Come Not Between the Dragon and Her [his] Wrath
I love the smell of fear in the morning. Or afternoon. Or anytime really, I thought with a sadistic smile. The floor rumbled under my feet, the walls shook, plaster dust filled the air, and every window I passed, shattered, shards instantly becoming (near) deadly shrapnel. I get to thank my theater kid roommate for my ability to project because my laughter rang through the building. (Half seductive chuckle, half maniacal giggle—you know that one meme that goes, “Mark me down as scared and horny?” Yes, that one; I can do the laugh that gets that reaction.)
“Here terrorist! Here, boy! Or girl, I’m not pick-y! Come and get me, bitches!”
Sideways flip, two legged kick. Roll midair like a bowling ball; four grunts with machine guns the pins. And every goon to go down, got flung through a conveniently already broken window and into Luna’s waiting arms.
Well, her giant magic baseball glove, like the one from the Green Lantern comics?—Oh yeah, (free run up the wall, then ceiling, land on idiot’s shoulders like a mechanical bull, go flat along his back, ignore the stumble, grab his shoulder and use his gun (upside down and shooting near backwards, take that bitches!) to drop five more members of the same cell, all flooding in through the same door. Idiots.)
I didn’t want to come out today, gunfire doesn’t help my headache, and let’s not mention what plaster dust and desert sand is doing to my allergies, but not a bad way to spend a day. Even if Luna did say no killing. Harrumph. Nothing a whole lot of wanton destruction can’t cure!
One-two punch combo, spin kick, dodge the idiot who thought knives in a fight with me were a good idea—swing said idiot by the wrist in a full circle (or two) to clear space. I’m getting crowded here! then let him fly through the remnants of the window, screaming like music to my ears. Dodge bullet, take a kick to the thigh (avoid the kidney shot from the other side) just so I can (cheat using telekinesis) “bend” the one enemy’s gun into a bow, watch his eyes get big, and then kick his ass out the hole in the wall. (That one wasn’t my fault! Not completely. It was an unfinished building! It wasn’t completely stabilized yet; how was I to know that repeatedly throwing 200-something pound bodies against it would cause the wall to collapse?!)
Dodge, dodge, kick, forearm block, block, punch (OW! Punching Kevlar, bad!), palm strike to the sternum, gasping dumbass became a brace, kick off, and slide across the floor, narrowly avoiding a hail of gunfire, knee-capping two with a one of their backup guns as I went by, flipped backwards to my feet, and swung a broken ceiling beam to hit the remaining three out of the park.
I took a quick glance at my surroundings and abruptly stood up, sucking in a sharp breath as I did—that one kick hurt! The hall was empty, and the next nearest foe was . . . well, not close. I turned and headed for the hole in the wall. I could see the jet just over there to my far right; and then there was Luna, standing around the corner of a building just across the street, also taking a breather. She waved jauntily; I raised a hand back. I was going to ask, “So, how am I doing?” but Luna beat me to the punch. (Which was good since I didn’t feel like talking much anyway.)
“Nice one! Ninety-two out of the total of four hundred eleven in twenty-nine minutes. You’re on fire, Raven! The fliers are doing perimeter checks, the Trickster’s with them, Arrow and Wintermint are in prime sniping positions, the Hulk, currently not Hulk-ed out is standing by; but I think they’re all seriously bored. Their only excitement so far has been catching a few superstitious types who fled to get away from the ‘man in black!’” I muffled an amused snort (I can’t go inhaling much more of this dust!) “The Man with the Plan is doing a lot of staring every time you toss someone out the building and I catch them. Well, that and look disapproving when I shake ‘em down for weapons. But I think he’s finally realizing that maybe even your ‘go-in-with-no-plan-except-to-fuck-shit-up’ plans are pretty good.”
Which told me almost everything I needed to know except, “Where’s my—“
“Oh, right yeah. Spidey’s over here with me—really? Nothing, come on, I’m trying here!—she’s got your tablet. When I said ‘you got this’, she totally went along with it. I think if it were possible she’d kick back with a drink and watch you work. Badass!”
I dragged a hand over my masked face. “What have you been telling her?”
“Only the good things.” That was not Luna’s voice. That was the Black Widow, my Soulmate.
“Secondary com line?”
“Close proximity, good hearing, and a loud friend.” (“Hey!”)
“Ah—“
“Incoming two, one floor down, heading for the north stairwell.” That was Luna again. “Wait, they’re headed . . . down?”
I reached out for a quick mental sweep and then sighed; I thought I was the dramatic one. “Widow, Smaug, clear the team and last minute evac, stat. They’re going to light it up.” Thank God for competent women because neither hesitated and off they went.
Me? I made a mad dash for the control room. I couldn’t just let all that information just go up in flames (and if I had some harebrained idea that maybe I could stop the explosion or disconnect some number of the explosives to lessen the blast, well, that was no one’s business but my own).
Stereotypical villains and their bloody dramatic tendencies, I grumbled as I flew down the halls. Yes, here, Control Room—mainframe and—SON OF A FUCKING GUN!!!!!!!!—overly-dramatic assholes went too fucking far this time. Who doesn’t put an off switch on a series of . . . oh fuck me! Of course they’re cascading detonations! Of course the fucking C-4 is wired into the damn foundations, of all the dick-shitting moves!
I had to rehack the mainframe and set it up on a remote download to an offshore, black site server farm that I “borrowed” from the C.I.A. (using my faked S.H.I.E.L.D. access code (what!? I certainly wasn’t going to use my N.S.A. one!)). I’d ask the Black Widow—Right, I gotta ask her if I can call her by her name Can’t be presumptuous. Wait, how did Luna get away with calling her ‘Spidey’?—maybe she’d like to hack it back for S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Right, back to the whole ticking time bomb thing. Remote download is taking place, not much point in staying here what with the evacuation of the cell . . . and the timer has less than two minutes on it. Might make that one explosive cache there in the center, could disrupt the continuity of the explosions, could even lessen the overall force. Then up and out, yeah, sounds like a plan.
***
Unfortunately, when I don’t think plans through, I get left smashing my way through ceilings with a bundle of C-4 floating next to me as a building exploded around me. This was not one of my better ideas—oh, good, it didn’t explode too. I’m going to have to get Luna to get rid of this for me. We can give it to Cap later who can turn it over to some sort of governing body who could track its sale when they track down the rest of this cell’s branches?
And then my thoughts were interrupted when I nearly collided midair with somebody some-I-don’-even-know-how-many-feet above the explosion. We each veered sharply to avoid the other and it only took me a fraction of a second to recognize the Falcon, Sam Wilson. And of course, because I was irritable as all anything today, what I said was, “Watch it! Learn to share the sky, flyboy!”
He drew up, obviously startled, though I guess almost crashing into somebody at this height could do that to you. He opened his mouth to speak when mass movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.
The cell, having now blown their facility, was apparently going to take to the streets and storm the city to increase panic. We couldn’t have that, a thought I could tell Luna concurred with. Which meant . . . it was time for another spectacularly bad idea.
Follow my lead! I thought at Luna as I held up a finger in a ‘wait’ gesture to the flyboy and dove back towards Earth to head the bastards off.
Don’t I always? You got a plan to keep them out of the city?
They’re going to chase us towards the desert and leave the civilians alone.
Luna didn’t bother to reply though she did as I indicated that she should take position at the far opposite side of the enemy force. If this worked, they should split and follow us back around the wreckage and towards the desert instead of continuing to march on the city. I took a position on a lamp post that didn’t get bowled over by the explosion, one foot braced, one hand holding on, a la Singing in the Rain, ripped off my mask, and threw my head back (and thanked God that our bracelets were working again). “Yo! Bitches! Where do you think you’re going?”
I don’t know who was more surprised, Luna, the Avengers, or the very dipshits I was insulting. Then one of them from the back shouted, “The soldier from the mountains!”
I was about to compliment his Mulan reference when, I shit you not, somebody else shouted, “That’s not her!” And then they began to argue over whether or not I was me. Nobody even took a shot at me, sitting duck and everything. What happened, no upper leadership types here?
Then Luna decided to get in on the action. To be fair, I had said to follow my lead. She leapt up on a pile of cars, ripped her mask off, and hollered, “I’m actually over here!”
The fucking cell rioted and did just I’d planned (hoped); they split up, screaming threats and obscenities, and took off chasing either Luna or myself, with a group of seventy or so still heading for the occupied portion of the city, only to be met by the combined force of seven of the Avengers. (I trust I don’t have to tell you who I was betting on.)
I didn’t have much time to think about it before I had to jump from my perch, roll to my feet, and run towards the open desert with approximately one hundred twenty terrorists on my tail. I contemplated levitating the whole way, but then I remembered that the whole point; they were supposed to feel like they could catch me. Otherwise they’d turn back to the city and the civilians. We were here helping the Avengers; civilian casualties were the exact thing we were supposed to be avoiding. Which reminded me, I had to make sure they’d keep chasing me too. Turning my head slightly, I yelled back, “What’s the matter, slowpokes? Did you get fat and lazy in that nasty old S.H.I.E.L.D. prison? If you need a break, I can arrange a visit!”
The beast that was the mob howled with rage and few frontrunners tried to shoot and sprint at the same time. They missed, missed by so wide a mark that I took the time to run up the wall of a nearby building, shove off, and into a pile of rubble, then turned and began chucking loose pieces of debris at random. A few went down, but it served its purpose.
The mob ran on.
I let them chase me probably less than a quarter mile from the last ruined building; theoretically just far enough away that the city had a safety net of sorts, still close enough to provide cover or backup as needed for the others.
I made my stand under sinking sun, amid the still hot sand and let the beast come to me.
Silly things ran at me, thinking I was tired or just remembering that they had me outmanned and outgunned. Heh. Sucked to be them.
Just when I was about to create my own woman-made sandstorm, there was a flash of light and then a “Whoop!” as the Falcon decided to crash my party, dive-bombing away with a fantastic aerial twist, and a gun in each hand before he used the wings’ momentum to execute this really quite pretty full body flip-kick thing as the wings retracted back into his suit. He flashed me a smile before getting caught up in the fray. “Do you know,” he began, snapping off a quick shot and then blocking a poorly executed punch, “I joined the Air Force because of you.” The jerk had the nerve to say those familiar Words, half exasperated, half chucking, in the middle of a fucking firefight!
My internal Soulmate counter clicked up one more: 4/5. Just one more to go, did that mean . . . ? Later, fight first, think later.
“Seriously!?” I demanded while simultaneously roundhouse kicking some jackass in the face, “What kind of person says another’s Words in the middle of a fight?!” Block, dodge, kick, kick, elbow to the face (not mine!), stole his gun, and kneecapped three.
“You said yours while bustin’ out of an exploding building.”
“Don’t you bring logic into this when I’m having a bad day!” I glared at him, and punched somebody in the face when he tried to sneak up on me.
“You and Red, that rule about never taking your eye off your opponent doesn’t apply to either of you, does it?” He was in the middle of a fight, with his newly discovered Soulmate who was covered in other people’s blood, plaster dust coating half her face, sand in her hair, in the desert, as the sun went down, and he was laughing! I thought only Luna and I laughed in the face of the ridiculous!
“JUST KISS HIM ALREADY!” Luna. That bitch. Like a half a mile away and barely visible against the sand as she and the Iron Dude went at the crew that had followed her, and she still found time to ship me and my newest Soulmate.
“Well, I wouldn’t object.” Wilson flashed me another smile and then took three perfect cross body shots. I smirked and mouthed, “Later.” He laughed and had to dodge another badly executed kick.
Then I turned back to the fight and screamed at the sky, “Smaug, if I have to stop in the middle of a fight to kill you, I will not be happy!” I swore colorfully in three languages when all Luna did in response was giggle. “If you’ve got time to make jokes, then you can hide this!” And I threw the unexploded package of C-4 at her. I knew it would never hit, but watching every foe in the vicinity duck for cover as it flew past them was hilarious.
While they were distracted, both the Falcon and I headed skywards. “Keep them here while I check to see if any of the stragglers joined the fight against your team?”
“Please do. I think the explosion made the coms fritz out a bit. They should be easy enough to manage for a while if I’m airborne. Just don’t forget to come back. I can’t have just found you and then lose you again.”
“Cheeky.” I retorted and damn that man and his beautiful smile! I quick turned and headed back towards 6th of October before I did something foolish.
***
Back near the ruins of the base, I found that the fight wasn’t as quite over with as mine and Luna’s were. What else do you do but jump in? So I did.
Block, block, kick, flip, chop to the jugular, caught a roundhouse kick one-handed, smirk at the look on the other’s face and then sharp twist to fracture and then head first into a rubbish heap! There was another one sneaking up on me, but before I could turn around, somebody else took him out. I whirled around but the body was already on the ground. Not by an arrow but a gun, so one guess as to who gave me a helping hand.
I found his perch on a nearby rooftop easy enough. I knew he still had me sighted in his scope, so I looked up and met his eye through it, and then took a few roundabout leaps until I ended up on the ledge next to him. The Winter Soldier pulled back slightly from his rifle and looked at me flatly. It didn’t bother me much, so I smiled, winked and said, “I might have to keep you, just so you know.” (And you know you’ve got cojones when you can flirt with pretty holding a gun with blood on your face.)
The man blinked those gorgeous baby blues at me. And then did it again. And something happened to his expression, it went soft? Well, slightly. There was a little more life in his eyes and something in his shoulders relaxed, just a fraction. Then when he spoke, his voice was raspy, as if he didn’t spend much time using it. “Handlers don’t . . . they don’t flirt.”
Click: 5/5.
“We’re going to have to talk about this, aren’t we?” I asked once I could brain again. Somehow I wasn’t certain it was healthy if he viewed me as his handler. (Wait, handler? Why?) Maybe that can be worked around?
I would have said more but then an ear-splitting shriek rang through the air. I knew that voice, knew it all too well. “I’m have to, sorry, but I have to, I’ll be back.” I said hurriedly to Barnes before I threw myself over the ledge and raced towards the last echoes of Luna’s voice. That was not a good shriek; that was one of pure unbridled rage, the kind that didn’t come from her human throat.
That was the wrath of the dragon.
***
I made that three quarters of a mile in under ten seconds, and it only took me a further three to figure out what happened. Stark was half-sitting in the sand, bleeding from cut down the side of his face and a forming bruise around his temple, somebody apparently got him just right while his faceplate was down. Luna, having seen this or at least the aftermath, was reacting predictably. She was going full beast-mode . . . which made me the voice of reason. Fuck.
Cowering terrorists were shrieking before the vision of tiny Luna turning into a massive dragon before their eyes. The Avengers were useless in this instance. Though I suppose I could hardly blame them, it wasn’t like skyscraper-sized dragons were a thing most people knew about, or how to deal with.
“I AM FIRE; I AM DEATH!”
Oh boy, she’s going full beast and murderfest.
“By the Norns,” two voices breathed, just slightly out of sync. Thor and Loki each came up on one side of me, staring up at Luna, her massive head and horns silhouetted in what were supposed to be these calm, twilight hours.
“A real living fire drake; could you have ever imagined it, brother?”
“Never.” Great, even the two aliens were impressed by Luna about to go full murderbot. Why wasn’t I joining her? Oh yeah, complications.
Cap was trying to help Tony to his feet and the rest of the assorted Avengers were standing around staring. Fuck it all. I went over to the two of them and helped get and keep Stark on his feet. I yanked a tiny flashlight from my belt and did the whole pupils check thing on the billionaire. I took it as a testament to how far gone he was that he didn’t even offer up a snarky comment.
I couldn’t get my fingers in there to check his pulse, but I could count both the breaths he took and his heartbeat itself (I get to thank a friend of mine for teaching me how to focus that the next time I see him). I pulled a handkerchief from another pocket and dabbed lightly at the cut. (Stark was apparently back enough to take the cloth from me with a grimace and do it himself, which I suppose was good.) “The cut’s superficial and you’ve probably got a concussion. On the whole, you’re perfectly fine, but I’d almost rather you weren’t considering her reaction.
“Cap, look you gotta get them out before—“ a shockwave hit and it was only through my efforts that neither man ate sand. “Shit. Look, take Stark over there,” I pointed to a spot not too far in front of Luna. “And ham the fuck up.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Tin Can. If you’ve ever played up an injury to get sympathy from a girl, well then this is the performance that needs to top all others. Be Bottom, a la Midsummer Night's Dream, that’s the kind of overacting required. I mean it; you see where her head is? You gotta be loud.”
“Why can’t you get through to her?” Hawkeye coming up from my other side, and took my place keeping Stark on his feet.
“Well, a). somebody’s gotta protect them,” I indicated the assorted cowering, unconscious, or otherwise freaked out terrorists all around us (see that, bitches? Welcome to real terror!) “from her murder-rage-kill thing—Oh, when the psychopath says no to murder, you know something’s messed up. The horror!—and b). I could, but since I’m not the reason she’s in this state, it’ll take longer for anything I say to have an effect. He’s the hurt Soulmate, using him is quicker.
“Go, do the thing. The rest of you, on the plane, we’ll get the dragon to zap you all back. I gotta cleanup on aisle thirteen first.”
I think they would have kept arguing with me except that Luna roared again, and then they sped up. Even as I went to start gathering up all the conscious and unconscious terrorists, I could hear the ham in the background. “Oh the pain! The agony! I’m bleeding my life’s blood! THE PAIN!”
***
Sometimes, I hate that dragon. Her whole murder-kill-revenge thing against the idiots who hurt one of her Soulmates was understandable, (We let them live and this is how they repay us?! Easy, Luna not so loud! I can hear you just fine without you trying to fry my brain!), but she told me “No killing!”—so she wasn’t allowed to either! (I was kidding . . . mostly, sorta, kinda? Well, not really, no.)
But yeah, in truth? Mass killing would be bad, bring all kinds of attention to our involvement in this whole mess. And there was something seriously wrong with the fact that I had to protect the people we were just fighting from an angry dragon. But I yanked my mask back on (because now that the fighting was over and there was a fucking dragon on the loose, yeah, news crews and S.H.I.E.L.D. plus the Egyptian authorities would be here soon), pulled up my metaphorical ‘grown-up’ pants, and went to work.
It only took a few minutes before Luna realized that Stark was hollering up a storm about “The pain!” and be all, “Oh nu! The precious Tin Man!” and dropped down on her belly so she could inspect the poor injured Soulmate.
I will give Stark (and Cap since he was standing with him) props. The giant, black dragon head with the huge eye and the enormous sharp fangs suddenly appeared right next to him and he (they) managed to hold it together. Stark waved’ weakly’ and went, “Can we go home now? It hurts.” It was pitiful, and Luna, the dear, fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
Since Stark had her attention, I figured now would be a good time to get Luna to be practical for a few minutes. “Smaug,” I said, swinging a wide arc when I floated closer so she could see me coming, “why don’t you take the injured Stark and company back to New York? Let them get on the jet with the others, and then take them all home? I’ll clean up and make sure these twits go to prison like they’re supposed to? (Again/)
Her scaly head titled upwards to see me, and then she blew a cloud of smoke big enough to engulf me whole. I waved it away, too used to this response, “Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. But Stark kinda needs to be treated and it gets cold in the desert at night. So?”
Luna grumbled internally but she did let Cap get Stark to the jet, and then she zapped them away, presumably back to the Tower.
***