Ch. 4: Stormbringer Pt. 3

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Trunks and Thor were transported directly into a fervent battle. As the rainbow lights faded, Trunks heard the clang of metal and grunts of action. He got a bearing of his surroundings quickly.

Trunks was in a gilded, golden room where a warrior in gold armor fended off a pack of freakish beasts. The beasts screeched and scraped across the floor with sharp claws, snarling with mouths full of sharp teeth. The golden warrior swung a large broadsword expertly, with finesse and strength in equal measure. The golden warrior (ha-ha) sliced grey, multi-limbed creatures twain where their purple, putrid guts stained the glowing floors. Grimly, Trunks counted the ferocious pack outnumbered the warrior several times over. However, with Thor and Trunks' arrival, the odds more than evened out.

"Heimdall!" Thor

swung Mjolnir and launched himself like a torpedo into the conflict, tossing bodies and chucking lightning with furious delight. "Have at thee, foul creatures!"

Trunks followed Thor's lead the next moment. He punched one creature hard enough to knock its head off. From what Trunks could establish, he didn't need to hold back against these creatures.

The pack of creatures was defeated between the three of them, their cooling corpses bleeding out in pieces on the ground. Heimdall, Thor, and himself regrouped beside a raised altar in the middle of the room, stepping in puddles of blue-gray blood and guts.

"Heimdall," Thor swung his hammer, throwing blood off its edges. His eyes were writ with worry for the winded and possibly wounded warrior. "Are you alright?"

"I will be, my prince," Heimdall sucked in deep lungfuls of air, wincing intermittently—a fact Thor caught on to as well.

"Are you hurt?" Thor holstered his hammer and set the head of the Destroyer on the ground to check on his friend. But Heimdall held him up with a gesture.

"I will be fine, my prince," Heimdall repeated. His golden, luminous eyes found Thor's imploringly. "But Asgard may not be if you delay any further."

"Wha–" Thor didn't know where to begin. "What do you mean? What is going on, Heimdall? What manner of creatures are these? I've not seen their like in all my years traversing the Nine Realms."

"There are many things beyond the Nine Realms, my prince," Heimdall put up an admirable effort as he slotted his sword into the altar. The room echoed with its placement, and Trunks reasoned there must be some sort of mechanism attributed to it. "The Chitauri are one of them."

"The Chitauri?" Thor questioned. Then, a scowl stormed across his face. "Then they have made a grave mistake attacking Asgard. Is that what you mean, Heimdall? We are in the midst of an invasion?"

As if to answer for him, the room rumbled ominously. Whether it was an explosion or what, it didn't bode well.

"Yes," Heimdall replied, his hands fisted around the hilt of his sword. His eyes looked beyond Thor and Trunks, probably as far away as the myths alluded to. "Asgard is under attack by an enemy keen to take advantage coincidentally when we are without the All-father and you, my Prince.

It was easy to see what Heimdall alluded to.

"I—"

One moment, Thor was speaking, and then in the next, the roof exploded. Trunks was forced to cover his eyes from the dust thrown about by the destruction. He missed what came rocketing out.

BLAM

Something harsh and heavy slammed right into his chest, blasting him backward hard enough to plant him into the nearest wall.

CRASH

Trunks smashed into the wall, holding back a mechanical anchor as big as he was tall. The anchor shook in his grip, and Trunks powered up, his fingers dug into the metal. He'd crush it and leave whoever attacked him without their large weapon. That was just good sense.

Before he could, to his shock, the anchor opened up and clamped down around him like a straight jacket. He couldn't move. He powered up, but the chain tensed, and Trunks knew he was in for a ride.

Trunks was swung around against his will by a brick house of a being. It stood head and shoulders above everyone in the chamber with brown, thick-scaled skin, wearing all-black pants and a strap across its muscular chest.

Trunks locked eyes with the alien's golden gaze. He saw intelligence and a familiar intent in those dark gold eyes.

It was here to kill them.

The being swung the chain connecting to the axe around, and Trunks saw the wall coming and braced as best he could.

CRASH

Thor's battle cry upended the room, and he launched at the giant with a stormy fury. Trunks felt the clamps let go of him, and he wasted no time clawing out of the hole he made.

In the meantime, Thor took the fight to the giant alien. The weapon retracted swiftly but not as swiftly as Thor's thunderous retort on Trunks, Asgard's behalf. With all the fury of a thousand storms, the returned, restored Prince of Asgard swung his mighty hammer, Mjolnir, and landed a tempest of a blow.

THRA-KOOM

Trunks witnessed what he could only describe as a home run. If this was a game of baseball, Thor cleared the bases. There was a flash of that electric blue, the unique sound of Mjolnir and the hit.

Trunks' respect for the formerly disgraced Prince rose a level. Such strength was in a category of its own.

The alien was thrown off its feet, weapon trailing after him into a wall, crumbling bits of wall falling down upon its head. But for all Thor's strength, the alien rose steadily back to its feet with a shake of its head and massage of its jaw.

A blow flush to the jaw from the god of thunder shook off in moments. Trunks knew it must've done some damage; the electric blue arcs of lightning arcing off the brute's scaley shoulders told a tale. But it was back to its feet when Trunks rejoined Thor in the air.

"You alright, friend?" Thor asked him.

Trunks wondered how the guy could worry about him in this situation. Still, looking into those blue eyes, Trunks found a sincerity he'd seen very few other places.

He sucked his teeth. "I'm fine," Trunks focused on what was really important. The big ugly alien eyeing them like targets.

Trunks powered up, and his white aura appeared in a blazing inferno around him. His hair flowed in the wind, and Trunks regretted not getting that haircut sooner- damn week he's been having.

"Don't worry about me right now," Trunks pulled on more power. Fury and his policies could be forgiven when an entire city, realm, or whatever was under attack. That meant he didn't need to hold back. More, he'd pull on more.

The thought of drawing it out somewhere in his mind came to him. Big Ugly proved it could take a punch. How far did that extend? A ki blast? A Burning Attack? A Finish Buster? But no. Tampering with that intrusive thought was easy because lives were at stake.

Trunks wasn't like his father or Goku. He couldn't afford to fight just for the sake of it when every fight held such hush stakes. No, he'd finish this and help Thor defeat whatever invaders had come to his doorstep, bringing death and destruction.

Trunks wouldn't suffer another future, anyone's lot, turning out like he did because he was too weak, not strong enough. Not again.

"Never aagGAIN!" Trunks blasted through into the next level and felt the dull heat of his ascended form blaze off him in waves of gold and yellow light.

The chill of that cold, wet, miserable night in the aftermath, the ruins of that fateful battle, that final duel between his mentor and those monsters ran down his spine. Trunks' ki raced through his blood, thawing the memory with the fiery power that brought him his revenge. Not again. Trunks focused on the big brute of an alien, his heart beating loudly in his ears.

"Let me handle this," Trunks told Thor, glancing at him, seeing surprise and shock. But before this could be argued, Trunks continued. "No, listen to me, Thor. Right now, there are people out there, innocent people, who need your help. Your people need you, your kingdom. I'll handle big ugly. You go be the Prince your people need."

"My friend," Thor began, but Trunks' grip on his emotions was already frayed. All this talking was wasting time.

"I said go!" Trunks let his ki burst, spiking the golden aura around his body, infusing himself with the legendary power of his people. "The more you argue, the more people die, Thor! Is that what you want?! More lives lost because of your stupid pride?!"

Pride. It'd be the downfall of them all if they weren't careful. Trunks knew firsthand what pride could do to a man, to anyone. It made you sloppy, made you make mistakes. Too much pride could be lethal and disastrous. Trunks could extrapolate from Thor's guilt over his past actions that if Thor let his pride get in the way of saving people, he'd never get over it.

Thor's expression trembled before it reformed into something solid, something resolved. Trunks didn't want to pull a dirty tactic like pointing out Thor's past failure, but he could care about apologizing later. So long as Thor did what he needed to do and Asgard still stood, Trunks would face the consequences that'd come.

"Listen to your friend, my Prince," Heimdall pulled his sword from out the slot in the floor, his eyes dimmed. "I have had the chance to see the situation for myself. Asgard needs you. Your friend can handle this. Let us go and help our people."

"Do you believe," The alien rumbled like an avalanche, like a car crash, able to speak? It rose to its feet, its neck-bending height. "I'd let you go? No. No one leaves here alive. By order of the Cosmic Conqueror, Asgard will fall, and all its defenders shall lie broken at his feet."

Trunks had enough, aimed at the alien, and pooled his ki together. "I don't care on whose orders you're here. You're right that someone's not leaving here alive and that someone is you."

The alien growled, and Trunks let the shining ki blast go. The alien didn't have a chance to dodge. The white-hot ki blast shot Out at the alien and detonated with a big boom. It wasn't a proper technique, so Trunks doubted it killed the alien. What it did, though, was give Thor the chance to grab Heimdall, swing his hammer, and fly away.

Trunks imagined the pressure Thor must've felt, the burden, the fury. It would motivate the god of thunder, hopefully not blind him to what was really at stake.

The smoke from the ki explosion cleared, and the alien was pushed back a few feet, smoke Trailing its thick, Scaled hide.

"You are not like the other weaklings I have defeated," The alien rumbled and brandished its giant transforming weapon. "But it is too late. I am Cull Obsidian, a member of the Black Order, and I shall be your executioner."

"Funny," Trunks cracked his knuckles and slid into his fighting stance. "They call me Trunks, and I was going to say the same thing."

The alien reared back and roared. It was a harsh noise between a screech and a volcanic eruption. The alien blitzed him, launching off the ground with enough to leave fissures in the floor, and Trunks was all too happy to meet his charge head-on.

The two beings clashed in the middle of the Asgardian-style room, and there was only chaos and violence. If any eyes were upon them, they'd have witnessed a battle the likes they may never again. The immovable force met unstoppable power, and it was anyone's guess as to who was what in the opening salvo.

Cull Obsidian was a living, breathing nightmare. The ax big enough to chop Trunks in half was swung light as a feather as if the alien meant to tickle Trunks instead of bisect him at the waist or neck. The blade wind of the ax was sharp and poignant; Trunks wished his sword hadn't been needed to destroy that robot earlier, but his hands were as good as any sword, ax, or hammer.

Trunks dodged the flashing strikes in his ascended form and searched his foe for any tells, gaps, and information. Any open—

There!

Trunks stepped into Cull's guard as his next strike, frustrated and overpowered, drove into the floor where Trunks was two moments ago. Now, Trunks had Cull's other wrist in a tight grip with his left hand while his right hovered over Cull's wide-eyed face.

"Wh-"

Trunks pushed his ki, spiked it, let it burn, and rocketed out of his hand in a great big blast of bright, explosive energy. The burst from his hand blew far beyond Cull's body, punching through the wall and lancing out into the open air. Bits of the wall that weren't vaporized crumbled and fell in bits and blocks. The sound of thunder boomed in the distance.

VWOOOOOM

Trunks let his ki taper once he felt Cull's pulse stop in his hand. The whisps of ki that burned themselves up crackled like the burnt end of Cull Obsidian's neck. Nothing of the 'Black Order' member's head remained, annihilated in the corona of Trunks' ki blast.

In truth, this Cull Obsidian may have been a great warrior or something. Some honored this or chosen that. Maybe even prophesied. It didn't matter.

Trunks let the body topple backward and reassessed his objectives with Cull now dead. Usually, he'd let Coulson or whoever oversaw the operation know the situation, but he couldn't do that here. He'd have to find Thor and help him push back this Chitauri invasion.

Trunk stepped past the smoldering remains of the wall he blasted apart and out on the lip to see firsthand the destruction caused by the Chitauri and whoever else Cull arrived with. Trunks expected the sky to be alight with battle, Thor throwing cords of lighting like candy to any invaders, but Trunks found none of that. Yes, Asgard showed signs of an attack, but Trunks couldn't spy any immediate fighting. There were no invasion ships in the sky like in the movies, nor hordes of aliens racing after innocent people.

Trunks lept off the lip of the wall and out into the open air of Asgard. He could smell the smoke and see buildings cracked and brutalized. There were some fading sounds of battle, and Trunks flew towards it as fast as he could. He arrived in what felt like a couple of seconds and spied some warriors finishing off what was left of some Chitauri beasts with spears. Their armor was splattered with Chitauri blood, and the scene held carcasses aplenty, both Chitauri and Asgardian similar to Trunks' stewing fury.

"Is everyone alright?" Trunks hovered in the air and surveyed the scene. He got various grunts for answers. "Have any of you seen Thor?"

"What's it to you?" One of the warriors asked with a white-knuckled grip on his spear. "You with these ones? Never seen you 'round here."

"Yeah," Another added on, joining his buddy. "Who are you? And what do you want with Prince Thor? If you're here to kill him, you'll have to go through us first."

The warriors nodded, resolve set, but Trunks wasn't here for that. However, he admired these people's guts.

"No, I'm a friend, an ally," Trunks explained. "I arrived here with Thor from Midgard, and–"

"Midgard?" One of the warriors interrupted him. "You don't look like any Midgaridan I've ever heard of."

"Yeah, last I checked, Midagrdians couldn't fly."

"Or glow in the dark."

"Well, I'm special. Please all point me to where Prince Thor went. Or at least point me to more of those things so I could kill them."

That brought a concert of grim chuckles from the warriors.

"Well, can't say we can be picky about support. Not like any of the other realms showed up to help us."

"He flew to the palace, sir," one of the warriors pointed to the giant golden castle in the distance. "After whipping up a storm to clear out these beasties, he flew right to it. I think he's the reason why all those monsters stopped coming. He must've stopped them."

"Yeah, sir, you're too late. Everyone knows no being in the Nine Realms can defeat Prince Thor! He must've sent these monsters running scared."

"I hope he killed the lot of 'em."

Trunks left the warriors for the royal palace, helping out pockets of warriors and civilians as he went. One group cowered in what looked like a weapons shop, poking spears out of windows at the baying packs of Chitauri. It was easy for Trunks to sweep by on his way and decimate the aliens with some ki blasts.

Trunks arrived in the golden palace of Asgard expecting some sort of fight or resistance, but whatever Thor did effectively cleared out waves of enemies, as Trunks could barely begin to count the amount of Chitauri littered all over the place. Trunks heard the tell-tale sign of Mjolnir hitting something and flew to it.

He flew around the corner to enter some sort of atrium where rested a harrowing scene. Thor was in a battle against a green-skinned alien, furiously defending himself against her lightning-fast sword. On the ground was another alien, this one blue with what looked like some of Thor's thunder painfully arcing off them. The green alien looked female, along with the twitching blue one on the floor. In the backdrop of the atrium was a blue portal that opened into a black abyss.

The green alien spotted him, and their eyes widened, almost as if they hadn't expected him to be there. Well, tough luck. Trunks surveyed the portal. Whatever it was, the aliens had their backs to it, so that must've meant it was their 'doorway' between here and wherever they came from. These two aliens must be its last line of defense.

To the green alien's credit, they spotted Trunks yet didn't miss a beat in their duel with Thor. Mjolnir smashed into the green alien's sword with overwhelming might, sending off sparks of electricity that no doubt made it harder to wield the metallic weapon. The green-haired alien grunted and backpedaled, looking for a way out of the situation, but Trunks wouldn't let them escape.

Trunks flew to the portal, intent on turning it off or blowing it up. Still, he reasoned that the energy necessary to punch a hole through the fabric of space must've been massive. If Trunks simply blew the portal up, there was no telling which way that energy flow would go, onto their side of the 'doorway' or the other. He'd rather not risk it.

"No!" The green alien screamed in desperation, but Thor kept up his attack, forcing the alien to fight or catch an electrified hammer to the face. "Don't touch it! Nebula, get up! We have to stop him!"

The blue alien on the ground twitched and writhed, almost forcing itself to crawl toward him and the portal. Whatever source of will or power it possessed was respectable, but crawling wouldn't stop Trunks in time.

There was another clang of metal on metal and a flash of lighting. The green alien was thrown away after a blow from Mjolnir snapped her sword in half. A blast of lightning catapulted them off their feet and into the nearest wall with a sick thud as smoke wafted off their body. If Thor held back at all, Trunks couldn't tell.

Trunks focused on the portal and found a strange item acting as the catalyst or keystone. It looked like a simple blue gem, and Trunks wondered what it could be. The gemstone glowed with power, and Trunks didn't spy any hooks or cables connecting it to the portal. There are no tricks or traps. So, he reached for the gem and plucked it out of the portal's core. Instantly, the portal closed, and Trunks held the glowing gem in his hand as it dimmed ever so slightly. Finally, the gem grew inert and dull, and before Trunks could do anything more with it, the gemstone crumbled into pieces in his hand, dark blue shards and fragments spilling onto the floor.

"N-No," the blue-skinned alien could mumble before their heads dropped to the ground, their bodies unmoving.

"It is done," Thor panted, catching his breath. Looking at him full-on, Trunks noticed the Prince of Asgard did not escape the duel with the green-skinned alien unscathed; blood-red lines decorated his pale cheeks, and long gashes were carved out of his armor. "The portal is closed. This invasion is over, and Asgard is safe. Now, I…I need to find my family and make sure they're alive."

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AN: Let me know what you think. Till next time!