91/100 Power Stones (Almost reaching the Extra Chapter goal!)
----------------------------
Tony's Iron Man suit buzzed with energy as muons were expelled from the palms and feet at an accelerated rate. A shockwave of air billowed around it as upper Manhattan quickly came into focus. Planes were gently descending and ascending in ordered patterns as the hot-rod red powered armour soared between smaller apartment buildings and skyscrapers. The man himself groaned in effort as he pulled his hands to one side, using a pulse of ionized muons to make a tight turn in several seconds flat. This pattern continued for a minute as he slowed down to ensure his own safety and minimised damage to the city.
"Sir, Stark Tower is experiencing a surge of energy from an unknown source. Shall I attempt to deactivate the arc-reactor?" Tony licked his lips within his suit before hiking his power usage even further.
"Yes, make sure to give them a nasty surge for trying to use my building like a wall-socket." An evil glint entered his eyes as his tower entered visual range, a blue spark igniting upon the zenith of the epic skyscraper.
Sirens rang down below as flashes followed, the citizens of New York taking photos and recording Iron Man as much as they could. He had become a star to the majority of America after his announcement, this fact wouldn't change because of the circumstances.
"Sir, they have stopped draining the Arc-Reactor, I fear it is already too late to stop them in this manner." The man ignored his Ai for a moment, his manoeuvres dragging him upwards in an arc that just so happened to land him directly upon his disassembly point.
"I want the Mark VIII ready to deploy Jarvis." The Ai quickly began the process of readying the suit, despite his protests.
"Sir, the Mark VIII is not ready for combat..." Tony snorted as he walked through the ring of robotic tools that stripped his suit away from him. "Just get it done buddy, we need to take a risk with this guy, I can just smell it on him." Jarvis silently continued his preparations as his creator walked into his penthouse bar from the massive balcony.
"You mortals, all so... stubborn and stupid." Loki's voice echoed from one of the far walls, the trickster god's gaze pinned to the streets below and the ambling masses that strut through them.
Tony rolled his eyes before grabbing two shot glasses, "Want a drink? I find whiskey tends to take the edge off of mind control... Not that I'd know personally..." Loki turned towards him and narrowed his eyes, his armour glimmering in the sun as he slowly prowled up to the bar.
"I do not wish to partake in your swill, mortal, I am here for conquest. For purpose. I will take this world and bend it to my will. There is nothing you are capable of that can stop me." Tony casually poured himself a glass and proceeded to ignore Loki's monologue, making him one as well.
"There's the Avengers." Loki paused and frowned in confusion. Tony chuckled a little before taking a long sip of his beverage. "It's what we call ourselves, you know, the world's mightiest 'heroes' and most badass saviours." Loki downright scoffed in his face whilst turning, his staff dangling in his right arm as he looked out over the city once more.
"I've versed them... Not the most challenging foe I have faced before." The billionaire huffed in effort before walking around the bar, the arc-reactor in his chest glowing dully as he got up in the face of the trickster god.
"Yeah, well, you see... You fought us when we weren't ready. It was the introduction and you've shown all your cards. Now it is the conclusion and we're all pissed and know how you play the game..." Loki grit his teeth in anger.
"I have an ARMY!" Tony rolled his eyes and responded in kind, "We have a hulk."
"You cannot defeat the power of the Tesseract!!!" The billionaire laughed directly in his face, "We have a guy that can create matter from energy, your Tesseract is an overrated battery for him to use." The god growled, a flicker of something foreign spreading through his features before a devious smirk replaced it.
"Yes well, how can they fight me, when they are too busy fighting you?" He raised his staff and pressed the sharpened tip upon his arc-reactor. There were several seconds of awkward silence as Tony stared down at his chest and then up to the god.
"Performance issues occur in-" His words were interrupted by a rough backhand from said god, his body launching out of the window.
"Die, mortal." Loki watched on as the man fell off his own tower. He would have continued watching if it weren't for the shifting of a wall and the explosion of energy from several repulsors, an Iron Man suit blasting him to the side before following its creator through the window.
~~~
Meanwhile...
At the top of Stark Tower a massive spark of cerulean blue energy siphoned down into the ground, an energy shield becoming visible in all spectrums as the cube in the middle began spinning at speed exceeding Mach 1.
A minute passed before the sound of crashing glass sounded below, the device shimmering in the same spark of light that triggered the shield. Finally, with an immense sonic boom a beam of plasma lanced into the sky and tore into the fabric of space, a void of nothingness breaking from these cracks in the sky. It widened, stretched and elongated until it was perfectly circular, the freshly made portal facing down over the top of every single building in Manhattan.
Guttural roars billowed out from the massive scar in the sky, the vorpal whooshing of the scab making the sonic waves travel far. Screams followed the monstrous pin-cushioning of reality as tens of thousands of people ran for their lives.
Emma was watching this all with extreme discomfort and stomach churning butterflies. She didn't know where her brother was. He wasn't responding to phone calls, her messages weren't responded to and even her psychic abilities could not sense his usual calm presence within the few miles radius she could sense. Currently, she didn't know if she should go out and help or simply stay inside her family's compound.
A news helicopter's broadcast showed Tony Stark being thrown out of his own tower through a window, a slab of flying robotics following after him and breaking down into one of his suits. She gripped her glass tighter, a small crack spreading from rim to base as she did so. Looking out the window she watched the flying Aircraft carrier dispense a plane of some kind as it flickered in and out of visibility. The news stations themselves were chaotic and split between numerous reporters who were trying to take interviews amidst the rising panic.
One reporter was finally able to grab a police officer for his take on what was happening when the portal in the sky roared once more and some large serpentine shape slithered out from beyond the spatial crack.
"Holy shit..." Her voice quivered slightly as she watched a sky-scraper-long flying serpent covered in metallic plates and armour slowly pull out from the portal and descend onto the city, multiple blurry figures shooting out of the side of the creature as it continued swimming in the air.
`A-are they aliens?` The reporter asked the question on everyone's minds before a beam of energy blasted directly beside her and the cameraman. The camera dropped to the cement below and showed said reporter collapsing onto her side, half her face missing as the scream of the cameraman followed.
"Brother, what should I do...?" Emma paled at the macabre scene.
~~~
The Quin-Jet shuddered as energy blasts sped past the engines. We were all looking out at the sky before us, watching it fill with thousands of aliens. A massive troop carrier in the form of a biological snake-thing slithered between buildings, tearing them apart with its fins whilst flying chariots sped past and dispensed plasma into people and cars below.
"Bet you weren't expecting this when they pulled you from the ice captain..." Rogers shook his head whilst his fists tightened in anger.
"Boys and Girls, we're close, I'm going to take out as many as I can with the jet as you guys take on the hoard of aliens." Hawkeye shook his head at the madness of the scenario, his mind probably still trying to wrap itself around the concept of 'alien invasion'.
"Great, got any contact with Stark yet?" The comm system glitched momentarily.
"Aww, you miss me Elsa?" I sighed deeply as Natasha spoke up.
"What's the situation and where's Loki?" There was a pause in dialogue as the sound of repulsors screeching echoed with static and guttural yelps followed.
"My tower, can't go there right now, too busy killing aliens and saving people!" Another repulsor blast resounded.
Loki Odinson- I'm at Stark Tower, I'll intercept this version of Loki... Just make sure that you save as many people as possible and kill these Chitauri
Tony paused, reading the chatroom message before speaking again. "Don't worry about Loki, someone on our side is dealing with him... I think it is another Asgardian or something." Natasha and Rogers settled a little with that information as Hawkeye; otherwise known as Clint, drove us through a mass of chariots, the cannon on the front working overtime in wasting every single alien it could.
"Drop us here Clint." Nat pointed towards a capillary road that ran straight through the middle of Manhattan, a swarm of people running away from an advancing tide of Chitauri.
The man followed her directions and quickly hovered over the street. He lowered the ramp and urged all of us out, his hands working across the controls with alacrity. The landing process began and we exited just as a swimming-pools' worth of plasma rained down onto the top of the Jet, the engines whining and screeching as they began melting.
In moments Roger's shield was flying through the air, the metallic thunk of metal striking metal ringing out as several aliens dropped to the ground unconscious or dead. Nat immediately started blasting every alien she could see with her pistols whilst diving for nearby cover as plasma started raining towards us. Her dodging was needless however as I simply raised the road ahead of us and then pushed it forwards in a wave towards the Chitauri, killing them and breaking there bodies with the force of the wave.
Looking around I watched hundreds of the bastards hanging off the sides of skyscrapers, their claws digging into the hardened support beams and cement walls. My senses spread out in what everyone else would perceive as seconds, the atomic structures of the skyscrapers and buildings surroundings us clear inside my mind. With a clench of my right fist every single alien was perforated, impaled or otherwise stabbed with a blade of cement. Their bodies hung upon these blades limply, the light in their eyes fading rapidly.
"We need to spread out and start bringing the fight to them all across the city." Rogers began speaking just as a mass of lightning struck a nearby street, melting several aliens. Thor lifted Mjolnir from the ground and spun it before launching towards us and then softly landing on his feet.
"Captain, Lady Romanov, Drecarios, Archer... It is good to see you all once again. I must apologise for my late arrival, I was tricked by my brother and have only escaped said trap recently." I laughed a little.
"Perfect timing Thor." The muscle-bound blonde grinned widely as Rogers went back to his planning.
"Good to see you. Now, we need to go street by street and start clearing these Chitauri out. The skies are Stark's and Thor's domain, I'll leave that to them... If you could potentially blast that opening with lightning Thor it would be much appreciated." The god nodded before beginning to wind up.
"I'm going to take overwatch. You willing to take me big man?" Thor nodded and grabbed Clint before taking off at immense speed, his package being lightly tossed atop a nearby skyscraper before the god rushed towards the largest steel structure in the city; The Empire State Building.
Cap continued... "Me and Natasha will stay on the ground, get the police to setup a perimeter. Drecarios, just do more of what you just did... Maybe focus on the big snakes." I nodded and began running off, Nat and Rogers running the opposite direction in hopes of finding the police.
"Another fucking war, I wonder if I'll ever get to just chill and build something for myself..." My right hand tightened once again as several hundred aliens were skewered by the road, the chariots above smacking into some of the freshly made cement spears and exploding into a pile of shredded limbs and mechanical parts.
~~~
Gun fire resounded throughout the city as the less upstanding elements of society, or those that had carry permits, began firing back against the aliens. Gunpowder met plasma and the outcome was incredibly mixed.
In one such part of the city, Iron Man flew above a patch of mobsters firing his lasers and mini-rockets. Said mobsters were unloading AR-15's and Tommy Guns into a group of aliens that were trying to encircle the civilians behind them. The smell of cordite was a mire in the battlefield as these Italian mafiosos shred lead into several aliens, many rounds bouncing off of abandoned cars and storefronts. Plasma, much like the bullets, were impacting the cover they were situated behind and lightly pushing them or outright melting through in some places.
"Eyyy, tough guys… how about you pick on somebody who can answer back?" The man's tommy gun fired in bursts and dropped a couple of the grey-biomechanical assholes, their purple blood pouring out onto the dirty New York road below them.
This scene wasn't entirely unique as Americans used their right to bear arms to defend their nation, their city and their families. People were sheltering wherever they could and more often than not being chased down. Police pooled along several streets and fired up into the flowing mass of chariots whilst civilians ran past them in hopes of finding safety behind them. Military personnel, veterans and federal agents that were in the city quickly began organising structured responses to the alien threat. The invasion had caught people by surprise but many Americans were ready despite that.
This effort was further amplified by the stalwart guidance of Captain America as he sprinted up to the police lines and began directing them towards integral streets and locations where he knew a lot of people would be. His efforts were further punctuated by his easy takedown of nearby aliens and the calm that he exuded whilst doing so.
The battle was just beginning, but, people were standing up.
~~~
The Top of Stark Tower
Loki was destined for glorious purpose, wasn't he? The god frowned as he looked upon the damage he had wrought to an innocent planet. His head ached and his inner-monologue was screaming at him, or was it something else. He slowly blinked his eyes and felt a pressure upon his brain, something was influencing him, this wasn't him... Was it? Confusion proliferated like a plague within his consciousness, a voice curling at the edges of his mind.
`IT'S YOUR RIGHT!`
"What is my right? Killing all these mortals?" He frowned in consternation, the inner-war bleeding out onto his features as one half of his face reacted in sadness and horror, the other in glee and madness.
`TO BE KING!!!!`
"Why would I want to be a king...? Imagine all the paperwork..." His head whipped to the right as the pressure began building. It was as if someone were using his mind as an anvil to hammer metal upon.
`DO NOT DEFY YOUR DESTINY!!!!!!!!!!!!!`
The sound of an elevator arriving interrupted their argument, the tapping of metal boots on marble following the dinging. The god turned, or was he Loki? Either way the body moved to face whoever this new opponent was.
"Did I really succumb to that stupid trickery... I am disappointed at the mere fact that we're differing versions of each other. You're truly pathetic." The god, god-king, Loki, stood opposite another copy of himself... Perhaps an illusion conjured by the madness that swelled inside his mind?
"You cannot convince me that this invasion is for me, FAKE!" The illusionary version of Loki before him tilted his head in mild surprise.
"So you admit that this is all madness... A control mechanism of the Titan of Madness himself... Why not end this then?" The god twitched, his face spasming as the two sides fought for control.
"Ah, I see. Then I shall have to beat you out of the stupor." The illusion raised his similar staff and unleashed a beam of pure yellow energy.
"GO AWAY!!!!!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a Patreon where you can get exclusive Discord roles, vote on Fan fiction decisions, and even suggest Extra Chapters for me to write. Join here: patreon.com/user?u=111976696.
If you'd like to further support my work, here's my PayPal: paypal.me/RBSMFF.
Feel free to join my Discord community here: https://discord.gg/wVZXpPpUQn.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------