Okay, so. Clint had a concussion. A nasty concussion. Not the worst he'd ever gotten, but he was impaired. Probably wouldn't be hitting any bullseyes in the next few hours, that was for sure.
However, he wasn't nearly as impaired as he was letting his current captors believe, thank God.
(No, wait, a god was the reason he was concussed in the first place. Screw god.)
At least, that had been his initial impression. When one of his teenage captors disappeared in a whirl of sand and the other two had started hitting buttons that turned the… Yeah, okay, he didn't know what he was in, but he'd seen brick. He was pretty sure that things with brick in them weren't supposed to turn into a blimp. Or a jet. Since the two remaining children (who had tied him up surprisingly well) were arguing about turning it into a jet.
Had Barton seen some weird stuff in his time? Yes. Did he frequently work from an aircraft carrier that also flew? Yes. Had he just spent the last several days mind-controlled by a Norse deity alongside a kid who was fifty percent dead? Yes. Was he, Clint Barton, also incredibly strange? Yes. Yes, he most certainly was.
But a guy had to draw the line somewhere. He was just debating if he should draw the line before or after the weirdly competent children simultaneously being wizards and mechanical geniuses.
… Or, now that he was starting to reorient himself, they were just using the Fentons' gear. Where were the Doctors Fenton anyway?
.
Maddie Fenton squinted at her phone. "Jack, honey," she said, with the kind of venomous sweetness she generally reserved for Vlad Masters and Pamela Manson, "I think we've been had."
Jack with an equally uncharacteristic grimness surveyed the mostly empty street. "I think you're right."
"There's been another report," said Maddie, still squinting. She wished she remembered how to make the words on the phone bigger. "Park and Amity."
Jack started for the GAV. "Park Place? Or Park Row?"
"Park Row is in another city, dear."
"I was sure there was a Park Row here as well!"
"Alright, and which Amity is it? Or did you mean A. Mitty?"
"You're the only one who calls Alfred Mitty Boulevard that, dear." Maddie sighed. "I suppose we'll just have to check them out one by one."
"Ha! Well, with the Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle, that'll be a snap!"
.
The most surprising thing about all of this, mused Danny, was that his parents had yet to add to the chaos. Uncharacteristic of them, really.
He phased a prone SHIELD agent's body armor into the sidewalk and pivoted to punch another in the face, bypassing their helmet and face-shield. Come to think of it, were the ones wearing armor and combat gear agents, or were those just the ones in suits? Not that it particularly mattered. His job right now was just to keep anyone from getting killed. A task that would get exponentially harder once SHIELD's backup got here.
"Why," he asked Loki, when the rhythm of the fight allowed it, "are we still here?"
Yes, technically the answer was 'we haven't gotten Barton's signal yet' and, yes, he knew the real answer was probably 'self-sabotage' of one kind or another, but keeping everyone alive was a strain, if not on his abilities, then on his focus and attention. There was Loki, Loki's various minions, SHIELD, the police, random people still inside the nearby building – It was a wonder the GIW hadn't shown up, and Valerie and his parents would be here before too much longer. Not to mention—
"Phantom!"
There was a slight pause in the gunfire.
Danny looked up to see Valerie Gray, Iron Man a growing red streak in the sky behind her. His secret identity had been a very secondary concern since Loki snatched him, a lost cause, really, considering this fight, but the only way Valerie would have gotten the memo this fast was if someone told her.
… Maybe Danny would pretend to be mind-controlled a little longer than strictly necessary, for the purpose of punching a certain few SHIELD personnel. Namely, Fury and Coulson. He felt like he deserved it. As a treat.
"Hi, Red?" tried Danny, knowing that he was just trying to delay the inevitable.
"What," demanded Valerie, calling up her biggest gun, "do you think you're doing?"
"We need to leave, now," said Danny.
Loki grinned. "But the fun's just getting started!" He multiplied himself, which was the 'we're leaving' signal, and Danny disappeared.
Valerie fired the gun, which was honestly really unfriendly of her. What had SHIELD been telling her?
Finding the real Loki was easy. Danny had experience at this point, and a touch was all it took to make him invisible and intangible, too.
"Do you think Barton's gotten what we need?" asked Loki, airily.
"I think Barton's been caught," said Danny, flatly. "If we came to draw out my parents, it hasn't worked, and the only reason I can think of why it wouldn't work is if they got distracted by something else."
"Like Barton breaking in prematurely."
"Yeah."
"Pity. I suppose we'll have to—"
And this is where Danny was revealed as just as self-sabotaging as Loki, because he had neglected to remember that Valerie's equipment could pick him up while invisible. Unfortunately, the fact that he did know that combined with his sharp reflexes meant that he was able to shield himself and Loki from the blast.
"Oi! Red riding hood, can you see them in all this?"
"What did you just call me?"
And there was Iron Man. Lovely.
"Red, can you point me at them or not?"
"Come on," said Danny, tugging on Loki's elbow.
"But this is entertaining."
"It'll be a lot less entertaining when your brother and Captain America get here."
"Oh, very well. We'll go. To Fentonworks."
"Oh, come on—"
The sandstorm blindsided them, literally and figuratively, the heat of cutting through Danny despite his intangibility.
"WHEN I FIND LANCE THUNDER," shouted Tucker, voice supernaturally loud and deep, "I'M GOING TO KILL HIM. HE KNOWS HOW MANY DIFFERENT PARK AND AMITYS THERE ARE!"
Ah. Heck. Duulaman. Why did Tucker have Duulaman's scepter? Were they trying to solve mind control with different mind control? That was a terrible idea.
… But admittedly about on par with Danny's current plan. Darn it. There really weren't a lot of better options out there.
"Oh," said Loki, "I didn't know there were any humans who still practiced the arcane arts!"
"Uh huh," said Danny, pulling on his core to cool the air around them and gritting his teeth. "That's Tucker for you. This is going to be fun."
"And by fun you mean…?"
"Absolutely miserable. You'd better hope you're as good at magic as you think you are."
"He hasn't seen us yet."
Sand swirled around them and deposited them on top of a sand dune directly in the middle of the Park and Amity crossing. A few of the SHIELD vans had turned to stone, and others were slowly dissolving into sand.
Tucker was still, mostly, in his normal clothes, but gold bangles were wrapping themselves around his right arm and his beret was looking awfully Nemes-like. His eyes glittered red, accentuated by kohl.
The scarab jewel on the end of the scepter flashed, and Danny felt a tug on his mind.
.
"How dare you," hissed Loki, reasserting his control of Phantom with a twist of his staff.
"How dare you," snapped the dark-skinned boy. "He's mine. He was mine first, and you have no right to him!"
"I have every right! I am a god, you pathetic sorcerer!" Loki called on his magic, and on Phantom's blanketing the sand with ice.
"You?" sneered the boy, tilting his chin up. "You think you are a god? I am Nebmaatre Djedamun, called Duulaman! I am the Son of Ra! The Son of the Sun! I have lived and walked through the Duat and returned, as Osiris! Who are you, foreigner, to take what is mine?"
The ice beneath Loki began to steam, and the sun burned down from directly overhead, a position it should not be in under any circumstances at this latitude on Earth.
So. That was how it was going to be, was it?
"I am Loki Laufeyson, god of mischief and rightful king of Asgard." He bared his teeth and called up his armor, scepter growing into a full staff, the false sand desert morphing into an equally false vista of ice. "Let's see if you're worth my time. Human."
.
It turned out that extended desert-based trauma and resultant obsessive sand-proofing of technology was good for something. That something was freak sandstorms caused by strangely glow-y teenagers. Who knew. Not Tony, that was for sure.
"Hey, Red, you okay?"
"I'm fine," hissed the girl – and Tony really had to have words about whoever was setting SHIELD policy regarding the recruitment of teenagers, planetary threat or not – doing something that had her hoverboard zooming back to her, shedding sand as it went.
"Great," said Tony, "you know this new guy?"
Red was silent, and Tony wished he could see her face through the tinted visor of her suit. "I know the kid, not the ghost possessing him. I've never seen any of them use sand like this before." She looked up. "Or the sun."
Yeah, whatever was going on with the sky was throwing Tony for a loop. Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, yadda, yadda, yadda, like he hadn't heard that spewed in his direction a few hundred times. Thor made him believe it a little more, though. There had to be some explanation behind all the freaky stuff he could do.
The sand was abruptly replaced by a blizzard, and Tony pulled the girl to the roof of one of the buildings just in time for the river to melt into a gleaming river, its banks thick with reeds and flowers. The river rose out of its bed, sporting fangs and scales, eyes sharply green. Sand sizzled against its clawed feet and the plants wilted and burned. The good thing was, there didn't seem to be any actual people down there, beyond Loki, Fenton, and the new kid.
The possessed new kid. More mind control. Just what they needed.
"Any way to un-possess someone?"
"Shoot them with one of these," said Red, lifting a gun Tony was pretty sure she hadn't had before. He had no idea where she had gotten it from. Neat.
He reached for it.
"Nuh uh," said Red. "This stays with me."
"Okay, little Red, I don't know if you've noticed—"
"Here's how this's gonna go," Red interrupted him. "I'm going to go take down Phantom while those two are distracted with each other. You cover me. Once I've got Phantom, I'll shoot the ghost in Tucker out, and you and SHIELD have a clean shot at Lorry or whatever."
"And I'll be way better at covering you if I have a weapon that can actually do damage to these guys."
"I don't have time to argue with a stupid billionaire—"
The building they were standing on turned into a sphinx, and moved, dumping them at its feet. It leaned close and growled, eyes glowing. Both Tony and Red fired at it, their weapons leaving craters on its face. It only made it flinch.
Then lightning cleaved the sky.
"It's about time!" shouted Tony, ignoring Jarvis's comment about the rising temperature of the sand for the moment.
Thor jumped up on the rubble that had been the sphinx and shrugged. "The directions were very confusing, and there is strange sorcery on this place!"
"No kidding! Where's capsicle?"
"Captain Rogers was taking the plane with the Widow!"
Next to him, Red started to move again. "You're not a ghost," she said.
"Yeah, he's an alien, get with the program. Are you sure you can take care of Fenton?"
If Tony hadn't been looking for it, he wouldn't have caught the split-second hesitation.
"I've fought him before," said Red.
That didn't mean anything by itself. Tony had frequently fought gravity, the ground, and chemistry during pre-horrible-kidnapping benders. That didn't mean he'd ever had any chance of winning. Still, he supposed they had to take it. There weren't any other options.
"Come on, Red, you know I was always holding back."
Feeling like he was in a cheap horror movie, Tony looked to the right to see Danny Fenton.
.
Delight was almost certainly the wrong emotion to be experiencing at the moment, but Danny wasn't exactly in what he'd describe as a proper state of mind. Besides, Tucker's giant lens was really cool. Danny hadn't known that a lens made out of illusions could focus light like that, but it was logical enough. Most illusions probably were just bending light, at their base. Although why he was going through the steps of creating a false sun, the fake lens, and aiming, Danny didn't know. Wouldn't it be easier to just create lasers or something like that to begin with?
"There is something wrong with the people on this planet," hissed Loki, ripping the lens to shreds before it could melt through Danny's ice shield.
"Well, yeah," said Danny. "But I'm not sure you can generalize what's wrong with Tucker to the rest of the planet." He leaned as heavily into his ice powers as he dared in human form, which was actually quite far, and used telekinesis to bat away a pair of animate statues.
Arctic cold and equatorial heat pushed together in the air, swirling into clouds. Lightning forked from the sky. Danny caught a bolt and swung it to the side, glassing the sand under him.
Tucker was looking up at the sky, teeth barred. "Who dares strike against my people?"
Oh, Tucker really was a great friend. But fighting Thor really wasn't a good idea—Assuming the lightning was Thor arriving, and not a random weather phenomenon caused by three people with superpowers playing with the laws of physics.
Good distraction, though.
Danny appreciated what Tucker was—Well. What he assumed Tucker was trying to do, underneath the past life personality takeover. Rescue him, and all. But Danny did have his orders.
Loki's mind control and Tucker's were different. Loki's was focused and direct, while Tucker's diffused like dust on the air, subtle but insistent. Loki's staff was of this world, powered by something native to this part of the universe. Duulaman's was laced with ghost magic. Loki's drew on something primal, something that brushed at some fundamental force Danny could only guess at. Duulaman's control was woven, carefully, from ancient spells layered on one another like steel folded over and over.
Tucker's pull on Danny's mind wasn't negligible, but Loki's control of Danny was stronger.
Also, this couldn't possibly be healthy for Tucker.
"Tucker!" shouted Danny, over the howling wind. "Snap out of it! Don't let Duulaman make you do this!"
The expression on Tucker's face was offended and incredulous. Danny would have liked to laugh but the fate of the world was at stake here.
"That's what I want to say to you, idiot!"
"Hey, I'm not doing this willingly! Why do you even have that? You know what it does to you!"
"Forgive me for wanting to get the big guns when my best friend is shanghaied to lead an alien invasion!"
"Don't be ridiculous, I'm not leading it, that's all him!" He gestured behind him in Loki's general direction.
Oh, and there was Thor. And Iron Man. And Val. Oh, they really did have to get out of here. Danny didn't think he could handle all this while still in human form. They looked like they were having some sort of planning session over by the sphinx, but he didn't think that would last all that long. On the other hand, it looked like Loki was sneaking up on them, so that was about to become very interesting.
The sensation Danny was coming to associate with Duulaman's magic spiked as Tucker tightened his grip on the staff. "His arrow minion shot Jazz."
Danny froze. "Is she okay?"
"She's not bleeding to death, if that's what you mean," said Tucker.
Danny expanded the list of SHIELD agents he wanted to hit to include Barton. He probably wouldn't hit him, given the mind control, but he wanted to.
"Look," said Danny. "I do have a plan." One that was, admittedly, falling apart rapidly.
"Which you haven't told us beyond trying to use us for shopping!"
The influence of Tucker's magic on Danny wasn't as strong as Loki's. But that didn't mean it was nothing.
Danny gritted his teeth. "That's because the stuff wasn't for me to use, it's for you."
And then Tucker was hit by one of Iron Man's repulsor bursts.
.
In Tony's defense, he still wasn't used to the illusion thing, and he wasn't the only one who had fallen for the fake Fenton. He hadn't meant to hit the kid with the staff, and given a few minutes out of battle, he'd probably feel bad about it.
He also hadn't realized how angry Fenton would get about it.
The boy's body flickered and his eyes started to glow with a radioactive light even as the rest of him seemed to fade into shadow. The air got cold and heavy.
And then the quinjet arrived, laying down cover fire between Phantom and Tony. The feeling vanished as Fenton threw up a shield, protecting himself and Loki.
And then, because the day just had to get weirder, a blimp with Jack Fenton's face on it showed up and started shooting at the quinjet.
And then an absolute monstrosity of a vehicle, an unholy cross between an RV and a tank, barreled over the top of a nearby dune and started blasting everyone.
Between defending himself and trying to keep the poor unconscious kid from getting shot again, Tony was just barely able to see Phantom grab Loki's arm and phase into the ground. What he wouldn't give to be able to get out of stupid situations so easily.
Finally, proving that the only god of this world or the next was Murphy, a green-tinged energy bolt went wide, soaring over the sand, the ice, and several streets' worth of intact buildings to ping off the bottom of the helicarrier and somehow short out all the camouflage panels.
The fighting stopped as the blimp turned into a jet and zoomed – complete with sound effect – away, and the Fentons seemed to realize who they were firing at.
A blond civilian Tony had somehow missed in the chaos staggered into view, followed by a bedraggled cameraman. "Yes!" he said, hands raised in jubilation. "Yes! Now this is some freak weather, baby! Do you know how long it's been since I've been able to report on the weather? This is the best day I've had all week!"
Before Tony had any time to process that, Maddie Fenton got out of the Monstrosity (which was quickly becoming capitalized in Tony's head), calmly walked over, and slapped the man across the face. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down to her level. "Do you have any idea how many Parks and Amitys there are in this town?"
