AN: Well, this week was productive:
I wrote like 300 words of this chapter at first, then a whole other potential sequel chapter (DC), then I came back to this chapter and pushed it to 2.000 words, then I wrote ANOTHER sequel chapter (this time for Harry Potter) and ANOTHER sequel chapter (Naruto) before finally finishing this chapter.
Somehow, my brain kept getting distracted... not that anyone will see the sequel chapters for quite some time. :P
Chapter 19: Snake infestation in your backyard? Please call your local Spymaster for a fast and easy removal process!
To be honest, I tuned most of the meeting out. In the end the experienced spies took other most of that. Who would have thought they would know how to infiltrate and dismantle an enemy organization effectively?
That was sarcasm by the way.
The overall plan was mostly the same, I just needed to do a whole lot less. Black Widow and Cap would go to Camp Lehigh to plant explosives to blow Zola to kingdom come. At the same time Hawkeye and Jean would break into Alexander Pierce´s home and get all info about his access to Hydra out of him. I wanted to object that as an unnecessary risk but stopped when I thought about how there could be a back-up system that Pierce knew about. Something that wasn´t mentioned in the movie.
That would happen the night before Fury and I infiltrated Shield HQ. Well, I would do the infiltrating and Fury would just go to work. There it was my task to send the unfiltered info to Tony, who would coordinate the effort to round up the Hydra goons with the X-Men and the other agencies, and publish the censored version online.
Of course, the super spies were against that step. In contrast to the movie, this time they felt more in control, so they saw no need in airing out more dirty laundry than strictly needed. I didn´t think they saw Shield as totally lost yet.
The rest of the room was quick to disagree, even the mysterious Agent McBlankface from another agency, I think he was CIA. There was no love lost for the Hydra cover. It was no wonder that Xavier hadn´t let Logan attend, I think Fury would have been skewered before we got to the first toilet break.
When the meeting was over, I approached Tony and Hank to remind them of the experimentations with some sort of anti-mutant gas Hydra gad been conducting. Hank assured me that all mutants on the apprehension mission would be equipped with a gas mask.
Relieved, I said my goodbye´s and went for a quick visit with Lara before I had to take off.
It was agreed that we would start in two days. Fury had already made sure Pierce would be in DC in the needed timeframe.
I sighed. It wasn´t like I had free time in the meanwhile. The attack had become an utter disaster PR-wise. Sure, I was the victim, it was a direct attack on MESO, but it was also perpetrated by a mutant.
Fred Hanley. The boy´s name had been Fred Hanley.
The media had unearthed his whole life story in the days since his death. His likely murder, even if they didn´t know that.
He had been a normal student from a normal family in a fairly small town in Connecticut. His father was a mechanic, his mother a nurse. His big sister had followed her mother´s footstep. His little sister was enthusiastic about learning with her dad. Neither showed signs of being mutants.
Fred hadn´t been overly popular at school as he didn´t participate in a lot of extracurriculars. His love and passion had been music, he had been learning any instrument he could get his hands on since he was little. His parents had supported him as much as they could. He learnt to play piano, the violin, guitar, flute and trumpet. His own little orchestra, he called it. He had started writing his own music when he was ten.
His family was proud of their little prodigy. Fred had started to give music lessons in the town to save money for some prestigious college. Then he disappeared two years ago after some hushed up incident where a parent didn´t want to pay for their kids' lesson. The discussion got heated when said parent started to insult Fred´s musical talent and the way his parents had raised him. It wasn´t clear what happened next, but the parent landed in the hospital with a broken arm, some bruised rips and a concussion. A few days later the Hanley´s reported their son missing. It was presumed he had run away, afraid of the consequences. He was 19 when he died.
With how fast all this information came out, it was clear Hydra had planned this. There was no way they would have tested for the X-Gene that fast otherwise.
A deep dive through the news and police reports revealed that the "Mandarin" attacks had already started in April. They weren´t labeled as such yet and they paused in May after the invasion, but the signs were obvious with my meta-knowledge.
I cursed myself for being careless. There were a lot of villains whose timeline I wasn´t quite sure of. Ree´s orders were littered with alarms for all kinds of suspicious activity but some things I would only catch when I actually saw them.
AIM must have caught Hydra´s attention when they started their spree of misfired experiments and Hydra was desperate enough to either make deal or stage a hostile takeover to have more ammunition against me and the MESO movement.
The documentary about the experiment on mutants must have been the last straw.
Grimacing I thought about mutants powered up with Extremis in Hydra´s control. Well, at least Hydra hadn´t been to find a way to brainwash mutants yet.
Apparently, there was something in that X-Gene that made it impossible for Hydra to use the same methods they had employed with the Wintersoldier. Depending on the mutation, they self-destructed or held out until either their mind or body was too destroyed to be of any use for Hydra.
I knew from Lara that Hank didn´t hold any classes after our Hydra raids for a week. Jean had told me in confidence that going through the documentation of the experiments had taken huge tole on the scientist.
"Hey Al!", Lara screamed excitedly as she ran up to me when I finally found her outside.
Worries forgotten for now, I knelt down and opened my arms for a hug.
"How is my favorite little hell spawn doing?", I asked with a big smile.
Hydra could wait for another hour or two.
With Hades up and floating a couple of cm of the ground I followed Fury through the atrium of Shieldra´s HQ. I tried to suppress my nervousness as I kept enough distance to avoid the swishing of the spy´s leather coat. We came across a couple of Agents springing out of the way of their boss who was scowling more than usual. My only job for now was not bump into anyone.
Usually that was easier said than done, but this time I had Fury-shaped shield, which was doing quite nicely.
The first phase of the plan had gone off without a hitch. Zola was dead man walking, or, ah, a deleted AI computing? You get the gist.
The second part hadn´t gone near as flawless. It seemed to be going well, Barton and Jean got into Pierce´s residence without detection while the man had been out to dinner, they subdued him upon his return and Jean started to look into the bastard´s mind – until they got rudely interrupted by the one and only Wintersoldier.
Yes, Bucky dropped by, presumably to report for a mission and stumbled upon his commander being interrogated by the enemy. Predictably a fight ensued.
Barton alone would have had a hard time surviving a fight like that, he was not exactly the expert in close quarter combat in Shield´s line-up. Especially compared to Natasha, who had her difficulties against the Wintersoldier in canon and that had been with the advantage of having been trained by him in the Red Room.
Not that I could hold that against them. If the Wintersoldier would manage to get close to me, even with magic, I would probably be dead in 30 seconds flat. To be fair, when I arrived in this universe it would have been about 5 seconds in my estimation.
Luckily for Barton, he wasn´t alone. And Bucky was extremely susceptible to mental attacks thanks to Hydra´s delightful treatments of electroshock therapy over the years.
As Jean explained it later, it was like the smallest push deconstructed Pierce´s position as the handler in the Soldier´s mind. She said it had something to do with how often that position of handler was overwritten with the help of triggers.
Sadly, the few seconds she had in Bucky´s mind weren´t enough to grasp how deep his indoctrination reached. When he didn´t see Pierce as his superior and handler anymore, he saw a member of his organization in the hands of their enemies who were in the process of extracting information.
So he killed him.
The Wintersoldier took advantage of Jean´s momentary surprise and fled. Barton tried to pursue, but Barnes had few years of experience on him in that regard.
All in all, I thought it understandable that I was nervous. Seeing Barton and a mutant capture a high-ranking Hydra member had tipped the bastards off.
We had to act fast and hope to catch Hydra before they got too much time to prepare.
I hovered after Fury who made his way to the top of the building. We entered a room I was familiar with, not that I had ever been there.
Fury stalked over to the window and crossed his arms. It was the signal to let Ree know to start looping the cameras in the room. It might seem unnecessary and Fury standing there stoically might look a bit odd for anyone who watched more closely, however the spies insisted that we wouldn´t take any chances.
Not even bothering to make myself visible, I went over to the large glass screen and had Ree start disabling security measures. A look inside the system revealed the need for two Alpha level members to execute my orders.
Chortling at the connections with the phenomenon of Alpha males on the internet my brain made, I had Ree get at whose retinals that would need. Two quick constructs and an illusion later, I was sending Tony the data.
I blinked when I realized that I had basically done my part already. That wasn´t nearly as nerve-wracking as I had feared.
Absentmindedly I started Ree on filtering any might-lead-innocents-to-die-info out. The rest was pretty much automated.
"Huh", I said out loud, a bit stunned.
Fury turned around.
"You done?", he said with a clipped tone.
"Jup.", I confirmed.
Without another world I opened a portal to our mission headquarters. The helicarrier with a skeleton crew. That crew was, understandably, the first group to get checked for snake infestations.
I let us out at the bridge where Tony had already built up his command station.
"Hey, you are still here! How is it going? Did pest control already sweep through the place?", I asked, relieved that my part was more or less over.
Tony jumped up a few cm in fright and the way his eyes darted up, all over the room and at Fury behind me, reminded me that I was still invisible.
Chuckling sheepishly, I pushed Hades down. Now visible I waved at my friend, who looked at me exasperated.
"Not the day for this, Al, really not the day…", he grumbled, indignant at his own reaction, before he cleared his throat.
"Anyway, yeah, we had one rat on board. He is taken care of. The other agencies, you know the suits, are posed around the members we had already known and the X-Men, plus any other trustworthy suits the spymaster could come up with, are ready in their jets- ", he gestured towards the runway outside, "- and my unit is ready to be deployed too.
He smirked self-satisfied. I raised an eyebrow.
"Your unit?", I asked.
"Yeah, some repurposed models and an idea I had been working on, off and on for a few months. I call it the Iron Legion."
Tony grinned at me.
My eyebrow rose higher.
I knew that he had been working on something ever since the invasion. I knew that he hadn´t talked about his near-death experience and his likely PTSD. I also knew he made the Iron Legion in canon. While all our allies knew we would have to take on Thanos eventually, I might have been too distracted with MESO for Tony to feel like we were preparing adequately.
Well, as long as Ultron didn´t become a thing, the Iron Legion might be not such bad thing. The fanfics certainly made it seem like a good idea.
I shook my head. This would be problem for later. Silently, I watched my friend and his AI directing the operation to begin. I watched on a screen as Camp Lehigh went up in flames. Then it was time for waiting.
The next hour was grating. Tony and I stayed on the carrier to be able to give back-up where it was needed, but the teams dealt with any resistance without much problem. The Iron Legion was doing its job as well.
More and more reports came back confirming the capture of another Hydra plant. All went fine until we got an emergency signal from the team that had been tasked with bringing in Killian.
Tony pulled up Satellite footage of the area so I could promptly open a portal for us.
Not a minute after the signal went out Tony and I flew over the AIM warehouse Killian was at. We could already hear the explosions. I dove towards the fight.
This particular facility was on the edge of an Industrial complex, right next to a small harbor. Half of the warehouse´s roof was already caved in and revealed a most likely illegal lab. The glowing of Killian and his two bodyguards was easy to spot even from high up.
I threw half a dozen of my standard electric staffs at him as soon he was in range.
In the corner of my eye I could see rubble moving, some of the agents were still alive.
I couldn´t do anything to help them though, Killian deflected the first staff with his bare hand and tanked the second one that hit him in the stomach. He grabbed the staff with his hands, slightly hunched over but not thrown back even as his feet dug into the asphalt ground. The electricity seemed to slow him down for a second, but he just shook it off.
His bodyguards sadly didn´t fare any worse either. One had been caught in the back and thrown down, but he was already standing up again.
At my side, Tony let off carefully aimed blasts. He had to be mindful of the survivors on the ground.
"Stark!", Killian screamed, completely enraged.
Not bothering to listen to some insane megalomaniac´s ramblings about how his feelings had gotten hurt that one time 15 years ago, I pulled out my scythe.
There weren´t many humans I was willing to just outright kill like this, but even trying to subdue Killian with non-lethal methods sounded like a bad idea.
A few meters out, I started to swing. By the time I had landed, with quite the impact on my knees might I add, he was already dodging backwards.
Growling I flicked the scythe to my right without taking my eyes from Killian, catching on of the bodyguards by surprise and slashing his chest open. A white flash and the man laid dead on the ground.
The second bodyguard, the one I had hit in the back before, tried to advance on me, but Tony held him off from a distance.
"Tony, stay on the distance! They are strong enough to rip into your suit.", I called over my shoulder.
"Got it, air support. Now if they would just stand still…", Tony grumbled into the comms as he tried to nail down that remaining bodyguard.
"How dare you!", Killian spat out and closed the distance between us immediately to take swing at me.
"All my plans –"
As I blocked and diverted his fist to the side with my staff, blade retracted, both hands on the grip, I could swear I cloud feel hot spit on my face, he was frothing at the mouth that much. Raising the right end of my staff I got Killian across the face with a quick movement of my wrist.
"Shut the fuck up!", I shouted in his face, disgusted.
He screamed something incomprehensible at me and took another wide swing. His sloppy form would have had him out of the fight quick in any other situation, but thanks to Extremis he could make up that fault with pure power and speed.
I only narrowly blocked another punch with my staff. He let off a whole flurry of them, not giving me the time to counter attack or think.
As he pushed me backwards, I formed a strong shield half on reflex when I saw a punch that I wouldn´t be able to block.
The maniac screamed out in pain, his wrist malformed but already healing again.
I took his moment of inattention and swiped at him with my scythe, blade unfolding mid-strike.
Killian was moving backwards immediately, trying to lean out of my reach. It nearly worked, but the upper curve of my blade scratched him through his tattered suit. White light exploded outwards, corresponding to my blood lust.
A second later Killian´s body hit the ground. His empty eyes staring at the sky, now blue again.
Taking a deep breath I turned around to the ongoing fight behind me. I did so right as bodyguard number two stared at me with wide eyes. The reality that he was up against two heroes alone seemed to set in.
His distraction cost him, Tony finally hit him in the back, hard. As he was thrown in my direction, I dispatched him with another swing of my scythe.
For a moment I watched as his blood seeped into the rubble he landed on. To my right I heard the whirling of Tony´s suit as he landed. He stepped up to me and the face plate opened.
"I had him, you didn´t have to kill him.", Tony said slightly disturbed, but not reprimanding.
His way of asking why.
"And then? He explodes himself in custody when Extremis becomes unstable?", I asked rhetorically.
"Anyway, let´s see how the survivors are doing."
Tony grumbled but started scanning the rubble.
In the end there were only two teams with losses, Killian´s and Vanko´s. Sadly, Vanko was both smarter about it and luckier. He hid and killed off the agents one by one as they searched for him. Then he took off with the equipment Hydra had provided to him.
Maybe he would have been caught if there had been a mutant in the group, but the Fury and the agencies had insisted that no civilians would set foot into certain government facilities.
While the operation had been an overwhelming success otherwise with hundreds of Hydra members either killed or apprehended, Vanko´s escape left me itching and a bit paranoid.
Still, Tony and I celebrated over donuts and hamburgers as Ree finally uploaded decades worth of classified data and the internet went up in flames.
I wanted nothing more than to slink off to bed, but then Tony´s phone rang. I tried to ignore the conversation as I buried my head in my arms, half slung over the table, when Tony tapped me on the shoulder. I raised my bleary head.
"Hm?"
Wordlessly he handed me the phone. I took it without thinking and held it to my ear.
"Hm?", I repeated.
"Mr. Ravenstock! We need you in meeting room 5 immediately! We weren´t prepared for all that info leaking now, our timeline didn´t have that for another week! Why wasn´t the department informed? We have to-", came the frazzled but strict voice of the head of our PR-Team.
I cursed, kissing the idea of sleeping any time soon goodbye.
I knew I had forgotten something!
AN: Thank you for reviews, favs & follows! It´s really motivating to see.
Also: Vates Despero; I laughed so hard at that, I didn´t even see that while writing! Definitely need to write in a joke about that later...
