Tony gave Romanov a boost to get out past the stuck blast shutter. The room had tipped sideways – the fight below them had taken out at least one important support pillar, and although several of the builders had complained that Tony and Pepper had overengineered the building, everything had limits. Hopefully some of that 'overengineering' would keep the floor from falling out of the building entirely, but Tony didn't feel like risking it, and neither did Romanov.
The problem was, that not all of the safety features had been installed or tested yet. Normally, there would have been an emergency release switch for the shutters, but as it was, it hadn't been wired in. Tony would be complaining about that to the contractors, by the way. The wiring on this floor was supposed to be done.
Tony, in turn, activated the repulsors on his boots – one of the few armor pieces he had after Danny had more or less disassembled him – and grabbed the top of the shutter before swinging himself over. He did it with a lot less grace than Natasha and clipped his knee on the way over.
"Ow!" He stabilized himself. "Well. Let's get going! Can't get the scepter, might as well do the shields!"
Of course, Romanov was already way ahead of him. They jogged out into the corridor, and immediately ran into half a dozen men with guns.
So. This is where Loki's mooks wound up. He'd been wondering.
Romanov threw the back of shield generators back at him. Which – first off, he could hold his own in a fight without armor, so, rude, secondly—
Romanov had already taken out three of the six men. The fifth gasped and passed out apropos of nothing. Tony punched the sixth and final one in the face, hard, with his still-gauntleted hand.
"Stark, Gray, you hearing me?"
"Bit busy!" screamed Valerie Gray in his ear.
"Uh, yeah, what's up? Thought you were staying out of this fight, Fury."
"We have a missile headed straight for the city."
"I'm sorry, it sounded like you just said we had a missile headed for the city, but I know, I know you couldn't have—"
"It's nuclear and Phase Two, no more than ten minutes out, taking the storm into account."
"A nuke? A nuke?"
"I don't—JARVIS-?"
"Sorry, sir, the Mark VI is still not operational."
"I don't have a useable suit. Valerie, can your suit push a missile off course?"
"Wh—No! I can't even carry three extra people on my board. I- Holy crap!"
"I'm sorry," said Danny Fenton, "did you say nuke?"
.
"It's nuclear and Phase Two, no more than ten minutes out, taking the storm into account."
"He did say nuke, didn't he?" asked Sam as the conversation continued.
"Yep," said Jazz. "Maybe if we take off, we could- Could we ram it?"
"What would that do? Set it off early? Maybe my jetpack—"
"Wh—No! I can't even carry three extra people on my board. I- Holy crap!"
"I'm sorry," said Danny, "did you say nuke?"
.
In the middle of evacuating the subway, Steve froze. This fight had been going on for less than half an hour. Who the hell had decided to use nukes?
He thumbed the control on his comm, intending to demand a repeat, but someone else beat him to it.
"I'm sorry," said Danny Fenton, "did you say nuke?"
.
"A bit busy!" shouted Valerie, apropos of apparently nothing in the middle of the tag-team between them and Tucker.
She must have some form of communicator. A Fenton Phone, maybe? Or something built into her suit? It didn't matter to Danny, honestly, he was busy, too. Tucker kept trying to use the mind control aspect of his staff on him, and although Danny was handily shrugging it off with his newfound passionate dislike of mind control and intense awareness of the magic mind control staff he was holding, it was still distracting.
"A nuke? A nuke?"
Not so distracting that he couldn't hear that, though. Surely, no one was aiming a nuke at the city now. Right? Because that would be crazy. The portal was closed. Heck, both of the portals were closed, even if the GIW had a nuke (which in itself would be nuts, those guys were incredibly incompetent).
Crazy enough that even Tucker stopped what he was doing and turned to Valerie, slack-jawed.
Which made a great opening for Danny to yank the staff out of his hands. Tucker wobbled for a second, still wide-eyed, then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled. Danny caught him before he could fall off the platform he'd been standing on. Stark's roof was a mess, and the sand sifting down out of the sky was only making it worse.
He put Tucker in the recovery position and made sure he was still breathing – he was – then turned his attention to Valerie. In his experience, overshadowing-related fatigue rarely killed people, so hopefully past-life-takeover fatigue wouldn't either. Nukes were another story.
"Wh—No! I can't even carry three extra people on my board. I—" Valerie startled badly, having failed to notice Danny getting closer. "Holy crap!"
"I'm sorry," said Danny, trying to be polite, "did you say nuke?" He looked up at Valerie. "Can you turn that to speaker or something?"
Valerie retracted her helmet, and pulled a Fenton Phone from her ear, turning the volume all the way up.
"Danny, is that you?" asked Jazz.
"I'm not under mind control anymore. Is there really a nuke coming?"
"You and Thor are our only fliers, kid." Danny wasn't sure if that was Tony Stark or Captain America. "Can you move it?"
"I—Probably?" He could bench a school bus, and a nuke would probably be launched from a sub or a plane, neither of which were going to be lugging around school-bus-sized armaments. "But where would I put it? How long do I have to move it? Will it only go off with impact, or-?"
"Less than ten minutes."
Oh.
"Maybe Tucker—"
"Wha?" asked Tucker, sitting up. He made an attempt to stand up, then sat right back down.
"Could you get rid of a nuke?" asked Danny, vaguely aware of a parallel conversation ("Has anyone spoken to Thor?" – "I think he burned out his comm.") going on through the Fenton Phones. "If I gave you back the staff." He even held it out to Tucker, as inadvisable as that was.
Tucker reached out, touched it with the very tip of his finger, and pulled back, the motion violently sharp. His nose started bleeding.
"No," he said. "Out of power. I'm." He waved at himself. "Notice how I wasn't doing stuff like in Amity? A sandstorm was all… A nuke? What if you made it intangible?"
"I don't know. That isn't exactly something I've tested." He waved his hands. "I've got to be touching the thing to make intangible. Explosions, explosions aren't all one thing." He knew that from experience.
"Maybe you could make the city intangible," suggested Valerie, "and the blast would just miss."
"Val," said Danny, strained, "I don't think I could even make this building intangible all at once."
"The shields," said his mother, breathlessly. "You could trap it in a shield. One of the modified ones."
"It's one of their original uses!" added his father. "Radiation barriers! Of course, we were worried about spectral radiation, but it wouldn't be a Fentonworks product if we didn't go above and beyond!"
"Okay," said Danny. "Okay." He duplicated himself. Once. Twice. Three times. Eight wasn't a stable number for him, but he wasn't going to try to fight. "I'm getting the ghosts." If all else failed, maybe their natural shields could contain the nuke. "What do we need to set up the shields?"
"Romanov and I have the shields. We're trying to get up to where you are, but—"
"Say no more." A duplicate angled downwards, back through the building.
"You'll need to get the missile in the right location as well. Right over Stark Tower, as close to where the portal was as possible," said Mom. "That's what our calculations are for, and we don't have time to rerun them."
"Okay, and other setup?"
"We need Selvig," said Tucker, pointing back toward the penthouse. "I think he shut himself in a closet—"
"I'll get him," said Valerie.
"What else?" Danny asked Tucker.
.
Thor and Skulker, flying just outside the tower, obviously looking for Loki, were the first ones he found.
"Where is Lo—" started Thor.
"Later. For now, I need you to help me steer a nuke."
"Pardon?" said Thor.
"Why is there a nuke?" asked Skulker.
"I'll explain on the way." Well. He'd try. He was as clueless about why there was a nuke as they were.
.
Black Widow and Tony Stark weren't too far away from the lab they'd fought in.
"Ready to go up?" he asked, not waiting for a response before grabbing their elbows and flying straight up through the floor.
"Oh, that's weird," said Stark, stumbling a little when Danny set him down next to Tucker. He got right to work, taking the bag from Black Widow and pulling out a set of shield generators.
Danny's duplicate was kneeling between Tucker and Selvig, helping him with splicing in cables, and Stark and Widow both did a very obvious double take when they noticed.
"Nice trick," muttered Tony.
"Yeah," said the other duplicate, as it fused with the other one to be more stable, but kept the extra arms. "I can't do it while I'm human, though."
Black Widow leaned back on her left leg. "Lucky us."
.
"Great One!" exclaimed Frostbite, waving enthusiastically as he pulled a wicked spear out of the body of a space whale. "You've thrown off your compulsion!"
"Yep! But someone lobbed a superweapon at us and it'll hit in five minutes!" He gestured in the general direction the nuke was coming from. "Help?"
Frostbite's smile fell off his face entirely. So did those of all the other nearby yetis. "They what?"
.
Jazz felt useless. She wasn't fighting the aliens, or evacuating people, or working on the shields. All she could do from here was direct communications. She knew that was important, vitally important, but it sort of felt pale and weak knowing that a nuclear bomb was racing straight towards Stark Tower.
Which was where her little brother was.
And Tucker.
And Valerie.
And about half of the 'Avengers.'
And none of that even mattered, really, because all of Manhattan, if not all of New York City could be flattened by this thing. She was sure the Ops Center was in range, anyway.
"Jazz," said Sam. "Look!"
She jerked her head up, looking away from the controls and out the main window. The day had started out bright and sunny, but between the smoke, the sandstorm, and possibly whatever Thor had done, the city now looked quite dark. Against that dark background moved dozens of motes of light, converging on Stark Tower, rising up from shadowy streets or corpses of defeated alien whales.
And, like a burning arrow, the missile knifed across the sky.
.
"We're not going to get it done fast enough," said Selvig.
"Don't say that," said Tucker. "Don't say that."
Tony hated to admit it, but Selvig was probably right. They'd only managed to complete the wiring and setting changes on one of the generators, and the missile was—
"Please," said Loki.
Black Widow aimed an incredibly vicious kick directly at his crotch, but it passed through him, like he was smoke.
Another Loki leaned over Danny, reaching towards the unfinished portal generators. The portal generators shimmered and changed, becoming identical to the one they'd modified.
"An illusion—" started Tucker.
"The best lies are those you can make true." Loki's grin was sharp. "They will last only for a few minutes. I have no intention of trying my might against this nuclear missile of yours." He raised his hand, showing off a Fenton Phone. So. That's where Thor's had gotten to. "You can trust me on this, at least."
.
Thor saw the tower, and dropped his hand, letting Mjolnir pull him away from the weapon. He had done his part, pushing it up, to where the portal had once been. Now it was the ghosts' task to take it the rest of the way.
.
Steve stopped and looked up, shading his eyes against the sky with one hand while the other snapped out to catch his shield. The missile was clear and visible, leaving a distinct trail of exhaust.
He closed his eyes and started reciting a prayer.
.
(It wasn't as if the Hulk could be killed by something like a nuclear bomb, anyway. Still, something made him look up. Something made him hold the girl he'd just saved from a chitauri warrior just a little bit closer.)
.
"Now!" screamed Maddie.
Tucker flipped the switch.
.
Loki was at his limits, magically, but if he couldn't push himself now, when could he? He raised his hand, and a thin layer of ice grew over them. A thin barrier, if he understood the nature of this weapon correctly, but a barrier nonetheless.
.
Above and around Stark Tower, the ghosts raised their hands. Shields formed, layers upon layers of them, intricate and interlocking; some ghosts floated outside them, others were wedged between layers, unable to be too far from the shields they were making without losing them. The innermost ghosts were six of Danny's duplicates, orbiting the missile, which, for a split second, hung suspended in the perfect center of the shield.
Then it hit the other side.
Everything went white.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Danny pried his eyes open. The sky was blurry and greenish, and, for a moment, he panicked, convinced that he'd died all the way and was now in the Ghost Zone. But his vision cleared, and it soon became obvious he was looking at a sky that was blue, if very smoky and full of green… things. Shiny little motes of ectoplasm.
He was also lying in a very uncomfortable position. There was stuff on him. And under him. All around him, actually.
He sat up, pushing the remains of a couple shield generators and what looked like a good half of Loki's portal device off himself.
This was… a good sign. If the shields hadn't worked, all this stuff would've been vaporized. Probably. Danny supposed that it could've just stopped the blast, but not the radiation.
… Danny didn't feel irradiated, but he was probably not the best judge for that kind of thing. He wondered who would be a good judge. The Hulk, maybe?
Dr. Selvig was on the ground next to him, unconscious and bruised but alive. Danny picked some of the debris off him, but otherwise left him there. He didn't want to hurt him more if it turned out he had a broken neck or something like that.
There was a clatter, and Danny jumped, ready to fight again, but it was just Cujo in puppy form, carrying both stupid mind control staffs. Staves? He pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. Why were there two of these things?
"Good boy," said Danny, taking the… scepters. There. That was one with an unambiguous plural. "I'll have to play a real game of fetch with you sometime soon, okay?"
Cujo wagged his tail and Danny petted him.
"Where's everyone else, though?" It was possible they'd gotten blasted over the edge, which Danny didn't really want to think about, but there was also a lot of trash on the roof – remnants of Stark's landing pad and armor system, the portal and shield equipment, random chitauri junk, things from the penthouse – so they could just be hidden.
Cujo yipped and bounced over to where the warped panels of Stark's landing platform jutted up from the roof and, yep, there was some red hair. Black Widow was still alive. Valerie wasn't far off. Still in her suit, she blended into Stark's décor. He couldn't tell how hurt she was – he didn't want to take off her suit or even her helmet for the same reason he didn't want to move Dr. Selvig or Black Widow and couldn't phase through it.
Which left Tucker and Tony Stark.
And Loki.
"Danny."
Well, think of the devil… "Loki," said Danny, suddenly hyperaware of the scepters he was carrying.
Loki, leaning against the side of the portal device casing, looked rather worse for wear. His clothing was singed, and strange blue splotches marred his skin along with massive bags under his eyes.
"Were you using an illusion to make yourself look better before?" he asked.
Loki waved a lazy hand. "Others do as much with paints and powders. Why should I not use my natural gifts to do the same? Stark and the boy are over there, by the by."
He pointed toward the penthouse with his chin, and Danny hurried over. They were resting just inside where the big, full-length windows should have been. It looked like Stark had thrown himself over Tucker to shield him… Or maybe that was just the blast. Either way, he had a lot of painful-looking burns on his back, and the remaining parts of his armor looked scorched. Maybe he'd been hit by whatever had singed Loki?
After a few minutes of dithering, he did move Stark, because he was lying right on top of Tucker, who seemed to be having some trouble breathing. He also pulled Tucker's Fenton Phone out of his ear, but it was broken. Whether that was because of something he did while he was Duulaman, or if escaping radiation – the electromagnetic pulse – from the nuke wiped it out, Danny couldn't tell, but the inside was all burnt.
But everyone was alive. At least, everyone who was up here was alive. Alive-ish, in his personal case. He walked back out, and, oh, the green motes in the sky—All of those shields must have put enough ectoplasm into the air that it was condensing out as blob ghosts. All the death today (enough that Danny could feel it on his skin) probably was helping with that, too. New York was going to have a complicated ghost problem in the near future.
He should probably feel guilty about that, but he'd tried to keep this fight out of New York, tried to put it somewhere unpopulated, but…
"So," he said, sitting down next to Loki. The Tesseract cube sat unprotected on the ground only a meter or so from his feet. It still reminded him of a blue raspberry ice pop, and he still had that weird impulse to lick it, but yeah. No. He wasn't touching that at all. "Looks like you and Barton were wrong about them not shooting a nuclear missile at a big city." He'd been wrong, too, but again, he'd been trying to put the portal somewhere else.
"I am not responsible for the foolish decisions of someone else's government, only my own."
"And how responsible for your own decisions have you been, lately?" asked Danny.
Loki didn't answer, instead choosing to look up at the sky. Danny followed his gaze. There were some ghosts there that weren't blobs. He thought he recognized Pandora coming closer, although she was a long way off.
Danny sighed. "How'd you get up here so fast, anyway?"
"Well. We did our very best to forget it, but this building does have more than one set of elevators."
That was—Well, it was true, wasn't it? There was more than one elevator and—Danny tried to swallow his laughter. It didn't work. Honestly, it wasn't even that funny, but he couldn't stop laughing.
"A nuclear bomb was about to drop on us," he gasped, "and you took the elevator?"
"Would you have preferred that I took the stairs?"
Danny laughed harder.