AN: This chapter shows what The Avengers are doing, and since Loki warned about the bad guys, something happens earlier than canon, and a character will appeal earlier than canon also means some plots from MCU won't happen, like Ultron since Loki still has the mind stone, so I'll look into villains from the comics and find someone's for them to fight instead. I know I said most of the story would be in HP world, and it will, but since there isn't much action at the moment, I decided to show the Avengers every few chapters to give my story some fighting to keep it from being dull. And this chapter isn't in any one person's POV. It changes.
Disclaimer I don't own HP or Marvel
Chapter 9: The Avengers.
At an unknown location in Europe, a shadow covered the ground as a jet appeared in the sky, followed by a few more flying over, sending the ones standing on the ground running in a panic as others turned their guns up to the air, firing as the door lowered on the first one and out jumped Thor, he landed on the ground, bullets bouncing off him, as he tossed Mjolnir at one guy, then took out the other three in a matter of seconds. Clint Barton and Steve Rogers walked up on either side of him as Iron Man flew passed above their heads.
"You boys just going to stand there all day?" Natasha Romanoff was the last to leave the Quinjet since Bruce Banner would stay aboard unless they needed The Hulk.
"Alright, guys, we treat this like all the others; we fight the ones out here while Tony takes down the security system, then we get inside and clean the place out," Steve said.
"And try not to get yourselves killed," Clint said as he hooked an arrow in his bow to shoot a guard running towards them; he then pulled out a second arrow as more came running to them.
Thor tossed Mjolnir at them; then the four Avengers ran into battle, Steve throwing his shield then, punching a few guys, and taking some down; Clint put his bow away and fought with his hands, and Natasha fighting the same way in no time they had them all down and out. Steve and Clint tied them up so S.H.I.E.L.D agents could come and take them away. Then they all looked at each other and walked on toward the large building with Iron Man already there flying around it.
"Alright, JARVIS, what can you tell me?" Tony asked his trusted AI.
"I detect Chitauri technology inside the building," JARVIS replied.
"Of course you do," said Tony, "None of these raids yet have been without it. Can we get in?"
"Yes, I believe we can take down the security."
"Good," Tony replied, then got to work with the help of Jarvis to take down the security system. The others fighting could be heard over the earpieces, Thor laughing as he took out people, thunder rumbled overhead, and lightning lit up the sky.
Thor could be scary sometimes, especially when his moods changed from laughing and playful to dark and broody. Thankfully since they started their raids, he's been more cheerful, having something to do and getting his mind off his brother. The poor guy had it in his head that if he found Loki, he could somehow talk to him and save him from completely turning evil. Also, no matter what Loki had done, Thor still showed loyalty toward him and would snap at anyone who bad-mouthed him. And they often wondered if Loki was even on Midgard anymore, but with him having the tesseract and the Bifrost still broke, there was no way of knowing. Thor couldn't even go off-world until they found him and the tesseract. S.H.I.E.L.D. did have people trying to find a way, one of them being Thor's somewhat girlfriend, Jane Foster. They wanted Selvig's help, but with both being under the scepter's mind control and Loki's own little mind enchantment ability before that, he wasn't doing well mentally right now.
Thor laughed again as he slammed Mjolnir down on the ground; it made a creak along a path until it got to a tank driving towards him, and the earth opened up and swollen it; Thor gave it no other thought, as he raised his hammer, and took to the air, at some point, the Avengers got a little separated, and now Thor was landing next to Captain America, who Hydra agents surrounded along with a couple of tanks.
"Hammer to shield?" Thor asked; Steve turned to him.
"Hammer to shield." He agreed, grinning widely. Thor raised Mjolnir in the air, then came back down and hit Steve's shield; a loud bang echoed across the field, and the agent's collapsed to the ground as the tanks flipped over on their tops.
"That works every time." Thor chuckled as he tossed Mjolnir up and down in his hand.
Ironically, Loki's warning about Brock Rumlow and Jasper Sitwell, and all the others in the elevator was accurate and led to the discovery that Hydra not only still exists but had been hidden within S.H.I.E.L.D. for around seventy years and had stolen a lot of Chitauri weapons from the rubble of the battle. Now the Avengers and S.H.I.E.D. were rounding them all up and getting back all that dangerous weapons, but the search for Loki hadn't stopped; they still had people looking, and if any hint of him surfaced, The Avengers would be one of the first to know.
"The security system is now down," Tony said over the earpiece, "I'm heading in with S.H.I.E.L.D. You guys meet us inside when you can."
"We'll head that way," Steve replied; Thor grabbed hold of him and took off, flying toward the building.
"Yeah, it'll take Nat and me a little bit to get there," Clint replied as he hid behind a tree with Hydra agents shooting at him; Clint looked to his left at Natasha. "Can you tell how many?"
"No, they are all staying hidden, but I would guess five, maybe six," Natasha replied. She was also standing behind a tree. Clint took a chance, stepped out, and shot an arrow in the direction the gunfire came from; there was a groan, then the sound of a body hitting the ground, then, from the same direction, guns started firing.
"Bingo," Clint replied; he ducked behind the tree and reached in his arrows and pulled the last one out, hooked it, waited until the shots stopped, then walked out from behind the tree, shot the arrow in the air where the gunfire came from, after a moment the arrow burst and a net fell from the sky, then the sound of yells and electricity, then nothing. The Hydra agents were not dead; there was only enough juice in the net that was just a little more than a teaser; they'll lay there under it unconscious until S.H.I.E.L.D. comes along for them.
"You would think they would know not to hide group together like that," Natasha said, walking up next to him.
"Yeah," Clint said, turning toward Natasha to say something when a loud gunshot came behind them. Clint cried out as he felt his arm hit and stumbled to the ground, then got behind a large rock. Natasha ran the opposite way to get behind another tree as someone was walking towards them, gun firing.
"Clint!" Natasha cried out; he raised his hand to show he was alive.
"Barton, what happened? Have one of you been shot?" Tony's voice came over the earpiece, but Clint didn't reply. He was checking out his arm. "Barton, you feather brain fool, you better answer me."
"It only grazed my arm," Clint replied, "I'm fine, though it's nice to know Tony Stark cares."
"Shut up," Tony replied, and Clint chuckled, then noticed the gunshots stopped; he raised a little to see Natasha was on the guy's shoulders. She somehow snuck up behind him and attacked, her legs now wrapped around the back of his neck. The action had caused him to drop his gun.
"Do you guys need any help?" Tony asked.
"No, it's just one guy; we'll take him and meet up with you," Clint replied. He ripped a piece of his shirt off to wrap around his wound so that he could help Natasha; he was average height, muscular, wearing all-black, a pair of goggles that hid his eyes, and a black metal muzzle mask thing that was covering his mouth, with shoulder-length dark brownish color hair.
As Clint stood, the guy tossed Natasha off him onto the ground; she tried to sweep his legs out from under him, but, to Clint's amazement, the guy did a backflip to avoid her legs, landed on his feet, grabbed the back of Natasha's head swung around and sent her flying a few feet before she landed hard on the ground.
Clint leaped over the rock and tackled the guy to the ground; they both stood; Clint took a swing at him, he ducked, then swung at Clint, who ducked and punched him in the stomach, he came back with a punch of his own that sent Clint flying black over the rock, and he landed on his wounded arm.
"Fuck." Clint cursed; he then spoke through his earpiece. "Stark, you might want to go ahead and send one of the blondes; this guy seems to have inhuman strength."
"On my way," Thor replied; Clint looked around to check on Natasha, who was getting to her feet; he suddenly felt something grab his head and pull him up by the hair, and toss him across the field; he rolled, then turned over on his back to see the guy walking toward him. Clint got to his feet, getting ready to fight.
Lighting went across the sky; the guy paused and looked up as Thor landed in front of Clint; Mjolnir raised, ready to protect him, the guy pulled out two knives and came charging Thor, who laughed and dropped the hammer and went running towards him; the guy swung one knife at him. Thor stopped it; then he tried to get him with the other one; Thor stopped that two, holding both guy's arms in place; Thor head-butted him, causing the guy to stumble back; Thor came back with a punch; the guy did a flip and landed on his feet, then he and Thor traded a few punches.
Thor soon realized the guy he was fighting wasn't like the other Midgardians he had fought; the guy could handle fighting a god, just like Steve had given Loki a good fight, so Thor drew back his fist and, putting most of his strength into it, Thor landed a bunch on his jaw that knocked both his goggles and mask off his face as it sent him flying back a few feet, but to his amazement, the guy was able to turn himself so that the guy landed front first and slid across the ground with what looked like a metal hand; the guy stood up, a bruise was forming on his face, as he glared at Thor the sound of a couple of Quinjets flying overhead caused them all to look up, and when Thor looked back down the guy was gone.
The Next Day
"The second time." Nick Fury said, walking around the table; the Avengers were now sitting in a room at Avengers Tower. "For the second time in just four months, you let a dangerous individual slip through your fingers, and we don't even know who this guy is."
"It's like he teleported," Thor said, "One moment he was there, next he was gone."
"That guy has superhuman strength; I know that," Clint replied; he had gotten his arm stitched up the moment they got back yesterday, and they all ordered food and decided to wait until the next day to go through the files they took from the Hydra base.
"He gave me a good fight," Thor said, "What I would imagine fighting Rogers would be like."
"That's just wonderful; Hydra has a soldier juiced up on Cap's Kool-Aid," Tony replied.
"Whatever or whoever he is, we need to find him." Fury replied, stopping at the head of the table and leaning on a chair. "We have taken out almost all of Hydra's lower-level guys. Rumlow and Sitwell have been in prison for over a month; we don't need some Hydra super-soldier getting in our way to finding the leader. While we are so close to finding them."
"I agree," Steve said, "We are so close to finding whose behind all of this and taking Hydra down, for real this time."
"I think I might know who he is," Natasha said. "Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him The Winter Soldier. He's credited for over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years."
"50?" Tony asked, "So, he's an older man?"
"Sounds like he's a ghost story," Steve said.
"Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, and somebody shot at my tires near Odessa. We lost control and went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out, but The Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me." Natasha said, standing and lifting her shirt, showing a small scar. "A Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye-bye, bikinis."
"Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now," Steve replied. Tony looked at him, a little surprised.
"Going after him is a dead end. I know. I've tried. As you said, he's a ghost story." Natasha replied
"Well, keep looking through these files, see if you can find something that connects a real name to this ghost of yours." Fury demanded, then stood up straight and walked out of the room.
"These files tell us nothing." Tony said, "Either they are files they took from S.H.I.E.L.D. or people they were keeping an eye on, most of whom don't make sense."
"The files I'm reading are a little worrying," Bruce said, "Looks like back in the nineties, Hydra was experimenting with making more Super Soldiers. Titled it The Winter Soldier program. But it looks like they scrapped it by the end of the nineties, a bunch of failed attempts, looks like."
"We need to find out if they succeeded, so we know if Casper is the only super soldier Hydra has," Tony said.
"I'm sure if I keep digging in these files, I'll find out," Bruce said.
"The file I'm looking at might be thick, but it doesn't tell me much; Hydra seemed very interested in this British guy by the name of Sirius Black, even listed as a top candidate for being a Winter Soldier, but knows very little about him," Tony said.
"Did you say Sirius Black?" Natasha asked.
"Do you know him?" Tony asked.
"Yeah, whatever he did to catch Hydra's eye, must have been the same reason S.H.I.E.D. took an interest in him," Natasha said. "It was years ago, before the whole Odessa thing, probably my second or third assignment from S.H.I.E.D, word got to them that two guys on a motorcycle escaped a police chase by making the bike fly."
"A flying motorcycle?" Steve demanded.
"I don't know if S.H.I.E.D. believed it, but word about weird activities and attacks in Europe were reaching their ears for a while, and they decided to investigate; they ran the bike's license plate. London police were able to get it before he supposedly flew away, and it belonged to Sirius Black. S.H.I.E.D sent me to find and follow him, but he immediately caught me. So, I doubt Hydra had any better luck catching him either."
"Wait, is this the guy you..." Clint stopped his question when Natasha glared at him.
"What happened when he caught you? Did you fight?" Bruce asked.
"No, the conceited idiot thought I was following him because I wanted him; those were his exact words," Natasha said.
"Well, he wasn't entirely wrong," Clint said, grinning. Natasha glared at him.
"Shut up," Natasha replied. Tony looked between the two and then burst out laughing.
"Don't say a word," Natasha warned. Tony didn't listen.
"Sirius Black must be a real charmer to sweet talk the Black Widow." Tony teased, "Don't be embarrassed, Nat, nothing wrong with having a little fun."
"I'm not embarrassed," Natasha said. "Sirius was a nice guy. It's just none of your business."
"Alright, it's none of my business." Tony agreed; he set the file aside and picked up a different one, smiling a little.
Thor sat at the end of the table, watching and listening; one thing came to his mind, wizards; going by the flying motorcycle and weird things happening, it sounded like the Midgardian magic users. Thor was sure if Loki was still on Midgard, that's where he was. His brother always loved being among the Midgard wizards and witches. Thor felt guilty not mentioning this to his new teammates, but he also wanted to find Loki on his own; he wanted to talk to his brother without anyone interfering. Find out what happened back in June, why he did it, and who was really behind it. I doubted he would get the chance to have an honest conversation with Loki if the other Avengers were there; he knew Loki wouldn't be willing to tell him anything unless he got him alone. Thor would just have to wait to sneak off and search by himself; they needed his help with Hydra. Staying and helping is the least he could do for keeping valuable information from them.
"I found him," Clint said, holding up a file. "The guy who shot me. The Winter Soldier."
"What's his name?" Bruce asked.
"James Barns," Clint answered; Steve jumped up and grabbed the file, and stared at the picture of his long-time friend he had believed died long ago.
"Bucky," Steve mumbled. Then he tossed down the file and headed out of the room.
"Rogers, where are you going?" Tony demanded.
"To find Bucky," Steve replied.
Thor grabbed Mjolnir and hurried after Steve, deciding to help him out. When he caught up with him, Steve was already getting on the elevator.
"You survived all these years because you were frozen, correct?" Thor asked as the elevator doors closed, and they started going down.
"Yes," Steve answered.
"And Bucky, he's the friend you talked about often, the one that fought in the war with you?" Thor asked.
"Yes," Steve replied.
"Then how is Bucky still alive and has not aged?" Thor asked.
"When Bucky's unit was captured in 43, Zola experimented. Whatever he did must have saved him from the fall, and they must have found him and done something to him," Steve said, "Brainwashed or mind control, something, the Bucky I know wouldn't fight for Hydra."
"I believe you," Thor said, "But how has he not aged or died in the many years since then?"
"I survived because I was frozen," Steve said, "Only thing I can think of is that kept him frozen when they didn't need him."
The elevator doors opened on the bottom floor, and Steve and Thor walked out, down the hall to the lobby area, then to the two glass doors leading out; when they walked outside.
Thor was about to ask how they were going to find Bucky when someone started firing at them; taking out the large glass windows looking into Avengers tower, they both ducked down behind a car and heard the sound of car tires squealing and horns hooking as The Winter Soldier walked across the road towards them.
"We found him," Thor said.
"Funny," Steve replied, "I got an idea; I'll distract him while you come up from behind him and grab him; with any luck, we can stop him with little fighting, and hopefully, no civilian gets hurt."
"I'll do my best," Thor replied before lifting Mjolnir and taking off; Steve stood, holding his shield in front of him; Bucky had made it across the street and was close to Steve now; he had run out of bullets because he was dropping the clip out, and pulled another out of a pocket and put it in.
"Bucky, it's me, Steve." Steve tried, "We're friends remember."
"Who the hell is Bucky?" Bucky replied, then started firing at him; Steve dropped down, covering himself with his shield; it was that moment Thor landed behind Bucky and grabbed him, wrapping his arms around him almost like a hug.
"Bucky, I don't know what they did to you, but try and fight it," Steve said, lowering his shield and walking closer; Bucky somehow was able to get a leg up and kick Steve back, which knocked him back into a car, he then head-butted Thor, causing him to lose his grip, so Bucky was able to slip out, he pointed his gun at Steve, but Thor reached around him and grabbed it pulling it up, the gun went off into the air.
"There will be no shooting, Steve Rogers," Thor said as they struggled for the gun; Thor could pull it out of Bucky's hands; he turned around and punched Thor in the stomach. Then tried to pick up his weapon, but Thor kicked it out of the way; then Natasha was suddenly there and jumped on him from behind, pulling some kind of wire around his neck. Bucky flipped Natasha over his back and onto the road.
"Don't move," Tony landed in front of Bucky, now in his Iron Man suit, holding his palm out. "I have a guy on the roof that never misses and a guy ready to turn into a Hulk, so I'd give up and surrender now."
Bucky said nothing; he glanced at Steve, then back at Tony, and went to take a step.
"Bucky, you know me," Steve said, "We grew up together, remember? You were always there."
"I do know you," Bucky said, "You are part of my mission; I'm to kill you all."
Bucky turned back to Tony and took a couple of quick steps, and before Tony could react, he punched him right in the side, denting his metal suit, as he doubled over in pain.
Thor raised Mjolnir and formed a little lightning. Then pointed Mjolnir at Bucky's metal arm, and a small blast of lightning struck it; Bucky paused, shaking a little before falling backward onto the pavement and didn't move.
"Bucky." Steve ran over to him, dropping down next to him to feel his pulse, sighing when he still had one.
"I was careful and didn't put much power into the blast, but I saw no other way to get him to stop fighting us rather than knocking him out," Thor explained, sounding apologetic, "I figured Mjolnir might hit his head too hard."
"It's okay, Thor," Steve replied, "You did what you had to."
"We'll get him up to the tower and put him in the cage before he wakes," Tony said, "His file might have what they did to him and, hopefully, how to reverse it."
"Be careful; his arm might shock you," Natasha said.
"I got him." Thor hooked Mjolnir on his side, then lifted Bucky and tossed him over his shoulder; Tony stayed behind to talk to the police, that was showing up, while the others headed into the tower.
The cage Tony was referring to was a square cage made from breakproof glass that Tony himself took a month to create; it had no handles or locks on the door, and the only way to open it was a keypad that only opened to one of the six Avenger's fingerprints; Tony wanted something they could put a dangerous individual in temporary, so they couldn't escape like Loki had, Tony, was working on trying to make it magic proof but was satisfied that nothing could break the glass. They had tested everything to ensure that, including bullets, Mjolnir, lighting, Tony's lasers, and even Hulk's fist.
Steve didn't like the thought of locking Bucky up; he now knew how Thor must have felt when they had Loki locked up because Bucky was as much his brother as Loki was Thor's, and he didn't care what it took; he was going to get the old Bucky back. He now understood Thor's desperation to help Loki to have hope there was some good left in him.
AN I want to have Thor more intelligent like he is in the comics, and he knows of the wizarding world, and it is explained in the story why he hadn't mentioned it. This chapter was harder to write than I thought it would be. And No, there will be no love triangle. Sirius and Nat was a one-time thing in Sirius's playboy days and happened before he ever met Loki. I just thought it would be funny and show more of that former side, though I doubt Loki will find it funny, lol.
Hydra wanted to capture Sirius because of his "unusual abilities," but of course, they never caught him and gave up. It was during the first wizard war, so some wizards, mostly Death Eaters, weren't being careful about muggles seeing them use magic. Hence, people like S.H.I.E.D. and Hydra took an interest in them, but because the wizard's communities are hidden, they never find anything and don't know about wizards, or at least S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't. Hydra might know a little, but not much.