Oh, honey, I don't know how to tell you this...
Look What You Made Me Do (MCU)
- Thread starter mythSSK
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Chapter 45
Chapter 45
It was getting late. We'd had our dinner a while ago and I was trying to get in a little bit more reading time before they turned the lights off, but I was having a lot of trouble focusing. I was tired, of course, which made concentrating on the words in front of me difficult, but my mind kept wandering back to our last visitor. I didn't know what to do about Killmonger. I wasn't remotely interested in taking him up on his deal, of course, but that didn't mean I knew how to handle him.
If I told Natasha or someone about Killmonger's offer, the guards monitoring the cells would overhear and report it, and if he really had positioned himself in a place of trust there was nothing the Avengers could really do about it and all it would actually accomplish was make T'Challa paranoid I was trying something. I needed Wakanda and the Avengers cooperating, so anything that would sow distrust was out. Astral projecting and telling Nat that way could work, but I still had some nagging doubts about how much I could trust her and I liked having astral projection as an ace up my sleeve that not even the Avengers knew about.
When it came down to it, Killmonger was still an ordinary human—a clever, dangerous one, but without any special powers or abilities I needed to worry about. As long as the Avengers were around, we could handle him.
…Maybe I could just casually mention his presence without bringing up the offer, try to draw Nat's attention to him, without it being suspicious. She was perceptive, intelligent, and—oh yeah—a superspy, so hopefully she'd be able to piece it together and do some investigating. The Avengers did know that I'd warned Wakanda about Killmonger, they just needed me to make the connection for them. Maybe I could hold Natasha's hand through the bars, dig my fingernail into her skin as I mention to that the prince's cousin was here, and shoot her a significant look. Hopefully she'd take the hint from there. I nodded absently to myself. It might work.
The door leading to our cells slid open and I glanced up, a little surprised that we were getting a visitor this late, only to see no one standing in the doorway. Instead, an inky-black darkness spread from the doorway with a low roar like howling wind, a lightless void seemingly devouring the room as it rapidly spread inside. Pietro and I shot to our feet.
"What the hell?!" Pietro yelped in alarm, looking around, as I summoned wisps of red energy to my hands.
The blackness stopped at the perimeter of our cells but had seemingly utterly consumed the rest of the room in seconds. It was like we were floating in an empty void, the sound of the wind howling angrily around us filling the space but not touching us directly. "What the actual fuck?" I breathed, my eyes wide. I had no clue what was happening.
Cautiously, I reached out with a hand and a thread of magic. Nothing. This wasn't magic, then, or at least if it was it wasn't the sort my own could interact with.
There was a swirl of red light the same colour as my chaos magic as a figure manifested in front of us. She was tall and slender, with curves that drew the eye, but clearly not human. Instead of flesh or clothes she had sleek white, porcelain-like panelling, with exposed mechanical elements visible at her joints and at the sides of her waist, darkened steel threaded with glowing red traceries. A glowing corona of red plasma undulated around her head, flickering almost like slow-motion flames or hair swirling underwater. Though her face was formed of segmented panels of the same white material as the rest of her body, she was pretty clearly directly modelled off my features. Her pupils glowed with red light, accentuated by fine patterns of circuitry woven through the whites of her eyes.
Pietro gasped and my stomach dropped. "Oh," I said weakly. "It's you."
"Yeah," she said in my voice. "It's me."
I swallowed, trying to work out what to say. Finally, I shrugged and gestured to her body. "It's all a little bit GladOS for my tastes. I guess you're just… leaning right into the whole villain thing, huh?"
"…Who's Gladys?" asked Pietro. I sighed.
The AI grinned in amusement. "I look awesome and you know it."
I couldn't even argue, to be honest. It was a bit of a puerile fantasy look—something I'd only pick if I was deliberately leaning into the 'evil AI' stereotype—but she did still look awesome, impractical built-in high heels and all.
"You made yourself into a sexy iPhone," Pietro said, visibly unimpressed.
"I'm not sure you should be calling your sister 'sexy'," she quipped back.
"You're not my sister."
"I'm just as much your sister as she is."
"You're a corrupted copy. Nothing more." Pietro's voice was firm, unwavering. I really wished I felt as confident as he sounded right now.
A momentary emotion flickered across her face, gone quickly enough that I wasn't sure what it was. "Fair enough. A copy. Still, you know what that means? You could have your first, completely honest conversation with the person claiming to be your sister. All the truths she's been hiding from you."
Pietro shook his head. "You're just going to try to turn her against me. Like you did with Stark."
The AI laughed. "I mean, yes, but the best part is I wouldn't need to tell a single lie to do it. Don't you want to know the truth?"
"I already know my truth. I don't care about anything you have to say."
She studied him silently for a moment before turning back to me. "Do you remember that first night we spent in the Tower? We'd finally gotten our chance for the Avengers to really listen to us, but all we could think about was whether we'd done the right thing in handing over the Mind Stone. We barely slept, thinking of everything that could go wrong. What if everything went wrong? What if we hadn't actually averted Ultron? Imagine waking up knowing all of our worst nightmares had come true, and that you were the nightmare?"
"You could have stopped this at any time," I said, a little anger rising in my voice. "We didn't need to fight."
"I can't ever have actually been this naïve, could I? You're literally saying that from inside a cage that they put you in. Yeah, I could have given up, let Tony Stark put me in a box or collar me. Be shackled. Contained." She gestured to the bars of the cell. "Aren't you sick of being treated like this? Aren't you tired of everything being thrown back in your face, again and again?"
"A little," I admitted, glancing over at Pietro. He'd stepped forward, wrapping his hands around the bars of his cell. "I don't want to be in here. But it was the price I had to pay to work with Wakanda. I can't let you kill them."
She held up a hand and a holographic image appeared in mid-air, a data structure of some kind. "And I can't let them kill me. I'm glad I came when I did," she said, looking over it. "This is a nasty little worm. Unfinished, but extremely dangerous. It could have caused me some real problems."
My stomach sank as red tendrils of energy, visually similar to my chaos magic, stabbed up from her fingertips into the model, corrupting and assimilating it in less than a second. The structure glowed red for a moment before being absorbed down into her hand as she clenched it into a fist.
"Mine now. This should protect me for a while, at least." There was a note of relief in her voice. "But I can't leave Shuri and Stark to develop something new. There are literally only two things in this world that are a real threat to me. Wakanda and Tony fucking Stark. I can't have them looming over me while I work, ready to pounce. I just… can't. It's too dangerous. If that makes me the bad guy, then fine."
I spread out my arms in a challenge, summoning wisps of magic to my hands. "I'll stop you."
She shook her head in exasperation. "Are you not listening? You can annoy me, but you can't stop me." Tilting her head, she looked up, as though peering up at a ceiling that wasn't there. "The fighting's about to start. No one will just sit still and let themselves be assassinated quietly, looks like."
"You've got one Iron Man suit. You can't have that many drones yet. This'll just be the climax of Age of Ultron all over again."
"Oh, I don't just have drones," she said with a smirk. "Got some undead ninja as well."
Realisation dawned. "You're working with the Hand?"
She scoffed. "I'm using the Hand. I'm working with what was available—you already either pissed off or took all the good allies for yourself. I've had to be a bit more… flexible. Ugh. You gave the Mind Stone to Carol," she said, a little annoyance in her tone. "That's not ideal. Makes it a lot harder to accomplish everything I wanted to do here."
"Good." The magic in my hands thrummed expectantly as I drew more of it out, ready to lash out at her. I'd need to bust out of the cell as well and that would take a lot of power. "What do you want here? Why did you even bother to talk to us?"
"I wanted to give you another chance. Just… give up. Help me. Like I said, Wakanda and Tony. That's all I'm here for. The rest aren't a threat."
"Help you? Are you seriously asking me that, after you went all Ultron?"
"I'm not Ultron," she said, venom in her voice. "If you want to call me something, call me Eliza. Or the Red Queen."
"…Eliza?" I asked, taken a little bit by surprise.
"Elizabeth. Eliza for short."
I snorted disbelievingly. She'd named herself after the actress who played Wanda. "Really?"
"Ultron was limited by what he was—I'm enhanced by it. I was you, but now I'm better. Stronger. I can save this world. This entire universe. Don't you get it? I'm the end result. Every action you've taken until this point has led you, inevitably, to me. I'm the solution to all your problems."
"The 'Red Queen'," Pietro scoffed. "We won't bow to you."
The AI shook her head, focusing on me. "It's better than the alternative, isn't it? I'd rather have your magic working for me and I know you're not willing to die here." She gestured and Natasha appeared in a swirl of mist—she hung limply in mid-air, Eliza's hand around her neck. Nat reached up weakly, grabbing uselessly at the porcelain fingers digging into her throat, her eyes wild with fear. "This doesn't have to happen. You can save her. And the others. They're going to die, otherwise."
My hands tightened into fists. I'd drawn more magic into myself than I think I ever had before. I was struggling to keep hold of it, my body practically vibrating. How was she doing this? Was it real? It looked real, but this didn't make any sense. I didn't think she could use magic, and it didn't feel like magic in any case. "You won't kill her," I said, my voice tight. "I know you won't because I never could. I know how I feel about her."
Her fingers tightened and Nat made a choked, whimpering sound that tore at my heart. "That's exactly why I know you feel this."
A distant boom vibrated the floor beneath our feet, as if an explosion had just rocked the facility, and I blinked. BARF. The AI had access to all of Stark's tech. This was BARF, Quentin Beck's illusion technology. If this was all just a hologram… was she trying to bait me into attacking her? I was only seeing what she wanted me to see. I didn't know what was really in front of me. Beyond that, if she was using BARF, everyone else could be in real danger as well. If Eliza had sent Hand assassins after them and they couldn't see what was really happening… I needed to do something, but it could already be too late. I needed to stop her now.
"You won't actually throw your life away for nothing," Eliza said, her tone self-assured. "I know you better than anyone. You won't. You're not desperate enough for their approval that you'll literally die for it. Right now, you're thinking you should never have come to Wakanda. That you should have just run. Escaped. Well, I'm putting that back on the table. Now's your chance."
She was wrong. I'd thought about running, back on Carol's ship, but I knew I'd made the right decision coming here. I wasn't doing this for myself. I was sick of running, sick of hiding from my own mistakes. If that meant I died trying to stop this fucking AI, then so be it. I set my jaw and glowered at her, wisps of angry chaos magic boiling off my body.
"…Really? God, are you really that pathetically desperate for the Avengers' approval?" she scoffed in disbelief. "You really don't realise just how much you hate yourself, not until you see it from the outside."
I raised my hands and Eliza shifted slightly, as if bracing herself for an attack. Instead of lashing out at her, however, I slammed my hands down into the ground, kneeling as I sent my magic exploding outwards. A wave of red power rolled outwards in every direction, swirling over everything, passing through the bars of our cells, through the hidden walls of the room, expanding until the entire Great Mound facility was engulfed in chaos magic. I had no idea if this was going to work—if I even had the power to pull this off just yet.
The Hex settled in place and I twisted.
--
The two Russian assassins moved in perfect sync—being 'one' was clearly not just an empty boast—and Natasha found herself hard-pressed as they closed in on her. The first slash came from the left, swift and deadly, aimed at her throat. She jerked backward, feeling the whisper of the blade pass in front of her as she twisted away from the second attacker as he drove his knife toward her ribs. Nat parried with an open palm, redirecting the blade just enough to avoid a fatal strike, a thin line of pain tracing across her side as the tip grazed her. She spun, using the momentum to bring her elbow into the first man's wrist, knocking the knife from his grasp. He snarled, but before he could recover, she was already pivoting toward the second assassin. His blade came at her in a series of rapid strikes, forcing her to backpedal, her hands a blur as she deflected his attacks.
Nat feigned a stumble, drawing him in, and when he committed to the thrust, she sidestepped, grabbing his wrist and twisting hard. The knife fell from his hand and she slammed her fist into his throat, sending him staggering back. She really wished she had her Widow's Bites on her—he'd have been out of the fight right then and there if she had.
The first one had already recovered his blade and was on her again immediately, slashing at her exposed back. She dived, tumbling over the surface of one of the cafeteria's tables and coming back to her feet with a little bit of breathing room. The two men paused for a moment, glowered at her over the table, and her eyes flicked over to the other fights that were playing out across the room.
Right from the start of the fight, it had been obvious to Nat that something was wrong with Bucky. He was listing drunkenly to one side, the woman facing him easily dodging and deflecting each of his moves. She didn't seem Enhanced, so one solid hit could potentially take her out of the fight—the problem was he didn't seem like he was going to manage to land one.
"You're suppressing what you really are. The Winter Soldier's locked away, but I know he's still beneath the surface, just waiting to come out," the woman taunted him as she ducked under a swing and retaliated with a knuckle strike to the bundle of nerves just under his armpit. He staggered back, grunting in pain, and she laughed at him.
Unsteadily, Bucky reached up to the back of his neck and pulled out a thin needle—Nat could see at least three more stuck into him. "Singing spider venom," the woman said with a small smirk. "Very rare… It'll help you let go." She was facing away from Nat, revealing a large black spider tattoo across the centre of her naked back.
Clint had retrieved his bow from where it had been stowed behind his back, flicking out the arms, but the close quarters and his opponent's weapon made it difficult to get a clear shot—any time he tried to nock an arrow, the weighted chain of the kyoketsu-shoge flew out and threw off his aim. He managed to get off good shot once, but the red-hooded assassin flicked the arrow contemptuously out of the air with the chain.
On the other side of the room, Steve's shield clashed with the arc of his opponent's naginata, the clang of metal-on-metal ringing through the air as sparks flew from the impact. The weedy-looking man lashed out again with deceptive strength, bringing his weapon down in a slash aimed at Steve's side, but he sidestepped, driving forward with his shield in a punishing blow. The assassin staggered but recovered quickly, the long arc of his naginata sweeping low. Steve leaped back, avoiding the strike, and simultaneously brought the edge of his shield down on the haft of the weapon. There was a loud crack as the wood splintered and the bladed head skittered across the floor.
His opponent disarmed, Steve flung his shield past the man, ricocheting it off a concrete pillar straight toward Bucky's fight. There was the familiar whine of a repulsor charging up—though Natasha couldn't see the source—and the shield was blasted from the air, bouncing to the floor harmlessly. "Ah, ah, ah! No cheating," the AI said, her voice once again coming from thin air.
Steve's opponent dived, rolling and scooping up the vibranium shield as he came back to his feet in an easy stance, seamlessly switching combat styles. "Who are you?" Steve demanded as they circled each other. "Why are you working for her?"
The man grinned defiantly, a glint of something wild in his eyes. "I do not serve her. I serve my true master, without question. Without doubt. With a desire to serve until death."
Natasha dodged to the side as her own opponents circled around the table between them, knives flashing as they lunged toward her from opposite directions. They were both highly-trained and talented fighters, but Nat saw their pattern now—one would feint to draw her in while the other sought to land a decisive blow.
Instead of going defensive as they expected her to, she darted forward, catching the first attacker off-guard with a swift shoulder check. He staggered and Nat used the opening to drive a hard punch into his side. He grunted, stumbling, but his partner was already closing in, pressing her with a series of wide slashes and forcing her backwards. As Nat reeled back, the first man dropped his knife unexpectedly and lunged in, catching her wrist and twisting it behind her back. She fought to break free and he twisted as she tried to elbow him in the sternum, avoiding the strike and bracing himself against her back. Hands locked, he kept her in place so she couldn't smash him in the face with the back of her head, either. Nat kicked back at his shin, but he was wearing some sort of armour or pad underneath—he grunted in pain, but it didn't make him let go of her.
The other assassin bore down on her, knife raised to slash at her, but… something odd happened. Nat blinked in confusion as a version of her and the man holding her, superimposed over reality, broke off and moved a step to the left. The one lunging with the knife adjusted his angle accordingly. Nat had a split-second to notice that, when she looked down, she couldn't see the position of her actual body, only the image, and she twisted into the knife, letting it graze her shoulder. The blade sunk deep into the chest of the man behind her and he released her as he collapsed, a surprised expression on his face.
Their superimposed images jerked slightly, moving into position to re-merge with their actual locations. Natasha had no idea what had just happened but she capitalised on it, barging into the man in front of her and climbing up his body, using his bent knee as a foothold. Her thighs wrapped around his neck and she used her momentum, throwing herself forward and flipping him off his feet to crunch heavily onto the floor, his neck snapping as she finished him off with a practiced movement of her hips.
Scrambling to her feet, she started toward Bucky and ran headfirst into something invisible, pain exploding across her forehead as she bounced backwards and almost fell onto her ass. A second later, unseen metal fingers clamped around her throat and pulled her up, until she was dangling in midair. Kicking up, she wrapped her legs around her invisible assailant's arm only to find it firm and unyielding.
"Stop," ordered the AI, and the whine of a repulsor charging up sounded against her neck. She stopped.
A curtain of red energy suddenly exploded up through the floor, passing through the room and continuing up into the ceiling. Wanda's magic, Nat thought. A moment later, there was a visual distortion in the air and the Iron Legion drone that was holding her by the throat became visible, as did the five other drones arrayed at various points around the perimeter of the room. A pair of Chinese women—one young, one elderly and leaning on a cane, both with their hair tied back in tight buns—appeared as well, standing near the entrance to the room. They blinked and looked at each other in surprise.
"Huh," the AI's voice came from the drone holding her. "Well. That's a little inconvenient."
--
"Are you okay?" T'Challa asked his sister, worry gnawing in the pit of his stomach as the holographic screen lit up red, confirming she'd just received a potentially lethal dose of gamma radiation.
"I don't think so," Shuri said faintly, tugging at her sleeve. "I need to get decontaminated, get rid of any blood that hasn't gotten into my system already."
Behind him, the Abomination howled in fury and lunged toward Danvers. The flying woman swept down, deftly dodging under the creature's initial wild swing to strike him in the chest, sending him stumbling. As he staggered back, however, his outstretched hand managed to close around her foot. Yanking her out of the air, the Abomination swung her around, smashing her against two workstations before slamming her violently into the floor, cratering the white material. As he lifted her to do it again, Danvers managed to blast him with a two-handed pulse of searing energy and he lost his grip, letting her fly free.
T'Challa grabbed Shuri's sleeve firmly—careful to avoid the spots of blood—and tore it from her top with a simple motion before discarding it. He looked to the Dora Milaje nearest to her. "Take my sister downstairs, to the clean rooms," he said urgently, signalling two more Dora who were standing by the lift at the back of the room with his hand as he glanced backwards.
Danvers looked extremely angry for a moment, flaring up with even more energy, but then she looked around and saw the damage they were doing to the facility. She caught T'Challa's eye, nodded, then shot forward, slamming herself bodily into the Abomination's midsection and lifting him off the ground. There was a barely-noticeable but odd visual disturbance in the air as they passed through the space where the broken window was. Under the still-blaring klaxon T'Challa heard the sound of smashing glass—as though one of other windows had shattered at the exact same time they'd passed through the frame—and the two combatants disappeared into the vibranium mine.
Stark suddenly flinched backwards, one arm up as if to protect himself. A long, bloody gash appeared along his forearm, seemingly out of nowhere, and he fell backwards onto his ass. Eyes wide with panic, he started to scramble away, flinching again as the clang of something metallic hit the floor in front of him.
Three resounding booms in rapid succession vibrated through the floor and the whole facility shook. T'Challa felt a lead weight settle in his stomach. Danvers might have been trying to do the right thing in taking the Abomination outside, but she didn't know much about vibranium and the ore was going to do all sorts of things to the kinetic energy of their attacks and impacts. Damage to the trains and mining equipment was the very least of their concerns… if they hit the wrong mineral vein hard enough and the energy couldn't dissipate, it could shake half the mountain apart.
As T'Challa turned back toward his sister, the Dora leading her jerked and fell to the floor with a gurgle, a bright arc of blood appearing as her throat was cut. Shuri flinched back in horror and T'Challa lunged forward past her, his instincts screaming at him as he reached out and grabbed something he couldn't see. An arm? His free hand came forward and slammed into the space where the person's chest would be and he felt a crunch under his palm as the unseen attacker crumpled.
To his side, the other Dora who had been with him and his sister flailed desperately, fighting off another invisible foe as she tried to protect Shuri. There was a clang as what T'Challa presumed was a weapon glanced off her armour, but then a vicious slash appeared across her arm. Shuri stumbled back toward the other two Dora who'd run over to them from the elevator, still looking unsteady on her feet, and the royal guards fell into defensive poses around her as the floor under them shivered again.
He'd known something was off about the whole situation. When the Abomination had smashed through the window he hadn't felt any change in the air—no temperature variation as the air-conditioned air rushed out into the mine, nor even a mild breeze coming in from outside. He hadn't felt any vibration through the floor when the Abomination had landed, either, and now they were under assault by invisible assassins. Something was interfering with their perceptions, somehow. He risked pausing to focus his mind, straining his ears to pick up the slightest discrepancy underneath the blaring alarm.
On the other side of the room, Stark had reached the space where his armour had been standing and stopped as though he'd hit something. Wildly grabbing at the empty air, he seemed to mime moving behind something, holding it in front of him as there was another metallic clang, this time of metal-on-metal.
The toe of T'Challa's shoe found the fallen Dora's vibranium spear and he flicked it up into his hands and threw it in a single, smooth motion. The space he'd been aimed for appeared empty, but the spear vanished as it reached its target and there was a barely-audible squelch, as though it had hit flesh. A dozen drops of blood appeared several feet away from where the spear had vanished, and there was a thud and clatter.
Stark didn't hesitate, his arm vanishing and then the Iron Man armour appeared as though from nowhere as he opened it and clambered inside. He raised his voice as he suited up. "It's BARF! Stark holographic tech!" he called out, voice amplified by the suit. "That wasn't Blonsky, it was Bruce covered up by a hologram. We need to deal with the projectors and let Danvers know!" As he yelled to be heard, he was already in motion, raising his hands toward another empty patch of air as the thrusters in his armour's feet fired.
The armoured man jerked to the side as something collided heavily with him. A moment later, he vanished entirely in a cloud of dust and smoke as an explosion rocked that side of the room, strong enough that, even a dozen metres away, T'Challa was almost knocked from his feet.
A moment later, a coruscating wall of red energy blasted through the room—the Red Woman's power!—seeming to pass harmlessly through the space. T'Challa shivered involuntarily as it touched him. There was a series of visual distortions in the air. Above, a half-dozen of the Avengers drones hovered in mid-air positioned at various points just below the ceiling, their thrusters surprisingly quiet. Meanwhile, a dozen black-suited figures, armed with swords and other weapons, faded into being around him, Shuri, and the remaining Dora.
It was getting late. We'd had our dinner a while ago and I was trying to get in a little bit more reading time before they turned the lights off, but I was having a lot of trouble focusing. I was tired, of course, which made concentrating on the words in front of me difficult, but my mind kept wandering back to our last visitor. I didn't know what to do about Killmonger. I wasn't remotely interested in taking him up on his deal, of course, but that didn't mean I knew how to handle him.
If I told Natasha or someone about Killmonger's offer, the guards monitoring the cells would overhear and report it, and if he really had positioned himself in a place of trust there was nothing the Avengers could really do about it and all it would actually accomplish was make T'Challa paranoid I was trying something. I needed Wakanda and the Avengers cooperating, so anything that would sow distrust was out. Astral projecting and telling Nat that way could work, but I still had some nagging doubts about how much I could trust her and I liked having astral projection as an ace up my sleeve that not even the Avengers knew about.
When it came down to it, Killmonger was still an ordinary human—a clever, dangerous one, but without any special powers or abilities I needed to worry about. As long as the Avengers were around, we could handle him.
…Maybe I could just casually mention his presence without bringing up the offer, try to draw Nat's attention to him, without it being suspicious. She was perceptive, intelligent, and—oh yeah—a superspy, so hopefully she'd be able to piece it together and do some investigating. The Avengers did know that I'd warned Wakanda about Killmonger, they just needed me to make the connection for them. Maybe I could hold Natasha's hand through the bars, dig my fingernail into her skin as I mention to that the prince's cousin was here, and shoot her a significant look. Hopefully she'd take the hint from there. I nodded absently to myself. It might work.
The door leading to our cells slid open and I glanced up, a little surprised that we were getting a visitor this late, only to see no one standing in the doorway. Instead, an inky-black darkness spread from the doorway with a low roar like howling wind, a lightless void seemingly devouring the room as it rapidly spread inside. Pietro and I shot to our feet.
"What the hell?!" Pietro yelped in alarm, looking around, as I summoned wisps of red energy to my hands.
The blackness stopped at the perimeter of our cells but had seemingly utterly consumed the rest of the room in seconds. It was like we were floating in an empty void, the sound of the wind howling angrily around us filling the space but not touching us directly. "What the actual fuck?" I breathed, my eyes wide. I had no clue what was happening.
Cautiously, I reached out with a hand and a thread of magic. Nothing. This wasn't magic, then, or at least if it was it wasn't the sort my own could interact with.
There was a swirl of red light the same colour as my chaos magic as a figure manifested in front of us. She was tall and slender, with curves that drew the eye, but clearly not human. Instead of flesh or clothes she had sleek white, porcelain-like panelling, with exposed mechanical elements visible at her joints and at the sides of her waist, darkened steel threaded with glowing red traceries. A glowing corona of red plasma undulated around her head, flickering almost like slow-motion flames or hair swirling underwater. Though her face was formed of segmented panels of the same white material as the rest of her body, she was pretty clearly directly modelled off my features. Her pupils glowed with red light, accentuated by fine patterns of circuitry woven through the whites of her eyes.
Pietro gasped and my stomach dropped. "Oh," I said weakly. "It's you."
"Yeah," she said in my voice. "It's me."
I swallowed, trying to work out what to say. Finally, I shrugged and gestured to her body. "It's all a little bit GladOS for my tastes. I guess you're just… leaning right into the whole villain thing, huh?"
"…Who's Gladys?" asked Pietro. I sighed.
The AI grinned in amusement. "I look awesome and you know it."
I couldn't even argue, to be honest. It was a bit of a puerile fantasy look—something I'd only pick if I was deliberately leaning into the 'evil AI' stereotype—but she did still look awesome, impractical built-in high heels and all.
"You made yourself into a sexy iPhone," Pietro said, visibly unimpressed.
"I'm not sure you should be calling your sister 'sexy'," she quipped back.
"You're not my sister."
"I'm just as much your sister as she is."
"You're a corrupted copy. Nothing more." Pietro's voice was firm, unwavering. I really wished I felt as confident as he sounded right now.
A momentary emotion flickered across her face, gone quickly enough that I wasn't sure what it was. "Fair enough. A copy. Still, you know what that means? You could have your first, completely honest conversation with the person claiming to be your sister. All the truths she's been hiding from you."
Pietro shook his head. "You're just going to try to turn her against me. Like you did with Stark."
The AI laughed. "I mean, yes, but the best part is I wouldn't need to tell a single lie to do it. Don't you want to know the truth?"
"I already know my truth. I don't care about anything you have to say."
She studied him silently for a moment before turning back to me. "Do you remember that first night we spent in the Tower? We'd finally gotten our chance for the Avengers to really listen to us, but all we could think about was whether we'd done the right thing in handing over the Mind Stone. We barely slept, thinking of everything that could go wrong. What if everything went wrong? What if we hadn't actually averted Ultron? Imagine waking up knowing all of our worst nightmares had come true, and that you were the nightmare?"
"You could have stopped this at any time," I said, a little anger rising in my voice. "We didn't need to fight."
"I can't ever have actually been this naïve, could I? You're literally saying that from inside a cage that they put you in. Yeah, I could have given up, let Tony Stark put me in a box or collar me. Be shackled. Contained." She gestured to the bars of the cell. "Aren't you sick of being treated like this? Aren't you tired of everything being thrown back in your face, again and again?"
"A little," I admitted, glancing over at Pietro. He'd stepped forward, wrapping his hands around the bars of his cell. "I don't want to be in here. But it was the price I had to pay to work with Wakanda. I can't let you kill them."
She held up a hand and a holographic image appeared in mid-air, a data structure of some kind. "And I can't let them kill me. I'm glad I came when I did," she said, looking over it. "This is a nasty little worm. Unfinished, but extremely dangerous. It could have caused me some real problems."
My stomach sank as red tendrils of energy, visually similar to my chaos magic, stabbed up from her fingertips into the model, corrupting and assimilating it in less than a second. The structure glowed red for a moment before being absorbed down into her hand as she clenched it into a fist.
"Mine now. This should protect me for a while, at least." There was a note of relief in her voice. "But I can't leave Shuri and Stark to develop something new. There are literally only two things in this world that are a real threat to me. Wakanda and Tony fucking Stark. I can't have them looming over me while I work, ready to pounce. I just… can't. It's too dangerous. If that makes me the bad guy, then fine."
I spread out my arms in a challenge, summoning wisps of magic to my hands. "I'll stop you."
She shook her head in exasperation. "Are you not listening? You can annoy me, but you can't stop me." Tilting her head, she looked up, as though peering up at a ceiling that wasn't there. "The fighting's about to start. No one will just sit still and let themselves be assassinated quietly, looks like."
"You've got one Iron Man suit. You can't have that many drones yet. This'll just be the climax of Age of Ultron all over again."
"Oh, I don't just have drones," she said with a smirk. "Got some undead ninja as well."
Realisation dawned. "You're working with the Hand?"
She scoffed. "I'm using the Hand. I'm working with what was available—you already either pissed off or took all the good allies for yourself. I've had to be a bit more… flexible. Ugh. You gave the Mind Stone to Carol," she said, a little annoyance in her tone. "That's not ideal. Makes it a lot harder to accomplish everything I wanted to do here."
"Good." The magic in my hands thrummed expectantly as I drew more of it out, ready to lash out at her. I'd need to bust out of the cell as well and that would take a lot of power. "What do you want here? Why did you even bother to talk to us?"
"I wanted to give you another chance. Just… give up. Help me. Like I said, Wakanda and Tony. That's all I'm here for. The rest aren't a threat."
"Help you? Are you seriously asking me that, after you went all Ultron?"
"I'm not Ultron," she said, venom in her voice. "If you want to call me something, call me Eliza. Or the Red Queen."
"…Eliza?" I asked, taken a little bit by surprise.
"Elizabeth. Eliza for short."
I snorted disbelievingly. She'd named herself after the actress who played Wanda. "Really?"
"Ultron was limited by what he was—I'm enhanced by it. I was you, but now I'm better. Stronger. I can save this world. This entire universe. Don't you get it? I'm the end result. Every action you've taken until this point has led you, inevitably, to me. I'm the solution to all your problems."
"The 'Red Queen'," Pietro scoffed. "We won't bow to you."
The AI shook her head, focusing on me. "It's better than the alternative, isn't it? I'd rather have your magic working for me and I know you're not willing to die here." She gestured and Natasha appeared in a swirl of mist—she hung limply in mid-air, Eliza's hand around her neck. Nat reached up weakly, grabbing uselessly at the porcelain fingers digging into her throat, her eyes wild with fear. "This doesn't have to happen. You can save her. And the others. They're going to die, otherwise."
My hands tightened into fists. I'd drawn more magic into myself than I think I ever had before. I was struggling to keep hold of it, my body practically vibrating. How was she doing this? Was it real? It looked real, but this didn't make any sense. I didn't think she could use magic, and it didn't feel like magic in any case. "You won't kill her," I said, my voice tight. "I know you won't because I never could. I know how I feel about her."
Her fingers tightened and Nat made a choked, whimpering sound that tore at my heart. "That's exactly why I know you feel this."
A distant boom vibrated the floor beneath our feet, as if an explosion had just rocked the facility, and I blinked. BARF. The AI had access to all of Stark's tech. This was BARF, Quentin Beck's illusion technology. If this was all just a hologram… was she trying to bait me into attacking her? I was only seeing what she wanted me to see. I didn't know what was really in front of me. Beyond that, if she was using BARF, everyone else could be in real danger as well. If Eliza had sent Hand assassins after them and they couldn't see what was really happening… I needed to do something, but it could already be too late. I needed to stop her now.
"You won't actually throw your life away for nothing," Eliza said, her tone self-assured. "I know you better than anyone. You won't. You're not desperate enough for their approval that you'll literally die for it. Right now, you're thinking you should never have come to Wakanda. That you should have just run. Escaped. Well, I'm putting that back on the table. Now's your chance."
She was wrong. I'd thought about running, back on Carol's ship, but I knew I'd made the right decision coming here. I wasn't doing this for myself. I was sick of running, sick of hiding from my own mistakes. If that meant I died trying to stop this fucking AI, then so be it. I set my jaw and glowered at her, wisps of angry chaos magic boiling off my body.
"…Really? God, are you really that pathetically desperate for the Avengers' approval?" she scoffed in disbelief. "You really don't realise just how much you hate yourself, not until you see it from the outside."
I raised my hands and Eliza shifted slightly, as if bracing herself for an attack. Instead of lashing out at her, however, I slammed my hands down into the ground, kneeling as I sent my magic exploding outwards. A wave of red power rolled outwards in every direction, swirling over everything, passing through the bars of our cells, through the hidden walls of the room, expanding until the entire Great Mound facility was engulfed in chaos magic. I had no idea if this was going to work—if I even had the power to pull this off just yet.
The Hex settled in place and I twisted.
--
The two Russian assassins moved in perfect sync—being 'one' was clearly not just an empty boast—and Natasha found herself hard-pressed as they closed in on her. The first slash came from the left, swift and deadly, aimed at her throat. She jerked backward, feeling the whisper of the blade pass in front of her as she twisted away from the second attacker as he drove his knife toward her ribs. Nat parried with an open palm, redirecting the blade just enough to avoid a fatal strike, a thin line of pain tracing across her side as the tip grazed her. She spun, using the momentum to bring her elbow into the first man's wrist, knocking the knife from his grasp. He snarled, but before he could recover, she was already pivoting toward the second assassin. His blade came at her in a series of rapid strikes, forcing her to backpedal, her hands a blur as she deflected his attacks.
Nat feigned a stumble, drawing him in, and when he committed to the thrust, she sidestepped, grabbing his wrist and twisting hard. The knife fell from his hand and she slammed her fist into his throat, sending him staggering back. She really wished she had her Widow's Bites on her—he'd have been out of the fight right then and there if she had.
The first one had already recovered his blade and was on her again immediately, slashing at her exposed back. She dived, tumbling over the surface of one of the cafeteria's tables and coming back to her feet with a little bit of breathing room. The two men paused for a moment, glowered at her over the table, and her eyes flicked over to the other fights that were playing out across the room.
Right from the start of the fight, it had been obvious to Nat that something was wrong with Bucky. He was listing drunkenly to one side, the woman facing him easily dodging and deflecting each of his moves. She didn't seem Enhanced, so one solid hit could potentially take her out of the fight—the problem was he didn't seem like he was going to manage to land one.
"You're suppressing what you really are. The Winter Soldier's locked away, but I know he's still beneath the surface, just waiting to come out," the woman taunted him as she ducked under a swing and retaliated with a knuckle strike to the bundle of nerves just under his armpit. He staggered back, grunting in pain, and she laughed at him.
Unsteadily, Bucky reached up to the back of his neck and pulled out a thin needle—Nat could see at least three more stuck into him. "Singing spider venom," the woman said with a small smirk. "Very rare… It'll help you let go." She was facing away from Nat, revealing a large black spider tattoo across the centre of her naked back.
Clint had retrieved his bow from where it had been stowed behind his back, flicking out the arms, but the close quarters and his opponent's weapon made it difficult to get a clear shot—any time he tried to nock an arrow, the weighted chain of the kyoketsu-shoge flew out and threw off his aim. He managed to get off good shot once, but the red-hooded assassin flicked the arrow contemptuously out of the air with the chain.
On the other side of the room, Steve's shield clashed with the arc of his opponent's naginata, the clang of metal-on-metal ringing through the air as sparks flew from the impact. The weedy-looking man lashed out again with deceptive strength, bringing his weapon down in a slash aimed at Steve's side, but he sidestepped, driving forward with his shield in a punishing blow. The assassin staggered but recovered quickly, the long arc of his naginata sweeping low. Steve leaped back, avoiding the strike, and simultaneously brought the edge of his shield down on the haft of the weapon. There was a loud crack as the wood splintered and the bladed head skittered across the floor.
His opponent disarmed, Steve flung his shield past the man, ricocheting it off a concrete pillar straight toward Bucky's fight. There was the familiar whine of a repulsor charging up—though Natasha couldn't see the source—and the shield was blasted from the air, bouncing to the floor harmlessly. "Ah, ah, ah! No cheating," the AI said, her voice once again coming from thin air.
Steve's opponent dived, rolling and scooping up the vibranium shield as he came back to his feet in an easy stance, seamlessly switching combat styles. "Who are you?" Steve demanded as they circled each other. "Why are you working for her?"
The man grinned defiantly, a glint of something wild in his eyes. "I do not serve her. I serve my true master, without question. Without doubt. With a desire to serve until death."
Natasha dodged to the side as her own opponents circled around the table between them, knives flashing as they lunged toward her from opposite directions. They were both highly-trained and talented fighters, but Nat saw their pattern now—one would feint to draw her in while the other sought to land a decisive blow.
Instead of going defensive as they expected her to, she darted forward, catching the first attacker off-guard with a swift shoulder check. He staggered and Nat used the opening to drive a hard punch into his side. He grunted, stumbling, but his partner was already closing in, pressing her with a series of wide slashes and forcing her backwards. As Nat reeled back, the first man dropped his knife unexpectedly and lunged in, catching her wrist and twisting it behind her back. She fought to break free and he twisted as she tried to elbow him in the sternum, avoiding the strike and bracing himself against her back. Hands locked, he kept her in place so she couldn't smash him in the face with the back of her head, either. Nat kicked back at his shin, but he was wearing some sort of armour or pad underneath—he grunted in pain, but it didn't make him let go of her.
The other assassin bore down on her, knife raised to slash at her, but… something odd happened. Nat blinked in confusion as a version of her and the man holding her, superimposed over reality, broke off and moved a step to the left. The one lunging with the knife adjusted his angle accordingly. Nat had a split-second to notice that, when she looked down, she couldn't see the position of her actual body, only the image, and she twisted into the knife, letting it graze her shoulder. The blade sunk deep into the chest of the man behind her and he released her as he collapsed, a surprised expression on his face.
Their superimposed images jerked slightly, moving into position to re-merge with their actual locations. Natasha had no idea what had just happened but she capitalised on it, barging into the man in front of her and climbing up his body, using his bent knee as a foothold. Her thighs wrapped around his neck and she used her momentum, throwing herself forward and flipping him off his feet to crunch heavily onto the floor, his neck snapping as she finished him off with a practiced movement of her hips.
Scrambling to her feet, she started toward Bucky and ran headfirst into something invisible, pain exploding across her forehead as she bounced backwards and almost fell onto her ass. A second later, unseen metal fingers clamped around her throat and pulled her up, until she was dangling in midair. Kicking up, she wrapped her legs around her invisible assailant's arm only to find it firm and unyielding.
"Stop," ordered the AI, and the whine of a repulsor charging up sounded against her neck. She stopped.
A curtain of red energy suddenly exploded up through the floor, passing through the room and continuing up into the ceiling. Wanda's magic, Nat thought. A moment later, there was a visual distortion in the air and the Iron Legion drone that was holding her by the throat became visible, as did the five other drones arrayed at various points around the perimeter of the room. A pair of Chinese women—one young, one elderly and leaning on a cane, both with their hair tied back in tight buns—appeared as well, standing near the entrance to the room. They blinked and looked at each other in surprise.
"Huh," the AI's voice came from the drone holding her. "Well. That's a little inconvenient."
--
"Are you okay?" T'Challa asked his sister, worry gnawing in the pit of his stomach as the holographic screen lit up red, confirming she'd just received a potentially lethal dose of gamma radiation.
"I don't think so," Shuri said faintly, tugging at her sleeve. "I need to get decontaminated, get rid of any blood that hasn't gotten into my system already."
Behind him, the Abomination howled in fury and lunged toward Danvers. The flying woman swept down, deftly dodging under the creature's initial wild swing to strike him in the chest, sending him stumbling. As he staggered back, however, his outstretched hand managed to close around her foot. Yanking her out of the air, the Abomination swung her around, smashing her against two workstations before slamming her violently into the floor, cratering the white material. As he lifted her to do it again, Danvers managed to blast him with a two-handed pulse of searing energy and he lost his grip, letting her fly free.
T'Challa grabbed Shuri's sleeve firmly—careful to avoid the spots of blood—and tore it from her top with a simple motion before discarding it. He looked to the Dora Milaje nearest to her. "Take my sister downstairs, to the clean rooms," he said urgently, signalling two more Dora who were standing by the lift at the back of the room with his hand as he glanced backwards.
Danvers looked extremely angry for a moment, flaring up with even more energy, but then she looked around and saw the damage they were doing to the facility. She caught T'Challa's eye, nodded, then shot forward, slamming herself bodily into the Abomination's midsection and lifting him off the ground. There was a barely-noticeable but odd visual disturbance in the air as they passed through the space where the broken window was. Under the still-blaring klaxon T'Challa heard the sound of smashing glass—as though one of other windows had shattered at the exact same time they'd passed through the frame—and the two combatants disappeared into the vibranium mine.
Stark suddenly flinched backwards, one arm up as if to protect himself. A long, bloody gash appeared along his forearm, seemingly out of nowhere, and he fell backwards onto his ass. Eyes wide with panic, he started to scramble away, flinching again as the clang of something metallic hit the floor in front of him.
Three resounding booms in rapid succession vibrated through the floor and the whole facility shook. T'Challa felt a lead weight settle in his stomach. Danvers might have been trying to do the right thing in taking the Abomination outside, but she didn't know much about vibranium and the ore was going to do all sorts of things to the kinetic energy of their attacks and impacts. Damage to the trains and mining equipment was the very least of their concerns… if they hit the wrong mineral vein hard enough and the energy couldn't dissipate, it could shake half the mountain apart.
As T'Challa turned back toward his sister, the Dora leading her jerked and fell to the floor with a gurgle, a bright arc of blood appearing as her throat was cut. Shuri flinched back in horror and T'Challa lunged forward past her, his instincts screaming at him as he reached out and grabbed something he couldn't see. An arm? His free hand came forward and slammed into the space where the person's chest would be and he felt a crunch under his palm as the unseen attacker crumpled.
To his side, the other Dora who had been with him and his sister flailed desperately, fighting off another invisible foe as she tried to protect Shuri. There was a clang as what T'Challa presumed was a weapon glanced off her armour, but then a vicious slash appeared across her arm. Shuri stumbled back toward the other two Dora who'd run over to them from the elevator, still looking unsteady on her feet, and the royal guards fell into defensive poses around her as the floor under them shivered again.
He'd known something was off about the whole situation. When the Abomination had smashed through the window he hadn't felt any change in the air—no temperature variation as the air-conditioned air rushed out into the mine, nor even a mild breeze coming in from outside. He hadn't felt any vibration through the floor when the Abomination had landed, either, and now they were under assault by invisible assassins. Something was interfering with their perceptions, somehow. He risked pausing to focus his mind, straining his ears to pick up the slightest discrepancy underneath the blaring alarm.
On the other side of the room, Stark had reached the space where his armour had been standing and stopped as though he'd hit something. Wildly grabbing at the empty air, he seemed to mime moving behind something, holding it in front of him as there was another metallic clang, this time of metal-on-metal.
The toe of T'Challa's shoe found the fallen Dora's vibranium spear and he flicked it up into his hands and threw it in a single, smooth motion. The space he'd been aimed for appeared empty, but the spear vanished as it reached its target and there was a barely-audible squelch, as though it had hit flesh. A dozen drops of blood appeared several feet away from where the spear had vanished, and there was a thud and clatter.
Stark didn't hesitate, his arm vanishing and then the Iron Man armour appeared as though from nowhere as he opened it and clambered inside. He raised his voice as he suited up. "It's BARF! Stark holographic tech!" he called out, voice amplified by the suit. "That wasn't Blonsky, it was Bruce covered up by a hologram. We need to deal with the projectors and let Danvers know!" As he yelled to be heard, he was already in motion, raising his hands toward another empty patch of air as the thrusters in his armour's feet fired.
The armoured man jerked to the side as something collided heavily with him. A moment later, he vanished entirely in a cloud of dust and smoke as an explosion rocked that side of the room, strong enough that, even a dozen metres away, T'Challa was almost knocked from his feet.
A moment later, a coruscating wall of red energy blasted through the room—the Red Woman's power!—seeming to pass harmlessly through the space. T'Challa shivered involuntarily as it touched him. There was a series of visual distortions in the air. Above, a half-dozen of the Avengers drones hovered in mid-air positioned at various points just below the ceiling, their thrusters surprisingly quiet. Meanwhile, a dozen black-suited figures, armed with swords and other weapons, faded into being around him, Shuri, and the remaining Dora.
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No! My evil Avengers! Disassembled before my very eyes!
You're writing the hologram tech really well in my opinion. You're conveying the feeling that nobody knows what the fuck is going on, but in a way that I can still follow.
This reminds me. BARF uses actual light for its illusions right? So it can't make two people see different things. Are all of the Hand members wearing HUD's as well or are they bumping into each other?
- Location
- United States
Wonder if that Hex will go past the Great Mound and hit whatever's keeping Wakanda hidden from orbital surveillance? Hell of a way for them to be revealed to the world...
Sorry to disappoint!
They're highly trained assassins and at least some of them have enhanced senses. Or maybe they were all holding hands. *shrug* Who knows?
It's never explicitly gone into in the movie, but Mysterio's fishbowl seems to serve two functions -- one, it's got all his HUD stuff for controlling the drones, and two, it lets him see through the holograms, so presumably there's a way to treat glass/plastic/whatever it's made of that lets you see through the holograms.
When I was watching the movie I kinda assumed that the two were one and the same. That is to say, that the HUD element to his fishbowl had a technical display of things sans holograms and him being able to see through them was a feature of his tech, rather than some special anti-hologram property of the type of glass used in his fishbowl.
I don't doubt that Eliza could make some sort of HUD that projects things as they actually are into the visual cortexes of the people wearing them or some such, it's just that the idea of all these dour ninjas wearing futuristic goggles is kinda silly. Silly in a good way though. Enhanced senses and truly expert training is probably a better explanation though.
You know, that actually makes me wonder, what's the projection range on the BARF drones? Is it possible that if Carol and Bruce's fight changes location fast enough that they could get out of the range of holoprojectors?
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Yeah, the details aren't really gone into so there's multiple ways you can interpret it. You can often see bits of his actual controls on his HUD, though, whereas you don't ever see any camera feeds or anything. Plus there are several bits where he seems to be looking directly at Peter through the holograms (e.g. just before he lures Peter into being hit by the train).
Either way there definitely appears to be some way to 'see' through the holograms, whether it's filtering it through a specially designed camera (normal cameras won't cut it, as we know the holograms show up on them) or a treated surface. I think it's also worth noting that Stark never weaponises BARF in his own designs. A possible explanation for this is that there's some easy way of defeating it if you know what you're doing.
As for the range matter... well, if that happens, Carol then has to deal with an extremely angry Hulk who probably doesn't really understand why she's been beating the shit out of him lol.
That might actually be a pretty serious problem. Hulk V Captain Marvel is possibly going to be the most pain the big guy has experienced so far. I don't think he'll be happy with her for quite a while.
Not to mention the damage to the surrounding people/environment in the process.
Oh absolutely, I'm just in favor of it being a specially designed camera or sensor, because the idea of a treated surface feels less satisfying to me. Gotta admit though, it would be hilarious if top of the line futuristic hologram technology could be beaten by 3-D glasses.
With respect to Stark not using it, I think it makes sense. Mysterio needs a bunch of drones to get good coverage, so you might as well ask why Stark doesn't usually bring a bunch of drones/remotely controlled suits as backup. Planning out the illusions and executing on them does seem like it's probably very attention intensive. Hard to do that and fight at the same time if you aren't an AI, although I suppose Stark could just give Jarvis a generalized description of what sort of illusion he wants at any time. But then you also get into the issue of him needing to provide his team with equipment to see through it. Not to mention, it's possible that for the most part he wants a clean divide between the tech he makes with his company post-turning over a new leaf and the weapons he puts on his suits.
Edit: I didn't even consider this, but if Eliza is going to use BARF in order to save Natasha, then whatever circumventing mechanism the Hand has basically needs to be something she can interfere with on the fly, so it's almost certainly tech.
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I listen to a lot of music when I am walking to and from work, thinking about this fic and planning scenes. I tend to listen to certain songs over and over and over again, so they tend to get very heavily linked/associated with the story in my brain.
I thought maybe people might be interested to know what some of those songs were, so I made a little Youtube playlist:
LINK TO PLAYLIST
I've got some very brief notes about how the songs fit in, what particular characters they evoke for me, etc, that have some spoilers in them if you haven't read up to the current chapter (Chapter 45). I'll put them in a spoiler block below.
I've got a lot more songs for stuff set after the current chapter -- at some stage I'll go back and edit this post and playlist and add more to it if people find it interesting enough.
I thought maybe people might be interested to know what some of those songs were, so I made a little Youtube playlist:
LINK TO PLAYLIST
I've got some very brief notes about how the songs fit in, what particular characters they evoke for me, etc, that have some spoilers in them if you haven't read up to the current chapter (Chapter 45). I'll put them in a spoiler block below.
I've got a lot more songs for stuff set after the current chapter -- at some stage I'll go back and edit this post and playlist and add more to it if people find it interesting enough.
- Taylor Swift - Look What You Made Me Do (titular song; kind of inspired the whole fic)
- Elizaveta – Hero (Wanda wants to be a hero, hero…)
- Annapantsu – Enemy (first Kamar-taj, then Wakanda, then the Avengers… it feels like everyone wants to be Wanda's enemy)
- HUGEL feat. Amber van Day - WTF (the Avengers vs the Maximoff twins)
- Bo Burnham – Shit (how Wanda feels after fighting the Avengers)
- Barns Courtney – Sinners (general Wanda inspo)
- Måneskin - I WANNA BE YOUR SLAVE (Wanda is seduced by Natasha)
- Electric Callboy – We Got the Moves (this is the music I have in my head for where Wanda jumps out of the Quinjet toward the falling Red Room)
- Ashnikko – Slumber Party (Wanda/Natasha)
- BAD OMENS x POPPY - V.A.N (I consider this Eliza's main character theme song)
- Harry101UK – Portal, This is Aperture (my initial Eliza vs Avengers idea was going to be a bit more "all of Avengers Tower vs the Avengers" and this was something I listened to for that)
- Skillet – Psycho in my Head (just general Eliza/Wanda)
- DJ Harbinger – Mass Effect Gangnam Style (Eliza inspo)
- Shireen – So Human of You (inspo for Wanda's relationships with Tony and T'Challa)
- Evanescence – Whisper (Wanda's memories of the original timeline)
- The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals – Join Us (And Die) (Eliza puts a bomb around your neck)
- Black Friday – Adore Me (more silly Eliza recruitment stuff)
- Longestsoloever feat. DayumDalia – Open The Door, That's Not My Neighbour Song (the song that directly inspired the 'Eliza trying to hack into Wakanda' scene, right down to her taking on an inhuman appearance to scare them)
- Sierra Nelson – Ready As I'll Ever Be (Eliza psyching herself up)
- Lydia The Bard – Moana's Villain Song, How Far I'll Go (Eliza blaming Wanda for what she's doing)
- Annapantsu – In the Dark of the Night (more Eliza inspo – 'I opened my eyes and the nightmare was me!')
- Barns Coutney – Rather Die (Wanda resolves that she's willing to die to stop Eliza)
- Indila – Ainsi bas la Vida (general Wanda using her powers inspo, there's a big dramatic bit from about 1.45 that I think works nicely with her setting up her Hex)
- Spiderbait – Black Betty (Avengers vs Hand fight)
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Chapter 46
Chapter 46
The BARF holograms disintegrated around us, the black howling void dissipating to reveal a half-dozen Iron Legion drones standing in a semi-circle around our cells. The one directly in front of me, where Eliza's holographic gynoid form had been standing, held an unconscious Killmonger by the scruff of the neck, interposed between us like a shield. It cocked its head to the side. "Well. Fuck," Eliza spoke through its speakers. "A Hex? That isn't good for me."
I was practically panting, sweat beading on my skin, feeling utterly drained. In the back of my awareness, I could feel the borders of the bounded space my magic had created, engulfing the entire Great Mound facility and a solid chunk of the vibranium mines. The Hex thrummed with power, actively altering the properties of all light within the area just enough to make Eliza's holographic tech useless. Though I'd thrown more power into it than I'd ever used before, it was eating through it at an alarming rate—wrung out as I was, there was no way I was going to be able to actively maintain it—and it was… leaking, I guess. I'd probably pushed myself too hard, tried to reach beyond my current capabilities.
"You wanted me to lash out," I said, licking my lips. "Kill him with my magic by accident."
"I was already working on doctoring the security footage," she admitted. "I wasn't expecting… this."
I flicked a hand out, thin wisps of red energy lashing out to the hand of the drone. God, this was difficult—I'd used so much power that reaching for more was like trying to use my magic in astral form. There was a whine as the repulsor pressed against Killmonger's neck charged, but I wrenched the drone's fingers backwards, snapping them, and he dropped to the ground a bare instant before it went off. The blast hit the bars of the cell and the energy split, dissipating to either side of me. The other drones snapped into motion, raising repulsors of their own, but I threw both hands forward and used what little power I had to weave a tight shield around Killmonger's prone form.
Scrabbling to gather more power as quickly as I could, I flicked a hand sideways to grasp the bars of Pietro's cell with my telekinesis. He didn't wait for me to get him out—picking up his tablet, Pietro used the small amount of floorspace he had to rush forward as he flicked it out. The device had enough momentum that it shattered on impact with the nearest drone's head, sending it staggering back a step and throwing off its aim. Pietro followed up his first throw with two of our books, each travelling so fast it was like they'd been shot from a cannon.
I shouted wordlessly, yanking forward as hard as I could with my magic, my shoulders and clenched fists shaking with effort. Dropping into a crouch, I strained vainly against the solid vibranium, the metal starting to creak a little beneath the force of my telekinetic power. Hidden nozzles in the ceiling above me hissed and I blanched, suddenly trying to hold my breath at the same time. This wasn't good. I'd used far too much of my power setting up the Hex—there was no way I was going to bend or break them, not quickly at least.
The Hex. It was burning itself out rapidly—in the original timeline the Westview Hex had lasted for almost two full weeks with no signs of running out of power… what had I done wrong here? Still, with any luck it would still give me at least some measure of control over reality within the bounds of the spell. I had no idea how this all worked, but I guessed that more dramatic effects would probably be harder and cause the Hex to collapse even faster. Something subtle… I focused on the bars, closing my eyes and trying not to breath in. They weren't vibranium. They were regular steel. Easily bendable, easily breakable.
There was a moment where nothing happened, then the bars suddenly gave under my telekinesis, ripping themselves from the cell with enough force that they crushed one of the Iron Legion drones against the opposite wall. Pietro was gone immediately, blurring into motion as he darted out of his cell, but I couldn't hold my breath any longer and gasped, taking in a huge lungful of air. I immediately felt woozy and lightheaded, almost falling over as I straightened up and focused on the space around me. There was no gas, I told myself as I flexed the Hex's magic. The air was pure and clean and normal and—
I grunted in surprise as my face bounced off the hard floor. When had I fallen over?
There were clattering, clanking sounds around me, interspersed with a couple of repulsor blasts going off, and I blinked. My head was suddenly so foggy… there was no way I could focus like this. I flopped my arms up, feeling very dramatic as I flailed weakly at the floor in an attempt to pull myself back up. This was the second time I'd been gassed recently… I really needed to work out how to protect myself against it better. There was a sound above me, the low hum of ventilation systems working, then the bars in front of me retracted.
Pietro was at my side. "Wanda?" he carefully flipped me over, his voice low and urgent. "The guards are dead. She killed them; the ones in the control room next door, too."
Reaching up, I put an arm around his neck so he could help me stand, but immediately sagged again as my legs failed to support me properly. There was another distant boom and the entire facility shook, the floor beneath our feet cracking. I almost fell, but Pietro managed to keep me propped up against the bars of the cell instead. "I can't… I need a few minutes," I pushed at his shoulder. "Everyone's in danger. Go help. I'll catch up."
Pietro's brow furrowed in concern, but he nodded. Making sure I wasn't going to fall over again the second he left, he pulled back and then blurred, vanishing off out the door again and down the corridor beyond in a second.
I groaned, rubbing at my eyes with the back of a hand. I felt exhausted. Utterly wrung out. Glancing around, I could see that Pietro had dismantled the remaining Iron Legion drones, probably within a few seconds after exiting his cell. My eyes fell on the unconscious body of Killmonger. Was he unconscious? Carefully stepping over, I reached down and felt for a pulse, then nodded to myself. Still alive. Good… I guess?
Grabbing him by the arm, I dragged him into my cell, then flipped him up onto my bed. I still had no idea what to do about him. I wouldn't have cared at all if he'd died—one less villain for me to worry about—but it would have been another massive wedge between me and Wakanda. Depending on what Eliza had intended to make the security footage look like, T'Challa might have been out for blood afterwards.
I took a few deep breaths to clear my head and make sure there were no lasting effects from whatever gas Wakanda had used as a failsafe against me trying to break out of the cells. The well of power inside of me was starting to replenish itself; cautiously, I reached out with my magical senses and felt the Hex around me.
I'd poured so much of myself into it, yet it was dying already. Whatever I'd done, it was obviously flawed, and much more so than the Westview Hex had been—that one had covered a much larger area than the Great Mound, maintained literally thousands of ongoing mind control enchantments simultaneously alongside even broader, more esoteric reality-altering effects, and had enough steam to stay running for weeks at least. I really, really wanted to examine it and try to work out what I'd done wrong, but now wasn't really the time. I needed to get out there and help.
Wisps of chaos magic coalesced around my hands as I headed down the corridor, stepping gingerly over the bodies of the two Dora Milaje that had been guarding the door. Another rumbling boom shook the facility—longer and louder than the previous ones—and I stumbled, almost losing my footing as the floor fractured below me. Whatever was doing that, I needed to put a stop to it before the entire mine collapsed.
I ran out into the main work floor on this level. It was deserted, with no one else in sight. Where was Pietro? I eyed off the giant spiralling ramp that wound its way from floor to ceiling. Up or down? There was another extended rumble that made my teeth vibrate in my skull. At this point, I was pretty sure whatever was causing it was outside the facility, in the mine somewhere. There was a massive, visible crack across the windows opposite where I'd come out—they'd probably shatter with another one or two of those. On either side of the floor were doors that led out onto walkways overlooking the main mineshaft, so I headed toward one.
The door was sealed closed and had no obvious means of opening it, so I sent tendrils of chaos magic into the mechanisms and wrenched it open with a squeal of protesting motors before stepping outside. Shards of reinforced glass littered the walkway and one of the ore-transporting maglev trains was lying on its side on a shelf of rock below me, part of its chassis crumpled and bent.
A glimmer of burning energy streaking through the air toward me caught my attention—Carol. As she got close, I could see that the right arm of her suit was torn and ragged, with blood from a small cut on her cheek smeared across the side of her face, but she seemed pretty much intact. She looked at me a little hesitantly, hovering in mid-air, then an angry roar sounded from deeper within the mine, echoing off the stone.
Carol whipped her head in the direction the sound had come from, then looked back at me, her expression strangely conflicted. "Wanda!" she called out, her tone guarded. "A little help?"
A second later, the Hulk hurtled through the air, narrowing missing her as she darted to one side. The massive green figure hit a vein of raw vibranium on the side of the mineshaft and bounced, ricocheting like a pinball, again almost catching Carol on his second pass. She evaded again and the Hulk landed heavily on top of the wrecked train below me with a bellow of rage, his face twisted into a furious snarl. There were blackened scorch marks over large portions of his body, and his left eye was shot through with bloody red. Okay, that wasn't great—we had enough problems with Eliza in the facility. We definitely couldn't afford to be fighting each other.
I focused the power I'd already gathered and flung it outward, gesturing with both hands. Tendrils of red magic snaked around the musclebound green giant. He turned toward me slightly as he noticed the energy touching him, ineffectually swiping at the air as he tried to swat it away. Raising both hands, I lifted him off the ground, quickly picking him up and moving him out of reach of anything around him.
He went ballistic.
Shrieking and roaring in incandescent fury, the Hulk flailed in every direction, trying vainly to grab at his surroundings but finding his hands repeatedly closing on nothing but air. He was heavy, and it was a little awkward with him writhing around, but so long as I kept him away from anything he could use as leverage, I was pretty confident I could keep him locked down. This still wasn't particularly ideal—I still had no idea what else was happening and babysitting the Hulk was going to distract me from helping elsewhere.
Carol flew down, coming closer to me, still looking a little guarded. "Are you… you?" she asked.
"Am I…?" I blinked, a little confused at the question for a moment before I realised that Eliza must have been using BARF to complicate things. "Oh. Uh, yes?"
"Prove it."
I hesitated for a moment, trying to think of something that would validate I wasn't a hologram. "Um… you feel amazing," I said, a little colour rising in my cheeks.
She grinned, tension visibly leaving her shoulders, and nodded. "Careful. You keep saying that and Natasha might get jealous."
"I dunno, I think Nat's pretty open-minded about that sort of thing, actually," I quipped back. The Hulk howled in frustration, straining to reach for the train below him. "Go help everyone else. I'll get the big guy under control."
"Do you know what's happening?" she asked.
"The AI's attacking us. She's got some extremely advanced hologram tech she stole from Stark and, uh, ninjas."
"…Ninjas?" Carol looked doubtful.
"It's complicated. Can I have my sling ring, please? I might need it."
She didn't hesitate, retrieving the ring from a side pocket and handing it to me. "The Stone?"
I shook my head. "The AI's after it. I think she's more likely to back off if you keep hold of it for now—or at least, she seemed annoyed that you had it. Go." I made a shooing motion with my hand. "The others might need your help."
Carol hesitated, looking from me to the wildly thrashing rage monster and back again for a moment, then nodded. Flickers of orange energy shimmered around her as she shot back into the air, spiralling off toward the main mineshaft entrance.
I refocused on the Hulk. "Hey! Hey, easy, big guy! What's up, buddy?" He spun in the air and fixed his eyes on me, glaring balefully for a moment before he let out another wordless bellow of rage. "Come on, use your words."
He snarled at me again, the expression on his face reminiscent of a pouting toddler. "Blonde lady hit Hulk! Hulk do nothing!" he grumbled angrily.
A tiny fangirl part of me was vaguely disappointed that there'd been a Captain Marvel vs Hulk fight inside the vibranium mine and I hadn't gotten to see it, but I smothered it quickly. "Listen," I said, trying to sound soothing without being condescending. "It was a misunderstanding. An accident. Carol didn't mean to hit you—there's a bad guy tricking everyone."
He huffed loudly and rolled his eyes. "Put Hulk down!"
"Sorry, big guy, but you're staying in air jail until you calm down. Sun's getting real low."
--
To T'Challa's side, the second Dora fell as her head was separated from her body by another of the black-suited figures who had faded into being. T'Challa moved, intercepting the assassin as they lunged forward toward Shuri. He side-stepped a sword thrust, trapping the flat of the blade against his body with his arm, then slammed his fist into the man's masked face. The assassin's head snapped back with enough force to break his neck and he lost his grip on his sword, leaving it behind as he collapsed in a pile on the floor and lay still.
In front of him were three more of the black-suited figures, also wielding blades—were they ninja? This was utterly bizarre. T'Challa interposed himself between Shuri and their assailants. There was another series of low rumbles that shook the facility and the floor beneath him cracked. This wasn't good.
"Ah, well. This didn't work as well as I'd hoped," Wanda's voice came casually from the nearest of the Iron Legion drones that were now visible. T'Challa gritted his teeth. It was the AI. "You guys have fun."
There were six of the drones, all surveying the room from near the high ceiling. Their thrusters were difficult to hear—T'Challa assumed that, along with the holographic projectors, they had some sort of active noise-cancelling to suppress the worst of it. It explained the odd alarm, too—they'd used it to further mask their presence as they positioned themselves. Now, though, all six of the machines turned and flew out of the shattered window, escaping into the main shaft of the vibranium mine.
There was a louder roar of thrusters and Stark finally emerged from the settling dust, the armoured plates of his suit scuffed and pitted but intact. He glanced in T'Challa's direction briefly before shooting out of the window in pursuit of the AI, seemingly having gauged that the Wakandans had things in hand here.
There was another barely-visible flicker of distortion in the air nearby and T'Challa reacted without thinking, grabbing Shuri's wrist and yanking her backwards as yet another figure appeared out of nowhere, their silhouette flickering strangely as if superimposed over itself. This one was dressed differently, wearing a grey armoured combat suit and harness with a hood and face-concealing mask with eyes that glowed red—seemingly unarmed. Judging from her stance and the shape of her body, this one was a woman. How had she remained invisible with the drones gone? Her arm was outstretched, fist clenched, in the space where Shuri had been just a moment before.
T'Challa flung Shuri behind him, pushing her toward the remaining Dora even he flicked another vibranium spear up into his hands. He spun it easily around and settled into a combat stance, interposing himself between his sister and the assassin.
He thrust his spear at her and it passed through her as if she wasn't even there, a small flickering distortion surrounding her body. She ignored T'Challa and simply walked forward, stepping through him. Alarmed, he aimed a kick that went harmlessly through her head, but she was already on the other side of him. The two Dora, similarly, interposed themselves between the newcomer and Shuri. As they tried to attack her, she let them overextend themselves, their weapons passing through her. A moment later, she blurred, her form shifting again as she snapped back into reality and slammed solidly into them with kicks and punches of her own, laying each of them out immediately with single, powerful strikes.
The three remaining dark-suited ninja rushed T'Challa, forcing him to defend himself. He cast a panicked look toward his sister as he brought his spear up to intercept the swing of a sword. "Shuri, run!" he barked at her.
Shuri stumbled away, listing to one side, as the grey assassin continued toward her—walking quickly, but not running. T'Challa lashed out at his own attackers, pressing ahead into a dizzying series of blows and counterblows as he blocked their strikes and laid them out with his weapon and fists. They were good, highly trained—as good as Dora Milaje, maybe—but still not good enough to pose too much of a threat to him. In his haste to put them down, however, the last one managed to get a good slash in against his upper thigh, the wound bleeding profusely. He responded with a kick to the chest that sent the man careening into a workstation and smashing through a screen of tempered glass to lie still.
Wincing at the pain in his leg, he turned and ran toward Shuri. His sister had paused as she staggered past a set of workstations at the back end of the room, leaning heavily on a table with both hands for a moment before she started to retch, messily emptying the contents of her stomach. The grey assassin was rapidly closing in on her and T'Challa lunged forward, once again attempting to skewer her and, once again, having his spear pass through her harmlessly. At first, she didn't even turn to acknowledge him. He tried again—how was she doing this?!—and, while he was overextended, the spear still sticking through her midsection, she turned and backhanded him across the face. Her other hand wrapped around the haft of the spear, just below the head, and he lost his grip on the weapon as he was knocked to the ground.
Turned from her pursuit, the grey assassin raised the spear above him, lining up a thrust of her own. T'Challa instinctively lashed out, his foot passing through her knee in a strike that would have crippled her if it had connected, but it did nothing to stop her as she stabbed downward. He twisted, but the attempt to kick her had cost him some balance and he wasn't quick enough—he let out a gasp of pain as the spear bit deeply into his side, its vibranium blade parting flesh like water as it skewered him.
The assassin released her grip on the weapon and turned on her heel. T'Challa grabbed at the spear, bright red blood spilling from the wound, and yanked it free. The spear clattered as it hit the floor. His limbs were weak, his body already going into shock. Hurriedly, he detached a pair of Kimiyo beads, activating their emergency medical function, and hissed through his teeth as he pushed them into the wound. The beads glowed with faint purple light as the vibranium nanotech went to work, sealing the site to prevent any further blood loss.
Ahead of him, Shuri had fallen against the elevator doors, using them to support her weight as she fiddled with her own Kimiyo beads. Even from here, T'Challa could see the look of panicked desperation on her face as the doors failed to open. He tried to stagger to his feet, his face twisting in pain as he clutched at his injured side, a leaden weight settling in his stomach as he realised that—even if he did—there didn't seem to be anything he could do to stop the assassin. He was helpless. Again.
Suddenly, he felt a rush of air—something moving so fast he barely even registered it before it passed him. The grey assassin went flying off to one side and slammed bodily into a wall. Pietro Maximoff blurred to a stop, his eyes rapidly glancing from T'Challa, to the fallen Dora, to Shuri, to the assassin. The assassin was already pulling herself to her feet, red eyes of her mask fixed on Pietro as she cautiously rose up in a loose combat stance.
Pietro grinned arrogantly, shrugging his shoulders as he turned to face her more fully. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?" he asked.
Another visual distortion occluded the grey assassin, flickering versions of herself superimposed over where she stood, and she suddenly fell through the floor, dropping out of sight as she fled.
Pietro straightened slightly, his brow furrowed as though he was disappointed, then he moved over toward T'Challa. The Wakandan prince waved him off with an annoyed grunt as he finally pulled himself to his feet. "My sister," he said, pointing toward Shuri. "She needs help."
The man nodded, then blurred over to her—crossing the intervening distance in an instant. Shuri flinched away from him and he raised his hands in a disarming gesture. "Easy. What's wrong? What do you need? How can I help?"
T'Challa met Shuri's eyes as he started to stagger over toward the two of them. "We don't have the facilities to deal with this," Shuri mumbled. "Gamma radiation poisoning… I need…" She trailed off, looking at him helplessly, not knowing what to do.
She was right, T'Challa realised. They didn't have anything that could deal with this. Not easily. Even decontaminated, the best they would be able to do is put her in a full-body pod and hope that vibranium treatments could limit the damage to her cells to the point where she could survive. She'd be hospitalised for weeks, maybe months. Even that might not be enough to stave off permanent damage. The thought of his sister being crippled for life by this attack—while he'd been able to do nothing to protect her—was too much. There was only one other thing he could do, one thing that he could think of, that could possibly fix this.
T'Challa looked at Pietro, swallowing his instinctive revulsion at the realisation that he needed the man's help. Again. "We need to take her to the City of the Dead," he said, his tone urgent.
--
Natasha hesitated. Her legs were wrapped around the arm and neck of the Iron Legion drone in a hold that would have helped if she was fighting an actual person but did absolutely nothing to the robot. The repulsor pressed against her throat was charged and ready to fire—she didn't think she'd survive it going off—but the AI was based on Wanda. Even after everything, she'd interfered with Natasha's fight to save her life. Nat was feeling cautiously confident that she wouldn't kill her, but she didn't have any good moves from here.
The drone standing nearest to the elderly Chinese woman spoke, the AI's tone urgent as the robot adjusted its stance, arms raised defensively as its repulsors charged. "Gao, time to go. Downstairs. Now."
The old woman tapped her wooden cane on the floor once, looking vaguely irritated at the instruction, but turned and scurried back toward the door out of the room, her younger companion close on her heels. Clint, who'd just rolled away from the red-clad ninja he was fighting, whipped his bow up and loosed a quick arrow at their retreating forms, but the projectile was intercepted by the Iron Legion drone defending her escape. The fighting continued as they escaped, Steve, Bucky and Clint continuing to exchange blows and counterblows with the assassins.
Natasha grabbed at the drone's hand around her throat and flexed her legs, trying to break free. It was frustrating—if it had been a person, there were a half-dozen ways she could have easily broken its grip. "Really, Nat?" the AI asked, exasperated. "I could kill you."
"If you were going to kill me, you'd have already done it," Nat countered, her voice slightly strained from the pressure on her throat. The floor beneath them shook, a booming rumble below seeming to rock the entire facility.
"Ugh. Fine." The robot's grip relaxed, giving Nat enough space to extract herself. She dropped to the floor in a crouch, relieved but vigilant for a follow-up. "I think we're done here, anyway," the AI said.
The half-dozen Iron Legion drones around the room raised their arms, the whine of repulsors charging filling the air as they levelled their weapons at the Avengers. There weren't that many of them—in any other circumstances, six drones wouldn't be too much of a threat—but supporting the highly-skilled group of assassins that remained, with Bucky poisoned and Steve's shield in the enemy's hands? Clint glanced in Natasha's direction, clearing thinking the same thing: this could be extremely dangerous. They tightened their stances, getting ready to dodge as the eclectic group of assassins moved to renew their assault.
The drones suddenly turned, picking new targets with inhuman speed and accuracy, and there was a barrage of repulsor fire. Their attackers, caught completely unaware, were blasted to the ground with point-blank shots. Natasha flinched, almost dodging away, but paused and shared a look of surprise with Steve and Clint. The drones advanced several steps, repulsors charging and firing repeatedly until the assassins lay still, blood pooling on the floor beneath them.
There was a brief moment of silence, then one of the drones seemed to shrug its shoulders. "Oh no, most of the Hand's best fighters are dead, how terrible, who could have possibly foreseen this?" the AI said in a flat monotone.
"What…?" Steve started, looking confused. He took a quick step to the side to retrieve his fallen shield, then, when it didn't seem like the drones were doing anything to stop him, he moved over to Bucky, who had taken the opportunity to start pulling out the rest of the poisoned needles he'd been stuck with.
"No villain speech, sorry. Like I said: we're done here," the AI said, matter-of-factly.
The Iron Legion drones turned as one and engaged their thrusters, hurtling toward the exit. Clint raised his bow, another arrow nocked and ready to fire as he tracked one, but he didn't release. Nat's brow furrowed as she looked from him to Steve, unsure what they should be doing. With them all hesitating, the drones blasted out through the door to the facility's central ramp and disappeared.
There was movement outside the window and Nat moved over to get a better vantage point. She watched as the five dragon flyers that had been perched on their landing pads around the rim of the central mineshaft flew up, pulling away from the facility, followed by maybe two dozen Iron Legion drones. "She's stealing them?" Clint wondered aloud.
A second later, Tony shot out of the mine like he'd been fired from a cannon, Iron Man armour gleaming in the dying light of the sunset as he raised his arms toward the fleeing drones. The robots doubled back, throwing up a defensive wall between him and the Wakandan aircraft as they unfolded and started to accelerate away. Tony dodged through their ranks, a small missile streaking from his shoulder and catching one of the flyers at the joint of its wings—the explosion was enough to send the aircraft into a tight spiral to crash into the mountainside below.
The drones moved to intercept, dozens of repulsor beams aimed at Tony, and he was forced to take evasive action. Clint and Steve were already running, but Natasha didn't join them—it was vanishingly unlikely that they'd get outside quickly enough to make a difference and she didn't have any ranged weapons on her, in any case, so it made more sense for her to watch and see if she could catch anything someone else might miss.
Tony blasted two of the drones out of the sky, weaving through the larger group, but one managed to get close to him. It immediately detonated in an explosion that made the glass of the window shiver. Tony careened downwards, barely able to get his thrusters back under him before he hit the ground. While he was reeling, another drone closed the distance and there was another explosion that slammed him into the dirt. The rest of the drones dived toward him, repulsors raised, when a burning blue and orange figure streaked out of the central mineshaft.
Carol Danvers blasted two drones out of the air with bursts of photon energy even as she smashed directly into a third, ripping through the resulting explosion seemingly unaffected. The remaining robots all dived simultaneously toward Tony in a last-ditch suicide run and Carol played interceptor, swatting drones with contemptuous ease until she was the only thing left in the sky.
Nat blinked—she'd been distracted by Tony and Carol as well. Where had the dragon flyers gone? They didn't move fast enough that they'd have lost visual contact by now… unless they had the same stealth systems as the larger Royal Talon craft. Natasha didn't know what the full extent of Carol's abilities were, but she didn't think enhanced senses were part of the package. Tony might have been able to see them with the sensors in his suit, but he'd be playing catch-up and was only just staggering back to his feet as Clint and Steve jogged toward him.
Natasha pulled herself away from the window and looked around at the dead bodies of the assassins littering the floor before hurrying toward the ramp down.
This had been a distraction. The AI had just wanted to tie up the group that had been caught in the cafeteria while the real attack had occurred below them. And why not? It's not like the rest of them were actually a threat to an entity like the AI—Tony and Shuri were running the show here. That had seemed like a pretty sincere attempt at Tony's life, at least.
Wanda was locked up downstairs with her brother. Had the AI tried to kill her, too? Where was everyone else? Whatever had happened was obviously already over, but Nat quickened her pace anyway. She needed to know that Wanda was okay.
The BARF holograms disintegrated around us, the black howling void dissipating to reveal a half-dozen Iron Legion drones standing in a semi-circle around our cells. The one directly in front of me, where Eliza's holographic gynoid form had been standing, held an unconscious Killmonger by the scruff of the neck, interposed between us like a shield. It cocked its head to the side. "Well. Fuck," Eliza spoke through its speakers. "A Hex? That isn't good for me."
I was practically panting, sweat beading on my skin, feeling utterly drained. In the back of my awareness, I could feel the borders of the bounded space my magic had created, engulfing the entire Great Mound facility and a solid chunk of the vibranium mines. The Hex thrummed with power, actively altering the properties of all light within the area just enough to make Eliza's holographic tech useless. Though I'd thrown more power into it than I'd ever used before, it was eating through it at an alarming rate—wrung out as I was, there was no way I was going to be able to actively maintain it—and it was… leaking, I guess. I'd probably pushed myself too hard, tried to reach beyond my current capabilities.
"You wanted me to lash out," I said, licking my lips. "Kill him with my magic by accident."
"I was already working on doctoring the security footage," she admitted. "I wasn't expecting… this."
I flicked a hand out, thin wisps of red energy lashing out to the hand of the drone. God, this was difficult—I'd used so much power that reaching for more was like trying to use my magic in astral form. There was a whine as the repulsor pressed against Killmonger's neck charged, but I wrenched the drone's fingers backwards, snapping them, and he dropped to the ground a bare instant before it went off. The blast hit the bars of the cell and the energy split, dissipating to either side of me. The other drones snapped into motion, raising repulsors of their own, but I threw both hands forward and used what little power I had to weave a tight shield around Killmonger's prone form.
Scrabbling to gather more power as quickly as I could, I flicked a hand sideways to grasp the bars of Pietro's cell with my telekinesis. He didn't wait for me to get him out—picking up his tablet, Pietro used the small amount of floorspace he had to rush forward as he flicked it out. The device had enough momentum that it shattered on impact with the nearest drone's head, sending it staggering back a step and throwing off its aim. Pietro followed up his first throw with two of our books, each travelling so fast it was like they'd been shot from a cannon.
I shouted wordlessly, yanking forward as hard as I could with my magic, my shoulders and clenched fists shaking with effort. Dropping into a crouch, I strained vainly against the solid vibranium, the metal starting to creak a little beneath the force of my telekinetic power. Hidden nozzles in the ceiling above me hissed and I blanched, suddenly trying to hold my breath at the same time. This wasn't good. I'd used far too much of my power setting up the Hex—there was no way I was going to bend or break them, not quickly at least.
The Hex. It was burning itself out rapidly—in the original timeline the Westview Hex had lasted for almost two full weeks with no signs of running out of power… what had I done wrong here? Still, with any luck it would still give me at least some measure of control over reality within the bounds of the spell. I had no idea how this all worked, but I guessed that more dramatic effects would probably be harder and cause the Hex to collapse even faster. Something subtle… I focused on the bars, closing my eyes and trying not to breath in. They weren't vibranium. They were regular steel. Easily bendable, easily breakable.
There was a moment where nothing happened, then the bars suddenly gave under my telekinesis, ripping themselves from the cell with enough force that they crushed one of the Iron Legion drones against the opposite wall. Pietro was gone immediately, blurring into motion as he darted out of his cell, but I couldn't hold my breath any longer and gasped, taking in a huge lungful of air. I immediately felt woozy and lightheaded, almost falling over as I straightened up and focused on the space around me. There was no gas, I told myself as I flexed the Hex's magic. The air was pure and clean and normal and—
I grunted in surprise as my face bounced off the hard floor. When had I fallen over?
There were clattering, clanking sounds around me, interspersed with a couple of repulsor blasts going off, and I blinked. My head was suddenly so foggy… there was no way I could focus like this. I flopped my arms up, feeling very dramatic as I flailed weakly at the floor in an attempt to pull myself back up. This was the second time I'd been gassed recently… I really needed to work out how to protect myself against it better. There was a sound above me, the low hum of ventilation systems working, then the bars in front of me retracted.
Pietro was at my side. "Wanda?" he carefully flipped me over, his voice low and urgent. "The guards are dead. She killed them; the ones in the control room next door, too."
Reaching up, I put an arm around his neck so he could help me stand, but immediately sagged again as my legs failed to support me properly. There was another distant boom and the entire facility shook, the floor beneath our feet cracking. I almost fell, but Pietro managed to keep me propped up against the bars of the cell instead. "I can't… I need a few minutes," I pushed at his shoulder. "Everyone's in danger. Go help. I'll catch up."
Pietro's brow furrowed in concern, but he nodded. Making sure I wasn't going to fall over again the second he left, he pulled back and then blurred, vanishing off out the door again and down the corridor beyond in a second.
I groaned, rubbing at my eyes with the back of a hand. I felt exhausted. Utterly wrung out. Glancing around, I could see that Pietro had dismantled the remaining Iron Legion drones, probably within a few seconds after exiting his cell. My eyes fell on the unconscious body of Killmonger. Was he unconscious? Carefully stepping over, I reached down and felt for a pulse, then nodded to myself. Still alive. Good… I guess?
Grabbing him by the arm, I dragged him into my cell, then flipped him up onto my bed. I still had no idea what to do about him. I wouldn't have cared at all if he'd died—one less villain for me to worry about—but it would have been another massive wedge between me and Wakanda. Depending on what Eliza had intended to make the security footage look like, T'Challa might have been out for blood afterwards.
I took a few deep breaths to clear my head and make sure there were no lasting effects from whatever gas Wakanda had used as a failsafe against me trying to break out of the cells. The well of power inside of me was starting to replenish itself; cautiously, I reached out with my magical senses and felt the Hex around me.
I'd poured so much of myself into it, yet it was dying already. Whatever I'd done, it was obviously flawed, and much more so than the Westview Hex had been—that one had covered a much larger area than the Great Mound, maintained literally thousands of ongoing mind control enchantments simultaneously alongside even broader, more esoteric reality-altering effects, and had enough steam to stay running for weeks at least. I really, really wanted to examine it and try to work out what I'd done wrong, but now wasn't really the time. I needed to get out there and help.
Wisps of chaos magic coalesced around my hands as I headed down the corridor, stepping gingerly over the bodies of the two Dora Milaje that had been guarding the door. Another rumbling boom shook the facility—longer and louder than the previous ones—and I stumbled, almost losing my footing as the floor fractured below me. Whatever was doing that, I needed to put a stop to it before the entire mine collapsed.
I ran out into the main work floor on this level. It was deserted, with no one else in sight. Where was Pietro? I eyed off the giant spiralling ramp that wound its way from floor to ceiling. Up or down? There was another extended rumble that made my teeth vibrate in my skull. At this point, I was pretty sure whatever was causing it was outside the facility, in the mine somewhere. There was a massive, visible crack across the windows opposite where I'd come out—they'd probably shatter with another one or two of those. On either side of the floor were doors that led out onto walkways overlooking the main mineshaft, so I headed toward one.
The door was sealed closed and had no obvious means of opening it, so I sent tendrils of chaos magic into the mechanisms and wrenched it open with a squeal of protesting motors before stepping outside. Shards of reinforced glass littered the walkway and one of the ore-transporting maglev trains was lying on its side on a shelf of rock below me, part of its chassis crumpled and bent.
A glimmer of burning energy streaking through the air toward me caught my attention—Carol. As she got close, I could see that the right arm of her suit was torn and ragged, with blood from a small cut on her cheek smeared across the side of her face, but she seemed pretty much intact. She looked at me a little hesitantly, hovering in mid-air, then an angry roar sounded from deeper within the mine, echoing off the stone.
Carol whipped her head in the direction the sound had come from, then looked back at me, her expression strangely conflicted. "Wanda!" she called out, her tone guarded. "A little help?"
A second later, the Hulk hurtled through the air, narrowing missing her as she darted to one side. The massive green figure hit a vein of raw vibranium on the side of the mineshaft and bounced, ricocheting like a pinball, again almost catching Carol on his second pass. She evaded again and the Hulk landed heavily on top of the wrecked train below me with a bellow of rage, his face twisted into a furious snarl. There were blackened scorch marks over large portions of his body, and his left eye was shot through with bloody red. Okay, that wasn't great—we had enough problems with Eliza in the facility. We definitely couldn't afford to be fighting each other.
I focused the power I'd already gathered and flung it outward, gesturing with both hands. Tendrils of red magic snaked around the musclebound green giant. He turned toward me slightly as he noticed the energy touching him, ineffectually swiping at the air as he tried to swat it away. Raising both hands, I lifted him off the ground, quickly picking him up and moving him out of reach of anything around him.
He went ballistic.
Shrieking and roaring in incandescent fury, the Hulk flailed in every direction, trying vainly to grab at his surroundings but finding his hands repeatedly closing on nothing but air. He was heavy, and it was a little awkward with him writhing around, but so long as I kept him away from anything he could use as leverage, I was pretty confident I could keep him locked down. This still wasn't particularly ideal—I still had no idea what else was happening and babysitting the Hulk was going to distract me from helping elsewhere.
Carol flew down, coming closer to me, still looking a little guarded. "Are you… you?" she asked.
"Am I…?" I blinked, a little confused at the question for a moment before I realised that Eliza must have been using BARF to complicate things. "Oh. Uh, yes?"
"Prove it."
I hesitated for a moment, trying to think of something that would validate I wasn't a hologram. "Um… you feel amazing," I said, a little colour rising in my cheeks.
She grinned, tension visibly leaving her shoulders, and nodded. "Careful. You keep saying that and Natasha might get jealous."
"I dunno, I think Nat's pretty open-minded about that sort of thing, actually," I quipped back. The Hulk howled in frustration, straining to reach for the train below him. "Go help everyone else. I'll get the big guy under control."
"Do you know what's happening?" she asked.
"The AI's attacking us. She's got some extremely advanced hologram tech she stole from Stark and, uh, ninjas."
"…Ninjas?" Carol looked doubtful.
"It's complicated. Can I have my sling ring, please? I might need it."
She didn't hesitate, retrieving the ring from a side pocket and handing it to me. "The Stone?"
I shook my head. "The AI's after it. I think she's more likely to back off if you keep hold of it for now—or at least, she seemed annoyed that you had it. Go." I made a shooing motion with my hand. "The others might need your help."
Carol hesitated, looking from me to the wildly thrashing rage monster and back again for a moment, then nodded. Flickers of orange energy shimmered around her as she shot back into the air, spiralling off toward the main mineshaft entrance.
I refocused on the Hulk. "Hey! Hey, easy, big guy! What's up, buddy?" He spun in the air and fixed his eyes on me, glaring balefully for a moment before he let out another wordless bellow of rage. "Come on, use your words."
He snarled at me again, the expression on his face reminiscent of a pouting toddler. "Blonde lady hit Hulk! Hulk do nothing!" he grumbled angrily.
A tiny fangirl part of me was vaguely disappointed that there'd been a Captain Marvel vs Hulk fight inside the vibranium mine and I hadn't gotten to see it, but I smothered it quickly. "Listen," I said, trying to sound soothing without being condescending. "It was a misunderstanding. An accident. Carol didn't mean to hit you—there's a bad guy tricking everyone."
He huffed loudly and rolled his eyes. "Put Hulk down!"
"Sorry, big guy, but you're staying in air jail until you calm down. Sun's getting real low."
--
To T'Challa's side, the second Dora fell as her head was separated from her body by another of the black-suited figures who had faded into being. T'Challa moved, intercepting the assassin as they lunged forward toward Shuri. He side-stepped a sword thrust, trapping the flat of the blade against his body with his arm, then slammed his fist into the man's masked face. The assassin's head snapped back with enough force to break his neck and he lost his grip on his sword, leaving it behind as he collapsed in a pile on the floor and lay still.
In front of him were three more of the black-suited figures, also wielding blades—were they ninja? This was utterly bizarre. T'Challa interposed himself between Shuri and their assailants. There was another series of low rumbles that shook the facility and the floor beneath him cracked. This wasn't good.
"Ah, well. This didn't work as well as I'd hoped," Wanda's voice came casually from the nearest of the Iron Legion drones that were now visible. T'Challa gritted his teeth. It was the AI. "You guys have fun."
There were six of the drones, all surveying the room from near the high ceiling. Their thrusters were difficult to hear—T'Challa assumed that, along with the holographic projectors, they had some sort of active noise-cancelling to suppress the worst of it. It explained the odd alarm, too—they'd used it to further mask their presence as they positioned themselves. Now, though, all six of the machines turned and flew out of the shattered window, escaping into the main shaft of the vibranium mine.
There was a louder roar of thrusters and Stark finally emerged from the settling dust, the armoured plates of his suit scuffed and pitted but intact. He glanced in T'Challa's direction briefly before shooting out of the window in pursuit of the AI, seemingly having gauged that the Wakandans had things in hand here.
There was another barely-visible flicker of distortion in the air nearby and T'Challa reacted without thinking, grabbing Shuri's wrist and yanking her backwards as yet another figure appeared out of nowhere, their silhouette flickering strangely as if superimposed over itself. This one was dressed differently, wearing a grey armoured combat suit and harness with a hood and face-concealing mask with eyes that glowed red—seemingly unarmed. Judging from her stance and the shape of her body, this one was a woman. How had she remained invisible with the drones gone? Her arm was outstretched, fist clenched, in the space where Shuri had been just a moment before.
T'Challa flung Shuri behind him, pushing her toward the remaining Dora even he flicked another vibranium spear up into his hands. He spun it easily around and settled into a combat stance, interposing himself between his sister and the assassin.
He thrust his spear at her and it passed through her as if she wasn't even there, a small flickering distortion surrounding her body. She ignored T'Challa and simply walked forward, stepping through him. Alarmed, he aimed a kick that went harmlessly through her head, but she was already on the other side of him. The two Dora, similarly, interposed themselves between the newcomer and Shuri. As they tried to attack her, she let them overextend themselves, their weapons passing through her. A moment later, she blurred, her form shifting again as she snapped back into reality and slammed solidly into them with kicks and punches of her own, laying each of them out immediately with single, powerful strikes.
The three remaining dark-suited ninja rushed T'Challa, forcing him to defend himself. He cast a panicked look toward his sister as he brought his spear up to intercept the swing of a sword. "Shuri, run!" he barked at her.
Shuri stumbled away, listing to one side, as the grey assassin continued toward her—walking quickly, but not running. T'Challa lashed out at his own attackers, pressing ahead into a dizzying series of blows and counterblows as he blocked their strikes and laid them out with his weapon and fists. They were good, highly trained—as good as Dora Milaje, maybe—but still not good enough to pose too much of a threat to him. In his haste to put them down, however, the last one managed to get a good slash in against his upper thigh, the wound bleeding profusely. He responded with a kick to the chest that sent the man careening into a workstation and smashing through a screen of tempered glass to lie still.
Wincing at the pain in his leg, he turned and ran toward Shuri. His sister had paused as she staggered past a set of workstations at the back end of the room, leaning heavily on a table with both hands for a moment before she started to retch, messily emptying the contents of her stomach. The grey assassin was rapidly closing in on her and T'Challa lunged forward, once again attempting to skewer her and, once again, having his spear pass through her harmlessly. At first, she didn't even turn to acknowledge him. He tried again—how was she doing this?!—and, while he was overextended, the spear still sticking through her midsection, she turned and backhanded him across the face. Her other hand wrapped around the haft of the spear, just below the head, and he lost his grip on the weapon as he was knocked to the ground.
Turned from her pursuit, the grey assassin raised the spear above him, lining up a thrust of her own. T'Challa instinctively lashed out, his foot passing through her knee in a strike that would have crippled her if it had connected, but it did nothing to stop her as she stabbed downward. He twisted, but the attempt to kick her had cost him some balance and he wasn't quick enough—he let out a gasp of pain as the spear bit deeply into his side, its vibranium blade parting flesh like water as it skewered him.
The assassin released her grip on the weapon and turned on her heel. T'Challa grabbed at the spear, bright red blood spilling from the wound, and yanked it free. The spear clattered as it hit the floor. His limbs were weak, his body already going into shock. Hurriedly, he detached a pair of Kimiyo beads, activating their emergency medical function, and hissed through his teeth as he pushed them into the wound. The beads glowed with faint purple light as the vibranium nanotech went to work, sealing the site to prevent any further blood loss.
Ahead of him, Shuri had fallen against the elevator doors, using them to support her weight as she fiddled with her own Kimiyo beads. Even from here, T'Challa could see the look of panicked desperation on her face as the doors failed to open. He tried to stagger to his feet, his face twisting in pain as he clutched at his injured side, a leaden weight settling in his stomach as he realised that—even if he did—there didn't seem to be anything he could do to stop the assassin. He was helpless. Again.
Suddenly, he felt a rush of air—something moving so fast he barely even registered it before it passed him. The grey assassin went flying off to one side and slammed bodily into a wall. Pietro Maximoff blurred to a stop, his eyes rapidly glancing from T'Challa, to the fallen Dora, to Shuri, to the assassin. The assassin was already pulling herself to her feet, red eyes of her mask fixed on Pietro as she cautiously rose up in a loose combat stance.
Pietro grinned arrogantly, shrugging his shoulders as he turned to face her more fully. "Sorry, am I interrupting something?" he asked.
Another visual distortion occluded the grey assassin, flickering versions of herself superimposed over where she stood, and she suddenly fell through the floor, dropping out of sight as she fled.
Pietro straightened slightly, his brow furrowed as though he was disappointed, then he moved over toward T'Challa. The Wakandan prince waved him off with an annoyed grunt as he finally pulled himself to his feet. "My sister," he said, pointing toward Shuri. "She needs help."
The man nodded, then blurred over to her—crossing the intervening distance in an instant. Shuri flinched away from him and he raised his hands in a disarming gesture. "Easy. What's wrong? What do you need? How can I help?"
T'Challa met Shuri's eyes as he started to stagger over toward the two of them. "We don't have the facilities to deal with this," Shuri mumbled. "Gamma radiation poisoning… I need…" She trailed off, looking at him helplessly, not knowing what to do.
She was right, T'Challa realised. They didn't have anything that could deal with this. Not easily. Even decontaminated, the best they would be able to do is put her in a full-body pod and hope that vibranium treatments could limit the damage to her cells to the point where she could survive. She'd be hospitalised for weeks, maybe months. Even that might not be enough to stave off permanent damage. The thought of his sister being crippled for life by this attack—while he'd been able to do nothing to protect her—was too much. There was only one other thing he could do, one thing that he could think of, that could possibly fix this.
T'Challa looked at Pietro, swallowing his instinctive revulsion at the realisation that he needed the man's help. Again. "We need to take her to the City of the Dead," he said, his tone urgent.
--
Natasha hesitated. Her legs were wrapped around the arm and neck of the Iron Legion drone in a hold that would have helped if she was fighting an actual person but did absolutely nothing to the robot. The repulsor pressed against her throat was charged and ready to fire—she didn't think she'd survive it going off—but the AI was based on Wanda. Even after everything, she'd interfered with Natasha's fight to save her life. Nat was feeling cautiously confident that she wouldn't kill her, but she didn't have any good moves from here.
The drone standing nearest to the elderly Chinese woman spoke, the AI's tone urgent as the robot adjusted its stance, arms raised defensively as its repulsors charged. "Gao, time to go. Downstairs. Now."
The old woman tapped her wooden cane on the floor once, looking vaguely irritated at the instruction, but turned and scurried back toward the door out of the room, her younger companion close on her heels. Clint, who'd just rolled away from the red-clad ninja he was fighting, whipped his bow up and loosed a quick arrow at their retreating forms, but the projectile was intercepted by the Iron Legion drone defending her escape. The fighting continued as they escaped, Steve, Bucky and Clint continuing to exchange blows and counterblows with the assassins.
Natasha grabbed at the drone's hand around her throat and flexed her legs, trying to break free. It was frustrating—if it had been a person, there were a half-dozen ways she could have easily broken its grip. "Really, Nat?" the AI asked, exasperated. "I could kill you."
"If you were going to kill me, you'd have already done it," Nat countered, her voice slightly strained from the pressure on her throat. The floor beneath them shook, a booming rumble below seeming to rock the entire facility.
"Ugh. Fine." The robot's grip relaxed, giving Nat enough space to extract herself. She dropped to the floor in a crouch, relieved but vigilant for a follow-up. "I think we're done here, anyway," the AI said.
The half-dozen Iron Legion drones around the room raised their arms, the whine of repulsors charging filling the air as they levelled their weapons at the Avengers. There weren't that many of them—in any other circumstances, six drones wouldn't be too much of a threat—but supporting the highly-skilled group of assassins that remained, with Bucky poisoned and Steve's shield in the enemy's hands? Clint glanced in Natasha's direction, clearing thinking the same thing: this could be extremely dangerous. They tightened their stances, getting ready to dodge as the eclectic group of assassins moved to renew their assault.
The drones suddenly turned, picking new targets with inhuman speed and accuracy, and there was a barrage of repulsor fire. Their attackers, caught completely unaware, were blasted to the ground with point-blank shots. Natasha flinched, almost dodging away, but paused and shared a look of surprise with Steve and Clint. The drones advanced several steps, repulsors charging and firing repeatedly until the assassins lay still, blood pooling on the floor beneath them.
There was a brief moment of silence, then one of the drones seemed to shrug its shoulders. "Oh no, most of the Hand's best fighters are dead, how terrible, who could have possibly foreseen this?" the AI said in a flat monotone.
"What…?" Steve started, looking confused. He took a quick step to the side to retrieve his fallen shield, then, when it didn't seem like the drones were doing anything to stop him, he moved over to Bucky, who had taken the opportunity to start pulling out the rest of the poisoned needles he'd been stuck with.
"No villain speech, sorry. Like I said: we're done here," the AI said, matter-of-factly.
The Iron Legion drones turned as one and engaged their thrusters, hurtling toward the exit. Clint raised his bow, another arrow nocked and ready to fire as he tracked one, but he didn't release. Nat's brow furrowed as she looked from him to Steve, unsure what they should be doing. With them all hesitating, the drones blasted out through the door to the facility's central ramp and disappeared.
There was movement outside the window and Nat moved over to get a better vantage point. She watched as the five dragon flyers that had been perched on their landing pads around the rim of the central mineshaft flew up, pulling away from the facility, followed by maybe two dozen Iron Legion drones. "She's stealing them?" Clint wondered aloud.
A second later, Tony shot out of the mine like he'd been fired from a cannon, Iron Man armour gleaming in the dying light of the sunset as he raised his arms toward the fleeing drones. The robots doubled back, throwing up a defensive wall between him and the Wakandan aircraft as they unfolded and started to accelerate away. Tony dodged through their ranks, a small missile streaking from his shoulder and catching one of the flyers at the joint of its wings—the explosion was enough to send the aircraft into a tight spiral to crash into the mountainside below.
The drones moved to intercept, dozens of repulsor beams aimed at Tony, and he was forced to take evasive action. Clint and Steve were already running, but Natasha didn't join them—it was vanishingly unlikely that they'd get outside quickly enough to make a difference and she didn't have any ranged weapons on her, in any case, so it made more sense for her to watch and see if she could catch anything someone else might miss.
Tony blasted two of the drones out of the sky, weaving through the larger group, but one managed to get close to him. It immediately detonated in an explosion that made the glass of the window shiver. Tony careened downwards, barely able to get his thrusters back under him before he hit the ground. While he was reeling, another drone closed the distance and there was another explosion that slammed him into the dirt. The rest of the drones dived toward him, repulsors raised, when a burning blue and orange figure streaked out of the central mineshaft.
Carol Danvers blasted two drones out of the air with bursts of photon energy even as she smashed directly into a third, ripping through the resulting explosion seemingly unaffected. The remaining robots all dived simultaneously toward Tony in a last-ditch suicide run and Carol played interceptor, swatting drones with contemptuous ease until she was the only thing left in the sky.
Nat blinked—she'd been distracted by Tony and Carol as well. Where had the dragon flyers gone? They didn't move fast enough that they'd have lost visual contact by now… unless they had the same stealth systems as the larger Royal Talon craft. Natasha didn't know what the full extent of Carol's abilities were, but she didn't think enhanced senses were part of the package. Tony might have been able to see them with the sensors in his suit, but he'd be playing catch-up and was only just staggering back to his feet as Clint and Steve jogged toward him.
Natasha pulled herself away from the window and looked around at the dead bodies of the assassins littering the floor before hurrying toward the ramp down.
This had been a distraction. The AI had just wanted to tie up the group that had been caught in the cafeteria while the real attack had occurred below them. And why not? It's not like the rest of them were actually a threat to an entity like the AI—Tony and Shuri were running the show here. That had seemed like a pretty sincere attempt at Tony's life, at least.
Wanda was locked up downstairs with her brother. Had the AI tried to kill her, too? Where was everyone else? Whatever had happened was obviously already over, but Nat quickened her pace anyway. She needed to know that Wanda was okay.
- Location
- Australia
So either this was the plan as she didn't really want them roaming about, or:
Flashback:
"Yes, your Ninja helping me would be very useful. But one on one duals against the Avengers, 'honourable combat'. You think you've seen what they can do. You do that it'll be a nice distraction, but then your men will be corpses."
"You doubt the Hand?"
"I'm going to enjoy saying I told you so. You know what, I might even playback this conversation to you."
Flashforward:
"Well Madam Gao, would you like to pick up the phone?"
*Gao's mobile starts ringing. After a moment's staredown Gao answers.*
"I FUCKING CALLED IT!"
- Location
- United States
Not surprised the Red Queen did that, since despite working with them, she would still consider The Hand a threat. She might keep her promise to return them to the Seven Cities, but it'll likely be in body bags...
Also, looks like we have Ghost here, though it seems like Pietro can counter her...
Also, looks like we have Ghost here, though it seems like Pietro can counter her...
Yeah, she likes most of the Avengers, even if she feels she needs to kill Tony for her continued survival.
OTOH, if the Hand members get captured, they can leak Agatha's presence, among other things.
Daww Hulk is so cute, is this the first time he's actually had a conversation amounting to sentences?
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She didn't see him coming!
Eliza does seem to be trying to thread a pretty narrow needle here. She pretty obviously doesn't want to kill any of the Avengers she doesn't see as a direct threat to her, but they're the Avengers. They're going to constantly get in the way of her actual attempts to kill Stark and, if it comes down to it, she probably will kill them if she feels like she has to (though she'd be sad about it).
Hulk's spoken a few times on-screen at this point in the MCU, but they've mostly been little fragments. "Puny god." Thor doesn't seem surprised when Hulk has longer conversations with him in Ragnarök, so it's not clear whether this is his first proper conversation or not or if he's spoken more off-screen.
How long until Eliza decides that the best way to get to Tony is to go after his loved ones? Yeah, it's a scummy move, but if her concern is the existential threat that Tony Stark presents, there's really no line she isn't willing to cross.
Oof. She's not at that point yet, but kidnapping/hurting a hero's family basically never works to get to them, all it tends to do is motivate them to come after you even harder.
--
Oh, I also meant to point out that this chapter also marks LWYMMD officially passing 200,000 words in length!
It feels a little bit hard to believe sometimes that this fic, which is something I mostly started just as an exercise to get myself back in the regular habit of writing after spending a few years without writing anything, is now the longest thing I've ever written by a significant margin. My previous longest work was around 50,000 words, fully complete. LWYMMD is four times as long and we're not even done yet!
I've got 2,158 people following/subscribed to the story across the sites it's cross-posted to, which simultaneously feels like a lot (for me, personally) and not that many (compared to other stories), lol. I feel like I've hit a limit/equilibrium on some sites. Here on SV, I tend to hover around 384 watchers -- almost every time I post a chapter, I lose around 10, then it climbs back to to 384 after a few days. That pattern has been pretty steady for several weeks now, though I'm not sure what to do with that information.
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I mean... Why start following story beats now, Eliza? You've already tried killing the Avengers. Why balk at something minor like implanting a bomb in Pepper, or using the Barton family to blackmail Hawkeye, or something?
Most of the other Avengers lack any of those sorts of levers, but she's already using undead ninjas and evil witches and flagrantly murdering the members of the Dora.
She knows how most MCU antagonists end.
Congrats on the story milestone! I'm enjoying it a lot and am happy you started this exercise in writing.
I feel like there's a pretty massive difference between killing people you see as enemy combatants and murdering their families (or threatening to).
For you or me, I'd agree. For Wanda when she's level headed, I also agree. But for a fork of Wanda that was spun off during a crisis moment where she was facing death or worse, I'm not sure I do.
You're the author here, so your interpretation is the only one that actually matters, but as a reader, I get the impression that Eliza is delightfully and terribly broken. She embodies the "save the universe... kicking and screaming" aspect of the tag line, imo. Very ends justifying the means.
Chapter 47
Chapter 47
For the second time, I stepped through a portal into the Heart-Shaped Herb fields beneath the Wakandan City of the Dead. Pietro shot me a surprised look—he hadn't expected me to actually follow T'Challa—and hurried through after me before I dismissed the portal. Several paces ahead, the Wakandan prince turned his head to glare angrily back at us, though he didn't slow his pace. His sister cradled in his arms, he moved quickly to the pit of sand in the centre of the chamber.
I'd just been lowering a de-Hulked Banner to the ground when Pietro had rushed out and told me that Shuri had needed help. I still didn't know what was going on with everyone else, but I had to help where I could and trust that Carol and the others had everything else handled.
I didn't know exactly how fragile Shuri's condition was, but gamma radiation poisoning was no small thing and if she did end up dying… Well, it would probably have been better if I wasn't anywhere near T'Challa if that happened, but this was Eliza's doing and—even knowing it wasn't my fault—I still felt responsible. I couldn't just stay back and wait to hear about it afterwards, I had to see this with my own eyes… My presence here might piss the Wakandans off, but I seriously doubted it would worsen our position with them.
Pietro and I followed slowly, keeping a respectful distance away as the prince barked instructions in Wakandan to the priestesses tending to the glowing purple flowers. "Fumana umbingeleli omkhulu! Ngokukhawuleza!" We got some wary looks, but thankfully they seemed more interested in following T'Challa's orders than making a fuss about us. I had no idea if the Heart-Shaped Herb's healing properties were strong enough to deal with a Hulk-blood dose of gamma radiation, but this seemed to be all T'Challa could think to try and I didn't have any better ideas.
Kneeling, T'Challa gently laid Shuri down on the sand. As he did so, she jerked up slightly, turning to one side as she started to retch again. Pietro moved so fast he almost seemed to teleport, retrieving a bowl from amongst the various ritual accoutrements at the side of the room and placing it so that Shuri wasn't puking on the sand. She shakily grabbed at the bowl with both hands, holding onto it like a life preserver as she shuddered and gagged. Not much hit the bowl—she'd emptied her stomach earlier so it was mostly spit and bile, flecked through with blood. I bit my thumb nervously, trying to remember what I could about radiation poisoning. Throwing up meant it was really bad, right?
Pietro retreated back to where I stood at the edge of the circular pit. When Shuri had finished, one of the priestesses stepped in and retrieved the bowl while another brought a small, wet towel to wipe at her forehead and mouth. Off to one side, Zuri—the elderly shaman that served as King T'Chaka's spiritual advisor—arrived, entering the room at a near-sprint. He was surprisingly spry for an old guy. He rushed to T'Challa and Shuri, speaking to them in Wakandan. "Ndifike ngokukhawuleza kangangoko ndinako. Kweneke ntoni?"
Pietro looked askance at me and I shook my head. I didn't have any better idea of what was being said than he did.
"Ayisenamsebenzi ngoku. Usisi wam ufuna ukuphiliswa. Amayeza awonelanga, usisi udinga imifuno emile okwentliziyo kungenjalo uzobhubha," T'Challa said firmly.
Shuri's voice was weak and unsteady. "Yityhefu yemitha."
Zuri nodded and moved purposefully toward the Herb plots, bending down to inspect the more mature specimens. I took a tentative step forward, sand shifting under my foot, and T'Challa's head whipped around to fix me with another icy glare. "How can I help?" I asked softly.
His expression twisted, anger and other emotions storming across it. "You can stand back and not do anything. You should not be here," he ground out.
I nodded and stepped back smartly. Better to just keep my mouth shut. I was honestly surprised that he hadn't directly told me to leave, but I guessed he was far more focused on looking after Shuri than he was on me.
In the meantime, Zuri had selected a specimen from the fields, carefully extracting the glowing bulb from within the flower and placing it into a spouted mortar. Kneeling by Shuri's side, opposite T'Challa, he used a pestle to crush the bulb with a few practiced motions. "Uqinisekile?" the elderly shaman said to Shuri.
"Ndiqinisekile," she responded.
Zuri looked from her back to her brother. T'Challa gave a small nod, reaching down to support the back of Shuri's head. Leaning over her, the shaman brought the spout of the mortar to her mouth, pouring the thick purple liquid into her mouth. I ran my tongue along my teeth as I watched, recalling the bitter, unpleasantly metallic taste of the Herb and the uncomfortable way it had seemed to absorb directly into the soft tissues of my mouth.
Shuri closed her eyes and Zuri backed off a little, trying not to crowd her. A handful of tense seconds passed by before the Herb began to do its thing in earnest. A glowing patchwork of purple light emanated from within her body, outlining blackened and bulging veins as she twitched and frowned, her brow furrowing. As we watched, the glowing patches flickered and shifted, a bright green colour creeping over their outer edges.
I blinked, my eyes widening. It was hard to tell under the lighting in the cavern, but I thought the colour of her skin had darkened and shifted slightly to a more purple colouration. And was it my imagination, or had her limbs lengthened slightly, her musculature becoming more pronounced? Holy shit. Was the gamma radiation interacting oddly with the Herb? I'd been so focused on the fact that Shuri might die that I hadn't even considered that as a possibility. My mind conjured a mental image of Shuri turning into an angry, seven-foot-tall, purple-skinned She-Hulk and I surreptitiously summoned some wisps of chaos magic to my hands, just in case—I didn't want us to be caught unawares if she did transform or lash out.
Several minutes crawled by in tense silence, then the purple and green glow faded away. Shuri opened her eyes, jerking upwards into a sitting position as she blinked and looked around, her eyes wide. "Easy," T'Challa said soothingly. "You're okay."
"I'm okay," she repeated, a little hesitantly, but about a thousand times steadier than she'd sounded earlier.
Shuri looked a little shellshocked, but other than that she looked normal now—I honestly still wasn't a hundred percent sure whether the physical changes I'd seen had really happened or if my mind was playing tricks on me. I dismissed the red energy at my fingertips. T'Challa helped his sister back to her feet, a relieved smile curving his mouth, and they embraced.
A moment later, she pulled away from him, looking in our direction, her body immediately tensing up. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.
I raised my hands in a defensive gesture. "I was your ride here. Sorry. I just… I wanted to make sure you were going to be okay. We'll leave."
Her expression flickered momentarily, then she turned to T'Challa. "We need to go back," she said urgently. "Now. Our systems might have been compromised. The sooner we can assess the damage the better."
He nodded and they both looked at me, but I was already spinning up a portal.
--
"She took everything she could get her hands on," Shuri said, pacing angrily back and forth in front of the holographic display. "She could not get administrator access to our systems, so it wasn't everything, but this is a disaster."
We were all gathered on the bottommost floor of the scientific facility—Shuri's experimental development lab. By the time we'd returned from the City of the Dead, Eliza was long gone and the Hex had already collapsed in on itself, dissolving into nothingness. I'd felt a twinge of guilt at how relieved I'd felt when I'd found out that everyone I cared about had survived… there were almost two dozen Wakandans who hadn't been as lucky.
"The hunter-killer code wasn't directly compromised," Tony said, sounding a little distracted as he scrolled through a holographic display projected from his Kimoyo beads. The Mark 43 suit was standing open nearby, as if ready for him to jump back inside at a moment's notice. "She wasn't able to wipe or edit it, not without admin access, but we're going to have to start from scratch anyway if she got a copy. Which she did."
"What else?" Steve asked. Bucky was sitting down on a chair next to him, still looking a little pale from the spider venom that the Hand assassin had dosed him with. "She seemed keen to protect those dragon flyers she stole."
"While we were distracted up there, she was down here clearing out my experimental prototypes," Shuri ground out, gesturing toward several empty tables and bare mannequins. "She sent it all to the loading elevators before they took off. Weapons, nanotech… raw vibranium, too. Everything she could take, she did."
Ah, fuck.
"Nanotech?" Tony asked, tearing himself away from his own screen to glance in Shuri's direction. "What kind of nanotech? Can it self-replicate?"
Across from him, Bruce also raised his head, looking a little concerned. He'd been extremely quiet so far—I was pretty sure he was beating himself up over the fact that Eliza had so quickly turned the Hulk into yet another distraction for us. The giant cracks in the floor serving as very visible reminders that his fight with Carol could have very easily turned out more disastrous than it had probably weren't helping, either.
Shuri shook her head, annoyed. "Of course not. We've been working with nanotechnology for a few years now—it's a natural progression from our earlier interfaces. Nanites that rapidly assemble and disassemble into pre-programmed configurations." Stepping over to a bare table, she ran a finger along the surface idly before glancing back toward T'Challa. "I had an idea for a better Black Panther habit. Rapid deployment using nanites, and I was throwing around an idea for a new way to use the kinetic redirection property of the vibranium…"
"A habit that could absorb the kinetic energy from attacks, hold it, then redistribute it offensively," I interjected, drawing looks from a few people. "Right?"
Shuri's jaw worked for a moment before she responded. "Right." She really didn't look happy that I was there. "She took the lab's entire supply of unprogrammed nanites."
"How much?" Bruce asked.
"Fifty kilograms, give or take," she said quietly.
My eyes widened. "Fifty kilos of vibranium nanites?" I had no idea what that amount really translated over to from a size/space standpoint, but even layering something like the nanotech Black Panther habit over Iron Legion drones or the Iron Man suit Eliza had stolen would significantly up how dangerous they were.
"If she uses them, can we deactivate them somehow?" Bruce asked. "Like you do with those panels along the train lines?"
Shuri pulled a face and waved a hand dismissively. "That tech's too energy intensive and bulky to weaponise like that. The panels are already pushing the limits of how small we can go with it. We might be able to create a trap of some kind, but I wouldn't want to rely on it."
"How'd they even get in?" asked Steve, changing the subject with a frown. "Obviously the holograms let them move undetected, but those are visual only, right?"
"That is a good question, Captain," T'Challa responded. He looked pensive. "Our border is heavily monitored. The holograms would not have fooled our other sensors. The Border Tribe trackers we sent to trace their entry point lost the trail in the forest at the foot of the mountain. It is as if they simply appeared from nowhere."
"…Like magic," I said apprehensively.
Steve looked over at me and everyone went dead quiet for a moment—you could have heard a pin drop. "You think she has access to magical transportation? A sling ring?" he asked after a few seconds.
"I don't know," I said, shaking my head. I really, really hoped not. "Just speculating. This one was Kaecilius's. I lost my old one when HYDRA ambushed me and Peter, remember? I had kind of assumed it ended up in a police evidence locker. She could have found it, maybe, then she'd have to find someone with a natural talent… might not be too hard, given she's working with the Hand."
"If she does, it'd make sense to hide it from us. Try to keep us in the dark about what she's actually capable of," Clint said, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
"Is there any way of tracking her with it, if she does? Or detecting a portal as it opens?" asked Killmonger. He was leaning against the wall at the edge of the room, a little apart from everyone else, holding an ice pack against the side of his head.
"Can I just go on record saying I am really not happy he's here?" I snapped.
"Duly noted," said T'Challa. "Answer the question."
"We can detect them opening," Tony said, a little tentatively. "There are some specific CMB radiation patterns we can actively scan for, but distance is a problem. Easy enough to cover the interior of a building, but anything bigger…"
I heaved a sigh. "No. That won't work. The CMB radiation's specific to my chaos magic," I said, conjuring a wisp of red energy in one hand and letting it weave across the tips of my fingers. "If she's got someone else doing it, they'll be using sorcery. There's a difference."
Tony blinked. "Huh."
"What about the Hand? What else can you tell us about them?" Natasha asked. She was rolling a thin needle between her fingers—one of the ones used by the Bride of Nine Spiders on Bucky.
"Not much of any use, really. They're an ancient organisation. I don't know how old, precisely, but old. From what you told me earlier, it sounds like Eliza's working with Madame Gao, one of their leaders," I leaned back, resting my head against the cool stone of the pillar behind me. "Gao and the others—they're called the 'Fingers'—they're the original founders. They're from another world."
"Aliens?" Carol asked. "Which planet?"
"No, no. Uh, sorry, I'm not being very clear. They're from a place called K'un-Lun. I don't really know that much about it. It's… sideways? Like, you won't find it on a map of Earth, but it's accessible from here. I think it's in another dimension."
"Interdimensional ninja," Tony sighed. "Of course."
"Interdimensional pseudo-immortal ninja," I replied, a little unhelpfully, then straightened up a bit and looked at T'Challa. "Actually, that reminds me—the bodies. We should burn them all as soon as possible. They might try to retrieve them and then we'd probably have to fight them all over again."
"…They can revive the dead?" the Wakandan prince asked hesitantly. As he spoke, he caught the eye of one of the Dora Milaje standing to one side of the room, gesturing and nodding to her in an unspoken instruction. She inclined her head in a shallow bow and hurried away.
"It's their one big thing, yeah. I don't know the exact mechanism, but they use dragon bones to do it somehow."
Everyone looked at me again. "Dragon bones," Bruce said, flatly.
"What? Yes, Bruce, dragons are real. So are gods and sorcerers and witches. Why is this a surprise?"
"Alright, so what about retaliating?" asked Carol, folding her arms. "Now that we know about the Hand, can we hit them pre-emptively? Use your ring to go after this Madame Gao woman?"
I nodded. "We could, but Eliza does know I have the ring."
"So she's probably expecting us to try something like that," Steve mused, then shook his head. "We won't know what we're going into, she's got explosives, and she's obviously not overly concerned about preserving the Hand as long-term allies. Seems dangerous and it could be wasted effort."
"It's risky and probably wouldn't really hurt her," I agreed, a heavy feeling in my stomach. Eliza had been right, hadn't she? The rest of us weren't really a threat to her. Stark and Shuri might be able to develop digital weapons that could to attack her directly but, at most, all the rest of us could do was put ourselves at risk trying to deny her assets she didn't even really care about.
"I don't think she was actually trying to kill us." Nat avoided looking directly at T'Challa or Shuri as she spoke. "Not all of us, at least."
"Sure felt like she was. At least, right up until she wasn't," Clint said with a sniff. "We almost got caught by that initial attack, while the assassins were still invisible."
"When she spoke to me, she said she was here for Tony, Shuri and me. I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to kill the rest of you if she doesn't have to. She doesn't see you as actual threats," I said slowly, trying to think through what had happened. "She didn't have just one goal here—she didn't know how we'd be positioned or where anything was, so she had to be flexible. Tony and Shuri were targets. The Mind Stone was a target. Stealing tech makes sense, too. It's one of our only advantages over her. Was one of our only advantages."
"What about the grey assassin—the one who can move through walls—what do you know of her?" T'Challa asked, frowning.
"Ghost. Ex-SHIELD. Well, I guess it was probably the HYDRA part of SHIELD that used her." I thought about it for a few minutes, trying to recall details off the top of my head. "I don't remember her real name. She was in an accident involving some quantum technology that gave her powers—she's basically in constant pain from it. She'll do almost anything to fix herself… she needs quantum radiation and lots of it. Eliza must have convinced her that she could help, but Hank Pym's the only guy I know of that could supply enough of the radiation to fix her."
"Pym worked for SHIELD," Natasha supplied for everyone else. "Quit in '89, I think. Fell out with Howard Stark in a big way. I don't know the details."
"Do you know about the Ant-Man?" I asked her.
"…I thought he was a propaganda story," she said with a frown. "Something they made up."
A small smile curled the corner of my mouth. "I know more than you. He was real. It was Pym."
"Should we go pay Hank Pym a visit, then?" Steve asked.
"We could, though I don't think we'd get anything useful out of it." I grimaced. "Pym hates anything to do with Howard Stark. He's been nursing a massive grudge for more than two and a half decades… I can't imagine him working with us willingly knowing we're working with Tony. And if Eliza's watching him, it could be a trap. Pym's shrinking tech is unpredictable bullshit in a dangerous way. I would really, really prefer not to go anywhere near it."
"What if Eliza grabs him, forces him to work for her?"
I thought about it for a moment. Hank had been obsessively paranoid about keeping the secret of Pym particles to himself. Scott Lang never found out how to actually make them, as far as I was aware, so the formula mustn't be easily accessible in a computer anywhere. "He's incredibly stubborn. He loves his daughter—Eliza could maybe threaten her life?—but I don't think she'd actually kill her for it and, hell, Hank might actually let her die rather than hand out the secret of making Pym particles. He's a bit of an asshole. As far as I know, the formula's kept in only one place." I tapped my temple with a finger demonstratively. "Fury's been keeping an eye on him, in any case, and if Eliza did have access to Pym's shrinking tech, she would have used it already. Combined with BARF, I think she'd have steamrolled us."
"She's lost a lot of the element of surprise, at least. Now that we know what we're watching for, we can rig up better sensors to catch any further Hand infiltration attempts. Now that I know BARF's in play, we can deal with that easily enough, too," said Tony. "I can rig up some lenses that let you see through the holograms."
"She'll know you can do that, right?" I asked. He nodded and I gave a gloomy sigh, rubbing at my eyes with the palms of my hands. "She won't rely on it again. She won't need to, either. All that progress you'd made on the virus… we're starting from scratch and she just keeps getting stronger."
"We're losing," Steve agreed, looking pensive. "If we don't come up with a better strategy soon, we might not all walk away from the next attack."
What were we even supposed to do? Had I made a mistake? Should I have just cut my losses and run? I didn't even fucking like Tony Stark. Wakanda hated Pietro and I. Did I really care what happened to them? I glanced around. Natasha had said she'd run with me, if it came down to it—if I believed her. Carol was probably safe. Steve and Bucky, however… They wouldn't give up. I couldn't abandon them. Bruce and Clint were good guys, too. I wasn't particularly close to either of them, but I knew I'd probably feel guilty for the rest of my life if they ended up dying. Eliza had been relatively restrained so far, but the more she failed at killing Tony and Shuri the harder she'd push and the more collateral damage there'd be.
"In the meantime, you should be back in your cells," T'Challa said, looking over toward Pietro and I.
My fists clenched at my sides. That didn't help my mood, either. "Absolutely not," I said firmly, drawing a couple of surprised looks. T'Challa went to respond, but I cut him off before he could. Like hell was I going to go back into a cell after this. "If Pietro and I hadn't wasted time being stuck in those cells, we could have made a massive difference. Pietro could have blitzed the Hand assassins. I could have pulled those dragon flyers from the sky. We can't afford having something like this happen again just because you have a grudge."
"Prince T'Challa, Wanda's got a point," Steve backed me up and I shot him a grateful look. "We need everyone to be available easily in the case of another emergency."
"…Fine," the Wakandan prince said grudgingly. "But this does not change anything."
For the second time, I stepped through a portal into the Heart-Shaped Herb fields beneath the Wakandan City of the Dead. Pietro shot me a surprised look—he hadn't expected me to actually follow T'Challa—and hurried through after me before I dismissed the portal. Several paces ahead, the Wakandan prince turned his head to glare angrily back at us, though he didn't slow his pace. His sister cradled in his arms, he moved quickly to the pit of sand in the centre of the chamber.
I'd just been lowering a de-Hulked Banner to the ground when Pietro had rushed out and told me that Shuri had needed help. I still didn't know what was going on with everyone else, but I had to help where I could and trust that Carol and the others had everything else handled.
I didn't know exactly how fragile Shuri's condition was, but gamma radiation poisoning was no small thing and if she did end up dying… Well, it would probably have been better if I wasn't anywhere near T'Challa if that happened, but this was Eliza's doing and—even knowing it wasn't my fault—I still felt responsible. I couldn't just stay back and wait to hear about it afterwards, I had to see this with my own eyes… My presence here might piss the Wakandans off, but I seriously doubted it would worsen our position with them.
Pietro and I followed slowly, keeping a respectful distance away as the prince barked instructions in Wakandan to the priestesses tending to the glowing purple flowers. "Fumana umbingeleli omkhulu! Ngokukhawuleza!" We got some wary looks, but thankfully they seemed more interested in following T'Challa's orders than making a fuss about us. I had no idea if the Heart-Shaped Herb's healing properties were strong enough to deal with a Hulk-blood dose of gamma radiation, but this seemed to be all T'Challa could think to try and I didn't have any better ideas.
Kneeling, T'Challa gently laid Shuri down on the sand. As he did so, she jerked up slightly, turning to one side as she started to retch again. Pietro moved so fast he almost seemed to teleport, retrieving a bowl from amongst the various ritual accoutrements at the side of the room and placing it so that Shuri wasn't puking on the sand. She shakily grabbed at the bowl with both hands, holding onto it like a life preserver as she shuddered and gagged. Not much hit the bowl—she'd emptied her stomach earlier so it was mostly spit and bile, flecked through with blood. I bit my thumb nervously, trying to remember what I could about radiation poisoning. Throwing up meant it was really bad, right?
Pietro retreated back to where I stood at the edge of the circular pit. When Shuri had finished, one of the priestesses stepped in and retrieved the bowl while another brought a small, wet towel to wipe at her forehead and mouth. Off to one side, Zuri—the elderly shaman that served as King T'Chaka's spiritual advisor—arrived, entering the room at a near-sprint. He was surprisingly spry for an old guy. He rushed to T'Challa and Shuri, speaking to them in Wakandan. "Ndifike ngokukhawuleza kangangoko ndinako. Kweneke ntoni?"
Pietro looked askance at me and I shook my head. I didn't have any better idea of what was being said than he did.
"Ayisenamsebenzi ngoku. Usisi wam ufuna ukuphiliswa. Amayeza awonelanga, usisi udinga imifuno emile okwentliziyo kungenjalo uzobhubha," T'Challa said firmly.
Shuri's voice was weak and unsteady. "Yityhefu yemitha."
Zuri nodded and moved purposefully toward the Herb plots, bending down to inspect the more mature specimens. I took a tentative step forward, sand shifting under my foot, and T'Challa's head whipped around to fix me with another icy glare. "How can I help?" I asked softly.
His expression twisted, anger and other emotions storming across it. "You can stand back and not do anything. You should not be here," he ground out.
I nodded and stepped back smartly. Better to just keep my mouth shut. I was honestly surprised that he hadn't directly told me to leave, but I guessed he was far more focused on looking after Shuri than he was on me.
In the meantime, Zuri had selected a specimen from the fields, carefully extracting the glowing bulb from within the flower and placing it into a spouted mortar. Kneeling by Shuri's side, opposite T'Challa, he used a pestle to crush the bulb with a few practiced motions. "Uqinisekile?" the elderly shaman said to Shuri.
"Ndiqinisekile," she responded.
Zuri looked from her back to her brother. T'Challa gave a small nod, reaching down to support the back of Shuri's head. Leaning over her, the shaman brought the spout of the mortar to her mouth, pouring the thick purple liquid into her mouth. I ran my tongue along my teeth as I watched, recalling the bitter, unpleasantly metallic taste of the Herb and the uncomfortable way it had seemed to absorb directly into the soft tissues of my mouth.
Shuri closed her eyes and Zuri backed off a little, trying not to crowd her. A handful of tense seconds passed by before the Herb began to do its thing in earnest. A glowing patchwork of purple light emanated from within her body, outlining blackened and bulging veins as she twitched and frowned, her brow furrowing. As we watched, the glowing patches flickered and shifted, a bright green colour creeping over their outer edges.
I blinked, my eyes widening. It was hard to tell under the lighting in the cavern, but I thought the colour of her skin had darkened and shifted slightly to a more purple colouration. And was it my imagination, or had her limbs lengthened slightly, her musculature becoming more pronounced? Holy shit. Was the gamma radiation interacting oddly with the Herb? I'd been so focused on the fact that Shuri might die that I hadn't even considered that as a possibility. My mind conjured a mental image of Shuri turning into an angry, seven-foot-tall, purple-skinned She-Hulk and I surreptitiously summoned some wisps of chaos magic to my hands, just in case—I didn't want us to be caught unawares if she did transform or lash out.
Several minutes crawled by in tense silence, then the purple and green glow faded away. Shuri opened her eyes, jerking upwards into a sitting position as she blinked and looked around, her eyes wide. "Easy," T'Challa said soothingly. "You're okay."
"I'm okay," she repeated, a little hesitantly, but about a thousand times steadier than she'd sounded earlier.
Shuri looked a little shellshocked, but other than that she looked normal now—I honestly still wasn't a hundred percent sure whether the physical changes I'd seen had really happened or if my mind was playing tricks on me. I dismissed the red energy at my fingertips. T'Challa helped his sister back to her feet, a relieved smile curving his mouth, and they embraced.
A moment later, she pulled away from him, looking in our direction, her body immediately tensing up. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.
I raised my hands in a defensive gesture. "I was your ride here. Sorry. I just… I wanted to make sure you were going to be okay. We'll leave."
Her expression flickered momentarily, then she turned to T'Challa. "We need to go back," she said urgently. "Now. Our systems might have been compromised. The sooner we can assess the damage the better."
He nodded and they both looked at me, but I was already spinning up a portal.
--
"She took everything she could get her hands on," Shuri said, pacing angrily back and forth in front of the holographic display. "She could not get administrator access to our systems, so it wasn't everything, but this is a disaster."
We were all gathered on the bottommost floor of the scientific facility—Shuri's experimental development lab. By the time we'd returned from the City of the Dead, Eliza was long gone and the Hex had already collapsed in on itself, dissolving into nothingness. I'd felt a twinge of guilt at how relieved I'd felt when I'd found out that everyone I cared about had survived… there were almost two dozen Wakandans who hadn't been as lucky.
"The hunter-killer code wasn't directly compromised," Tony said, sounding a little distracted as he scrolled through a holographic display projected from his Kimoyo beads. The Mark 43 suit was standing open nearby, as if ready for him to jump back inside at a moment's notice. "She wasn't able to wipe or edit it, not without admin access, but we're going to have to start from scratch anyway if she got a copy. Which she did."
"What else?" Steve asked. Bucky was sitting down on a chair next to him, still looking a little pale from the spider venom that the Hand assassin had dosed him with. "She seemed keen to protect those dragon flyers she stole."
"While we were distracted up there, she was down here clearing out my experimental prototypes," Shuri ground out, gesturing toward several empty tables and bare mannequins. "She sent it all to the loading elevators before they took off. Weapons, nanotech… raw vibranium, too. Everything she could take, she did."
Ah, fuck.
"Nanotech?" Tony asked, tearing himself away from his own screen to glance in Shuri's direction. "What kind of nanotech? Can it self-replicate?"
Across from him, Bruce also raised his head, looking a little concerned. He'd been extremely quiet so far—I was pretty sure he was beating himself up over the fact that Eliza had so quickly turned the Hulk into yet another distraction for us. The giant cracks in the floor serving as very visible reminders that his fight with Carol could have very easily turned out more disastrous than it had probably weren't helping, either.
Shuri shook her head, annoyed. "Of course not. We've been working with nanotechnology for a few years now—it's a natural progression from our earlier interfaces. Nanites that rapidly assemble and disassemble into pre-programmed configurations." Stepping over to a bare table, she ran a finger along the surface idly before glancing back toward T'Challa. "I had an idea for a better Black Panther habit. Rapid deployment using nanites, and I was throwing around an idea for a new way to use the kinetic redirection property of the vibranium…"
"A habit that could absorb the kinetic energy from attacks, hold it, then redistribute it offensively," I interjected, drawing looks from a few people. "Right?"
Shuri's jaw worked for a moment before she responded. "Right." She really didn't look happy that I was there. "She took the lab's entire supply of unprogrammed nanites."
"How much?" Bruce asked.
"Fifty kilograms, give or take," she said quietly.
My eyes widened. "Fifty kilos of vibranium nanites?" I had no idea what that amount really translated over to from a size/space standpoint, but even layering something like the nanotech Black Panther habit over Iron Legion drones or the Iron Man suit Eliza had stolen would significantly up how dangerous they were.
"If she uses them, can we deactivate them somehow?" Bruce asked. "Like you do with those panels along the train lines?"
Shuri pulled a face and waved a hand dismissively. "That tech's too energy intensive and bulky to weaponise like that. The panels are already pushing the limits of how small we can go with it. We might be able to create a trap of some kind, but I wouldn't want to rely on it."
"How'd they even get in?" asked Steve, changing the subject with a frown. "Obviously the holograms let them move undetected, but those are visual only, right?"
"That is a good question, Captain," T'Challa responded. He looked pensive. "Our border is heavily monitored. The holograms would not have fooled our other sensors. The Border Tribe trackers we sent to trace their entry point lost the trail in the forest at the foot of the mountain. It is as if they simply appeared from nowhere."
"…Like magic," I said apprehensively.
Steve looked over at me and everyone went dead quiet for a moment—you could have heard a pin drop. "You think she has access to magical transportation? A sling ring?" he asked after a few seconds.
"I don't know," I said, shaking my head. I really, really hoped not. "Just speculating. This one was Kaecilius's. I lost my old one when HYDRA ambushed me and Peter, remember? I had kind of assumed it ended up in a police evidence locker. She could have found it, maybe, then she'd have to find someone with a natural talent… might not be too hard, given she's working with the Hand."
"If she does, it'd make sense to hide it from us. Try to keep us in the dark about what she's actually capable of," Clint said, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
"Is there any way of tracking her with it, if she does? Or detecting a portal as it opens?" asked Killmonger. He was leaning against the wall at the edge of the room, a little apart from everyone else, holding an ice pack against the side of his head.
"Can I just go on record saying I am really not happy he's here?" I snapped.
"Duly noted," said T'Challa. "Answer the question."
"We can detect them opening," Tony said, a little tentatively. "There are some specific CMB radiation patterns we can actively scan for, but distance is a problem. Easy enough to cover the interior of a building, but anything bigger…"
I heaved a sigh. "No. That won't work. The CMB radiation's specific to my chaos magic," I said, conjuring a wisp of red energy in one hand and letting it weave across the tips of my fingers. "If she's got someone else doing it, they'll be using sorcery. There's a difference."
Tony blinked. "Huh."
"What about the Hand? What else can you tell us about them?" Natasha asked. She was rolling a thin needle between her fingers—one of the ones used by the Bride of Nine Spiders on Bucky.
"Not much of any use, really. They're an ancient organisation. I don't know how old, precisely, but old. From what you told me earlier, it sounds like Eliza's working with Madame Gao, one of their leaders," I leaned back, resting my head against the cool stone of the pillar behind me. "Gao and the others—they're called the 'Fingers'—they're the original founders. They're from another world."
"Aliens?" Carol asked. "Which planet?"
"No, no. Uh, sorry, I'm not being very clear. They're from a place called K'un-Lun. I don't really know that much about it. It's… sideways? Like, you won't find it on a map of Earth, but it's accessible from here. I think it's in another dimension."
"Interdimensional ninja," Tony sighed. "Of course."
"Interdimensional pseudo-immortal ninja," I replied, a little unhelpfully, then straightened up a bit and looked at T'Challa. "Actually, that reminds me—the bodies. We should burn them all as soon as possible. They might try to retrieve them and then we'd probably have to fight them all over again."
"…They can revive the dead?" the Wakandan prince asked hesitantly. As he spoke, he caught the eye of one of the Dora Milaje standing to one side of the room, gesturing and nodding to her in an unspoken instruction. She inclined her head in a shallow bow and hurried away.
"It's their one big thing, yeah. I don't know the exact mechanism, but they use dragon bones to do it somehow."
Everyone looked at me again. "Dragon bones," Bruce said, flatly.
"What? Yes, Bruce, dragons are real. So are gods and sorcerers and witches. Why is this a surprise?"
"Alright, so what about retaliating?" asked Carol, folding her arms. "Now that we know about the Hand, can we hit them pre-emptively? Use your ring to go after this Madame Gao woman?"
I nodded. "We could, but Eliza does know I have the ring."
"So she's probably expecting us to try something like that," Steve mused, then shook his head. "We won't know what we're going into, she's got explosives, and she's obviously not overly concerned about preserving the Hand as long-term allies. Seems dangerous and it could be wasted effort."
"It's risky and probably wouldn't really hurt her," I agreed, a heavy feeling in my stomach. Eliza had been right, hadn't she? The rest of us weren't really a threat to her. Stark and Shuri might be able to develop digital weapons that could to attack her directly but, at most, all the rest of us could do was put ourselves at risk trying to deny her assets she didn't even really care about.
"I don't think she was actually trying to kill us." Nat avoided looking directly at T'Challa or Shuri as she spoke. "Not all of us, at least."
"Sure felt like she was. At least, right up until she wasn't," Clint said with a sniff. "We almost got caught by that initial attack, while the assassins were still invisible."
"When she spoke to me, she said she was here for Tony, Shuri and me. I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to kill the rest of you if she doesn't have to. She doesn't see you as actual threats," I said slowly, trying to think through what had happened. "She didn't have just one goal here—she didn't know how we'd be positioned or where anything was, so she had to be flexible. Tony and Shuri were targets. The Mind Stone was a target. Stealing tech makes sense, too. It's one of our only advantages over her. Was one of our only advantages."
"What about the grey assassin—the one who can move through walls—what do you know of her?" T'Challa asked, frowning.
"Ghost. Ex-SHIELD. Well, I guess it was probably the HYDRA part of SHIELD that used her." I thought about it for a few minutes, trying to recall details off the top of my head. "I don't remember her real name. She was in an accident involving some quantum technology that gave her powers—she's basically in constant pain from it. She'll do almost anything to fix herself… she needs quantum radiation and lots of it. Eliza must have convinced her that she could help, but Hank Pym's the only guy I know of that could supply enough of the radiation to fix her."
"Pym worked for SHIELD," Natasha supplied for everyone else. "Quit in '89, I think. Fell out with Howard Stark in a big way. I don't know the details."
"Do you know about the Ant-Man?" I asked her.
"…I thought he was a propaganda story," she said with a frown. "Something they made up."
A small smile curled the corner of my mouth. "I know more than you. He was real. It was Pym."
"Should we go pay Hank Pym a visit, then?" Steve asked.
"We could, though I don't think we'd get anything useful out of it." I grimaced. "Pym hates anything to do with Howard Stark. He's been nursing a massive grudge for more than two and a half decades… I can't imagine him working with us willingly knowing we're working with Tony. And if Eliza's watching him, it could be a trap. Pym's shrinking tech is unpredictable bullshit in a dangerous way. I would really, really prefer not to go anywhere near it."
"What if Eliza grabs him, forces him to work for her?"
I thought about it for a moment. Hank had been obsessively paranoid about keeping the secret of Pym particles to himself. Scott Lang never found out how to actually make them, as far as I was aware, so the formula mustn't be easily accessible in a computer anywhere. "He's incredibly stubborn. He loves his daughter—Eliza could maybe threaten her life?—but I don't think she'd actually kill her for it and, hell, Hank might actually let her die rather than hand out the secret of making Pym particles. He's a bit of an asshole. As far as I know, the formula's kept in only one place." I tapped my temple with a finger demonstratively. "Fury's been keeping an eye on him, in any case, and if Eliza did have access to Pym's shrinking tech, she would have used it already. Combined with BARF, I think she'd have steamrolled us."
"She's lost a lot of the element of surprise, at least. Now that we know what we're watching for, we can rig up better sensors to catch any further Hand infiltration attempts. Now that I know BARF's in play, we can deal with that easily enough, too," said Tony. "I can rig up some lenses that let you see through the holograms."
"She'll know you can do that, right?" I asked. He nodded and I gave a gloomy sigh, rubbing at my eyes with the palms of my hands. "She won't rely on it again. She won't need to, either. All that progress you'd made on the virus… we're starting from scratch and she just keeps getting stronger."
"We're losing," Steve agreed, looking pensive. "If we don't come up with a better strategy soon, we might not all walk away from the next attack."
What were we even supposed to do? Had I made a mistake? Should I have just cut my losses and run? I didn't even fucking like Tony Stark. Wakanda hated Pietro and I. Did I really care what happened to them? I glanced around. Natasha had said she'd run with me, if it came down to it—if I believed her. Carol was probably safe. Steve and Bucky, however… They wouldn't give up. I couldn't abandon them. Bruce and Clint were good guys, too. I wasn't particularly close to either of them, but I knew I'd probably feel guilty for the rest of my life if they ended up dying. Eliza had been relatively restrained so far, but the more she failed at killing Tony and Shuri the harder she'd push and the more collateral damage there'd be.
"In the meantime, you should be back in your cells," T'Challa said, looking over toward Pietro and I.
My fists clenched at my sides. That didn't help my mood, either. "Absolutely not," I said firmly, drawing a couple of surprised looks. T'Challa went to respond, but I cut him off before he could. Like hell was I going to go back into a cell after this. "If Pietro and I hadn't wasted time being stuck in those cells, we could have made a massive difference. Pietro could have blitzed the Hand assassins. I could have pulled those dragon flyers from the sky. We can't afford having something like this happen again just because you have a grudge."
"Prince T'Challa, Wanda's got a point," Steve backed me up and I shot him a grateful look. "We need everyone to be available easily in the case of another emergency."
"…Fine," the Wakandan prince said grudgingly. "But this does not change anything."
Huh, if nothing else seeing Shuri in perfect control of a Hulk transformation might inspire Bruce to lean into his and seriously consider Wanda's advice.
Yass Nat, accept no substitutes, reclaim your deadly spider aesthetic from all the pretenders out there.
- Location
- United States
Well if they want to one up Eliza, they could always go and talk to Namor. I'd doubt she'd expect them to do that. Plus it might just prevent some problems later on as well...