The Sokovian Shadow

Chapter 18

TW:
- Fighting
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Ultron sentinels started clawing their way up to the surface. I landed in front of the crowd of people who had turned away from the edge of the steadily rising city. I coated my feathers with my soul fire, formed two daggers, and grinned beneath my mask, the robots charged me, and I flicked my wing in front of me to release a wave of feather daggers. I leapt towards the oncoming swarm, lashing out with wings and knives as I ripped them apart, but for everyone I killed, three more appeared to take its place.

I looked over my shoulder and, finding the civilians gone, jumped into the air. I flapped my wings and quickly ascended, the sentinels jumping into the sky behind me. I flipped in the air and flew back towards them. I flew in between them, dodging energy blasts, the razor-sharp bridges of my wings cutting through them like butter. There were too many of them though, and I was going to have to resort to a different tactic.

I pretended one of the blasts caught my shoulder and fell into free fall. I took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes. I'd done this before, but I'd never done it with the ground rising towards me as I fell towards it. I felt one of my wings cut through the edge of a building and opened my eyes. I waited until I was seconds away from crashing, then straightened out and snapped my wings open, beating them as hard and as fast as I could to avoid crashing into the apartment building.

As I twisted in the air, I watched as the sentinels all crashed into the ground since they couldn't pull out of the dive in time. I noticed a small family in the shadow of a building that was about to collapse. I dived towards the ground and forced my soul fire through the ground and up to the surface in thin spikes that supported the building. I would have made them thicker, but there wasn't time, and I had to conserve my energy. They looked over at me and I beckoned to them to come.

They sent their daughter over to me first and I wrapped my wing around her as I went to help the wife. She wrapped her arms around her daughter under the shelter of my wing. The father came last, but the spikes of my frozen soul fire snapped the building collapsed, I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards me, but I wasn't fast enough, and he lost his right leg at the knee. The wife immediately ripped a strip of cloth off the hem of her shirt and quickly bound the wound. When she was satisfied, she helped him to his feet.

The little girl grabbed my hand and pointed at something. I don't know how I didn't realize until now, but Ultron was monologuing.

'Purge me from your computers, turn my own, flesh, against me.' An arrow came from behind me and struck the sentinel on the forehead, but another took its place. 'It means nothing.' I wrapped my wings around the small family as a few of the sentinels started firing at us and, using my free hand as a guide, directed one of the snapped spears of soul fire to impale every single one. 'When the dust settles, the only thing living in this world, will be metal.'

The wife thanked me for my help, took the young girl's hand, and led her family towards the centre of Sokovia. I hurled a dagger through the neck of the sentinel trying to sneak up on them, twisted my wing behind me to cut one in half, then took off.

'Cap, you got incoming.' Stark warned over the commlink.

'Incoming already came in.' Cap groaned. 'Stark you worry about bringing the city back down safely. The rest of us have one job: tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt 'em back. You get killed, walk it off.' I chuckled under my breath.

Below me, I saw Hawkeye getting Wanda into an empty building as Ultron's sentinels overwhelmed them. I narrowed my eyes and was about to dive down to help, but got stopped by another wave of Ultron's drones. I spun and flew through them, my wings cutting them to pieces. It only took me a few seconds to destroy them all. I checked that my mask was still in place before I dived down to help Hawkeye, who was back in the fray.

Before I could land, however, Wanda stepped out of the building, hands and eyes glowing as she made short work of the sentinels. Hawkeye looked at her and the two shared a nod.

'Alright, we're all cleat here.' The archer reported as I finally landed, wrapping a wing around Wanda.

'We are not clear!' Cap replied. 'We are very not clear!'

'Alright coming to you.' Hawkeye finished. I took off again, but before we could go anywhere, Pietro sprinted over to us and picked up his sister.

'Keep up old man!' He threw over his shoulder as he sped off again. I laughed as I started following the light blue stream, but broke off when I saw a couple of dozen civilians being cornered by Ultron's sentinels. I arrowed towards the ground and circled the robots, the edge of my right-wing cutting through them easily. I landed in front of the civilians and started guiding them towards the centre of Sokovia. By the time I arrived where the rest of the civilians had been gathered, the sentinels seemed to have backed down for the time being.

'The next wave's gonna hit any minute.' I heard Cap announce as I headed in the direction of Black Widow's shock of red hair, subtly checking my mask again. I'd given up on my hood, which meant that my pure black eyes were clearly visible, but no one could find out about my fangs. Not yet at least. 'What have you got, Stark?'

'Well.' The armoured Avenger began, and I could tell instantly that the news wasn't going to be good. 'Nothing great.' Knew it. 'Maybe a way to blow up the city.' My eyes widened. 'That'll keep it from impacting the surface if you guys can get clear.'

'I asked for a solution, not an escape plan.' I looked over at Cap, mentally thanking him as Iron Man started talking again.

'Impact radius is getting bigger every second.' He explained. 'We're going to have to make a choice.'

'Cap, these people are going nowhere.' Nat was agreeing with Stark? 'If Stark finds a way to blow this rock...'

'This "rock" still has people on it, Natasha. I'm not going to watch as Stark blows it up.' I protested

'Everyone up here versus everyone down there? There's no math here.' Nat argued.

'We're not leaving this rock with one civilian on it.' Cap spoke with a kind of finality that made me respect him even more.

'I didn't say we should leave.' Cap and I turned to look at Nat as she spoke. 'There's worse ways to go.' She shrugged as she looked over the edge of my city, and I followed her gaze. We were above cloud level now and I was getting worried about a lack of oxygen. 'Where else am I gonna get a view like this?'

'Glad you like the view, Romanoff.' I jumped slightly at the new voice over the commlink. 'It's about to get better.'

'You guys know I can fly, right?'