start to ooze away, he'd been angry, but not enough to justify beating Stark's face in.
The tension was replaced with a deep pit in Roger's stomach, something that the man recognised was shame. He was better than that, magic Space Scepter or not.
He'd not get caught like that again.
Before Rogers, or even Ross, could verbally respond to the confirmation of Doyle's Scepter theory. A loud whine erupted from the speakers on top of the room's ceiling, Stark's face lit back up into a smile, though less bright than any Roger's had seen from him before.
"We've got one!" Stark yelled up, trying to bring cheer to the room. When Ross giggled slightly, Rogers felt like he missed a reference.
(Pat Doyle)
We were in the Quinjet before long, deciding to go in as a group would be better than to let any one of us run into the area and step into a trap. I was in a standard SHIELD jumpsuit, not too dissimilar to the one that Black Widow and Morse wore, except theirs were darker and bright respectively, while mine was a deep dark blue.
Patrick Doyle, Agent of SHIELD.
It had a certain ring to it, but I wasn't interested in working full time for any sort of government agency, so I wasn't going to offer up my resume to Fury any time soon. Just wasn't my jam.
"Indian Point in Buchanan?" I scratched my chin, something was off about this location. But I wasn't sure what was getting me to mistrust it so much, it seemed like I was just getting a vibe that something was up. "The Nuclear facility?"
"That's the one," Stark replied to me, frowning at the Satellite Image of the site in question. "Seems to be a perfect location to bring the troops in to me. Far enough from any major large military base, the defenses nearby would be overwhelmed within a few moments if enough of the army gets in fast, they can overwhelm what few defenses are there. It's not too far from people as well, could take over the state if they're good enough."
"And the Chitari can come in numbers so large that Earth doesn't stand much of a chance if they were to create a foothold."
Thor added, his arms crossed and his eyes glaring downward at the floor of the jet. He'd been sulking ever since I teamed up with Widow to dive deep into his and Loki's history. The Norse God didn't seem to understand why we were analyzing Loki's priors so much and was slightly agitated by the whole process.
But he gave us everything he could recall.
Loki's backlog of crimes prior to the events of New Mexico was sparse on lethality. Mostly pranks, dying people's hair odd colors, giving them new rainbow skin colors. One of the trickster's favorite pranks was to turn objects into snakes, sometimes it would the stools people were sitting on, sometimes he'd turn their drinks into snakes just as it reached their lips.
But they were never venomous. Making all of his worst deeds, harmless if not annoying pranks till Thor's coronation.
So Loki's world domination phase was a new thing entirely, which was good for us. Meant he was inexperienced in the role, liable to make mistakes. Though, it did leave us with no real MO for an operation other than he likes snakes. Something Thor told us he also shared.
The rest of the conversation was mostly about his personality. But that didn't get us anything new, much to my disappointment. We confirmed that the guy was a massive prima donna, felt that he never got enough attention compared to Thor.
Which given what I've seen from Thor… probably true.
Guy had a way of draining attention from a room, even when his brother was planning world domination. All anyone of us thinks of Loki is that he's Thor's brother, or what'll Thor do about him.
Not just how do we stop him but how do we help Thor, or does Thor help us, stop him.
"So… me and Thor go in first," I sat down, glancing up to Widow who was piloting the jet. "Followed by Cap, after we settle the area then Stark."
"There's only one entrance and you'll need to use it," Widow explained, yelling back to the four of us. "With all the sensitive equipment in there, we don't want you bursting through walls and damaging any of the equipment, dealing with a nuclear meltdown is not on SHIELD's itinerary."
"Very well," Thor was the only one of us to verbally speak up, the rest of us simply nodded. "But I warn you, this may not be a place where our standard Midgardian traps lay. My brother may have given his minions traps of his own design to set up."
"How dangerous can they be?" Stark questioned. Not in a mocking manner that you'd think he'd be using, but in that stern serious method that you'd used when asking how much will the TNT blow up when it goes off.
"Loki's traps could end with you as a small creature, like a mouse," he explained, shrugging while Mjölnir swung from his hip. "And then summoned a cat of sorts, it doesn't end well."
"I thought you said that before New Mexico that Loki hadn't killed anyone?" I interceded with a confused glance sent his way.
"No, I said that he had not murdered anyone," Thor corrected me, raising a finger up to his chin as he did. A slight smug smile as if he had gotten something over me. "Don't consider my brother anything but one of the finest warriors that Asgard's ever produced. He's felled many an opponent."
"Well, they must have been shit then," I replied smoothly. "I'm still here."
"We all have our off days."
It was a quiet, near threat like a statement. Which was odd for me to recognize, I usually wouldn't be able to recognize when people make those sorts of threats. The only time that I'd notice a threat was if it was completely blatant. Not that kind of tone alone implied threat that Thor was giving me here.
But it made me angry now, it made me angrier than I can ever recall being. My hands became tightened fists, said fists started to shake uncontrollably while I could feel my teeth started to grind.
The only thing that stopped the palms of my hands from bleeding or my teeth from turning to dust was that even I couldn't seem to hurt me.
I should've taken it as a sign that like Stark and Rogers earlier, the Scepter was working some mojo on me, even as far away from the Helicarrier as we were currently, it had me raging over nothing I would normally be raging over.
I'd stood a few steps closer to Thor, my height similar to Thor, he was actually a inch or so bigger than me, didn't really help when I tried to tower over the man. Instead of looking intimidating at all, I just got the two of us tense as we started to glare at each other, sparks starting to erupt from Thor's side while my vision slightly tinted red.
"Gentlemen!" Stark stepped forward, his metal glove shoving me back a bit. I was vaguely aware that Rogers was doing the same thing to Thor, while Widow seemed to be leaning back in her seat, trying to get into a better position to listen in on us. "You're both pretty, how about we keep on track and not get distracted by the color of each other's eyes."
"R-right," It was like a bucket of water had been dropped on to the raging flames of my hatred as I stuttered out a sentence, an action that I hadn't done in a number of years. Not since I was in my early teens at least. "Sorry about that… I'll keep a tighter leash on that from now on."
The sheer emotion that I had been feeling had overwhelmed me. Like I was a raft, going down a violent river, not in control of the guy actually trying to steer the thing. Hopefully, I'd steer better from here on out.
Didn't need to metaphorically crash.
"It's been getting to us all," Stark told me, quietly as if he was ashamed of himself. Something to watch on, if anger could be amplified, guilt and shame were just another emotion that could be used to get rid of us. "Just keep in mind that it's Loki and an invasion that we're trying to stop and not each other."
It wouldn't be long till we were at the Nuclear Power Plant, the very first such place that I'd ever been to in my life. Maybe after I stop this invasion I'll go and get a tour? Do they even offer those?
It didn't really matter I suppose, I was about to get something better than a tour. I was about to assault a Nuclear reactor. I did not play enough Red Alert to be prepared for this.
(Pat Doyle: Twenty Minutes Later)
We were waiting just above the place to scout a tiny bit before heading in. The jet in the perfect position at the moment to not get smashed by other flying objects while we continued to think a plan up.
For some reason?
"I can't see through much," I revealed sheepishly. "Most of it is either lead-lined or some other sort of anti-radiation shielding, not much I can do about that."
"It's been shielded a bit too well," Stark piped in from his position in the air, he had left the comfort of the Quinjet to more easily scan the building with his tools, something I didn't even need to stand for. I could hear his AI, Javis, speak about the materials "The only signal I can get from the place is from the Tesseract's gamma readings."
"We're going to need to enter carefully," Cap supplied.
There was something odd about this conversation as if we'd discussed this once too many times. It was probably us trying to be extra careful, given the mild mind-fu that we were under, it wouldn't be good if we were too eager and went and got ourselves killed.
"I'm going in," At a glance from Black Widow, who didn't need to pilot now that the jet was set to hover in the air, I shrugged. "I can get in and through anything down there before you say tits on an elephant."
"I'm not going to ask about one," Cap butted in before Romanoff could sound anything off. "But we're going to go in together. More eyes will mean fewer risks, and you don't have the experience in dealing with traps."
I didn't have much to say in regards to that but it turns out that Thor did.
"Aye," he agreed, brushing back some strands of his golden locks from his face. "And only I have the experience needed to point out any traps that were created by my brother's power."
"So Harry Potter traps," Stark finally piped in. "Good to know, I'll keep an eye out for any boggarts or moving staircases."
I chortled.
"Is Harry Potter the only fantasy story that you've read?"
"Let's stop with the references and get to saving the world."
With the stern words from the Captain, Thor and I followed Stark's suit and leaped out of the Quinjet, slowly hovering to the ground. I walked forward first, just a few steps ahead of the Thunderer, snapping the handle, and the lock, of the steel door frame.
Stark took the lead after that, with Thor standing in front of me as we went in. I could hear Cap drop from the jet with a thud, and follow in behind me. Only Black Widow was staying behind.
The building was mostly concrete walls filled with many things that I couldn't see through. The only things that I could make out where the steel beams that were holding things up. The building otherwise appeared completely empty,
Which would be odd, given it was a nuclear site and needed security worthy of that fact.
I made sure to glare upon the cameras in each room, knowing that Loki's minions were watching us as we went further into the building. It was then that I caught a red line in the air in front of us, it's presence clear to me but apparently not to Thor, as he continued to walk towards it. Acting quickly, I reached out and grabbed his cape.
"Wait," His glare would've been the stuff of legend… if I hadn't met Louise. "Laser trap, don't want to trip whatever trick is set for us. Stark, do you got something for this?"
The armored hero stepped forward, a panel on his right arm opening up and a loud hissing noise erupted from it. The laser blinked, then I heard a low crack and the beam died out.
"Cracked the laser's emitter with the shattered glass trick," Stark swaggered forward, for the first time, I could tell that there was some issue with walking in the thing. Not that he was having trouble, just that you had step in exact ways. "It won't cause the trap to go off this way."
With the way that I now perceived things, it was easy to notice that none of the others had reacted to the Stark's little stunt, so I faked blinking and rubbed my ears.
"W-well," I stuttered out. "Next time you bust that thing out, I'd like a warning."
"Sorry," he replied, a genuine apology for what was a lie on my part.
(Bobbi Morse)
She woke up with a startling headache, the kind that felt akin to having part of your head carved in bmy a shovel. They had covered her eyes, tied her arms behind her back by the wrists, and then bound her to a pole. But with the tips of her fingers, she was able to feel the ground.
Hard polished floors, cold and smooth. Not like the floor in the apartment Bobbi had been taken from, this felt expensive to touch. It had that mix of natural and artificial texture work that only the super-wealthy could afford.
Bobbi was careful not to move much otherwise, not wanting to let her kidnappers know that she was awake. Instead, the Agent concentrated in taking in the crowd around her talking their heads off.
"It is glorious, the truth… isn't it?" A woman spoke up, from her voice alone Bobbi couldn't tell her exact age but estimated that she was between her early thirties to mid-forties.
"Librating is what it is," Replied a man who sounded older than the woman which placed him within his early to late fifties, before elaborating further with a glee only seen in small children. "The knowledge of the truth, it completes a man. I'm not sure what I was thinking before, but whatever it was… it can't match what we were shown."
The information was unimportant, it didn't get Bobbi any closer to finding out where she'd been taken. It didn't reveal any further details about the scheme Loki, given Barton's involvement, or Octavius were cooking up.
Obviously, the Trickster had called up the talents of the mad scientist to help with the portal for his army. Someone with morals as loose as Ock would jump at the chance, especially as it's a dream of the woman, even if it meant the world would be conquered by aliens.
"Doc!" Barton's voice was like a beacon to Bobbi, she was able to keenly hone in on his location in the far corner of the room they were in. A rather large room, given the distance she was able to estimate. "Morse is awake."
It was then that she heard the mechanical clicking of the doctor's limbs, the snaps of the claws as it neared her ears.
"I know, I was waiting for her to get bored playing," Doc Ock's voice came out with glee. "But I suppose the opening teaser is coming soon," The claws snapped around Bobbi's face, freeing her from the blindfold. "I do want someone not brainwashed to see the fruits of my studies."
There wasn't much to be said about the room, other than what Bobbi had already deduced. Though the series of large TV screens that were hanging off walls wasn't what she expected. Off to the side, she could spot a few SHIELD Agents, brainwashing tagged on their faces with their bright blue eyes, and a few freelance folks Bobbi recognized from briefings on people that ran missions once or twice with Barton.
But sitting by a laptop with the Tesseract hooked up to it and also some other machine was Dr. Selvig. His greying hair and glasses only displayed the blue in his eyes with even more prominence, while the maniac smile sent a chill down Morse's spine.
A loud whine came out of a pair of speakers, a red light accompanying it.
"Doctor, we seem to have a problem with stabilizing the Tesseract," Selvig's statement should've brought some urgency from the other doctor but the woman only gave it half her attention as a pair of tentacles stabbed into a port on a nearby console. The whining stopped and the light turned blue. "Oh… that fixed it."
Octavius searched Bobbi's face, up and down.
"Do you know why I've brought you here?" she asked in a quiet, but somehow threatening voice. "I-"
"I didn't let her kill you," Barton interrupted with a grin as he took a few steps forward into the room. "No point, we're not here to kill but to liberate. When you see the truth for yourself, you'll join us."
"Good," Morse spoke for the first time. "Then you can 'liberate' me now."
Barton actually bent to do so, his face smiling as he did. It was as if he had considered what Morse said as a joining statement. A tentacle wrapped around the man's shoulder and pulled him away.
"Now, now," Octavius's claws snapped into her face, drawing the pair's attention back to her. "There will be time for that soon enough, once we've allowed the army though. Then everyone will be liberated. Now, go along Barton, you've a task to fulfill."
With that and a smile shared between the two, Barton walked away, leaving with a parting sentence;
"I'm looking forward to seeing your work in action Doc."
"Now it's just us-" Doc Ock's new speech was interrupted again, this time by Selvig. "-and the rather odd Dr. Selvig," she leaned into Bobbi's ear. "The brainwashing seems to have had odd effects on Selvig, he almost stripped down to his skivvies, we had to stop him."
"They've tripped the sensors!" Selvig yelled out, ignoring the rather defamatory statement Doc Ock had made about him. "Should I activate the traps now or-?"
"Not yet, I don't want them too close to the reactor," She responded smoothly, Bobbi's heart skipping a beat.
"Reactor?" She took another look around, spotting a window showcasing a clear series of skyscrapers. The screens flashed, changing from blank to display to something more along the lines of an industrial complex's concrete floors, thick reinforced steel doors, and radiation warning signs. The two images clashed against each other. "Where are we?"
"Far away from where the Avengers are," Doc Ock replied while snapping her claws together, detaching the pair of them that were connected to the nearby console. "But I wanted to watch, nothing like live test data."
That was when she spotted the red cape of Thor, the iconic shield of Captain America, the red/gold armor of Iron Man, and the blue man himself pop on the screen.
"Lugh," Bobbi tried, hoping that neither of the doctors noticed that she called the man's mostly unused codename.
"Oh, I really hope that he can't hear you," Octavius muttered. "Would completely need to rethink his limits if he can. Would also wonder how he hadn't found me earlier?" She turned around to smugly stare at Morse with a large smile gracing her face. "But it wouldn't matter if he did, it's already too late."
Bobbi rolled her eyes at the other woman, but was careful not to open her mouth just yet. Octavius was the type of person to gloat and loved to have a crowd to do it, to make sure that everyone knew just how smart she was.
"Well… aren't you going to ask?" The Doctor's helm went back on, her voice now distorted. "I'm just dying for you to ask."
"..."
"Fine, I'll just tell you anyway," Her actual right arm pointed at the screen with Doyle on it. "Right now, the 'Avengers' are in the middle of a trap I've set up in the Indian Point Energy Center," she closed her eyes and smiled in a manner that reminded Bobbi of someone tasting a delicious meal. "You'd be amazed how easily my little Ock bots took over that place with none the wiser… except for the dead workers," Octavius shrugged. "But who counts them?"
"You're a monster," Bobbi growled.
And while the agent did believe what she was saying, she also was playing it up for the woman. Keeping the mad woman's attention away from the screens, away from the Avengers. It was obvious that she wanted to watch as the trap went off.
So keeping the doctor's attention on her would give them more time to counter whatever she'd set up.
"And my trap is set on a timer."
"... Fuck."
(Pat Doyle)
"The Tesseract signal is coming from that room," Stark supplied, stopping us from entering at that very second. "You… noticing any traps that Reindeer Games put up?"
"No, but that only makes me even wearier," The Norse God intoned, twirling the handle of his hammer around on the flat of his palm. It was as if the blond could sense some sort of danger that the rest of us couldn't. "My brother has only become even more devious with his time away from Asgard. I can't imagine the horrors that may await behind those doors."
"Let me check something," I waved my arm out, making a show of pressing my ear up against the wall. I concentrated on hearing the goings-on in the room, but I could only hear the sound of mechanical components whirling about in there.
The sound of CPU fans.
"Do we have any idea what's meant to be in that room?" I asked Stark, curiosity drove me to ask unnecessarily, we were about to enter anyway.
"It should be the control room for the three Nuclear units," Stark spoke. "Not the place to use the Tesseract, but they could still be setting up the facility with the extra equipment, left it with Selvig in here while the main forces do so."
"Totally a trap," I couldn't help but point out before turning to Cap. "What do you want to do?"
"Spring the trap," he replied with a small smile.
This time we let Thor go first, hoping that he'd be able to see whatever trap his brother had in here and react. When we entered the room, like a well-coordinated wolf pack, we covered the room with all we could. Stark with his beams ready to fire, me with eyes lighting up red, Thor… held out his hammer ready to throw while Rogers his shield.
But rather than finding anything that could remotely count as a threat to us… we found… something far worse for the eye.
"Jesus Christ on a stick," I couldn't help but mutter at the sight before me. Bodies were piled in the corner, bloody holes the size of a large fist oozing the red liquid till it pooled around them. "What the fuck happened here?"
There was no sign of the Tesseract, other than a device in the room that emitted gamma radiation in the same manner according to Stark. Smart idea, obviously if this wasn't a trap it was just a distraction.
Meaning we couldn't spend too long here.
The other three started to talk, I ignored them as I started to examine the bodies. From the injuries, and a layman's understanding of the science behind identifying weapons from the wounds, I could tell that the damage had been done by a long instrument, something like a polearm but bent.
Mostly, I knew this from the curve of the entry wounds compared to the exit ones. They would need to be curved in order to slide in the manner that they did. But it appeared that the weapon had points that came together while inside the body, given the star-shaped nature of the entry wound but not the exit wound.
"Thor, any idea what weapon could do this?" I asked, dragging him from the conversation.
"None that comes to mind," Thor answered me, his face steeped in an expression of thought. "I can name more than a few creatures that could, but none native to Midgard; nor all that controllable, even by one such as my brother."
Hard to believe given what he's been doing here lately but I didn't want to get bogged down in such an argument with the man yet.
Sadly, any deeper examination of the situation was interrupted by a loud swear from Stark.
"Shit, someone's fucked around with the station's safeguards," his armored fingers typed vigorously. "The reactors are going into meltdown, I'm trying to release the water tanks to cool them down but it's not responding."
Suddenly, the computer screen shifted to reveal the familiar frizzy hair and glasses of Doctor Octavius.
"Well, well, it isn't my previous employer, Mr. Stark,'' she grinned at us with the same sort of smile that I'd seen from Freddy Cruger. "Seems that you've been having some computer trouble, do you need to contact tech support… because-" The doctor feigned a look of horror. "-I'm afraid that they've all caught a case of death."
"Octavius," he replied smoothly, taking out a connection from beneath another panel in his armor. It revealed a cable with a USB connector at the end which he slid into a port on the computer. "You're even madder than when we last met. How were SHIELD agents sent your way?"
While he was talking to the 'good' doctor, I burned out the cameras in the room with heat vision. Getting Octavius to shift her attention to me finally.
"Doyle, it's been a while," She glared, while I grinned, knowing that she couldn't see me anymore. Though, I should've thought about how she could hear us. "Still getting in the way of progress I see."
"Well, you know it's a hobby."
"Keep them busy, R2."
I saw the distortion in the air move before she'd given the order, my right hand lunging forward and breaking through the Ock Bot as if it was paper mache. The machine erupted into smoke, metal torn wide open and it's invisibility cloak turning off.
"She's made cloaking tech too?" Stark griped while taking a shot at an Ock Bot himself. Neatly taking the thing down just as it was about to attack Cap's backside. "What the hell is going on with this woman, she was meant to be specialized in cybernetics?"
"Stark!" Cap yelled out, leaping into the air and swinging his shield at the ground, smacking another bot into pieces. "The meltdown, how do we stop it?"
"Without the water, we-" Just as he was about to explain a bot rocketed into him and took him through a wall.
"Stark!" The blond super soldier screamed the man's name once more.
With a strike of his hammer against the ground, Thor screamed.
"Enough!"
Lightning shot out, hitting everything, but me and Cap. The six remaining bots fell to the ground, fried to bits and now on fire. But as I found after walking towards the computer…
"You stupid fuck! You broke the computer, now what do we do?"
(Louise O'Reilly: Stark Tower)
She sat down in the lunchroom, this time without Pat there to ramble on about his day. It was typically a highlight of her day, long office work wasn't the most glamorous of roles, especially when compared to the life of a super-powered reporter who's idea of a short trip was anywhere in the world.
When he wasn't gloating, Pat was always interesting to listen to. If only because of his horrible ability to actually describe anything, once the Taj Mahal was described as an upside-down Beyblade with two sticks by its side.
If Louise hadn't known what the damn thing he went to look at was in the first place, she would've never been able to fathom that it was the Taj Mahal.
Without this prime source of entertainment, Louise had been left to herself for the last two lunches, bored out of her mind. Not even Becca and? little boyfriend Ricky had been by in the last few days. So the young woman ate her lunch in boredom, while Pat went out there and enjoyed the excitement of the superhero life.
Never were any boring lunches with spies… and if a text from the blue man himself was to be believed, Captain America himself.
A loud buzz of her phone startled her out of her funk, answering the thing as a man on fire would jump into a pond.
"Pat?" Louise responded hopefully, having not bothered to even check the Caller ID.
"Nope, that's the wrong Catholic you got there," Murdock, that blind vigilante friend of Pat's, answered instead. "Sorry for the sudden call, but something's come up and I need a hand."
"Not usually the gal to call for this stuff," The redhead replied coyly. "Pat's too busy with SHIELD to bother answering your call?"
"..."
"What?"
"See… I… can't… actually get a connection to him," The Lawyer responded with a hesitancy that came from worrying about an explosive reaction. As if Louise was so easily rattled, her Pops had been in the mob, she knew not to explode at the first sign of trouble. "I'm sure that he's just in some secret facility that blocks out calls."
"... Fine," She sighed, "What do you want from me?"
"I need to get into Stark Tower without anyone spotting me," he started to explain. "There's no time to scout out the place for an opening."
Louise stood up from her seat, leaving the sandwich half-eaten while she made her way towards the elevator. Her heartbeat shot up as her meal was spiked.
"I'm guessing there's a good reason I'm about to get fired?"
"Doctor Octavius is in the building."
Author's note: Okay, super sorry for the long wait. To make up for it, here's a decently long chapter. Expect another dropping tomorrow and the next day, and probably the next day after that.
I will be honest, I really dislike having to upload the chapters to this site. I lose a lot of formatting options, like invisible text, in doing so.
Anyway, all the nonsense with the Krypontian stuff happening in the story will be explained eventually. And this is where the Avengers' plot starts to diverge from the movie here. There won't actually be a lot of "redo" of the movie plots in this story outside of the Avengers' start here.
There will be some of the badguys from the movies. But not a lot of the plots from the movies. I actually have big diverging plans coming up in the story. And the story up to the end of the Avengers is already written I just need to format it for this site. And a casual reminder to check out my ko-fi account, and there's a discord for my stuff as well to check out.
I can't link things on this site, so google Pro-Man Spacebattles and Blueman. You'll get my spacebattles thread, and a link to both will be in the signature of my posts.
Edit: To those that noticed, yeah accidentally posted some of the same stuff twice there. Sorry about it. Fixed now.