Chapter 29
New York, United States
April 2011
Steve landed on the patrol car’s hood with a slam. The two arguing cops stared up at him in shock.
“I need men in these buildings,” he snapped, well aware that he was a formidable figure in his battle-scarred armor and helmet. “There are people inside who could run into the line of fire. You take ‘em through the basement or the subway; keep them off the streets.” Clint’s advice had come through the comms, and Steve seconded it. “I need a perimeter as far back as 39th; turn back anything that gets that far. This has to stay contained.”
“Why the hell should I listen to you?” the fat older cop demanded.
Steve barely had time to register his indignation before three Chitauri soldiers dropped off a ship above and charged at him, hissing.
He hooked one’s weapon with his shield and spun the thing into the one in the middle, deflecting an energy blast from the third with his shield in the same movement, and slammed a booted foot into the first one’s chest. It caved in like a pinata. Steve nailed an uppercut in the jaw of the third, exchanged a flurry of blows with the remaining Chitauri, and snapped the thing’s neck.
The two cops stared at him.
Steve glared back.
The older cop marched away, shouting Steve’s orders at his squad.
Steve smirked and took off running.
New York, United States
April 2011
Tony screamed around the city, moving faster than he ever had for this long. The suit was performing beautifully; it had taken several scrapes along walls and pavement that had done little more than scratch the paint. Tony knew the red and gold was mostly vanity, but he didn’t care. If he was going to be helping people, they didn’t get to criticize how he looked while doing it.
“Sir, there are fourteen Chitauri on your tail.”
“Good, that’ll keep ‘em off the streets. Rogers?”
“Kinda busy,” Rogers panted over the comms.
Tony whipped his hands out and made a ninety degree direction change. Two Chitauri ships slammed into a building and exploded. He prayed no one was in there.
“Where are you?”
“Uh-”
“Captain Rogers is here, sir,” JARVIS chimed in, and a location appeared on Tony’s HUD.
“Perfect.” He whipped around, blasted two Chitauri ships - one went down with a dead driver, the other swerved into a third and took them both out - absorbed three shots to his armor, and took off in Rogers’ direction.
“Sir-”
Tony looked up.
“What the everloving shit is that!” he yelled.
The leviathan was enormous, the length of several city blocks at the very least, looking like a flying mutated sky whale the size of a shopping mall in heavy armor. Tony soared up next to its side. “JARVIS, find me a soft spot.”
“The armor is impenetrable. I see no visible weaknesses in its carapace.”
“Lovely,” Tony muttered. He didn’t see any either.
The leviathan flew (swam?) through a building, leaving thousands of tons of steel and concrete rubble in its wake. Tony aimed downward, scanning for biosigns: there, there -
He fired his thrusters and flew into the dust cloud, hauling rebar and blocks aside until he could pull three women and two men out of the remains of an elevator shaft. Tony passed on the orders he’d heard Barton and Steve giving and sent them on there way.
With no other biosigns close enough for him to save easily, Tony forced himself to take off again and head for the leviathan. He had to leave them behind. The sooner they ended this battle, the sooner the rescue workers could get in here, and that wouldn’t happen with that leviathan in the air.
Tony careened around a building and came face-to-face with the thing.
“God, it’s ugly,” he said. “Let’s make it uglier.” He fired a swarm of rockets.
The tiny guided missiles screamed through the air at the target highlighted on Tony’s HUD. They slammed in quick succession into a patch of less-armored flesh (or whatever) on the thing’s cheek. The leviathan let out an air-shaking roar and turned toward Tony.
“Well, that got its attention,” he said. “What the hell was step 2?”
“I recommend you lead it up higher, away from the buildings, and keep it focused on you,” JARVIS said.
“Yes, that’s very helpful,” Tony said, and took off into an ascent. The leviathan roared again and followed.
New York, United States
April 2011
Natasha leaped off a car and landed hard on a Chitauri’s shoulders, clinging with her legs while it spun and flailed at her with that damn energy spear. She seized the weapon, yanked it out of the thing’s hand, and stabbed a knife through the weak point she’d discovered on the tops of their helmets. The Chitauri collapsed and she rode it to the ground, exchanging the knife for a pistol and taking down three more before she hit the pavement and rolled. The empty pistol went back in her boot until she could reload. She uncoiled to her feet, bent backwards away from an energy beam, and slashed a Chitauri with the spear in her hands. The fight lasted seconds before she cut its throat and dodged behind a car, breathing hard and waiting for the next one.
Nothing came.
Cautiously, she poked her head up and over the hood of the vehicle. No Chitauri in sight, at least not alive.
Clint ducked out from a shattered storefront. “Where’d they go?”
“I think we killed them all,” Maria said, yanking a throwing knife out of a Chitauri’s chest. Natasha approved. “You two are amazingly efficient.”
“That’s what happens when you work together as long as we have,” Clint said, grinning.
Natasha winced. Maria looked annoyed for a fraction of a second before she tucked it away, but Natasha saw it, and made a note to talk to Clint later. He and Maria would have enough problems halting their passionate debates long enough to get together without Maria thinking Clint was into Natasha, too.
“There’re still soldiers around,” Steve said on the comms. “I’m two blocks south. Meet in the middle?”
“Can you get here? I’m salvaging arrows,” Clint said.
Natasha shot him a look and started to reload her guns. She’d gone through half the ammo she had on her.
He raised his hands, one of them full of arrows dripping Chitauri gore. It ran over Clint’s fingers and down his forearm. He didn’t seem to notice. “What? I have limited resources. And don’t give me that look. They’re more reusable than bullets.”
Maria laughed.
“En route,” Steve said.
Natasha spotted him seconds later, jogging their direction. Aside from his footsteps, the city was eerily silent as he came to a stop next to them.
Clint wiped arrows one by one on the seat of a shattered nearby car and stuck them back in his quiver, which whirred and spun to accommodate the new additions.
“We need to-”
With a boom, Thor landed next to the group.
There was a subtle but instant shift, as Natasha, Maria, Clint, and Steve all turned and squared up against Thor. Their last encounter with him hadn’t ended well.
Steve was clearly simmering with tension. “What’s the story upstairs?”
“The energy field around the Tesseract is unbreakable,” Thor said in his deep voice.
“Thor is right,” Stark chimed in over the comms. “We gotta deal with these guys.”
Natasha decided it was time to move them along. “How do we do this?”
“As a team,” Steve said simply.
“I have unfinished business with Loki,” Thor said angrily.
Maria raised an eyebrow at him. “I suggest you get in line.”
Clint snorted.
Thor glared at them both.
The put-put of an engine sliced through the rising tension. All five of them spun to analyze the newcomer.
Banner.
He pulled up on an ancient motorcycle wearing clothes that clearly did not fit, hair disheveled. “So, this all seems… horrible,” he said, clearly uncomfortable.
Next to Natasha, Steve softened.
“I’ve seen worse,” she said pointedly.
He winced. “Sorry.”
“No. We could… use a little worse.”
“Is that Banner’s dulcet tones I hear?” Stark asked.
Clint laughed.
“Yes,” said Steve.
“Good. I’m bringing the party to you.”
A rumble shook the ground beneath them, and the team turned to stare as Tony swung around a corner and headed straight toward them at top speed. There was a leviathan on his tail.
“I don’t see how that’s a party,” Natasha said as calmly as she could.
Banner glanced at the rest of them, then began to walk forward.
Tony dove low, shooting toward them. The leviathan followed suit, barrelling along close to the ground.
“Dr. Banner,” Steve said. “Now might be a really good time to get angry.”
“That’s my secret, Cap,” Banner said, and the smile he shot them over his shoulder was a strange combination of bitter and relieved, frightened and content. “I’m always angry.”
He turned away.
The movement became transformation. Skin faded from pale to green; his muscles twisted and grew; Banner’s skeleton expanded upward. It was altogether smoother and faster than the one Natasha had seen.
The Hulk roared a challenge back at the leviathan and charged straight for it.
The rest of the team flinched back when the impact rolled through the pavement. The Hulk drove his fists into the leviathan’s jaw, feet digging huge scars in the street as he roared with the strain. Force echoed up the leviathan’s long body as the scales slammed into one another - and came loose.
Alien metal thundered to the ground around the Hulk and the leviathan as the Chitauri beast shuddered and died, collapsing along the length of the street.
In the silence that followed, furious Chitauri screams rose from the surrounding streets.
The Hulk appeared, leaping over the thing’s corpse and slamming into the street next to the rest of them. Natasha tensed, remembering the last time she’d been this close to the Hulk, but he just snarled and joined their circle as everyone braced themselves for the Chitauri who came swarming over the buildings toward them.
There was a pause.
The portal pulsed and flared wider. Hundreds more Chitauri ships, four more leviathans…
Natasha’s breath caught. This was a nightmare.
She fingered her guns. Good thing she was a nightmare, too.
“Guys,” Maria said, shifting backward.
“Call it, Steve,” Stark said.
Natasha couldn’t help glancing at him and noticed Clint and Maria’s surprise as well. Stark was… asking someone else to give him orders?
He must’ve noted their expressions. “I can bend to someone who’s better at battle math than I am,” Stark said irritatedly.
“Until we can close that portal, we’re gonna use containment,” Steve said, ignoring them. “Barton, I want you up on that roof-” he pointed- “eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays; take down anything that tries to get out. Stark, you’re border patrol. Anything gets farther than three blocks out, turn it back or turn it to ash.”
“Give me a lift?” Clint asked Stark.
“Right,” Stark said, stepping behind Clint and securing a grip on his tactical harness. “Better clench up, Legolas.”
With a roar of thrusters, they were gone.
“Thor, you bottleneck that portal,” Steve continued. “Use your lightning. Tear them apart.”
Thor nodded once, shot Steve one more glare, and took off, Mjolnir humming in his hand.
“The three of us are on the ground,” Steve said, gesturing at Maria, Natasha, and himself. “We protect the innocents of this city, keep Loki focused on us, or these guys’ll go wild. And, Hulk?”
The beast snapped his head to Steve in a vicious movement.
“Smash,” Steve said.
A cruel smile crossed the Hulk’s face, and he launched. Natasha watched as he leaped from building to building, using Chitauri soldiers as ragdolls and weapons, impervious to their energy blasts.
Natasha pulled her focus back to the street as Steve and Maria shifted and prepared for the next wave. She fell in on Steve’s right flank while Maria took his left.
“Ready?”
Natasha and Maria shared a glance. It was all they needed. “Yes,” Natasha said.
Steve took a breath and ran forward.