The Quinjet flew off as Black Widow landed on the roof. She slid under the green beams of the Brainiac Drones with the ease of a dancer. She grabbed a small dagger from her belt, the blade expanded out from her hand, cutting through the legs of the drones. They fell to the ground but quickly raised themselves back upright with their arms.
And now shot beams out of their forehead rather than their hands.
"Great," Romanoff mentally sighed.
Twisting herself around a small amount of cover that existed on the rooftop, knee-high walls that wouldn't save someone from blasts of plasma but they would lower her visibility. Something that helped when being shot at by anyone, especially rather dumb drones.
They strode up towards her position slowly… when they were struck down by blasts from Stark's repulsors. The drones were taken out casually as if they were props. Stark landed in a crude fashion as if he hadn't test-driven this armor enough to be used to the weight.
While simultaneously the newest and most powerful of Stark's current armors, it was already roughed up. Scruffs littered about its frame, making what had been a pristine paint job into something that appeared to have been miskept for years.
Piled onto this were the black scorch marks that accented the areas around his chest. As if the drones had suddenly gained an unusual amount of intelligence and attempted to hit the man's weak spot, otherwise known as the man's Arc Reactor.
It was a bigger armor than his usual stuff, thicker helmet, big enough to house more than the usual gadgets, thicker chest plate, and a massive backpack.
"Sorry, Thor was meant to back you up bu-" There was a rumble of thunder in the area, the sky darkened as Stark Tower was suddenly struck by a massive amount of lightning. Even from this distance, the light was so great that Natasha needed to block her vision with her forearm. "-as you can see, the big guy's trying to deal with the portal up in the sky."
"Well, you might be able to tell what this thing is better than him," She pointed at the object, round and glowing green. And sitting there dead in the center was the emblem of Brainiac, the three circles forming a triangle, connected by lines.
"It looks to be an amplifier from my scans," Stark walked closer to it, displaying some measure of hesitancy. "The device is incredibly advanced, the power source matches the output that my Arc Reactor can put out on the minimal, you know the dips into the 1% that happen every once and awhile."
"So? Is that bad? Good? Can we use it against Brainiac?" The SHIELD Agent asked him.
"This is bad, I'd need a week just to be sure how this thing works never mind use it against the evil alien overlord that describes itself as God of Technology."
Suddenly, two more drones burst into existence beside Natasha, while another pair tackled Stark to the ground. Quickly, she pulled out a titanium cable, wrapping it around the arms of the right drone before it opened fire on her and turning it against the ones holding Stark.
Freed from their grip, Stark pointed his arm towards the two drones near her, a panel opening up as two missiles seared through their bodies, both destroying them and knocking them far away from her before they could explode.
Stark walked over to her, a compartment bouncing up from the suit's backpack, the man reached back and took a small handgun, something that looked closer to a Star Trek phaser than a real gun, and handed it over to her with the typical Stark flourish.
"This will work much better against them than the standard firearms," he told her, his head moving back towards the sky. They both saw the swarms of drones that were raining down fire from the sky. "These things do not let up."
"No, but then that is the point, Mr. Stark," She rolled to the side in an instant when the voice spoke up, firing off a blind shot towards that while Natasha could hear hit the target, she knew that it had done next to nothing given the gentle hum that rang in her ears along with the smooth voice of her target. "Even in my current position, I do not lack for resources. If I can not send quality through the portal yet, then I shall drown you all in quantity."
There was an inhuman quality to every motion Brainiac had. Like he'd only ever learned enough to seem eerie rather than akin to something that most would consider alive. Only minimal facial movements, enough to speak but never to emote. Brainiac was much closer to what she'd thought alien invaders would've looked like than Loki was.
The Asgardian was nothing but rage and spite, combined with brains admittedly. But Brainiac radiated cold, calculating, and something uncannily more insidious than Loki ever managed.
"You only come out of hiding when the Odin bros aren't here?" Natasha could imagine the small grin on his face that was going unseen behind his helmet. "Seems someone is afraid, how about you go and hide back in that other dimension of yours. We promise not to send the big bad Asgardians after you."
"Your wit is almost amusing," Brainiac said this with an expression that forced Nat to wonder if the being had ever felt amusement. "Almost as amusing as the thought that like you, I'm limited to one vessel at a time, my consciousness is spread throughout all my drones. I am everywhere, I see everything."
Stark opened fire, repulsors being assisted by rockets, destroying the alien's current body within seconds.
"As quick to the draw as I'd been led to be-" This time it was Natasha that stuck first, the repulsor pistol tearing through the alien's face without resistance. The blowback from the shot was greater than the SHIELD Agent had expected, so her next shot was off target, harmlessly shooting into the sky before disappearing into nothingness.
"Nice shot," Stark sniped as he picked up the device Brainiac had left there. It would've been far too heavy for Natasha to lift, and he could only manage it due to the armor he wore. "Going to just-" A single finger of his lit up bright red and he slowly cut into the outer casing. It was slow and careful, but soon Stark had removed a small green orb from the device. "-deal with this."
It soon powered off without fanfare, letting the billionaire bounce the thing from one hand to another.
"Pretty reckless," she glanced at him. "Could've caused an explosion."
"This suit isn't bulky because I liked the style," Stark responded, casually throwing the device to the ground while inserting the power source he just removed. "It's bulky because it was my first design to match our blue friend's abilities."
The expression Natasha sent him was more than enough to display her thoughts on the matter.
"Yeah, yeah, I know this one will be ripped apart," His backpack opened once more, this time seemingly to just vent heat. "But at least I've got all those helpful sensory powers matched… just need to invent a suit strong enough to hold up a helicarrier."
(Stark Tower Roof)
Louise idly wondered if there was something about super-powered men and having longer than average hair. Pat mightn't have started out like that, but currently, he and Thor seemed to be matched in length, with Loki not far behind.
There were also their rippling muscles that they had in common.
Thor especially outdid Pat in that regard. Her friend looked like a swimmer, built for speed. Thor was like a wrestler in some regards, powerful muscles built for delivering heavy blows and moving large weights in an instant.
And boy… did Thor use them to rip apart drones without an issue while his brother continued to poke and prod against the blue barrier that protected the portal machine. Sometimes one would get close to Loki but those were dealt with by an arrow from Barton.
The man appeared to be rather enraged as he fought as many drones as he could.
His specialty arrows were impressive. Not only were they high tech, but some of them also used high-frequency blades or a plasma-like edge to cut through the armor of the drones as if they were wearing leather.
Doc Ock had equipped the man well.
Morse's equipment on the other hand was doing a lesser job. The female SHIELD Agent kept moving, in and out, rolling and flipping around the drones' melee reach as if she were a dancer, her electric batons only ever smacking against them once Morse could see an opening to exploit.
It was much more exhausting work than what the other two were doing, her weapons were hurting the drones but she lacked the raw force to crash through the thick metal that the drones were made from.
It was only with the help from Murdock that the woman managed to keep in the thick of things, having co-opted one of the batons for his own use. The blind lawyer added to the Agent's survival by acting in much the same way and picking out the same drones as targets.
It wasn't so much that they were a well-oiled machine, but rather they were both so aware of their own capabilities that they radiated competence. They trusted the other based on that, and the prior fight against Loki, so the duo acted with complete trust that the other would back them up.
Luckily for the young redhead, she wasn't as defenseless as one would've thought. The drones that Earth's latest attacker was sending their way all appeared to share the same weakness to the SHIELD EMP Rifle, single shots would cause them to collapse onto the ground… or fall from the sky onto the streets below depending on where they were at the time.
Even if the drones were ineffective in killing them, Louise was sure that wasn't the point of the continued assault. Brainiac only needed to stall them while his ship exited the portal above, he didn't need to beat them this very second.
It was even possible that he was holding back more advanced drones or other forces till Brainiac himself arrived to provide air support to cover his unit too heavy to fly. Though that was just Louise guessing based on what she knew from WW2 documentaries combined with video games.
But even with the amazing fighters arranged here, from the experienced SHIELD Agents to the brother gods with control over the very elements themselves. Even with all this, they began to tire, or at least the humans were, by the sheer numbers that the alien conqueror was sending their way. For every dozen they destroyed, two dozen more would pop into the city skyline.
And eventually, especially given the human's continued tiring condition, Thor's temper seemed to spike.
"Loki!" he screamed. "Turn the portal off now, before it's too late!"
"What do you think I've been trying for the past twenty minutes!" Loki roared back, dodging a blast from a drone by leaning to the side, then blasting them back with the power of the scepter. "It seems that it'll take a bit more than I would've thought. The shield was meant to match the energy frequency from the scepter, so the weapon would pass through it but-"
"Stand aside," Thor held his hammer in the air, against the protesting of Loki, the sky gathered dark clouds and rumbled with the sound of thunder. Soon a bolt of lightning struck the weapon, but it wasn't like the usual kind, instead, it was a continuous stream of power dropping down from the sky. "RAHHHH!"
Thor ran, screaming from the top of his lungs before leaping into the air and descending down on the shield. When the hammer met the glowing blue shield protecting the Tesseract-powered machine, an explosion sprung into life.
Louise found herself thrown into the air, her heart leaping into her chest as her body neared the edge of the rooftop. Luckily, one hand managed to grab hold of the railing that lined the area, the action nearly ripping her arm out of her socket but it did cause her to lose the EMP Rifle.
The corner of her eyes caught Murdock, who ended stomach first, in no small amount of pain, having been thrown into a different section of railing by the explosion. Meanwhile, Morse had managed to hang on to the man's foot using the handle of the baton's cross-section.
Barton fared much better than any of them, having stabbed an arrow into the rooftop and held onto it for dear life.
"Can we not set off explosions with the very squishy humans beside you," he rolled to his feet, shooting off a duo of arrows at drones that were approaching the Murdock/Morse pair. "I'd like to survive this whole thing with only nightmares!"
Thor's eyes glanced towards Louise's position, letting the young redhead see the regret practically ooze out from them. Whatever pity she felt for the man was drowned in by the rage she felt at him nearly killing them. Regret was fine, but she had a right to be angry when someone made a mistake so big.
This wasn't accidentally knocking you to the ground, this was knocking you off the top of a skyscraper.
"I apologize," The blond god replied even as he threw his hammer through three drones that had dropped in while the humans not named Barton regained their breath. "I was sure that it would break through the barrier. Truly an unbreakable defense."
"Good to see your tactical senses haven't diminished since we last fought together, Thor," Loki spoke up, pulling the scepter up from the ground, his eyes inspecting the Tesseract's current location as one would expect from a hunter sizing up prey. "Brute force isn't the answer here. Nothing we can muster could break through that barrier without annihilating the city too."
"What do you suggest?" Thor turned to face his brother, a frown on his lips when he noticed that the other man suddenly flashed bright blue, his form twisting away into something like a whirlpool in the air, only to reappear inside the barrier protecting the portal device.
"That, I suggest that," Loki replied cheekily, he spun around his scepter. "Did you really think that I had not prepared for this sort of situation?"
"You prepared for a being thought myth in the minds of many randomly interrupting your own invasion of Midgard?"
"Well, no but I did prepare for the event of someone modifying the barrier to be used against me. You got to be prepared for betrayal from everyone, at any moment."
"That's exactly how you teleported to the Tesseract," Morse pondered why exactly he didn't do that to escape capture in the first place, but just by scanning his appearance, the woman could tell that it took more than a bit of stamina to do so.
Loki was out of breath, in spite of what his rather wide grin would have you believe, the trickster god was running on fumes with the act of teleportation itself. His skin, which already had been pale, now was stark white and was shifting in response to the pressure the barrier put on things inside the barrier.
"LOKI! WATCH OUT!"
But… one thing that didn't appear to be affected by the barrier's powerful energy was the familiar sight of Brainiac. His robotic body grabbed Loki by the neck, while his other hand attempted to pry the scepter from his hands.
"It does interest me," Brainiac's expressionless face didn't show a single ooze of comparison for the god as he continued to choke the man. His fist growing ever tighter with each passing second. "The power that this scepter holds, it is not unlike the Tesseract in energy signature, though with a different mo-"
In his arm the Asgardian prince suddenly slid out of the mechanical grip, his body lengthening and thinning before Brainiac could respond. What was once a person soon became a snake, and while that did give the City Bottler the scepter as Loki now lacked hands, it also allowed Loki to spit a glob of venom into the visual receptors of Brainiac's current body.
The venom ate through his face as if it was a pure acid of such strength that Iron Man's armor would fall to it. But instead of letting this slow him down, the World Ender quickly kicked the Loki-snake so hard that the creature slammed against the barrier above them.
"Loki!" Thor screamed attempting once more, this time with a far more focused blast of lightning being sent towards the barrier, causing a small ripple to erupt on the surface.
But his worry was premature, as Loki flashed back to being a man once more. He flipped in the air, his feet hitting the ceiling of the barrier as the Norse God used it to bounce back towards Brainiac, a blade flashing into his hand as he did so.
In a single smooth motion, the robotic body of Brainiac was split in half, from head to pelvic area. Nothing but smoking scraps of metal and circuits were left of the alien menace as Loki once more put away his sword, flipping the scepter up to his hand.
"Truly, all anyone does is underestimate me."
Loki sliced the blade of the scepter through the top of the portal machine, the device shutting down with only a few sparks that spoke of the danger that such a method of turning off a dimensional portal device had. The barrier fell soon afterward, as did the long blue beam that had been shooting into the sky to create the portal originally.
"As Earth's Latest Savior," Loki shuffled towards them, the scepter held against his shoulder by the long shaft. "I'll gladly take France as my reward, something about the inherent artistic value of the Louvre just speaks to me."
"Brother-" But the young sibling didn't even let Thor finish the sentence before waving him off with a glib smile and shake of his head.
"I'm joking brother, just joking."
"Loki-"
"Yes, yes, I suppose that we should be making haste to Asgard before the Midgardians decide to punish me themselves. I'll take-"
"Loki, the portal is still open!" Thor roared in his brother's face, physically forcing the man's head to stare up into the sky. Brainiac's ship was still in clear sight inching itself through the portal even if it was slower now than it had been before.
"Oh shit," Louise groaned, leaning against the railing with the same sort of energy you'd expect from a person that attempted a marathon with only a week's worth of preparation. "Can we not catch a break?"
The drones had returned in force, with greater numbers. Hundreds of them circled the building, their weapons lighting up in bright green, building power for a series of blasts that would no doubt leave the humans on the roof dead at the very least.
But suddenly, there was a chill in the air, accompanying that was a blue blur sliding in and out of sight in such brief flashes that Louise and Morse were almost sure that it was their minds playing tricks on them under the stress of the situation.
Then… all the drones dropped from the sky, some hitting the roof, others heading towards the streets below. The drones that hit the roof were white and shattered as if glass.
"I don't know about taking any breaks right now, it's not really the time for it, file for a vacation after I foil this invasion," Pat's familiar voice piped into Louise's ear, answering her question from a moment before. "Is his ship really a giant version of his head? I'm guessing he's from the 80s."
She turned with a smile a sigh of relief, even at the sight of his new outfit. Not that it was badly designed, in fact, it was so well designed that she couldn't keep a giggle escaping at the sight of the cape so brazenly added onto the back.
Louise wasn't sure whether it was from a sheet or a jumper or some mix of both. But it's patchworked nature contrasted against the rest of the suit.
"What?" Pat asked, raising above them before landing on the rooftop. He smiled, "Don't like the cape? Well, it was tough to add one on such short notice, let's see you do better in the five seconds it took to sweep my apartment." Pat then turned his head to look up at the head-shaped ship still pushing itself through the portal, at this point, it was halfway through. "So… any thoughts about how to close the massive gap? Because I'd rather New York without a bottle around it… you think Brainiac ever just taps the glass around the cities he's collected?"
"You, you're late," Murdock couldn't help but groan at the reporter's attempts at 'jokes' while rising back to his feet. "Next time, you go and collect the damn scientist, might have less alien invasions then."
"So that's a no on a plan from you?"
"Lugh, I can't even see the damn ship, never mind make a plan."
Author's Note: Long month. So sorry about the wait.
We now assume our previous programming. Prepare yourselves. Because till the end of the next arc, this story is once more my priority. Also, WandaVision was great, and it does give me some ideas for the future.
But it hasn't affected any of my current planned arcs. So Yah! That's the best kind of content.
On to the words of the chapter, Pat finally arrives on the field. A little late and a modification to his suit, what chance does Brainiac have against the might of the fully assembled heroes?
...
And there's Loki as well I suppose. But... not the most stable of people, is he?