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Looking at the images, Jean shook her head as she gazed at the examples of the carnage going on across China. It hadn't reached everywhere yet, but there were huge groups of skimmers, many of them over a thousand strong, moving around in various areas of Chinese airspace almost entirely unimpeded. Each group could easily overpower any local air defense since China had yet to organize a country-wide response, and the Chitauri were simply killing or causing carnage wherever they wanted. There were also reports now coming in of hundreds of the larger flying creatures and thousands of infantry moving out from the portal slower but in ongoing waves of alien enemies. Enemies who had no care for the idea of noncombatants.
Cities were being targeted ruthlessly by the larger eel-like constructs, which would destroy every building they could while the skimmers and infantry charged in. The images of towns and villages being shot to pieces from one end to another, men, women and children shot down from on high by skimmers, caused Jean to grit her teeth to keep from crying. And the less said about highways, the better. Skimmers were like jet fighters mixed with helicopters, so anything moving on the highways near a skimmer was just a sitting target. The image of dozens of cars carrying far more people than they should have burning from laser fire was one Jean wasn't going to forget anytime soon.
"There don't seem to be as many of the manta-ray floating anti-air batteries, but those we are seeing are mostly staying around the Chinese invasion portal," Pinoptes reported, the AI's tone dry and clinical but with an undercurrent of sadness. "They are backed up by a growing plethora of the anti-air guns reported in the Himalayas. The various groups of infantry that have not been racing away from the portal are also building a forward defensive position there, complete with shield generators, much like on the Himalayan front at present. That might be in response to the Asgardian assault in Russia or the way the battle in DC is now going against the invaders. I estimate it's only a matter of time before both of those fronts collapse at this point."
"DC will be first," Sage stated. "Rogue's on a rampage, keeping close to the local commander, and with him unable to prosecute the war, the portal device will be destroyed soon. The Asgardians under Tyr and Freya might have a harder time of it."
"Good to know the rest are doing so well. And if these Chitauri think their little defenses will save them when I get near the portal here in China, they had better think again!" Jean nearly snarled, flinching a bit at a video that had just begun to play on her screen. In the video, what must have been an elementary school was being shot up by skimmers. All of it caught on camera and then sent out onto China's internet. I am going to tear them to pieces! Each and every fucking Chitauri I find!
Those more visceral images and reports didn't even count the reports that Pinoptes were now getting from their new allies of infantry units spreading out in every direction. They would use their skimmers to move around, then descend on the civilians or military targets, going to the ground as they did so.
"What's worse is I think that the reinforcement doctrine the aliens have been using up to this point has just changed. Before this, there was a noted difference between each of the battle fronts," Sage interjected for the first time, and Jean could almost visualize the black-haired woman shaking her head. "Each of the local commanders had their own personal style of command and organization that the continual trickle of reinforcements was designed to meet. Now, they're simply pushing in as many troops as possible through the still-open portals in America, Russia, Nepal and China. Evidently, closing two of the six portals means they are no longer willing to allow the local commanders to slow things down with their idiosyncrasies if they can help it."
"Problematic, but not important on my end. Unless you're telling me the Chitauri have something that can slow me down when I get to that portal?" Jane responded with a shrug of her shoulders even as she began to speed forward once more. "There's a reason Harry sent me here to China, after all."
Jean wasn't being arrogant. There was indeed a reason why she had been sent here solo like this, although Jean wasn't so arrogant as to believe that there weren't threats out there that could challenge her. The campaign against Galactus had shown that there was a limit to her powers, and she and Harry had talked a long time about his battle with Thanos. Someone like that, Jean would rate her chances as sixty/forty at best if Thanos had time to prepare, which he'd certainly had going into this campaign. But anything below that threat level, Jean would fuck up but good, and she was very much in the mood to do so.
"China is looking to be a major issue regardless of your presence, given how France, Russia, and America all were quick to start working with us when we responded to the invasion. Those battlefields are going to be confined to one city per nation," Dennis nearly snarled, despite his customary self-control and the almost dry choice of words. The spymaster had looked at the casualty reports from France and the US, and it made for very grim reading.
The battles there were now almost entirely contained, as he had said, within Paris and Washington, and Paris at least was no longer getting any reinforcements. The surviving civilians had also been teleported out in job lots thanks to Ororo from both DC and the City of Lights.
But that didn't mean the dying was done. All it meant was that the dying were now confined to the fighting men taking back their nations' capital cities house by house.
"We're also getting some reinforcements now," Sage interjected, seemingly to keep her fellow spy master's spirits up. "Asgard has responded to our request for help, and their army is on the move. Their first attack groups are already on the way down into Russia as we speak," Sage answered. "Another is going to be redirected towards the biggest portal we've discovered so far, the one in the Himalayas."
Jean smiled at that and then asked Pinoptes and Dennis to make certain that the locals wouldn't fire on her to the best of their ability before pushing her speed even higher. While it was good to know that the war was slowly turning against the invaders, she still had her own role to play against them and now could finally strike at them directly.
OOOOOOO
Supergiant liked to think that when it came to using her Telepovore powers, she was a bit of an artist. Not so much one of paint, ink, or sound, but rather, she felt she was a master playwright, creating a performance for the ages. With every bit of chaos, Supergiant created, with every moment of confusion or carnage, she painted a greater spectacle, a greater show for her lord and master. And here on earth, in this quaint little country, Supergiant had discovered a perfect canvas for her work. The paranoia, the self-interest carefully hidden under loyalty – fear – of the strangely named Chinese Communist Party, the sheer amount of graft, all of it made the country's military magnificent soil for the seeds she planted.
At first, after taking over the minds of several base commanders and using them to launch attacks toward the island called Taiwan, Supergiant traveled across the country, using her skimmer to crisscross the country randomly. She kept away from the Chitauri so that they were not linked in the locals' minds to the troubles that she was causing with her infiltration of the high command, which just served to add another note to her performance.
At times, it had been tough to get to any kind of flag officer. The security at military bases in this country was quite paranoid. But more often than not, Supergiant was able to find a way, taking over one or two victims first, then moving deeper into the bases. From there, she would make her way quickly up the local chain of command until she found her actual target.
All in all, Supergiant felt she was performing excellently. The local military and civilians were united in paranoia against the other nations on this little blue marble before she arrived, and it was almost too easy to set them at their neighbors' throats.
It had, however, taken time, something which she was somewhat annoyed by at that moment. More than half the day had gone by since she had first arrived here, and she had yet to infiltrate the truly high command of the country. Although, thankfully for her mission, she had discovered where the General Secretary had retreated to.
This was a simple military structure, seemingly small, but easily the most high-tech base that she had yet seen in this world. Indeed, some of the scanners she could see from where she was hiding in the forest nearby looked high-tech enough that they wouldn't have been out of place on any Skrull or Kree planet. It almost looked impossible to sneak in without some form of backup, and for a moment, Supergiant wondered about the feasibility of calling in her troops to reinforce her attack or, at the least, to make enough noise for her to slip in unnoticed.
Then, she saw an officer leave and grinned. "I do believe I have my way in."
She retreated, and for the next fifteen minutes, she moved along a road that led to the hidden bunker. At first, she thought that was rather foolish, but then again, she reflected that the humans would need to bring in construction equipment after all, so having a road made some sense in that case if this place was new. But what she found at the other end of the road was a massive helicopter pad and more security. The security here was obviously still being put in place, something that made Supergiant thankful, as it allowed her the opportunity to sneak in.
When she saw another officer arrive and hastily get into the same jeep the first officer had already vacated, heading towards a helicopter, Supergiant moved in quickly. Not five minutes later, she was hidden in the back of the jeep, having taken over the minds of the two guards and the officer. She refrained from eating their brains entirely, just eating enough of their minds to make them her puppets for a time. This worked to allow her entrance into the security zone around the bunker.
Yet to Supergiant's shock, the scanners there still spotted her when she tried to sneak out of the truck despite her cloaking technology.
Two automated laser guns popped up from the sides of the entryway, and after a second, they opened fire. Not just on Supergiant but on anyone in the area, sending the driver, guard and officer in the jeep to the ground as Supergiant ducked aside. While she wore armor, she wasn't about to let it take any hits that she could avoid. At least these humans have a good understanding of the need for security. Kill the interloper and whoever is responsible for them being there.
As her purple lips twitched into a smirk, twin pistols appeared in Supergiant's hands from a holster at the small of her back, and she fired in both directions, showing that she was both ambidextrous and able to split her attention. I might enjoy using my powers more, but there is a different kind of art inherent in the expression of physical violence.
Three guards who had been stationed at the door leading into the bunker had also opened fire on her. Unlike the vast majority of the troops her own Chitauri had faced, they were armed with energy weapons, cumbersome things that had quite large battery packs. Their power was decent, punching through the jeep Supergiant had been using as cover, but she had already rolled away from it.
Supergiant's return fire did not miss. All three went down, their chests exploded from precise pistol fire. It would appear their armor is still not worth the weight it looks to be, even here in one of their most advanced and important bases.
From where she had been lying on the ground, Supergiant hurled herself forward through the opening into the bunker where her latest meal had remained, holding the door into the bunker open as per her last order. But just as she did it, two shots rang out, blowing the man's head apart and putting a bullet in the back of his body, causing him to fall forward out of the way of the door.
But too late. Supergiant leaped over his falling corpse, taking a glancing blow from one of the guns as it tried to traverse to follow her, but getting behind its arc of fire. Her pistols fired again, and two more guards fell. Then she was in the bunker, rolling along the ground for a moment before hopping to her feet. Ahead of her was what looked like a short hallway with several panels open along it. In each were more guns, but it looked as if they weren't hooked up just yet.
Not that Supergiant was willing to take that at face value. Precise pistol shots rang out, destroying each gun emplacement before she moved forward. Nor was she surprised when the elevator controls did not work a second later.
With a surge of strength, Supergiant wrenched one of the doors to the elevator open, finding the elevator cart wasn't there, only the shaft. Shrugging mentally, she began to rappel down the side of the elevator. Another tool came out a moment later as the elevator cart came back up towards her, no doubt intending to crush her against the ceiling. Before it could, her tool, a laser scalpel, allowed her to cut a hole in the top of it, dropping downwards.
There, Supergiant found three more guards. All of them already had their guns raised, warned by the cutting laser, and tracked Supergiant as she came down through the hole, hitting her armored legs and lower torso rather than her unarmored head, thanks to the angles of the shots. Two shots hit her stomach, but even there, the heavy armor weave she wore absorbed the heat of the energy bolts and deadened the impact.
Supergiant's return fire killed all three of them before her feet touched the ground, but a last bolt hit her shoulder and neck even as the man firing went down, causing both to sting something fierce. "Stars take them, there is a reason why I like using my Telepovore powers more than this brute force nonsense," she grumbled. "There's always a chance things can go against you."
Once more, the elevator did not allow Supergiant to communicate with it at first, but again, one of Supergiant's prepared bag of tricks came into play. Opening the control panel, she connected a small portable computer to it. The Chitauri tech-based pocket computer easily overrode the simple halt order on the elevator, and the box began to head downwards a second later. Supergiant was still grimacing a little at the pain in her legs and shoulder but was otherwise eager for the next challenge.
Supergiant could not measure how deep the elevator went into the earth but estimated the elevator had descended more than eight stories before the elevator came to a halt. As it did, Supergiant dropped two small smoke pellets, which quickly filled the elevator room with gas. A second later, Supergiant leaped back up out of the hole she had made previously just as the door to the elevator cart opened as they were programmed to.
Lasers and now physical bullets flashed through the opening as soon as the elevator opened, peppering the bodies of the three dead troopers there and the rest of the elevator with enough firepower to have put Supergiant into a shallow grave. Dangerous but predictable.
From her hiding place back on top of the cart, Supergiant threw several more smoke pellets. They bounced out and into the hallway beyond before she pulled herself back up, rolling away from the hole to avoid any lucky shots.
Smoke bloomed out, and a second later, Supergiant was on the ground and charging out of the elevator. Able to see through the smoke, she marked out the targets for a brief second, and then her pistols spoke, downing several more guards. Just like had been planned above, most of the defenses seem to be automated turrets set into the walls and ceiling, although obviously, these were fully operable. Regardless, they were not armored enough to stop the pistols that Lord Thanos had designed for her personally.
By the time the smoke cleared, all the defenders who had fired at her were down, man or machine.
At the far end of a short hall stood a massive hatch, the door a type that would recess into the wall when opened, adding more strength to the door than a normal door would have. To most, even if you got this far, this would seem an immense obstacle.
But Supergiant had plumbed the depths of her initial victim's brain, savoring it like fine wine, and she had thought about ways of getting through it. He knew how thick that door was, and to me, it's not thick enough. Still, best to add a bit of theater to this…
With that in mind, Supergiant retreated back to some of the destroyed gun turrets that she had taken out a moment ago and began to pull out their emergency batteries, stringing them together. With that done, she moved back over to the bunker door and laid them on it in a small pattern. Meanwhile, as she was doing all of this in clear sight of two security cameras up above, Supergiant was also reaching out mentally.
Supergiant preferred to use line of sight to control her targets because it gave her more dexterity with her Telepovore powers, allowing her to savor each memory or piece of information like a full course meal and because it let Supergiant create false memories to a far greater degree. But here, she wasn't looking to have a meal, only for a way past this final hurdle. Instead, she was looking to take over a mind just enough to give it a single order.
The taste of her target's mind barely registered to her as Supergiant found the mind of a low-ranking human somewhere within the control room beyond, and instantly, her own thoughts slid into his like a dagger between the ribs. "Open the doors. Do not be seen."
Everyone within the bunker was concentrating on what she was doing on the video screen or still trying to give orders to the rest of the CCP's military via the fast communication array that seemed to dominate the room. This included the Mandarin, who was keeping one eye on both the small and the big picture currently.
He was also giving out a few specific orders to those officers who had apparently been in contact with foreigners. For now, he would tolerate that, but their names would be known to him, and after these invaders had failed like all the others throughout China's history had, they would be punished for their disloyalty.
Even the Mandarin didn't notice as one of the security soldiers within was slowly making his way to the control panel for the door.
Outside, Supergiant put on a show as she tried to put together her bomb, as if she was thoroughly annoyed with everything and getting desperate, knowing the humans had help on the way. She even headed back to the elevator to make sure that they would not be interrupted by setting up an obvious IED triggered by a trip wire. In this manner, she helped keep the attention of the people within the bunker on her, giving her pawn more time to covertly move into position. And then, when her makeshift explosion went off, he opened the doors.
The Mandarin turned quickly at the noise of the door, shouting, "What in, get that soldier away from the controls!" But he was too late, and the Mandarin raised his bejeweled hand towards the still-open doorway.
Supergiant dove inward, barely dodging a hasty shot of some kind of energy beam the likes of which she hadn't seen before, gold with a very slight greenish tint to the edges. Her pistols spoke, and two more guards went down before either could get their guns up. Even so, another killed her first pawn and hammered her side with two rounds before a return fire blew his head apart.
A second energy blast caught Supergiant this time. The golden-green energy bolt was far more powerful than the energy weapons the Chinese had been using against her before this, and the hit lifted her up, hurling Supergiant back into the wall of the command room, through two of the consoles there linking this hidden bunker to the rest of the Chinese military. It couldn't quite penetrate her suit, but for some reason, the energy blast had momentum to it, and that momentum had leaked through even if the heat of the bolt hadn't.
Supergiant groaned in pain as she landed awkwardly but then rolled away from a third blast of energy as a dozen radar and communication specialists raced past her in panic to get away from the only entrance. She was about to take over their minds for a second to cause more of an issue but then had to dodge back and out of the room into the hallway beyond, ducking to one side of the doorway with more small blasts of energy following her. Dammit, he is just barely out of my range!
The size of the command room had foiled her attempt to simply take over the mind of the Secretary Chairman, or whatever his official rank was, the moment she entered. And now that same individual was defending himself quite well, not allowing her to close.
The Mandarin was a middle-aged man, fit, but not overly so, with a thin, sallow face and expression, his face clearly showing mixed Chinese and Mongolian blood for those who could understand what they were looking for. A long flowing goatee in the ancient Chinese style, along with long black hair done up in a topknot, showing white specks here and there throughout it, along with long, carefully manicured nails, normally gave him the air of an ancient emperor who had somehow time traveled to the present.
At present, his face was lined with tension and anxiety, his mouth a rictus of anger, watching as his country began to collapse. Whatever else he had ever been, the Mandarin was a patriot, and seeing China coming apart like this was horrifying.
Yet despite those obvious signs of age and concern, there was nothing wrong with the Mandarin's reaction speed. Nor his lungs as he shouted over the tumult of the fleeing operators, tone showing a certain glee at having something to take his frustration out on as he fired towards the woman who was almost undoubtedly behind all of this. "You will not conquer here, alien! China belongs to the Mandarin!"
Another blast of power came from his hands, or rather, from the rings of power that the Mandarin always wore. These were his true claim to fame, the true reason behind his rise to first power in the underworld and then in China's political battlefield. The Mandarin had found these rings while fleeing out into the back of beyond after having been found thieving. The rings had been in a crashed alien spaceship, an alien which had looked remarkably like the ancient Chinese dragons in myth and art.
The Mandarin had killed the wounded alien, claiming the rings for his own. With them and the technology of the ship, he had carved out a criminal empire, controlling almost the entirety of the middle kingdom's underworld of China from sea to mountain. The rings gave him knowledge of the technology, helped his mind grow to a frightening degree, and gave him command of various types of attacks, along with strengthening his body to an incredible degree. One even made him immune to mind control, although that was not a power he was ever enthused about trying to test.
But first a run-in with the Black Widow and Hawkeye, and then his meeting with Harry had curbed his worldwide ambitions. The first two had nearly killed the Mandarin as SHIELD helped the South Koreans beat off his attempt to take over their criminal empire. The fact two seemingly unpowered people had beaten him, and his people had been infuriating. As for Potter/Guardian, the fact there was real magic out there and Potter's simple aura, had terrified the Mandarin for all that he had been able to hide it from the man himself.
For the Mandarin, taking over China had originally been set simply as a step to something greater, and he had been forced to simply settle for second best, knowing any attempt to grow beyond China would be met with lethal force from Potter or someone allied to him. That galled, but more than anything else, the Mandarin was a survivor. If staying within China would let him not come into conflict with the Custodes and retain control of China, that was good enough.
A blast of kinetic energy came from the Mandarin's other hand, exploding the side of the doorway where the Supergiant was taking cover. It hurled both doorway and Supergiant down the core door, but Supergiant was able to roll out of the way before she was flattened, cursing as this opened her up for another blast of energy from the Mandarin as he remained where he had been. Stars take it, he's still out of my range! But his people aren't…
Several of the operators have been caught in the crossfire, gunned down by either Supergiant trying to return fire or the mandarins overpowered beams, but two of them had thrown themselves to the floor of the corridor between the two combatants and were laying there now, keeping their heads down desperately. Reaching out with her Telepovore powers, Supergiant took control of one of their minds, causing him to crawl towards where a soldier lay nearby, discarded in death by one of the original troopers.
The Mandarin continued to fire at Supergiant, but he was now watching the guards closely, much to Supergiant's chagrin. He gunned down both of the operators with short blasts of energy, then continued to fire at Supergiant himself.
It was with some chagrin that Supergiant realized she couldn't close with the man into her power's range, and her armor was beginning to fail, the internal energy shield being overcome, and the armor covering her body beginning to melt away in places. Dammit, I suppose I will have to call in help.
Luckily for Supergiant, a group of skimmers was nearby. As she retreated back into the elevator and then up into its shaft, the Mandarin continuing to fire at her, those skimmers moved into position, assaulting the exterior defenses of the complex. Most of those defenses were automated, which had contributed to the fact she faced so little in the way of defenders inside the bunker itself. And unlike the defensive guns inside the bunker, all the exterior guns were online.
Heavy machine guns and energy beams filled the sky as they fired at the incoming skimmers. More than a dozen skimmers fell before the guns began to get knocked out of the fight one after another. Ten minutes later, a dozen skimmers landed to disgorge their infantry onto the ground while others began to patrol the area, seeing off several attack helicopters as they tried to move in on the attackers.
Before the Chitauri could enter the bunker in strength, however, the Phoenix arrived.
Searing claws of telekinetic force dealt with the skimmers as if they were so many gnats. A second later, the infantry was similarly dealt with, hurled away, or simply crushed into the ground in groups of telekinetic energy. With the Chitauri reinforcements dealt with, Jean entered the bunker, only to run right into Supergiant as she came out of the elevator shaft.
Supergiant instantly reacted, several decade's worth of experience allowing her to use her telepathic powers before Jean could, Jean having been unaware of her presence, as that too was part of Supergiant's Telepovore powers, hiding her from other telepaths like the predator she was. When she launched her attack, it didn't work.
It should have. The Phoenix avatar in front of her was not the first telepath that Supergiant had fought. And thanks to the work that had been done on her powers by Lord Thanos, she was always able to get that first all-important blow in if she was in range. Indeed when attacking telepaths was the only time Supergiant really saw the Astral Plane, as her ability let her bypass it to eat the minds of her victims directly.
Telepaths were not only connected to the Astral Plane but conscious enough to feel and even fight her assault on their minds. It was at times a lengthy process, but the battle always started and ended the same way. First, Supergiant found her mental projection pulled into the Astral Plane, always within range of the victim already, perhaps standing and touching the other telepath's own projection in some manner. Her fingers, like long tendrils, burrowing into the projection of her victim.
It didn't matter what kind of touch it was, all that mattered was the speed in which the contact was made, so fast that no telepath that Supergiant had ever dealt with could react in time. At that point, the connection was established on Supergiant's terms, and she instantly began to feed, the telepath's own power turning against him or her.
No matter how they screamed, the projection could never get away, and soon, it would fade. The telepath's mind would die, dissipating memory by delicious memory. And as it did, the telepath would know, would understand that his or her mind was being eaten, making the taste all the sweeter.
But this time, she ran into something she hadn't ever seen before. Most of the time, automatic telepathic defenses were constructed like a shield, which her touch would've simply burrowed through, letting her get in that first all-important attack before the enemy telepath could rally. But mental constructs given near-life, the belsham trees that Jean had long ago created under Harry's tutelage in Occlumency were far more reactive than a shield, and Supergiant found her attacks parried.
For her part, Jean reeled as the telepathic probe slammed into those defenses, coming up almost from the 'ground' of the Astral plane, as if Supergiant operated at a different frequency than the rest of the realm, almost. Her attack even seemed like that of some kind of sea monster, tentacles lined with barbs and mouths, able to rend and feed at the same time, trying to burrow through her defenses only to be matched in turn by the tentacles of her Belsham trees.
They held for the split second they needed to let Jean get her bearings, and Supergiant reeled backward, shocked. And then the Astral form of the attack faded, the Telepovore not having the strength to maintain her assault against a telepath. As it did, the redhead recovered her equilibrium, and Jean's eyes exploded with power. "My turn!" Pheonix snarled as her own telepathic assault washed over the astral plane and into Supergiant with all the force of an exploding nova.
"N-ARRGHH…." Supergiant tried to fight back but couldn't. She was simply nowhere near powerful or skilled enough to even evade, let alone survive, this attack. What mental defenses she had thanks to her lord Thanos altering her, making her better, was no match. A second later, Supergiant fell, her mind literally turned into mush under the impact of Jean's telepathic assault. All her higher brain functions faded, and her legs gave out, no single being sent to make her remain standing. Drool began to dribble out of her mouth, and it was only her body's automatic functions that kept her heart beating.
However, Jean was in no mind to take chances and even as everything that made up the individual known as Supergiant faded away under her mental onslaught, she reached out telekinetically to snap the alien woman's neck before tearing her heart out of her chest. While the suit of armor weave she had been wearing had stopped any energy or impact-related damage before, Jean's power easily overwhelmed it, and she tossed the alien's heart against the far wall of the tunnel. "Okay… maybe that was a bit far, but fuck if that bitch didn't deserve it."
Leaving the blue-skinned alien's corpse there on the ground, Jean, feeling a bit more relaxed now, moved on, floating down the elevator shaft.
Her shield flared as a strike from within lanced up at her, a kinetic energy strike, followed a second later by a pulse of plasma, the color of which was unusual to Jean. Thankfully, it didn't somehow bypass her shielding. "I am the Phoenix!" she shouted, projecting her voice down rather than trying to reach out with her telepathy. Whoever's down there is probably on a hair trigger, and if it's the Mandarin, Dennis learned he had some anti-telepath tech. Best not to set him off.
"I just dealt with your attacker, Mandarin. I'm assuming you're the Mandarin anyway. That energy bolt matched the information we have on one of those rings of powers of yours."
The fire below stopped for a moment, and then the Mandarin's voice spoke. "And I am simply to assume that you will not use the opportunity this alien invasion has granted you to, shall we say, create a regime change here in China? Americans are always happy to look for such opportunities."
"The carnage and chaos spread across China says you need the help," Jean retorted, again fighting the urge to reach out mentally to the man and do what she had done to Supergiant above. Instead, she continued her way down, alighting in the elevator and staring at where the Mandarin stood in the doorway of the command center, having backed away quickly down the hallway.
"Come no closer, American!" he growled, his hands coming up, the rings on them glowing.
"I actually don't have American citizenship anymore, but I understand what you're trying to say. I suppose your position does force a certain paranoid frame of mind on its holders," Jean said, her tone almost light and jocular for a second before she shook her head as she stared across the intervening distance at the man. "And I'm not going to stand here and shout at you. Let me come within at least speaking distance. And if you think that distance is making you any safer now than you would be then, you should probably think again. Or maybe just outright fire your spies."
The Mandarin snarled a bit, but he had long since gotten used to the fact that he was in no way the biggest dog in the yard, even as head of China. With a curt gesture, he allowed Jean to come closer without firing on her, although several of his rings did twitch a bit on his fingers.
"I don't like you either," Jean retorted to that look, shaking her head. "In fact, a large portion of my mind wants to turn you into a torch right now. But we need to work together to close the portal and shut down the rest of the invaders. I can't be everywhere at once, and even with my telepathic powers, I can't spread out my power on such a wide range to deal with so many small-scale problems. So get off your high horse, stop seeing everyone not Chinese as an enemy, and let's get a move on."
"Never become a politician. You would no doubt cause heart attacks across the globe," the Mandarin muttered before shaking his head and leading the way back into the control room. Much of it had been destroyed, but the main screen across from the entryway was still in relatively one piece and still gaining information from elsewhere in China. With Jean relaying what Pinoptes could, the Mandarin began to piece together the Chinese high command once more. He even called off the ongoing conflict around Taiwan.
Not, Jean thought internally, that there was much of that force left. While the carrier group there had taken losses, with the help of Taiwan and the base in Okinawa, they had chewed up every force that China had sent into the Strait or the waters around Taiwan.
"That was a good gesture on your part," Jean allowed, shaking her head a bit as they turned their attention back to China, the attempt to be diplomatic leaving a bad taste in her mouth. "And now, you need to get in touch with North Korea and tell them that Big Brother is very angry with them right now."
The Mandarin actually snorted in laughter at that before something else on the screen caught Jean's eye. At the same time, Pinoptes shouted a warning into her earbuds. "Phoenix! The Chinese have just launched nuclear weapons… they are aiming at a site within their own borders. Target is the portal!"
Jean's eyes widened, and she whirled to look at the Mandarin, shouting, "What have you done!? Didn't you hear me when I said I'd…"
"I have done what needs to be done! The people of China are no strangers to sacrifice. If I have to create a radioactive wasteland around that portal in order to close it and make sure no further aliens come through, the thousands of lives that take will be a small price to pay in the great scheme of things." The Mandarin waved her off, staring at two screens in particular. One changed to watch the trajectory of the missiles rather than the overall conflict across China, while the other showed a real-time image of the portal.
"You forget the Chitauri have already done a very good job of killing every single civilian or soldier for dozens of miles around that area. If more than one out of every ten civilians in the zone that will be impacted by a nuclear explosion is still alive, I will be surprised. That entire area for miles in every direction is a viable military target. Anyone caught within by our nuclear weapons will all be seen as martyrs, giving their lives so that China may live."
"That might be, but the Chitauri have stopped this kind of thing before," Jean answered tartly. "The portal in Paris and the portal in Russia were both…"
Her voice trailed off as things changed once more, the image on the screen causing her words to stumble to a halt.
The Mandarin had not only worked on trying to raise the technological level of China's military forces and create a better system of quality control but had also revamped their internal security apparatus to a significant degree. Part of that security force was a series of drones, much like the even smaller ones that the Orbital Drop Marines used in combat. These drones, which had been created in groups of a hundred and shaped like birds of various types, had been handed over to the local police and were normally used to spy on China's citizenry.
And, of course, the Mandarin could override the local controllers, using these drones as he saw fit. He had created them, and even if his power as Chairman didn't allow for such, he would have been able to do so.
Several dozen of them had been sent toward the portal when the Mandarin started to piece together what was going on. Their camouflage as birds seemed to fool the aliens, or perhaps they didn't care that the locals were able to observe them. This had allowed everyone in the bunker to see the appalling number of Chitauri coming through the portal, thousands of skimmers, hundreds of Rippers, and more in an unending stream.
Now, they should have allowed the Mandarin, Jean and the others in the control room to see what happened right up until the nuclear weapons hit. Instead, Jean watched in horror no less than what she had felt a moment ago at the news of the nukes as she watched Thanos, the Mad Titan, come through the portal, his hover throne flying above the tide of Chitauri.
OOOOOOO
While Thanos's attention had been completely subsumed by the hunt to come, that did not mean that the rest of the current battlefield was willing to allow his mind to wander. Not without taking some recompense. Garm and Hela were gone, and Greta dead, with Dani, much as she had heretofore refused to admit it, too weak and inconspicuous to matter to Thanos, floating high above the ruined landscape of this portion of the Himalayas while Dani was well below him.
Fenris was wounded, more wounded now than he had been with Sutr, the fire Jotun king. His shoulder was practically gone, flesh and bone alike, letting his foreleg hanging on by mere slivers of flesh and tendons. Fenrir had a series of burns along his side and back that wasn't quite as bad but covered more area than the wound to his shoulder, and worse, his tail was nearly seared to the point that not a single hair remained upon it. It was so bad that when he looked over his shoulder at it at one point when Thanos's assault let up, it caused the proud young the wolf to shudder, as it looked far too much like a rattail for his state of mind.
Yet he was still Fenris, still the Breaker of Chains, the wolf who would eat the sun. Young and raw in many ways Fenrir's personality might be, but his pride was one of his most defining traits. He would not simply lie there and succumb. As the mad Titan had turned back to his throne, sitting down on it quickly, Fenris pushed himself to his feet, crouching low, gathering energy into his three working limbs.
Thor was also wounded. The Power Cosmic had allowed Thanos to overwhelm the Thunderer in a way very few other than Odin himself had ever done. Then come the final blasts that Thanos had sent his way, hurling him through a mountainside and out the other side of said mountain. His back was paining him in a way that Thor was not used to, and his arms were sore, sore to the point that he felt as if he had broken something in at least one of them. The fingers of one hand were also purpling noticeably. Portions of his magnificent beard and red hair had also been seared away in such a manner that Thor felt even Balder and dour Hogun would laugh at him.
Yet still, Thor pushed himself to his feet. Still, he gripped his hammer, his eyes alight with battle lust as he stared through the hole his body had made, which quickly began to be covered by rubble from higher up the mountainside as yet another series of avalanches rocked the area. An instant later, he was in the air, hurling himself upwards with all the energy he could as he whistled sharply.
Thor's chariot had been circling high, high above the battlefield. Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr had been taking some amount of delight at running down any of the giant eel-like enemies that had attempted to fire upon them, evading such fire with needs. Goats were normally not that combative, particularly against enemies who produced loud noises and could attack them at range. However, Tanngnjóstr and Tanngrisnir had taken on some measure of their master's combative personality.
Similarly, goats and chariots should not be aerodynamic. But like normal magic did in many other areas, the magic of Thor's chariot made a mockery of the laws of the physical realm, allowing the pair of goats to outmaneuver skimmers and rippers alike.
As he reached the aphelion of his leap, the goats pulled up beside him, not quite making the rendezvous, but close enough that Thor was able to reach out and grab the side of his chariot, flipping himself into it with his mangled hand. The next second, he was whipping the reins, charging back down towards his opponent.
"Attention, input needed. Incoming Asgardian-level enemies."
Looking up from the data that the Chitauri general had sent him, Thanos had barely a second for his eyes to widen before Mjolnir smashed through the kinetic barrier and then his throne's energy shield before crashing into his side, carrying him off his throne with a cry of pain, the first one Thanos had released this entire fight. Thor followed up, leaping off his chariot and down towards the falling Titan, hastening his descent as much as he could, landing directly on top of Thanos as he crashed him into the ground, grabbing his hammer out of the air as he went.
"Be smashed to dust, foul one!" Thor brought Mjölnir down hard on Thanos's chest, causing the titan to groan in pain again.
But he still raised his hands and blasted Thor off him with a full power double-barreled strike of Power Cosmic. This caused the God of the Common Man to stumble off him, allowing Thanos to roll to one side and get his feet under him. Just in time for Fenris to slam into him from the other side.
The wolf had grown to such a size that when he tried to bite down, Fenrir would have easily been able to chomp Thanos in half, but Thanos was able to get his hands up, grabbing at the slathering wolf's jaws as he had before, this time by grabbing at his fangs rather than his jaw. "When will you learn beast? Your strength is all you have, and even that is nothing to me!"
With a roar, he lifted the wolf off his feet for a second, sending him sideways to slam into four as Thor himself was recovering. The thunder went sideways, stumbling down, then losing his footing, and was sent tumbling down a crevice for a moment, although he was able to get his feet under him before he landed. Then, that most lifted Fenris again into the air, shouting, "Foolish beast, you are no match for me!"
Thanos slammed the beast down onto Fenrir's already wounded side, causing Fenris to flinch and howl in agony, wrenching away from Thanos's grip, which in turn allowed him to slam several blows of the Power Cosmic into the creature, sending Fenrir skipping away, then off the exceptionally large ledge that had been created earlier in the battle. With a final howl of fury, Fenris fell away, but then Thor leaped out of the crevice he had fallen into, hammer swinging. Thanos barely got his forearm up and activated his personal kinetic barrier before the hammer struck, and it was his turn to be smashed off his feet, slamming into a nearby wall of stone.
'Hahaahah!" Thor bellowed in laughter and came after him, landing two more strikes before Thanos returned one, a simple punch to the face sending Thor stumbling for a second, before his free hand caught Thanos, purple fingers and all, pulling Thanos into an elbow strike to the side of the head that had the Titan seeing stars for a moment.
A Power Cosmic blast to the chin sent Thor stumbling away again, something in his jaw giving way before a kick to the lower knee sent him stumbling to one knee. Mjölnir crashed into Thanos's side a second before Thanos's own knee came up into Thor's face, and then those grimaced as his armor began to crack and buckle. But at the same time, several of Thor's teeth had been smashed out of his face by that knee blow.
Even so, he gripped the nose around the middle, lifting him up and off the ground, and performed a perfect suplex, slamming the Titan's head into the solid stone behind him, before rolling away and bringing around his hammer again, only for the throne to start to get involved again, blasting down at him from on high. The kinetic energy of Thor's hammer throw earlier came back to him, smashing into Thor's chest, breaking his Asgardian armor and sending him off of his feet. Then, Thanos was on his own feet, lashing out with the Power Cosmic again, even as he ascended up into the air towards his throne.
Whirling his hammer in front of him, Thor tried to block most of those blows but couldn't and found himself forced backward again and again even as Fenris finally leaped upwards, landing on the platform around Thanos' throne, yellow eyes and slathering jaws speaking eloquently of death. This, however, proved a bad choice, as Thanos simply used one hand to keep blasting Thor and the other to start blasting Fenris, hurling him off the construct again. In this manner, he kept them at range for a moment.
Thanos had left extremely clear, non-discretionary orders for the Chitauri general, organizing the attack from the dimensional gap. He was only to be bothered by news about the energy signature matching the Phoenix avatar or Guardian's. Unfortunately, in this, Thanos had forgotten, or perhaps ignored, the fact that the cyborg Chitauri, with much of their brains having been replaced by cybernetics, were often a little too literal. Especially when it came to orders that he gave them. The cybernetic elements of their brains reinforced the quasi-religious idolatry the Chitauri were all literally programmed to feel towards Thanos.
In this case, that meant that no information about the rest of the ongoing invasion had been shared with Thanos since he had decided to get involved personally. This, in turn, meant that he had no idea that, at around the same time when he had been dealing with Ghigau's strange mental assault, the Severomorsk and DC portals were closing. Although the one who had orchestrated this whole ward did not know it yet, the invasion was very much in danger of ending in total defeat.
The Custodes Mundi and their allies had succeeded in bringing more power to bear at the portals than Thanos and the Black Order had ever thought they could. Worse, the Black Order's own idiosyncrasies, and Thanos' arrogance had worked against them, as had Skrull being unable to close with the planet.
Yet, while his master was completely ignorant of this fact, Ebony Maw wasn't. He got a report first that Severomorsk's portal had closed. Someone had snuck in, found the portal generator, and destroyed it even as the Chiaturi were defending against the arriving Asgardians. Then, almost on the heels of that report, more news that DC's portal had followed. With that, he knew that his own portal and the one in China were the only ones left.
Not wasting any time gloating about Corvus Glaive's death despite Ebony having seen the other, more cerebral commander as his only real rival among the Black Order, Ebony instead ordered as many men and material pushed through the remaining gates as possible. He overrode any commands that Supergiant might have left behind, and soon, hundreds of rippers joined the skimmer craft in China, spreading out everywhere.
This, ironically, caused a large amount of the chaos in China to start to slow down. With so much more evidence on hand, more of the local commanders realized that China was being invaded by an alien source rather than a human one. Not that they were able to do much at first, given how much of a battering China's aerial forces had already taken around the portal and how spread out the Chitauri quickly became, but that could be overcome in time.
At the same time, here in the Himalayas, more and more infantry came out, joining the ongoing scattered battles against Balder and the forces under his command. Still more anti-air guns joined their fellows, along with still more skimmers, spreading out and away as fast as possible in large groups. The only way the invasion could succeed at this point was to create a defensive cordon so large that no force could get to the two remaining portals, regardless of whatever resources they could bring to bear that had already dealt with the rest of the Black Order.
Logically, Ebony knew that unless the Skrull broke through, there was little chance of the invasion winning out. But he would obey his master until he could not, and at the moment, his portal, his avenue of retreat, was still open, regardless of anything else.
Even as the tumult of the battles scattered throughout the rest of the mountain range began to rise to a fever pitch, Thanos and his two opponents remained ignorant of the larger strategic picture. Line of sight and distance meant that they could not see anything that was going on, while the two Asgardians didn't have any means to communicate with the locals. Even Fenrir had lost his earbud at last. The valiant little device had finally fallen out of his overlarge ear.
Eventually, Thanos was able to regain his throne, and with a few buttons, he rose up into the air. A series of hypersonic missiles from one of his throne's weapon systems were sent in the direction of the completely bizarre goats, and the chariot they were pulling caused them to bank away, racing for the horizon with the missiles in hot pursuit. This meant that Thor wouldn't be able to come after him as Thanos rode his throne up into the air.
From below, Thor stared up at Thanos, his face a rictus of fury. Not at his wounds. The various burn marks across his body and the tattered remnants of his armor mattered little to the defender of gods and men. No, what infuriated him was that Thanos was leaving without finishing the fight. "Come back and fight, coward!"
His words fell on deaf ears. Thanos's mind was elsewhere.
Now would have been a good time for Thanos to check in with the Chitauri, to check and see what was going on with the overall war against Earth. But that war had always been a simple means to an end for Thanos. Even his fury and grief at Gamora being defeated was a momentary thing in comparison to the desire and love, the obsession he felt towards Lady Death, which had ridden him for eons. A love that had gone unrequited for some time now.
I have tried to gain my Lady's attention in recent years through the artful destruction of hundreds of souls, given up to her in the most exquisite torture I could contrive, and at other times, I have tried to make a comedy of some deaths. I have tried to gain her attention through the use of sheer numbers, consigning whole planets, whole star systems worth of individual minds and souls to her grace. None have worked to regain the favor I had with her.
But there is one thing that must: the defeat of her counterpart's avatar, the defeat of the Phoenix Force, and, along with the avatar, the death of the being who defeated me the last time I was in the star system. Overcoming an obstacle like that at the same time I lay what can only be called a victory for her at Lady Death's feet, must work to regain her favor. I will have my Lady's gaze upon me again! I will! Thanos thought as he inputted new controls. A second later, a personal portal opened on the same frequency as the Chitauri, depositing him back into the dimensional gap for a moment.
Even as the Chitauri commander, now able to actually see and speak directly to Thanos when he could not have overridden Thanos's orders to call him with other information, tried to get his attention, Thanos turned his throne towards the portal for China. A second later, he was gone, still none the wiser that the larger plan had completely come apart.
OOOOOOO
The video recorders showed Jean and the others in the distant command bunker showed Thanos as he hovered there in midair, sitting on some kind of floating throne thing. Even through this medium, there was something unnatural about Thanos that even the tear in reality seemed normal in comparison, his size, his looks, the way his eyes glowed like small dwarf stars even through the video, turning this way and that before seemingly staring in one particular direction. Everything screamed otherworldly about him.
"Call the nukes off!" She nearly whispered throat dry as her mind became filled with numerous ways this could go wrong. "Those things won't…"
But it was too late. Thanos was already aware of the incoming ICBMs. She watched as Thanos tapped at his throne's armrests a few times, and then, the information displayed on another screen changed. That console was following the ICBMs via local radar. And within a few seconds, the trajectory of the missiles began to shift.
As Jean and the others in the command center watched, the trajectory of each rocket shifted toward where a different nearby city lay.
Wh… no way Thanos was able to target each of those cities so quickly! Some kind of automated targeting device or something more? Desperately, Jean set aside that mystery and closed her eyes, raising her hands above her head. Her aura of the Phoenix appeared once more, muted but still lighting up the command center around her in red and orange reflected glory, causing the Mandarin and several others to back away while everyone else covered their eyes.
For a second, the Mandarin's rings glimmered as he began to also call on his powers, but he paused, watching the Pheonix stare at the console showing the flight of the ICBMs. Realizing what was going on, the Mandarin ordered the drone controllers to shift the feeds to any other drones in the area, trying to follow the missile, trying to give Jean a visual to better concentrate on using her powers long range.
But this wasn't like using the sensors Pinoptes had given her access to so Jean could look down from on high as she had done during the Eurasian War. Instead of one view straight down, even as the men at the controls tried to rapidly shift from one to another, Jean was faced with several different images at once, several in fact for each missile as they separated.
Worse, there were so many minds nearby, and between her and the target, concentrating on finding something that didn't have a mind was far harder. Using her telekinetic powers without seeing what she was doing was always tough, but this was an order of magnitude harder.
Yet even so, despite the distance and everything else, one by one, Jean was still able to grab three of the five missiles that the Mandarin had launched at the portal out of the air. With a near groan, she wrenched the three of them upward, hurling them high into the sky and beyond, held now by her powers rather than being directed by their rockets.
But the other two evaded her best efforts. She kept on trying while still directing the other rockets straight upwards, but both of them slammed into the cities of Wuxi and Wuzhou. Jean tried her hardest, tried to contain the explosions, but from this far away, she couldn't. The next second, both cities disappeared as China's own nuclear devices were turned against it as in the bunker, the Mandarin and his officers stared in horror at what he had wrought.
Slumping to her knees, Jean had to shake her head several times to recover, one hand rising to wipe away sweat from her face. That had taken a lot of concentration, reminding her in many ways of the savage telepathic battles that had been waged during the Asgardian war. Visuals, good ones without any kind of break, were immensely necessary to use telekinetic powers at anything like long range. Damn it! How… how many millions just…
Anger rising in her mind, Jean recovered quickly, and pushing to her feet, she snarled at the Mandarin, barely stopping herself from going full Darth Vader on him and breaking his fool neck. "You, you did this! And when this is all over, your people will know the truth, that you were willing to sacrifice thousands of them to close that portal and that it was your fault that millions just died! If I were you, I would probably seek asylum in some other country. I rather doubt the mob will have any pity for you."
Not, Jean knew, that any international court would have much pity either.
The Mandarin seemed to gather himself, but his tone was lacking in energy, and his shoulders slumped a bit as he answered, giving his words the lie they were. "You, you make the mistake of many throughout history. You believe a hard truth will be believed over a soft lie chosen to fit into the worldviews of those targeted. Regardless of whatever else happens, the Chinese people will never turn on me. Nor would I ever let myself fall so low as to need to throw myself on the largess of another nation."
"You just keep telling yourself that," Jean drawled, shaking her head and turning towards the entrance. "Meanwhile, I'm going to go out and handle the real problem." Moments later, she was in the air over the Mandarin's command post, racing towards Thanos and the portal. "Pinoptes, Dennis, if you haven't already, tell the others: Thanos is here. I'm going to do what I can but I would really like some emerald-eyed help right about now."