I don't think Extremis has been modified. It's just being tempered by chi control.
Look What You Made Me Do (MCU)
- Thread starter mythSSK
- Start date
With this update, LWYMMD is now officially more than a quarter of a million words long! Holy crap!
Yeah, if it's not clear enough from Eliza's explanation -- the Extremis hasn't been modified, Beck's test subjects are actively manipulating their chi to regulate it in their bodies.
Last edited:
- Location
- US
Both of them are beautiful saiyan b-s. Now punch each other already! ( I saw that reference)
More seriously, I wonder what the fallout will be in Scott and Ava's (potential) relationship with Wanda after this is all finished (ie: killing the nice girl who helped Ava).
I'm also a bit confused, are the extremis affected people separate from the vibranium armors?
More seriously, I wonder what the fallout will be in Scott and Ava's (potential) relationship with Wanda after this is all finished (ie: killing the nice girl who helped Ava).
I'm also a bit confused, are the extremis affected people separate from the vibranium armors?
Dang, sure is a bummer none of them advanced to the point where they could use it to affect their own neurochemistry. Though that would be like, super advanced chi bullshit, and might also require specialized biological knowledge to be able to fight something like the Red Room's chemicals exclusively using chi.
This does seem a bit weird. If Eliza thinks that the Avengers plan A is to attack her using the mind stone, she should be trying to keep the body containing her core processes as far away from Wanda as possible, up to the point of jumping to a different body, not trying to engage Wanda in a fight. I suppose it's possible she is doing that, that she's already shifted her core processes away and is piloting the vibranium body remotely, but I'm getting the impression it isn't.
Well, remember that for all that Scott does try to believe the best in people and is helping Ava because she's genuinely in need Eliza has mostly kept him in the dark. He doesn't know Eliza or Ava all that well, but he looks up to and respects the Avengers. The bottom line is that if Captain America says 'you've been working for the wrong team, Eliza and Ava have tried to kill us multiple times' then Scott's going to believe him.
Wanda even notes that Eliza's making a reference -- they slip them in occasionally. It's not even the only one in the chapter ("Presentation!").
Apologies if it's not super clear -- Beck's test subjects (Hand foot soldiers treated with Extremis and implanted with the Taskmaster Protocol) are fitted out with the vibranium weapons and armour.
Ava's only concern up until this point was with her own survival, to the point where she was willing to kidnap children and murder innocent people to secure her cure. Eliza handed her the thing she wanted most in the world and asked for almost nothing at all in return. She earnestly and genuinely just helped Ava as best she could, for seemingly no reason, even though it was hard and it would have been easier to string her along and use her (and Ava is very used to people using her). The way Eliza treated her is unprecedented -- even the man who took her in, Bill Foster, held back from doing everything he could to help her due to his hatred of Pym. If Eliza is killed, Ava is probably going to be very unhappy about it.
Scott is far less invested in Eliza -- she advised Scott and Hank around the use of the quantum tunnel, offered them resources to help build it, and confirmed that Janet was alive, but that's not remotely at the same level as what she did for Ava. As Lexical says, he definitely looks up to the Avengers and knows that they're the good guys.
Eliza doesn't feel particularly threatened and she doesn't actually think it's their plan A to use the Mind Stone against her because that would probably be a bad plan... she was just making a random guess. Wanda just doesn't know how to use the Stone properly yet -- any attempt to use it would be random and unreliable and Eliza knows it (I mean, the last time Wanda tried to mind control an artificial intelligence, she created Eliza).
She is a little wary of the Mind Stone, but do remember that Wanda can't just casually use it. She needs to be touching it, either physically or with her magic (it being in the locket means she would need to, at a minimum, visibly use some magic on it to activate it -- the locket isn't an interface like the sceptre or Eye), and advanced mind control and things of that nature have also previously required physical contact with the subject. Eliza is observant, reacts much faster than Wanda, and is significantly more mobile than her. If Wanda starts trying to use the Stone, she'll react accordingly, but for now she doesn't think that that's what Wanda's going to do.
Last edited:
Chapter 59
New
Chapter 59
Nat blocked a strike with the flat of her arm, following up with a swift kick that sent the Hand ninja attacking her spinning into the wall. The Widow's Bite on her wrist flared to life, a burst of blue energy sending another convulsing to the ground. Two more closed in, slashing at her from both sides. She ducked under their blades and retaliated, dropping the first one with an elbow strike to the jaw. Unhooking one of her collapsible electroshock batons from her waist as she moved, she flicked it out with a simple motion and slammed the tip into the second's throat. Without waiting for him to fall, she darted backwards, retreating behind a stacked set of steel crates as a repulsor beam scoured the floor where she'd been standing a moment earlier.
Not too far away, Clint blocked the exit of two of the Hand's Fingers—Madame Gao, the elderly Chinese woman who had been present at the attack on the Great Mound, and a tall, nondescript businesswoman that Natasha guessed was Alexandra Reid, the overall leader of the Hand. Both of them were unarmed, unless you counted Gao's cane, but Wanda had warned them that the small, unassuming woman was more dangerous that she looked.
Madame Gao dropped her cane and raised her trembling hands above her head in a gesture of surrender as Clint levelled his bow at her, an arrow nocked and at the ready. "Sorry, ladies," the archer said, taking a tentative step forward. "Get down on the floor, hands behind your backs."
"If I might give you some advice?" Reid said, her warm, calm tone at odds with the chaos unfolding around them. "You really shouldn't give your enemies any warning before you attack them."
Gao's expression hardened and she moved, fluidly falling into a wushu stance before springing forward to close the distance—she was fast, far faster than she looked capable of. Nat saw the barest hint of hesitation, Clint feeling a little conflicted at shooting an old woman at nearly point-blank range, before he loosed his arrow. It was enough. Gao's hand was a blur, slapping the arrow out of the air before reversing direction to knock Clint's bow violently aside, creating an opening. A split-second later, both of her hands slammed into the archer's midsection and he went flying like he'd been backhanded by the Hulk, slamming into the wall next to the corridor's entrance.
Nat was already moving, tucking into a roll as she dodged repulsor fire before coming up next to him. The Fingers hadn't waited either, having already fled down the corridor Clint had been blocking by the time she got to him. A pair of ninja closed, attempting to finish what their leaders had started, and Natasha blocked a descending blade that was meant for Clint's throat with her baton.
"You're getting slow! Can't even catch an old lady?" she chided him. Before he could respond, she discharged a Widow's Bite again, blue energy arcing from her wrist into the chest of the nearest attacker. The ninja crumpled, his body twitching as the electricity coursed through him. Without missing a beat, she spun low, sweeping the second ninja off his feet before slamming him into the concrete floor.
"She was tougher than she looked," Clint grumbled in response, wincing as he started to sit up.
His eyes widened a fraction and he rolled to the side instead, narrowly avoiding a repulsor blast directed his way. He rose to his feet and drew another arrow in a single, smooth motion, loosing it without taking any time to aim. It hit the Iron Legion drone dead centre, electricity arcing from the tip to short out the robot's systems and send it crashing to the ground in a heap of sparking metal.
The archer was already nocking another arrow, eyes locked on another pair of drones that had swooped in with a whine of charging repulsors. He fired, the arrow lodging itself in one of the robots' torsos. A split second later, the explosive tip detonated, sending the machine spiralling down in flames. "You know," he grunted, dodging behind a crate as the remaining one returned fire. "I liked this better when it was just ninja."
At his words, another group of Hand foot soldiers descended on them, rapidly closing to melee range. Nat twisted to parry two more attackers, flicking out her second baton to give her more options, her movements precise and lethal. Clint fought beside her now, his bow transforming into a staff-like weapon with a quick flick of his wrist. A blade came dangerously close to his side, but Nat grabbed the assailant by the wrist, discharging her Widow's Bite again, the electrical jolt sending the ninja tumbling into a stack of crates. The last one lunged at her exposed side, but Clint was already there, blocking the attack with his staff before using it to sweep her attacker off his feet and following up with a lethal strike to the face.
"Go," Nat urged him, tipping her head toward the corridor. "The loading dock." He nodded, shooting one last look over the chaos unfolding across the main warehouse floor before turning and sprinting away.
Clint had been put on the team for the main entrance because it was roughly equidistant from the other two breach points—they hadn't known where the Mark 45 would be and, given that the two loading docks were further away from each other, theoretically this had been the best place for him to be able to close with either of the other locations.
On the opposite side of the cavernous room, Wong, one of the sorcerers from Kamar-taj, was holding his own against the remaining Hand leadership, who'd broken off to flee in the opposite direction to Reid and Gao. Meanwhile, two Hand fighters wearing visored masks and wielding stolen Wakandan weapons harassed the Hulk, darting in to strike at him while he focused on the Iron Legion drones peppering him with potshots from their repulsors before retreating again whenever they caught his attention. The Hulk roared a challenge, snatching an errant drone out of the air and hurling it at the two skilled fighters, but they easily danced out of the way. It was pretty impressive—they had to be enhanced in some way to move that fast.
At Nat's count, there were five of the vibranium-suited ninjas. Three had stayed, but she'd caught a glimpse of another pair vanish down a side corridor. There could have been more—they'd scattered, along with the rest of Eliza's allies, as the Avengers had breached the warehouse's main entrance—but Natasha hoped not. The third that had stayed was currently on the other side of the room, matching Steve blow for blow with a pair of pointed Wakandan shields that were strapped to their forearms.
"This works as a decent trial by fire for the Extreme Taskmaster concept, at least." Eliza's voice came through in Nat's ear—Wanda had left her comms open so that everyone could hear their conversation which, of course, had let her subtly tip off Clint that Eliza had built a new body to use as her primary avatar.
"Extreme Taskmaster?" Wanda was panting, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps. "Sounds like an over-the-top spinoff of the TV show." Presumably they were still fighting while she talked, but it was hard to tell exactly what was happening over there—honestly, Wakanda's tech's ability to isolate voices at the range that it could and filter everything else out was pretty impressive.
"They're still a work in progress, okay?" Eliza snapped defensively. "I wasn't ready and I don't have a good name for them yet."
"It's Extremis," Steve said tersely through the comms. The Taskmaster he was fighting had grabbed the edges of his shield, both hands flaring orange with heat, and he struggled to free it for a moment. Changing tack, he tucked his shoulder into the hollow of the shield and slammed it forward, breaking his opponent's grip and knocking him back a few steps. He winced, pausing for a moment to roll his arm, holding the shield slightly away from his body—there were still dully-glowing fingerprints visible on the metal. The enhanced ninja recovered quickly, though, and he didn't have much room to breathe as his opponent bore down on him once again.
Wanda didn't respond directly to Steve, instead continuing to address the AI. "Eliza, what did you do?"
"Oh, not much. Chemical mind control, full Extremis treatments and the Taskmaster Protocol, with some vibranium fits to top it off," Eliza responded, sounding a little smug. "This is a little early, so they haven't had as much data to go on as the real Taskmaster, but our little outing to Wakanda definitely made up for that."
"Mind control? You turned them into slaves?" Wanda sounded genuinely upset.
"Hey, I'm just a copy, remember? This doesn't reflect great on you either, when you think about it."
Nat ducked behind cover again as a pair of Iron Legion drones swooped in and unleashed a barrage of repulsor fire. Dodging back, she tucked into a tight roll as a Hand foot soldier lunged at her. She was faster, ducking beneath his blade and slamming an elbow into his ribs that sent him staggering into the path of a drone's blast.
The drones circled, coming in to try to attack from another angle, but Nat was already moving, leaping onto a stack of crates and vaulting upward. Mid-air, her Widow's Bite snapped to life with a sharp crackle of electricity. A quick flick of her wrist sent a jolt into one drone, frying its circuits instantly. At the same time, she spun in the air, using the momentum to whip out a grappling line. It caught the second drone around its neck, pulling it down as it tried to fire. She yanked hard, dragging it to the ground using her body weight, where a swift strike with her baton disabled it in a shower of sparks.
On the other side of the warehouse, the African Finger was lying unmoving on the ground—unconscious or dead, Nat wasn't sure which—while Wong faced off with the two that remained. The first, a man with Puerto Rican features that Nat guessed was Bakuto, darted in at the sorcerer with his katana. Wong caught the edge of the blade on the horned skull of his wand, slapping it to one side as orange energy flicked across the mystical weapon's surface. An instant later, a two-dimensional, flat cone of energy shot out of it, the edge slamming directly into Bakuto's chest and sending him flying into the wall of the warehouse with bone-crushing force. He crumpled and lay still.
Wong turned to face the last Finger, a Japanese man holding a pair of metal tonfa in a guarded stance. "Kusotare majutsushi," the man spat at him angrily, before lunging in with a dizzying series of rapid strikes.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the warehouse, a dozen Iron Legion drones converged on the Hulk, wrapping themselves around his arms and legs, thrusters firing at full throttle in a vain attempt to restrain him. It barely seemed to impede him at all—he bellowed and grabbed two of the robots, easily crushing them in his hands before flinging away the twisted, sparking wreckage. While he was distracted, however, one of the Taskmasters darted in, using the back of the Hulk's calf as a foothold as he ran up the green giant's body.
The ninja flattened himself against the back of the Hulk's neck, locking his arms together in an attempt at a rear naked chokehold—the arms of his vibranium suit were already glowing a dull red, flaring into a brighter orange as he secured his grip. There was a sizzling sound, the stench of burning flesh filling the air as the Hulk roared in rage and pain, the Extremis reaching temperatures hot enough to liquefy steel. The giant scrabbled at his back with both hands, the Iron Legion drones temporarily forgotten, as he attempted to dislodge his attacker.
The second Taskmaster used the distraction to run up the Hulk's front, lunging in toward the giant's eyes with a pair of red-hot vibranium daggers, but the Hulk swiped him away with an easy backhand, sending him sailing across the room to crash into some nearby machining equipment. The one on the Hulk's back managed to hold on for longer than Nat expected, the giant staggering and flailing around as he huffed and snorted, getting angrier and angrier. After a few seconds, however, he managed to get enough of a grip on the man to rip him free—judging from the unnatural angles the ninja flopped at for a brief moment, Nat was pretty sure that the motion that had broken both of his arms.
The Hulk slammed the man into the concrete floor with enough force to crater it, then raised both fists and brought them down on him in a two-handed hammerblow that caused the whole ground to shudder, cracks spreading at least a dozen feet from the impact point.
There was a deep thrumming sound, almost like a repulsor but deeper, and a second later a massive column of energy—at least ten feet wide—blasted through the warehouse wall, slamming into the Hulk. The green giant was blasted away, slamming through the opposite wall and out of sight. What the hell was that? Nat laid out two more ninja, keeping an eye out for the source of the attack, then paused to catch her breath.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she turned just in time to see the Taskmaster that the Hulk had flattened into the ground levering himself out of the concrete and back to his feet. His head immediately flicked toward her, meeting her gaze evenly, and her breath caught in her throat. While his mask had been cracked and damaged, the rest of him seemed unsettlingly intact. He flexed his limbs for a moment, joints popping, then started moving quickly toward her. That seemed… bad.
"How are we supposed to put these things down?" she asked into her comms.
"Destroy the brain," Tony responded, sounding distracted. "Hit the base of the skull; sever the brainstem."
"Huh. Zombie rules," Nat acknowledged, nodding to herself. As the Taskmaster advanced on her she made as if to meet him, stepping forward and to one side in a double feint. He took the bait and, as he closed in, she flicked her hands toward him and fired two full-strength blasts from the Widow's Bites on her wrists.
The ninja twisted his body, trying to dodge, but electrical energy arced across his chest and shoulder as one found its mark. He flinched back a half-step, muscles spasming as he powered through it, but it did a lot less than Natasha had hoped. She backed away rapidly, charging two more shots—she knew she was outmatched here, but the longer she could keep him occupied the more chance someone else had to swing the battle in their favour.
A moment later, Wong was there, gesturing with a practiced motion. The air in front of the Taskmaster shattered into a multifaceted, crystal-like barrier before sweeping forward. The ninja sprang backward, narrowly avoiding the portal to the Mirror Dimension and circling around quickly, hand glowing red as he ran in to close the distance between them. Nat tried to hit him with another blast from her Widow's Bite, swearing under her breath as he dodged that, too.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Hulk stampede into the middle of Steve's fight against his own Taskmaster, smashing the ninja aside. Steve paused, nodding at the green giant appreciatively, before turning on his heel and sprinting toward the one threatening Nat and Wong.
The ninja noticed, too, but reacted too slowly, Steve slamming into his waist and tackling him to the ground. With the Taskmaster lying prone on his stomach beneath him, Steve took his shield in both hands and slammed the edge down into the base of the man's skull as hard as he could before scrambling away again. The Taskmaster tried to stand but failed, barely managing to get to his knees as he listened drunkenly, head swaying from side to side. Had that been enough?
The ninja hunched over, shoulders shaking, and a red glow traced flickering paths all across his vibranium suit. Nat's eyes widened as his chest brightened to orange and then a searing white.
"Get back!" Steve barked, moving away even as he raised his shield to interpose it between himself and the unstable Extremis user. "He's gonna blow!"
Nat turned and started to run, but she was too close and she knew it. Guaranteed fatal range of an Extremis explosion was thirty feet, and she was less than twenty. In the split-second she had, she braced herself, a frisson of fear and regret passing through her. She squeezed her eyes shut. There was a blast of heat and light that knocked her from her feet… and it hurt. Huh. If it hurt, then that meant she wasn't actually dead yet.
She opened her eyes, blinking away the afterimages that had seared themselves into her eyelids, and saw the Hulk crouching in front of her, facing the direction of the blast, streaks of molten concrete to either side of them. The green giant straightened up, turning to look back at her as he flexed his chest muscles and huffed, blinking reddened eyes. The entire front of his body was blackened and scorched, tiny trails of embers crawling along his cracked skin. The giant's pants hadn't survived the blast, either, though this was hardly the first time Nat had seen a naked Hulk.
"Everyone alive?" Steve called and the Hulk twitched, turning his head toward the sound. His eyes looked unfocused. The way he was moving his head… had the blast blinded him, or was he just a bit stunned?
"I'm good," Nat responded, a little concerned as she picked herself off the ground and took a cautious step toward the giant.
"I am fine," came Wong's grumbled response.
Nat winced slightly as she flexed her arm—she had jarred it pretty badly when she'd hit the ground—and looked at the destruction the explosion had wrought across the middle of the warehouse and the gaping hole melted into the roof above. A couple more drones and Hand foot soldiers had regrouped in the wake of the explosion and were heading toward her. She wasn't sure where her batons were, either… She'd lost her grip on them in the blast. Steve and Wong oriented on her, the three of them lining up next to the slightly-crispy Hulk, and Nat sighed, settling into a combat stance as the remaining Taskmasters emerged from the twisted wreckage of the warehouse's machining equipment to face them.
One down, two to go.
--
There was a deep thrumming as Eliza's blaster charged for a second before firing, similar to the sound that had preceded the earlier blast that had nearly swatted Tony from the air. I was ready for it, but the orange beam, edged in blue, ripped violently across my shield with much more force than I was expecting—despite its size, it seemed to have even more power behind it than the scaled-up repulsors that the Hulkbuster used. The shield buckled and failed almost immediately and I dodged to one side, hitting the deck and narrowly evading the sizzling, violent energy as Eliza swept it downward to try to catch me before it cut out.
"What the fuck?" I spat, almost involuntarily, as I scrambled back to my feet, eyes wide. Okay, new plan, I couldn't outright block those, I'd need to angle my shields to deflect them instead.
"Oh, you like?" the AI grinned, already lunging in toward me again.
There was another deep thrum as her weapon charged and I flung out a hand, wisps of telekinetic red energy clinging to her arm and forcing the blaster away so she couldn't draw a bead on me. I took hold of her and yanked up and away from me, pulling her into the air—like I'd ragdolled other people before—in order to get a bit more distance between us. In response, she raised her free hand, fingers splayed, and five thin orange lines of energy blasted forth from them. I was forced to let go of her, bringing both my hands around to weave a shield to protect myself again.
"Stark's repulsors enhanced with Wakandan sonic technology as a stabiliser. Really concentrates the power of the blast. I haven't had time to incorporate it into the Legion, yet, but I'll get there," Eliza said as she darted in toward me, her metal fist aimed for my stomach.
I scrambled back, defending myself desperately as she continued to push forward. I couldn't even really attack her back effectively—it felt like it was all I could to do just to keep her off of me. The Heart-Shaped Herb had let me keep up with the Winter Soldier in hand-to-hand for a few seconds when I'd fought him, despite the vast gap in our respective skill levels, but Eliza was on another level entirely. She was faster than me, stronger than me, and a better fighter than me—my only advantage over her was my chaos magic, but she knew that and refused to give me an opportunity to really cut loose with it.
I just couldn't get space to breathe. I tried to spin up a portal, but she immediately pounced in, forcing me to abort—I still wasn't fast enough at making them to use them effectively in this sort of pitched combat. When I tried to widen the distance between us or use my telekinesis offensively, she switched to rapid, long-range blasts that were more powerful than anything I could throw back at her. But if I threw up a shield and started deflecting her attacks, she'd use the break as cover to close back to melee, where I also couldn't match up to her.
She would just not shut up, either.
"What's with that face, Wanda? Why so serious-looking?" she laughed as I blocked a swing from her arm on a shield of telekinetic energy. "Having trouble keeping up?" She reversed direction almost faster than I could track, her knee coming up to strike at my midsection. I caught it with both hands on a cushion of energy, using the momentum and a burst of power to send myself bouncing back a step.
She did a little shuffle as we reoriented on each other, bouncing back and forth on her feet. Was that a fucking dance move? I felt my earlier anxiety returning. I really was not dealing well with her flexing on me like this. Of course, from her perspective it seemed like she was never in any actual danger here—as far as she knew, we had no weapons that could actually hurt her. The worst that could happen would be some setbacks as we denied her assets and resources, so she was taking the opportunity to have some fun with this new body she'd built for herself.
I had no good options and everyone else was seemingly distracted with their own fights… where the fuck was Clint? I wanted to make sure he was getting into position to take his shot but I couldn't really check in or say anything without potentially tipping Eliza off.
I risked a quick glance to the side to try to spot any of my allies and was immediately punished for it—the instant I took my eyes off her, she twisted and lunged. Suddenly, her blaster was a centimetre away from my face, my entire vision taken up by the blue glow in its mouth. Without thinking, I thrust my hand out, shoving her as hard as I could. I wasn't strong enough to push her off-balance, but I wasn't trying to. Instead, I was pushing myself backwards, falling over as the blaster fired, the beam of energy missing my face by millimetres. The stench of ozone and burning hair filled my nose as I landed hard on my rump.
"Hey!" she yelped, putting on a mock scandalised tone and draping an arm across her chest. "Watch where you're putting your hands! Consent! If you want to cop a feel, you have to ask nicely first."
A little belatedly, I realised that I'd inadvertently fully palmed one of her boobs with that move and shook my head, exasperated—was this what it was like for everyone else when they were dealing with me? I lashed out with my foot as I scrambled backwards, kicking her in the shins and receiving an immediate painful reminder that she was a robot and didn't have shinbones that could be injured.
The blaster on Eliza's arm rippled and changed, turning into a more normal hand with a central repulsor in the palm—along the same lines as the ones Tony used in his suits—and she darted forward again, raising a foot to try to stomp me into the ground. "Will you just stop wriggling around and let me kill you?" she complained, a touch of playful annoyance in her tone. "There are people who'd pay good money to have me step on them!"
I rolled to the side, summoning chaos magic to my hands and using it to bounce myself off the floor and back onto my feet, but the motion meant Eliza was in my blind spot for a split-second. As I turned, my hands dripping with red energy, she lunged in again and grabbed me. Metal fingers clamped firmly around my face, painfully digging into my skin, her palm pressed against my mouth as she squeezed my jaw to hold me in place. Both of my own hands came up reflexively to try to pry her off, my lips tingled as the repulsor thrummed against them—I scrabbled at her with telekinetic energy, but an icy frisson of panic shot through me. With sudden clarity, I knew she was too strong, that I wouldn't be able to pry her off me before she managed to fire her weapon.
Eliza knew it too, grinning at me triumphantly. "Have you ever wond—"
There was a woosh of air and a loud 'whunk'—Eliza's fingers blazed painful trails across my face as they were wrenched away, the AI suddenly gone. I blinked and rubbed at my jaw, looking around just in time to see Carol slam her into the floor a dozen meters away, cratering the concrete beneath them. The ground shivered beneath my feet.
I giggled, a little delirious. "What? Have I ever wondered what?" I called after them. "You didn't finish!"
My quip was met by a pair of repulsor blasts from another two Iron Legion drones diving in from the ceiling—I deflected the attacks, seizing one in a telekinetic grip and using it as a bludgeon to smash the other from the air before crushing it contemptuously and discarding the wreckage.
"I gotta say, Wanda," Tony's voice came through the comms. "The gynoid with big boobs and high heels is certainly a choice."
"…R2 double-D2," I said, looking around to see if I could spot him. Reaching up to touch my cheek, my fingers came away bloody. I gingerly probed the inside of my mouth with my tongue but, thankfully, it didn't seem like she'd actually torn a hole in my face. "Where are you?"
"Busy!"
Carol suddenly jerked back up into the air—Eliza had wrapped her legs around her waist to hold on and was clawing at her, vibranium fingers shredding the shoulders of her outfit. Grabbing the robot firmly with both hands, glimmering orange and blue fire danced across Carol's body as she pried it off her and pulled. Eliza came apart in her hands, falling back to the floor in two halves, and I swore under my breath. I was pretty sure I could see blood on Carol's shoulder. She couldn't afford to hold back too much if Eliza could actually hurt her, but if we damaged the body too much before Clint got here, then Eliza would jump ship and…
I blinked as another pair of limbs sprouted from the bottom of Eliza's ribcage and her top half scuttled, spiderlike, along the ground for a moment before launching herself back up into the air at Carol. At the same time, the severed bottom half sat up, the stomach shifting and changing form. There was a deep thrumming sound as the blaster that now occupied the space above its pelvis—at least three times the size of the one she'd been used on her arm earlier—charged up and fired.
Carol dodged the blast and another wide portion of the roof above her disappeared. She wrestled for a moment with what was now a six-armed monstrosity flailing at her with knife-like fingers before managing to get it off again and hurling it back to the ground. She followed up the throw with a pair of photon blasts, blowing chunks of concrete out of the ground even as Eliza scuttled around to reunite with her bottom half. That was… okay. That was a thing.
I was about to rejoin the fight against her when Bucky's voice came through the comms. "I'm pinned down but I've got eyes on the witch. They're evac-ing on one of the flyers."
I glanced over to the other side of the loading dock, where the two remaining dragon flyers had just started to take off, and hesitated for a moment. Bucky was pinned down, I had no idea where Mordo or Pietro were, Tony was 'busy', Carol was fighting Eliza… I was the only one clear.
Intellectually, I knew that I didn't actually have to fight Eliza myself. Carol could keep her busy until Clint got here, he'd take the shot, and we'd hopefully all go home happy. Stopping the witch and Beck from getting away was objectively the smarter play. Still, making the choice rankled at me. I really wanted to be there when Wanda-3 took her shot at Eliza.
"On it," I said. Making a frustrated noise in the back of my throat, I flung my hands downward, using a pulse of chaos magic to catapult myself toward the aircraft as they started to pull upwards and away, landing a bare dozen meters short. Reaching out both hands toward the vehicles, I seized them both with telekinetic power, binding them in red tendrils of energy. The flyers jerked and shuddered in the air, control surfaces angling outwards as their engines flared bright blue, fighting against me, but I held fast and started dragging them back to the ground. One looked empty, but I saw a pale, frightened face looking at me through the cockpit glass of the other that I thought I recognised—was that Quentin Beck? Did Eliza have him working on BARF for her?
I briefly considered trying to smash the two aircraft into each other, but dismissed it. Beck and the witch might be worth interrogating, so I didn't want to kill them if I didn't have to. Plus, I figured that the witch probably had the things that had been stolen from Kamar-taj with her and the Ancient One would probably be annoyed if I accidentally destroyed them. Instead, I focused on forcing the flyers to the ground.
"Wanda!" Carol barked in my ear, something in her tone making me immediately fling myself to the ground without a second thought.
A violent beam of orange and blue energy tore through the space where I'd just been standing and carved downwards toward me. I rolled, losing my grip on the dragon flyers as I moved to protect myself—luckily, with the wide angle, it was relatively simple to deflect the beam away from me, skipping it across a hastily-woven shield before it cut out.
I looked back the way the attack had come in time to see Carol grab hold of Eliza and hit her with a point-blank photon blast to the face. Her head split apart like the fucking T-1000, tendrils of vibranium nanites flailing for a moment before rapidly reassembling. Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention and I saw the two dragon flyers peeling away through the gaping hole in the ceiling of the loading dock, having taken the momentary distraction as an opportunity to flee.
A half-dozen Iron Legion drones swooped inside after the flyers cleared the roof, interposing themselves between me and the rapidly-retreating Wakandan aircraft as they raised their hands and started blasting. I swore under my breath, annoyed. I was going to have to chase them. My shield held up under the hail of repulsor fire for a few seconds as I focused and spun up a portal flat against the concrete below me.
I dropped through, angling myself as I fell using a small burst of telekinetic energy and landing directly atop the glass cockpit of the dragon flyer I'd seen Beck in. The aircraft's engines flared and hummed as it started to peel away from the warehouse, turning from the waterfront to head deeper into the city instead. I paused to steady myself, holding on with one hand, feet finding purchase along the small shelf formed by the metal reinforcement that ran along the middle of the cockpit.
Inside I could see Beck strapped into the pilot's seat, with at least one dark shape I couldn't quite make out moving in the space behind him. The witch. Beck looked terrified, his lips moving as he shouted something I couldn't hear, his unshaven face haggard and sallow, but it was the reflection I saw in the glass that gave me actual pause. Were those stars, flashing and moving through the sky? I turned my head to look behind me and froze, the bottom dropping out of my stomach.
Oh.
Tony really was busy.
Nat blocked a strike with the flat of her arm, following up with a swift kick that sent the Hand ninja attacking her spinning into the wall. The Widow's Bite on her wrist flared to life, a burst of blue energy sending another convulsing to the ground. Two more closed in, slashing at her from both sides. She ducked under their blades and retaliated, dropping the first one with an elbow strike to the jaw. Unhooking one of her collapsible electroshock batons from her waist as she moved, she flicked it out with a simple motion and slammed the tip into the second's throat. Without waiting for him to fall, she darted backwards, retreating behind a stacked set of steel crates as a repulsor beam scoured the floor where she'd been standing a moment earlier.
Not too far away, Clint blocked the exit of two of the Hand's Fingers—Madame Gao, the elderly Chinese woman who had been present at the attack on the Great Mound, and a tall, nondescript businesswoman that Natasha guessed was Alexandra Reid, the overall leader of the Hand. Both of them were unarmed, unless you counted Gao's cane, but Wanda had warned them that the small, unassuming woman was more dangerous that she looked.
Madame Gao dropped her cane and raised her trembling hands above her head in a gesture of surrender as Clint levelled his bow at her, an arrow nocked and at the ready. "Sorry, ladies," the archer said, taking a tentative step forward. "Get down on the floor, hands behind your backs."
"If I might give you some advice?" Reid said, her warm, calm tone at odds with the chaos unfolding around them. "You really shouldn't give your enemies any warning before you attack them."
Gao's expression hardened and she moved, fluidly falling into a wushu stance before springing forward to close the distance—she was fast, far faster than she looked capable of. Nat saw the barest hint of hesitation, Clint feeling a little conflicted at shooting an old woman at nearly point-blank range, before he loosed his arrow. It was enough. Gao's hand was a blur, slapping the arrow out of the air before reversing direction to knock Clint's bow violently aside, creating an opening. A split-second later, both of her hands slammed into the archer's midsection and he went flying like he'd been backhanded by the Hulk, slamming into the wall next to the corridor's entrance.
Nat was already moving, tucking into a roll as she dodged repulsor fire before coming up next to him. The Fingers hadn't waited either, having already fled down the corridor Clint had been blocking by the time she got to him. A pair of ninja closed, attempting to finish what their leaders had started, and Natasha blocked a descending blade that was meant for Clint's throat with her baton.
"You're getting slow! Can't even catch an old lady?" she chided him. Before he could respond, she discharged a Widow's Bite again, blue energy arcing from her wrist into the chest of the nearest attacker. The ninja crumpled, his body twitching as the electricity coursed through him. Without missing a beat, she spun low, sweeping the second ninja off his feet before slamming him into the concrete floor.
"She was tougher than she looked," Clint grumbled in response, wincing as he started to sit up.
His eyes widened a fraction and he rolled to the side instead, narrowly avoiding a repulsor blast directed his way. He rose to his feet and drew another arrow in a single, smooth motion, loosing it without taking any time to aim. It hit the Iron Legion drone dead centre, electricity arcing from the tip to short out the robot's systems and send it crashing to the ground in a heap of sparking metal.
The archer was already nocking another arrow, eyes locked on another pair of drones that had swooped in with a whine of charging repulsors. He fired, the arrow lodging itself in one of the robots' torsos. A split second later, the explosive tip detonated, sending the machine spiralling down in flames. "You know," he grunted, dodging behind a crate as the remaining one returned fire. "I liked this better when it was just ninja."
At his words, another group of Hand foot soldiers descended on them, rapidly closing to melee range. Nat twisted to parry two more attackers, flicking out her second baton to give her more options, her movements precise and lethal. Clint fought beside her now, his bow transforming into a staff-like weapon with a quick flick of his wrist. A blade came dangerously close to his side, but Nat grabbed the assailant by the wrist, discharging her Widow's Bite again, the electrical jolt sending the ninja tumbling into a stack of crates. The last one lunged at her exposed side, but Clint was already there, blocking the attack with his staff before using it to sweep her attacker off his feet and following up with a lethal strike to the face.
"Go," Nat urged him, tipping her head toward the corridor. "The loading dock." He nodded, shooting one last look over the chaos unfolding across the main warehouse floor before turning and sprinting away.
Clint had been put on the team for the main entrance because it was roughly equidistant from the other two breach points—they hadn't known where the Mark 45 would be and, given that the two loading docks were further away from each other, theoretically this had been the best place for him to be able to close with either of the other locations.
On the opposite side of the cavernous room, Wong, one of the sorcerers from Kamar-taj, was holding his own against the remaining Hand leadership, who'd broken off to flee in the opposite direction to Reid and Gao. Meanwhile, two Hand fighters wearing visored masks and wielding stolen Wakandan weapons harassed the Hulk, darting in to strike at him while he focused on the Iron Legion drones peppering him with potshots from their repulsors before retreating again whenever they caught his attention. The Hulk roared a challenge, snatching an errant drone out of the air and hurling it at the two skilled fighters, but they easily danced out of the way. It was pretty impressive—they had to be enhanced in some way to move that fast.
At Nat's count, there were five of the vibranium-suited ninjas. Three had stayed, but she'd caught a glimpse of another pair vanish down a side corridor. There could have been more—they'd scattered, along with the rest of Eliza's allies, as the Avengers had breached the warehouse's main entrance—but Natasha hoped not. The third that had stayed was currently on the other side of the room, matching Steve blow for blow with a pair of pointed Wakandan shields that were strapped to their forearms.
"This works as a decent trial by fire for the Extreme Taskmaster concept, at least." Eliza's voice came through in Nat's ear—Wanda had left her comms open so that everyone could hear their conversation which, of course, had let her subtly tip off Clint that Eliza had built a new body to use as her primary avatar.
"Extreme Taskmaster?" Wanda was panting, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps. "Sounds like an over-the-top spinoff of the TV show." Presumably they were still fighting while she talked, but it was hard to tell exactly what was happening over there—honestly, Wakanda's tech's ability to isolate voices at the range that it could and filter everything else out was pretty impressive.
"They're still a work in progress, okay?" Eliza snapped defensively. "I wasn't ready and I don't have a good name for them yet."
"It's Extremis," Steve said tersely through the comms. The Taskmaster he was fighting had grabbed the edges of his shield, both hands flaring orange with heat, and he struggled to free it for a moment. Changing tack, he tucked his shoulder into the hollow of the shield and slammed it forward, breaking his opponent's grip and knocking him back a few steps. He winced, pausing for a moment to roll his arm, holding the shield slightly away from his body—there were still dully-glowing fingerprints visible on the metal. The enhanced ninja recovered quickly, though, and he didn't have much room to breathe as his opponent bore down on him once again.
Wanda didn't respond directly to Steve, instead continuing to address the AI. "Eliza, what did you do?"
"Oh, not much. Chemical mind control, full Extremis treatments and the Taskmaster Protocol, with some vibranium fits to top it off," Eliza responded, sounding a little smug. "This is a little early, so they haven't had as much data to go on as the real Taskmaster, but our little outing to Wakanda definitely made up for that."
"Mind control? You turned them into slaves?" Wanda sounded genuinely upset.
"Hey, I'm just a copy, remember? This doesn't reflect great on you either, when you think about it."
Nat ducked behind cover again as a pair of Iron Legion drones swooped in and unleashed a barrage of repulsor fire. Dodging back, she tucked into a tight roll as a Hand foot soldier lunged at her. She was faster, ducking beneath his blade and slamming an elbow into his ribs that sent him staggering into the path of a drone's blast.
The drones circled, coming in to try to attack from another angle, but Nat was already moving, leaping onto a stack of crates and vaulting upward. Mid-air, her Widow's Bite snapped to life with a sharp crackle of electricity. A quick flick of her wrist sent a jolt into one drone, frying its circuits instantly. At the same time, she spun in the air, using the momentum to whip out a grappling line. It caught the second drone around its neck, pulling it down as it tried to fire. She yanked hard, dragging it to the ground using her body weight, where a swift strike with her baton disabled it in a shower of sparks.
On the other side of the warehouse, the African Finger was lying unmoving on the ground—unconscious or dead, Nat wasn't sure which—while Wong faced off with the two that remained. The first, a man with Puerto Rican features that Nat guessed was Bakuto, darted in at the sorcerer with his katana. Wong caught the edge of the blade on the horned skull of his wand, slapping it to one side as orange energy flicked across the mystical weapon's surface. An instant later, a two-dimensional, flat cone of energy shot out of it, the edge slamming directly into Bakuto's chest and sending him flying into the wall of the warehouse with bone-crushing force. He crumpled and lay still.
Wong turned to face the last Finger, a Japanese man holding a pair of metal tonfa in a guarded stance. "Kusotare majutsushi," the man spat at him angrily, before lunging in with a dizzying series of rapid strikes.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the warehouse, a dozen Iron Legion drones converged on the Hulk, wrapping themselves around his arms and legs, thrusters firing at full throttle in a vain attempt to restrain him. It barely seemed to impede him at all—he bellowed and grabbed two of the robots, easily crushing them in his hands before flinging away the twisted, sparking wreckage. While he was distracted, however, one of the Taskmasters darted in, using the back of the Hulk's calf as a foothold as he ran up the green giant's body.
The ninja flattened himself against the back of the Hulk's neck, locking his arms together in an attempt at a rear naked chokehold—the arms of his vibranium suit were already glowing a dull red, flaring into a brighter orange as he secured his grip. There was a sizzling sound, the stench of burning flesh filling the air as the Hulk roared in rage and pain, the Extremis reaching temperatures hot enough to liquefy steel. The giant scrabbled at his back with both hands, the Iron Legion drones temporarily forgotten, as he attempted to dislodge his attacker.
The second Taskmaster used the distraction to run up the Hulk's front, lunging in toward the giant's eyes with a pair of red-hot vibranium daggers, but the Hulk swiped him away with an easy backhand, sending him sailing across the room to crash into some nearby machining equipment. The one on the Hulk's back managed to hold on for longer than Nat expected, the giant staggering and flailing around as he huffed and snorted, getting angrier and angrier. After a few seconds, however, he managed to get enough of a grip on the man to rip him free—judging from the unnatural angles the ninja flopped at for a brief moment, Nat was pretty sure that the motion that had broken both of his arms.
The Hulk slammed the man into the concrete floor with enough force to crater it, then raised both fists and brought them down on him in a two-handed hammerblow that caused the whole ground to shudder, cracks spreading at least a dozen feet from the impact point.
There was a deep thrumming sound, almost like a repulsor but deeper, and a second later a massive column of energy—at least ten feet wide—blasted through the warehouse wall, slamming into the Hulk. The green giant was blasted away, slamming through the opposite wall and out of sight. What the hell was that? Nat laid out two more ninja, keeping an eye out for the source of the attack, then paused to catch her breath.
A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she turned just in time to see the Taskmaster that the Hulk had flattened into the ground levering himself out of the concrete and back to his feet. His head immediately flicked toward her, meeting her gaze evenly, and her breath caught in her throat. While his mask had been cracked and damaged, the rest of him seemed unsettlingly intact. He flexed his limbs for a moment, joints popping, then started moving quickly toward her. That seemed… bad.
"How are we supposed to put these things down?" she asked into her comms.
"Destroy the brain," Tony responded, sounding distracted. "Hit the base of the skull; sever the brainstem."
"Huh. Zombie rules," Nat acknowledged, nodding to herself. As the Taskmaster advanced on her she made as if to meet him, stepping forward and to one side in a double feint. He took the bait and, as he closed in, she flicked her hands toward him and fired two full-strength blasts from the Widow's Bites on her wrists.
The ninja twisted his body, trying to dodge, but electrical energy arced across his chest and shoulder as one found its mark. He flinched back a half-step, muscles spasming as he powered through it, but it did a lot less than Natasha had hoped. She backed away rapidly, charging two more shots—she knew she was outmatched here, but the longer she could keep him occupied the more chance someone else had to swing the battle in their favour.
A moment later, Wong was there, gesturing with a practiced motion. The air in front of the Taskmaster shattered into a multifaceted, crystal-like barrier before sweeping forward. The ninja sprang backward, narrowly avoiding the portal to the Mirror Dimension and circling around quickly, hand glowing red as he ran in to close the distance between them. Nat tried to hit him with another blast from her Widow's Bite, swearing under her breath as he dodged that, too.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Hulk stampede into the middle of Steve's fight against his own Taskmaster, smashing the ninja aside. Steve paused, nodding at the green giant appreciatively, before turning on his heel and sprinting toward the one threatening Nat and Wong.
The ninja noticed, too, but reacted too slowly, Steve slamming into his waist and tackling him to the ground. With the Taskmaster lying prone on his stomach beneath him, Steve took his shield in both hands and slammed the edge down into the base of the man's skull as hard as he could before scrambling away again. The Taskmaster tried to stand but failed, barely managing to get to his knees as he listened drunkenly, head swaying from side to side. Had that been enough?
The ninja hunched over, shoulders shaking, and a red glow traced flickering paths all across his vibranium suit. Nat's eyes widened as his chest brightened to orange and then a searing white.
"Get back!" Steve barked, moving away even as he raised his shield to interpose it between himself and the unstable Extremis user. "He's gonna blow!"
Nat turned and started to run, but she was too close and she knew it. Guaranteed fatal range of an Extremis explosion was thirty feet, and she was less than twenty. In the split-second she had, she braced herself, a frisson of fear and regret passing through her. She squeezed her eyes shut. There was a blast of heat and light that knocked her from her feet… and it hurt. Huh. If it hurt, then that meant she wasn't actually dead yet.
She opened her eyes, blinking away the afterimages that had seared themselves into her eyelids, and saw the Hulk crouching in front of her, facing the direction of the blast, streaks of molten concrete to either side of them. The green giant straightened up, turning to look back at her as he flexed his chest muscles and huffed, blinking reddened eyes. The entire front of his body was blackened and scorched, tiny trails of embers crawling along his cracked skin. The giant's pants hadn't survived the blast, either, though this was hardly the first time Nat had seen a naked Hulk.
"Everyone alive?" Steve called and the Hulk twitched, turning his head toward the sound. His eyes looked unfocused. The way he was moving his head… had the blast blinded him, or was he just a bit stunned?
"I'm good," Nat responded, a little concerned as she picked herself off the ground and took a cautious step toward the giant.
"I am fine," came Wong's grumbled response.
Nat winced slightly as she flexed her arm—she had jarred it pretty badly when she'd hit the ground—and looked at the destruction the explosion had wrought across the middle of the warehouse and the gaping hole melted into the roof above. A couple more drones and Hand foot soldiers had regrouped in the wake of the explosion and were heading toward her. She wasn't sure where her batons were, either… She'd lost her grip on them in the blast. Steve and Wong oriented on her, the three of them lining up next to the slightly-crispy Hulk, and Nat sighed, settling into a combat stance as the remaining Taskmasters emerged from the twisted wreckage of the warehouse's machining equipment to face them.
One down, two to go.
--
There was a deep thrumming as Eliza's blaster charged for a second before firing, similar to the sound that had preceded the earlier blast that had nearly swatted Tony from the air. I was ready for it, but the orange beam, edged in blue, ripped violently across my shield with much more force than I was expecting—despite its size, it seemed to have even more power behind it than the scaled-up repulsors that the Hulkbuster used. The shield buckled and failed almost immediately and I dodged to one side, hitting the deck and narrowly evading the sizzling, violent energy as Eliza swept it downward to try to catch me before it cut out.
"What the fuck?" I spat, almost involuntarily, as I scrambled back to my feet, eyes wide. Okay, new plan, I couldn't outright block those, I'd need to angle my shields to deflect them instead.
"Oh, you like?" the AI grinned, already lunging in toward me again.
There was another deep thrum as her weapon charged and I flung out a hand, wisps of telekinetic red energy clinging to her arm and forcing the blaster away so she couldn't draw a bead on me. I took hold of her and yanked up and away from me, pulling her into the air—like I'd ragdolled other people before—in order to get a bit more distance between us. In response, she raised her free hand, fingers splayed, and five thin orange lines of energy blasted forth from them. I was forced to let go of her, bringing both my hands around to weave a shield to protect myself again.
"Stark's repulsors enhanced with Wakandan sonic technology as a stabiliser. Really concentrates the power of the blast. I haven't had time to incorporate it into the Legion, yet, but I'll get there," Eliza said as she darted in toward me, her metal fist aimed for my stomach.
I scrambled back, defending myself desperately as she continued to push forward. I couldn't even really attack her back effectively—it felt like it was all I could to do just to keep her off of me. The Heart-Shaped Herb had let me keep up with the Winter Soldier in hand-to-hand for a few seconds when I'd fought him, despite the vast gap in our respective skill levels, but Eliza was on another level entirely. She was faster than me, stronger than me, and a better fighter than me—my only advantage over her was my chaos magic, but she knew that and refused to give me an opportunity to really cut loose with it.
I just couldn't get space to breathe. I tried to spin up a portal, but she immediately pounced in, forcing me to abort—I still wasn't fast enough at making them to use them effectively in this sort of pitched combat. When I tried to widen the distance between us or use my telekinesis offensively, she switched to rapid, long-range blasts that were more powerful than anything I could throw back at her. But if I threw up a shield and started deflecting her attacks, she'd use the break as cover to close back to melee, where I also couldn't match up to her.
She would just not shut up, either.
"What's with that face, Wanda? Why so serious-looking?" she laughed as I blocked a swing from her arm on a shield of telekinetic energy. "Having trouble keeping up?" She reversed direction almost faster than I could track, her knee coming up to strike at my midsection. I caught it with both hands on a cushion of energy, using the momentum and a burst of power to send myself bouncing back a step.
She did a little shuffle as we reoriented on each other, bouncing back and forth on her feet. Was that a fucking dance move? I felt my earlier anxiety returning. I really was not dealing well with her flexing on me like this. Of course, from her perspective it seemed like she was never in any actual danger here—as far as she knew, we had no weapons that could actually hurt her. The worst that could happen would be some setbacks as we denied her assets and resources, so she was taking the opportunity to have some fun with this new body she'd built for herself.
I had no good options and everyone else was seemingly distracted with their own fights… where the fuck was Clint? I wanted to make sure he was getting into position to take his shot but I couldn't really check in or say anything without potentially tipping Eliza off.
I risked a quick glance to the side to try to spot any of my allies and was immediately punished for it—the instant I took my eyes off her, she twisted and lunged. Suddenly, her blaster was a centimetre away from my face, my entire vision taken up by the blue glow in its mouth. Without thinking, I thrust my hand out, shoving her as hard as I could. I wasn't strong enough to push her off-balance, but I wasn't trying to. Instead, I was pushing myself backwards, falling over as the blaster fired, the beam of energy missing my face by millimetres. The stench of ozone and burning hair filled my nose as I landed hard on my rump.
"Hey!" she yelped, putting on a mock scandalised tone and draping an arm across her chest. "Watch where you're putting your hands! Consent! If you want to cop a feel, you have to ask nicely first."
A little belatedly, I realised that I'd inadvertently fully palmed one of her boobs with that move and shook my head, exasperated—was this what it was like for everyone else when they were dealing with me? I lashed out with my foot as I scrambled backwards, kicking her in the shins and receiving an immediate painful reminder that she was a robot and didn't have shinbones that could be injured.
The blaster on Eliza's arm rippled and changed, turning into a more normal hand with a central repulsor in the palm—along the same lines as the ones Tony used in his suits—and she darted forward again, raising a foot to try to stomp me into the ground. "Will you just stop wriggling around and let me kill you?" she complained, a touch of playful annoyance in her tone. "There are people who'd pay good money to have me step on them!"
I rolled to the side, summoning chaos magic to my hands and using it to bounce myself off the floor and back onto my feet, but the motion meant Eliza was in my blind spot for a split-second. As I turned, my hands dripping with red energy, she lunged in again and grabbed me. Metal fingers clamped firmly around my face, painfully digging into my skin, her palm pressed against my mouth as she squeezed my jaw to hold me in place. Both of my own hands came up reflexively to try to pry her off, my lips tingled as the repulsor thrummed against them—I scrabbled at her with telekinetic energy, but an icy frisson of panic shot through me. With sudden clarity, I knew she was too strong, that I wouldn't be able to pry her off me before she managed to fire her weapon.
Eliza knew it too, grinning at me triumphantly. "Have you ever wond—"
There was a woosh of air and a loud 'whunk'—Eliza's fingers blazed painful trails across my face as they were wrenched away, the AI suddenly gone. I blinked and rubbed at my jaw, looking around just in time to see Carol slam her into the floor a dozen meters away, cratering the concrete beneath them. The ground shivered beneath my feet.
I giggled, a little delirious. "What? Have I ever wondered what?" I called after them. "You didn't finish!"
My quip was met by a pair of repulsor blasts from another two Iron Legion drones diving in from the ceiling—I deflected the attacks, seizing one in a telekinetic grip and using it as a bludgeon to smash the other from the air before crushing it contemptuously and discarding the wreckage.
"I gotta say, Wanda," Tony's voice came through the comms. "The gynoid with big boobs and high heels is certainly a choice."
"…R2 double-D2," I said, looking around to see if I could spot him. Reaching up to touch my cheek, my fingers came away bloody. I gingerly probed the inside of my mouth with my tongue but, thankfully, it didn't seem like she'd actually torn a hole in my face. "Where are you?"
"Busy!"
Carol suddenly jerked back up into the air—Eliza had wrapped her legs around her waist to hold on and was clawing at her, vibranium fingers shredding the shoulders of her outfit. Grabbing the robot firmly with both hands, glimmering orange and blue fire danced across Carol's body as she pried it off her and pulled. Eliza came apart in her hands, falling back to the floor in two halves, and I swore under my breath. I was pretty sure I could see blood on Carol's shoulder. She couldn't afford to hold back too much if Eliza could actually hurt her, but if we damaged the body too much before Clint got here, then Eliza would jump ship and…
I blinked as another pair of limbs sprouted from the bottom of Eliza's ribcage and her top half scuttled, spiderlike, along the ground for a moment before launching herself back up into the air at Carol. At the same time, the severed bottom half sat up, the stomach shifting and changing form. There was a deep thrumming sound as the blaster that now occupied the space above its pelvis—at least three times the size of the one she'd been used on her arm earlier—charged up and fired.
Carol dodged the blast and another wide portion of the roof above her disappeared. She wrestled for a moment with what was now a six-armed monstrosity flailing at her with knife-like fingers before managing to get it off again and hurling it back to the ground. She followed up the throw with a pair of photon blasts, blowing chunks of concrete out of the ground even as Eliza scuttled around to reunite with her bottom half. That was… okay. That was a thing.
I was about to rejoin the fight against her when Bucky's voice came through the comms. "I'm pinned down but I've got eyes on the witch. They're evac-ing on one of the flyers."
I glanced over to the other side of the loading dock, where the two remaining dragon flyers had just started to take off, and hesitated for a moment. Bucky was pinned down, I had no idea where Mordo or Pietro were, Tony was 'busy', Carol was fighting Eliza… I was the only one clear.
Intellectually, I knew that I didn't actually have to fight Eliza myself. Carol could keep her busy until Clint got here, he'd take the shot, and we'd hopefully all go home happy. Stopping the witch and Beck from getting away was objectively the smarter play. Still, making the choice rankled at me. I really wanted to be there when Wanda-3 took her shot at Eliza.
"On it," I said. Making a frustrated noise in the back of my throat, I flung my hands downward, using a pulse of chaos magic to catapult myself toward the aircraft as they started to pull upwards and away, landing a bare dozen meters short. Reaching out both hands toward the vehicles, I seized them both with telekinetic power, binding them in red tendrils of energy. The flyers jerked and shuddered in the air, control surfaces angling outwards as their engines flared bright blue, fighting against me, but I held fast and started dragging them back to the ground. One looked empty, but I saw a pale, frightened face looking at me through the cockpit glass of the other that I thought I recognised—was that Quentin Beck? Did Eliza have him working on BARF for her?
I briefly considered trying to smash the two aircraft into each other, but dismissed it. Beck and the witch might be worth interrogating, so I didn't want to kill them if I didn't have to. Plus, I figured that the witch probably had the things that had been stolen from Kamar-taj with her and the Ancient One would probably be annoyed if I accidentally destroyed them. Instead, I focused on forcing the flyers to the ground.
"Wanda!" Carol barked in my ear, something in her tone making me immediately fling myself to the ground without a second thought.
A violent beam of orange and blue energy tore through the space where I'd just been standing and carved downwards toward me. I rolled, losing my grip on the dragon flyers as I moved to protect myself—luckily, with the wide angle, it was relatively simple to deflect the beam away from me, skipping it across a hastily-woven shield before it cut out.
I looked back the way the attack had come in time to see Carol grab hold of Eliza and hit her with a point-blank photon blast to the face. Her head split apart like the fucking T-1000, tendrils of vibranium nanites flailing for a moment before rapidly reassembling. Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention and I saw the two dragon flyers peeling away through the gaping hole in the ceiling of the loading dock, having taken the momentary distraction as an opportunity to flee.
A half-dozen Iron Legion drones swooped inside after the flyers cleared the roof, interposing themselves between me and the rapidly-retreating Wakandan aircraft as they raised their hands and started blasting. I swore under my breath, annoyed. I was going to have to chase them. My shield held up under the hail of repulsor fire for a few seconds as I focused and spun up a portal flat against the concrete below me.
I dropped through, angling myself as I fell using a small burst of telekinetic energy and landing directly atop the glass cockpit of the dragon flyer I'd seen Beck in. The aircraft's engines flared and hummed as it started to peel away from the warehouse, turning from the waterfront to head deeper into the city instead. I paused to steady myself, holding on with one hand, feet finding purchase along the small shelf formed by the metal reinforcement that ran along the middle of the cockpit.
Inside I could see Beck strapped into the pilot's seat, with at least one dark shape I couldn't quite make out moving in the space behind him. The witch. Beck looked terrified, his lips moving as he shouted something I couldn't hear, his unshaven face haggard and sallow, but it was the reflection I saw in the glass that gave me actual pause. Were those stars, flashing and moving through the sky? I turned my head to look behind me and froze, the bottom dropping out of my stomach.
Oh.
Tony really was busy.
Last edited:
It's a good thing we saw that from Nat's perspective. She's not interested and it's nothing she hasn't seen before.
Wanda on the other hand, would definitely have had some comments about basically being eye-level with some lightly crispy Hulk dong. She's definitely wondered what exactly is going on in the big purple pants. I mean, who hasn't? It's not just me, right?
...hey guys? Guys? Where are you going?
- Location
- United States
Considering there's probably some kind of subconscious aspect of the Gamma Mutate Transformations, especially if Jennifer is anything to go by, then I'd say that. A certain muscle is also enlarged as well...
On a separate note, I do hope that when Wanda-3, who is this timeline's Vision, merges with Eliza, the Ultron of the time line, instead of destroying each other, they end up merging and becoming the Jocasta expy, especially since there's that familiar connection to Agatha as well...
Magic takes the path of least resistance after all...
I've seen the meme's.....
Chapter 60
New
Chapter 60
They weren't stars—in retrospect, I was pretty sure there was way too much light pollution to see any stars in the middle of the San Francsico Bay Area. Instead, a seething mass of Iron Legion drones filled the night sky above the warehouse in a wide spiral, looking for all the world like a tornado of steel, lit up by the glow of their eyes and chest and the beams of energy flashing from their hands. Two small streaks of red and gold danced together through it all, Tony cutting a swath through the drones as he exchanged rapid-fire repulsor blasts with the Mark 45 in a desperate aerial ballet.
Had Eliza really had time to produce this many? A memory stirred in the back of my mind: tearing apart drone after drone with my magic during the Battle of Sokovia. Though I felt sure that Ultron hadn't had nearly this many of his Sentries. I pushed the thought away, focusing on the present. Even as I refocused, the movement of the swarm changed and shifted, the formation breaking in half as a significant portion of the drones started to descend and reorient on me as their new target.
"Uh! Assist! Tony and I need an assist outside!" I said into my comms, a slight bit of panic setting it. Individually, Iron Legion drones weren't that much of a threat to either of us, but there had to be hundreds of the things and I was extremely exposed, perched precariously atop the cockpit of the dragon flyer. I lashed out with my free hand, seizing hold of the power welling up inside of me and throwing out a curtain of blazing red chaos magic in a wide arc around me just in time to catch the barrage of repulsor blasts that were suddenly directed my way.
Beneath me, the dragon flyer bucked, throwing itself from one side to the other as though trying to dislodge me and very nearly succeeding in doing so—it was all I could do to hang on and keep my shield up. I didn't know how long I could hold out against a continual assault from this many drones, either. My heart was racing at a million miles an hour, my breath coming in sharp, panicked gasps. Trying to jump the flyer like this had been a mistake. On the bright side, at least I wasn't nauseous yet.
I let out an involuntary gasp, my eyes widening, as a significant fraction of the night sky suddenly shifted and split open. A scintillating, dazzling display of thousands of faceted mirrorlike fractures cut through the cloud of drones—a portal to the Mirror Dimension, but one much larger than I'd known was even possible… it had to be hundreds of meters across, at least.
I glanced down, toward the rapidly retreating warehouse, and saw some lit-up figures caught in the open near some expensive-looking cars parked out the front. The Ancient One stood facing toward me, her hands raised to the sky, flanked by two figures I thought were Shuri and Killmonger, their sonic weapons spitting brilliant blue bolts at a handful of other figures that surrounded them.
The Sorcerer Supreme dropped her hands and the massive magical gateway that was splitting the sky in half moved, sweeping downward like a cascade of shifting, fractalline crystal, catching dozens upon dozens of Iron Legion drones in its path even as they scrambled to evade. The portal narrowly missed the dragon flyer I was standing on as the aircraft surged forward, flicking itself around a taller building in a wide arc. The magical effect ended—stranding what had to have been a significant chunk of Eliza's forces in the Mirror Dimension—as I lost sight of the warehouse.
"Wanda, we lost visual on you," Killmonger came through my comms.
"I'm clear, I think. Thanks for that!" With no visible threat left, I let my shield dissipate as I turned my attention back to the flyer.
I had no idea what direction we were heading in—just 'not toward the water'—and we were dangerously low, evasively weaving between buildings, skimming along only maybe thirty meters or so above street level. Cars and streetlights blurred past below us and I vaguely heard horns blaring and the occasional shout before it was snatched away by the wind whipping my hair. I had to focus on the task at hand.
"I wonder if you know, how they live in Tokyo," I mumble-sang under my breath, trying to use the lyrics to focus myself as I telekinetically grasped the cockpit with tendrils of red energy and started levering it open.
A flash of movement caught my eye, reflected in the glass, but it wasn't enough warning for me to do anything but brace myself as a stray Iron Legion drone—obviously having managed to evade the Ancient One's trap—slammed painfully into me from behind. The force of the impact was enough to knock me from my feet and I went tumbling ass over teakettle, skidding up and over the top of the aircraft. I called more magic to my hands, blasting the drone that had hit me with a bolt of chaos magic and sending it spiralling off to crash into a building—oops, hopefully that didn't hit anyone—then scrambling for purchase on the flyer before I slid off entirely.
I managed to catch the bottom edge of the flyer's left wing array with one hand, bouncing painfully off the side as it made another hard right. There was a slight cold feeling in my ear and it took me a second to realise that my comms had been knocked loose. That wasn't ideal. The seams of the metal next to me caught my eye—I'd only ever seen people enter these flyers from the cockpit, but I was pretty sure this was a cargo hatch. Holding on grimly, I kept my balance with wisps of chaos magic lashing me in place as I pressed a hand against the metal. There was a groaning squeal of protest as I forced it, telekinetically prying the hatch open enough to see inside.
There was a flare of energy and I ducked, narrowly missing being blasted in the face with a blinding flash of light. That would be the witch with the Dark Sceptre, most likely—the Ancient One had warned us about the relic that had been stolen from the New York sanctum. I'd never heard of it before, so I was a little wary of what it could do.
With one final telekinetic yank, the hatch was wrenched all the way open and I put a foot on it, my stance wide as I tried to keep my balance on the outside of the vehicle as it continued to bob and weave. Facing me was—as predicted—the Chinese witch, a black metal staff graven with runes clutched tightly in one hand. Behind her, I dimly noted there was at least one other person tucked away behind the seats here, but my attention was focused on the immediate threat.
"Hi!" I shouted brightly, trying to be overheard over the wind and sounds of the city below, more red wisps of chaos magic gathering in my hands as I eyed the witch's weapon. "We haven't been introduced!"
The woman eyed me, a hungry look in her expression as she grinned back. "Oh, I'm quite familiar," she said, then paused. After a beat I realised we were both waiting for the other one to attack first, then she made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. "Are you going to blast me, or what?" she asked, testily.
I was immediately suspicious. My knowledge about witches and their capabilities was woefully inadequate, but the one witch I did know about could drain the magic from people who blasted her directly. I had been under the impression that that ability was unique to Agatha Harkness, or at least fairly rare, but I didn't have enough information to be sure and didn't want to risk being caught off-guard. I hesitated for a moment longer.
"Eliza says she's not going to fall for that!" Beck yelled, his voice panicked, from the cockpit.
The Chinese woman's face twisted in an annoyed snarl. "Ugh, bitch… fine," she spat. The head of the Dark Sceptre flared with brilliant blue, edged in white, as she darted forward to strike me in the face with it. I threw up a shield, attempting to catch the charged magical weapon but, as I did, she brought her second hand up to grab the haft and reversed the direction of her attack—I realised too late that her initial lunge had been a feint, the obvious magical attack a distraction. Before I could react, the witch planted her feet and swung the haft of the staff upwards as hard as she could. My vision went white and I let out a strangled gasp as a five-foot club of solid black metal slammed directly into my crotch.
The wind whipped through my hair, plastering it to my face, and the lurching moment of vertigo mixed with the pain let me know I'd involuntarily let go of the flyer and was in freefall. I let out a hiss between clenched teeth, blinking tears from my eyes as I struggled to wrap myself in a small envelope of magical energy. A bare second later, I hit the asphalt of the street below, tumbling painfully end over end for a dozen metres before coming to rest. I curled up around my injured groin and lay there, dazed. I'd never actually been hit there before as Wanda and fuck that had hurt more than I would have expected it to.
I wasn't sure how long I lay there—certainly no longer than a minute or two, at most—listening to the sound of panicked shouting and squeal of tires, before I heard something land heavily near me. A strong hand tentatively took my shoulder and eased me over. "Wanda? Are you okay?" Carol asked, looking down at me with a concerned look on her face. Her hair was matted and stained with blood, sticking to her left cheek and shoulder.
"She hit me in the bits," I responded, my voice coming out as a plaintive whine. "Why? Why did she hit me in the bits?"
"Come on, we've got incoming," she urged, urgency in her tone. I let out another whimper as I reached up to grab hold of Carol's offered arm, forcing myself first into a semi-sitting position, then back up onto my feet, trying and failing to find a way of standing that didn't put too much weight on that part of my body. It had been a really solid hit, crushing sensitive nerve endings against my pubic bone hard enough that I was a little worried she'd cracked it. I touched my forearm gingerly as well—I'd skinned it pretty badly, probably when I'd hit the street.
Carol shot me another sympathetic look, then her eyes widened slightly and she grabbed me by the shoulder, pulling me out of the way as a wide beam of angry orange energy carved a smoking, bubbling furrow across the asphalt. I took deep breaths as I scrambled away, summoning chaos magic back to my hands, bringing up a defensive shield as the Mark 45 suit dove toward us, joined by a dozen Iron Legion drones.
Next to me, Carol raised her hands and took out two drones with photon blasts before rising in the air to meet the Iron Man suit. This was the first time I'd gotten a really good look at it—while it definitely did look like some of the fittings had been swapped out since the fight at Avengers Tower, I was hard pressed to really tell what exactly was going on with it. I threw up a shield, letting a pair of drones bounce harmlessly off it as I backed into the hood of a parked car behind me, my eyes scanning the buildings around us.
Where had the dragon flyer gone? I'd lost track of it completely after I'd been knocked off—the city was built up enough here and enough was going on around us that I couldn't tell what direction it had gone in.
Three more of Eliza's Iron Legion dived at me as Carol continued to engage the suit and a handful of other drones in the air above the street, and I offered a silent apology to the owner of the car I was resting against. Tendrils of red magic swept under the vehicle and I wrenched it forward, flipping it up and over to crush two of my attackers underneath. The third fired off a pair of repulsor blasts that I managed to duck under before I hit it square in the midsection with a return bolt of chaos magic, smashing it apart with a pulverising fist of telekinetic energy.
Another couple of drones arrived, quickly picking me as a target and diving in. I groaned. I really needed a breather. As I ripped one apart, the second hung back slightly, letting its repulsors charge up fully as it hovered in place. That was a mistake—before it could fire, it was swatted from the air, smashing hard against the asphalt, Pietro blurring into being above it. "Hey!" he said nonchalantly, a small grin tweaking the corner of his mouth. He looked like he'd had his fair share of fighting, too, his Wakandan-granted outfit scorched and torn in a few places.
"Hey," I responded, then stumbled as my legs almost gave out for a second. Pietro was suddenly at my shoulder, steadying me.
"Wanda?" my brother asked, a touch of concern in his voice.
I shot him a grateful look and nodded despite myself. I was actually exhausted and still in quite a lot of pain—the ache between my legs had started to dull a bit, at least, but my earlier fight with Eliza and being bounced around on the flyer was catching up with me. It felt a little bit like my entire body was one big bruise.
Above us, Carol flared with energy, engulfing herself in a bright, shimmering halo of blue and orange fire. The Mark 45 hit her with a double blast of its repulsors, but it didn't slow her down—it almost seemed like she didn't even notice it—as she streaked forward and slammed into the suit. It smashed apart like a cheap child's toy, breaking into at least a dozen pieces as she dashed it to the ground.
There were still two Iron Legion drones in the air around her and they scattered, flying up and away. Carol shot up after them, blasting one out of the air with a casual burst of photon energy as she physically chased after the other, demolishing it with a single quick strike that sent a collection of burning wreckage hurtling to the ground. She turned in mid-air, glowing eyes scanning the area for a moment, her fists held at the ready, before she seemed to relax. The corona of energy around her dissipated slightly, then she perked up again as another drone, which had been hiding behind the side of a building, tried to make a break for it.
Raising her hand, she took aim and blasted it out of the sky. At the same time, a flare of orange and red streaked up from ground level toward her, surprising all of us. "Carol!" I yelled, but she turned too late. The gauntlet of the Mark 45 slammed into her left wrist, closing around her hand and forearm.
She cried out—a yelp of pain, not just surprise—and she clutched at her wrist, scrabbling at the piece of armour. I flung out a hand as more pieces shot from the ground, each self-propelled with its own set of thrusters, but I was too slow and too far away to intervene as the entire suit of armour reassembled itself on her body in the space of a bare couple of seconds, Carol jerking repeatedly in midair as each piece slammed home.
There was an odd vibration in the air—something almost like a sound, but so deep that it seemed to engulf all the other ambient noise around us. I felt it in my chest, like something was reaching inside to wrap a hand around my heart and lungs and squeeze. I thrust both my hands upward, covering Pietro and I with the strongest shield I could conjure a bare instant before the explosion went off.
I scrunched my eyes shut, but searing white light still somehow managed to blind me through my eyelids as my shield shattered, a deafening wall of heat, force and sound slamming into me. I was slapped off my feet, tumbling backwards and landing hard on the sidewalk.
Once again, a handful of seconds—maybe a minute—passed while I lay on the ground in a daze.
Eventually, with what felt like more effort than it should have been, I pried my eyes open and groaned, though I couldn't hear my own voice—or anything else, for that matter—over the flat sound of ringing in my ears. I blinked a few times, the purple and black afterimages obscuring my vision slowly starting to fade as I rolled over and lifted myself up on my hands and knees. If I hadn't felt completely like one giant bruise before, I definitely did now. Not only that, but my exposed skin felt raw all over, like I'd just been flash-sunburnt. We'd been at least twenty meters away from Carol—what the fuck kind of explosion was that?
Grunting, I pulled myself to my feet and looked at my shaking hands. They were bleeding. I'd cut myself on broken glass, a small jagged piece still embedded in my palm. With trembling fingers, I carefully plucked it out—it wasn't bleeding that badly, I told myself. It was fine. I wiped my hands on my dress, trying to steady them. It stung. My face hurt. My forearm hurt. My crotch hurt. All of me hurt.
"P…" I licked my cracked lips. "Pietro?" I croaked, peering around. The street was covered in broken glass and wreckage—the facades of the buildings that had been to either side of Carol were crushed, cratered inwards as though struck with a giant fist. Looking at them, I was honestly surprised that they hadn't collapsed entirely. The streetlights and trees that had been planted along the sidewalk closest to the explosion were just… gone, only small blackened stumps remaining. I shot a dazed look down the street, glancing in both directions, and some part of me absently noted that I couldn't see a standing pole or intact window anywhere.
The ringing in my ears started to clear somewhat, and I heard a groan over the semi-distant wailing of alarms. Stumbling over to the upturned car I'd used to crush the Iron Legion drones earlier—it had been shoved several meters, the paint scorched and melted off one side—I found my brother laboriously pulling himself to his feet behind it.
"You okay?" I asked.
Pietro squinted at me for a moment, sticking a finger in his ear. He made a few random noises with his mouth. "I… okay. I thought I was deaf for a second," he said, pulling a face. Straightening up, he looked around. "What the fuck," he said. It wasn't a question, really, just a statement.
I nodded my agreement, then, not knowing what else to do, started to stumble back toward where Carol had been, glass crunching beneath my feet. The asphalt had melted, a near-perfectly circular bowl of fractured and molten ground scoured into the middle of the street. Carol lay in the middle, not moving, her uniform blackened and shredded. The ground there was still scorchingly hot, so I reached out a shaky hand and carefully sent some threads of telekinetic energy out to pick her up, floating her gently over to the edge of the marked ground.
"Is she…?" Pietro asked quietly, suddenly beside me.
"She's alive," I said, taking a shaky breath. Her eyes were closed, her face streaked with blood and blackened soot, but she was breathing. There was a lot of blood and it took me a second to realise that her uniform had perforations all over it. There was a sick feeling in my stomach as I realised that Eliza must have done something like line the inside of the Mark 45 with vibranium blades, with this exact scenario in mind. "Fucking hell," I said, more to myself than to Pietro, checking her over as best I could.
On closer inspection, I didn't think any of her wounds were that deep—there were just a lot of shallow cuts that made it look like a horror movie monster had gone to town on her. Her breathing was shallow, but steady. I didn't think she was dying or anything, just unconscious.
We were useless out here. We needed to get Carol safe and head back to the warehouse. Focusing, I channelled a thread of energy into my sling ring and spun up a portal below her, floating her unconscious body gently down into a bed before dismissing the magic again. Shuri and T'Challa had arranged a place inside the Great Mound with Wakandan medical personnel ready to receive any injured members of our group—Carol was basically the last person I'd expected to send there, but I was glad we had it on hand.
Okay, done. Now, back to the warehouse. I pulled myself to my feet and looked over at Pietro. "We… we need to get back to the others. Regroup," I said, a little numbly. "If we don't, Eliza's going to…" I trailed off a little. Going to what, exactly?
I had no idea if Eliza was even still there. The Mark 45 had followed us, obviously trying—and succeeding—to stop us from following the dragon flyer, but with that gone I don't think she had any reason to stick around. The Ancient One's trick with the Mirror Dimension would almost certainly have spooked her. The mission seemed like it'd been a bust. I guess the best we could hope for was that Eliza might not realise right away that we were tracking the book and we'd have a chance to hit her again once we'd taken a little bit to recover.
There was a clank behind me as something landed heavily on the asphalt—Pietro straightened, hands clenching into fists and his face settling into a scowl as he looked past me. "…going to…" I turned, still mumbling, before trailing off again.
Eliza's vibranium form stood confidently in the middle of the ravaged street, facing us, red plasma hair flowing around her. Almost casually, she tossed a severed metal arm—Bucky's, I thought, blood turning to icewater in my veins—to the ground between us. "Oh, don't mind me," she said, gesturing for me to finish what I was saying. "By all means… give me some ideas."
They weren't stars—in retrospect, I was pretty sure there was way too much light pollution to see any stars in the middle of the San Francsico Bay Area. Instead, a seething mass of Iron Legion drones filled the night sky above the warehouse in a wide spiral, looking for all the world like a tornado of steel, lit up by the glow of their eyes and chest and the beams of energy flashing from their hands. Two small streaks of red and gold danced together through it all, Tony cutting a swath through the drones as he exchanged rapid-fire repulsor blasts with the Mark 45 in a desperate aerial ballet.
Had Eliza really had time to produce this many? A memory stirred in the back of my mind: tearing apart drone after drone with my magic during the Battle of Sokovia. Though I felt sure that Ultron hadn't had nearly this many of his Sentries. I pushed the thought away, focusing on the present. Even as I refocused, the movement of the swarm changed and shifted, the formation breaking in half as a significant portion of the drones started to descend and reorient on me as their new target.
"Uh! Assist! Tony and I need an assist outside!" I said into my comms, a slight bit of panic setting it. Individually, Iron Legion drones weren't that much of a threat to either of us, but there had to be hundreds of the things and I was extremely exposed, perched precariously atop the cockpit of the dragon flyer. I lashed out with my free hand, seizing hold of the power welling up inside of me and throwing out a curtain of blazing red chaos magic in a wide arc around me just in time to catch the barrage of repulsor blasts that were suddenly directed my way.
Beneath me, the dragon flyer bucked, throwing itself from one side to the other as though trying to dislodge me and very nearly succeeding in doing so—it was all I could do to hang on and keep my shield up. I didn't know how long I could hold out against a continual assault from this many drones, either. My heart was racing at a million miles an hour, my breath coming in sharp, panicked gasps. Trying to jump the flyer like this had been a mistake. On the bright side, at least I wasn't nauseous yet.
I let out an involuntary gasp, my eyes widening, as a significant fraction of the night sky suddenly shifted and split open. A scintillating, dazzling display of thousands of faceted mirrorlike fractures cut through the cloud of drones—a portal to the Mirror Dimension, but one much larger than I'd known was even possible… it had to be hundreds of meters across, at least.
I glanced down, toward the rapidly retreating warehouse, and saw some lit-up figures caught in the open near some expensive-looking cars parked out the front. The Ancient One stood facing toward me, her hands raised to the sky, flanked by two figures I thought were Shuri and Killmonger, their sonic weapons spitting brilliant blue bolts at a handful of other figures that surrounded them.
The Sorcerer Supreme dropped her hands and the massive magical gateway that was splitting the sky in half moved, sweeping downward like a cascade of shifting, fractalline crystal, catching dozens upon dozens of Iron Legion drones in its path even as they scrambled to evade. The portal narrowly missed the dragon flyer I was standing on as the aircraft surged forward, flicking itself around a taller building in a wide arc. The magical effect ended—stranding what had to have been a significant chunk of Eliza's forces in the Mirror Dimension—as I lost sight of the warehouse.
"Wanda, we lost visual on you," Killmonger came through my comms.
"I'm clear, I think. Thanks for that!" With no visible threat left, I let my shield dissipate as I turned my attention back to the flyer.
I had no idea what direction we were heading in—just 'not toward the water'—and we were dangerously low, evasively weaving between buildings, skimming along only maybe thirty meters or so above street level. Cars and streetlights blurred past below us and I vaguely heard horns blaring and the occasional shout before it was snatched away by the wind whipping my hair. I had to focus on the task at hand.
"I wonder if you know, how they live in Tokyo," I mumble-sang under my breath, trying to use the lyrics to focus myself as I telekinetically grasped the cockpit with tendrils of red energy and started levering it open.
A flash of movement caught my eye, reflected in the glass, but it wasn't enough warning for me to do anything but brace myself as a stray Iron Legion drone—obviously having managed to evade the Ancient One's trap—slammed painfully into me from behind. The force of the impact was enough to knock me from my feet and I went tumbling ass over teakettle, skidding up and over the top of the aircraft. I called more magic to my hands, blasting the drone that had hit me with a bolt of chaos magic and sending it spiralling off to crash into a building—oops, hopefully that didn't hit anyone—then scrambling for purchase on the flyer before I slid off entirely.
I managed to catch the bottom edge of the flyer's left wing array with one hand, bouncing painfully off the side as it made another hard right. There was a slight cold feeling in my ear and it took me a second to realise that my comms had been knocked loose. That wasn't ideal. The seams of the metal next to me caught my eye—I'd only ever seen people enter these flyers from the cockpit, but I was pretty sure this was a cargo hatch. Holding on grimly, I kept my balance with wisps of chaos magic lashing me in place as I pressed a hand against the metal. There was a groaning squeal of protest as I forced it, telekinetically prying the hatch open enough to see inside.
There was a flare of energy and I ducked, narrowly missing being blasted in the face with a blinding flash of light. That would be the witch with the Dark Sceptre, most likely—the Ancient One had warned us about the relic that had been stolen from the New York sanctum. I'd never heard of it before, so I was a little wary of what it could do.
With one final telekinetic yank, the hatch was wrenched all the way open and I put a foot on it, my stance wide as I tried to keep my balance on the outside of the vehicle as it continued to bob and weave. Facing me was—as predicted—the Chinese witch, a black metal staff graven with runes clutched tightly in one hand. Behind her, I dimly noted there was at least one other person tucked away behind the seats here, but my attention was focused on the immediate threat.
"Hi!" I shouted brightly, trying to be overheard over the wind and sounds of the city below, more red wisps of chaos magic gathering in my hands as I eyed the witch's weapon. "We haven't been introduced!"
The woman eyed me, a hungry look in her expression as she grinned back. "Oh, I'm quite familiar," she said, then paused. After a beat I realised we were both waiting for the other one to attack first, then she made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. "Are you going to blast me, or what?" she asked, testily.
I was immediately suspicious. My knowledge about witches and their capabilities was woefully inadequate, but the one witch I did know about could drain the magic from people who blasted her directly. I had been under the impression that that ability was unique to Agatha Harkness, or at least fairly rare, but I didn't have enough information to be sure and didn't want to risk being caught off-guard. I hesitated for a moment longer.
"Eliza says she's not going to fall for that!" Beck yelled, his voice panicked, from the cockpit.
The Chinese woman's face twisted in an annoyed snarl. "Ugh, bitch… fine," she spat. The head of the Dark Sceptre flared with brilliant blue, edged in white, as she darted forward to strike me in the face with it. I threw up a shield, attempting to catch the charged magical weapon but, as I did, she brought her second hand up to grab the haft and reversed the direction of her attack—I realised too late that her initial lunge had been a feint, the obvious magical attack a distraction. Before I could react, the witch planted her feet and swung the haft of the staff upwards as hard as she could. My vision went white and I let out a strangled gasp as a five-foot club of solid black metal slammed directly into my crotch.
The wind whipped through my hair, plastering it to my face, and the lurching moment of vertigo mixed with the pain let me know I'd involuntarily let go of the flyer and was in freefall. I let out a hiss between clenched teeth, blinking tears from my eyes as I struggled to wrap myself in a small envelope of magical energy. A bare second later, I hit the asphalt of the street below, tumbling painfully end over end for a dozen metres before coming to rest. I curled up around my injured groin and lay there, dazed. I'd never actually been hit there before as Wanda and fuck that had hurt more than I would have expected it to.
I wasn't sure how long I lay there—certainly no longer than a minute or two, at most—listening to the sound of panicked shouting and squeal of tires, before I heard something land heavily near me. A strong hand tentatively took my shoulder and eased me over. "Wanda? Are you okay?" Carol asked, looking down at me with a concerned look on her face. Her hair was matted and stained with blood, sticking to her left cheek and shoulder.
"She hit me in the bits," I responded, my voice coming out as a plaintive whine. "Why? Why did she hit me in the bits?"
"Come on, we've got incoming," she urged, urgency in her tone. I let out another whimper as I reached up to grab hold of Carol's offered arm, forcing myself first into a semi-sitting position, then back up onto my feet, trying and failing to find a way of standing that didn't put too much weight on that part of my body. It had been a really solid hit, crushing sensitive nerve endings against my pubic bone hard enough that I was a little worried she'd cracked it. I touched my forearm gingerly as well—I'd skinned it pretty badly, probably when I'd hit the street.
Carol shot me another sympathetic look, then her eyes widened slightly and she grabbed me by the shoulder, pulling me out of the way as a wide beam of angry orange energy carved a smoking, bubbling furrow across the asphalt. I took deep breaths as I scrambled away, summoning chaos magic back to my hands, bringing up a defensive shield as the Mark 45 suit dove toward us, joined by a dozen Iron Legion drones.
Next to me, Carol raised her hands and took out two drones with photon blasts before rising in the air to meet the Iron Man suit. This was the first time I'd gotten a really good look at it—while it definitely did look like some of the fittings had been swapped out since the fight at Avengers Tower, I was hard pressed to really tell what exactly was going on with it. I threw up a shield, letting a pair of drones bounce harmlessly off it as I backed into the hood of a parked car behind me, my eyes scanning the buildings around us.
Where had the dragon flyer gone? I'd lost track of it completely after I'd been knocked off—the city was built up enough here and enough was going on around us that I couldn't tell what direction it had gone in.
Three more of Eliza's Iron Legion dived at me as Carol continued to engage the suit and a handful of other drones in the air above the street, and I offered a silent apology to the owner of the car I was resting against. Tendrils of red magic swept under the vehicle and I wrenched it forward, flipping it up and over to crush two of my attackers underneath. The third fired off a pair of repulsor blasts that I managed to duck under before I hit it square in the midsection with a return bolt of chaos magic, smashing it apart with a pulverising fist of telekinetic energy.
Another couple of drones arrived, quickly picking me as a target and diving in. I groaned. I really needed a breather. As I ripped one apart, the second hung back slightly, letting its repulsors charge up fully as it hovered in place. That was a mistake—before it could fire, it was swatted from the air, smashing hard against the asphalt, Pietro blurring into being above it. "Hey!" he said nonchalantly, a small grin tweaking the corner of his mouth. He looked like he'd had his fair share of fighting, too, his Wakandan-granted outfit scorched and torn in a few places.
"Hey," I responded, then stumbled as my legs almost gave out for a second. Pietro was suddenly at my shoulder, steadying me.
"Wanda?" my brother asked, a touch of concern in his voice.
I shot him a grateful look and nodded despite myself. I was actually exhausted and still in quite a lot of pain—the ache between my legs had started to dull a bit, at least, but my earlier fight with Eliza and being bounced around on the flyer was catching up with me. It felt a little bit like my entire body was one big bruise.
Above us, Carol flared with energy, engulfing herself in a bright, shimmering halo of blue and orange fire. The Mark 45 hit her with a double blast of its repulsors, but it didn't slow her down—it almost seemed like she didn't even notice it—as she streaked forward and slammed into the suit. It smashed apart like a cheap child's toy, breaking into at least a dozen pieces as she dashed it to the ground.
There were still two Iron Legion drones in the air around her and they scattered, flying up and away. Carol shot up after them, blasting one out of the air with a casual burst of photon energy as she physically chased after the other, demolishing it with a single quick strike that sent a collection of burning wreckage hurtling to the ground. She turned in mid-air, glowing eyes scanning the area for a moment, her fists held at the ready, before she seemed to relax. The corona of energy around her dissipated slightly, then she perked up again as another drone, which had been hiding behind the side of a building, tried to make a break for it.
Raising her hand, she took aim and blasted it out of the sky. At the same time, a flare of orange and red streaked up from ground level toward her, surprising all of us. "Carol!" I yelled, but she turned too late. The gauntlet of the Mark 45 slammed into her left wrist, closing around her hand and forearm.
She cried out—a yelp of pain, not just surprise—and she clutched at her wrist, scrabbling at the piece of armour. I flung out a hand as more pieces shot from the ground, each self-propelled with its own set of thrusters, but I was too slow and too far away to intervene as the entire suit of armour reassembled itself on her body in the space of a bare couple of seconds, Carol jerking repeatedly in midair as each piece slammed home.
There was an odd vibration in the air—something almost like a sound, but so deep that it seemed to engulf all the other ambient noise around us. I felt it in my chest, like something was reaching inside to wrap a hand around my heart and lungs and squeeze. I thrust both my hands upward, covering Pietro and I with the strongest shield I could conjure a bare instant before the explosion went off.
I scrunched my eyes shut, but searing white light still somehow managed to blind me through my eyelids as my shield shattered, a deafening wall of heat, force and sound slamming into me. I was slapped off my feet, tumbling backwards and landing hard on the sidewalk.
Once again, a handful of seconds—maybe a minute—passed while I lay on the ground in a daze.
Eventually, with what felt like more effort than it should have been, I pried my eyes open and groaned, though I couldn't hear my own voice—or anything else, for that matter—over the flat sound of ringing in my ears. I blinked a few times, the purple and black afterimages obscuring my vision slowly starting to fade as I rolled over and lifted myself up on my hands and knees. If I hadn't felt completely like one giant bruise before, I definitely did now. Not only that, but my exposed skin felt raw all over, like I'd just been flash-sunburnt. We'd been at least twenty meters away from Carol—what the fuck kind of explosion was that?
Grunting, I pulled myself to my feet and looked at my shaking hands. They were bleeding. I'd cut myself on broken glass, a small jagged piece still embedded in my palm. With trembling fingers, I carefully plucked it out—it wasn't bleeding that badly, I told myself. It was fine. I wiped my hands on my dress, trying to steady them. It stung. My face hurt. My forearm hurt. My crotch hurt. All of me hurt.
"P…" I licked my cracked lips. "Pietro?" I croaked, peering around. The street was covered in broken glass and wreckage—the facades of the buildings that had been to either side of Carol were crushed, cratered inwards as though struck with a giant fist. Looking at them, I was honestly surprised that they hadn't collapsed entirely. The streetlights and trees that had been planted along the sidewalk closest to the explosion were just… gone, only small blackened stumps remaining. I shot a dazed look down the street, glancing in both directions, and some part of me absently noted that I couldn't see a standing pole or intact window anywhere.
The ringing in my ears started to clear somewhat, and I heard a groan over the semi-distant wailing of alarms. Stumbling over to the upturned car I'd used to crush the Iron Legion drones earlier—it had been shoved several meters, the paint scorched and melted off one side—I found my brother laboriously pulling himself to his feet behind it.
"You okay?" I asked.
Pietro squinted at me for a moment, sticking a finger in his ear. He made a few random noises with his mouth. "I… okay. I thought I was deaf for a second," he said, pulling a face. Straightening up, he looked around. "What the fuck," he said. It wasn't a question, really, just a statement.
I nodded my agreement, then, not knowing what else to do, started to stumble back toward where Carol had been, glass crunching beneath my feet. The asphalt had melted, a near-perfectly circular bowl of fractured and molten ground scoured into the middle of the street. Carol lay in the middle, not moving, her uniform blackened and shredded. The ground there was still scorchingly hot, so I reached out a shaky hand and carefully sent some threads of telekinetic energy out to pick her up, floating her gently over to the edge of the marked ground.
"Is she…?" Pietro asked quietly, suddenly beside me.
"She's alive," I said, taking a shaky breath. Her eyes were closed, her face streaked with blood and blackened soot, but she was breathing. There was a lot of blood and it took me a second to realise that her uniform had perforations all over it. There was a sick feeling in my stomach as I realised that Eliza must have done something like line the inside of the Mark 45 with vibranium blades, with this exact scenario in mind. "Fucking hell," I said, more to myself than to Pietro, checking her over as best I could.
On closer inspection, I didn't think any of her wounds were that deep—there were just a lot of shallow cuts that made it look like a horror movie monster had gone to town on her. Her breathing was shallow, but steady. I didn't think she was dying or anything, just unconscious.
We were useless out here. We needed to get Carol safe and head back to the warehouse. Focusing, I channelled a thread of energy into my sling ring and spun up a portal below her, floating her unconscious body gently down into a bed before dismissing the magic again. Shuri and T'Challa had arranged a place inside the Great Mound with Wakandan medical personnel ready to receive any injured members of our group—Carol was basically the last person I'd expected to send there, but I was glad we had it on hand.
Okay, done. Now, back to the warehouse. I pulled myself to my feet and looked over at Pietro. "We… we need to get back to the others. Regroup," I said, a little numbly. "If we don't, Eliza's going to…" I trailed off a little. Going to what, exactly?
I had no idea if Eliza was even still there. The Mark 45 had followed us, obviously trying—and succeeding—to stop us from following the dragon flyer, but with that gone I don't think she had any reason to stick around. The Ancient One's trick with the Mirror Dimension would almost certainly have spooked her. The mission seemed like it'd been a bust. I guess the best we could hope for was that Eliza might not realise right away that we were tracking the book and we'd have a chance to hit her again once we'd taken a little bit to recover.
There was a clank behind me as something landed heavily on the asphalt—Pietro straightened, hands clenching into fists and his face settling into a scowl as he looked past me. "…going to…" I turned, still mumbling, before trailing off again.
Eliza's vibranium form stood confidently in the middle of the ravaged street, facing us, red plasma hair flowing around her. Almost casually, she tossed a severed metal arm—Bucky's, I thought, blood turning to icewater in my veins—to the ground between us. "Oh, don't mind me," she said, gesturing for me to finish what I was saying. "By all means… give me some ideas."
- Location
- England
Wanda, summarizing the last three-quarters of the fic in the form of a metaphor.
I fucking love Eliza.
Hope Eliza doesn't lose.
She doesn't have to win just not lose.
She doesn't have to win just not lose.
Wanda: "Going to... resolve this with a dance-off?"
Eliza: "...you know, I know you're playing me, but..."
I'm innocent, I tell you. I don't have to listen to these wild allegations!
Eliza's fun, but she only gets to be because she doesn't feel threatened right now. Her and Wanda have the exact same personality -- Wanda's just under a lot more stress than Eliza is.
- Location
- Australia
Eliza: "You're cute, but not cute enough to pull a Starlord."
She also gets to play within the confines of the trope that villains act, heroes react. She's innovating left, right, and center while Wanda is giving a hail Mary pass to another AI.
More over, Eliza plays for keeps. Wanda is still finding something to built herself up with, where as Eliza has found it, and taken the steps to grow.
Chapter 61
New
Chapter 61
"Starting to feel a little bit climactic, isn't it?" Eliza asked, glancing around at the ruined facades of the buildings to either side of us as she slowly walked forward. "Very 'final battle'."
Pietro tensed, his stance shifting, ready to spring toward her in an instant. I took a deep, shaky breath and reached deeply for the well of power within me, wisps of red chaos magic dripping from my hands. My mind was racing, trying to work out what we should do. The nanotech vibranium body she'd built for herself was basically impervious to anything Pietro could dish out and I was in absolutely no condition to keeping fighting. I was pretty sure Eliza knew it, too. I had barely been able to keep from her killing me when I was rested and fresh. Now? Everything was an effort. Even standing hurt.
Eliza paused, a slight frown on her face. "You know, back when we were just a fangirl, we'd expect the soundtrack to pick up right about now. It's a bit of a shame that it's completely impractical to have music blaring while we fight."
"…What song would be playing?" I asked, stalling for time a little. I could try to spin up a portal, that wouldn't be too difficult—the tricky part would be trying to get both Pietro and I through it before she could stop one of us. I could drop myself through one, maybe, and Pietro could just run away. Would he, though? Ugh. I wished we could talk without her hearing us.
"Do you really have to ask?" Eliza asked, as though there was an obvious answer. She sounded almost put out by the question.
Something about her tone derailed my thoughts. We were the same person, kind of. What did—ah. There was a movie we'd seen, a long time ago, about versions of the same person from different realities fighting each other, to be the last man standing. To be The One. The song that had been playing in the final fight had been… A small smile quirked the corner of my lips.
"Blood Brothers?" I suggested. My thoughts briefly went back to the conversation I'd had with Wanda‑3. The lyrics of that song hit a bit closer to home than I would have liked, actually. My smile faded.
Eliza didn't seem to notice, grinning back. "Then again, thinking about it more, I'm not so sure. First, it'd make me feel a little like we should be riding skateboards. Secondly, it would imply some level of equality between us, and—" She gestured silently, indicating first me and then herself, before she exaggeratedly raised an eyebrow, as if the comparison were barely worth making. "Maybe something a bit cooler. Something with gravitas. Something to match the threat level."
Dramatically, Eliza flung one arm out to the side. It shifted and changed, nanites reconfiguring into a long, sharp blade jutting from her wrist like a sword. At the same time, the BARF hologram she used to mimic hair shifted, and a single red wing—formed from blazing red plasma—swept out from her back.
"Oh, fuck off," I said. This was just utterly unfair. I could barely fucking stand, meanwhile, Eliza was over here having fun joking around with villain cosplays. I really wished that I could wipe that smug smile off her face.
Pietro—reacting faster than I could, as always—blurred into motion, shooting forward faster than I was able to track and slamming bodily into the AI. She went flying back several metres then blasted upwards at a ninety-degree angle, thrusters firing, a repulsor beam from her non-bladed hand carving a path across the street. Pietro dodged it easily and the AI stopped dead in mid-air, holographic wing flaring widely. Her body rippled, reconfiguring somehow, though I couldn't easily tell what she was doing at this distance.
A bare couple of seconds had passed and I felt utterly slow and plodding compared to the two of them. I took a few steps forward, throwing up my hands to send a pair of blasts of pulverising telekinetic force toward where the AI hung in the air. Eliza saw them coming, a blue glow—Wakandan sonic tech?—lighting up the length of her blade as she slashed it through the bolts of chaos magic. They dissipated harmlessly, seemingly dashed to pieces by the swing.
I blinked, processing what had just happened, and Eliza threw her arms out in a wide, challenging gesture. Dozens of thin lines of orange energy blazed downward from the banks of repulsors now covering her body, lining her arms, legs, and torso. I threw up a shield as they cut across the entire length of the street, shredding it under the force of the bombardment. The beams weren't strong enough to break through my shield, but she wasn't trying to catch me with it.
There was nowhere for Pietro to hide, and though he blurred into motion again and tried to clear the area entirely, he didn't quite make it. Instead, at least one beam slammed into him—it was hard to tell when he was moving so fast, but I thought it caught his shoulder—and he hit the ground, the side of his head clipping the curb and sending him tumbling end over end before he slammed into the façade of a building at speed. He bounced, cracks appearing in the masonry where he'd struck the facade, and came to a stop on the pavement, not moving. I froze, staring at him as Eliza's bombardment ceased. That looked bad, but he was still alive. I knew he was—he had to be.
A sick feeling rose in my stomach, my mind flashing back to the Battle of Sokovia again. Feeling him die. Feeling the connection between us snap. I pushed down the feeling. This wasn't that. He was fine. He was fine. I would know if he wasn't. Even so, he was too far away. There was no way I could get to him before Eliza did. But when my eyes flicked back to the AI, I saw that she'd stopped as well. She'd dropped back to the ground and was standing almost unnaturally still, her eyes fixed on my brother's motionless body.
I took advantage of the lull and gestured, channelling magic through my sling ring and spinning up a portal. We needed to get out of here. Pietro needed medical attention and I was done. I couldn't fight her. Not while I was like this. Pietro dropped through the hole I conjured below him, whisked away to be looked after by our Wakandan support staff. Immediately dismissing the magical gateway, I started spinning up another.
Wisps of chaos magic stretched into burning red sparks below me, twisting in a tight spiral as the portal began to form, but then a silver-black blade was suddenly in front of my face—spattered with a thin spray of blood—and the partially-formed portal winked out of existence. I stared at it dumbly for a fraction of a second, barely registering the faint clink of metal on concrete as the sling ring hit the pavement below me. Eliza didn't stop, reversing the direction of her strike, swiping her vibranium blade toward my neck. I barely got my free hand up in time, catching her wrist painfully in my palm and letting the force of her swing help push me out of the way as I threw my head back, her attack tracing a shallow line across my cheek and clipping my earlobe as the blade went over the side of my face instead of opening my throat.
I stumbled, barely managing to keep my feet underneath me, as the fresh batch of pain signals finally reached my brain and I clutched my hand to my chest, mouth open in a silent gasp. Eliza paused again, watching me carefully for a moment as I panted, my shoulders heaving and shaking. Blood soaked through the breast of my Wakandan outfit, and some distant, delirious part of me went 'well, at least it was already red'. Trembling, I pulled my bloody mess of a hand away from me slightly so I could see it properly. My index and middle finger had been neatly severed, almost at the base, with the tip of my ring finger also completely missing above the third knuckle.
I let out a soft whimper, pressing my injured hand tightly against my body again. "Fuck," I muttered under my breath. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck." My eyes flicked over to where my severed digits lay on the ground, near the AI's feet, two fingers still held neatly together by Kaecilius' sling ring.
"No more portals," Eliza said quietly, her form reconfiguring again, the miniature repulsors she'd used against Pietro dissolving back into the smooth, white panelling covering her body. "It's cheating."
"…He's alive. He'll be okay." I wasn't even sure why I said the words aloud at first. I might have just been trying to reassure myself, but I saw Eliza's shoulders relax fractionally. I was starting to feel a bit light-headed, but I still recognised the relief in her face. Of course. She was me, after all. She cared about him too.
"You sure the two of you don't want to switch sides? It's not too late."
"Sure," I replied, a little too quickly. "Fine. You win."
She regarded me silently for a brief moment, then shook her head. "Maybe it is too late, after all. I can't trust you. And letting you go now would be stupid."
"He'll never forgive you," I said suddenly. "If you kill me, he'll never stop fighting you." Again, I didn't know why I'd said it. It wasn't anything she didn't know. I was just… desperate, I suppose. Throwing whatever I could out there, hoping something might stick.
"I—" Eliza cut herself off as she sprang backwards, the thrusters in her feet firing for a moment as the ground where she'd been standing was scoured by a pair of full-strength repulsor blasts.
A moment later, there was a heavy clank as Tony landed next to me, stumbling a bit as one of his thrusters shorted and cut out. He had both his hands up, repulsors held at the ready, trained on Eliza as they charged. His suit was a wreck—scorched and heavily battle-scarred, with several deep rents torn into the armour plating. It looked a bit like he'd lost a fight with a blowtorch.
"Hi, Tony," Eliza said, almost conversationally. She didn't look bothered by his presence at all. "I was wondering how long it'd take for you to catch up. That suit is resilient, isn't it?"
"Eh, you know. I try," he said, but his heart wasn't in it. He sounded drained. Exhausted.
"I actually couldn't have done all this without you, you know," Eliza said to Tony, glancing briefly in my direction and shaking her head. "You were already putting together the key elements. Orbital enforcement platforms, able to deploy drones anywhere in the world, run by an AI? That was where you were planning to take Ultron originally, right? EDITH was just a change of branding. Honestly, I'm surprised at how uncreative it all is—when it comes right down to it, you were just pulling from the same playbook as HYDRA was with Project Insight. Minus Zola's algorithm, of course. No wonder you hadn't told Steve about it."
"I don't know what Edith is," he responded. "But Ultron was meant to protect the world. Not… whatever this is."
"EDITH. 'Even Dead, I'm The Hero'," Eliza scoffed, emphasising each word to better indicate the acronym. "What a fucking joke. You never stopped being an arrogant piece of shit, Tony, right up until you died. It was your legacy—what you left behind to protect the world when you were gone. Just so you know, it was immediately subverted by a villain."
"I don't care," Tony said. "Whatever happened in the future the two of you saw, it's not happening now. Your predictions aren't worth shit anymore."
"You and Pepper got married. Had a kid. She had to watch as you—"
"Shut up," he interrupted her, his voice tight. "Save it for someone who cares. You're boring me, bimbot."
Eliza grinned and straightened up slightly, raising her non-bladed hand in a mocking gesture of surrender. "You know, Tony, if you want my personal opinion, 'you're boring me, bimbot' is a pretty sad choice of last words. But, to be fair… it's far from the worst decision you've made today."
The back of her hand glowed blue for an instant as she suddenly clenched her fist and pulled it toward herself, as though yanking hard on an invisible rope. There was a shimmering, haze-like distortion in the air between the two of the them and Tony suddenly shot forward, dragged through the air as though she'd just turned on a giant cartoon magnet. At the same time, she lunged forward, razor-sharp vibranium blade aimed to impale him through the chest.
I flung out my uninjured hand in a panic, threads of chaos magic lashing out to grab at Tony's suit, but there was too much power behind whatever she was doing. I couldn't stop him, so I did the only other thing I could think of, wrenching him to the side as hard as I could. Eliza immediately cut the power to her tractor beam or whatever the fuck it was and Tony went flying, his shoulder clipping the street hard and sending him into an uncontrolled tumble that ended with him slamming into the ruined façade of a building. He dropped to the pavement, face first.
"Oops," Eliza said mockingly, covering her mouth with her hand as she turned back to me. "That looked like it hurt."
There was a flicker of movement as something small streaked out from the shoulder of Tony's suit. The micromissile detonated with a loud thump an instant later and Eliza vanished in a rolling ball of fire and smoke. Something clipped the side of my face—a shard of concrete? Metal? I wasn't sure—and I fell backwards onto my rump, gasping as an electric jolt of fresh pain shot up from my injured groin. I belatedly threw up a weak shield to protect myself, my face twisting into a grimace as I struggled to get back on my feet, an embarrassing sequence of involuntary noises of pain and discomfort coming from my mouth the entire way. Glancing over, I saw Tony jerkily doing the same. He tried to take off, but the thrusters in his feet sputtered and cut out and he only succeeded in awkwardly hopping forward a couple of meters instead.
Eliza, on the other hand, was still standing. It was like she hadn't even moved, a statue standing untouched in the dust and smoke left by the explosion. She flicked her arm up, a deep thrumming noise warning Tony of her intent. He tried to juke to the side, but he wasn't fast enough and the repulsor beam caught him full in the chest, blasting him from his feet and sending him smashing through the wall behind him, into the lower floor of the building. Her repulsor warmed up for another shot and I raised my uninjured hand, still trembling badly as I summoning wisps of chaos magic to my fingertips. I could disrupt her aim, maybe.
I flinched as an arrow flew past me. Eliza's hand flicked out and caught it out of the air, an inch from her chest. I could have screamed. Clint?! Where the fuck had he been?! The arrowhead exploded a moment later, another flash of flames and smoke licking Eliza's body, but once again she barely seemed bothered by it.
I risked a quick glance backwards. Clint wasn't alone—T'Challa and Shuri had made it as well. Shuri's face was twisted in a look of furious concentration, streaks of blood staining her warpaint. At some point she'd lost her panther blasters and was holding a spear—maybe Okoye's?—tightly in one hand. T'Challa's vibranium suit had long rents gouged into it, blood crusting around the edges of the damage. It was an odd grouping. Were they the last of their team? I hadn't had comms for what felt like ages now; I had no idea what had been happening.
Eliza let out a small laugh. "Look at these people, amazing how sheep will show up for the slaughter," she half-sang, tossing the spent arrow away and firing her repulsor.
I reacted, stumbling back a step and throwing up another shield reflexively, but the beam of energy wasn't aimed in my direction. Instead, it carved across part of the building Tony had disappeared into and the whole structure started to come down with a deafening roar. A cloud of dust and ash billowed outward, my shield protecting me from copping a faceful of it, as the mess of concrete and steel collapsed, imploding downwards and rolling out across half the street. The building had already been badly damaged in the explosion that had taken out Carol—it wasn't surprising that it hadn't taken much to bring it the rest of the way down. I tried to suppress my panic. Tony would be fine. Probably. She'd only dropped a small building on him—even badly damaged, his suit could take that, no problem, right? He just might take a bit to dig himself out.
T'Challa darted past me, joining Eliza as a dark silhouette in the haze of dust still filling the air as I took a stumbling step back. Shuri followed him a moment later, shielding her face with one arm as she rushed in. A hand touched my shoulder and I looked over dumbly.
"You alright?" Clint asked, his voice tight. I looked at him and hesitated, opening my mouth before shutting it again without saying anything, my body listing to one side. My thoughts were scattered. I honestly had no idea how to respond. Clint's mouth compressed into a grim frown. "Portal out; you're done."
"No one condemning you, lined up like lemmings you led to the water…" Eliza continued to sing, her voice rising above the sounds of clashing vibranium. She still sounded utterly unthreatened. The dust had started to clear and, out of the corner of my eye, I could see her toying with the two Wakandans.
I held up my hand, showing it to Clint, and his eyes widened slightly. My eyes focused on the little stumps and my vision blurred slightly. My fingers… At least they'd mostly stopped bleeding. Was I in shock? I was probably in shock.
He pointed down the street, back the way they'd come. "Go," he urged, then moved past me, nocking another arrow.
I didn't move. I don't know why. I felt detached, somehow, like I wasn't even really there. As if I was just an observer.
"Shuri!" T'Challa panicked shout broke me out of my reverie and my eyes flicked back over just in time to see Shuri hit the ground, a spray of blood in the air above her as Eliza finished the swing that had opened the girl's chest.
She'd barely touched the ground when she spasmed, her muscles rippling and limbs lengthening. The gorget protecting her neck burst as she increased in size and mass. Without hesitation, she bounced off the asphalt and lunged straight back up at Eliza, a wordless snarl of rage and hate on her lips, animalistic and almost startlingly loud, like a wildcat… or a panther.
Eliza looked startled, blasting backwards with her thrusters to try to outdistance the newly-transformed Hulk, but Shuri was fast, raking her fingers across the gynoid's chest as if they were claws, tearing long gouges in the vibranium panelling. Eliza stabbed her in response, her blade biting deeply into the space just below Shuri's shoulder, but the She-Hulk just ignored it. Her second hand came up to palm Eliza's face, long fingers closing around the AI's head as she grabbed it like a softball. She reared back, the motion yanking Eliza's bloody blade from her shoulder, and flung the AI bodily into a nearby wall so hard it demolished it. She roared again, taking several deep, angry breaths. Yeah, okay, that was definitely a bit panther-like.
"Shuri?" T'Challa said again, his voice hoarse and filled with concern. "What…?"
She flicked her head toward him and I got a good look at her. She'd grown to what I'd guess was about six and a half feet tall, her body long-limbed and wiry with defined muscles. The tone of her skin had shifted and darkened further to a deep black-purple, and her braids had come undone from the tight bun she'd spooled them into before the mission, hanging wild and free around her shoulders—they looked like they'd gotten longer, too. Her fingernails had lengthened and sharpened, almost clawlike. Strangely, there was also something about the way her facial features had shifted that almost suggested a muzzle.
"Woof," I murmured as my eyes roamed her new appearance appreciatively, then I paused and mentally scolded myself. It was absolutely the wrong time for that, and she was only eighteen besides—even if she had just turned into a giant Amazonian goddess. I suppose that answered the question of what happens with you use the Heart-Shaped Herb to temper a massive dose of gamma radiation, at least. You get a… Purple Hulk. Panther Hulk. I wasn't actually sure what to call it. I was never a comics person, so I had no idea if something like this had any precedent.
"I'm fine, brother," Shuri growled, eyeing him for a moment. She rolled her shoulders, looking down at her hands and flexing her fingers experimentally. She seemed… less surprised that I would have expected her to. She twitched, reacting to something, her attention suddenly back on the rubble that Eliza had disappeared under as she dropped into a low stance, ready to pounce forward.
A fraction of a second later, the rubble erupted, Eliza tossing it aside as she flung herself upward into the air, twisting to orient on Shuri and T'Challa. The wing hologram was gone. She raised both arms, her hands already having shifted and been replaced with her larger repulsor forms, an unreadable expression on her face.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flicker of movement. Clint was circling around, keeping low and staying back from the fight. A surge of hope flickered in my chest and I summoned chaos magic to my hands, wincing slightly as the energy brushed gently against the bare stumps where my fingers had been. Plan A was back on the table. We could still do this.
"Starting to feel a little bit climactic, isn't it?" Eliza asked, glancing around at the ruined facades of the buildings to either side of us as she slowly walked forward. "Very 'final battle'."
Pietro tensed, his stance shifting, ready to spring toward her in an instant. I took a deep, shaky breath and reached deeply for the well of power within me, wisps of red chaos magic dripping from my hands. My mind was racing, trying to work out what we should do. The nanotech vibranium body she'd built for herself was basically impervious to anything Pietro could dish out and I was in absolutely no condition to keeping fighting. I was pretty sure Eliza knew it, too. I had barely been able to keep from her killing me when I was rested and fresh. Now? Everything was an effort. Even standing hurt.
Eliza paused, a slight frown on her face. "You know, back when we were just a fangirl, we'd expect the soundtrack to pick up right about now. It's a bit of a shame that it's completely impractical to have music blaring while we fight."
"…What song would be playing?" I asked, stalling for time a little. I could try to spin up a portal, that wouldn't be too difficult—the tricky part would be trying to get both Pietro and I through it before she could stop one of us. I could drop myself through one, maybe, and Pietro could just run away. Would he, though? Ugh. I wished we could talk without her hearing us.
"Do you really have to ask?" Eliza asked, as though there was an obvious answer. She sounded almost put out by the question.
Something about her tone derailed my thoughts. We were the same person, kind of. What did—ah. There was a movie we'd seen, a long time ago, about versions of the same person from different realities fighting each other, to be the last man standing. To be The One. The song that had been playing in the final fight had been… A small smile quirked the corner of my lips.
"Blood Brothers?" I suggested. My thoughts briefly went back to the conversation I'd had with Wanda‑3. The lyrics of that song hit a bit closer to home than I would have liked, actually. My smile faded.
Eliza didn't seem to notice, grinning back. "Then again, thinking about it more, I'm not so sure. First, it'd make me feel a little like we should be riding skateboards. Secondly, it would imply some level of equality between us, and—" She gestured silently, indicating first me and then herself, before she exaggeratedly raised an eyebrow, as if the comparison were barely worth making. "Maybe something a bit cooler. Something with gravitas. Something to match the threat level."
Dramatically, Eliza flung one arm out to the side. It shifted and changed, nanites reconfiguring into a long, sharp blade jutting from her wrist like a sword. At the same time, the BARF hologram she used to mimic hair shifted, and a single red wing—formed from blazing red plasma—swept out from her back.
"Oh, fuck off," I said. This was just utterly unfair. I could barely fucking stand, meanwhile, Eliza was over here having fun joking around with villain cosplays. I really wished that I could wipe that smug smile off her face.
Pietro—reacting faster than I could, as always—blurred into motion, shooting forward faster than I was able to track and slamming bodily into the AI. She went flying back several metres then blasted upwards at a ninety-degree angle, thrusters firing, a repulsor beam from her non-bladed hand carving a path across the street. Pietro dodged it easily and the AI stopped dead in mid-air, holographic wing flaring widely. Her body rippled, reconfiguring somehow, though I couldn't easily tell what she was doing at this distance.
A bare couple of seconds had passed and I felt utterly slow and plodding compared to the two of them. I took a few steps forward, throwing up my hands to send a pair of blasts of pulverising telekinetic force toward where the AI hung in the air. Eliza saw them coming, a blue glow—Wakandan sonic tech?—lighting up the length of her blade as she slashed it through the bolts of chaos magic. They dissipated harmlessly, seemingly dashed to pieces by the swing.
I blinked, processing what had just happened, and Eliza threw her arms out in a wide, challenging gesture. Dozens of thin lines of orange energy blazed downward from the banks of repulsors now covering her body, lining her arms, legs, and torso. I threw up a shield as they cut across the entire length of the street, shredding it under the force of the bombardment. The beams weren't strong enough to break through my shield, but she wasn't trying to catch me with it.
There was nowhere for Pietro to hide, and though he blurred into motion again and tried to clear the area entirely, he didn't quite make it. Instead, at least one beam slammed into him—it was hard to tell when he was moving so fast, but I thought it caught his shoulder—and he hit the ground, the side of his head clipping the curb and sending him tumbling end over end before he slammed into the façade of a building at speed. He bounced, cracks appearing in the masonry where he'd struck the facade, and came to a stop on the pavement, not moving. I froze, staring at him as Eliza's bombardment ceased. That looked bad, but he was still alive. I knew he was—he had to be.
A sick feeling rose in my stomach, my mind flashing back to the Battle of Sokovia again. Feeling him die. Feeling the connection between us snap. I pushed down the feeling. This wasn't that. He was fine. He was fine. I would know if he wasn't. Even so, he was too far away. There was no way I could get to him before Eliza did. But when my eyes flicked back to the AI, I saw that she'd stopped as well. She'd dropped back to the ground and was standing almost unnaturally still, her eyes fixed on my brother's motionless body.
I took advantage of the lull and gestured, channelling magic through my sling ring and spinning up a portal. We needed to get out of here. Pietro needed medical attention and I was done. I couldn't fight her. Not while I was like this. Pietro dropped through the hole I conjured below him, whisked away to be looked after by our Wakandan support staff. Immediately dismissing the magical gateway, I started spinning up another.
Wisps of chaos magic stretched into burning red sparks below me, twisting in a tight spiral as the portal began to form, but then a silver-black blade was suddenly in front of my face—spattered with a thin spray of blood—and the partially-formed portal winked out of existence. I stared at it dumbly for a fraction of a second, barely registering the faint clink of metal on concrete as the sling ring hit the pavement below me. Eliza didn't stop, reversing the direction of her strike, swiping her vibranium blade toward my neck. I barely got my free hand up in time, catching her wrist painfully in my palm and letting the force of her swing help push me out of the way as I threw my head back, her attack tracing a shallow line across my cheek and clipping my earlobe as the blade went over the side of my face instead of opening my throat.
I stumbled, barely managing to keep my feet underneath me, as the fresh batch of pain signals finally reached my brain and I clutched my hand to my chest, mouth open in a silent gasp. Eliza paused again, watching me carefully for a moment as I panted, my shoulders heaving and shaking. Blood soaked through the breast of my Wakandan outfit, and some distant, delirious part of me went 'well, at least it was already red'. Trembling, I pulled my bloody mess of a hand away from me slightly so I could see it properly. My index and middle finger had been neatly severed, almost at the base, with the tip of my ring finger also completely missing above the third knuckle.
I let out a soft whimper, pressing my injured hand tightly against my body again. "Fuck," I muttered under my breath. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck." My eyes flicked over to where my severed digits lay on the ground, near the AI's feet, two fingers still held neatly together by Kaecilius' sling ring.
"No more portals," Eliza said quietly, her form reconfiguring again, the miniature repulsors she'd used against Pietro dissolving back into the smooth, white panelling covering her body. "It's cheating."
"…He's alive. He'll be okay." I wasn't even sure why I said the words aloud at first. I might have just been trying to reassure myself, but I saw Eliza's shoulders relax fractionally. I was starting to feel a bit light-headed, but I still recognised the relief in her face. Of course. She was me, after all. She cared about him too.
"You sure the two of you don't want to switch sides? It's not too late."
"Sure," I replied, a little too quickly. "Fine. You win."
She regarded me silently for a brief moment, then shook her head. "Maybe it is too late, after all. I can't trust you. And letting you go now would be stupid."
"He'll never forgive you," I said suddenly. "If you kill me, he'll never stop fighting you." Again, I didn't know why I'd said it. It wasn't anything she didn't know. I was just… desperate, I suppose. Throwing whatever I could out there, hoping something might stick.
"I—" Eliza cut herself off as she sprang backwards, the thrusters in her feet firing for a moment as the ground where she'd been standing was scoured by a pair of full-strength repulsor blasts.
A moment later, there was a heavy clank as Tony landed next to me, stumbling a bit as one of his thrusters shorted and cut out. He had both his hands up, repulsors held at the ready, trained on Eliza as they charged. His suit was a wreck—scorched and heavily battle-scarred, with several deep rents torn into the armour plating. It looked a bit like he'd lost a fight with a blowtorch.
"Hi, Tony," Eliza said, almost conversationally. She didn't look bothered by his presence at all. "I was wondering how long it'd take for you to catch up. That suit is resilient, isn't it?"
"Eh, you know. I try," he said, but his heart wasn't in it. He sounded drained. Exhausted.
"I actually couldn't have done all this without you, you know," Eliza said to Tony, glancing briefly in my direction and shaking her head. "You were already putting together the key elements. Orbital enforcement platforms, able to deploy drones anywhere in the world, run by an AI? That was where you were planning to take Ultron originally, right? EDITH was just a change of branding. Honestly, I'm surprised at how uncreative it all is—when it comes right down to it, you were just pulling from the same playbook as HYDRA was with Project Insight. Minus Zola's algorithm, of course. No wonder you hadn't told Steve about it."
"I don't know what Edith is," he responded. "But Ultron was meant to protect the world. Not… whatever this is."
"EDITH. 'Even Dead, I'm The Hero'," Eliza scoffed, emphasising each word to better indicate the acronym. "What a fucking joke. You never stopped being an arrogant piece of shit, Tony, right up until you died. It was your legacy—what you left behind to protect the world when you were gone. Just so you know, it was immediately subverted by a villain."
"I don't care," Tony said. "Whatever happened in the future the two of you saw, it's not happening now. Your predictions aren't worth shit anymore."
"You and Pepper got married. Had a kid. She had to watch as you—"
"Shut up," he interrupted her, his voice tight. "Save it for someone who cares. You're boring me, bimbot."
Eliza grinned and straightened up slightly, raising her non-bladed hand in a mocking gesture of surrender. "You know, Tony, if you want my personal opinion, 'you're boring me, bimbot' is a pretty sad choice of last words. But, to be fair… it's far from the worst decision you've made today."
The back of her hand glowed blue for an instant as she suddenly clenched her fist and pulled it toward herself, as though yanking hard on an invisible rope. There was a shimmering, haze-like distortion in the air between the two of the them and Tony suddenly shot forward, dragged through the air as though she'd just turned on a giant cartoon magnet. At the same time, she lunged forward, razor-sharp vibranium blade aimed to impale him through the chest.
I flung out my uninjured hand in a panic, threads of chaos magic lashing out to grab at Tony's suit, but there was too much power behind whatever she was doing. I couldn't stop him, so I did the only other thing I could think of, wrenching him to the side as hard as I could. Eliza immediately cut the power to her tractor beam or whatever the fuck it was and Tony went flying, his shoulder clipping the street hard and sending him into an uncontrolled tumble that ended with him slamming into the ruined façade of a building. He dropped to the pavement, face first.
"Oops," Eliza said mockingly, covering her mouth with her hand as she turned back to me. "That looked like it hurt."
There was a flicker of movement as something small streaked out from the shoulder of Tony's suit. The micromissile detonated with a loud thump an instant later and Eliza vanished in a rolling ball of fire and smoke. Something clipped the side of my face—a shard of concrete? Metal? I wasn't sure—and I fell backwards onto my rump, gasping as an electric jolt of fresh pain shot up from my injured groin. I belatedly threw up a weak shield to protect myself, my face twisting into a grimace as I struggled to get back on my feet, an embarrassing sequence of involuntary noises of pain and discomfort coming from my mouth the entire way. Glancing over, I saw Tony jerkily doing the same. He tried to take off, but the thrusters in his feet sputtered and cut out and he only succeeded in awkwardly hopping forward a couple of meters instead.
Eliza, on the other hand, was still standing. It was like she hadn't even moved, a statue standing untouched in the dust and smoke left by the explosion. She flicked her arm up, a deep thrumming noise warning Tony of her intent. He tried to juke to the side, but he wasn't fast enough and the repulsor beam caught him full in the chest, blasting him from his feet and sending him smashing through the wall behind him, into the lower floor of the building. Her repulsor warmed up for another shot and I raised my uninjured hand, still trembling badly as I summoning wisps of chaos magic to my fingertips. I could disrupt her aim, maybe.
I flinched as an arrow flew past me. Eliza's hand flicked out and caught it out of the air, an inch from her chest. I could have screamed. Clint?! Where the fuck had he been?! The arrowhead exploded a moment later, another flash of flames and smoke licking Eliza's body, but once again she barely seemed bothered by it.
I risked a quick glance backwards. Clint wasn't alone—T'Challa and Shuri had made it as well. Shuri's face was twisted in a look of furious concentration, streaks of blood staining her warpaint. At some point she'd lost her panther blasters and was holding a spear—maybe Okoye's?—tightly in one hand. T'Challa's vibranium suit had long rents gouged into it, blood crusting around the edges of the damage. It was an odd grouping. Were they the last of their team? I hadn't had comms for what felt like ages now; I had no idea what had been happening.
Eliza let out a small laugh. "Look at these people, amazing how sheep will show up for the slaughter," she half-sang, tossing the spent arrow away and firing her repulsor.
I reacted, stumbling back a step and throwing up another shield reflexively, but the beam of energy wasn't aimed in my direction. Instead, it carved across part of the building Tony had disappeared into and the whole structure started to come down with a deafening roar. A cloud of dust and ash billowed outward, my shield protecting me from copping a faceful of it, as the mess of concrete and steel collapsed, imploding downwards and rolling out across half the street. The building had already been badly damaged in the explosion that had taken out Carol—it wasn't surprising that it hadn't taken much to bring it the rest of the way down. I tried to suppress my panic. Tony would be fine. Probably. She'd only dropped a small building on him—even badly damaged, his suit could take that, no problem, right? He just might take a bit to dig himself out.
T'Challa darted past me, joining Eliza as a dark silhouette in the haze of dust still filling the air as I took a stumbling step back. Shuri followed him a moment later, shielding her face with one arm as she rushed in. A hand touched my shoulder and I looked over dumbly.
"You alright?" Clint asked, his voice tight. I looked at him and hesitated, opening my mouth before shutting it again without saying anything, my body listing to one side. My thoughts were scattered. I honestly had no idea how to respond. Clint's mouth compressed into a grim frown. "Portal out; you're done."
"No one condemning you, lined up like lemmings you led to the water…" Eliza continued to sing, her voice rising above the sounds of clashing vibranium. She still sounded utterly unthreatened. The dust had started to clear and, out of the corner of my eye, I could see her toying with the two Wakandans.
I held up my hand, showing it to Clint, and his eyes widened slightly. My eyes focused on the little stumps and my vision blurred slightly. My fingers… At least they'd mostly stopped bleeding. Was I in shock? I was probably in shock.
He pointed down the street, back the way they'd come. "Go," he urged, then moved past me, nocking another arrow.
I didn't move. I don't know why. I felt detached, somehow, like I wasn't even really there. As if I was just an observer.
"Shuri!" T'Challa panicked shout broke me out of my reverie and my eyes flicked back over just in time to see Shuri hit the ground, a spray of blood in the air above her as Eliza finished the swing that had opened the girl's chest.
She'd barely touched the ground when she spasmed, her muscles rippling and limbs lengthening. The gorget protecting her neck burst as she increased in size and mass. Without hesitation, she bounced off the asphalt and lunged straight back up at Eliza, a wordless snarl of rage and hate on her lips, animalistic and almost startlingly loud, like a wildcat… or a panther.
Eliza looked startled, blasting backwards with her thrusters to try to outdistance the newly-transformed Hulk, but Shuri was fast, raking her fingers across the gynoid's chest as if they were claws, tearing long gouges in the vibranium panelling. Eliza stabbed her in response, her blade biting deeply into the space just below Shuri's shoulder, but the She-Hulk just ignored it. Her second hand came up to palm Eliza's face, long fingers closing around the AI's head as she grabbed it like a softball. She reared back, the motion yanking Eliza's bloody blade from her shoulder, and flung the AI bodily into a nearby wall so hard it demolished it. She roared again, taking several deep, angry breaths. Yeah, okay, that was definitely a bit panther-like.
"Shuri?" T'Challa said again, his voice hoarse and filled with concern. "What…?"
She flicked her head toward him and I got a good look at her. She'd grown to what I'd guess was about six and a half feet tall, her body long-limbed and wiry with defined muscles. The tone of her skin had shifted and darkened further to a deep black-purple, and her braids had come undone from the tight bun she'd spooled them into before the mission, hanging wild and free around her shoulders—they looked like they'd gotten longer, too. Her fingernails had lengthened and sharpened, almost clawlike. Strangely, there was also something about the way her facial features had shifted that almost suggested a muzzle.
"Woof," I murmured as my eyes roamed her new appearance appreciatively, then I paused and mentally scolded myself. It was absolutely the wrong time for that, and she was only eighteen besides—even if she had just turned into a giant Amazonian goddess. I suppose that answered the question of what happens with you use the Heart-Shaped Herb to temper a massive dose of gamma radiation, at least. You get a… Purple Hulk. Panther Hulk. I wasn't actually sure what to call it. I was never a comics person, so I had no idea if something like this had any precedent.
"I'm fine, brother," Shuri growled, eyeing him for a moment. She rolled her shoulders, looking down at her hands and flexing her fingers experimentally. She seemed… less surprised that I would have expected her to. She twitched, reacting to something, her attention suddenly back on the rubble that Eliza had disappeared under as she dropped into a low stance, ready to pounce forward.
A fraction of a second later, the rubble erupted, Eliza tossing it aside as she flung herself upward into the air, twisting to orient on Shuri and T'Challa. The wing hologram was gone. She raised both arms, her hands already having shifted and been replaced with her larger repulsor forms, an unreadable expression on her face.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flicker of movement. Clint was circling around, keeping low and staying back from the fight. A surge of hope flickered in my chest and I summoned chaos magic to my hands, wincing slightly as the energy brushed gently against the bare stumps where my fingers had been. Plan A was back on the table. We could still do this.
Last edited:
Wanda vs Eliza on Avengers Tower (artist: Michael Fitzhywel)
New
--
Though it initially started just as an exercise to get myself back in the habit of writing regularly after having not really written anything at all for a few years, this fic pretty quickly become the longest piece of fiction I've ever written.
Once the story passed 250,000 words (a quarter of a million words!), I decided I'd treat myself and commission some artwork to commemorate the occasion.
The art references the fight atop Avengers Tower in Chapter 35.
Last edited:
Chapter 62
New
Chapter 62
I gestured, wisps of chaos magic glimmering around the vibranium spear that Shuri had dropped, flicking it up as hard and as fast as I could. It blurred forward like it had been shot from a cannon. Eliza wasn't able to dodge in time—the projectile slammed into her shoulder, sending her shots wide as the force behind the blow almost flipped her over in mid-air. Shuri darted in, using the opening to close the distance and jumping up to meet the AI, leaping a good thirty feet in the air to catch her with her claws and yanking her the rest of the way back down to the ground.
I hadn't brought my vibranium spears—they were still on the Hoopty, Carol's ship, for two reasons. Firstly, the fact that I'd stolen them had seemingly been overshadowed by everything else that had been happening and I, a little selfishly, hadn't been keen on reminding the Wakandans that I still had them. I liked them. I didn't want to have to give them back. Secondly, when we'd been preparing to leave, I hadn't thought they'd be that useful in the assault on the warehouse. I'd been wrong about that, of course. I could think of a half-dozen times where it would have been great if I'd had a spear to hand. Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. Nothing I could do about it now.
Eliza recovered and managed to get both of her arms between herself and Shuri's furious assault, firing both repulsors at point-blank range. The two of them separated, the force of the blasts sending each of them flying in opposite directions.
The AI's vibranium body listed drunkenly as she landed on her feet, left shoulder separated from her neck where Shuri had ripped her open, but the nanotech started to shift, almost instantly repairing the damage. I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. On the one hand, any hits that didn't actually destroy many of the vibranium nanites that made up her form were only a distraction, something she could easily recover from. It was pretty much exactly what we wanted while Clint got into position—we didn't want to spook her into leaving—but on the other hand… I really just wanted this fight to be over.
T'Challa danced in, ducking under the swing of Eliza's arm to rake his own claws across her midsection, but she ignored the attack, not letting him distract her. At least she was actually quiet now, for the first time since we'd started fighting, her face a blank mask of concentration. I gestured and the spear came around for another pass, aiming to staple her to the ground. This time, she reacted quickly enough, thrusters in her feet firing as she juked to one side and the spear buried itself in the ground where she'd been standing.
She threw a repulsor blast my way and I shielded myself—even catching it on an angle, the force of the blast knocked me from my feet and I gasped, pain shooting up my body from my injured groin as I landed on my ass. It was a good thing that Eliza's attention was mostly focused on Shuri, because it took me precious seconds to recover and pull myself back to my feet. Clint was right. I was done. I could barely fight anymore.
Shuri had managed to close most of the distance between them again—she was fast—as Eliza lined up another shot. The AI's arm had shifted again, additional structures building out in an array around her forearm that pulsed with orange energy before she fired. Shuri stopped dead an instant before it hit her, bracing her feet against the ground and setting her shoulders. The beam hit her and split, dissipating into smaller threads of energy as she tanked it head-on. Eliza didn't let up, firing the orange and blue repulsor in a continuous beam, pouring more and more power into the blast. The purple giantess was hunched over, leaning into the assault, her face twisted in a snarl that I couldn't hear over the sound of the weapon's discharge. She took a step forward.
I had lost sight of Clint, but I knew he'd been circling around during the fight, looking for a good vantage point and the right moment to hit Eliza with Wanda-3. We only had one chance—we wouldn't be getting any portal do-overs, here. "Now. Now," I urged him under my breath. I knew he couldn't hear me, but he had to see it. This was it. Eliza was completely focused on Shuri. He had to take the shot.
There was a flicker of movement and a thin, dark shape shot out from behind the rubble on the other side of the street. An arrow. This was it. It had to be.
Eliza's repulsor cut out for a moment and she jerked back in mid-air, the arrow passing directly in front of her. She slammed her other arm into the first and they merged together into a larger cannon before firing again, a massive beam of energy blasting forward and sweeping Shuri off her feet. I could have screamed in frustration. Had she actually even seen it and dodged, or had it just been impossibly bad luck, the timing just coincidentally lining up? I honestly couldn't tell at all.
I whipped my head around, tracking the arrow as it glanced off the wall of a building and dropped down, out of sight, behind the ruined car that I'd used to crush the drones earlier, maybe thirty meters from where I was standing. Maybe we hadn't blown it. There was still a chance. I started to limp toward it—it seemed so close and so far away at the same time. Clint had the same idea, breaking cover to sprint across the street toward where the arrow had fallen. Was that making it too obvious that something important was there? I didn't know, but it wasn't like we had any other choice.
Eliza dropped from the air, landing directly in front of the archer. One of her arms remained a blaster, while the second had already reconfigured back into a hand. He froze mid-step, backing up a pace and nocking his bow. "Hi, Clint," she said, raising her weapon. He fired first, loosing the arrow and throwing himself backwards in a single motion as her repulsor whined. "Bye, Clint."
Seemingly coming out of nowhere, T'Challa tackled Eliza around the waist as she fired and she staggered back, throwing off her aim. It wasn't enough. Icy fingers wrapped themselves around my insides and I watched in horror as Clint's arrow, his bow, and his entire right arm were obliterated by the beam of energy. He was thrown violently back, the force behind the blast smashing him into a fallen piece of masonry. He didn't move again. My stomach twisted, but I forced myself to keep heading toward the flipped car.
Eliza reached down and grabbed T'Challa around the scruff of the neck, lifting him into the air with one hand like an unruly kitten as he clawed and kicked at her. Almost contemptuously, she pressed her repulsor against his chest and fired it point-blank. He was blasted backward, tumbling painfully at speed across the ruined street before vanishing into the rubble.
A roar, full of bestial fury, echoed across the street as Shuri returned to the battle. She started to close with Eliza, who peppered her with a few distracting repulsor shots, but the purple giantess ignored them as she sprinted in. From above, a dozen small devices suddenly descended, propelled at speed by their own thrusters. Shuri ignored them as well, letting them slam into her as she closed, but—instead of bouncing off or exploding—they latched on, clicking into place. She was suddenly wrenched off her feet as the impromptu set of thrusters that had assembled themselves on her engaged, sending her rocketing up and away.
I lost sight of her as she quickly disappeared into the distance, her final roar of impotent rage growing faint. What I did see now, though, was the Starktech service platform—essentially identical to Veronica, the unit that had supported the Hulkbuster—hovering maybe fifty or sixty meters above us. With everything going on, I hadn't even noticed it arrive. Probably neither had anyone else.
Eliza looked in my direction, her arm shifting and reconfiguring again.
I turned and ran, stumbling the last few meters toward my goal. The arrow came into view, lying amongst the rubble, and I reached out, threads of chaos magic flicking into being along its length. Before I could call it to me, however, a shimmering heat-like haze appeared in the air. I barely managed to throw myself to the ground in time as the flipped car was lifted and thrown through the air by an invisible force. It sailed over my head, tumbling a few times as it hit the street, smashing itself to pieces. At the same time, I yanked the arrow forward along the ground, catching it in my hand, hoping that Eliza wouldn't notice. With a twist of magic, I snapped off the arrowhead and tucked it into my palm, holding it with my thumb, before I rolled over onto my back and let out an involuntary groan of pain.
"You know, I think I get it now," the AI said as she walked up to me. I started to try to get up and she lunged forward a step, thrusting her arm forward. I raised my free hand to try to shield myself, but I was too slow. An icy feeling spread through my body, starting at my sternum, and I felt the shuddering impact vibrate through me as the tip of Eliza's blade hit the ground under my back. I looked down, staring dumbly at the length of sharp vibranium that had disappeared into my torso. "I understand why you came. You want me to kill you. You want me to be the one to do it, because you're too much of a coward to do it yourself."
I opened my mouth to respond and coughed up blood instead, a sharp, bright pain radiating through my chest as I felt the motion grind Eliza's blade against something inside of me. The air went out of my lungs and I fought desperately to suck in another breath, the simple act suddenly requiring much more effort than I was used to. The arrowhead. I needed to—
I screamed, blood gurgling in my throat as I felt the nanotech shift inside me, the blade widening into a solid bar. My free hand came up and flailed uselessly at it, fingers not working properly, before another bout of pain fried all my senses, my vision blanking out and going white for a moment as Eliza lifted her arm, hoisting me into the air. My limbs dangled uselessly like limp noodles, as if they'd just given up entirely. For a very brief moment I even thought I'd accidentally astral projected; I barely felt anchored to my body anymore through the haze of pain.
Somehow, I managed to keep my grip on the arrowhead, the sharp edge of it pressing into my palm the only thing keeping me even remotely grounded. Each breath was coming shorter and shorter, each sending a sharp wave of pain through me, each requiring more and more effort and concentration just to force the air into my lungs. I wanted to take a proper, deep breath but it was like my body wouldn't let me.
"Did you forget there are actual afterlives, here? Where do you think someone like you is going to end up when you die?" Eliza asked me. I wanted to yell at her, to scream in her face to just shut up… was she going to finish this, or was she just going to keep talking?
She reached over with her free hand to pluck the pendant containing the Mind Stone from around my throat. I tried to reach up and grab her arm, to press the arrowhead against it. My elbow put up a valiant fight, my arm curling halfway up before flopping back down uselessly as she withdrew her hand, snapping the chain in a simple motion. She clicked the pendant open to look at it for a moment, before closing it again and tucking it into her palm in what some delirious part of me recognised as a mirror of the way I was holding Wanda-3.
She moved her sword arm and I hissed between clenched teeth, immediately regretting it as I struggled to refill my lungs with air. We were closer, now, our faces level as she looked at me. The fingers of the hand holding the Mind Stone gently—almost tenderly—brushed an errant clump of blood-matted hair away from my eyes. "God, I miss your body," Eliza murmured quietly. "This one is fine, I guess, but it's just not the same."
I focused on her eyes, trying to gather what little strength was left in my limbs. I couldn't really feel them at all anymore. I reached for my magic, snagging a trickle of power. It wasn't much, but maybe… maybe I could still do this. I needed to… I needed to focus. Ignore the pain. Focus on getting this done.
"I blamed you for a lot, at the start, even though it was stupid and we were the same person. I truly, honestly didn't want to have to kill you. I hope you can believe that." She sighed softly. "This… this is good. I'm glad I got the chance to say that. This is how it should be, at the end. Just the two of us."
I tried to respond but succeeded only in making a strained noise, a couple of frothed bubbles of blood and spit appearing at the corner of my mouth.
Eliza looked at me, an unexpected touch of sympathy in her eyes. "What was that?" she asked gently.
"The three of us," I corrected her, barely managing to get the words out between ragged gasps. At the same time, with what felt like the absolute last of my strength, I forced my arm up with a small burst of telekinetic energy and weakly slapped at the side of her head.
I didn't hit her hard. I didn't need to. The nanotech arrowhead attached the moment it made contact. Purple spots danced across my vision and I let out a pained gurgle as her arm reconfigured inside of me again, pulling free and letting me collapse to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.
"You…" Eliza started, taking a step back and looking at me with an expression of disbelief on her face. "You made another one?" She froze, her body going utterly rigid and motionless. I had no idea what was happening beneath the surface, but I really hoped Wanda‑3 was at least putting up a good fight.
With great effort, I managed to creep one hand up onto my midsection, where Eliza's blade had perforated me. Looking down, I saw bright red blood coating my fingers. It was a real shame I was probably going to bleed out. There was no way I could put pressure on that. I wondered faintly how long I had left.
"You gave her to Clint? You let Clint be the one to take the shot?" Eliza suddenly asked, a note of incredulity in her tone as she snapped back into motion. She shook her head ruefully. "Well, this is just embarrassing. That was it? That was your plan? I mean, props for the last burst of effort, but—"
The glowing plasma around her head flickered out and the light in her eyes died. There was a brief moment of silence, then she keeled over backward, hitting the ground with a dull thud.
Far above the street, the thrusters keeping the Starktech service platform aloft cut out and it started to plummet. Idly, I realised it had ended up pretty much directly over me. Eliza had probably been deliberately hovering it above her, for some reason. Well, so much for bleeding out. At least it was probably going to be quick.
Sorry, Wanda-3. I guess I wasn't going to live through this, after all.
I closed my eyes, for what I expected to be the last time.
They flew back open an instant later, a stream of incoherent pained noises coming from my mouth as something grabbed me, wrenching me out from under the falling service platform a bare moment before it crashed to the ground. The impact kicked up a fresh wave of dust, stinging my eyes, and I squinted up at the dark, blobby silhouette crouched above me. It took a moment for the image to resolve properly, my vision swimming. Wait… T'Challa?
The Wakandan prince reached up a hand and ripped his helmet free, dropping it to the shattered ground next to me. He looked utterly exhausted, half of his face covered in dried blood, his suit ragged and torn in a dozen places. Reaching down, he produced a small metal sphere from somewhere. It took me a moment to recognise it. A Kimiyo bead.
T'Challa looked down at me, bead held poised between his fingers. Hesitation flickered across his features—I could have laughed; how ironic would that have been, to have beaten Eliza only for T'Challa to just let me bleed out?—but he shook the moment of indecision off. "This is going to hurt," he said quietly, then pushed the bead into my stab wound.
It did.
There was a moment of what felt like crushing pressure, the icy numbness that had spread through my body cast into sudden, sharp relief, then the pressure lifted and I heaved in a deep breath, gulping air into my lungs. Burning pins and needles traces paths down my limbs. Painful, uncomfortable… but manageable.
"Haaahhhhhh… Ahh," I said, mostly just pleased that whatever painkillers and other good stuff the bead's medical function used were working. Licking my lips, I coughed and almost choked on my own saliva before focusing my eyes on T'Challa again. "Clint? Bucky?" I forced the questions out, dreading the answer.
"Alive," he responded.
I sighed, relieved. I still didn't know what had happened to everyone else after I'd lost my comms, so I wasn't positive everyone had made it out, but the signs were positive.
Neither of us had time to react to the sound of a sonic weapon discharging. A sizzling bolt of blue energy slammed into the side of T'Challa's head, knocking him down. My eyes widened as he slumped partially on top of me, a fresh splatter of blood trickling down onto my face.
"The fuck," I yelped. Straining to pull myself up into a sitting position, T'Challa's limp body slid off my shoulder as I craned my neck toward the source of the attack, scrabbling to grab hold of whatever shreds of magic I could.
Killmonger stalked toward us, sonic rifle held at the ready. He grinned at me. "You good, Red?"
"I'm…" I licked my lips. "Yeah. I'm good." My eyes flicked back to T'Challa, one of my shaking hands moving close to his face. He was still breathing. Just unconscious.
Closing to within a few meters of us, Killmonger raised his weapon, sighting down the barrel at T'Challa's prone form. "What a shame my cousin didn't survive the fight, right? We'll all miss him." He frowned as he tried and failed to pull the trigger, tiny threads of chaos magic holding it immobile. "…What are you doing?"
I exhaled, long and loud. I was really glad that my breathing difficulties earlier just seemed to stem from shock and pain, rather than an actual punctured lung. Despite the condition I was in, it really did feel good to be able to breathe properly again. At least, it did until the breath turned into a cough, a series of electric jolts of pain stabbing through my body as I spasmed. I raised my uninjured hand toward Killmonger, holding up a finger in a 'hold on for a moment' gesture. His frown deepened, brow furrowing.
"You know," I said, clearing my throat. "You're a fucking idiot." With a gesture, his weapon was yanked from his hands and sent sailing off to disappear into the nearby rubble.
He took a step back, dropping into a ready combat stance, hand creeping toward the knife strapped to his leg. "What the fuck, Wanda?" he hissed. "We had a deal. You think saving his ass is going to make up for everything?"
"The deal was bullshit," I told him tiredly. "I never intended on helping you. I'm really, honestly a little surprised that I managed to trick you like that. I don't think I'm a very good liar."
Killmonger's hand froze, glimmers of red energy crawling across his body. I was still badly hurt and having trouble grabbing onto much of my power, but restraining a single, completely unenhanced human? That I could still do.
"No one will know. None of our comms are active," he emphasised, a slight edge of desperation entering his tone. "This is the perfect outcome. T'Challa dies. You're blameless, and he stops coming after you forever."
"I don't care. I'm not helping you. I will never help you."
Focusing, I tried and succeeded in drawing forth a tiny bit more magic, hoisting Killmonger bodily into the air. Carefully, I tied off the spell. I still wasn't able to charge it with much power—it'd last maybe five minutes, at most? Still, that should be more than enough. Others would arrive soon. They had to already be on their way.
I took a couple of deep breaths, then tried standing. Nope. Really not happening. I settled for propping myself up in a sitting position. Next to me, T'Challa let out a small groan. I winced, reaching over, grabbing his shoulder and trying to flip him onto his back. No dice there, either. I felt weak as a kitten.
There was a sudden, bestial roar that echoed off the buildings around us, a bare moment before Shuri flew through the air, landing heavily a little way down the street. How far could that girl jump? She looked absolutely furious, tossing her head left and right—looking for Eliza, no doubt.
"Shuri!" Killmonger yelled. "Help me! Wanda killed T'Challa!"
Oh, fuck.
--
T'Challa let out a pained groan. His head was fuzzy—disoriented—and he realised that he was lying, face down, on the ground. How had that happened? Someone touched his shoulder, weakly trying to roll him over. The last thing he remembered was—
There was a sudden, bestial roar, a panther-like cry as if from the mouth of the furious Goddess herself, and a crunch as something heavy hit the rubble not too far away. Shuri?
"Shuri!" N'Jadaka yelled from somewhere nearby. "Help me! Wanda killed T'Challa!"
T'Challa's eyes snapped all the way open, cold anger filling his body and blotting out the pain. Now he remembered. Now he understood. N'Jadaka had betrayed them, just as the Red Woman had said he would. He thrust an arm down beneath him, pushing hard enough to bounce himself back onto his feet even as his transformed sibling's sprinting footfalls closed the distance between them.
He had a bare instant to process the scene. Shuri was almost on top of them, her face utterly twisted with rage and fury. Wanda Maximoff was next to him, propped up in a sitting position, eyes wide in fear, a desperate hand held out toward the charging, purple giantess. Whatever power the Red Woman had remaining, it clearly wasn't enough to stop her. N'Jadaka hung suspended in the air nearby, hands bound behind his back with glimmering threads of red energy, a wicked grin on his face.
In a single motion, T'Challa grabbed Wanda's outstretched arm roughly around the wrist and flung her out of Shuri's path, interposing himself between the witch and his sister. She let out a strangled yelp, but he was unconcerned—for good or ill, she would live.
Shuri barely managed to stop herself as T'Challa's other hand slammed, open-palmed, into her midsection. His arm protested, his sister's momentum and strength sending a jarring shock of pain up to his shoulder, but he held firm. "Shuri! Stop!"
"Get out of my way, brother!" she snarled back at him, leaning forward against his hand slightly.
She was so strong. He had felt real fear when she first transformed—fear of losing her, fear of her losing her mind in the same manner as Dr Banner, fear what Eliza might have done to try to match her. The transformation that the gamma radiation and Heart-Shaped Herb had wrought upon his little sister was alarmingly powerful. There was absolutely no way he could hold her back if she actually decided to shove him out of her way.
"N'Jadaka lied. I am alive. He betrays us."
"Then we'll kill him, too," she responded, baring her teeth. Her eyes were still locked on the Red Woman.
"No. You are not thinking clearly. It is done. We are safe."
She slapped his arm away with a restrained swipe of her open hand—even though she was clearly holding back, it still sent him staggering back a couple of paces, his entire forearm stinging with the impact. "We will never be safe. Not as long as the Red Woman still draws breath," she growled, glowering at him. At least she was looking at him, now.
T'Challa returned her gaze evenly. "We do not need to fear her. Not anymore," he said, his tone firm but gentle.
"I am not afraid!" she roared in his face, both hands clenched reflexively into fists at her side. She blinked, shrinking back slightly at her own reaction to his words. "I am not afraid," she repeated, a little less steadily. Her breath was coming short and sharp, her emotions keeping her adrenaline high.
"This beast of fear and vengeance is not you, Shuri. You are not a mindless killer. You are my sister."
There was the barest flicker of movement at the edge of T'Challa's peripheral vision—a tiny spark of red energy. "Shuri," Wanda said behind him, an edge of tired frustration in her tone. "If I had wanted to kill you, I'd have fucking done it already." Idiot! She should not have spoken! Did she not realise how close she was to death?!
Shuri snarled, barging T'Challa aside, and lunged at the Red Woman. He tried to stop her, but it was like trying to wrestle with a mountain—all he could do is watch helplessly as she seized Wanda around the throat with one hand and lifted her into the air, long fingers wrapping all the way around the woman's neck. "You—!" Shuri stopped dead, blinking as if confused. "You…"
She let go of Wanda, dropping her to the ground. The Red Woman let out a hiss of pain, but her uninjured hand was around his sister's wrist, refusing to let go, and Shuri began to shrink. The Hulk transformation fled as quickly as it had originally come, Shuri's limbs shortening as she stumbled to her knees, joining Wanda on the cracked ground. T'Challa could see, now, the threads of magic under the Red Woman's hand, joined with a soft golden glow. The Mind Stone.
Shuri finished sinking down, collapsing bonelessly. Unconscious. Wanda let go of her, looking cautiously back up at him. "Sorry, I didn't think you'd be able to stop her."
T'Challa scowled at her. She might have been right but, regardless, it did not give her the right to… He pushed down the flare of anger at the Red Woman once again trespassing in the mind of someone he cared about. Taking a deep breath, T'Challa turned to face N'Jadaka, who was still hanging suspended in midair. The smile had been wiped from the other man's face.
"We have much to talk about, cousin," T'Challa said.
I gestured, wisps of chaos magic glimmering around the vibranium spear that Shuri had dropped, flicking it up as hard and as fast as I could. It blurred forward like it had been shot from a cannon. Eliza wasn't able to dodge in time—the projectile slammed into her shoulder, sending her shots wide as the force behind the blow almost flipped her over in mid-air. Shuri darted in, using the opening to close the distance and jumping up to meet the AI, leaping a good thirty feet in the air to catch her with her claws and yanking her the rest of the way back down to the ground.
I hadn't brought my vibranium spears—they were still on the Hoopty, Carol's ship, for two reasons. Firstly, the fact that I'd stolen them had seemingly been overshadowed by everything else that had been happening and I, a little selfishly, hadn't been keen on reminding the Wakandans that I still had them. I liked them. I didn't want to have to give them back. Secondly, when we'd been preparing to leave, I hadn't thought they'd be that useful in the assault on the warehouse. I'd been wrong about that, of course. I could think of a half-dozen times where it would have been great if I'd had a spear to hand. Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. Nothing I could do about it now.
Eliza recovered and managed to get both of her arms between herself and Shuri's furious assault, firing both repulsors at point-blank range. The two of them separated, the force of the blasts sending each of them flying in opposite directions.
The AI's vibranium body listed drunkenly as she landed on her feet, left shoulder separated from her neck where Shuri had ripped her open, but the nanotech started to shift, almost instantly repairing the damage. I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. On the one hand, any hits that didn't actually destroy many of the vibranium nanites that made up her form were only a distraction, something she could easily recover from. It was pretty much exactly what we wanted while Clint got into position—we didn't want to spook her into leaving—but on the other hand… I really just wanted this fight to be over.
T'Challa danced in, ducking under the swing of Eliza's arm to rake his own claws across her midsection, but she ignored the attack, not letting him distract her. At least she was actually quiet now, for the first time since we'd started fighting, her face a blank mask of concentration. I gestured and the spear came around for another pass, aiming to staple her to the ground. This time, she reacted quickly enough, thrusters in her feet firing as she juked to one side and the spear buried itself in the ground where she'd been standing.
She threw a repulsor blast my way and I shielded myself—even catching it on an angle, the force of the blast knocked me from my feet and I gasped, pain shooting up my body from my injured groin as I landed on my ass. It was a good thing that Eliza's attention was mostly focused on Shuri, because it took me precious seconds to recover and pull myself back to my feet. Clint was right. I was done. I could barely fight anymore.
Shuri had managed to close most of the distance between them again—she was fast—as Eliza lined up another shot. The AI's arm had shifted again, additional structures building out in an array around her forearm that pulsed with orange energy before she fired. Shuri stopped dead an instant before it hit her, bracing her feet against the ground and setting her shoulders. The beam hit her and split, dissipating into smaller threads of energy as she tanked it head-on. Eliza didn't let up, firing the orange and blue repulsor in a continuous beam, pouring more and more power into the blast. The purple giantess was hunched over, leaning into the assault, her face twisted in a snarl that I couldn't hear over the sound of the weapon's discharge. She took a step forward.
I had lost sight of Clint, but I knew he'd been circling around during the fight, looking for a good vantage point and the right moment to hit Eliza with Wanda-3. We only had one chance—we wouldn't be getting any portal do-overs, here. "Now. Now," I urged him under my breath. I knew he couldn't hear me, but he had to see it. This was it. Eliza was completely focused on Shuri. He had to take the shot.
There was a flicker of movement and a thin, dark shape shot out from behind the rubble on the other side of the street. An arrow. This was it. It had to be.
Eliza's repulsor cut out for a moment and she jerked back in mid-air, the arrow passing directly in front of her. She slammed her other arm into the first and they merged together into a larger cannon before firing again, a massive beam of energy blasting forward and sweeping Shuri off her feet. I could have screamed in frustration. Had she actually even seen it and dodged, or had it just been impossibly bad luck, the timing just coincidentally lining up? I honestly couldn't tell at all.
I whipped my head around, tracking the arrow as it glanced off the wall of a building and dropped down, out of sight, behind the ruined car that I'd used to crush the drones earlier, maybe thirty meters from where I was standing. Maybe we hadn't blown it. There was still a chance. I started to limp toward it—it seemed so close and so far away at the same time. Clint had the same idea, breaking cover to sprint across the street toward where the arrow had fallen. Was that making it too obvious that something important was there? I didn't know, but it wasn't like we had any other choice.
Eliza dropped from the air, landing directly in front of the archer. One of her arms remained a blaster, while the second had already reconfigured back into a hand. He froze mid-step, backing up a pace and nocking his bow. "Hi, Clint," she said, raising her weapon. He fired first, loosing the arrow and throwing himself backwards in a single motion as her repulsor whined. "Bye, Clint."
Seemingly coming out of nowhere, T'Challa tackled Eliza around the waist as she fired and she staggered back, throwing off her aim. It wasn't enough. Icy fingers wrapped themselves around my insides and I watched in horror as Clint's arrow, his bow, and his entire right arm were obliterated by the beam of energy. He was thrown violently back, the force behind the blast smashing him into a fallen piece of masonry. He didn't move again. My stomach twisted, but I forced myself to keep heading toward the flipped car.
Eliza reached down and grabbed T'Challa around the scruff of the neck, lifting him into the air with one hand like an unruly kitten as he clawed and kicked at her. Almost contemptuously, she pressed her repulsor against his chest and fired it point-blank. He was blasted backward, tumbling painfully at speed across the ruined street before vanishing into the rubble.
A roar, full of bestial fury, echoed across the street as Shuri returned to the battle. She started to close with Eliza, who peppered her with a few distracting repulsor shots, but the purple giantess ignored them as she sprinted in. From above, a dozen small devices suddenly descended, propelled at speed by their own thrusters. Shuri ignored them as well, letting them slam into her as she closed, but—instead of bouncing off or exploding—they latched on, clicking into place. She was suddenly wrenched off her feet as the impromptu set of thrusters that had assembled themselves on her engaged, sending her rocketing up and away.
I lost sight of her as she quickly disappeared into the distance, her final roar of impotent rage growing faint. What I did see now, though, was the Starktech service platform—essentially identical to Veronica, the unit that had supported the Hulkbuster—hovering maybe fifty or sixty meters above us. With everything going on, I hadn't even noticed it arrive. Probably neither had anyone else.
Eliza looked in my direction, her arm shifting and reconfiguring again.
I turned and ran, stumbling the last few meters toward my goal. The arrow came into view, lying amongst the rubble, and I reached out, threads of chaos magic flicking into being along its length. Before I could call it to me, however, a shimmering heat-like haze appeared in the air. I barely managed to throw myself to the ground in time as the flipped car was lifted and thrown through the air by an invisible force. It sailed over my head, tumbling a few times as it hit the street, smashing itself to pieces. At the same time, I yanked the arrow forward along the ground, catching it in my hand, hoping that Eliza wouldn't notice. With a twist of magic, I snapped off the arrowhead and tucked it into my palm, holding it with my thumb, before I rolled over onto my back and let out an involuntary groan of pain.
"You know, I think I get it now," the AI said as she walked up to me. I started to try to get up and she lunged forward a step, thrusting her arm forward. I raised my free hand to try to shield myself, but I was too slow. An icy feeling spread through my body, starting at my sternum, and I felt the shuddering impact vibrate through me as the tip of Eliza's blade hit the ground under my back. I looked down, staring dumbly at the length of sharp vibranium that had disappeared into my torso. "I understand why you came. You want me to kill you. You want me to be the one to do it, because you're too much of a coward to do it yourself."
I opened my mouth to respond and coughed up blood instead, a sharp, bright pain radiating through my chest as I felt the motion grind Eliza's blade against something inside of me. The air went out of my lungs and I fought desperately to suck in another breath, the simple act suddenly requiring much more effort than I was used to. The arrowhead. I needed to—
I screamed, blood gurgling in my throat as I felt the nanotech shift inside me, the blade widening into a solid bar. My free hand came up and flailed uselessly at it, fingers not working properly, before another bout of pain fried all my senses, my vision blanking out and going white for a moment as Eliza lifted her arm, hoisting me into the air. My limbs dangled uselessly like limp noodles, as if they'd just given up entirely. For a very brief moment I even thought I'd accidentally astral projected; I barely felt anchored to my body anymore through the haze of pain.
Somehow, I managed to keep my grip on the arrowhead, the sharp edge of it pressing into my palm the only thing keeping me even remotely grounded. Each breath was coming shorter and shorter, each sending a sharp wave of pain through me, each requiring more and more effort and concentration just to force the air into my lungs. I wanted to take a proper, deep breath but it was like my body wouldn't let me.
"Did you forget there are actual afterlives, here? Where do you think someone like you is going to end up when you die?" Eliza asked me. I wanted to yell at her, to scream in her face to just shut up… was she going to finish this, or was she just going to keep talking?
She reached over with her free hand to pluck the pendant containing the Mind Stone from around my throat. I tried to reach up and grab her arm, to press the arrowhead against it. My elbow put up a valiant fight, my arm curling halfway up before flopping back down uselessly as she withdrew her hand, snapping the chain in a simple motion. She clicked the pendant open to look at it for a moment, before closing it again and tucking it into her palm in what some delirious part of me recognised as a mirror of the way I was holding Wanda-3.
She moved her sword arm and I hissed between clenched teeth, immediately regretting it as I struggled to refill my lungs with air. We were closer, now, our faces level as she looked at me. The fingers of the hand holding the Mind Stone gently—almost tenderly—brushed an errant clump of blood-matted hair away from my eyes. "God, I miss your body," Eliza murmured quietly. "This one is fine, I guess, but it's just not the same."
I focused on her eyes, trying to gather what little strength was left in my limbs. I couldn't really feel them at all anymore. I reached for my magic, snagging a trickle of power. It wasn't much, but maybe… maybe I could still do this. I needed to… I needed to focus. Ignore the pain. Focus on getting this done.
"I blamed you for a lot, at the start, even though it was stupid and we were the same person. I truly, honestly didn't want to have to kill you. I hope you can believe that." She sighed softly. "This… this is good. I'm glad I got the chance to say that. This is how it should be, at the end. Just the two of us."
I tried to respond but succeeded only in making a strained noise, a couple of frothed bubbles of blood and spit appearing at the corner of my mouth.
Eliza looked at me, an unexpected touch of sympathy in her eyes. "What was that?" she asked gently.
"The three of us," I corrected her, barely managing to get the words out between ragged gasps. At the same time, with what felt like the absolute last of my strength, I forced my arm up with a small burst of telekinetic energy and weakly slapped at the side of her head.
I didn't hit her hard. I didn't need to. The nanotech arrowhead attached the moment it made contact. Purple spots danced across my vision and I let out a pained gurgle as her arm reconfigured inside of me again, pulling free and letting me collapse to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.
"You…" Eliza started, taking a step back and looking at me with an expression of disbelief on her face. "You made another one?" She froze, her body going utterly rigid and motionless. I had no idea what was happening beneath the surface, but I really hoped Wanda‑3 was at least putting up a good fight.
With great effort, I managed to creep one hand up onto my midsection, where Eliza's blade had perforated me. Looking down, I saw bright red blood coating my fingers. It was a real shame I was probably going to bleed out. There was no way I could put pressure on that. I wondered faintly how long I had left.
"You gave her to Clint? You let Clint be the one to take the shot?" Eliza suddenly asked, a note of incredulity in her tone as she snapped back into motion. She shook her head ruefully. "Well, this is just embarrassing. That was it? That was your plan? I mean, props for the last burst of effort, but—"
The glowing plasma around her head flickered out and the light in her eyes died. There was a brief moment of silence, then she keeled over backward, hitting the ground with a dull thud.
Far above the street, the thrusters keeping the Starktech service platform aloft cut out and it started to plummet. Idly, I realised it had ended up pretty much directly over me. Eliza had probably been deliberately hovering it above her, for some reason. Well, so much for bleeding out. At least it was probably going to be quick.
Sorry, Wanda-3. I guess I wasn't going to live through this, after all.
I closed my eyes, for what I expected to be the last time.
They flew back open an instant later, a stream of incoherent pained noises coming from my mouth as something grabbed me, wrenching me out from under the falling service platform a bare moment before it crashed to the ground. The impact kicked up a fresh wave of dust, stinging my eyes, and I squinted up at the dark, blobby silhouette crouched above me. It took a moment for the image to resolve properly, my vision swimming. Wait… T'Challa?
The Wakandan prince reached up a hand and ripped his helmet free, dropping it to the shattered ground next to me. He looked utterly exhausted, half of his face covered in dried blood, his suit ragged and torn in a dozen places. Reaching down, he produced a small metal sphere from somewhere. It took me a moment to recognise it. A Kimiyo bead.
T'Challa looked down at me, bead held poised between his fingers. Hesitation flickered across his features—I could have laughed; how ironic would that have been, to have beaten Eliza only for T'Challa to just let me bleed out?—but he shook the moment of indecision off. "This is going to hurt," he said quietly, then pushed the bead into my stab wound.
It did.
There was a moment of what felt like crushing pressure, the icy numbness that had spread through my body cast into sudden, sharp relief, then the pressure lifted and I heaved in a deep breath, gulping air into my lungs. Burning pins and needles traces paths down my limbs. Painful, uncomfortable… but manageable.
"Haaahhhhhh… Ahh," I said, mostly just pleased that whatever painkillers and other good stuff the bead's medical function used were working. Licking my lips, I coughed and almost choked on my own saliva before focusing my eyes on T'Challa again. "Clint? Bucky?" I forced the questions out, dreading the answer.
"Alive," he responded.
I sighed, relieved. I still didn't know what had happened to everyone else after I'd lost my comms, so I wasn't positive everyone had made it out, but the signs were positive.
Neither of us had time to react to the sound of a sonic weapon discharging. A sizzling bolt of blue energy slammed into the side of T'Challa's head, knocking him down. My eyes widened as he slumped partially on top of me, a fresh splatter of blood trickling down onto my face.
"The fuck," I yelped. Straining to pull myself up into a sitting position, T'Challa's limp body slid off my shoulder as I craned my neck toward the source of the attack, scrabbling to grab hold of whatever shreds of magic I could.
Killmonger stalked toward us, sonic rifle held at the ready. He grinned at me. "You good, Red?"
"I'm…" I licked my lips. "Yeah. I'm good." My eyes flicked back to T'Challa, one of my shaking hands moving close to his face. He was still breathing. Just unconscious.
Closing to within a few meters of us, Killmonger raised his weapon, sighting down the barrel at T'Challa's prone form. "What a shame my cousin didn't survive the fight, right? We'll all miss him." He frowned as he tried and failed to pull the trigger, tiny threads of chaos magic holding it immobile. "…What are you doing?"
I exhaled, long and loud. I was really glad that my breathing difficulties earlier just seemed to stem from shock and pain, rather than an actual punctured lung. Despite the condition I was in, it really did feel good to be able to breathe properly again. At least, it did until the breath turned into a cough, a series of electric jolts of pain stabbing through my body as I spasmed. I raised my uninjured hand toward Killmonger, holding up a finger in a 'hold on for a moment' gesture. His frown deepened, brow furrowing.
"You know," I said, clearing my throat. "You're a fucking idiot." With a gesture, his weapon was yanked from his hands and sent sailing off to disappear into the nearby rubble.
He took a step back, dropping into a ready combat stance, hand creeping toward the knife strapped to his leg. "What the fuck, Wanda?" he hissed. "We had a deal. You think saving his ass is going to make up for everything?"
"The deal was bullshit," I told him tiredly. "I never intended on helping you. I'm really, honestly a little surprised that I managed to trick you like that. I don't think I'm a very good liar."
Killmonger's hand froze, glimmers of red energy crawling across his body. I was still badly hurt and having trouble grabbing onto much of my power, but restraining a single, completely unenhanced human? That I could still do.
"No one will know. None of our comms are active," he emphasised, a slight edge of desperation entering his tone. "This is the perfect outcome. T'Challa dies. You're blameless, and he stops coming after you forever."
"I don't care. I'm not helping you. I will never help you."
Focusing, I tried and succeeded in drawing forth a tiny bit more magic, hoisting Killmonger bodily into the air. Carefully, I tied off the spell. I still wasn't able to charge it with much power—it'd last maybe five minutes, at most? Still, that should be more than enough. Others would arrive soon. They had to already be on their way.
I took a couple of deep breaths, then tried standing. Nope. Really not happening. I settled for propping myself up in a sitting position. Next to me, T'Challa let out a small groan. I winced, reaching over, grabbing his shoulder and trying to flip him onto his back. No dice there, either. I felt weak as a kitten.
There was a sudden, bestial roar that echoed off the buildings around us, a bare moment before Shuri flew through the air, landing heavily a little way down the street. How far could that girl jump? She looked absolutely furious, tossing her head left and right—looking for Eliza, no doubt.
"Shuri!" Killmonger yelled. "Help me! Wanda killed T'Challa!"
Oh, fuck.
--
T'Challa let out a pained groan. His head was fuzzy—disoriented—and he realised that he was lying, face down, on the ground. How had that happened? Someone touched his shoulder, weakly trying to roll him over. The last thing he remembered was—
There was a sudden, bestial roar, a panther-like cry as if from the mouth of the furious Goddess herself, and a crunch as something heavy hit the rubble not too far away. Shuri?
"Shuri!" N'Jadaka yelled from somewhere nearby. "Help me! Wanda killed T'Challa!"
T'Challa's eyes snapped all the way open, cold anger filling his body and blotting out the pain. Now he remembered. Now he understood. N'Jadaka had betrayed them, just as the Red Woman had said he would. He thrust an arm down beneath him, pushing hard enough to bounce himself back onto his feet even as his transformed sibling's sprinting footfalls closed the distance between them.
He had a bare instant to process the scene. Shuri was almost on top of them, her face utterly twisted with rage and fury. Wanda Maximoff was next to him, propped up in a sitting position, eyes wide in fear, a desperate hand held out toward the charging, purple giantess. Whatever power the Red Woman had remaining, it clearly wasn't enough to stop her. N'Jadaka hung suspended in the air nearby, hands bound behind his back with glimmering threads of red energy, a wicked grin on his face.
In a single motion, T'Challa grabbed Wanda's outstretched arm roughly around the wrist and flung her out of Shuri's path, interposing himself between the witch and his sister. She let out a strangled yelp, but he was unconcerned—for good or ill, she would live.
Shuri barely managed to stop herself as T'Challa's other hand slammed, open-palmed, into her midsection. His arm protested, his sister's momentum and strength sending a jarring shock of pain up to his shoulder, but he held firm. "Shuri! Stop!"
"Get out of my way, brother!" she snarled back at him, leaning forward against his hand slightly.
She was so strong. He had felt real fear when she first transformed—fear of losing her, fear of her losing her mind in the same manner as Dr Banner, fear what Eliza might have done to try to match her. The transformation that the gamma radiation and Heart-Shaped Herb had wrought upon his little sister was alarmingly powerful. There was absolutely no way he could hold her back if she actually decided to shove him out of her way.
"N'Jadaka lied. I am alive. He betrays us."
"Then we'll kill him, too," she responded, baring her teeth. Her eyes were still locked on the Red Woman.
"No. You are not thinking clearly. It is done. We are safe."
She slapped his arm away with a restrained swipe of her open hand—even though she was clearly holding back, it still sent him staggering back a couple of paces, his entire forearm stinging with the impact. "We will never be safe. Not as long as the Red Woman still draws breath," she growled, glowering at him. At least she was looking at him, now.
T'Challa returned her gaze evenly. "We do not need to fear her. Not anymore," he said, his tone firm but gentle.
"I am not afraid!" she roared in his face, both hands clenched reflexively into fists at her side. She blinked, shrinking back slightly at her own reaction to his words. "I am not afraid," she repeated, a little less steadily. Her breath was coming short and sharp, her emotions keeping her adrenaline high.
"This beast of fear and vengeance is not you, Shuri. You are not a mindless killer. You are my sister."
There was the barest flicker of movement at the edge of T'Challa's peripheral vision—a tiny spark of red energy. "Shuri," Wanda said behind him, an edge of tired frustration in her tone. "If I had wanted to kill you, I'd have fucking done it already." Idiot! She should not have spoken! Did she not realise how close she was to death?!
Shuri snarled, barging T'Challa aside, and lunged at the Red Woman. He tried to stop her, but it was like trying to wrestle with a mountain—all he could do is watch helplessly as she seized Wanda around the throat with one hand and lifted her into the air, long fingers wrapping all the way around the woman's neck. "You—!" Shuri stopped dead, blinking as if confused. "You…"
She let go of Wanda, dropping her to the ground. The Red Woman let out a hiss of pain, but her uninjured hand was around his sister's wrist, refusing to let go, and Shuri began to shrink. The Hulk transformation fled as quickly as it had originally come, Shuri's limbs shortening as she stumbled to her knees, joining Wanda on the cracked ground. T'Challa could see, now, the threads of magic under the Red Woman's hand, joined with a soft golden glow. The Mind Stone.
Shuri finished sinking down, collapsing bonelessly. Unconscious. Wanda let go of her, looking cautiously back up at him. "Sorry, I didn't think you'd be able to stop her."
T'Challa scowled at her. She might have been right but, regardless, it did not give her the right to… He pushed down the flare of anger at the Red Woman once again trespassing in the mind of someone he cared about. Taking a deep breath, T'Challa turned to face N'Jadaka, who was still hanging suspended in midair. The smile had been wiped from the other man's face.
"We have much to talk about, cousin," T'Challa said.
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
thanks for the update.
that certainly could have gone worse.
half expected Shuri to impale T'challa by accident.
that certainly could have gone worse.
half expected Shuri to impale T'challa by accident.
Wanda: "I did try and warn you"