Godzilla|Marvel Saga Book 1: WORLDS COLLIDE

Part 11: Friends in High Places

SHIELD Sub-Station

Things were not good. Not good at all.

In the underground bunker of the make-shift headquarters, Cap stared at a wall sized display screen, a projection of Earth's continents with several pulsating red points across their face. Now not only was there two giant monsters from a parallel universe roaming unchecked, there were four. Just how the others could have gotten here without Richard's portal ticked at him fiercely, the prospect of another party orchestrating what amounted to an invasion on the world. The Earth was under siege.

On top of all that, Wakanda had been subject to an asteroid strike, that wasn't a real asteroid, causing all sorts of mysterious phenomena. And the facility housing the remains of the subterranean monsters had been attacked and demolished, by a creature that was capable of defeating the Incredible Hulk, and leaving Banner with barely enough vitality to keep breathing.

Suddenly on screen, a series of alerts highlighted a point in the middle of the Atlantic. Two data windows with stems connected to the same red dot, one on the left reporting the epicenter of a massive spike in radioactivity, the one on the right describing the epicenter of an underwater noise loud enough to be registered from pole to pole.
"Looks like Godzilla is making new friends already." Rogers mused, hoping in the back of his mind that whatever had occurred was nothing more than a brief skirmish, perhaps a tussle with another of this worlds native monsters.

Something else that ate at him was the continued absence of Hank McCoy, who was still on the other side of the wall. Over the few years that the Avengers had been working with the X-Men, he had grown to like and respect Beast, his maturity a welcome respite from the often rowdy dynamic of the Avengers, or the super-professional demeanor of SHIELD. Whatever his friend was doing over there, he just wished he'd get it done, the best, the brightest, and the strongest were going to be needed for this world-spanning emergency.

He even considered options that were usually off the table. The remaining Sentinels under Federal control were collecting dust in their holding facility, decommissioned since the end of Operation: Zero Tolerance. There were even a few 'Nuclear options' as he liked to think of them, super powered individuals of such capacity they might single-handedly beat one of these monsters. But they were kept under lock and key for everyone's protection, unleashing them might open a Pandora's box of terrible outcomes. What options were left then? Let them run amok until they got tired and went home? Their ranks were stretched thin as it was, and that's including those who stood no chance against such powerful creatures.

No good options, nothing until Stark or Richards came through with a solution. They were on the defensive, reacting instead of initiating; which was the worst feeling for Steve Rogers, distinctly not liking being in the position of weakness. The barely organized state of his temporary command center a visual metaphor for SHIELD after just a single encounter with Godzilla; humbled.

He placed his hands on the counter that ran along the bottom of the display screen, letting his head hang after the long hours of stress.
"Why couldn't it have been Hydra? And nice, simple, Hydra attack?"

XAVIER INSTITUTE

It was coming. He could feel it. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Charles Xavier wheeled through the halls of his home, trying to construct some plan that amounted to more than gathering his students in the bunkers below the mansion. Wolverine was off on sabbatical, searching in the Canadian wilderness for answers to the questions of his past. Colossus was visiting family in Russia, a well deserved vacation for one of his most loyal X-Men. Storm was with her husband in Wakanda, dealing with their own predicament. Beast, his trusted confidant, was a world away.