It dawns on him then what he needs to do. Just as he'd previously thought, Emma wouldn't want to involve herself directly while Thaddeus knew he couldn't fully stand aside. And so the solution… was obvious.
He sends Rogue, Wanda, and Pietro off with one final goodbye and an assurance to both Rogue and Wanda that he would back them up if the Brotherhood tried anything. Then, once they're gone and off to team up with Mystique and her team, Thaddeus turns to Emma.
The blonde telepath raises an eyebrow at him but the corners of her mouth also turn up into a knowing smile. She knows without even looking into his well-defended mind exactly what he's thinking, Thaddeus can tell.
"Tch… very well, but only because I love you."
Grinning, Thaddeus reaches out and takes one of Emma's hands in his own, intertwining their fingers together.
"I love you too, Emma."
That brings a startled blush to the blonde's face. She'd said it offhandedly, framing it as a joke… but they both knew she'd meant it as a lot more and now Thaddeus was effectively calling her bluff. In the end, Emma just huffs.
"Shall we get started?"
Thaddeus nods. In the end, the answer to his dilemma is easy. Rather than picking one group to go with in the upcoming takedown of HYDRA… he'll play overwatch for all of them, with Emma at his side to help out.
They sit down together on the couch in Emma's Office and reach out as one. With Thaddeus taking the lead and Emma backing him up, the entire world opens up before them… literally. Just like last time, except this time Thaddeus is taking charge. He's in control, Emma is merely boosting his efforts. And given they're already the two most powerful telepaths on the planet, that boost is all Thaddeus needs to set everything in motion.
He doesn't have to do anything to get the Brotherhood moving of course, but he does keep a close eye on their activities all the same. The power to resurrect the dead isn't something to be treated lightly after all and Thaddeus isn't about to just rely on Mystique's goodwill to keep Wanda and Rogue safe now that they've revealed some of their hand.
Fortunately, all seems to be well on that front. Not only do they team up rather easily, but Mystique even goes a step further and calls in the X-Men, much to Thaddeus' mild surprise. Professor Charles Xavier and his team DO have a vested interest in stopping bigoted supremacists from experimenting on their kind though, and the facility where Magneto is located doesn't just house him, but dozens of other mutants as well.
With the X-Men involved in the whole operation, it's less likely the Brotherhood will make a play for Rogue or Wanda, Thaddeus figures… though it's not like he's going to just trust them.
At the same exact time, Thaddeus and Emma are seeding information all across the world. Anonymous tips here, file packets uncovered there. It's not an instant thing of course… in fact, just the set up alone takes the next twenty four hours.
Thaddeus doesn't need to sleep anymore and Emma can semi-reset her physical health by hopping in and out of diamond form so that's not a big deal. Not to mention, when Sage finally stops by and finds out what they're doing, she quickly steps in to help with logistics… and that includes providing the two of them with food and water.
SHIELD's very own Director Fury, who thankfully is not a member of HYDRA, is informed as carefully as possible about the infiltration he has in his midst. Fortunately, HYDRA hasn't dug their claws in too deep. Unfortunately, they've still managed to convert the entire STRIKE Team, led by a man named Brock Rumlow, to their side.
To say Fury is unhappy about this discovery would be an understatement and he immediately begins making plans to capture, detain, and interrogate Rumlow and his fellow infiltrators.
Deeming these plans to be 'good enough' for now while also making a note to keep an eye on things, Thaddeus and Emma send the Black Widows under their command elsewhere in HYDRA's network. Two teams led by Natasha and Yelena each prepare to go after separate major facilities that HYDRA has absolutely no reason to believe could ever be compromised.
The Avengers, meanwhile, are tipped off to the most blatant and 'obvious' HYDRA bases, none of which are actually located in America. HYDRA operates all over the world after all, and while their American Cells are subtle and doing their best to remain hidden, there are other HYDRA branches in other parts of the world that aren't hiding themselves whatsoever.
With Captain America as the defacto 'leader' of the Avengers at this point in time, just a whiff of HYDRA still existing anywhere is enough to get them all up in arms. A small nudge from Thaddeus ensures that they have She-Hulk call in the Fantastic Four by way of her connection with the Invisible Woman as well, prompting a team up that should give them all more than enough firepower to deal with anything HYDRA has to throw at them.
On the ground level, Thaddeus doesn't leave his girls out here. There are half a dozen more secret laboratories in New York City alone, all of them contractors of HYDRA just like The Facility and Harkins were. Thaddeus sends information on them to Gwen through a back channel, which then prompts Gwen to assemble the others. She even tries to message him to see if he can help, but he apologetically turns her down… while at the same time pushing for Laura and Cessily to do so.
In the end, Kitty and Illyana wind up going with that group instead of the main X-Men team also, and there's one other surprise that Thaddeus really isn't anticipating. Namely, Gwen's roommate Doreen Green, turns out to be a hero as well. He thinks he's heard mention of 'Squirrel Girl' once or twice before, though he has to admit to questioning the strength of her powerset and its usefulness in battle…
Still, if nothing else her ability to communicate and command squirrels did give her a nice little scouting power, Thaddeus supposed.
On the dawn of the second day after Thaddeus, Wanda, and Rogue bring Pietro Maximoff back from the dead… it all starts to kick off. Coordinated Chaos, as Emma likes to describe it. Not everyone goes at the same time of course, that would be too obvious, even if it was probably going to be clear after the fact that some mysterious force had made this all happen behind the scenes.
Still, the staggered assault on HYDRA Bases all over the world is helped by Thaddeus and Emma as they truly begin to nudge and tweak and push in the favor of their allies.
HYDRA Agents start to forget protocol, even as alarms begin to ring. Pushing them to be a bit more selfish and forgetful prompts self-destructs to go unused and causes more than one agent to step away from a terminal without signing out first.
Here and there, Thaddeus adjusts the aim of a goon so they miss their targets, while Emma disrupts the teamwork and unit cohesion between different members of HYDRA's super-powered elements as they face off against the Avengers.
Of course, after seeing her do that, Thaddeus can't help but push a little in the other direction, giving the people on their side just a bit more teamwork, helping smooth over the edges so that they're as crisp and clean as they can be in their movements and awareness of their allies.
It's not control… it's guidance. Emma wasn't wrong when she told Pietro that their telepathic powers combined with Wanda and Rogue's reality warping could very well allow them to take over the world in a day if they wanted to.
But Thaddeus had no desire for that and thankfully, Emma didn't care for the idea either anymore. No, better to be the power in the shadows making everything safe. Better to be the guy in the chair.
With a flick of his mental will, Thaddeus pushes half of the HYDRA security forces that Gwen and her team are going up against to turn and flee, elevating their cowardice and dampening their belief in 'the cause'.
At the same time, on the other side of the world, he pushes She-Hulk's awareness of her surroundings just a tad more, letting it expand. As a result, her hand snaps out and she catches a mortar shell that would have hit one of her weaker teammates but instead harmlessly explodes in her palm.
The squads of widows led by Natasha and Yelena barely even need his and Emma's help, though Thaddeus still makes sure that their twin missions are cakewalks by leaning on the minds of their opponents and weakening the opposition.
In turn, the Black Widows come away with a lot more data from the bases they're able to take intact, data that Natasha then sends on to Nick Fury so that the Director of SHIELD can in turn send it on to the Avengers to reveal even more HYDRA bases to the All-Star Squad.
Speaking of SHIELD, the operation to take down their own STRIKE Team goes off without a hitch and really, all Thaddeus has to do is slow down Brock Rumlow's reflexes enough that he doesn't manage to get a message out to HYDRA about their exposure before they're all captured. A couple of the STRIKE Team do still manage to use the suicide capsules in their false teeth, but most of them are prevented and taken alive.
And of course, last but not least… are the mutants. The Brotherhood and the X-Men working together… or rather, working perpendicular to one another. Their little planning session hadn't gone overly well due to previous bad blood, but Thaddeus had sort of seen that coming… and ultimately neither he nor Emma had seen any reason to try and smooth things over and risk detection by Charles Xavier.
Instead of working together-together, the two groups had agreed on a split plan for hitting the secret facility where Magneto was being held at the same time. As a result, the X-Men went in from the front while the Brotherhood went in from behind.
Regardless of his personal hang ups with either group, Thaddeus gives them all the same support he and Emma are giving everyone else, to be fair. Lax security, forgetful HYDRA staff, cowardice galore. In the end, nobody takes too much damage and the Brotherhood reach their tormented leader rather quickly. Once Magneto is freed and within range of the metal on the facility's outer edges, everything really kicks off.
In the end… HYDRA simply wasn't ready for assaults of this magnitude, let alone this many assaults all over the place all at once. As Thaddeus and Emma provide overwatch, it's easy to see HYDRA's reaction too… and of course, blunt it. HYDRA leaders, colloquially referred to as 'Heads', are captured and arrested left, right, and center all over the place by different groups of superheroes and law enforcement.
That said… not all of them are taken out at the same time. And as a result, a couple manage to slip their respective nets. However, this isn't entirely a bad thing…
"The 'Supreme Hydra', Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, is en route to the HYDRA base in the Arctic. It looks like he intends to escape to the automated base located on the Moon."
Thaddeus grunts and nods at Emma's words, the first time she's actually spoken out loud since they started doing all of this. Yes, HYDRA had a damn moon base. There was nobody living up there thankfully, but it was a final fallback position in case 'the worst' came to pass. Which today definitely counted as for the organization.
From the Arctic HYDRA Base, the 'Supreme Hydra' would be able to launch a spaceship that would take him all the way to the moon base. Unfortunately for him… it wouldn't work out that way.
"The widows have caught wind of his flight and Natasha has alerted SHIELD, who has in turn alerted the Avengers. They're on their way."
All according to plan. Of course, the Supreme Hydra DID have a sizable headstart on the Avengers and if everything was functioning as it should have been at the Arctic Base, then he probably would have escaped to the Moon before they could catch up to him.
Unfortunately for Baron Strucker, the Arctic Base actually was staffed by real people with minds that Thaddeus and Emma could effect. Efficiency degrades, functionality diminishes, and the poor unfortunate Baron is still screaming at his incompetent agents who can't get his ship launched when the Avengers arrive and put him under arrest.
All across the board, everything is working out similarly. No one on their side takes more than surface level injuries, while HYDRA is torn to pieces before they can even fully react. Contingencies and revenge plots are discovered and shredded to nothing and ultimately, the entire organization is pulled out by the root.
Would it have gone nearly as good if he and Emma hadn't worked together to provide overwatch like this? Frankly, Thaddeus doesn't think so. Even as he double checks everyone and everything, it all comes up green.
Heh, all's well that ends well, rig-
'THADDEUS!'
Emma's telepathic voice suddenly lets out a psychic scream in his mind, causing Thaddeus to pull his mind back to his body and twist to see her in the real world, his eyes widening in confusion and fear. At first he thinks they're being attacked. But there's no one else in the room with them at the moment, not even Sage.
Instead… instead Emma is floating in the air, surrounded by blazing orange flames that are even coming out of her eyes at this point.
"Emma?! Emma, what's happening?! What's going on?!"
'I… I don't know! Something has come! Something… the Phoenix has CHOSEN ME!'
Thaddeus' eyes widen as he remembers a story from Cessily and Laura he'd blown off as 'fantastical'. A story about a deceased Jean Grey… and the Phoenix Force she'd once housed.