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Thanks to the spells that she now had access to thanks to more recent lessons with Gaia, Storm was now able to sense people living within a targeted area so long as that area was on Earth. After affixing her dominion over said areas, she could then teleport living beings within those zones of control to others. At first, she'd only been able to manage teleporting people within a single zone around herself, and that was if she'd gone with them, but since those early days she'd learned and mastered the art. Thanks to all her training, and the monstrous power boost she'd been gifted with when Gaia blessed her union with Harry, her area of control had expanded from a few miles to a little under a hundred at last tally.
Storm had just finished doing the same thing over in Washington actually, although it had taken quite a lot out of her and she'd had to down several Pepper Up Potions at the end. Of course, that would just be the start of it though, as none of them were foolish enough to believe that simply teleporting civilians away from a combat zone would be enough to make certain that they were all safe. But she had felt confident that she could leave the rest in the hands of the local authorities.
"Roger that ma'am! Please start from the southernmost districts of the city. My troops haven't spread out that way yet so we'll try to keep to the north for now and then move over into the empty zone once you're done. Hopefully the Chitters will follow us and ignore the remaining civilians while you work. I will say I believe a lot of civvies escaped down into the subway tunnels before we even got here," Sean advised.
The Thing was forced to turn his attention away from the conversation for a few moments as several skimmers opened fire at him. His ride was struck several times and soon enough the appropriated skimmer began to lose altitude. This forced Ben to leap off the wreck before it could get too low, right into the side of a Ripper.
Having miraculously landed on a part of the cyborg creature that wasn't covered by armor, the Thing's fists immediately plunged into its hide with vengeance, tearing away. As the Ripper floundered in midair, fruitlessly trying to keep itself afloat while dislodging whatever was causing it so much pain, the rocky member of the Fantastic Four only put his back into his efforts.
Meanwhile, Thunderbird found himself still underneath the rubble. He could move its arms thanks to how the rubble had fallen, but he'd discovered his legs were completely pinned and he couldn't move around enough to get the leverage needed to free himself. Growling in anger, he radioed Storm asking for her to teleport him out along with the civilians.
After confirming his request, and ignoring the wry grin he could hear through the comslink, the elder Proudstar brother literally disappeared from underneath . He appeared in an open field next to Storm, along with several thousand dazed, confused, and terrified civilians who now found themselves elsewhere from where they'd been hiding or taking cover. Nearby, on the backs of a few military trucks, uniformed officers were shouting at the top of their lungs into megaphones to be heard, directing the rescued Parisians this way and that.
Parisians, however, historically did not do too well when being told what to do, and as a result quite a bit of chaos was developing. Indeed, several hundred of those just rescued had begun to shout back, looking almost as if they were going to riot. As if anywhere near a warzone was the perfect time and place to do so.
Seeing the rapidly worsening discontent, Thunderbird felt the need to ask, "Are you going to be all right here?" He wiped at the dried blood on his face from where his cheek had been cut during the fight with the Super-Skrull. Really, he only smudged it worse.
"I will be perfectly fine, never you worry. By all means, get back in the fight Thunderbird," Storm ordered, not even looking up from where she'd been kneeling on the ground with her hands outstretched and pressed flat against to the earth. Magic flowed from her into the ground, through every bit of dirt, dust, and rock she could reach, and then focused up to exact coordinates of that made up the outer city limits Paris. Once that was done, she started teleport away anyone who wasn't actively fighting in groups several blocks wide.
Thunderbird wasn't quite so certain, despite the assurance. He knew that massive undertakings like what Storm was attempting, especially over such distances, would take a lot of concentration, not to mention power and stamina. And this is the second warzone that Storm's seeing to. Still, the man didn't argue, instead pulling out his magic broom and taking off into the sky. Getting his mind back into the fight, he easily ignored the shouts of consternation and shock from those below who were in a fit enough state to notice such things.
He was almost out of sight when a feeling made him look back. His sharp sight quickly noticed a group of Parisians were now trying to charge Storm's position, only to be rebounded back by something unseen. Thunderbird didn't even try to fight his smirk, realizing that Storm had foreseen the problem brewing before he had and had set up some sort of defensive spell around herself.
Satisfied, Thunderbird turned back forward and sped through the air back toward Paris, determined to get back into the fight as quickly as he could.
OOOOOOO
While the others immediately set to work drawing the attention of the Super-Skrull and the invading Chitauri down on them, Mystique instead moved away quietly, heading into the burning, ruined city without firing a shot, wincing at the carnage all around her. She did snipe one Chitauri off a wall, but only because she feared she'd been spotted, before she ducked sideways through a hole into the burnt out husk of another structure. Taking a moment to press herself against a wall, she put away her broomstick, shaking her head with a wry, somewhat forced chuckle. "Magic. Honestly, I doubt I'll ever get used to it…" Then, her scant humor faded as she took in the sight of the burnt, half-buried corpses around her and heard the fighting in the distance even over the nearer creakings and groanings of a building barely staying upright.
Slowly and carefully, Mystique made her way down to street level, the device Reed had created to try and locate the Beacons the aliens had used to open their dimensional doorways in her hand. Luckily for them, the devices were something the genius had already been working on prior to the invasion actually beginning. It was believed that if they could find all of the beacons and shut them down, then the dimensional doorways they anchored would be forced closed. With their unending reinforcements canceled, then between the Custodes, the Oh Damns, and the local militaries everyone would be able to eventually overwhelm the invaders.
As a precaution, Mystique took on the form of a Chitauri, right as the sounds of violence around her rose to a crescendo at the arrival of the Oh Damns. However, Mystique could've cared less about that. Fighting the aliens head-to-head wasn't her specialty, nor her mission.
That didn't mean, however, that Mystique, one of the oldest living mutants and one of the most experienced hand-to-hand fighters in the world, couldn't throw down with the best of them, though. An unlucky Chitauri, which barged through a wall to one side and leveled a rifle at her found this out, to its cost.
The sight of another of its kind where there shouldn't have been one caused the Chitauri soldier to hesitate. In that brief moment, Mystique closed the distance, grabbing the alien's rifle with one hand while the other morphed into a claw. Before the Chitauri could even react, she'd stabbed her clawed hand through its throat.
Unfortunately, it hadn't been alone. Several more Chitauri had been in the same room that one had been in previously. Now alerted to her presence, they fired at her from the doorway as one, ignoring the corpse of their fellow between them. Briefly using it as a shield to block the first wave of blaster fire, she soon tossed it aside, changing her body into that of the Thing as she charged forward.
While she couldn't make her body quite as strong as the real Ben Grimm, or take on any other super individual's special abilities, she could make her body almost as immune to damage by taking their forms. Thus, Mystique was able to ignore the blaster bolts that continuously impacted her as she got closer to her foes. A sudden kick caught one of the Chitauri on the side of the knee, shattering it. A follow up forearm, shot to the side of another's head sent it stumbling. A knee to the head threw the one with the shattered knee into a third.
With what was revealed to be all three reeling, Mystique pulled out one of her plasma pistols. Without pausing, she fired, one shot each, straight through the head. Whirling, she snorted in derision, the noise sounding somewhat odd coming from behind the near-skintight mask she had formed out of her body to take on the shape of the mask the Chitauri all wore. "Idiots. You never pile up like that in a doorway," she muttered to the dead, then moved on.
That is, until the floor caved in from under her. The building had been weakened structurally by the damage it had sustained, and now Mystique would face the consequences. The shape-shifter crashed onto the floor down, her world spinning. Groaning in pain, she was half buried under the rubble that fell with her. Two Chitauri there stared at her for a second before they began to fire at her. Somehow despite looking like one of them, the Chitauri seemed able to tell she wasn't one of them after only a brief examination.
This fact was something Mystique made a note of as she pushed through the pain, firing back with her pistol and downing one of her latest attackers. Now with only one firing at her, she decided that it was smarter to concentrate on pulling herself out of the rubble she found herself in, not wanting to be pinned there if more of the aliens showed up.
It turned out it was well that she did so, as a grenade—one that reminded her very strongly of a similar item from that Star Wars series—landed where she'd been stuck a moment later. "Oh come on!" Mystique flung herself forward just as the explosive went off. However, the Chitauri version of a grenade wasn't like one from Earth though. It turned out they acted almost like thermal weapon, creating an area of intense heat and blinding light for a second which melted everything around it like a tiny nova.
Tactically rolling through a doorway into what looked like what used to be an office of some kind, Mystique took a moment set the wounds that now littered her body to slowly start healing while she pulled out her rifle and lined up a shot back the way she'd come. As the Chitauri trooper appeared there, she shot it through the foot, then through the side and then the head as it fell. But behind its corpse she could hear noises that clued her in that several more of the invaders had come to reinforce the two she'd nearly died fighting only moments before.
Scrambling away, Mystique settled into a better position, to one side of the door, and wondered if she should chance trying the 'little lost child' routine. In the past, whenever soldiers or police had chased her into a corner she'd assume a nonthreatening appearance for a few seconds—just to throw them off—in order to close with them so she could use her superior CQC skills. Here though, I doubt it would do me any favors, she thought, her eyes straying to one side. Strewn across one side of the room was what looked to be what had once been a young family, the four having been gunned down in the open door to a bathroom.
"Right then, the old-fashioned way it is!" Mystique growled, surprising anger rising within her at the needless slaughter eagerly fired back at the Chitauri as they charged in. Unfortunately for her, as those slowed down, more appeared, clinging to the outside of the building. These played it smarter, firing through the already shattered windows at her. The spy was caught in an enfilade, with no way out.
Stuck in place like that, the Chitauri might've eventually been able to do enough damage to her body to overwhelm even Mystique's special healing factor… if not for the Oh Damns. Two suddenly pushed out of a nearby wrecked building, firing on all cylinders at the Chitauri outside. The mad dash succeeded in dragging some of their attention in that direction. A moment later, a Heavy trooper poked his way out from a window a few floors above them across the street, closely followed by his Gatling gun. He opened fire into the mass of Chitauri in the doorway. Things just began to look up when a Ripper smashed down into the building the Heavy was in. Even as Mystique pulled herself out of the rubble, she heard, "Trooper Jeffries just ported out," from the squads noncom over the shared coms net.
As the Chitauri on the wall outside the apartment building were now concentrating on the two troopers quickly retreating into the distant building, Mystique raced forward, leaving the battle behind. Once she was fairly sure she'd broken contact with any Chitauri, she snuck out into yet another building nearby, deli that had half-collapsed. Its storefront had been entirely destroyed, exploded inward by some tremendous shock or other, perhaps by a car, like the one that had been hurled down the street outside?
Regardless of what had caused the damage to the building, inside Mystique found still more bodies. Several dead bakers and more than a few customers were strewn out, two clearly killed by a window exploding, as pieces of glass had sliced into their faces, throats, and upper arms and the others by Chitauri weaponry.
Mystique gingerly moved through the dead, unable to help grimacing. I thought I had left my last slaughterhouse like this behind in World War II, and now here I am again. I hope Paris can rebuild after this, Irene and I used to love coming to the city.
Pushing still aching thoughts of her late lover to one side, Mystique stepped around the remains of the cash register and display case, grabbing at some of the bread still there and munching on it quickly. She could feel her energy reserves in desperate need of replenishing after having pushed her body so hard. Repairing the damage she'd been taking was no easy feat.
Once she was certain she'd rebuilt as much of her reserves as she could with slightly charred bread and cold salami, Mystique moved back out the broken window, immediately discovering dead Chitauri. The battle against the team of Oh Damns had moved away, leaving seven Chitauri dead and scattered across the rubble-strewn road outside, along with the corpse of one of the giant fish things.
Examining the dead aliens one after another, Mystique slowly transformed her body to match that of a wounded Chitauri, one that had taken some damage to the side of its head and back. She picked up one of their blasters at the same time. They seem to be able to tell that I'm not one of them. If that's because of some kind of communication tech they share between their cyborg-like parts, maybe if I look wounded they'll assume the parts I need to contact them are broken?
It was a long shot, but Mystique hoped it would work. If it didn't, then she'd only be able to slip through the city by either killing any Chitauri that saw her or going to ground entirely, by, say, taking the form of a dead body, every time she ran into a Chitauri. Whatever she did, it would slow her infiltration to a crawl.
Soon enough, Mystique was done with her new disguise. As she pushed her way deeper into the city, following the signal on the scanner hidden on the interior of her wrist, it was quickly put to the test. Seeing the incoming Chitauri, she fired into an empty building, hoping that they would, at best, ignore her.
Thankfully, the wounds Mystique's form appeared to suffer from seemed to be enough, and the Chitauri who spotted her ended up ignoring her. Instead, they focused on gunning down any surviving humans they could find, which they must have assumed she was doing as well, or firing at the Oh Damns.
Good. Thank fuck that worked. Now maybe I can make some progress in finding this damned beacon thing. The French better be grateful for all this… like pay for us all to have some time off down on the Riviera grateful. That sounds like a nice reward for saving the world. With that, the ageless shape changer steadily moved through the ruined capital of France, ignoring the ever more violent battle around her as more and more Chitauri came through the portal above the city.
OOOOOOO
As Mystique moved away from the main area of conflict, Thunderbird was notified of the arrival of the SAS, the first group having been dropped off and already desperately at work defending the locals. They wouldn't last very long against the Chitauri, lacking the body armor of the ODM's nor did they have the same mobility, although they would be able to take cover more easily. Still, they would take some of the pressure, and pull the invaders in different directions from within the city, something the Oh Damns had only been able to do in small ways given the disparity in numbers.
Other military forces were also inbound from multiple directions around France, and more and more of the country's own Air Force was also getting involved, although there, as with the first responders from Châteaudun Air Base, their losses were ruinous.
Even so, hopefully all of it meant that the tide was starting to turn in this particular battlefield. We can only pray it is.
Moments later, Thunderbird saw his quarry battling it out with two Heavy Troopers. The two armored men bounced every which way they could, raining down mortar rounds, Gatling fire, and even rockets onto the Super Skrull who in turn either batted them away or didn't even seem to notice them.
As he took in the sight, the memory of that little boy lying dead the street came to Thunderbird again, and he glanced down at his still bloodied hand, gripping the shaft of his hatchet tightly.
Silently, he leaned forward and down, the position they'd all been told would direct the magic brooms to fly faster. How and why they worked that way, he didn't know but it did, and soon Thunderbird was a blur through the air. Not quite at Mach speed, but certainly fast.
The Super-Skrull finally closed with one of the eavies, punching his head clean off his shoulders with a single blow before the man's body blinked out of existence. Out of the corner of his eye saw something flashing towards him from a different direction and turned, but too slow as Thunderbird's hatchet drove itself deep into his chest. "ARRGHHH!" he cried out in pain, the cutting edge of that weapon bypassing his stretching powers entirely, almost chopping deep enough to hit his heart.
He fell back, and Thunderbird whirled around his collapsing form, striking at the back of his head. The Super-Skrull barely dodged, taking a cut to his shoulder instead, and managed to throw out a blow that snapped Thunderbird's broom in two, sending him tumbling to the ground below. The Apache warrior landed in a bit of rubble and roared as he leaped back upward, reaching out to grab onto the Super-Skrull's still flaming legs.
The super soldier dodged again, only to eat a chect full of mortar , the shell's blast spread enough to impact the wound Thunderbird had just caused. "Damn you, you barely evolved apes! Your tenacity will avail you nothing! The Lord Thanos, with the mighty Skrull and Chitauri armies, will slay you all!"
"Really? Because from where we're standing, our tenacity is kicking your ass!" One of the Heavy Gunners shouted, using his exterior speakers to taunt the alien prick.
Before the Super-Skrull could retort, a Ripper fell out of the sky and slammed into the ground nearby. From the dust plume, the Thing came flying out, hurling himself through the air towards him. But the Thing couldn't really control himself once airborne, just fall with style, so the Super-Skrull was able to dodge away from him before he landed, putting several blocks of the ruined city between him and his previous position.
As he did though, he spotted movement to the side. A group of humans had come rushing out from a collapsing building just as a Ripper smashed into it, only to blink as they disappeared between one step and the next. It was as if they had somehow hidden themselves under a cloaking device or been teleported away somehow without using any visible technology to perform either act. "What—what was that?"
There was no time to think on that however, as just then artillery began to rain down onto the city from a distance. Many of those munitions were airburst shells, which went off midair in the Parisian sky, tearing into skimmers and Rippers there, forcing their shields to activate. Many failed, dozens of skimmers blonw out of the sky in moments. Others, even the massive skimmers, also took damage.
Other artillery shells, driven by rockets, flashed into the Chitauri portal, along with several ICBMs fired from the French fleet using data from the Orbital Drop Marines. While it was true that the Chitauri were still able to suppress the normal types of human communications and radar, the highly advanced system that Reed, Tony, and Forge had devised for the Orbital Drop Marines connected to the equally advanced scanning equipment of the satellites in orbit. Thus, they were able to punch straight through the jamming field.
Firing ICBMs at and into their own capital city was not a decision the French High Command, or what remained of it after the assault on Paris, had taken lightly. But it was one that they had decided upon once Storm had begun teleporting the surviving civilians out of the city. The enemy was simply bringing in too many troops without pause. Every minute the portal remained active, skimmers, infantry transports, and Rippers emerged out of the dimensional doorway to join the horde infesting the city, relentlessly pressing outward.
Even if those reinforcements were mainly concentrating on military targets for now, the flow had to be stopped.
Alas, shooting through the portal was one thing, hitting something on the other side was another. The ICBMs in questions flashed through the portal, missing a Ripper crossing the other way by inches, only to disappear into the blackness beyond. Several more followed, only for the same thing to occur, and the battle, and the influx of reinforcements, continued unabated.
OOOOOOO
On the other side of the various dimensional portals, Thanos waited, sitting in his hover throne gazing from one portal to the other, watching for his target to appear. The Mad Titan knew he was prepared, had strengthened himself in various ways, both physically and technologically, to fight and defeat magic users like Potter or the raw strength of an Avatar of the Phoenix.
That being said, it would be beneath him to show his own advancements against lesser opponents. Until his two targets showed themselves, his Black Order, the Skrull, and the Chitauri would serve to soften up the humans.
Watching through the various portals, Thanos was somewhat amused to note that the humans didn't seem to have realized the main portal was the most important one. There were only a few locals attacking the forwardmost scouts of the main force so far, pathetic bandits slain instantly when they appeared. Instead, the humans were busy scrambling whatever forces they could muster to defend the scattered cities in which the other portals had opened. Well, bar that one territory, but it seems to have been completely thrown into disarray thanks to Supergiant. Perhaps I should command her to change her name at some point. Supergiant just makes absolutely no sense. I realize she is quite tall for her people but…
The Mad Titan's idle musings abruptly cut off as artillery shells and first one, then multiple giant missiles came through one of the portals. Lazily, he turned his thrown in that direction and waved one of his hands. Upon that wrist, a small band of metal began to hum, and a gravitational field empowered from the engine of his throne lashed out under his direction. The field grabbed the missiles and twisted them away from the gathered forces of the Chitauri they had been headed toward.
The artillery kept on going through the void until they was well out of sight, by which time Thanos had already turned his gaze away, now staring into that one portal. He watched as several more missiles appeared, only to use the same defensive measure against each in turn, shaking his head sadly as he did so. "And so it seems that Nebula has once more proven herself the lesser of my daughters. How frustrating."
Tapping on the controls of his throne for a few seconds, Thanos quickly programmed the throne room to emit the same gravitational sphere as his wrist device. Moments of more tapping later, and bubbles of the same energy appeared around each portal. These would redirect or halt any kinetic missiles coming through from Earth to be disposed of quickly.
With that defense now in place, Thanos turned his attention back to the portal where the missiles had come from, pondering if he would need to step in. But even as he had acted against the miniscule threat of the missiles, still more of the Chitauri had moved through the offending portal. Now even more joined them, pulling themselves out of the columns meant for Supergiant's breach. These forces included several larger troop transports, thousands more skimmers, and over a dozen Rippers and Dreadwyngs, the slow moving aerial denial systems of the Chitauri.
Thanos couldn't quite tell from where he was sitting, but regardless, it was obvious to him that whatever human forces were on the other side of that particular portal, they hadn't been able to bring enough firepower to bear to stop further reinforcements from arriving. Seeing the retaliatory response already on its way, Thanos leaned back in his throne, crossing his arms as he continued to wait patiently.
The show was, after all, still quite amusing. Fight, kill, die gloriously, take hundreds of Chitauri with you into the Wheel, humans. All of it serves my aims to gain My Lady's favor. Potter and the Avatar's deaths will then serve as the main course, and then I will at last have her affections!
OOOOOOO
While she was no goddess in need worship, or even seek such, the ENDLESS had long since been well aware of her would-be paramour. At first, hundreds of years ago, Death had been… amused, perhaps, or maybe intrigued by the idea of a living being, a sentient of immense power of a Titan no less, being romantically enamored of her. And perhaps Death might have, in some fashion, shown enough understanding of Thanos's actions to come across the Titan's limited perspective as encouragement. But since that one instance, that interest had faded. Death was the ENDLESS, and for her there was nothing as important to her as her duty, her knowledge that eventually, all things ended but her and her opposite, her 'sister', the Phoenix Force, the power of rebirth and life. And the One Above All, of course, but like the Phoenix Force, the Endless preferred not to think of him.
Now, watching events on Earth with a larger portion of her attention than might be appropriate, Death acknowledged her past mistake with Thanos, while also recognizing that her remaining interest in Thanos had faded almost instantly upon meeting Harry Potter as he crossed from the Forbidden Zone into this dimension. A being infused equally with Life and Death energies, one not afraid of her but still respectful, who was a defender of Life and Dealer of Death in equal measure, had grabbed her attention like no other. Not to the point where Death would consider looking upon him as Thanos did her, as a possible paramour, but simply as an object of fascination.
A fascination that had been well rewarded since. Not just with his services to her, killing fools and even entities that had thought themselves removed from her touch, removed from the Wheel as she so hated, but the Traveler also saved one of her favored servants from eternal, slavery. A fate she'd been forbidden to interfere with. Hela's freedom pleased Death greatly.
Moreover, watching Harry, communing with him alongside her 'sister' had taught the Endless something about herself, a novel idea. In many ways, she was like one of the fireflies of Earth, yearning for the light, yet knowing she would never touch it. NEVER WILL I TRULY LIVE, AND NEVER WILL I KNOW THE PLEASURES OF LIFE, YET THEY FASCINATE ME EVEN SO, JUST AS AT TIMES MY OPPOSITE HAS BECOME ENAMORED OF MYSELF AND VIOLENCE. BUT, THERE IS ALWAYS THE DUTY. AND I WILL NEVER SHIRK IT. JUST AS I WILL NEVER FIND DELIGHT IN THE PASSING OF SOULS FROM THE MATERIAL INTO MY HANDS. IT IS MY PURPOSE, NOT MY PLEASURE. THANOS, FOR ALL HIS PROFESSED LOVE FOR ME, DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THAT WHILE I AM DEATH, THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT KILLING IS THE WAY TO MY HEART. IF I EVEN HAVE ONE. THAT, AS THE HUMANS WOULD SAY, IS A POSER.
Death's glowing, cold blue eyes flared a bit in amusement at that thought, before she turned her attention from Thanos alone to the overall feel of the Material Plane around Earth, feeling it beginning to clench almost, like a man tensing for a blow, or a muscle tensing prior to performing some great dead of strength. Regardless, Death knew what that meant.
Nor was she alone in her recognition. Within the heart of the Mkraan crystal, the Phoenix Force looked on as well, eager to see how this spark would alight anew, while closer to hand, Gaia smiled, feeling Harry's presence in the weave of the universe begin to change. "SO IT HAS BEGUN…"
OOOOOOO
Despite being nominally in charge of the portal in Paris, Nebula wasn't even anywhere close to Paris at the moment that artillery began to fire on the portal. Instead, she had finished leveling Châteaudun Air Base, the base that had launched the fighters that had attacked her assault force previously. That done, she'd decided to move on to another one nearby, further southward. But even as she and her now diminished force of skimmers had arrived above the base, the Super-Skrull had gotten in touch with her, his voice blaring into her head thanks to one of the pieces of technology that Thanos had forced upon her as a reward for one of her losses to Gamora in training.
"Nebula! Return to point of source as soon as you can! Humans are pushing forward hard on the portal in force, and I am being cornered into fighting some of their superpowered soldiers. They have the range on the Chitauri and are using it toeffect. I can't fight these supers and guarantee the safety of the beacon from their regular units at the same time!"
Scowling, Nebula said nothing as she immediately turned back towards the city, ordering her skimmers to attack the base without her. "That portal must remain open! Get the infantry to form a series of defensive rings on the ground. I will arrive soon, and we will begin moving it around at random. That portal must hold, damn it, I will not face Father's fury for another loss, not again!"
So concerned was she at avoiding punishment, that Nebula didn't see the tornado that kicked up and reached out for all the skimmers she'd left behind, nor the shield of magic that covered the second base from one end to the other. In fact, she was already well away by the time the last of the skimmers crashed to the ground, torn asunder by the ravening wins that Storm had conjured. Another area was now clear to receive refugees.
OOOOOOO
By the time the battle in France had devolved into tumultuous battles out at sea, over the countryside, and most importantly in and above the streets of Paris, Colossus and his team of Custodes had gotten ready to go themselves into battle. But in Russia, they realized they'd be facing entirely different problems. The French theatre was dominated by the two fronts, Paris and out to sea, with several smaller battles inland as the Chitauri reacted to continued aggression from the defenders almost piecemeal.
In contrast, the battles in Russia were, to this point were very different. They were located far away from the city above which the portal had opened.
Proxima Midnight was not only a better general than Nebula, but she also wasn't one to get tunnel vision to the point that she neglected to consider what her enemies could do against her. To that end, the majority of the Chitauri units she'd organized to follow through after the first wave had been anti-air units.
These came in two different types. One was the sort that the Wrecking Crew had observed taking position around the main portal, the cyborg creatures that looked somewhat like Earth dung beetles. Though short in range, they were incredibly fast, able to lock onto multiple targets with each of the six guns mounted onto their backs, and would dig into the ground to defend themselves from return fire. The second system were series of floating batteries like that which had shown up over Washington D.C. after Corvus had finished slaughtering everyone in the White House.
These floating manta ray-like creatures had four energy turrets, which each had far longer range than the normal variety of Chitauri weaponry. The slowness inherent in their movement was the reason why neither Nebula nor Gamora had decided to use them for their own forces. But Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive both used them. However, in Washington those defenses were still stuck in place due to facing off against the might of the American Air Force alongside the missile launchers of local army units. , here in Russia, that was not an issue. Russia had never had as strong an air force presence as America or France, and hadn't even rebuilt it to its pre-Eurasian War point.
This led to the state of things now; the manta ray-like flying batteries, designated Dreadwyngs among the Chitauri, were making their slow way away from above Severomorsk to provide constant overwatch against human air units while below them skimmers and infantry moved out just as slowly. These creatures proceeded to make mincemeat of the first groups of Russian planes to run into them. The same occurred a little later when the first allied planes arrived, as the Russians had declined to mention how effective the anti-air fire was to their allies. The squadrons from Finland, Sweden, and the US forces posted there—holdovers from the Eurasian War that had not yet been pulled out—suffered heavily.
On the ground however, was a slightly different story. Thanks to the numerous tunnel systems that the Dire Wraiths and their pawns had burrowed throughout Russia, Russian forces had been able to rebuild the majority of their material losses out of sight. Their troops were nowhere close to as well-trained as those they'd lost in the Eurasian War, but they were just as fiercely patriotic. Additionally, the Russian units responsible for defending those tunnels had long thought of how to do so.
Thus, a maintenance tunnel had been wide left open on purpose just so the Russians could trick the invaders to enter close combat with them. While Russia would probably never be a great producer of electronics, textiles, or freedoms, they produced two things in great abundance. Raw materials such as titanium and steel, and men willing—perhaps with liberal use of liquid courage—to fight for Russia.
Sergeant Goromovo held up a hand, signaling his troops to slow as they raced along the tunnel offshoot leading from the main underground network to Severomorsk. It was technically the maintenance tunnel for the main vein east, the one that actually transported goods to the rest of the network from underground factories separate from the rest. That tunnel had been collapsed in a response to the invasion in multiple places to deter any flanking maneuvers.
The tunnel was three-men wide and the Russians took advantage of this by creating special units called Tunnel Shields. Ahead of Goromovo, two such men stood, troopers wearing heavy titanium armor and wielding enormous tower shields, though they had none of the mechanical muscles needed to move like a Titanium Man. These men had one purpose, to hold the line ahead of the regular troopers, their titanium shields their only benefit to the force.
Ahead of the two Shield Guards, only one over-enthusiastic trooper still remained on his feet, the others having fallen to the energy weapons that the aliens were using. Looking through the legs of that man, Goromovo could see the mangled bodies of several of his men interspersed with more than a dozen alien corpses. Glaring, Goromovo snarled, shouting out, "For Mother Russia!" and fired his grenade launcher up over the heads of the two Shield Guards.
The grenade went off as it landed in amongst several charging aliens. Their armor seemed to shrug off everything but the concussive blast as they kept on firing even as they were flung around the tunnel. Still, that fire was noticeably less effective for a few seconds and Goromovo and the remaining troopers with him took the chance to move up directly behind the Shield Guards, sticking their guns through prepared slits in the giant titanium slabs.
They let loose, downing two of the still firing aliens, then pulled back behind the shields as return fire lanced through the slits in turn. Whatever else, it was incredibly clear that the aliens were excellent marksmen, even on the fly. Or perhaps they had some type of autotargeting feature?
Regardless, the rifle of one of Goromovo's troopers exploded as it took an energy round to the muzzle. The soldier moved away from the others at once, trying to find a gun that was still intact.
"Heavy machine gun coming up!" A shout came from behind, and with a grunt, the two Shield Guards began to lift their massive shield. As they did, Goromovo and his troopers pressed against the sides of the tunnel, allowing the machine gunner to open fire with his heavy, crew-served weapon from under the tower shields as the Shield Guards raised them to stomach height. Several of the aliens were quickly mowed down.
But enough of them were able to move to either side of the tunnel and shot back. Another one of Goromovo's men went down, screaming as an energy round struck his leg, searing straight through.
Back and forth the battle went, with nearly a hundred aliens dying per couple of troopers. Unfortunately, the invaders' numbers hardly seemed to fall, and eventually the tower shields began to glow red from repeated hits. One of the Shield Guards shouted, "Retreat, the shields are being overloaded!"
Goromovo and his men, only two of which remained on their feet, did so and retreated back down the tunnel, passing by two fresh Shield Guards. As soon as they were through, the two hastily moved forward into position.
The two Shield Guards that previously had been defending Goromovo waited until their shields were literally melting, and then with bellowing roars charged forwards. Their advance was ponderous, as their armor lacked any powered synthetic muscles, but both had been chosen for their roles because they were large, powerfully built men. When they reached the enemy, for once the Chitauri found that they couldn't just overpower a human in hand-to-hand combat. Worse, thanks to the narrowness of the tunnel and how many of the aliens had pressed forward, they couldn't dodge very well either.
Punches pulped alien heads and armored feet crushed bones; the two Shield Guards still holding the line even as Goromovo and their replacements came marching back into the fight. Unmindful of the two men in front, Goromovo and the rest resumed fire, and once more the aliens began to die in droves.
This continued until one alien physically climbed onto one of the Shield Guards that had charged, clinging to him with their legs. Using its hands, the alien tore the man's helmet off. In response, the soldier dropped his melted shield and crushed the alien in a bear hug. "RAGGHHHH! Feel the fury of Mother Russia!" A second later, several blaster bolts zeroed in on the man's suddenly exposed face.
The other Shield Guard fared better, for a moment, as reinforcements reached him. Aliens continued to die all around him as they'd crammed into the small space of the tunnel to the point that those in the back could barely fire forward, meanwhile the humans could fire away freely. Finally, two other aliens followed the earlier one's example, one holding the Shield Guard's attention while the other tore the man's helmet off of his head. Such an exploitable weakness in the design would surely be going in Goromovo's After Action Report.
But when the second Shield Guard, Timochenko, fell, behind him the two fresh Guards stepped into place, their shields slamming down, blocking the majority of the tunnel save for the small slits built in the shields. Behind Goromovo and his men, still more arrived, slowly coming to the fore from elsewhere in the near-nationwide underground tunnel network via tram or truck. From that point on, switching places the maintenance tunnel made for much harder going for the Shield Guards, moving them up around the shooting troopers was tough at that point since more fire teams had also arrived.
Even so, the aliens were not going to be getting anywhere in the tunnels anytime soon. There in the tunnels, they were forced to fight face to face, where they had few, if any, real advantages over the humans. Indeed, the defenders just might've had the advantage thanks to their Shield Guards.
But on the surface, that situation was entirely reversed, and not only in the air.
OOOOOOO
With the destruction of the majority of Russia's reconstituted Winter Guard, Proxima Midnight had continued on her way, closing with the nearest military base at the equivalent of Mach speed and began her assault even as its troops were just beginning to move to assist Severomorsk. Although the base's AA brigade of ZSU-23-4 Shilkas and their four autocannons took a toll on her skimmers, in return she and her forces laid down an equally withering rain of fire. Proxima Midnight herself destroyed anything that she came across, targeting the anti-air batteries, getting close and smashing them into pieces.
The Russian forces were routed quickly there, and she moved on, keeping a tight rein on her troops. Thanks to the humans lacking the ability to interdict her communications, unlike how the Chitauri could so effectively interdict their own, there were still a few nearby bases that had yet to learn about the invasion, despite a runner having gotten away through the underground tunnels. Even better for Proxima Midnight, the toll of the Eurasian War had yet to be made good in any real fashion. The tunnel guards might've been brought up to strength, along with the Winter Guard somewhat, but the majority of the Russian military was showing that it was still a shadow of what it once had been.
Yet, despite the massive successes she'd had in the first two hours, Proxima Midnight's desire to lead her attack force personally had taken her away from the portal.
That, and Pinoptes being able to follow her progress, had allowed Colossus to come up with a somewhat similar plan to what Thunderbird was attempting to do, with admittedly scant success so far, in Paris.
However, instead of attacking the city, Colossus felt that they would be better served to strike the head off this particular snake. "The blue skinned woman in France is barely in control of her troops. There, the portal itself is a much more important a target. But here, this blue-skinned woman is dangerous, and she needs to be removed." Colossus had pointed out to his team when they'd been given the information Pinoptes had gathered about what was going on in Russia.
The rest had agreed with him. So while most of the Custodes assigned to the Russian theatre would look to eliminate the blue-skinned spear wielder, Morph alone would head for the portal.
Now, they were close enough to the ground to make out actual terrain features and with the heat of reentry fading, Colossus nodded over to Morph. "You have your GPS?"
"Yep, yep, I have the nifty little tracker that Mister Fantastic made for me. The egghead might be a little too quick to lecture on emission spectrums, energy analysis, and multi-radiation theory or whatever it was he started going on about, but he does good work," Morph answered with a smile.
"You speak truth." Colossus nodded, exchanging a grin and a handclasp with the shape changer. The others joined in, giving him slaps on the back and well wishes. Morph had become a firm friend to everyone on the team thanks to his irrepressible good humor and quick wit, and everyone trusted that he'd get the job done. They just hoped he would come back in one piece. "Good luck Tovarish."
"Luck? I don't need luck, just a bit of skill and timing," Morph quipped back with a snicker, hopping onto a magic broom. With that, he headed away from the rest of the team.
Once Morph was out of sight, Colossus guided the dropship to the ground, then used one of the magic carpets to fly into the air. With Pinoptes guiding them, the group flashed over the countryside with all the speed of a jet fighter, quickly coming to where the blue-skinned woman and her forces had just finished demolishing another Russian military base. As it had been a simple infantry base for trainees, it had fallen within minutes.
As they got closer, the Custodes could see smoke rising from the ruins, as well as a single large fire, most likely from the base's gasoline storage tanks. Soon, they were close enough to start seeing the wreckage of numerous stationary anti-air weapons littered the ground. Then came the bodies, each and every one scattered around the base seemingly at random where the infantry had tried to disperse, and Colossus was somewhat proud of the fact that here, at least, most of the dead had died with guns in their hand.
Even so, there was no doubt that the fight had been horrendously uneven. Ground troops with machine guns against energy weapon-carrying flying skimmers with shields? There was only one way that would've ever ended. Hundreds of bodies littered the ground as, with some of them having been cut in half, others simply riddled with holes, the energy bolts having burned through them entirely. Tellingly, there was not a single Chitauri body among the mass of dead. This had not been a fight, it had been a massacre, the courage of the defenders notwithstanding, and Colossus felt his anger rising.
The Custodes flew on over the remnants of the base, still in search of the commander of this assault. Unfortunately for Colossus and his team, their quarry turned out to have a surprise waiting for them…
Down below, Proxima Midnight looked up from where she had just tossed aside the eviscerated carcass of the last human left alive from the pathetic excuse of a base she'd just wiped out, her thin smile of a job well done turning downward as her highly advanced senses told her some strange energy was closing with her position. She wondered what it was, glaring around her unable to pinpoint where the feeling was coming from until she looked into the sky and, for some reason, felt her eyes trying to obscure or ignore the area.
It is as if my mind is not allowing me concentrate there. My eyes skitter away from it like some of these pathetic humans I've slaughtered have done when faced with their certain death. As if their pathetic existence could have had any higher calling than dying in the name of Lord Thanos. But more importantly, the more I think about that area of the airspace, the more I don't want to. Bah, that must mean there is something there, something that is trying to push my mind awa., Hmm… a telepathic trick then? Like the rest of the Black Order, Proxima had dealt with telepaths numerous times before this, and had seen many of their tricks. And if I am supposed to not notice that area of space, then that is where I must strike!
Even as her eyes were once more forced away, Proxima Midnight raised her spear and blindly fired an energy bolt in the direction of the spot. The energy blast punched through some kind of strange thin flying thing? She wasn't certain what it was, it looked almost like a carpet. But that could be right, carpets couldn't—
"Magic!" She hissed, concern going through her for a moment as she observed the five beings on the carpet that she could now see. All of them wore different types of armor, it seemed, with two of them appearing to be metal-skinned ferorganics while two others merely wore power armor. "Is this going to be Potter then? Or one of the other magic users that Lord Thanos warned us about?"
Proxima was almost relieved to see that the first-person off the strange magic object was one of the metal-skinned warriors. That is one I have seen in the information I've gleaned from the local data network. His name is Colossus I think but regardless of his name, he is no magic user. Her concern seemingly unfounded, she raised her spear and shouted, "Close and engage! The enemy is upon us once more!"
Many of the skimmers had set down as they breached the human's base, the Chitauri upon them leaving their transports behind to hunt through the various buildings for their prey. Now those who had left them behind raced out, firing at the newly arrived humans while those who'd remained above quickly directed their fire to the same. The Rippers present also turned in place, their maws gaping. Greenish energy coalesced there as they powered up their main battery.
"Husk, Warpath, with me, we'll try to take out the leader. Coyote, Uzume, spread out and target all fliers. Take out those big ones first though," Colossus ordered.
Before Colossus had even finished speaking, Uzume was already firing at one of the four Rippers, having lined up on the monster as the magic carpet had snuck them into the middle of the attack force otggling the enlarging runic array as she fired. The normal-sized gauss rifle shot that zipped out of the barrel grew to the size of a boulder instantly and crashed into the Ripper's shields, piercing through and hammering into the creature, tearing away a large chunk from its side and sending it flailing to crash into the ground.
Another of the Rippers dropped just as quickly, a similar shot from Coyote. The former triathlete targeted the center of the beast's head, his shot tearing it apart. A second later, the two snipers used their inbuilt teleportation devices to pop away, landing nearby where they both moved into cover, firing at the skimmers in the air.
Unfortunately, one of the remaining two Rippers got a lucky shot in on Warpath, its oversized blast catching him in the side just as he leaped off the magic carpet. The large Apache warrior cried out, more in annoyance than pain, as the impact flung him sideways through the air to crash down onto a wrecked anti-air gun well away from the others.
Down to two, Husk followed Colossus off the pierced magic carpet, leaping for the alien, blue-skinned woman with a lashing kick.
In response, the woman laughed, her energy staff coming up in a quick riposte that snapped up against Husk's leg, smacking her away to crash nearby. "Ah come on!"
"Hah! You think to challenge me in hand to hand, worms?!" the alien woman shouted with a derisive sneer.
Colossus did indeed think to do so, and barreled into her, dodging a similar swing from the staff, and lashed out with a quick punch. To his surprise, the blue woman didn't even bother dodging, openly taking the haymaker on her chin instead. "What the…"
"Hmmm… not bad." Proxima worked her jaw for a second, then ducked under a follow punch, before leaping around a kick, which Colossus turned into a spinning kick that nearly caught her. But she ducked under it and watched with surprise as the metal-skinned worm seamlessly lifted his pillar leg up into the air as well, performing a mule kick. Not having properly set herself, Proxima found herself stumbling back from the force of the blow, despite her last second block.
By that point Husk had regained her feet, and now charged forwards now, completely undamaged by the previous blow. When the woman twisted around and stabbed her spear at Husk's face, Husk reared her head back and headbutted the weapon full force, cracking it and nearly caused it to break. The momentum of her charge sent the spear's head skyward, up above her head, with a squeal of metal on metal and Husk grabbed its shaft with both hands. Heaving, she hauled the blue woman into a knee to the gut that broke her grip on her weapon. "Take that ya alien bitch! Teach you tah throw this gal!"
A retaliatory blow in response caught Husk in the chest, causing her to gasp. The next blow struck her across the cheek, sending her stumbling although doing no real damage. Damn! This bitch is throwing me around like ah paperweight, despite how heavy mah metal form. Still, I'm damn glad I evolved it after the campaign in Asgard.
Paige Guthrie's power was a kind of metamorphosis power that allowed her to shed her skin and take on the form of various materials, such as wood, metal, or stone. She had evolved her metal form, her main combat form, slightly after events in Asgard by studying the metal that the Asgardians used in their weapons and armor. Where before she had looked almost like Colossus in terms of her silver coloration, now her silvery form had a distinct greenish tinge to it.
And already Husk knew that was going to save her. The alien woman was powerful, easily on the scale of one of the upper-tier Asgardians in terms of raw power for sure. Hopefully, that mean she also wasn't able to tear through inches thick armor plating made to defend those selfsame Asgardians from equally strong foes.
Similarly, Colossus wore his Juggernaut armor chestplate, vambrace, and greaves, which all protected him a second later from a snap kick from the blue woman. The impetus of the blow still sent him stumbling though, and their foe use the impact to launch herself into the air, lashing out with slicing kick to Husk's face that sent the teen tumbling to the ground. Again. "Gah, fuck!"
Before Husk could recover for a second time, the woman stomped on her head, nearly embedding Husk's head into the ground with the force of the blow. Fuck she is fast! And good. This is not gonna be easy!
"You fools might have some interesting armor, but you have nowhere near the experience of one such as me when it comes to war."
Uzume just could not let that slide, her Air Force infused ego acting up. From where she was crouching at that moment, having teleported around the battlefield innumerable times, she twisted around, lining up a shot with her gauss rifle, which caught the woman in the back. Even the insanely fast, high-impact round only managed to push the woman to her knees, but that was enough to work with the blonde woman's taunt. "We're fast learners, blue-bitch!"
Roaring in fury, Proxima Midnight launched to her feet, grabbing Colossus's foot as it came towards her face, twisting and pulling the man down into an uppercut that sent him flying. Turning around and barely grabbing the blow meant for the back of her head from metal-clad woman. She grunted as the child threw a fist next, cracking it against her chest, but still grabbed that arm in turn, turned, and flipped the woman onto her back, whereupon Proxima stomped on her head once more.
"Dammit, shtop doing that!" Husk barked, somewhat muffled from the foot grinding down on her face. Reaching up, she grabbed at the foot with both hands.
Unfortunately, this didn't help much, as the alien woman's foot continued to lift up, pulling Husk off the ground with it for a second. Now raised, Proxima Midnight brought her other foot sweeping in. The resultant kick bent Husk in two, sending her sprawling away and breaking her grip on the alien woman's leg, but also forced the woman to twist a bit awkwardly.
And then, Warpath finally arrived. He had sacrificed one of his hatchets, hurling it up into a passing Ripper's chest, only to see it halted by the Ripper's shields falling away without doing anything, which put him in quite the bad mood on top of having been smashed away so easily a moment ago. "RAAHH!" He roared, and body checked the woman away from Husk, grabbing her in a bear hug, then twisting around and smashing her into the ground with him on top of her.
Stunned somewhat by the sudden attack Proxima Midnight couldn't react quickly enough. But now she broke the grip while on the ground, reaching up and grabbing at the warrior's face, her fingers digging in for his eyes, she hissed at the imbecile with sudden rage. "You are unworthy to touch me, worm!"
Instinctually, Warpath reared back, away from the alien woman's hands, but this allowed her to punch him in the chest, twice, with so much force that the attacks rattled his ribs and caused him to wheeze for breath. This was followed by another punch, this one to the side of his jaw, that sent the Apache warrior sprawling to one side. Rolling away, Proxima Midnight managed to stand up just in time to block a strike from Colossus. Grabbing his outstretched hand so fast it almost reminded Colossus of Shiang Chi, the alien woman hurled him into Warpath, snarling out, "No matter how many of you there are, it will not matter! I am Proxima Midnight, of the Black Order, and you will never overcome me!"
Nearby Coyote dodged incoming fire by the skin of her teeth, his teleporter having been used so much it needed time to recover its energy. Rolling out of the away of incoming fire from on high and from the ground, he fired back up at the numerous skimmers as they tried to box him in. Inevitably, he finally missed a shot attack from behind, which hit his armor, melting away a portion of the powered armor.
Simultaneously, Uzume also made a mistake. Her teleportation device, for whatever reason, failed to carry her far enough forward to land in the ruins of one of the military base's structures as she had wanted to. Instead, she materialized completely out in the open between two wrecked trucks… exactly where the Ripper she had just downed with an enlarged gauss round was crashing. "OH SHI—!"
The beast, a cyborg creation whose higher brain functions had been almost entirely superseded by the near-suicidal instincts programmed into it by its masters, blasted one final energy bolt the size of a battleship's main cannon round as it fell. Right onto Uzume's prone form. The attack smashed into her with vengeance, melting her body armor in numerous places. The heat alone caused her to cry out in agony, but while damaged her armor did manage to see her through, although not without cost. Status updates filled her HUD, breaking down just how screwed she had become. "My teleporter's shot!"
"Pull back," Colossus ordered without looking back to her, grunting as a blow from Proxima Midnight dented his shoulder badly. "You too, Coyote. Keep the bastards busy and keep your distance. This will not be a quick battle."
Proxima chuckled coldly at that even as she crashed into Warpath, slowly pushing the Apache back. All the Custodes realized the truth of their leader's words and shared roughly the same thought. Morph better be having an easier time of things than us!
OOOOOOO
Elsewhere, Morph was in fact cursing up a storm as he zoomed across the landscape, taking fire from the strange manta ray-like things from above. It had taken him an entire hour to get where he was now from where he had left the others, but his approach to Severomorsk had quickly run into a major problem. Not only had the combined forces of the flying units of the Chitauri pushed several hundred miles out from the city, but worse, the manta ray floating battery things somehow saw him coming, despite how low to the ground he'd been flying. "So much for all that effort dodging around large trees and shit!"
Sickly green beams of energy flashed all around, burning into the ground below as they missed the shapechanger, igniting trees or simply turning them to ash. Thankfully, the large beasties seemed unable to deal with his on-a-dime evasive maneuvers, but Morph knew he still had a long way to go. And of course, the continued bombardment made it so he wouldn't even be able to get into the city without being noticed.
"I'd fake my death to throw them off, but there isn't enough topography around here to hide my presence afterward; fucking Russia and its wide open spaces," Morph bemoaned to himself, his voice snatched away by the speed of his flight to the point he barely heard his own voice. "I suppose I could shift into some kind of camouflage form, blend into the landscape like a chameleon? Nah, that never works out well in the end. Course, if those manta ray things were robots maybe, but—"
Morph's musings were cut off as the telepathic voice of Emma Frost—telepathic sending suddenly invaded his mind with no prior warning. "Morph, prepare to go to ground. Jean seems to be closing in on the alien leader of the attack in China, and she might need backup. I won't be able to ride along with you after all that starts, but Pinoptes and I have prepared a bit of a distraction for you."
At that moment, there were a series of sonic booms, and suddenly, the manta rays discovered that they had a lot more to worry about than him. The distant Baltic Fleet, finally getting itself in order, had opened fire with their long-range missiles. The ordinance came in by the hundreds over Russian airspace towards the city. After the first attempt by the United Air Forces to push the aliens back, Pinoptes had linked into their radar systems and was now providing them real time data.
But there were so many manta rays in the air by that point that the barrage had no chance of actually getting through even the outer defensive zone, let alone actually hitting any of them. But spending those missiles stopped the manta rays from targeting Morph, and he took the chance to dive down to the ground, entering a bit of a forested area.
"Er… how long can they keep this up, miss?" Morph asked mentally, always on his best behavior when one of the telepaths contacted him like this. He always hoped that Mrs. Frost-Potter never delved too deeply into his thoughts whenever she made a connection. Oh that would be so bad… Fuck it's like not thinking about pink elephants!
"Don't worry about your little perverted fantasies Morph, I of all people know how men always harbor some perversions inside. As to your question, the fleet will keep firing their missiles until they run out. I would, however, still suggest getting a move on," Emma ordered, her mental tone both deadpan and holding a bit of warning. "Succeed and I just might not tell my husband about your little fantasy involving myself, Carol, and Mystique in a bathtub…"
"YES Ma'am!" Morph mentally squeaked, hastily racing forward on his broomstick, his body shifting into the mottled green and browns of the forest around him as he went. For several moments after that, he flashed over the ground at around a hundred feet off the ground, then banked away, zipping through another series of trees, looking down at his GPS as he burst back out into the open. In this manner Morph slowly crossed the distance towards Severomorsk, wishing all the while that his team had been able to get deeper into the enemy's defensive envelope before separating. I still have another thirty minutes or more before I even get there!
Despite his best efforts, Morph ended up still being well away from Severomorsk when the Baltic Fleet ran out of missiles. Once they did, his earlier concerns regarding the limits of his chameleon skill were proven accurate as the manta rays somehow once more spotted him almost instantly. They resumed fire at once and forced Morph back into evading rather than focusing on racing forward. "Damn it, I was so close!"
Grumbling, Morph directed his broomstick to land, going to ground. Hiding among the snow near an empty road, Morph waited against the white backdrop, changing his body to match. There he waited until the manta rays ceased firing, the beams of energy burrowing into the ground around him slowly dying off. "Either they lost track of me, or those things can't target enemies on the ground. That'd be ironic."
Slowly pushing himself through the melting snow, Morph sighed, looking down at his GPS only to realize he still had at least twenty more miles to go. "Fuck. Here's to hoping they don't have foot patrols. Or anything else really, damn it. Fuck. Well, guess there's nothing for it…" With that, Morph put his broomstick into his expanded pouch, unable to keep from snickering as always whenever he saw the shaft disappear into the bottomless pouch. His voice turned falsetto for a moment before deepening further than his normal tone. "No, no that shouldn't fit at all… Oh don't you worry darling it'll fit, I'm sure of it."
After his brief moment of levity, Morph sighed once more when the broomstick had disappeared into the pouch. With a resigned look, he put one foot in front of the other, picking up speed as he jogged toward the distant, overrun city.
OOOOOOO
As other Custodes descended into the war, Dani, the Valkyrie Brunhilde, Garm, and Fenrir were also heading in. They wouldn't be attacking the center of the single Chitauri force spreading out from the only portals that was well away from a population center though. In the time it had taken Harry and his officers to gather, decide on a plan, and organize their response, the Chitauri there had already rolled out so many anti-air guns that doing so on their own would have been horrendously difficult. Pinoptes had also reported that the apparent leader of this assault use telekinetic powers, and the foursome were very leery of going up against such since telekinetic users so often also had access to telepathy.
While Fenrir's mind was animalistic in nature and powerful enough a normal telepath would've struggled to control him, Garm was somewhat less so. And Dani and Brunhilde had no such defense. And although Hela did have her magic to defend her from such, she knew that kind of defense was not the best against a telepath. Such would always have a bit of an edge against someone using mind magics, regardless of the type. And due to her history with assaults upon the mind, Hela was keen to avoid any such confrontations unprepared if she could help it.
So they would instead hit and run, striking at the outer edge of the enemy's forward-most defenses, keeping the true strength of the two wolves a secret for now until Storm joined them to help Hela offset the alien leader's powers. They were also to keep their eyes open, to see if there was a reason why this particular dimensional rift was so far away from the nearest city when all of the others had been opened in cities the world over. None were happy about their course of action, but they all well remembered Harry's warnings about how thinly they were spread right now.
Worse, unlike those sent into Paris or Washington, there was no local force strong enough to truly help here, not given how the nations in the Middle East viewed both the Empire and one another. India would be the closest allied nation, and there would be no way they could send troops in time, not even aerial units. They would well and truly be on their own.
As they flew over the mountains of Afghanistan, the fivesome were quiet. Garm, shrunken down as Fenrir often was to the size of a large wolfhound, was silent, his ancient eyes smoldering with battle lust as he rested beside his mistress. Hela rested a hand upon his head, the other glowing with fell magics as she readied herself. Fenrir, again shrunken to a more manageable size, similarly rested beside Dani, his face set in a bamused, somewhat eager expression, or the wolfish equivalent anyway.
Off to the side, Brunhilde was bent over in prayer, supplications to her Lady Freya for courage and Lord Odin for foresight in the coming battle silently spilling from her liips. Dani was in much the same position, in her own way. Her prayers to Skadi were extremely personal in nature, not even a whisper under her breath as she raised the dagger her lover had gifted her, kissing the handle before raising it to her forehead. She finally murmured a prayer to Lady Freya. "Let my courage not falter, let my strength not flag. Watch over me, oh Freya, and find my acts worthy of one who has stood beneath your gaze afore."
Then, Hela moved, directing the magic carpet ahead of them, shouted, "'Ware, we come upon their outriders!"
Instantly, Dani jumped to her feet, dagger slipping into her pouch as she pulled out her sniper rifle. A moment later, an enlarged gauss round shot out and crashed into an oncoming skimmer, overloading its shield and pulping vehicle and its riders in one go. "Let's do this!"
Hela snorted, black lightning flaring out around her. The fell magic lashed out, crashing into more incoming skimmers as the magic carpet flew into the center of the rapidly expanding group of flyers. Brunhilde also moved to engage, shouting out, "Have at them sister! For Midgard and Asgard united!" She let fly with enchanted arrows at an incalculable speed, the shimmering bolts striking with all the power of a punch from Balder himself.
Below them, infantry units, including one of the traitorous Wrecking Crew, had been moving through the mountains. The aliens had made the climbing up and down sheer cliff faces look as easy as spiders; the easily discernable Bulldozer had been far slower. Recognizing this, Garm led the way off the magic carpet, growing to half his normal size as his paws hit dirt and stone, Fenrir doing the same. The twin howls of the wolves, their very presence, caused the Chitauri to feel something their species hadn't since they'd first begun to worship lord Thanos.
Fear.
In the face of the unfamiliar emotion, skimmers and infantry alike quailed. This did nothing to save them, as they and Bulldozer, who had come out to help the Chitauri build up a forward defensive position away from the main dimensional doorway, found themselves facing the guard of Hel and the beast of Ragnarök utterly unprepared.
Despite not feeling the near unknown emotion of fear that gripped the aliens, Bulldozer was almost as stuck as a cow in a slaughterhouse. His main offensive skill was to charge forward and build up speed. His strength alone wasn't much to someone like Garm or Fenrir. Worse, he belatedly realized he wouldn't even be able to dodge the creatures, stuck on a small mountain trail with rocks to one side and a very precipitous drop on the other. "OH fuck me!"
"No. Eat you, yes. Mate, no," Fenrir growled tauntingly from where he'd landed on a ledge above him, before lunging forward. "I need more iron in my diet anyway!"
Bulldozer's screams rose to agonized shrieks, and for a few moments, the invading defenders were held at a major advantage in terms of force strength. Unfortunately for Hela and her group, as they'd expected, a smaller portal opened up two mountain peaks over and more skimmers and Rippers spilled out in a flood of reinforcement. Hela, seeing the incoming wave, called a retreat, her tone brooking no argument. "I will hear none of it brother, get up thee here now! We shall not sacrifice ourselves fighting on this molehill for no purpose. For now, we are away. Fear not, for we shall be back."
Biting back a snarl at his sister, Fenrir begrudgingly turned aside from his latest meal, leaping upward to be caught by Hela's magics. As he shrank down he floated back onto the magic carpet they'd arrived on. Once he and Garm were aboard, the five raced away, disappearing under a multitude of magical spells once more. The horde of skimmers chasing after them suddenly floundered, slowly turning back once it became clear there was no opponent to hunt down.
And so they retreated, Bulldozer having been mauled within a few moments of their first skirmish. One of the traitors to Earth and humanity itself had been dealt with, caught completely flatfooted and unable to fight back at all.
Hela, who'd witnessed her brother devouring his latest meal as she'd turned a Ripper into floating charcoal, laughed as they raced away. "Thus always to traitors, fools!"
OOOOOOO
As the Custodes were finally joining the fight, Skadi was in Australia, waiting. She had arrived ten minutes before Thunderbird and the others were set to arrive in Paris and… was still there. She stood, almost as still as stone, in the center of the undesignated airfield in Australia that had become the designated contact point for the Rainbow Bridge. Around her, workers moved around in force, smashing down the few buildings on the old WW2 airbase that had previously been left standing. It had been an ongoing activity, as they'd need to have the area ready for the Arc Reactor Jarl Potter had agreed to fund and lease out to the Australian government in return for using the land.
There had been some talk regarding moving the Rainbow Bridge's connection point with Midgard to a better location, but Odin, for whatever reason, had vetoed the discussion when it had come up. He apparently did have a place up in Norway he wanted it to be and refused to move it until the Norwegian government had agreed to his terms.
None of that mattered to Skadi though, as she waited for Heimdall to activate the Bridge from his end, another thing the King of the Asgardians had been very clear on. The Rainbow Bridge, and any further interaction between the two realms, would be completely facilitated and directed by Lord Odin and his court. Even any Asgardians on Earth, such as Skadi who currently lived there with Dani, could not simply travel back and forth as they pleased.
Finally, in front of the Huntress, the air rippled, curving around itself in a spiral pattern like water around a vortex. The walls of the vortex widened, solidified, and the floor of the tunnel thus created between dimensions shifted from gray air and bands of nothingness into the multicolored bridge of legend. A voice boomed out, "Come through, Huntress."
Instantly, Skadi moved forward, swift as a deer all the way to the end of the bridge where it ended in front of Heimdall's post of Himinbjörg. The All-Seeing One nodded his head, his unblinking eyes fixed beyond her. "Best you hurry, Skadi. The foul Chitauri are moving quickly, and their forces outnumber that of all humanity by many times over. All that stops them is the physical limitations to how many they can force through those doorways of theirs at a time."
Skadi nodded and raced on her way, only getting to the archway leading into Asgard proper when Heimdall spoke once more, calling over his shoulder to her. "The lone door in the mountains, away from brick and soul. It bares a weight unlike its brethren. Remember that for when you return."
With a faint frown and a hasty, 'My thanks,' Skadi resumed her task, racing through the city.
Passing through Asgard went quickly thankfully, as all but a few families of karls had left months back for various reasons, yet at the entrance to Valhalla, Skadi was forced to wait once more. This, though, was a pure power play, one that Lord Odin had set up several months back simply to further distance the Asgardians, most specifically himself and his position, with that of humanity. Anyone coming through the portal would need to wait for a time before being seen by his court, other Asgardians included. Hmph, that Lord Odin still persists in playing this game when he knows I am here as an envoy to formally request our people come to the aid of those our treaty dictates just goes to prove that All-Seeing doesn't mean All-Knowing. Then again, that aspect of my King is one of the least consistency, so perhaps I should not be surprised.
By the watch on her wrist that Dani had bought her, forty minutes would pass before one of Lord Odin's Alfar servants eventually allowed her entry, announcing her presence in grand form. "My Lords and Ladies, Skadi the Huntress, as envoy of the Avalon Empire and Midgard!"
Skadi marched forward, absently noticing that the grand hall was full. Completely. Mead and meat were also plentiful, clearly a mid-afternoon meal hosted by the king himself that involved almost all of Asgard. So, he knows what this might be about, and has already brought the war host together. He just wants to play to the audience. Ugh, politics and posturing!
Skadi shifted her pace from one of haste to one of grim formality as she strode forward, locking eyes with Lord Odin's one. The Sky Father looked back at her, his face, previously laughing and boisterous, shifting into an equally grim visage. Something in his one eye, a gleam there, told Skadi she was right, that he knew what this was about, but also enjoyed the panoply. Old ass, Skadi grumbled internally, growing furious at this delay.
In contrast to her husband, Lady Freya made no effort to appear calm at all. She was staring at Skadi as a bird of prey would a mouse. Gone was any teasing amusement at Skadi's expense, hidden was her joy at the love that had come upon the previously virgin goddess that Skadi had been. Instead, now Freya's eyes were narrowed slits, her hands clenching onto the arms of her throne like talons. It was clear to the Huntress that her warrior goddess aspect was slowly coming to the fore overriding her goddess of love aspect for some reason.
Seeing such a rare sight, Skadi's already pounding heart began to throb in her chest. Somehow, she just knew that seeing such a look from Lady Freya meant that Danielle had joined the fray somewhere back on Earth. The young Moonstar's raw courage, determination, and faith had called to her and Freya from the start, and Skadi knew no matter how much she grumbled, the connection between Danielle and her Queen was a very real thing, although she also acknowledged it was not the same kind of connection as Skadi and Dani shared.
My sister in the Hunt, my Heart, is in battle, and I have been kept waiting here like a useless heifer! Damn politics and the prides of kings! Skadi snarled internally. With an effort of will that was almost foreign to her outside of battle and when stalking the most dangerous of prey she managed to keep her inner feelings off her face.
Luckily for Skadi's blood pressure, it appeared that several of the Asgardians gathered were also well aware of something going on thanks to Freya's attitude, despite Odin's nonchalant acting. Balder was looking now between Skadi and her mother with wild surmise, Sif was already on her feet, and Dour Hogun was nodding his head, as if his dire predictions for the future were all about to come true. All of that was good, as it somewhat helped calm Skadi down enough to realize that despite Odin's love of panoply, her people would be ready.
Odin slammed the butt of Gungnir onto the ground, a concussive wave of sound and noise rippling throughout the hall in a boom fit to silence any war drum. Every other noise in the hall, all conversation, all music, all jokes, everything grew silent as those present turned their attention to their king and the young Huntress stalking her way toward him. The All-father stood up from his throne and waved his hand in the air before of him, shouting out, "Make way for the Huntress! She comes as envoy to our allies upon Midgard with word of import."
Wordlessly, the Huntress finished passing through the now expectant crowd, ignoring the murmurs that resumed as she walked by, not letting her gaze stray from Lord Odin or Lady Freya. When Skadi reached the dais leading up to the two thrones, she knelt on one knee, holding up a formal missive from Jarl Potter, which he had written out on magical parchment.
"Your majesties, Earth, Midgard stands invaded. The Army of the Displaced, the Chitauri, and another race known as the Skrull, have come at them in force, led by the Mad Titan Thanos and those he has gathered to his nihilistic banner. They come to Midgard through multiple angles of attack. They could perhaps withstand one avenue of invasion, be it from the stars or the doorways the Chitauri prefer, could perhaps match the raw power of the Mad Titan with Jarl Potter and his Custodes. But they cannot match the might of all of these, all together… not alone. Therefore, Jarl Potter calls upon Asgard to aid him, to aid Humanity in this time of strife as dictated by the treaties signed between him, his Empire, and our Lord Odin, King of Asgard."
Odin took the missive, opening it quickly and reading through it, After a second of seeming thought, he held the parchment high above his head. "Midgard calls for aid my warriors. Those who came to us, unasked for and unsought in our time of need, have themselves been beset by forces most dire. What say you, my people? Shall Asgard answer their call?"
The answer was a roar to shake the heavens as Thor, Sif, Balder, and every other Asgardian there raised their weapons as one. "AYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEE!"
OOOOOOO
Harry stared at the three-dimensional magical array, then breathed in cracking his neck explosively before gently stepping forward into the central position across from the steel-gray gem. There he breathed in again, then cut his palms with a ritual athame. He let his blood drip down into the rubies that made up part of the array, then smeared still more blood into specific runes etched into the metal bars around him, reaching out to his magic at the same time.
Pulsing out his magic in the way he'd learned since coming to this dimension—formless, without intent behind it—Harry felt the stirrings around him. Now as mentally prepared as he'd be, he began the verbal portion of the ritual, directing the magic around him further into the runes around him. The various bits of metal woven into the array began to heat up, as did the rubies, as he murmured, "Acknowledged by the Eternal Pair, I declare my challenges overcome, and my fate my own. With this blood and magic, I signify my death and rebirth. By heart and soul and mind, I leave my humanity willingly, but never shall forget it."
Harry repeated the cutting ritual several times, placing his blood at very distinct different points in the ritual array. By the time both palms had been cut seven times, the energy of the array was crackling all around him. The runes given to him by Death and the Phoenix Force, all of it throbbed with his magical power, turning inward as he continued the ritual. "Let my bone become as stone, let my strength become as mountains. Let my magical might change the reality of my merely human self as I become more than I was, but the same, my mind my own, my emotions my own, but my soul and body empowered further! Let the shackle of humanity fall entire, as I rise, reborn a Titan!"
With that, Harry placed one hand on Krakkan's gem, and the other on the runes given to him by Death and the Phoenix Force, his hand creating a circuit between them even as his magic continued to flow out into the array. And as he did, he could feel the magic within the gem being dragged out, his soul being dragged the other way by the god within. Here… we go… Harry thought, before the pain hit whitening out his world in agony.