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Not that Dani had any real idea of what to do when she arrived. Even though she had an Asgardian sword, that was a far cry from being able to wield it with enough strength to get through Thanos' skin, if his ability to withstand a bite from Fenrir was any indication. Still, isn't this the essence of being a hero, mindlessly charging into danger?!
So, despite being terrified, Dani charged forwards now, reaching out instead to her mutant powers. And it isn't as if I'm out of tricks.
Dani's mutant powers allowed her to do several things. First, the one she used the most, was a high empathic ability with animals. The second was the ability to pull out images or memories from an area or person. It was this skill which had made her such a fine huntress, and which she hoped to use now. Dani had tested this ability on Emma and Harry, and while Harry could defend against it, Jean could only do so after a lot of practice.
As she closed, Dani concentrated, raising a hand to direct her power, and after a few seconds, despite the distance and his inhuman mind, Thanos' strong mental defenses could not stop her strange ability.
Apparitions rose from the ground all around Thanos, where he was still locked in battle with Fenrir, and his eyes widened. "What… what is this?"
Thanos recognized some of them. One of them was his father. Another was his best friend, a fellow warrior scholar, with whom he had debated the nature of the galaxy and many other things for eons. Before he had found the love of his life before, he had dedicated himself to Death. Before he had slaughtered the other Titans. Even now, several thousand years later, those deaths still at times come back to Thanos.
Not because of any grief. Such was Thanos' devotion to his Lady that Thanos did not feel grief for the death of his race. It was more a lingering sense of regret that those closest to him had never understood his destiny or the true nature of the galaxy.
Other images appeared, other actual regrets over his lifetime, including Gamora, and others appeared as well. They began to reach for him, trying to drag him down into the same mediocrity they had embraced, grabbing at him with hands and even teeth that felt all too real to his mind for the moment, causing him to twitch and try to break free. "What, what is this…"
With a sudden wrench, Fenrir broke Thanos' weakened grip on his jaws. A raised paw smashed Thanos off his feet, and Thanos roared with mixed pain and wounded pride as he found himself crashing into the ground with enough force to embed his body into the bedrock.
The apparitions pounced, but Thanos roared, and from his body, a wild wave of purple energy, the Power Cosmic flashed. Fenrir's pounce towards him was halted in place, and the wolf flung away, unable to brace himself against the energy, while the apparitions dissipated somewhat, losing much of their corporeal nature.
Glaring through the shades, Thanos scowled in anger, trying to determine where this strange attack was coming from. "Some kind of telepathic power that somehow bypasses my defenses?"
Leaping up out of the hole his body had made in the side of the mountain, Thanos landed high above the battlefield on his throne's platform.
As he did, the images faded, which caused Thanos to almost breathe out a sigh of relief. "I see, it is some kind of distance-based ability, good. And yet, you still assaulted my mind. And I will forgive no such trespass!"
Thanos held up his hand and began to lash out at Dani, the only new factor that had appeared on the battlefield. She yelped and, with her hover skates on high power, she tried to dodge away from the strike, pushing off with one leg so hard she felt something in her leg twinge. Luckily, Thanos was so far away that it was kind of telegraphed, and she was able to dodge the first blast.
But she could not have dodged the one after that. Or the ones following it. She bounced off one sheer rock face towards a small incline, staring up as death came for her in the form of a purple beam as wide as she was. "Well… Fuck."
Then Fenrir was there, crouching over her, taking the next strike on his back. He howled in pain but endured it as Dani lay under him. "Fenrir, don't-"
"Shut up, Dani!" the wolf growled as Thanos began to simply empower his attack into a beam rather than a pulse of energy, beating Fenrir down to the point his legs trembled under the continued energy assault. "This, this is nothing, nothing to the Beast Who Ends All!"
By this point, Hela's healing cantrips had run their course as much as they could, and eager to rejoin the fight and take some of the pressure off her brother, Hela slapped her hands down on either side of her, ignoring the added agony this caused her from her still-healing forearms. Spikes of earth rose and shot toward the bottom of Thanos' throne, causing the throne platform's kinetic energy shield to appear automatically.
But a second spell grabbed at the debris created by the impact, and she used it to create a global of soil and dirt, a makeshift smoke bomb to blind Thanos. "Fenrir, Dani, move!"
While Fenrir and Dani were indeed able to move away from Thanos' area of attack, this did nothing to blind the sensors on the throne. A second later, Hela cursed as she was forced to shield herself again from another blast from Thanos.
A moment later, a now furious Fenrir began to grow and grow some more. "RAAGGGHHHH, I will taste your flesh yet, Titan!" Soon, the Sun-Eater was the size of a small skyscraper, and he roared as he launched himself upwards.
The throne's AI attempted to shift backward through the air, but it was too slow. The kinetic barrier flashed into being once more as the now huge wolf's jaws closed, but it was almost instantly overcome, and Thanos was forced to reach up with both hands, grabbing at Fenrir's upper jaw to keep it from closing. Which did nothing to the bottom-most, which crashed into the bottom of the platform.
Yet, to Fenrir's astonishment, another barrier of some kind blossomed just as his teeth were prepared to bite into the metal, absorbing almost all his bite's strength like he had just bitten into rubber, even though, like the kinetic barrier, this was an energy shield of some kind. "Secondary kinetic barrier activated. Kinetic Absorption, 62%. Compensating via instant redirection."
"Fenrir, pull back!" Dani howled, her voice barely heard even through the now tiny communication device in Fenrir's ear, the thing not having changed size with the rest of him. It was only luck and how large, ironically, his ear had become that had kept it in his ear at all rather than falling out like a piece of lint lost in his fur.
Yet even so, it was enough, and before the rubbery energy could explode, Fenrir flinched back, pushing off the air momentarily as if it was the ground, his own personal magic coming into play. This, however, allowed the AI to absorb the energy instead, and a second later, both Thanos and throne alike struck out, blasting not only at Fenrir but at Hela, Dani, Garm and Gerda.
The redirected kinetic energy flashed down in a wave that vaguely resembled a rapidly expanding yellow half-ball, smashing down from the throne to cover the ground, further shattering the landscape. Hela attempted to shield herself and her companions, but while she was able to do so, beyond that shield, the surrounding territory once more paid for being the setting of a clash of near-deific powers. The mountainsides all around them cracked and crumbled, and within moments, Gerda, Garm and Dani found themselves buried.
At this point, Gerda's luck finally failed her. While the Valkyrie had proven capable of fighting the Chitauri and even able to give a good showing against the Wreckers, she was not a deity herself, not even a Vanir, let alone an Aesir. She was merely a servant of Freya, and now, Gerda found herself first pinned in place, then crushed under the weight of tons of rubble, shrieking in fury at such an ignoble second death.
In Asgard, there was a vast, wild garden. A meadow, a cultivated garden and a small forest all in one, this was the realm of Freya, Fólkvangr, the realm of the Valkyries and those souls whose death in battle didn't automatically pass muster do join the host of the einherjar. There it would remain, bobbing gently over the land until Freya returned. For the lady, just as her servant, had gone to war.
Dani, too, might well have died at this point were it not for the fact that she was, once more, guarded by one of her companions. In this case, Garm leaped towards her. Even as Dani's hover boots began to fail and the tons of rubble began to catch up to her, Garm's jaws gently grabbed her up from behind. "Safe landings, Dani!"
The next second, Dani was hurled into the air above the flowing avalanches below, only to be caught by a spell from Hela that had her hovering in midair, similar to the one that Hela had cast on herself. Garm, however, was buried in her place, howling as he disappeared under the rubble. "Blast it all. This had best not be my tomb!"
Above them, Fenrir had similarly come under attack from Thanos. In this case, it was another concentrated blast of the Power Cosmic, and once more, unable to brace himself in midair, Fenrir found himself hurled away. "By Odin's hairy nutsack, fight fairly, you purple-skinned bastard!"
"Now now, while my skin might be unusual, I knew who my parents were. Just because I killed them eventually doesn't mean I was birthed out of wedlock," Thanos allowed himself to quip, smirking as he moved to settle himself on the throne, raising a fist and aiming it at the now-distant form of Fenrir. "Throne, empowerment mode."
"Activating." At that command, the throne's AI emptied all of the various types of energy it had absorbed, first transforming that energy into the Power Cosmic in a manner that only Thanos's technology could do, then directing it into Thanos, empowering him further.
While that energy was next to nothing in comparison to what Thanos himself contained, it still added a bit to the amount of energy he could release in any given attack. This energy he used now on Fenrir, having seen that the now massive beast was his toughest current opponent.
Fenrir had but a second from when he landed on a thin escarpment before he once more felt the blast of Power Cosmic slamming into him. He howled in agony, and now, the ravening energy began to do actual damage, his fur burning off and the lower layer of skin rapidly searing away to reveal flesh and bone.
Hearing her brother in distress, Hela once more went on the offense. Flashing upwards to a point equal to the throne, she lashed out with a series of spells, small, pinprick pulses of dark black and sickly green energy. " the woes of the damned, the regrets of the dishonorable dead will burn thy soul!%"
Another spell powered by Hela's connection to the realm of Niflheim, this spell had more than a touch of Death to it, and the energy shield that sprang up to protect throne and Titan barely stopped the first few. When they struck, the throne and its platform began to take real damage, the metal armor beginning to melt away, turning almost corroded and wrong in some fashion as it began to slough away.
"Danger! Entropic energy detected. Chance of absorption, 10%. Analysis of entropic energy commencing. Chance to survive continued assaults of a similar nature, plus/minus 25%. Chances of the platform's abilities to be impaired by continued assault, 75% after more than five minutes."
Thanos however, had long made a study of death energy. After all, he loved Lady Death, and that meant he loved not just the personification of the ultimate end of all things but the energy that she ruled over. When it hit him, he grimaced but only felt the most slight twinges of pain as his trained Titan body ignored the damage. His armor didn't, but like the throne, it almost instantly began to try and repair itself, the subatomic nanites wound throughout its construction going to work automatically.
Turning away from the now groaning form of Fenrir, Thanos almost lazily raised a fist, aiming it toward Hela despite the ongoing pinpricks of death energy coming through his throne's defenses. "A noble attempt, but not enough." The next second, Hela howled with anger as she found herself once more entirely on the defensive, trying to dodge and shield but unable to get away from Thanos's continued attacks.
"Attention!" the throne blared even as Thanos fired again. "incoming life forms. All life form signatures concurrent with the main enemy targets already present on the battlefield. Supposition: Asgardians inbound."
Thanos snarled at that, and even as Hela's barrier shield cracked once more under the power of his attacks, he turned his gaze upward toward the distant horizon to see a portion of the Asgardian host charging toward him. "Ah, I do believe the Asgardians have chosen to side wholly with the humans. Annoying."
And perhaps life-threatening if Odin is with them. I cannot fight him and Guardian at the same time, and even alone, the god of kings would be a horribly dangerous threat, Thanos thought worriedly. "Can you identify target, Odin?"
Odin had yet to appear on the battlefield, as he had no way of knowing that Thanos himself had taken the field. He had also neglected to communicate at all with his allies, or provide a means with which his hosts could contact one another as yet. For now, as Thanos had initially, the God of Kings and War remained in Asgard.
"Target Aesir Skyfather, Odin, not identified. The leader appears to be-" For a moment, the AI's voice shifted from its computer-like atonal note, as if something inside its programming had skipped a line of code, allowing it to sound almost incredulous. "In the chariot being pulled by goats…"
At the head of the host was Thor on his chariot, and it was indeed being pulled by goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr. In his hand, he was whirling Mjölnir. Behind him, Balder flew while Hogun and others rode flying horses charging down towards Thanos.
Breathing a sigh of relief at that, Thanos barely had time to order the throne to take the host under fire before Thor's voice reached him over the hundreds of miles still separating them. "Have at thee!"
With that bellow, Thor leaped from his chariot hammer, lashing out towards Thanos, crossing the intervening distance so fast it left behind sonic booms that shattered the cyborg hearing of nearly every Chitauri in the mountain range along with the few humans in the same vicinity. Even Hela and Ebony, back near the main portal, screamed in pain from the impact to their ears.
Even as he did, the throne opened fire on the incoming Asgardians. It was too slow to intercept Thor, yet behind him, Tyr and several others reeled under the strikes, and two were even knocked entirely out of the air, their horses slain under them.
Yet even as fast as Thor moved, Thanos saw him coming in time to raise his arms. His forearms caught the incoming hammer, yet the impact nearly sent him off his throne while creating yet another shockwave that rolled through the shattered remnants of the mountains around him.
"Impressive!" He grunted before kicking out. This caught Thor in the leg, causing him to stumble lightly, and Thanos directed the ongoing strike to the side of his throne, thrusting himself upwards, going chest to chest with Thor as he quickly grabbed Thor's arms, wrenching them both to the side. "But not enough!"
For a moment, the two of them stood on the platform, striving strength against strength, as the throne's AI directed attacks toward the other Asgardians. The throne's weapons, energy and kinetic blasts, were so potent, and it had gathered so much energy from the battle up to this point that it was able to smash several of them out of the sky while also nearly finishing off both Garm and Hela.
As for Thor and Thanos, Thanos found his arms slowly being pushed backward. With the machinations of the Shadows finally defeated, his belt and bracers returned to him, the now redheaded Thor was much stronger than he had previously been. Bellowing in laughter, He forced Thanos back, almost forcing Thanos's back to bend as he did.
Yet Thanos was not just a physical powerhouse. He had the Power Cosmic, the underlying energy of the universe to call on in a way even deities could not. This he did so now, and his hands began to gleam with purple-colored energy, empowering Thanos further. From his face, a blast flashed out, slamming into Thor's chin with such force it rocked his head back, causing him to stumble. This allowed Thanos to pull one hand up and slam a punch into Thor's face.
Stumbling back, Thor smiled through now-blood-dotted teeth. "Excellent!" With the hand holding Mjölnir still held out to one side, Thor raised his other hand into a punch that slammed into Thanos's chest, cracking his armor. IT began to repair itself, and then the two began to simply trade blows with their one free hand like brawlers, with the Power Cosmic still flashing from Thanos's hands.
Elsewhere in the battle, Balder cursed as he raced forward, catching Hela as she was tossed out of the sky by the weapons of the strange thronelike dais. He caught her, but then he and her came under further fire while Hogun and the rest were forced to go to ground well out of the range of their own weapons. Not that arrows will mean much to this enemy. He must be the Mad Titan himself, and against such a foe, only magic and the strength of true champions will matter. Alas, for the rest of the host, they will not fair well here.
With that thought, Balder began to roar orders, his voice long trained to command on the battlefield, sending the accompanying Einherjar and Asgardians alike to skirt well around where Thanos and his throne hovered. Within minutes, the host was pressing in on the defenses still in place elsewhere throughout the Himalayas, even as more Chitauri arrived in a constant stream. Ebony, too, began to become embroiled in this aspect of the fight, while back near Thanos, Balder charged, trying to get close enough to engage in close combat.
Even Balder, with his immunity to wounds, could not overcome the momentum of the strikes raining down or the terrain. The very bones of the earth bucked and heaved under him with every reverberation of a strike above, the Himalayas shivering like a living thing under the power of the strikes the two combatants released.
But the throne's concentration on pounding Hela and Balder had allowed Skadi, ever the sneaky one, to close. Ignoring Balder's orders as she could see her lover doing elsewhere on the battlefield, Skadi shifted from one piece of cover to another and, emulating Dani's earlier movements, came at Thanos's floating dais from underneath.
It took her some time, while above her, Thor and Thanos hammered one another in a series of blows that made even the former fight with Fenrir seem lowkey. But thankfully, even the AI's attention was not infinite. Given Hela's continued spellwork and the fact Fenrir and Garm were both on their feet again, it had no computational algorithms to spare for Dani or Skadi, who slowly crossed the intervening distance.
Finally, Skadi was in position. She waited, watching until Helas continued attacks felled the energy shield. Then, as Garm crashed into the kinetic barrier, bringing it down in turn, the Goddess of the Hunt leaped upwards, traversing the distance as only an Asgardian before Dani could do the same. Sorry, lover, but first come, first served! Skadi thought as the dagger bit deep into the metal of his throne, Asgardian steel overcoming the odd composite just enough to find purchase. But this enemy is beyond you. He is beyond me as well, if I am any judge, but I will be damned if I meekly accept that fact!
Thanos's Power Cosmic finally began to allow him to gain some measure of an upper hand against Thor. Not because it empowered him to be physically stronger than the Guardian of the Common Man, only that it was enough to allow simple leverage and skill to give Thanos an advantage. With Thor unwilling to relinquish Mjölnir, Thanos's grip on Thor's forearm allowed him to keep Thor's main weapon out of play, which in turn was enough to let him start forcing Thor back under a series of punches and kicks, a means of combat which Thor did not utilize, seemingly, even as the Thunderer bellowed with laughter and fought on, his returning punches coming faster and faster.
Wincing at the play of energies that flowed out and around the edges of the platform to her current position, Skadi hung there, ironically protected by the bottom of Thanos' dais for a second. Then, as Thor stumbled from another blast of Power Cosmic to his face, she flipped herself up and over, landing behind the throne on the tiny portion of the platform surrounding it there.
She watched as Thor stumbled again before trying to wrench the arm holding Mjölnir free. Then his head was blasted backward with a punch so hard it shook the world for a second or so it seemed to Skadi, anyway. She clung onto the back of the throne for dear life, then leaped up and over it, her dagger in her hand again, seeking the back of Thanos' head.
"Warning, behind you, Creator." Even now, with a direct threat to his master having come so close, the AI sounded dull and atonal. Yet its warning was enough, and Thanos turned. Smacking the dagger out of her hand with one hand, Thanos then grabbed her throat.
So strong was he that Skadi felt like a small kitten in the maw of a grizzly. Then he was twirling Skadi around, slamming her into the recovered Thor, sending them both off the throne into the air.
Snorting in amusement, Thanos ordered. "Throne, release all accumulated energies! Target the hammer wielder, the sword wielder, and the wolf." While he had never made a great study of the Asgardians and the legends that had created them, he knew of Balder and had no desire to face someone he could not in any way harm in close combat. As for Thor, that hammer is dangerous. I have been lucky thus far to avoid being struck truly by it, and I will not allow such to occur. I still have my own personal targets to deal with, as well as a world to offer up in sacrifice to my Lady!
All of the accumulated energy that had been absorbed through the various shields the throne had been using since the Asgardians arrived was now released as raw kinetic energy, almost like Cyclops' beams but far stronger, and blasts of Power Cosmic similar to Thanos's own attacks. Few beings could construct something like the throne, but Thanos had long since devised technological means to surpass most such limitations. Only the World Eater's own ship could be said to be better than Thanos's creations, and now, those blasts crashed out across the battlefield, targeting first the twosome of Skadi and Thor as they were the closest, and then the more distant Hela, Balder and the recovering Fenrir.
Thor and Skadi were blasted out of the sky, hurled hundreds of miles away to crash into a still-standing mountain. Which was no longer standing after they struck it, the entire thing shattering around them. So great was the impact that Skadi instantly passed out, her ribs, arms, legs, and even back shattering under the impact and something else in her stomach giving out, while bits of stone and tree flew so far, they landed in the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, and even further in some territories in India.
Back at the battlefield, three great craters were now torn out of the ground around Fenrir, Balder and Hela as Fenrir's durability met and then was exceeded again by the onslaught. Balder stood, his armor shining and glowing with all the power of a dozen suns, yet the area around him began to crack, sear and melt away from the energies meeting one another.
In contrast, Hela's magic barely sustained her long enough for her emergency medical evacuation runes to activate. Just as he finished digging himself out of the scree that had practically buried the defender of Hel, a single blast from the throne slammed into Garm's head. The impact practically cracked his skull and seared his scalp away before the belt he wore, at Dani and Hela's behest, teleported him away with his mistress.
Even the backlash was enough to cause hundreds of skimmers, Rippers and Asgardians to fall out of the sky across the whole mountain range. Bleeding from the nose, ears and eyes, the Chitauri died, overcome, while the Einherjar's bodies failed them, their souls finding themselves back in Odin's hall, ready to rise and fight again, but removed from the battlefield. The Asgardians like Hogun, Njord, and Aegir found themselves unhorsed as their Pegasi were slain similarly but were otherwise unharmed.
Surveying what he could see of the shattered remnants of the mountain range around him, Thanos scowled a little, knowing that in that clash, he'd also heavily damaged the defenses of the main portal that Ebony had been working so hard to propagate. Indeed, he could see the remnants of hundreds, perhaps several thousand aliens and their creations all around them. Here, half a Ripper poked out of the now-flattened ground, there a dozen arms and legs all tangled together and very obviously not connected to living bodies lay scattered like children's toys. Here and there the remnants of anti-air guns stuck out of the ground, the guns long since torn away by the force of the sonic booms nearby, their owners pulled out of the solid rock that had been so disastrously flung about.
Above the battlefield near the main portal, however, Ebony still flew, having weathered the storm of constant crashing energies remarkably well. And the aliens were still coming through the portal and the portals further away from where Thanos had clashed with the Asgardians.
Yet Thanos knew that that attack would not have dealt with any of his many adversaries. It was too diffuse. Next time, I must target only a single opponent and remain at range, away from that one, Thanos mused, staring at where the roiling energies of the sun could still be seen through the ash and dust thrown up by his attack. Together he and Thor might be able to harm me too much for me to continue this battle.
"Incoming communication."
Frowning, Thanos turned back to his throne, wondering what could possibly have caused someone to call and interrupt him when he was fighting enemies like the Asgardians. Then his eyes widened as he remembered the very specific orders he had left behind him in the dimensional gap on that score to the Chitauri generalissimo who had been left in charge. Guardian or the Phoenix avatar, which has appeared, and where?!
With no further thought of the Asgardians in his mind, Thanos sat down on his throne, forgetting even his concerns about the portal's defenses. "Report!" he barked, his voice an alloy of the anticipation of a fanatic on the hunt for sinners and a man possessed by a great hunger.
"My Lord, the energy readings you told us to be on the lookout for have appeared in Super Giant's conquest corridor. Specifically, the Phoenix avatar's energy signature has been detected," the voice of the Chitauri general announced, and Thanos's eyes began to dance with coruscating energy. "AT LAST!"
OOOOOOO
Several hours before Thanos had decided to become personally involved in the invasion against Hela and the rest of her team, Jean had begun her intervention in Asia. Given the chaos that the Chitauri had caused somehow in the Chinese High Command, that meant trying to stop further conflict between China and its neighbors.
Whatever emergency plans the Chinese were operating under had launched several naval units and the fighter squadrons of numerous bases around the China Sea toward Taiwan. Several elements of the American 7th fleet had also been attacked directly, as had Japan, but those attacks had been somewhat smaller and had mostly ceased in the case of Japan. The battle in the Formosa Strait was still raging as Jean flew down from Babylon, though, or rather, the battle in the air over it.
In all honesty, Jean would have preferred to come straight down toward where they assumed the portal was, considering the movement of the invaders. But given the fact they weren't certain if doing so would stop whatever influence had caused the Chinese to seemingly go crazy, she agreed with Dennis and Harry that trying to contain the madness that had sprung up among China's military leadership from forcing other nations to react even more than the US fleet already was had to be the immediate priority.
This proved even more true when, while still high up in the ionosphere, Phoenix's earbud went off. A second later, Pinoptes' electronic voice echoed in her ear, sounding extremely worried. "Phoenix, we have verified ICBM launches. Chinese nukes are launched toward Taiwan currently. We have intercepted internal reports of fighting around several other nuclear missile silos nearer South Korea and elsewhere, but most still seem to be under the CCP's control and are not being used currently."
"So much for the Mandarin cutting the compromised officers out of the command loop in time, damn it! I know he ordered the nuke silos locked down, but it looks as if whatever invader is spreading this madness was able to bypass that," Jean snarled in return, her words carried into a pickup that was part of her half-mask, which covered the lower portion of her face, leaving her eyes free but moving up and covering her ears to house the earbud. "Are you any closer to figuring out how they are doing this?"
"The Chitauri skimmers are incredibly fast, almost as fast as a jet fighter in a straight line. If they can keep unseen, the individuals doing this could traverse a large portion of China without much trouble. As for how they are infiltrating the Chinese military command structure… other than telepathy, the only suggestion we have comes from Sage. She theorizes that it could be some kind of psychometry, the power to pull specific memories from objects to give whoever is behind this the controls and codes necessary. Unfortunately, whoever is behind this is able to blend into the background of the chaos they've caused far too well."
"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter how this is happening, so long as we can stop it," Jean grumbled, speeding up her descent to a speed that would have put Cannonball to shame.
We should have pushed harder to take nukes away from China! But I suppose at the end of the Eurasian War, we just couldn't. Not when China had been an ally in that war, and we weren't willing to do the same to America. The last thing they wanted to do at the time was to further isolate China. But that thinking had backfired badly before this invasion began, given how much trouble the Mandarin was getting up to in various ways, and now it was coming to a head even further.
Moments later, Jean came close enough to see the ICBMs. Instantly, massive fiery claws reached out. Such was the size of her telekinetic form for a moment, that it was actually visible like a shadow high above the earth far below in places in China and Taiwan. And then, those telekinetic claws reached their targets snagging the ICBMs aimed at the island nation out of the air. All twelve of them, overkill in her mind, were snatched like a sparrow on the wing. Damn, this is a lot easier using my own eyes rather than drones, and without my pregnancy's hormonal shit getting in the way, Jean thought, remembering how she'd done the same to missiles launched from the US and Russia alike during the Eurasian War.
With a mental twitch, Jean carried the nukes straight up, holding them still in her telekinetic grip until they were out of Earth's atmosphere and away, regardless of the thrusters on the nukes. There, the Verdun-class close defense stations, a few of which were in orbit around the real earth rather than moving with the magical illusion, would deal with them.
Thankfully, there didn't seem to be a second wave, and Jean allowed her fiery bird of prey aura to shrink down until it was only about as big as a jet fighter around her. Flying further downward, she soon reached the area where jet fighters normally operated. There, Pinoptes, having already discovered the Seventh Fleet's command network, gave her suit's coms the correct security protocols to link Jean into their local network.
"This is Phoenix. I am on the line to help, as you probably saw just now. But I won't be in the area for long. The actual alien invasion is going to call me deeper into China," Jean stated into the command network without any preamble, overriding everything but the local battle chatter. "But the Custodes would like to get a sitrep from whoever is in command down here."
"This is Admiral Johnson, U.S. Navy. Ah'm not gonna look a gift Phoenix in the mouth," a drawling southern voice said from the intercom set into Phoenix's ear. "I'm gonna presume that the president has activated Operation Overguard?"
That was one of the contingency plans that the Avalon Empire, or rather, Dennis, Steve and Carol, had worked out with the Pentagon to deal with another alien invasion. Specifically, it presupposed an alien invasion occurring on foreign soil with possible partisans among the local populace, willing or not, as had been the case in the Eurasian War.
Jean hadn't been part of that loop, but she knew the name of that plan and knew the correct response to give before Pinoptes could prompt her. "The Custodes Mundi guards all and works with the few and the proud."
Honestly, even as an American, Jean thought that code was a little much, but since she knew Steve and Carol both felt the same and had been overruled by whatever pencil pusher and come up with it on the other side, she was willing to go with it. Given the reports coming out of the area around Washington, say what you will about so-called American gung-ho-ness. There's certainly an upside to it.
By this point, the battle in Washington had been going on for several hours and showed no sign of slowing. But Jean was certain that Cyclops and the rest, already on station there, would do their best.
Any residual tension in the man's voice, barely there but easily picked up thanks to Jean's empathic powers, disappeared, and he gave her a brief overview of what was going on in the area even as she raced towards where she could sense several dozen jetfighters dueling in midair over the Straits of Taiwan. The American carrier group pulled out of the Straits and to the south after hammering several troop transports of all things that had pushed out into the Straits with no air cover. Whether or not those troop transports had been actually full of troops, neither Jean nor the Americans had any way of knowing. Regardless, they had sunk to the bottom by the American planes before they were jumped in turn by fighter squadrons from the mainland.
"Whatever is going on in China means that this assault on Taiwan isn't very organized. The basses launching fighters across the Straits might all be playing by the same rulebook, but it seems like each base got its ordahs at the wrong time or somethin'," the admiral reported, even as Jean came within visual sight of the ongoing dogfight.
F-15s and MIGs dueled in midair several kilometers of airspace alongside the Taiwanese equivalent, whose name Jean couldn't remember… if, in fact, it was a different jet fighter than the American one at all. Hawkers backed up the F-15s, armed for more anti-missile defense, shooting down whatever missiles got through from the MIGs, which had a distinct numerical superiority against the Americans and Taiwanese fighters. Whatever local numerical superiority, the Taiwanese and the carrier group had long since disappeared by this point, although experience and training were still heavily on the 7th Fleet's side.
Even with the example of the Eurasian War and how poorly the Chinese army had done despite local numerical superiority against the Russians, there was only so much that the Mandarin had been able, or willing, to do to change the society of China's military infrastructure. That meant that while many units really were as strong in reality as they were on paper, others weren't. And China still had a massive quality control issue.
Nonetheless, there were a lot of MIG fighters, with more coming in from the mainland. Diverted here, Jean knew, instead of fighting the real enemy over China's own airspace. Whether or not all of the reinforcements were acting on orders from subverted officers, Jean again didn't know and frankly didn't think possible. Not unless the Chitauri were somehow able to infiltrate China before the portals opened. Even their skimmers can't cover that much area that quickly, and each infiltration would also take time. Instead, the various commanders had jumped to presupposed conclusions rather than looking at the data without presupposed notions.
"God dammit, why is it that humans are so quick to turn on each other?" Shaking that thought off, Jean reached out. Telekinetic energies caught more than a dozen Chinese fighter jets, crushing wings and tearing open canopies to pull the pilots out, not even letting them use their emergency parachutes. Able to see them all like this, it was relatively easy for Jean to do so, almost like juggling a dozen balls telekinetically.
Likes, Jean combed through the area, destroying every MIG in the airspace around her and then some, reaching out over the horizon occasionally to grab at hastily retreating MIGs, feeling their presence easily thanks to the minds of their pilots. Those were harder to grab, and every time she did, the bobbing ejection seats and their gathered occupants lost some altitude, but Jean kept at it. Soon, Above and behind her, dozens of Chinese pilots hung, all of them hanging there encased in orange and red globes of telekinetic power, looking for all the world like ripened fruits on the branches of a vast tree made out of energy.
At one point, she had to smack aside bullets coming from one of the American fighters toward the group of captured pilots, and she glared with all the fierceness of a predator towards the jet behind the string of bullets. "I don't know what you are thinking of, but those are my prisoners! We do not allow prisoners to be killed like that. Try that again, and you'll join them."
Either Jean's telepathic shout or his squadron commander's over the squad's comms net did the trick. The man's fighter pulled out of its attack run, twitching up and away, then down, heading out towards where Jean could sense thousands of minds clustered together well over the horizon. No doubt that would be the carrier group.
Satisfied that no other MIG fighter was coming into the airspace here between China and Taiwan, Jean turned her attention back to speaking to Admiral Johnson, who gave her full report on the rest of the conflict going on in the sea of China. The Chinese submarines had taken a toll at first, but the American destroyers had eventually begun to run them down, although they had. Of the carrier group, four ships had been sunk outright, two of them going down with all hands. But in return, China's local submarine force had been decimated, and the pack of surface ships they'd sent out had been wiped out with ease.
"You're certain that they're not going to try to push their way across the Straits again?" Jean asked, already turning towards the distant shore of the continent.
"Positive, ma'am. Like I said, all of this seemed ta come from a good operational playbook, but they hadn't set everything up in time for all the various bases to work together. If they had more submarines in the area, we would've had a very bad way of it. And if their MIGs had come in as one giant fist rather than spaced out into different groups, that would've been just as bad for our air group. As it is, I think I'm going to find the engineers who put together that newfangled Phalanx system of ours and buy them as many drinks as my credit card can handle," Johnson drawled. "Sure is shit saved the bacon on many of our ships from missiles that got through our screens."
Jean nodded at that, as it made sense. She'd heard of the Phalanx system, and even knowing what she did about energy weapons, it still sounded amazing. Although the admiral's continued mutter of, "Why the hell did they just keep on coming? Why didn't they retreat before you arrived on the scene?" made her wince.
It brought to mind what Dennis had been saying in the meeting before she had left Camelot. Even if the upper echelon of the Chinese Communist Party understood what was going on - that aliens had somehow begun to infiltrate their command structure and take over their officers - they might not have bothered to try to override the orders given. The more Chinese who died fighting American and Taiwanese forces, the better their internal propaganda machine could build up the kind of 'us versus them' mentality that The Party needed in order to keep control of its massive population.
Jane passed instructions for her prisoners, and then, after about ten minutes of flight, she began to deposit them on a beach in Taiwan, where several Taiwanese infantry companies were waiting for them. She hovered there for a moment, making her opinion on the mistreatment of the prisoners clear by telepathic voice (shout) and physical presence, then turned once more towards China, easily visible from where she hovered in the air from here. Damn, that really brings to mind how close Taiwan and China are to one another. It's not quite like the Straits of Dover, but it's close enough.
Before she could fly in that direction, Admiral Johnson contacted her and told her that there was another group of MIGs and other Chinese flying units coming towards them now. Several submarines were also detected at the outskirts of his destroyer patrol around his flagship, a Nimitz class carrier.
That was bad enough, but the next report on the heel of the admirals came from Pinoptes, saying, "Phoenix, more bad news I'm afraid. For whatever reason, the North Koreans have finally begun to respond to the chaos spiraling out of China. And they have decided to take advantage of the situation. Missiles have been launched towards Japan and South Korea, and North Korean forces are surging all across the border with South Korea."
Jean winced, remembering what she had read about the Korean War, which had ended while she was still a toddler. That meant more humans were about to die fighting other humans when there were invading aliens around. "Is anyone at the command level still in communication? I need some advice here."
Several seconds later, Storm's voice came online. Harry was still busy, Steve was in combat in DC, and the rest were busy across other fronts. Even Emma was so busy providing telepathic communication to those in the combat zone she couldn't take a break to advise Jean. As for Ororo she was also still busy in America, teleporting massive amounts of civilians out of DC and troops inward. "I am in no way prepared to make any kind of decision on this point, Jean. I'm afraid it's all you."
Only Sage, Sir Dennis and Pinoptes were both still in the command loop and able to advise Jean. Between them, it was decided she should head to South Korea first. It was hoped that if they gave it another hour or so, some kind of central location for the chaos going on in China could be found, as right now, none of them had any idea what was causing the chaos there.
"And barring that, I am close to breaking into the Chinese military's communications system's highest security encryption," Pinoptes reported. "If we cannot find the center of the chaos going around, then we can at least discover its ultimate goal and get there before whatever special forces unit is causing this reaches that target."
This conversation had taken but a few minutes, and then Jean was back online with the admiral. "Admiral Johnson, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave the Straits to you. North Korea is currently busy proving it's led by a madman. From then on, I'm going to have to push into China."
"Miss, you already gave me more than enough time to reload my fighters and get my pilots some coffee. And it's not like I've not been doing anything on my end," Johnson drawled, his southern twang showing more than before. It had been about an hour and a half since Jean had intercepted the ICBMs.
"Seventh fleet might've been scattered all around, but we're all in communication, and I'm pulling in all of them here bar a few destroyers up towards Japan. We've even got some jet fighters coming in from Manila and the Philippines to be restaged out of Taiwan at Taipei and up in Japan at Okinawa. They were slow off the mark, but they're coming in hot. I can't say it's going to be pleasant for a while if the next batch of subs my destroyers are reporting come up from the south and decide to attack, but even if they do, the 7th fleet can handle it here. And 'Merica's got boys on the ground in South Korea, too besides."
Jean heard the pride in his voice and hoped that it wasn't misplaced. But she also sensed through her empathic powers that he was speaking not only for her but for the officers around him in his bridge… or wherever it was an admiral was during a battle. Isn't there a special word for where higher-ranking officers stay on a ship?
Shaking that odd question off, Jean simply told Johnson to keep this line open for Pinoptes. The Many Eyes of the all-seeing AI would add tremendously to his radar and ECM. With that done, Jean then turned her flight to the north, pushing herself to move as fast as a jet could at full bore.
Twice as she flew north she saw American ships out to sea heading southward towards Taiwan, far slower than Jean was moving, but Jean had to assume they were actually moving at what she had heard called flank speed for some reason. At one point, an American ship looked to have taken some damage, but judging from the small clumps of wreckage slowly sinking around them, Jean didn't think they were in much distress.
Once, she saw more MIGs flying out from another base in China over the ocean. Where they were going, Jean didn't know, but erring on the side of wisdom, she swatted them out of the air. As previously, she did so gently, pulling the pilots out of their plains along with their ejection seats, although this time, she allowed their parachutes to activate rather than collect them to drop them off elsewhere. Jean called to Pinoptes and told him where they were so someone else could pick them out of the sea later but didn't pause her flight, instead going even faster to make up for the time wasted.
Even so, by the time she hit South Korea, the reports from the border were bad. The South Korean and American forces stationed along the DMZ were holding, but barely. It had apparently taken the local South Korean high command a while to realize that this was a real push across the borders rather than another attempt to force the South Koreans to fire first, and even then, they'd been reluctant to admit the truth. Thus, they had stupidly not allowed the defenders to fire until actual casualties had been reported, by which time, the North Korean artillery had already wiped out most of its opposite number wherever they could.
Flying higher up into the stratosphere, Jean then boosted her speed as hard as she could, crossing the intervening distance between South Korea's shoreline and the border as she could. Instantly, she could see the reports she had gotten from Pinoptes were all too accurate. Dozens of battles were occurring across the entire DMZ, while in the air, the South Koreans and Americans had begun to win out, the ground battle was going against them. The Anti-air fire was keeping most of the Americans and South Koreans from pressing their advantage, while the North Korean artillery seemed, at least in the first combat zone she flew over, to be the deciding factor.
Luckily, North Korea relied more on mass-produced simpler artillery. China hadn't provided them with anything truly high-tech, so they lacked the range to, say, hit Seoul or any of the other large city centers further back from the front line.
No longer in any mood to take prisoners or forgive these people for their stupidity, she hammered a group of North Korean jets out of the sky with claws of fire before they could engage their South Korean fellows. A fierce, nearly raptor-like screech came from her mouth as she continued forward. "KREEEYYAAAA, you stupid fucking, argghhh!"
With Pinoptes and her own telepathic powers guiding her, she moved along the DMZ, aiming to remove North Korean artillery positions across the whole front. Giant beams of superheated air slammed into artillery positions, or claws of fire flashed down like the talons of a monstrous bird of prey, tearing entire artillery units apart by simply removing the artillery guns. And still, she tried hard not to kill everyone she came across. It wasn't their fault they believed the propaganda, after all.
"I am the Phoenix!" She shouted as she was nearly finished, using both her telekinesis to make certain her words were heard well beyond normal hearing range, telepathically hammering out the words to every mind she could sense… which included quite a lot of people who were hundreds of miles away from the previous armed border with North Korea. Several million, in point of fact. Damn, this isn't going to restart that Phoenix worship crap is it? Fuck it, too late now.
Setting that concern aside, she continued to shout aloud and mentally. "North Koreans, your leader has decided to use an alien invasion as an excuse to try and make war on your southern neighbors! He is wrong. This is not an opportunity. This is an act of stupidity! And all of you will pay for his stupidity and for your willingness to follow him into it."
With the North Korean artillery seemingly being wiped out systematically from on high, the southern forces pushed back hard. And unlike Jean, the locals had no choice but to kill their opponents, nor did they have any inclination not to. Not that she was going to say anything about it one way or another.
Over the next few hours they stabilized the front and then began to dig in once more. In other places, local commanders began to push through the previous DMZ, although Jean suspected they probably wouldn't get very far, considering how large the various minefields were. In the air was a different story, and now that the North Korean air force had been dealt with and Jean had smashed so many of their anti-air units, the US and South Korean aerial forces were also pushing deep into North Korea.
She even tapped into the mind of the local US commander, who was busy organizing a full paratrooper assault on North Korea's capital. Many in the South Korean military were all for it, while their civilian leaders were dithering but not giving out any orders to the contrary, only whimpering about the losses thus far sustained. Of which there had been a lot. Indeed, far, far more people had died in this short, sharp war of barely a few hours than had died out at sea.
But Jean could not allow herself to be bogged down here any longer. She had done her part, and if she stayed around to use her powers in more minute detail, it would just suck away more time. The time in which thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians were undoubtedly dying across China, a death toll to dwarf what had happened here.
Thankfully, the hours that she had spent dealing with this conflict had allowed Pinoptes and Dennis time enough to extrapolate a very vague idea of where the Mandarin was hiding out while his nation burned around him. They had also picked out indications that whoever was causing the chaos in China was making for the military base that the Mandarin had taken over as his command center. Whatever it was, they could also say unequivocally now that however the aliens were doing it, the Chitauri special forces, or whatever, were turning China's own officers against itself. "It's highly likely that you will be faced with another telepath or someone at least with mental domination powers."
"What's the difference in this case?" Jean asked, understanding in a broad sense why Dennis was making that distinction. Someone could dominate another person's mind without having full access to that mind. The Imperio spell, for example. There was also the villain that Colossus and some of the others had dealt with who had pheromone powers that allowed him to dominate the minds of those around him.
"It doesn't seem to extend for very long. The alien, we're pretty certain it is a lone operator, doesn't seem to be able to keep up the farce for very long. The alien takes what she wants, uses it, and then moves on. I also can't conclusively prove that they are able to mimic voices, or not. At times, it seems so. At others, they used codes. The alien appears to know not to keep to a single pattern," Pinoptes stated.
"Well, that's not good. Here's hoping that my mental defenses can stop whatever it is," Jean grumbled, a shiver going down her spine at the sudden fear that whatever it might be would attack her on a physical level. I'm going to need to filter out my air and keep a telekinetic shield up around my body. Not that I wasn't going to anyway, but I'll need to make it more like a RAD suit rather than a shield.
What Jean heard next, just as she reached the border with China, was far more to her liking. "We've even been able to contact a few local commanders: Generals and commandants who have realized what is going on and are willing to listen. Pinoptes has started to help them get in contact with one another and what remains of the Party's High Command. They are slowly starting to build up small segments of order scattered around China. And we are gaining access to their radar systems too, which will give us a much better idea of what is going on," Dennis reported.
A few minutes later, Jean halted in midair for a few moments to examine the image that sprang up from her wrist, which held a small computer screen on the inside. It had been designed by Reed as an upgrade for her and a few others to try out.