SOAR: An Avengers Story

Ch.17: Upon These Stones

February 18th, 2017

(Avengers)

Dani had no idea what she was doing.

She never did, truth be told. Here, though, it might have been a problem.

The first thing she noticed when she finally approached the castle was that Peter was on a balcony with the head tattoos guy, looking very close to death. Dani targeted him first, launching at him with incredible speed.

She swiped Radioactive Man off the ledge, taking him down to the courtyard with the rest of her team and slamming him into the stones that made the pathway. Dani broke her fall with his back and let her fire die down with her landing.

She looked at him and saw that his eyes were starting to glow a sickly green, along with his tattoos. Dani figured this was how his powers worked, and wasted no time in grabbing him by the throat and absorbing his energy.

She felt a rush of... something. It didn't hurt, but it wasn't pleasant. It made Dani's skin crawl and her head hurt a little bit, but the feeling was soon numbed by a feverish heat. A few seconds of this, and Radioactive Man was no longer active.

She stood up from the unconscious villain and saw her team—and their opponents—staring at her in disbelief. If the stakes weren't so high, she would have felt embarrassed. She felt proud, however, and charged with newfound confidence.

"Let's kick some ass!" she decided to scream into the void.

The team shouted a resounding scream and began to fight even harder than she assumed they were fighting before. Dani turned to face Nefaria.

He was gazing at her, less with shock and more with...hunger. Almost as if he wanted to peel off her skin and eat her like a piece of chicken breast. The sheer amount of discomfort that emerged was enough to immobilize her, but she quickly shut it down. It was game time.

* * *

Cas saw Dani through the glassy green sheen of his force field, and almost let his guard down. That would have been a mistake, however, as Penance was not letting up his onslaught of energy against him and a blacked-out Bucky. The man stopped to watch Dani render the radioactive mercenary unconscious, but as soon as Dani heaved her battle cry, Penance was back to trying to break through the shield.

"Come on, little boy," he screamed over the sounds of his violet punches, "Just let me kill you nice and easy."

The patronizing coax sent Cas into a headspace that would have normally brought him to tears. Suddenly, he was back in a small training room at the Facility, being bombarded with kicks by Hydra goons instructed to show no mercy to a teenage boy.

It sent him even further backward, to the kids that bullied him at ARGUS for being different, for having weirder abilities, for being black, for being quiet. For simply being.

Cas wanted to give up, to crumble like the force field in front of him was bound to do. Every bone in his body screamed at him to do so. But he couldn't. It would be a defeat, and Cas knew what happened when he loses.

As he let out a guttural scream, Cas pushed against Penance. He pushed with the might of a kid bullied for years in an unfamiliar place. The might of a child tortured by the hands of strangers and scientists in the name of turning him into a monster. The might of a person hellbent on proving that he was more than everything he was made to be. The might of an Avenger.

He pushed Penance into a portal.

Cas knew the portal was extremely far; one of the farthest portals he's created. Cas just didn't know exactly where it was. Only that it was above them.