In The Middle, Somewhat Elevated | An Avengers Fanfiction |

Chapter 7: Decreation

"Siri, we need you on the roof," Romanoff said.

I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut, still reeling from the vision the scepter had thrust me into. I emerged from it, gasping for breath as if breaking the surface of a deep and swift river. The significance of what I had seen faded, but a tickling feeling of importance clung to me like tears on my face.

"Are you ok?" Romanoff said. "Because there is an entire army of aliens destroying New York out there. They're coming through the portal in droves. I need you to use the scepter to shut it down."

"Okay," I said but didn't move. I tried but failed to process what she was telling me. She needed me? I looked at the scepter in my hand. She wanted me to help her. Against the aliens.

She scooped me up by my free arm. "Any day."

"Right," I said and let her drag me back to the elevator, past Loki, who lay still, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth as if he was stuck in a dream.

"I'm gonna need to hear that story," Romanoff muttered as she stepped around him.

"Should we be worried about him?" I asked.

She made a noncommittal grunt.

When the elevator doors opened on the roof, I stared in shock at the scene. A wild blue cord of energy shot straight up off the top of the building, right up into the sky. Aliens were pouring out of a black gap in the normally blue sky, their metal armor glinting off the sunlight.

Right there I knew I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave that elevator. It was the only thing keeping me from being on the outside where a battle raged. I wasn't a soldier. I wasn't a super person. I wanted to go back down where nothing would shoot at me, where I could not see the invasion happening so up close.

Romanoff looked at me with a mixture of pity and irritation. "Siri," she said. "You can do this."

Even with the scepter in hand, I was afraid. I was terrified.

"If you don't close the portal, there's a good chance we will not win this battle," she said.

I swallowed hard. How did it come to this? Why was the fate of the world suddenly in my hands? I was just an ordinary person. Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn't entirely true. I was not just human. I was something else. And I had the scepter.

I pushed myself out of the elevator before the doors closed again. Romanoff looked relieved.

"Over here!" the old man from before called to me. His eyes a normal shade, not zombie-blue, and had a cut on his forehead. He pointed. "Right at the crown!"

I looked to Romanoff. She shrugged as if to say it can't get any worse. I moved to put the tip of it into the contraption. A droning buzzing sound intensified and a sphere of protective energy, like a bubble, tried to keep me out. I pushed the scepter in harder. It felt like I was pushing through peanut butter, not oxygen. When I was almost to the core I looked back to Romanoff for confirmation. Did she even know what would happen? What if it exploded and killed us all where we stood?

"Wait!" Romanoff hollered at me. Her face was pale and her eyes were searching for something in the air above the city. I held the scepter steady and followed her line of sight, but didn't see anything unusual, except for a steady stream of aliens emerging from a black hole in the sky directly above my head.

"What are you waiting for?" the old man yelled at her. She held a hand up to signal me.

And then I saw it, a red glint of metal flying closer and closer to us. It was moving so fast I didn't have much time to feel afraid of it. Just as it was about to hit Stark Tower, it shot upwards, moving against the stream of alien crafts. It followed the crackling energy of the portal upwards until it was gone, right out of this world.