Manhattan, New York [2012]
–Alex Warner–
Within minutes of his maximum damage to buildings strategy, he was, once more, within the vicinity of the Stark Tower, which was more like A tower now, what with all the other letters having fallen down in all the ruckus around it.
He grinned as he heard the sound of thunder before climbing the building adjacent to Stark Tower like a monkey, shattering glass and concrete alike in his bid to reach the top. Once there, he just turned around, and after gathering an extra-large serving of Chakra at the soles of his feet, he was off, like a rocket, straight at one of the higher floors of A tower.
Within seconds, he had crossed the distance and was going to crash into one of the upper floors through broken pieces of glass. Now, he had excellent durability, especially when reinforced with active chakra usage, but why risk tumbling into an unknown floor with who knows what kind of sharp stuff lying around?
So, at the last moment, he angled himself so he went in feet first, and at the first point of contact, he latched onto the concrete floor, or at least that's what should have happened. "Oh…no,"
Apparently, the entire invasion thing stressed out the poor flooring of this building, which were definitely not rated for the extra stress everyone was putting on it, as some of the floors apparently just caved in.
No worries, though. He was nothing if not adaptable. It was his whole shtick, adapting to everyday events with a supernatural source of power dwelling within him, borne from the combination of physical as well as spiritual, or rather, mental energy.
Yet another series of vibrations passed through the building as he found his footing and just jumped up, finding himself hanging on the side of Stark Towers, stuck to a cracked piece of glass. With a smooth movement, he had pushed himself up, and then repeated the movement a couple of times before he found himself high up in the air, looking at Loki, who just stabbed Thor in the ribs, sceptre floating by his side.
His arrival, however, did not go unnoticed as he quickly found his footing and just ran straight ahead at Loki, his hands twitching as he called in his chakra, molding it into something he hoped would help him.
Meanwhile, Loki, as expected from someone with godly reflexes, quickly snatched the sceptre out of the air and aimed it at him. He could almost see the buildup of blue energy at the tip of the sceptre, ready to blast him away from Loki.
It was times like these that made him glad that he put all his time here, in this Death world disguised as a normal heroes-always-win universe, into offense, into strengthening his body, into honing his body into a weapon, into creating weapons from what little he knew of Chakra, and its properties.
It was also the reason why he could react as fast as he did, allowing him to duck low, as the blast of energy sailed past his head, making chills go down his spine at how close of a call it was. Loki was in the process of aiming it down, intending on using the sceptre as a knife but he was just plain faster.
He thrust his right hand out, lightning crackling around it, as Loki's body sizzled, spasming, as the sceptre was dropped on the ground, not floating this time, which meant Loki could not cast his magic.
He sighed in relief as Loki dropped on top of Thor, perilously close to the edge. His minor heroic tendencies won out as he grabbed both of them by the leg and tossed them towards the penthouse.
Thor recovered mid air, and glared at him but Loki remained spasming as his chakra wreaked havoc on the god's body. After all, he had put a nice 10% of his chakra into that blast, so it should go on for quite a while. He could have turned all that juice into an absolutely titanic lightning bolt but then again, he didn't want to have an angry Norse God with an impossible hammer on his ass.
He grabbed the sceptre and informed Thor, "Tell everyone that I can close the portal now. Selvig told me."
Thor just glared at him but with a hint of confusion on his face, as Loki continued to groan in pain, his body still twitching helplessly. His face turned into one of realisation as he realised Thor probably didn't have any comms on him. Cons of being someone regularly wreathed in lightning.
If he was correct, this was a Us bro Us moment.
Welp, if he couldn't communicate, he might as well just..
"Stop!" Thor pointed Mjolnir at him as he jumped and reached the roof in a single jump, cracking the already cracked floor, creating a hole in it, as rubble plummeted from this height. At least everyone around was already evacuated, so that was that.
"Hmm," Standing this close to the Tesseract was definitely intimidating. The Mind Stone was very tightly sealed within that housing, such that it was very hard for anyone to tell that it contained one of the six foundational blocks of the universe. But the Tesseract?
It might have concealed the Space Stone's energy if it was dormant, but now that it was being used to power a portal machine? He could feel it with ease. It was as if standing next to a furnace that you knew could turn you to ash instantly. It was…
"Alex!" He blinked, his thoughts stuttering to a halt as he looked at his hands, holding onto the sceptre, which was pointed down but still had a glow at the tip, as if he was going to attack the ground itself.
"What the…" He muttered to himself, shaking his head, feeling a little dizzy as he was apparently in the process of being mind whammied by the Mind Stone, which was more than terrifying. He resisted the urge to simply drop the sceptre and looked around to find the source of the voice.
"Alex! Or whatever your real name is, STOP!" He blinked at the literal piece of head that was just sitting on the ground near him. It was an identical unit of the Iron Man suit, with its signature glowing eyes.
"Tony?" He asked, incredulously.
"Yes! I mean, no! That is not me, but stop. Don't close the portal yet."
"Why?" He was just playing it up now, keeping his expression deadpan for no particular reason at all, as the head just stayed there, stationary.
Huh, A talking, severed head. There was definitely some story there…..Maybe he was still a bit concussed?
"We have a nuke coming. And I know justwhere to put it," And he delivered that dialogue with such grace that he just stayed mum for a moment before nodding, saluting with the scept–
"Whoa!" He thrust the sceptre away from himself, the tip of the thing coming alarmingly close to his head, "Whoops! Almost mind controlled myself there….How would that work, actually? Would I just control myself? But isn't that what is happening right now? Might actually be interesting from a free will philosophy perspective. You know what, I have to–"
"Just close the portal on my mark. You will know when you see it," Tony's voice sounded kinda strained near the end there, and he understood why. The man was going on a one way trip to the harshness of space, in a suit rated for atmospheric operations.
Hell, he was sure that Deep Sea would just crush the Iron Man suit as it was, let alone space, where his blood would just boil away, killing the man.
He looked to the side, as his eyes, enhanced by chakra as they were, despite getting no discernible advantage of being the bearer of the Eyes of the God, could very well spot Tony coming in along nicely, the twin afterburner, from the missile, as well as Tony's suit, easily visible, even from long distances.
"Stark," He turned to the head, feeling weird for a moment, talking to a metal head with glowing eyes, "You do know that it's a one way trip, right? Any way you can just aim it and fly away at the last moment?"
The silence had him shrugging. His funeral, quite literally.
As the seconds ticked by, he stood there, holding the tip of the sceptre at the base of the machine, having successfully penetrated–hehe–the energy shield around the machine, only stopping an inch from the wave of energy.
"Hold it!" Tony said from the head, as he flew closer, the sound of the missile was easily audible now. He wondered how Tony got that head here. Maybe it had propulsion of its own? How did that work, though? The Repulsors required a dense power source, like the Arc Reactor, which the head most definitely did not have.
Tony was good but he was not that good, not enough to fit micro arc reactors in every single piece anyway. So, some sort of air propulsion, then? That also raised the issue of energy but it was much easier to stomach Tony having built some high density batteries rather than him miniaturising an already miniaturised cold fusion reactor, with the element of the Tesseract at the core of the reactor.
He looked up, as Tony scraped the side of the building, going straight up, along with the missile. He tried one last time, "You might want to let go now, Stark." He received no answer as the missile and Tony both entered the portal, leaving him standing on the roof, holding onto an artifact housing an Infinity Stone, looking straight up, waiting for a nuclear explosion.
"Could I get blinded, though? There must be some benefit to having these wastes of chakra," He talked to himself before shaking his head and looking right up, to check up on any suns that might sprout simultaneously in the dark space on the other side of that portal.
His Rinnegan eyes, useless as they were in their current rendition, probably helped shield him from the sun's radiation, hopefully, as he waited for any signal, from anyone.
Either from someone on this side of the portal, like Fury or Captain, or from someone on the other side of the portal, like Tony.
"Hey," he turned to look at the head, sitting silently, the lights now gone, leaving behind two white indents–wow, that was creepy, "uh, Jarvis, right? You think your boss is coming back or no?"
Before the severed head could speak, he looked up instinctively, as the sun bloomed in the darkness of the space on the other side, forcing him to sigh in resignation. Despite Tony somehow making it back in one piece, miraculously alive and uninjured, he was unsure if the same could be repeated here.
He would love to—
"Close it…" The severed head spoke, a cultured, British but sombre voice telling him to shut down the portal, despite his boss and creator being on the other side.
The situation was sad and awkward enough already, so he did not put his foot in his mouth and instead just nodded, and jabbed the sceptre at the base of the machine, shutting down the flow of energy, as the portal made a visceral tearing sound before it began receding.
He looked up, unheeding of the chances of his eyes burning increasing by the second, hoping to capture the exact moment–
"Aha!" He shouted in triumph, turning to the head, "Look! Your boss made it. He came through, at the last moment. Showoff!"
After a moment, he added, "I don't think his suit is active, though. You think you can–"
His words were cut as another suit, this one all metallic and much sleeker than before, shot out of the building, heading straight up.
"Wow!" He exclaimed, "Did not know there were two,"
The head had gone silent by then, as he sat down on the ground, sceptre laid at his feet, and the Tesseract sitting in the rubble of the machine that apparently self destructed the moment the energy keeping it together was cut off.
"Now," He said, to himself, "What to do with you?"
One of them was definitely coming with him. As spoils of war, you could say. It was just a toss up between Space rock that would burn him upon contact, and also would bring in the heat from Asgard and Odin since they needed it for their Space Bridge or the sceptre, that could shoot cool blasts of energy, mind control people(not that he had any use for that) and was also a pretty handy dandy stabbytool.
Choice was pretty simple, then. He swiped the sceptre off the ground, lined it fluidly with the helmet, and blasted it clean off, punching a hole through it, revealing burnt wiring, and no squishy bits.
"Good to know," he nodded to himself before infusing chakra into the sceptre, raising an eyebrow at how easily it seemed to accept the otherworldly energy, and then dropped down from the roof.
___xx___
"Director Fury, this is simply unacceptable! In less than a week, we have suffered tremendous setback after setback. We lost the Base, we lost the research on the Tesseract. We lost the Tesseract. After all that, you lost the Sceptre and also the trust of–"
"Let me stop you right there, Councilman. I might, and I emphasise heavily on might, be held responsible for all the other things, but the last one? Let me jog your memory, if you have forgotten, I was notthe one who ordered a nuclear strike on a civilian population. I was not the one who refused my recommendations, refused to acknowledge the fact that my team was holding the city steady, to just blast a chunk of New York City into oblivion."
They remained silent as he spoke. Nick Fury scoffed internally, as he continued, "The Tesseract had to go. There was nothing I could do about that. I could not argue with a literal god because the other option was the god's far more powerful Father coming down to collect it himself. The Sceptre, on the other hand, we are still looking for."
"Fury," Ah, there he was. Pierce. Ally, when he needed something and first to fall back when it benefited him. "I was made to believe that Mr.Stark and Dr.Banner had already devised something to track the Tesseract. Could that tech simply not be repurposed?"
"We are on that as well, but the loss of both Selvig and Banner is not something that can be filled with just geeks from our academy. It will take time but I am confident that we will locate the sceptre."
"Very well. See that you do. As for the next item on the agenda."
A hologram of an unmasked face lit up in front of him, revealing a smiling man, mid twenties, brunette, and an overall unassuming face, if not for one single feature.
His eyes.Purple with concentric rings on them.
The wildcard of wildcards. Someone who went toe to toe with Loki, has excellent mobility and also took the sceptre with him. He added exceptional stealth to his long list of abilities.
"What has been done about this subject? I assume they are a priority target?"
"You are right, Councilman. He is both a priority target for recruitment as well as the prime suspect for the sceptre's theft