(New York: Pat Doyle)
My eyes glanced over the city, but with a level of detail being retained that only a machine could match. I had taken some time to wipe out all the drones that I had spotted on the way here, but even then there was always more being teleported in. So dealing with them needed to be put on the back seat for arriving at Stark Tower and dealing with the threat there.
"Brainiac's gotta have taken over the portal stabilization on that big ship of his," I turned to the Odin brothers with a frown, ignoring Thor's jubilation over my good health to focus on the matter at hand. "But that doesn't mean we can't destabilize it from this side of the portal, right?"
The only person here that knew anything about this was sadly Loki. The green-wearing Norse god was a bit of a shithead really, and probably had his own plans of betraying us at any moment. But I'm also sure that he didn't want to be killed by Brainiac, nor even to be outdone by the guy.
So I was hoping that his prima-donna nature would be the driving motivation at the moment.
"I doubt we have the time to set anything up," Loki started to explain, nonchalantly blasting a few drones that had appeared with the blue blasts from the scepter, shooting them down at a rate that outpaced what I had from Thor coming in. "I'd need a week and a legion of Asgardian spellcasters to create something to negate Brainiac's efforts. Anything I could do alone sadly ends with my death."
"What about you, Stark?" I asked, changing tracks and pressing a finger against a communicator that had been placed in my ear. It was small but had a powerful range. "Think you could come up with something to disrupt the Portal?"
Stark took this moment to land beside me, scaring the shit out of Louise who jumped in fright. It was hard for someone to hear a hulking armored man fly through the sky when Thor, and sometimes in spurts Loki, were continually blasting robots out of the sky.
Romanoff was dropped from his arms too, landing with a gentle pop from her footwear. She and Barton shared a glance, one that was filled with a tense eagerness that made me question the nature of their relationship. It wasn't lustful, but it appeared deeper than what I'd expect from people in a work style friendship.
They were close, relieved to see each other. I could tell.
"I'm working on a shoestring here, Blue," Stark replied to my question, his eyes glancing towards the side of the building. "If we only had a wheelbarrow that would be something."
"Where's an albino where you need them?" I shook my head, sighing as my ears picked up the roar of a familiar green giant on the streets below. I noted Stark's new armor, and it seemed he'd been having a bit of a tough time from how it appeared. "That's a nifty suit, does it come in a non-battle damage variant."
"Okay, hoodie cape," Was his snarkier rebuttal. "Maybe those of us that don't patch together can comment on the other's outfits."
Before I could try my hand at any sort of comeback, I heard some yell out; "Incoming!
"You guys hear that?" I asked them, not sure if it was just my enhanced hearing playing tricks with me or if someone had started to get closer to us in a way that would justify yelling that out… and it came from the ground.
Before anyone answered, suddenly the Hulk leaped onto the roof, Captain America held in his arms as the green giant cracked the rooftop under his feet due to the sudden application of force. I grinned, excitement rising at them both.
"Ah, the Team Leader is here!" I grinned savagely while pointing at Hulk, not Captain America. "You got a plan, big guy?"
The Hulk took a look around, his eyes glaring at us all. There was this oddly contemplative expression on the not-so-Jolly Green Giant's face, it was reminiscent of the expression Banner wore when he looked at the data on the Tesseract to find the thing earlier this day.
"Smash!" He screamed, beating his fists against his chest before throwing his hands towards the wormhole.
"Wise advi-" The Hulk rushed past me before I could finish, managing to knock me aside but not off my feet. Loki had a second of concern that flashed over his face before he found himself picked up by his left arm and leg and thrown towards the portal high above the sky.
"Nice shot," Stark remarked.
"Ehh," Barton replied, his hands framing the still flying Norse god as if to take a picture. "It's leaning off to the left a bit much."
I saw a flash of green envelop the man and he transformed into a rather large bird that I wasn't familiar with. It had a bit of an owlish look to it, with a hint of an eagle in the beak. Honestly, birds weren't my thing, except for that minor period of time that I wrote a story about groups at war named after birds, in 1st class.
He arrived back, but it didn't take long as he sorta just twisted in something that I could only describe as a spatial manner and appeared back to the rooftop, no longer a bird. I noticed that he had a scepter in one hand, Tesseract in the other. There was an air of smug ass that I couldn't help but want to quash.
So I grabbed it with a dose of Super Speed, leaving the trickster gaping at his hand before glaring at me.
"Was that truly necessary?" He groaned, giving me that separated expressions that I'd come to expect from
"I didn't want you to port out of here," I explained, throwing the artifact that normal humans apparently couldn't handle between my hands. "Saw you use it to get inside that barrier."
"I see Heimdal has gotten a rival in privacy invasion," He replied snidely, leaning on the scepter as if Loki needed it to stand up right. My eyes scanned his legs along the various visual spectrums I could see, finding that there were minor tears along his muscle tissue but nothing much else.
Hulk's got a hella grip I guess.
My mind suddenly shifted towards the glowing cube in my hand. I could feel the power of it, it felt like I was holding a rather hot spoon. But with the added sense of having drunk several cans of Red Bull energy drinks.
Loki had used it twice now, just to teleport from one to another.
"How does the Tesseract work?" I asked Loki with a grin.
(SHIELD Helicarrier; Nick Fury)
"Director Fury, the council has made a decision." One of the many annoying talking heads that regularly bothered him commanded. It wasn't usually too big of a problem, Fury would mainly find some way of following the letter but not the spirit. "We expect you to follow it."
"I recognize the council has made a decision," Fury replied, his cool but with bite. "But given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it."
"Director," A different member of the World Security Council spoke up. "You're closer than any of our subs, you could scramble that jet… "
The Council member let the sentence hang as if it would tempt Fury into obeying the command by phrasing it without mentioning the key factor.
"That is the island of Manhattan," Fury glared at the two members pushing the hardest. They weren't all for it, just the majority of them were. Alexander Pierce, as an example, may have agreed with the action in principle but had actually agreed with Fury that it was much too soon to commit to it. But was outvoted. "Until I'm certain my team can't hold it, I will not order a nuclear strike against a civilian population."
"If we can't hold them in the-"
"This is no longer an invading army," He interrupted this remark before it could go off the ground. "We're dealing with a single individual using drones. Brainiac's got no interest in conquering Earth. Our intel ensures us that it is only New York that he'll have interest in for now. My team can repel him easily."
"His key interest in New York is exactly why we must deny him it."
"His key interest New York is exactly why we mustn't," Fury's mind thought of what he knew about Brainiac, then compared to the reports that were currently written up, the lie that he spoke next came easy; "That city goes up in flames, Earth could be next."
There was a certain sense of pride that Fury felt in how that finally forced them to shut up. It had worked so well that they didn't stop him from ending the call. As he exited the room, Hill was there waiting for him in the hall, tablet in hand as she scoured through the data on their units backing up the Avengers on site.
"They're looking good," She started to fill him in on the recent developments. "Lugh has cleaned up a large portion of the drones, our people are managing to kill any of the remaining ones with the Phase 2 prototypes handedly, and the drones have stopped teleporting in."
Fury was more glad than ever that he hadn't listened to that command. They'd almost completely shut down Brainiac's forces and they wanted to nuke New York. It had been way too early in the conflict to use last resorts like nukes.
"And the portal?"
"Good news, the machine stabilizing the portal has been destroyed."
"Bad news?"
"Portal is still open, and being held open on the other side now."
Fury merely nodded to this, it was to be expected that there would be some hold-ups in a messy situation like this. Mythological Gods, Alien boogeyman popping out of nowhere, the Director wondered where the threats against Humanity would end?
Would there be Greek Gods striking against Lisbon? Embodiments of modern-day ideas of industry fighting against the old myths of Britain?
In any case, Fury didn't worry about it too much. He had plans for every situation after all. And an emergency contact just waiting to be summoned.
"Make sure to lock down the flight deck," Fury ordered Hill. "I don't want anyone to get any secret messages from a Council member and blaze off to nuke New York anytime soon."
(New York: Pat Doyle)
"This is a horrible idea," Louise said in response to my plan, ignoring her we started to huddle around Loki. She wasn't part of the 'we' here, instead she stood several feet away from us, as in myself, Rogers, Hulk, Barton, Morse, and Loki.
"But it is an idea," I returned easily. "Something which no one else has had so far."
The rest of us would stay behind to face whatever drones that Brainiac sent this way. Stark was almost brought along, but it was decided that both he and Thor needed to stay behind to provide air support that someone like the Hulk couldn't. Loki then needed to come with us as he was the most likely to understand how to disable the technology inside the ship after Thor and Stark.
I wasn't going to bring Louise inside an alien ship, not if she wasn't wearing a super version of the Iron Man suit designed to be actually Invincible. Even then I'd think she was too squishy. Not that I particularly thought Morse and Barton would die, given their same squishy level, only they were super spies and she was a normal girl.
Not really in the same league as the blind Lawyer even, he at least had years of specialized combat training. Louise had a few years of high school wrestling and boxing… I think?
Loki took over my attention soon enough, his hands gently taking the Tesseract from me.
"Now, once we're in we won't have a second before Brainiac's on us," Loki started. "We're talking deathrays, drones made from denser materials and therefore won't just break apart at the slightest touch. We're talking about shielding systems that will trap us between two barriers that will slowly inch together till our bodies start to compress into thinner profiles. The-"
Loki went on to describe the dangers we could face in several different manners and how such technologies could be used to create brutal torture to break our characters. Not really in character for the City Bottling Alien, but it was a disturbing look into how Loki thought about things.
Definitely making sure that we imprison him… with regular psyche visits.
Even Romanoff, a woman who knew more about breaking people than I could even have nightmares about, seemed to be taken back by the rather maniac zeal that Loki was talking with. So much so that the Russian threw Thor a look but the blond man had the same expression as a goose discovering that he had no wings suddenly in the middle of his flight.
"Loki… are you feeling well?" Thor asked his brother.
"Yes, brother," Loki rolled his eyes while the Tesseract suddenly glowed brighter. "I'm fine. Now to take part in a suicide mission to save the pitiful race that I was just trying to conquer, surrounded by a monster that I threw off a flying ship, an agent that I had mind-controlled, all looking for an excuse to kill me. I'm super dandy Thor, thanks for finally asking."
As we disappeared, at the same time more drones finally started to be teleported in, Thor's reply rang in our ears.
"That's certainly an improvement at least from the last time he was 'fine'."
(Pat Doyle: Brainiac's Ship)
The room we teleported into was as high-tech as I expected it would be. Perfectly flat surfaces that I'd expect from a Star Trek ship, outlined with small doses of green colors that accented their appearance to match their designer. Even though we were in a brightly lit room, there also wasn't a visible light source, at least to standard vision sets.
I could make out the odd bulb-like device floating above our heads. Something that I made sure everyone else made note of too.
Despite Loki's rather concerning ranting about the dangers of teleporting inside the ship without knowing the layout, we managed to arrive with all our limbs intact. Though, I'm just assuming that was what the ranting meant, because otherwise, Thor's brother thought about torture methods far too much, even for a would-be world-conqueror… especially for a would-be world conqueror.
I took point, having the toughest body and the fastest response times only made sense that I would. Loki was behind me, a dangerous spot if he decided to stab that scepter up where the sun didn't shine but Morse and Barton had the man in their sights at all times.
He even sneezed evilly, and they'd do their thing.
We almost came to an issue when we noticed that the doorways were just built for normal-sized, if not oddly skinny, people, and not the wide powerhouse of muscle and green that many today called the Hulk. It was an awkward moment when the rest of us peacefully walked by it and Hulk just… stood there glaring at the doorway as if it would collapse just by doing that.
"I'll deal with the doorway, big guy," Before I could do much more than walk up to it, Hulk just burst through it as if the wall had been made of paper, merely peeling outward. "Or you could do that… not like we want to keep the ship in one piece or anything like that."
Hulk merely huffed at me in the same manner that you'd see an adult whenever they see a kid try to act adult. That 'oh, that's adorable' sorta expression. It annoyed me, but whatever.
We didn't have long before Brainiac started to talk, his voice echoing out from speakers lining the walls of the hallway we were walking through.
"It was arrogant to think that you would be able to run around on my ship," Accompanying his sentence, a red energy barrier erupted out of the walls and into existence ahead of us. We quickly turned around, heading down the other way only for another barrier to appear the same way. "My defenses are designed against far greater foes than you."
"Hulk," I patted a wall. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Move," Hulk shoved me as his fingers ripped into the very wall itself, revealing a darkened room, a row of motionless drones held inside what looked like charging stations.
They were thicker than the other drones, larger biceps, rounder thighs and their faces were far more detailed than any of the drones that I took out down in New York. I didn't spot any external weapons but my array of super visionary powers noticed that there were several oddities about the way that the mechanical compliments were arranged. Properly could transform to deal with a varied range of enemies.
"You haven't thought this through," Brainiac spoke once more. "This ship is my fortress, every inch is designed to my specifications over hundreds of years of research and study."
Suddenly, one of the bodies sprung to life, its eyes peering out at us as if they were truly organic, blinking and darting around the room as it searched for us all. It broke free from the restraints holding it back but I didn't let it get further than an arm and a leg before I smashed through its chest.
"Nope," I said while pulling my fist from its mechanical guts. "Not going to let-" before I could finish my sentence, I found that my limb had become trapped in the tight grip of the robot's arm.
"Foolish," Brainiac's voice suddenly came from the robot's lips, it was cold and emotionless, but there was that sense of smugness that seemed to still emanate from it. "As I said before, this ship was designed by me. You'll find my vessels here make the drones sent out mere playthings."
I was just about to exert some effort to break from the bot's grasp when suddenly its mouth lit up blue and blasted me in the face. Instinctively, I closed my eyes and was thrown back by the blast taking me off my feet, but I wasn't hurt. Merely hit hard enough to be thrown out of the room and back to the hall once more.
It only got worse from there though. Before I could even get back to my feet before I was accosted by a series of laser shots that pelted against my body. Luckily, it appeared my durability had finally spread to my outfits, or at least this one was close enough to my skin to not be burned nor torn.
I heard Hulk roar out, his hands crushing, and tearing through several robots that got close to him. I shifted to my feet quickly, basically ignoring the laser fire as if it was simply someone using the hairdryer to dry me off. A quick bit of freeze breath turned those turrets into icicles and I ran back into the room.
What awaited me was Morse helping Hawkeye bounce into the air with a springboard maneuver. He shot off three arrows as if he was a machine, accurately nailing three standard drones that had popped into the room at some point.
The other more dangerous robot bodies stayed motionless at the sides.
My eyes soon came to Hulk ripping apart the Brainiac-controlled body that had hurled me out of the room seconds ago. It didn't take him long at all, it was like watching someone tearing apart cardboard to fit into a recycling bin.
"Li-ttle help!!" Hawkeye's voice caused me to glance back toward him.
"I'd been too inactive during this fight," I realized at the sight of Barton being held by the throat, another more human-like robot, no doubt directly controlled by Brainiac, raising him while stepping on Morse's throat, slowly applying more pressure as the seconds passed.
"Your arrogance knows no bounds," Brainiac stated. "I've studied you all for months, I know your strengths, your weaknesses. The gaps that you leave open when you arrogantly believe that you-"
Barton's arms were free and so using them he grabbed an arrow, the head sparking with electrical power. While Morse was much in the same position, only she took out a disk from her belt, it was sparking with that use of electrical energy.
The two stabbing the limbs that were restraining them.
Brainiac's current body didn't so much receive damage from these devices as it did lose the capability to hold the two. Morse knocked away his leg, leaving the alien to fall to his knees while Barton landed on his feet, quickly springing another arrow to his hand and using its blade to pierce Brainiac's head.
I took this as the moment to move in for the kill, using the same method that Hulk used seconds earlier and ripping the robot to pieces.
"We're moving!" I decided, Hulk already bursting through another wall, that Loki pointed him to, and leading us to the next room. Luckily, while he hadn't helped with the fighting, Thor's brother stayed around to lead us to where he thought the control room was.
"From now on, I'm sticking with the big guy," Barton groaned as they walked forward. Hulk growled slightly at this but didn't respond with any words. He was oddly silent for what I could recall from versions of the Hulk.
But I suppose that's better than him screaming 'Hulk Smash!'.
I took two steps inside the next room… and then was bombarded with a green energy ray so powerful that I fell to my knees, even the floor itself groaned under the pressure. Soon Brainiac's voice popped up once more.
"I told you, I had analyzed your weaknesses," he gloated as a robotic hand snaked its way across my throat. "My studies of Kryptonians were complete well before meeting you. This wavelength is derived from an irradiated mineral leftover from Krypton's destruction. It tends to have negative side effects on the subjects I've tested it on. Even trapped here as I am, I'm always advancing. "
Oh… so that was the plan. Almost smart of him.
(Louise O'Reilly: Stark Tower)
She shuffled down the stairs, Murdock not far behind her as the rest of those new Super Friends of Pat's started to get to work on defending the city from the drones that were once more being sent their way. It was in smaller numbers as if Brainiac had a backlog prior and now needed to send them as they were made.
Obviously, it was decided that as they weren't SHIELD Agents, or super soldiers, or Norse gods, or super genius playboys with mech suits, that they weren't going to be much help with them. Especially given one of them was a blind man and the other a young office worker.
Muggers? Louise could take them on, but alien invasions were another thing entirely.
But they were helping out, all the same, the Brainwashed minions of Loki were supposedly freed by the rogue Asgardians. These were the people that she and Murdock had knocked out and tied up not too long ago. So the pair were to free them of the restraints that they'd put on them.
There was a rather unfortunate matter once they reached Stark's cozy penthouse. There was no sign of the rather terrifying Doctor some called Ock. This was something that worried the two people that had spent no small amount of time dealing with the woman earlier that day.
"Where did she go!?" Murdock knelt to the ground as the freed SHIELD Agents took guard of the room's key entry points. "We didn't just beat her up and leave on the ground, we shot her in the head. There's no way that she could've survived that."
Louise watched as his hands rubbed along the floor, feeling out the area that the Doctor had been left laying from the battle earlier. Louise flinched at the sight of Murdock dipping his fingers into the blood that pooled from Octavius's body, he was testing if it had dried or not.
"It's real," Murdock supplied, his face once more concealed by a scarf covering the top half. "So she was really shot-"
"-And stabbed, electrocuted, suplexed, and had been shot with EMP weapons," Louise interrupted him, deciding to take a seat on one of the few remaining chairs that hadn't been destroyed during all the fighting. "I swear to god, what does it take to… " she trailed off, her eyes spotting a closet nearby that shook slightly.
Louise attempted to shift her body to the side suddenly, to lean her head in the direction of the closet. Trying to gain the Lawyer's attention but failing thanks to the dedication to tracking Octavius.
"Double D," She whispered, using one of Pat's nicknames for the man as to not give anyone the vigilante's name. Some of them had his face, it would be worse if they had his name to go with it. "The closet."
His head didn't move, she assumed that this was due to the whole blind thing. It didn't matter if he turned his head to face people, it wasn't like he needed to face someone to know that they were there. Slowly, Murdock walked slowly, holding up a baton while sneaking up to the door. Then he mouthed;
"On the count of three," A single finger rose, a second one, before finally the third one. Murdock swung the door open before stopping himself from striking the person tied up on the floor of the closet.
She was a brunette, older than Louise but not enough that Louise would think of the woman as old.
"You're not the woman we're looking for?" Louise couldn't help but blurt out. Murdock removed the gag around her mouth as she glared at the redhead.
"No? You don't say!" The obvious hostage snidely replied as soon as her lips were free. "Next, you'll even say that I'm tied up. Now before we're suddenly sucked into a black hole or something. UNTIE ME!"
"Wait a second?" Louise gasped as her mind recalled the article Pat had written for the Bulletin right after the Doc Ock one. The one about the Hulk and, the now former, General Ross. "You're Doctor Betty Ross!"
"... yeah, I know who I am," She returned, though angry. The woman didn't really appear angry at Louise but rather at the general situation. "I'm also the woman that spent what felt like weeks trapped in a closet while World War Three seemed to be going on outside. What time is it?"
Louise reached for her phone to check the time, only to realize that it wasn't there anymore.
"Must've lost the thing at some time during all the fighting," She realized with a rather shaky grin. Her Pops would've been calling her non-stop the second this invasion started on the news. He was going to kill her for worrying him and her Ma.
"Sorry," Came her and Murdock's dual reply.
"It's fine, I'm surprised it wasn't Bruce ripping through the building to save me that got me out of that closet."
Ross didn't stay long in the closet, walking out of there with the same sort of dead stare as one would expect once they spotted the city on fire.
"Loki did it," Ross looked on in mounting horror. The sirens of police and ambulances alike ascended the air. "That bastard. He's just out there killing so many people."
"Actually… this is a different alien coming in to invade and Loki's helping us defeat him."
Ross blinked.
Author's Note: I'm going to leave it with this smaller update today. I mostly want to get this out to say that I've corrected a mistake from chapter 14. Where I suddenly cut to Doyle mentioning about how he was "holding up the helicarrier" and fixed it so he actually had been.
Somehow I missed the post that included that update from Spacebattles. Opps... lol.
Anyway, same as the usual please review and visit my special accounts... as I am a rather underprivileged man. lol