Tenebris is a part of my Astronautical Series, but can be read first. Although this is often referred to by me as Book 3, it runs parallel to the two GotG books, and can be read first. I'm hoping to design it like the movies, in that Tenebris and Astronautical & Luciferous will each follow their own story line which will meet up in a direct sequel to both. Like how GotG and Iron Man, for example, are both independent but linked movies which eventually combine into IW. If you are new to this series, I suggest reading Astronautical and Luciferous as well, as it will have a lot of answers, but I know some people may love one set of characters more than others or just may not be interested in the other storyline right now, so I'm planning to have each one work relatively independently and have 'recaps/summaries' before the books meet up. I really suggest trying both, though!
For those who are already reading Astronautical; THIS BOOK TAKES PLACE A YEAR AND A HALF BEFORE THE EVENTS OF ASTRONAUTICAL & LUCIFEROUS!
It will cover more time and catch up, however.
Characters and Avengers belong to Marvel, I am writing this for entertainment purposes only!
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Tenebris
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.:Prologue:.
"I can close it." Natasha's voice rang across the coms, distorted by the power of the staff in her hands pulsing against the core of the device holding the portal open. "Can anybody copy? I can shut the portal down."
"Do it!" Steve shouted over the interference.
"No, wait!" Tony cut in, pushing the thrusters of his suit just a little harder.
"Stark! These things are still coming!" Steve's voice was tight and clipped.
"I have a nuke coming in." Stark struggled to keep his voice calm in contrast. "It's gonna blow in less than a minute."
The visuals in his suit finally located the incoming bomb. He was too low. The nuke was passing overtop the bridge he was darting under. Stark slammed on the breaks. His thrusters beat against the ocean and sent up waves of steam as he struggled to pull to enough of a halt to turn around and give chase. "And I know just where to put it."
He caught up to the nuke, sidling up underneath it and searching for a finger hold.
"Stark." Steve's voice was quieter now. "You know that's a one way trip?"
"Save the rest for return, J," he breathed.
{Sir} A mechanical voice chimed in. {Shall I try Miss Potts?}
The portrait of a smiling redhead winked to life in the corner of his eye.
Tony knew this picture by heart, every last line and pixel, but still he couldn't resist a glance as he guided the volatile nuke through the harbor and tried to find a solid grip.
"Might as well."
Stark and the missile broke out from over the water and flew into the city. He used his body to steer the weapon towards a straight alley through the buildings ahead. Stark tower rose above all the rest, the stream holding the portal open was glowing like a beacon at the top. Or maybe, for him at least, it was more like a bug-light.
Pepper still hadn't answered her phone as the tower grew close and Tony turned the missile upward. They flew up the length of the tower at what may have been a record speed for him. She hadn't answered as he shot past the top of the tower where Natasha and that scientist were guarding the Tesseract from Loki and these new enemies spilling in through the rift torn into the sky. It had still been ringing when he shot through the portal and the connection was lost. A hollow sense of loss and might-of-been's flooded his chest as he realized that he would never get to say a final 'I love you' or 'goodbye.' He didn't know which one made him sadder. He hadn't even have the time to leave her a stupid voicemail.
The mother ship loomed in the space above the portal and Stark was using the last of his flickering power to point the nose of the nuke towards its belly when something knocked against him. Whatever it was, it hit hard. The nuke was ripped from his hands and spun violently in one direction while Tony was flung in the other, desperately trying to make sense of what was happening.
"Jarvis?" he called out. "Talk to me, what's going on?"
{….ppears...to be... body si...} came the halting answer through the static and power surges of his failing suit.
"Body?" Stark gasped in disbelief, but as he pried at the weight around him, he recognized the feeling of arms wrapped around his waist. The spinning stars began to slow and Tony realized the body was aiming for the portal, dragging him back through.
An alarm raised in the corner of his screen. Stark managed to twist his head enough to make out a small spacecraft following after. It had scooped up the Nuke in some sort of tractor beam and was following after them.
"GUYS!" Stark screamed as he and the mysterious body re-entered the portal and their momentum gave way to gravity, leaving them plumetting down through the atmosphere. "CLOSE THE PORTAL!" His systems were flickering and dying so quickly he could do nothing but mentally beg them to work. Just a little more life. Just one more message. "CLOSE IT! CAN ANYONE HERE ME! HELLO!"
Nothing was happening. The portal wasn't closing. He could see the distorted image of the craft closing in.
Someone was screaming through the coms now, shouting commands or asking for clarification, he couldn't tell. The audio was so warped and garbled, he couldn't even identify who it was.
"Nonononono! Come on!" Stark howled as the image of the ship began to resolve after them. He couldn't let that bomb come back, he couldn't let it go off on this side of the portal. He ripped one arm free of the mysterious grasp around him, the suit's commands were sluggish and halting as he raised his palm to manually aim a shot and fired at the flickering form of the incoming ship.
The shot must have hit, because the last thing Stark saw was the ship ripping apart inside of the portal, and a bright shock wave coming straight for him.
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Chapter 1: Icarus
His name was Tony Stark. That was the first thing. The most important thing. That was the core of his being and existence. As long as he remembered that, he could rebuild the rest of the world around it.
Spaceships had day cycles, but they did not have seasons. That was the second thing. Because of this, Tony Stark did not know how long he had spent incarcerated on this craft. It felt like years. Yesterday, -at least he was pretty sure it was yesterday,- he had caught sight of his reflection in the shine of a polished panel in a hallway and swore he looked at least a decade older than he had been the last time he had seen his own face. It may very well have been decades, for all the time he had lost. Entire chunks of time were missing in his memories. White hairs dusted his head, but he had no way of knowing if they were from age or stress, and the deep ache and creaking in his bones may have been from his stints spent unmoving on tables or racks, hindered sometimes by straps and other times by agony and his body's own refusal to listen to his commands through its exhaustion.
Aliens spoke English. That was the third thing, and something that never ceased bothering him, rubbing against the back of his head like velvet brushing the wrong way. They shouldn't speak English. It made no sense. Not even all humans spoke English, yet the creatures that held him here had no problem making their intentions known, something that made playing dumb in their interrogations much more difficult. It also made him all too aware of the increasingly disturbing things they would suggest doing to him if he continued to withold information about the Tesseract.
The sound of footsteps and a shadow swallowing up the sliver of light under his cell door derailed his attempts to gather his thoughts.
Tony held his breath, as though if he were quiet enough they would forget he was here and move on to torment some other poor unlucky bastard. The click and trill of his door unlocking was the universe's only response to that hope.
"Hello Stark." A sharp, gravely, voice heralded the entrance of Tony's least favorite visitor even as he shut his eyes against the flood of burning light from the open door. "Are you feeling a bit more co-operative today?"
"G'morning Corvis," Tony replied, disheartened by the way his voice trembled and cracked like dry straw. "I'd offer you some scotch, or a place to sit, but the service here is just terrible. I'm still waiting on that pillow, by the way." As Tony blinked his eyes and struggled to adjust to the light after so long in the darkness, he thought he saw the edges of Corvis's lip twist up into a smile.
"I'll take that as a no," the alien said. "Good, I was hoping this wouldn't be too easy." He waved his arm and a pair of Chitauri entered to haul Tony up by the scruff of his shirt. As awkward and uncomfortable as the manhandling was, he knew without it he would never even make it to his feet, so he remained sullenly silent as they half-dragged, half-carried, him out of his cell and followed after Corvis Glaive down the hallway.
"It must be a special occasion," Tony managed to squeeze out as he struggled to keep his feet under him. He rarely left the dark room nowadays. And now it had been twice in a row. "Let me guess, is it Christmas? It kind of feels like Christmas."
"You have a new visitor," Corvis answered over his shoulder. "One of my sisters is here to meet you."
"Is it your girlfriend? With the- ...the horn things? We've already met."
"No, not her. And Proxima Midnight is my wife."
"That makes it worse." Tony missed a step and staggered against the guard to his left. "I don't know how you guys do things in space, but I think it's a pretty universal rule that you don't marry your sister..."
Corvis Glaive's beady orange eyes, too small for his face and set too far apart to be mistaken for human, regarded Tony for a moment. "It's strange hearing a Terran speak of the universe," he grinned. "Like a piece of filth fell off my shoe and suddenly began reciting poetry."
Tony tugged his lips into a frown, but his reply was morphed into a pained grunt when the group came to a sudden halt. In front of him, Corvis twisted his head like a dog that had caught a strange noise in the distance.
"Ah, she's already here." The tips of his pointed teeth showed in his broad smile. "We'll meet her in room 314."
Tony's stomach dropped at the sound of the very familiar number, and the bruising grip of the hands around his upper arms was the only thing that kept him from the embarrassment of sinking to his knees then and there.
-x-
Room 314 was up a steep flight of wire stairs and down enough hallways to make Tony's head swim. He'd counted them at least once. His brain kept churning out the number sixteen, but he couldn't be sure if that was the correct number. Things got very fuzzy in that room. By the time they made it to their destination, Tony had all but abandoned any pretense of walking on his own. The toes of his boots scuffed and scraped against the metal flooring as even his token efforts to land properly on his feet faded.
"Here we are," Corvis crowed as he shoved the heavy metal door open. "Your 'home away from home,' as you called it once."
Had he called it that? Tony couldn't remember, but it sounded like something he'd say.
His 'home away from home,' as he had apparently named it, came with a bed. A 'bed' was a generous way to put it, but it sounded better to Tony's rapidly panicking brain than the words 'dissection table' which always came to him when he laid eyes on the hunk of cold metal in the middle of the room with restraints built into it. The table could be tilted. Past experience had taught him it could lay flat or sit upright, or be locked into any position in between. Today, it was just a few degrees short of upright, and the Chitauri guards had no trouble shoving his tired body against its slanted surface and locking him in place. The strap across his forehead dug uncomfortably into his temples.
"So tell me about this new sister of yours," Tony wheezed out when he had gathered enough breath and the silence had yawned on for far too long. "Is she hot?"
Corvis gave him no answer, busy watching the door they'd come through.
"It doesn't really matter. I'm kind of taken, myself." Pepper. Her name was Pepper. The name flickered in his mind like the sight of a dying vacancy sign over a highway motel, and Tony clung to it through the darkness before it faded away again. "But I always prefer to be strapped down and tortured by pretty girls..." Tony glanced at the Chitauri guards. "No offense, guys."
Corvis's glittering eyes turned on him again. "It's such a pain that my father thinks we can get anything useful from you. I would have loved to have cut out your tongue a long time ago. Oh well, I'll just have to be content with removing your head when this is over."
"Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not the biggest fan of your dreams. Have you considered pastry school? Or watercolors?"
The sound of footsteps coming down the hallway halted their conversation.
"Welcome, sister." Corvis spread his arms wide, his Glaive glinting as he waved it under the ship's dull lighting.
A tall hooded stranger stepped through the doorway, dressed in a startlingly white robe that fell to the floor and obscured everything but the bottom half of her face. All Tony could tell was that her skin was a vibrant blue, and a pair of black stripes like whiskers were drawn across each of her cheeks. Despite the strong resemblance to a cat, some primal voice in the back of Tony's head was screaming shark.
"Since you don't seem to be very keen on sharing what we want to know willingly, we'll be doing things a little differently today," Corvis said, turning back towards Tony. "This is Supergiant, the greatest telepath in the known universe. If there's anything in your brain worth having, she'll drag it out."
The corners of Supergiant's mouth curved upward as she strode across the room, pausing so close to Tony he could feel the air she had disturbed in her approach. The long sleeves of her robe fell back as she raised her arms, revealing slender hands with black nails that had been filed into points. An unreasonable bolt of terror shot through Tony at the sight of those hands reaching towards his face.
"Wait!" he gasped. "Wait, hold o-"
A brilliant light flooded his vision, and filled his mind with agonizing pain.
-x-
Tony's brain fizzled and sparked like a fried wire. It was as though, whoever this new stranger was, she had physically reached into his head and scrambled his brains. Consciousness came back in scraps and snatches. Voices around him faded into focus and then slurred back into unintelligible noises. The stain on the floor, a scratch on his boots, Pepper's face, images resolved from flickering static to float across his vision and dissolve again into formless blurs and blots of color.
"...-n't found it yet-..."
"It's been... -lous-...-how long-..."
"...-can't take any-..."
"Why can't we-..."
"...-too weak-...-he'll expire."
"...-need him much longer-..."
"...-half-dead subjects-...-I can only-...-your own carelessness-..."
The conversation slowly pulled back into focus as the numbness in his body receded. Tony swiped his tongue over his lips and thought he tasted blood mixed in with the usual sweat and grime. His forehead stung where he must have been trashing against the restraint as his mind was flayed open, and he could already feel the deep bruising setting in along his wrists and across his chest. When he found the strength, he pulled his eyes up from the floor to watch the two aliens arguing in front of him.
Corvis Glaive was looking decidedly cross. His too-wide lips were pulled into an ugly frown and his eyes glittered with unconcealed malice as they glared up at the telepath. The Shark-woman hardly seemed fazed by his foul mood. Her hands were once more folded into the sleeves of her pristine white robe, and the only part of her face he could see was as cold and emotionless as it had been when she'd entered.
"Fine!" Corvis snarled up at his 'sister,' obviously furious about things not going according to his plans, and Tony wished he were feeling well enough to enjoy this moment. "I have some business to attend to on Terra. He can have some time to..." His face wrinkled in disgust. "Recover while I am away, but the moment he is strong enough to survive until you find what you're after we will continue."
The pair of Chitauri stepped forward and began removing the cuffs from his wrists.
"No," Corvis snapped at them, swiping at one with his blade in a fit of temper and forcing them to scatter back to avoid the weapon's sharp edge. "Leave him here. It'll just wear him out more to drag him to his cage and back."
With one final hateful look at Tony, who desperately wished he had the breath for a sarcastic quip right now, Corvis stalked from the room. The Chitauri marched out after him, the clanking of their boots against the metal drowning out Corvis's stomps.
The shark-woman lingered for a moment. He could feel her gaze on him even from under the hood, and her expressionless face was terrifying in a way that Corvis's worst moments of rage had never been. The corners of her lips twitched upward and Tony was suddenly irrationally certain he was about to die. His heart hammered and strained like it intended to abandon ship; burst from his chest to run away and leave the rest of him to his fate. Then the moment passed, and she turned away to vanish out the doorway as well, and Tony was left alone in his 'home away from home.'
Despite his best efforts to stay awake and consider this newcomer with the power to put Corvis on edge, Tony quickly slipped back into unconsciousness. Even the terror of those last moments could do nothing as his body gave out against the exhaustion and his mind sunk back into the comforting darkness.
When he woke, he woke with no sense of how long he had been out. It could have just as easily been minutes, or hours. Everything ached, but his head felt a bit clearer and more capable of holding down a train of thought. No one had returned yet, and Tony was still alone, held upright by the straps anchoring him to the table. Tony shifted in an attempt to find a position that would be even marginally better, and was surprised when the cuff around his right wrist felt just a little looser than he remembered it ever being. He gave his wrist an experimental tug and his breath caught painfully in his throat when it wiggled even looser in response. The Chitauri that Corvis had swiped at must have failed to properly reset the strap he'd been working free before leaving.
Hope sparked and flared in his chest, unfamiliar and overwhelming after so long without it. With more tugging, Tony managed to work his hand free and set himself to peeling off the rest of his restraints as quickly as he could. The whole time he worked he listened intently for the sound of footsteps coming back down the hallway. Any moment someone could walk in and catch him before he was entirely free and this moment would be lost. How much time had he wasted sleeping? If he made it out, he would have plenty of time to kick himself later. If he didn't, he wouldn't have much time for anything at all.
Tony could hardly believe it when he worked the last strap free from around his ankle and still no one had come.
"Okay," he whispered to himself as he kneeled by the table, catching his breath, hating how much it had taken out of him to do that. "Okay, focus. First things first. I need a ride."
This ship had smaller shuttles. Tony had seen them with his own eyes. He'd passed them on several trips, and he was pretty sure he remembered going down a lot of stairs the last time he'd seen them. With a grunt, he heaved himself up enough to stumble to the wall, bracing one hand against it for support as he cautiously peeked through the doorway. No one was there, so Tony slipped into the hallway and made his way towards the staircase at the far side.
No one happened upon his halting progress and Tony made it to the staircase undiscovered. It had always creeped him out, how empty this large ship was. There should be a crew. Something this size and with this many features should have maintenance workers and navigators; some signs of life and evidence of the people who lived here. But he only ever saw Corvis and his sister-wife, and a handful of Chitauri gruntworkers to manhandle him around and do whatever they were ordered. Tony couldn't tell them apart well enough to know if they were the same ones every time, or if he'd met dozens of the alien soldiers during his internment here. That strange fact was doing him a favor now, however, so he decided to count it among his very few blessings and not question it too much this time.
Tony had one arm slung over the railing of the winding staircase, using it like a crutch as he slipped and slid his aching body down the steps and wondered if he would have a heart attack and just die here. The irony of surviving all of the torture and abuse only to die on a flight of stairs was enough to keep his mind from the pain and his legs moving. When he got back to earth, he promised himself, he would never feel guilty taking an elevator again. In fact, he was going to install elevators everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Those three steps between his patio with the fountain and the oak deck? Gone. He never wanted to look at a step for the rest of his life.
It felt like he spent hours crawling down those steps. At the bottom he paused to pant and heave, and vomit up the sparse contents of his stomach. Then he pushed on.
The hallway they let out into was massive, and the hum of heavy machinery vibrated through the air, but there was no one in sight and it appeared just as empty as everywhere else. Tony thought he recognized the red-tint to the paint down here, and the moldy, coppery, smell in the air.
This area had the feel of an engine room, but for a much, much, larger engine than anything Tony had ever seen before. His palms were sweating from the heat seeping through the walls as he leaned against them to help him on his way. Tubes so large they looked like they could be used as water park slides obscured the ceiling and crept down the walls like wild vines. Several times, he swore he heard voices drifting down the hallway and ducked behind them for cover, but no one ever appeared and he would crawl back out to continue his trek. Smaller hallways branched off of the main one, and Tony peered down each one carefully, trying to summon any scrap of knowledge or recollection that might give him a hint as to which hallway he was looking for. Nothing jumped out at him, and nothing looked familiar.
A dozen offshoots passed by and Tony was beginning to panic. Was he on the wrong floor? Had he passed the hallway he needed already? What if he couldn't find it and he wandered around here until he was discovered? All of this couldn't be for nothing. He couldn't waste his one shot at freedom lost in this stupid engine room. Fear spurred his feet to work faster and he stumbled into tubes and bits of machinery with increasing frequency, bruising his shins and hips and catching himself against the wall like a drunk on a tilt-a-whirl.
"Come on," he whispered. "Come on, where are you?"
When a hallway came into view with a mess of green and silver tubing that sparked a feeling of familiarity in him, Tony was so elated he dove around the corner without checking it first and had to scramble backwards when he spotted a pair of Chitauri guards with their backs turned in his direction.
"Shit," he hissed, shoving himself down behind a large tube with paint that was flaking off and crumbled against the bare skin of his arms. "Please be napping on the job."
No shouts of surprise or alarm were raised, and after a minute Tony dared let himself breath again. The more he stared at the surrounding hallway and thought about it, the more certain he grew that this was the right turn. If memory served, at the other end of this relatively narrow hallway, which was still wide enough to drive a car down, was a small dark box of a room which was, according to Corvis's sister-wife, connected to the exhaust system of the ship's engine. All Tony knew for sure was that it was hot, and cramped, and when they shut the door it slowly filled with a gas that made him feel like he was drowning on the air around him.
In order to get to this hell-box, however, they had passed a small dock of shuttles. A handful of ships, not much bigger than a small jet on Earth had sat unguarded and mocking him with the promise of a freedom well beyond his reach as he'd been dragged towards the new day's torture.
Carefully, Tony crawled out from his hiding place and peeked around the corner. The Chitauri had moved further down the hallway away from him. They moved at an unhurried pace and didn't appear to be paying all too much attention to the hall around them. Tony guessed they must be on some sort of regular patrol, and not looking for an escaped prisoner. It was a long hallway, with a couple turns. If Tony was careful, he might be able to follow behind them at a distance, and slip into the docks before they reached the end and doubled back.
The pair rounded the first corner and Tony ducked into the hallway. He waited for them to vanish down the next turn and followed again. The next turn led to the docks. Tony couldn't believe his luck when the gleaming metal of the Chitauri's armor vanished again and he was able to make a stumbling break for the broad opening to the bay and head for the furthest ship he could find.
Tony leaned against the smooth hull of a dark grey vessel as he regained his breath from his short sprint. He'd never hot-wired an alien space-ship before. It couldn't be that hard, though, right? Right. Just find the drivers seat and then... figure it out. It took several laps to find the way in. He stumbled upon it by chance more than anything else when his hand, which was trailing along the hull as he walked in case he tripped again, passed over a hidden panel and a section of the wall peeled back.
"That'll do," he breathed, hauling himself through the opening and cursing at the handful of steps that lead up into the pair of cushioned seats in front of a wide windshield. As Tony sank into the leather-like pilot's chair it dawned on him that he couldn't actually remember the last time he had sat on anything but concrete and metal. His body nearly melted at the far-gone feeling of comfort. Tony struggled to keep his eyes open as he poked and prodded at every button and lever within his reach, hoping one of them would turn the ship on. In a stroke of luck, one of the switches worked and a bright screen of light flickered into existence in front of him. Alien symbols covered the screen, but Tony was sure he could find the basics through deduction and... trial and error.
A big virtual button glowed invitingly on the center of the screen. Tony obligingly pressed it and the engine rumbled to life.
"Okay," he breathed, grabbing a pair of joysticks which he assumed was the steering wheel. "Someone definitely heard that, so let's blow this popsicle stand."
It took some bumbling, and a few dents and scrapes to the neighboring ships, but Tony got his craft airborne and gliding down the center runway towards a rather obvious exit door. "Now how do you open?" Tony murmured, searching the ship for some sort of garage door opener or a weapons system. As the ship drew near a small virtual prompt lit up across his screen again. This one had a simplified image of a door opening and some sort of blinking red alerts. "That works." He swiped the indecipherable alerts aside and pressed the highlighted image of the opening door. The prompt vanished, and a beat later the wall in front of him began to peel back, revealing open space beyond.
A furious alarm filled the air, and the lights in the hangar began to flash red as the oxygen in the bay was released into the void of space. Smaller bits of machinery that weren't bolted down were blown about by the escaping wind and scattered into the stars as Tony pushed his ship out of the bay.
His exhaustion was swept aside in the rush of relief and adrenaline coursing through his brain as he oriented the ship around until he found what he was looking for. He'd been banking on the hope that they would be in orbit of Earth and he was right. The sight of the green and blue planet lit up an unexpectedly fierce bout of homesickness in his heart, and Tony urged the ship faster towards his destination.
Good luck never lasted forever, and it seemed this was where Tony's ran out. There was a loud bang and the ship suddenly rocked as something struck it from behind. "Looks like hide and go seek is over," he said tightly as he struggled to right the unfamiliar craft back onto its path. Another screen flicked online, this one displaying several charts- probably warnings about damage to the engine or shields- and a small video feed of the four ships following after.
He had no clue if this thing even had weapons, and even less idea of how to use them, so he pressed the accelerator again and jigged the ship in random patterns to avoid another hit. Descent onto the planet was fast, probably too fast for a ship where he hadn't actually discovered where the brakes were yet, but Tony didn't dare slow down with his pursuers dogging after his tail. Another blast struck one of his wings and the ship was sent rolling through the air. Alerts sprang up all around him and Tony struggled much harder to regain control this time. An image flickered to his right displaying a picture of the ship with the right wing highlighted in red and a big X slashed across it. "Ohhhh, that's probably not good."
Another blast sent him flipping end over end and plummeting in a ball of smoke towards a thick forest below. No! Nonono! He couldn't die here, he was so close! He was nearly home! He couldn't die in this ship without even stepping foot on dirt again. The ship struck the trees hard, ripping through them as well as any wrecking ball, but the thousands of mini impacts slowed his crash. By the time he struck dirt, the ship flipped and rolled into a violent stop, but didn't disintegrate entirely on impact. When it came to a final creaking halt, wedged on its side against a very solid looking trunk, only about half of it remained. The windshield was gone, along with an entire section of the cockpit wall and the co-pilot's chair was nowhere to be found.
Tony's collar bone was on fire where the seatbelt pressed against it, and his head swam. Sparks of red and black danced across his eyes and robbed him of entire sections of his vision. It cost him precious seconds for his shaking hands to find the clip and free himself enough to slide out of the seat, over the edge of the broken floor, and onto the dirt below. There, he crawled out from under the ship's mangled remains and into the forest, heading for a thick tangle of bushes.
As the ringing in his ears faded, he heard the sounds of the rest of the ships incoming. On hands and knees he scrambled under the bushes, shoving through the thick branches and ignoring where sharp points dug into his skin and tugged at his clothes. He didn't have the strength left to run, or the time to find somewhere better, so he hunkered down as deep under the bushes as he could get and twisted around to face where his ship had crashed. A twisted piece of metal from the hull was squeezed in one of his hands. It was hot to the touch and a sharp point dug into his palm, but it was the closest thing to a weapon he had.
A heavy wind shook the bushes around him as his pursuers circled his downed ship and searched out landing points. Through the gap beneath the scraggly bushes and the forest floor he watched as a dozen Chitauri clambered out of their ships and began inspecting the wreckage. Tony tried to slow his breathing and hold as still as he could. As soon as they figured out he wasn't in there, they would begin sweeping the nearby area. There was no way they wouldn't find him.
An especially large Chitauri climbed back out from the half-a-cockpit that Tony had just fled from, and shouted orders at the nearby soldiers, swinging his arm out to gesture at the surrounding forest. He turned to point at a specific soldier nearby when a sharp blast filled the air and the large Chitauri dropped lifelessly to the forest floor, a large bloody hole in the back of his helmet.
The rest of the soldiers immediately fell into a defensive line and began firing back into the nearby woods. Tony tried to smash himself further into the dirt to avoid any stray shots that may strike his hiding spot. A chill swept through the air as the scene before him darkened like something was obscuring the sun, and a deep rumble like thunder shook the ground. Tony couldn't see past the branches overhead, but he could have sworn the sky was clear when he had been shot down. He hadn't seen a single cloud or he would have remembered -he would have tried to use it for cover if he could. Some of the Chitauri glanced up as well as though they shared Tony's confusion.
Tony's hair stood on end and his world went white when a great arc of lightning fell from the sky and struck one of the Chitauri vessels. Tony shook his head and tried to blink the sparkles from his eyes while the sounds of screaming and weapons firing filled the air around him. By the time his vision returned, the screaming had gone silent, and all that remained in the stagnant air was the crackling of a burning log and distant rumbling of fading thunder.
"Thor?" he breathed.
"Who's Thor?" a voice chirruped right in his ear.
"Holy mother of-!" Tony yelped and tried to scramble away from the voice, but the branches had him effectively snared and he only managed an inch or two. Laying beside him underneath the bushes was a girl. She hardly looked old enough to be out of highschool. Her brown hair was pulled back into a high pony tail to reveal huge forest green eyes sparkling up at him. "Wh-what?" Tony gasped. There was no way she could have crawled under the brush without him noticing, but she definitely hadn't been here before him. What was going on?
The stranger reached out to grab him by the wrist. She slunging his arm over her slender shoulder and hauled him upward with surprising strength. He offered no resistance, and could only gape in fascinated horror as they stood and the brush which had been tearing into his skin moments ago was suddenly passing through his body as harmlessly as a hologram. "How-?"
"Hey!" the girl called out, ignoring his shocked question as she guided him out of the brush which passed through their legs as if it weren't even there, and back into the clearing where she let him sink back to his knees. "I found someone!"
"We were just-" Tony continued to gasp, glancing back and forth between the bushes they had just left, which still looked very convincingly real, and the slender girl standing over him. "How did you do that?"
"Kitty," a voice, deep and feminine like a fine porcelain vase, rang down from above. "We've spoken of this. You mustn't scare people like that."
From the grey sky above, a woman was descending slowly. Her arms were held out like she was holding something up, though her hands were empty as far as he could tell, and her eyes were glowing bright with tiny arcs of electricity dancing across her dark skin. Her short cropped hair shone white like fresh snow.
"He's fine," Kitty shrugged, not looking the least bit chastised as she turned to offer him a bright smile. "Right?"
The edges of Tony's vision were going dark again, and he swayed on his knees as the events of his wild ride caught up to him and everything faded away. The last thing he saw was those deep green eyes flashing with concern before his mind slipped from his body and the realm of consciousness was left very far behind.
End
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Chapter 2 Preview: "...What he couldn't figure out was why they hadn't made a move yet. Any half-way decent sniper would have taken the shot by now. He had given them half a dozen chances at least over the last mile in an attempt to draw them out, and still they had made no move to do anything but follow at a distance. Were they waiting for him to fall asleep? A part of him laughed at their caution. Another part found it sensible. The bravado of his previous guests, after all, had led to nothing but their deaths. This one was different, and that concerned him..."
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This book will have a revolving perspective and follow several 'groups' of characters. Most perspective shifts right now will be chapter based, but this may change as the groups start meeting up and things roll into faster motion.
I'm sorry if there are any growing pains as I get used to writing these new characters. I've been writing the GotG from Peter's perspective for so long, and it's all I've written, that this is me branching out. I am still learning and growing and pretty new to writing stories, so I appreciate any help, constructive criticism, ect. If you notice any grammar issues feel free to point them out! (I was 150k into the main seriese before I realized I was tagging my dialogue wrong.) If you're uncomfortable posting it as a review you can PM me, my inbox is always open, and I allow anonymous asks on my tumbler "ThereAreMonstersInTheDark." Same for any other random questions you may have.
I am not an expert on the Avengers. I will try my very best to keep all of the facts straight, but if you notice I messed up some character detail, missed something, forgot something, call me on it! I might not be able to fix everything, but if it's something I can fix I will. There's a lot of variation on Canon in Marvel, but for the most part I want to keep things close to the movies. I might, however, be leaning closer to the earliest X-men movies for the X-men, with some throwback to the X-Men: Evolution cartoons I grew up knowing.
Thank you for reading and giving this story a chance!
-OMaM