Liberty Is Mine |2| The Liberty Saga

Chapter Twelve: The Army

Becoming an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. prepared you for many things. You learned how to control your fear, how to control your heart rate, how to set everything else aside and get the job done. You learned how to die, and sometimes, if you were lucky, you learned how not to. You learned various martial arts, various languages, how to fight with a hundred different weapons, from a custom built katana to a dollar store stapler.

You did not learn what to do when four costumed heroes walked into your Quinjet and tried to commandeer it.

Faced with the stern might of Captain America, Lady Liberty, the Black Widow and Hawkeye, the young pilot did well not to faint. He scrambled to his feet, standing in their way bravely. "You're not authorised to be here."

America's new hope looked him in the eye. "Son... just don't."

S.H.I.E.L.D. taught you many things, but experience in the field taught you self-preservation above all else. And when confronted with four people who looked as though they had not only gone through hell, but were about to return to give the devil himself an unfavourable TripAdvisor review to his face, the young pilot made the sensible choice.

He left them to it.

***

On the bridge of the Helicarrier, Fury stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out into the empty sky and contemplating the situation as it stood. Or, more accurately, he was waiting. Behind him, Maria Hill approached. "Sir."

"Agent Hill?"

"Those cards..." she said, hesitating. "They were in Coulson's locker, not in his jacket."

Fury shrugged, glancing over his shoulder at where the bloodstained cards remained on the glass conference table. "They needed the push." A loud engine screeched and they both looked up to see the Iron Man suit shooting away from the Helicarrier, a Quinjet not far behind. "They found it." He turned back to the bridge, reenergised. "Get our communications back up, whatever you have to do. I want eyes on everything."

Hill nodded, getting to it. "Yes, sir."

***

As the hustle and bustle of Manhattan life continued obliviously below, the red and gold blur of Tony Stark's Iron Man suit shot across the skyline. As he neared the Stark Tower, he could just about make out the figure of Erik Selvig on the roof, stationed beside what had to be the portal-creating device with the Tesseract inside.

"Sir," JARVIS reported, "I took off the arc reactor. The device is already self-sustained."

Tony lifted an arm, aiming at the device. "Shut it down, Dr Selvig!"

"It's too late!" Selvig protested. "It can't stop now. She wants to show us something! A new universe!"

"Okay." Tony rolled his eyes and fired at the device. The repulsor beam hit an energy barrier, cracking with a sound loud enough to alert the whole city. Selvig fell to the roof as the shockwave sent Tony flying, scrambling to steady himself with his thrusters.

"The barrier is pure energy," JARVIS explained. "It's unbreachable." Before he could formulate a new plan, Tony spotted Loki on his balcony and flew down to meet him. "The Mark VII is not ready to be deployed."

"Then skip the spinning rims," Tony ordered, landing on the balcony. "We're on the clock." As he walked in, the robotic arms stripped the suit off his body, and by the time he met Loki inside the penthouse, he was just in normal clothes.

"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity," Loki said, amused.

"Uh... actually, I'm planning to threaten you," Tony told him.

Loki snorted, altering his grip on the sceptre. "You should have left your armour on for that."

Tony made a face. "Yeah, it's seen a bit of mileage. You've got the glow stick of destiny." He headed for the bar, turning his back on Loki with a confidence he wished was genuine. "Would you like a drink?"

"Stalling me won't change anything."

"No, no, no—threatening. No drink? You sure? I'm having one." He poured himself a glass of whiskey.

"The Chitauri are coming," Loki declared. "Nothing will change that. What have I to fear?"

"The Avengers." At Loki's look of confusion, Tony shrugged. "It's what we call ourselves, sort of like a team. Earth's mightiest heroes type of thing."

"Yes." Loki didn't seem too worried. "I've met them."

Tony smiled. "Yeah, takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one. But let's do a headcount here. Your brother, the demigod; two supersoldiers, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend and a woman who can literally shake the Earth; a man with breath-taking anger management issues; a couple of master assassins, and you, big fella... you've managed to piss off every single one of them."

"That was the plan," Loki pointed out.

"Not a great plan," Tony told him. "When they come, and they will, they'll come for you." Behind the cover of the bar, he slipped on his honing bracelets in preparation.

"I have an army," Loki reminded him.

"We have a Hulk."

"I thought the beast had wandered off."

Tony rolled his eyes. "You're missing the point. There's no throne. There is no version where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us, but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damned well sure we'll avenge it."

Loki walked towards him slowly, raising the sceptre. "How will your friends have time for me, when they're so busy fighting you?" He pressed the sceptre to Tony's chest, but instead of turning his mind against him and his eyes blue, it simply made a metallic clinking noise. Tony just raised an eyebrow. Loki tried it again, frowning, to no effect. "It should work."

"Well, performance issues, you know?" Tony said, shrugging. "Not uncommon. One out of five—" Loki grabbed him by the throat and threw him across the room. "JARVIS! Any time now!"

"You will all fall before me," Loki roared, smashing Tony through the glass windows.

"Deploy! Deploy!" Tony yelled, freefalling down the side of the tower. A red pod shot out of the elevator and followed him down, signalling to the homing bracelets. Then, as he continued to fall, the pod opened out into the Mark VII suit, latching onto him and closing up around him. He activated the thrusters before he hit street level and shot back up to Loki's level. "And there's one other person you pissed off! His name was Phil!"

Loki raised the sceptre once more, but before he could fire, Tony shot him with a repulsor beam. Loki crashed back into the penthouse steps.

Up above, bright cerulean Tesseract energy beamed up from the device on the top of the tower, opening an enormous portal in the sky. On the other side were unfathomable depths of space in all their glory. It was a beautiful sight, really.

Until the Chitauri began to spill through the tear in the universe on flying chariots, thousands of vicious, vengeful soldiers armed to the teeth with alien weaponry.

Tony stared in horror. "Right... Army." Activating his thrusters, he shot up into the sky with weapons blazing, and as the battle began, the people of Manhattan could do little more than watch in shocked amazement as the sky filled with a firefight unlike any other.

~~~