Chapter 28: Old enemies and new enemies
" – win for all of us. In the end, all I can say is this; thank you. From the bottom of my heart," I finished my speech.
When Tony had insisted on a celebration party (and while the idea would have come up eventually, no one was surprised that it was him who brought it up), Pepper was quick to find a fitting venue and caterer.
Lots of space, food and drink.
And we needed that space, I thought to myself as I bowed to the large group of people gathered in front of me. With the SI-employees, many mutants, handful of sorcerers and the Avengers in one place at one time, the room had filled up quickly. I think even Murdock came today.
Just goes to show how many had sunk their blood and tears into getting this done. And it was done, finally.
A mountain of different documents marked with dozens, hundreds of different signatures. The world was slowly but surely following the US's example, MESO was as popular as ever in the States, shaping the law to our favor had been an undertaking with surprisingly little headwind. The perks of saving the President's life.
Sure, I knew saying that it was over would be an oversimplification. Governments lie. All the time. Quite a few would just treat the documents their representatives had signed like easily broken promises.
Still, now we had a basis to fight those governments on.
In the end, I was not a relentless fighter for civil rights. I got tired. This was enough for me. Better, smarter, more qualified people could take over from here. I would support them, of course, but I would not lead them. The genius master-puppeteer role really wasn't for me. This was as far as my Plan™ went.
Now I would concentrate on the superhero part. Which meant planning for Thanos and getting rid of any villains I knew of in the meantime.
Firstly, we would be able to go after international Hydra bases. Finally. Vanko, Bucky. I was still not sure what version of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver I was dealing with.
The possibility of having to deal with a mix of the MCU version and the comic version was giving me headaches. Wanda with her hateboner for anything and anyone related to Tony Stark, indoctrinated by Hydra and I killed her father? I did not need that kind of energy in my life, please and thank you.
And Pietro was a whole-
Thump.
I rubbed my forehead and gave a very bemused Tony an unimpressed glare.
"Au," I said demonstratively. His grin widened. My eyes went to Pepper next to him, silently pleading for her to rain in that man-child.
"Serves you right. You should enjoy the evening. Not spend it sulking in a corner," she lectured me to my horror and Tony's glee.
"Et tu, Brutus?!"
While I did my best expression of heart broken betrayal, which had Tony snickering and Pepper rolling her eyes, Domi joined us. And he had something in his hands.
"Here, I brought you a mocktail," he said and held out a colorful drink.
I immediately abandoned my charade and plugged the glass out of Domi's grip with a comment of "Uuh, pretty.". Taking a sip, it tasted not bad. Mainly sweet and fruity. Pretty much like most mocktails, really. Still, I liked that taste.
While I was busy slurping my drink, Domi sent a triumphant look at Tony that I magnanimously ignored.
"That dress looks great, by the way," I complimented Pepper. She preened and smoothed down the flowy light-blue dress that made her somehow look more relaxed than her usual tightly fitted clothes.
"Thank you! It was a present," she explained with a bright smile. Tony frowned and cocked his head in thought.
"Really? What was it for, did I forget your birthday again?" he asked with a slight air of confusion.
Pepper rolled her eyes again and Domi snorted out a laugh.
"It wasn't from you. Domi bought it for me," she corrected him.
I didn't need to look in the mirror to see the shit-eating grin that stretched across my face as I looked at Domi.
"Did he, now."
Without turning to Tony, I could tell he had similar thoughts and a similar expression. Under our combined stares, Domi started to fidget with embarrassment.
"Domi and Pepper, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-," Tony sang, clearly enjoying teasing the couple. Not wanting them to be too badly embarrassed, I slung my free arm over the billionaire's shoulders and clamped his mouth shut with my hand while not stopping to smile at them.
Domi looked over at the exit with clear longing. Pepper just let out an exasperated sigh.
If this wasn't what friends were for, I didn't know what else there was.
Now that our work with the UN had born fruit, Operation "Fuck-Hydra (Worldwide Edition)" had the green light. And well, it didn't quite work out like it had in cannon. The Avengers were just one team, after all, and taking on all of Hydra's bases would have taken ages.
Giving Hydra any more time to prepare was not the smart thing to do in this situation. And the X-Men had a vested interest in getting rid if them too, so that was a huge help. Which meant that at any time, three different squads were raiding Hydra bases and labs around the world.
You would think it would be an exciting time for me, right?
Wrong.
You see, I was their only sorcerer. Because all other sorcerers were still exclusively dealing with threats from different dimensions. So, I was the only person capable of long-distance teleportation available.
Really, I should have seen it coming.
My life as a taxi.
I wasn't even allowed to interfere if one of the squads needed help. My task was strictly limited to providing immediate transportation, whether it was for a retreat or reinforcements. Ergo, I sat in a big conference room with lots of monitors on the helicarrier for hours at a time. Just sulking.
At least I wasn't alone. It took me a whole day and a half to get Agent Ross to play cards with me. In the beginning I was thrilled, both at seeing a familiar face and at having annoyed him enough to play along.
Then it dawned on me.
It wasn't because I had tricked him into it, he was my babysitter! They chose him because we were familiar with each other, and I had reacted positively to him in the past – my own fucking handler.
…
I couldn't believe it, a fucking babysitter.
Didn't mean I stopped playing cards with him. The number of times that I had something to do was vanishingly low.
I. Was. Bored.
Most of the raids were fairly small. Just a couple of Hydra operatives on the run, hiding out in bases and safe houses they thought were secret. Those unorganized parts of Hydra were a surprise to me. But in the end, I guess it was a natural result that some Agents rather hid out in abandoned Hydra bases to escape what they deemed a sinking ship of an organization.
They weren't wrong, just a little too late.
Chasing after the big and still organized part of Hydra was more like a cat and mouse game. Us having to wait for MESO had given them some time to hide their tracks and desert many of their established bases before the deadline had hit. Luckily, they could only run so far though. Bases did not materialize out of nowhere.
It wasn't long before the Avengers brought back a certain little souvenir from one of the raids in South America. The mind stone, still safely wrapped in my containment. It seemed that Hydra had desperately tried, and failed, to crack my rune scheme.
Heh, sucks to be them.
I felt inordinately pleased at the frustration that certain Hydra scientists expressed in the logs that were also recovered from that same base.
At some point, a couple weeks in, I started to bring some of the more obscure books from the library of Kamar-Taj. What was obscure about it? The languages they were written in.
At the same time, I had Ree observe the ongoings around the surveillance of the room I was in.
The Ancient One had already told me about the suspicious uptick in visitors that wanted to become sorcerers. As if she couldn't weed out the Agents of various countries easily. It wasn't a reach for me to expect some kind of curiosity from my friendly American overlords when I brought mystic reading material into the conference room.
Oh, they were curious, alright. It was hilarious to watch them struggle with translating these ancient texts in often long dead languages. I spent only half the time reading and the other just staring at a page, trying to suppress my grin as Ree fed me live-footage of a poor language expert tearing his hair out over his struggle to translate these texts without any context.
Agent Ross sent me more than one weirded out look. I suppose madly grinning at the same page of an ancient magic text for hours at a time might seem slightly mad. Oh well.
It was in month three that I resorted to bringing art supplies with me. It may have made me look even less professional, but I had only so many fucks to give and I was running real low at that point.
To be fair, it helped fight my rising anxiety.
While we made great progress with chasing down Hydra, there were still glaring gaps. Still no Vanko. Still no Maximoff twins.
And no Bucky, though that didn't worry me nearly as much. There was good chance that he was at least somewhat coherent after Jean's attack and on the run from Hydra. He could handle himself for a bit longer. Less Hydra in the world meant that there were less people who could take advantage of the Wintersoldier. Until then, Bucky was safer in hiding and I had to endure Steve's sad expression each time they came back from another raid and there was no sign of his friend.
It was just another boring day in the office… at least that was what it felt like to me. My stomach rumbled and I got an idea. With a thought, I had Ree connect me to Tony.
"What's up?"
It was hard to tell, because the Ironman suit was fairly well noise isolated so I couldn't hear any battle sounds, but he seemed available enough.
"Hey, I have been thinking- "
"Oh, careful, don't hurt yourself," he interrupted like a smartass.
Don't react Al, you'll just encourage him.
After waiting a couple of seconds, I tried again.
"Anyway. I thought about making kale for dinner this evening, wanna eat together?" I asked, already planning for the ingredients I had yet to buy and excited that I would get to try my grandmother's recipe again.
"Uuh, kale? Are you on a health trip or something?"
Tony sounded decidedly not enthused about my idea. Which was weird because for someone that didn't eat enough, he was always very enthusiastic about eating away at the food I made for myself.
I frowned. Kale? Healthy? There were more unhealthy foods to be sure, but grandma's dish wasn't exactly low on fat…
"We are talking an Oma Anna™ recipe," I simply elaborated. He knew what that meant.
"Oh, ok. Hell yeah then!"
Thought so.
My grandma had grown up in the aftermath of WWII. Food had been scarce, and it shaped the way she treated cooking. Meals were always to be hefty and filling, nothing should be wasted. It maybe wasn't the healthiest way of cooking, but it sure was delicious.
"Hold on, things are getting a bit dicey here. Talk later."
As Tony's voice snapped me out of my ponderings, that had me worrying a bit. If he couldn't talk, the fight must have been a tough one. Tony Stark was very hard to shut up.
Therefore, I left my little corner of the room to walk over to the monitors. Now that I was paying attention, the manned command desk was in a bit more of a hustle than usual. I had not even located the right monitor when Ross appeared next to me.
"We need you to provide support to the Avenger unit," he ordered swiftly, his tone made it sound quite serious.
I blinked at him, stumped for a moment at his urgency.
"Sure," I replied when I caught myself. "Just tell me who and where."
"You misunderstand. I want you to provide support. We have reports that there might be a mystical threat on location."
Ah, shit. That is not good.
"Where?"
"Sokovia."
Oh. Oh no. Wait, what? So, was the Scarlet Witch not a mutant?
"And he may not have been spotted yet, but Vanko's trails also lead to this base, which is why we doubled the raid unit's size from the get-go. You fought him before, they need you there."
Ah, double shit.
Silently cursing in my head, I finally got a good look at the monitors showing the Sokovia raid. With a sigh (I might have been bored but that did not mean that I wanted to deal with Scarlet Witch, Vanko and Quicksilver in one fight), I decided my standard protocol would be best.
First, my loyal compatriot Hades went up and then I portaled to a somewhat distant corner of the area. I was behind a hill and some forest, fairly well hidden.
I wanted to try to take Quicksilver out first and that would work best if he didn't know I was there. I would have to surprise him. He would be the hardest to deal with if I didn't get the drop on him.
I just didn't have a good counter for his speed. He couldn't really hurt me either, as long as I was careful. A bit of hovering and a vigilant use of barriers and he couldn't touch me. Still didn't mean I wanted him running around freely. Else he would just run with his sister when the fight turned against them, like he had in cannon.
With that in mind, I flew across the base and surveyed the fighting below me. The skies were clear, only the Ironman suit occasionally went above the roof height of the base. Hulk was easily spotted, he was tearing through walls and buildings in the east corner, largely unbothered by the insistent gunfire of Hydra operatives.
You would think they would learn that their guns had no hope of doing any damage to the big green bean. But nope. They were still firing.
I had no idea where the spy twins were, somewhere in the building, sure, but who knew what they were doing.
Thor wasn't there. He participated when he was on earth, but Odin kept him fairly busy, so he often didn't have the time.
What surprised me was the ongoing fight on the rooftops. I didn't know how I had missed that on the monitor, but maybe I hadn't been looking at the right perspective.
Wanda was facing off against Steve and Tony. She had nowhere to run but she didn't look like she had been driven into a corner. It wasn't hard to guess why.
She was able to handle both Cap's and Tony's attacks effortlessly, countering the shield throws and energy blasts while keeping both heroes at a distance.
Obviously, Hydra had trained her for combat, and they trained her well. Her control over her powers was a lot more advanced than it should have been at this point in time. Not quite at Dr. Strange 2 levels but way better than even in Infinity War.
Not good. Not good at all.
I couldn't tell if she was wearing a red coat or if she was merely surrounded by so much chaos magic that the color just didn't show through anymore.
Really, really not good.
Shoving down the panic that wanted to take over my mind, I set Ree on the task of searching for Pietro. Wanda's power-up may have been bad news but I was confident that I could take her and neither Tony nor Steve in danger at the moment.
They both were wearing some prototype armor, something that had been largely Tony's project, ages ago when I introduced him to runes. The runes wouldn't protect them forever, not to mention that they were mostly geared towards shock absorption and not magic defense, but it would dampen Wanda's attacks. Her mind manipulation would only work in close proximity, something she couldn't risk with a much stronger close quarter fighter like Steve around.
Ergo, priorities.
Getting a hold of Pietro was easier said than done. Ree informed me of a mutant rapidly changing position, flitting all over the map and I settled in for a long and weird chase.
I caught a lucky break when Pietro decided to take on Hawkeye who had been on a hill overlooking the base. Of course, he was playing with the poor man, taunting him with his speed.
I watched as Quicksilver flitted around Hawkeye, tapping him on the shoulder, making him miss shots and swings at this seemingly invisible attacker.
His mistake came when he wanted to insult the hero. Pietro came to a standstill a few meters away from an enraged and annoyed Hawkeye, ready to taunt him. He wasn't even halfway through whatever clever quip he had come up with when I barreled into his arm at full speed and slapped my special handcuffs on him. He fell unconscious immediately.
I righted myself and let out a whoop of triumph.
"Got ya, you sneaky fucker!" I exclaimed with a vindictive grin as I walked over to my teammate, my hands held high.
…
You try flying back and forth over that stupid base for minutes on end in the middle of a fight and not feel stupid about it.
Hawkeye lowered his bow and gave me serious nod and held a hand up in my direction.
"Good work."
I gave him a nod back and high-fived him.
While Hawkeye went over to secure Pietro, I flew back to the rooftop fight.
Time for the main event.
And oh boy, did I not anticipate the scale of said main event. I had not made it halfway when the side of the roof Cap and Tony were on exploded.
I increased my speed.
"Stark!" a voice bellowed from the smoking wreck of a roof, piercing the sudden silence after the collapse.
"Face me!"
Oh, great. What was this, the annual meeting of the Coalition Against Tony Stark?
AN:
This chapter fought me. So. Much.
Had to take so many inspo breaks. At first, I wanted to write more but then I went on another inspiration break and snuggled with my cat. She peed on me. I took that as a sign to just post the chapter. -_- Love ya too, bud.
Can you spot the part where I was really hungry? :P Definitely visiting my grandma soon. S-tier food, I'm telling you.
Anyway, what did ya think?
