Manhattan ⇻ The Avengers [1]

chapter twenty-one

Dr. Banner grew and grew, turning greener, his shirt ripping apart easily and then the Hulk jumped over Tony to slam his fist down on the leviathan's nose, causing its head to slam into the ground, its body making a 360° as if flew over them, continuing the motion that its head wasn't able to. Tony landed, firing a rocket at a break in the leviathan's armor, causing it to explode.

Steve raised his shield to defend against pieces of the leviathan that flew every which way because of the explosion while the others (along with the speedster herself) took to dodging individual pieces. Gen gaped, this was completely insane.

"Is no one going to talk about the fact that his explanation made absolutely no sense whatsoever?" Kae broke in, her voice nearly hysterical.

"I'm not sure that's really a priority right now," Alison responded, her own voice filled with awe.

"Yeah," Winter had to agree, "We should probably keep going. Even more are going to be coming through the portal now."

Gen looked up and groaned when she saw that Winter was right, multiple leviathans were coming through the portal along with a ton of individual Chitauri chariots, "Guys," she pointed, calling all of their attention to the thousands of Chitauri soldiers pouring through the portal.

"Call it, Cap," Tony said in response, looking upward himself.

"Alright, listen up," Steve started as all of them formed a circle, each of them facing outward to defend against oncoming aliens, "Until we can close that portal up there, we're gonna use containment. Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or your turn it to ash."

"Wanna give me a lift?" Clint asked the billionaire.

"Right," Tony agreed, "Better clench up, Legolas."

Gen snorted as the two of them take to the air, then turned to Steve, who'd continued giving orders, "Thor, you've gotta try and bottleneck that portal. Slow them down. You've got the lightning. Light the bastards up. Legion, I want you to keep getting everyone out of the city. Try to minimize the destruction," Gen nodded, readying herself for running, retieing her shoes and tightening her ponytail, "You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here. And Hulk? Smash."

Gen grinned uncontrollably, taking off down the street to the tune of Hulk's roar. She stopped a few soldiers from crashing through buildings, and phased through a few leviathans as she leapt from building to building, making for a disturbing trip as they seemed to be part metal and part organic on the inside. She also may have accidentally ripped a hole through one by doing that, which wasn't her intention.

After she'd done that, she did the same to one or two more, just to get them out of the way, then started evacuating even more civilians, clearing a path of debris and then ushering them through, keeping the Chitauri from them. She cleared even more buildings of people, taking out whichever aliens happened to have decided to threaten them.

She was in the middle of evacuating the top floors of an office building when one of the workers spotted something out the window, another leviathan. The speedster then started hearing destruction coming from the other side of the building as soon as the opposite wall broke, she slipped into super speed, moving all of the civilians she was evacuating out of the Hulk's way as he continued, jumping through the window and landing on the leviathan, causing it to careen toward the opposite building.

Gen eyes widened, and she ran as fast as she could, jumping over the street and braking through a window of the building, swooping in and evacuating the building to the lower levels before the leviathan impacted. She hunched over in the middle of what seemed to be a daycare, trying to catch her breath. Little kids surrounded her, something that she didn't expect, along with all of the parents and workers that she'd gotten out of the top levels.

"You- need- to- get out- of the- city," Gen panted, "Go through- the subways. Stick to the sides of the roads."

They all nodded, and apart from a tiny child who hugged her leg and thanked her before running off, they all stayed silent as they ran for the exits, each of them taking a child with them. Gen took a few more moments to catch her breath, then continued where she left off, at a much slower pace than she had been going only seconds before, mind you.

Gen sped through the streets, taking out more and more Chitauri soldiers, passing Thor and the Hulk, both of whom were tearing apart a leviathan. She then passed Romanoff and Tony, the former controlling a Chitauri chariot and the latter blasting the other chariots that were following her.

"Captain," Clint called over the comms, "the bank on 42nd past Madison, they caught a lot of civilians there."

"On it," both Gen and Steve chorused, the speedster swooping in to run the captain over to the bank.

Winter took the situation, jumping through the window with Steve as he threw his shield at a soldier seeming to be holding a high tech bomb. When it bounced back, the assassin caught it, using it to block the shots that the soldiers had lined up. Steve kicked a table at them right as Winter aimed around the shield, shooting one of them in the head. As he ducked to get another of them in a headlock, she started debating what to do with the bomb, which was starting to beep faster and faster.

Then it started beeping even faster, "Just get it in the air!" Kae shouted.

Winter complied, taking it and chucking it as far as she could, as it reached the ceiling of the bank, it went off, barely missing the civilians, the glass however, did not, and tiny shards rained on all of them. It was then that they all scattered, running toward the police and firemen who'd come in response to the commotion.

Everyone was fine for the most part, though. Winter helped Steve fight off the last two soldiers, one being finished off with a bullet and the other with a swift blow to the head. The assassin smiled,

"Good job, Stevie."

"Uh..." Steve didn't seem very comfortable with the nickname, causing her to smirk, "You too."

"We should probably get back out there," Winter said, deciding to put him out of his misery.

"Of course," Steve nodded sharply, so the two of them jogged back into the streets where destruction surrounded them.

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. There's probably around 2 more chapters and an epilogue to go, so I'm going to be updating on Friday, then taking a week to work on Iroas, then I'll finish this book up. Then I'll be back on the regular updating schedule (which means it'll be two more weeks after that until the sequel is posted). So, I hope you all have a fantastic week, and I'll see you all again on Friday with chapter twenty-two.
~ Aria