Saving Public Shulk
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avengers_assembled(For the entertainment of others, duly noting.)
---
May 7th, 2013
Sif has disconnected.
It's seven thirty in the morning when the commlink goes wild with alert. SHIELD chatter, JARVIS' exclamations-- //Sirs and ladies//-- but in the time it takes for triangulation and data processing to
translate to the language that humans require to learn what they know, Vision has a clear understanding of the situation. The ones who took Jennifer Walters have come out of the woodwork. The GPS dot throbs vividly in his mind's eye despite that the cellphone is offline.
It's remarkable, what you can do with technology these days.
Odd thing: the signal reemerges out of nowhere, at breakneck speed and already in-transit, flashing along the New Jersey Turnpike-- which any map, be it holographic, paper, or the contents of Vision's mind will tell them turns into the George Washington Bridge. It's six or seven miles from the mansion to the bridge; further, if they want to bank on the remote hope of intercepting them before the bridge; sooner, if the plan is to stop them getting across. SHIELD is already sending a chopper. It's probably best no one pauses to brush their teeth.
But magic occasionally pitches in where technology's utility reaches its limits. A seam of light opens in the murky morning light of the kitchen, and a second later JARVIS' crisp accent is emanating across the house. It's the AI's version, uncommon as it is, of raising his voice:
"//Sif and Thor have arrived at the mansion. Please proceed to the kitchen for transport//."
Amora arrives at the front door of the mansion and lets herself in a beat after the other Asgardians. Does she get a big annoucement? She doesn't seem to want one, slipping into the action as she is, inviting herself along to help, of all things. Her ulterior motive must be more complicated than usual. She's not dressed for fighting as much as Sif undoubtedly is, but she's wearing leggings under her tunic-length dress, and her bodice looks like it's doing its job holding everything secure as opposed to just shaping prettily.
Vision happens to be tooling around on a set of contextless joints when the alert comes in. He translates, swiftly, almost thoughtlessly, pinging Avengers and data-snagging and dropping, if the actual application for logistics proves unnecessary with Sif and Thor involved. He ghosts down to the main floor, as he does. Just to ghost.
Already (or perhaps, <i>still<i>) buried in the depths of his laboratory, wound up in hologram interface and deep tension, Bruce takes a little longer to scramble than those who are actually close to the kitchen. He looks up with the announcement, frown pinching his brows above the gleam of his spectacles. His hand closes nearly tight enough on the light pen he has been fiddling with to break it even with the ordinary human strength to which his broad hands are currently limited.
"Thank you, JARVIS," he remembers to thank the house as he sweeps out of the lab, striding on long ground-eating strides for the elevator.
//Seven miles away, glass drifts cold into her cheek, and a muffled rattle seeps into her hearing. Lurch and slide. The movement is enough to get her awake; but perhaps what'll get her// awake //is the cold realization she's in submerged darkness, her lungs full with liquid that she can somehow breathe. Worse, that she can't move much further than that. Her wrists are bound wide, and ankles too. She can't see her hands or battered body, never mind the enemy. She is afloat in a womb of no natural making//.
"Where are the others?" Thor roars at Vision once he sees the robot. He prbably doesn't mean to come off tremendously aggressive or hostile; he's merely somewhat stressed out, that family of a friend is imperilled and they aren't yet there. He raises Mjolnir, red cloak flaring around his shoulders. "We must go to New Jersey."
Or not. Vision will know it's too late for that.
"Coming, I'm sure," Vision says, cool and abstracted, as if his attention were elsewhere. Which it probably is. "They're heading for the George Washington Bridge. It may be too late to intercept them on it."
Sif matches Thor's urgency if not his aggression, shutting the portal behind them once she's stepped through and lowering her sword but keeping it naked in hand, ready to put to use again imminently. She tugs on a piece of armor, securing a buckle like she too was rushed to readiness. "I need to know where we are going," she instructs-- everyone and no one in particular, "A map would be best, unless it is close enough to simply fly." Simply. As you do.
Who actually ever wants to go to New Jersey? Silly Thor.
<i>Her last memories are fresh. Maybe they are. There is no scale, where she is. For the best? Perhaps. The lurch of turn and distant rumble of wheels is familiar enough-- she's moving. Something is
moving her, rather. Her mouth is open, lungs filled, and no sound comes from her chest; the ring of effort vibrates in her skull when the muscles in her chest attempt to dispel whatever is inside it. The twine of wrists against bonds pulls an echo of ache through her shoulders, then hips, then core, when all four limbs twist at the roots, valiant and fruitless. This is wrong, that much she knows for certain. The rest is a foreign occupation of her body, and sends a ripple of panic through the pain behind her eyes and down her spine.</i>
"We must go to where they will be, not where they have just been," is Amora's (unhelpful) contribution. She keeps at the side of the room away from Thor, but she makes her way toward Sif, perhaps to remind everyone there's two teleporters in play.
"JARVIS," Bruce directs with only a shadow of his usual humble courtesy, his voice and body limned with tension, even as he lopes up from the elevator to join the others. "Can you please show up a map of the bridge?"
A long sweep of dark blue dress shirt and coal-black jeans, he lifts his hands to manipulate the shimmering image of the holographic map even as the AI brings it up, floating in convenient projection away from the entertainment center in the Great Room. Bruce reaches up to spread the zoom of the intersection where bridge meets road again.
"Here," he says. "We can block them from getting off it again. Before I break the bridge."
Not entirely or even mostly unhelpful. Thor levels Amora a slightly dark look, but concedse her point-- and Vision's with a grunt, letting his arm fall back to his side. His pale eyes cut to the map that Bruce brings up, narrowing slightly at the glowing network of streets, the long, high stretch of the bridge over open water. The next moment, his eyes refocus on the scientist behind the map, sketching a brief look over the Hulk's face. Not green yet. That's a good sign.
"JARVIS," he says. "Have Fandral and Volstagg join SHIELD on the New York side. Our brothers will help where they can." He pauses to watch a globe-shaped marker bloom on the East end of the Washington bridge, nodding his head. "Do we know anything of what awaits us?"
JARVIS calls up a tiny mesh truck, like a toy riding through Bruce's map. Closer to reality, traffic camera footage rolls through Vision's mind: the truck is massive, eighteen wheels and a fender broader than a human body, chipped blue paint.
//The next thump that reverberates through the medium of Jennifer's prison doesn't sound like traffic. Sharper, no cadence-- and it comes from above. She sways again, and something brushes her finger, thin, plastic. Tubing.//
"Who travels with me?" Amora looks at Vision first, since they're...friends? Right? Kinda? Her hand held out to him is every so slightly preemptory. Her glance at Bruce is more cautious, in contrast. The Asgardians she ignores.
Vision takes Amora's hand without so much as an I will. It's perhaps preemptory in turn, lightly possessive. But he's no sooner seized the hand than described, "The truck is immense, 18-wheels. Not that I expect this will be a problem for anyone here."
<i>Is there someone there?
The object brushes past like a ghost, and startles her into a jerk of awareness. Something is in here with her. Thing. It felt hard and plastic. Her fingers stretch out to try and grasp at it, pull it,
desperate to try and be a catalyst. The sharp noise was something...small, right? Feet? A muffled noise echoes in her head again, somewhere between fear and panic.</i>
"No," Bruce says with the barest shadow of what might be a smile in less tense circumstances touching his mouth at the corners. "I got to say, I don't care that much who rides shotgun on who." He rubs his thumb along the knuckles of his opposite closed fist, breath puffed past his nose in a hissing exhlation as he turns slightly outward on one foot. He yanks off the glasses, next, and throws them aside; they bounce lightly off the surface of the coffee table and then come to rest.
"Let's go," he says, unbuttoning his sleeves first at the cuffs. He is immune to the need to plan, I guess.
Well.
It's not like there is much doubt about what he is going to do.
Sif steps forward to examine the map carefully, requesting JARVIS zoom out before studying the spot some more. She gives a quick, decisive nod and steps back to Thor's side. "Very well," she says, with a glance aside at Amora and Vision as she lifts her blade, "I can take whoever else requires it."
She'll step back away from the others then to carve the portal, which is unlikely to be perfectly precise and so hopefully does not open right into traffic. Maybe Bruce should go first just in case.
Yeah, Bruce can walk through a portal rather than hanging onto Amora's hand if he's going to do that. Amora glances at the map too, and then she and Vision are gone, calculated to appear at the side of the road, but far enough from the truck's predicted path that they can wait for the others to arrive before throwing themselves into action.
"I will go with you," Thor tells his old friend. He's different now; none of that discreet caution, awkward tact, gentleness that he'd come to her with in the morning, to ask about Loki, about the days that lie ahead. This time for the here and now. He moves after Sif, attention set on the glowing portal ahead.
And in a blink, morning on the Washington bridge brings its chorus of birds, traffic, and light winds. At fourteen hundred yards, the truck is still imminently recognizable. In part because it's blue; and not the least because it's sliding haphazardly over the median. Its massive frame knocks cars and taxicabs out of its way, fiction sparking orange in the grey light.
Only to scream into deceleration, burning tracks into the asphalt eight hundred yards out. The trailer swing madly, threatens to tip, knocks a Volvo ass-over-teakettle. A figure launches itself out of the cab, running. Made tiny by distance, he's hard to make out, but might well be Asian. Just as the massed traffic is jigsawing into a disorganized stop, headlights popping and bumpers nudging into barriers, the man makes a run into it. He leaps, rolls over the roof of a dented sports car. Runs for the edge of the bridge. The pack on his back probably doesn't contain a lunchbox.
Beep beep. The GPS dot in Vision's head moves toward the edge of the bridge. That explains that.
A split-second later, the roof of the truck rips wide open.
//Sunlight floods through. It's too bright. At first, Jen thinks it might be the artefacts of momentary blindness or corneas on her retinas, but another blink promises otherwise. Her arms are corded in
intravenous tubing, needles rubber-banded to her veins, up and down her wrists, the thin skin of her inner-arms, a pots-modern crucifix. The next moment, the light blanks out with a shadow, and the space around her// heaves. //The thing above her is twice her size. Thrice. More. Vague arms, a hulking torso; it pulls itself out into what must be open sky.//
Thor blinks. "It looks familiar," he says. Mjolnir is already spinning, the wind picking up.
He's right about that. Tarnished metal shapes something like a mask, at the peak a supple mountain of ropey, green muscle. Something like a cannon gleams on its arm, recognizably weaponized, but warped, scarred into the bone and flesh of its anatomy. Perhaps the creature used to be Chitauri.
Vision unholsters his sidearm, plain, plain pistol as he and Amora rather materialize within eyeshot of the embodiment of GPS dots, as well as skidding trucks. "I am not sure," he says, without
inflection. He has not been using any inflection at all. "I am not sure we will be needed, here. But in case of delicate work." He cuts himself off. The creature in your due unfolding existence does not look very delicate.
Amora hisses a curse while she frowns at the creature. "Delicate," she agrees, shaking her bracelet down to pull it over her palm, hooked over her middle finger, as is her habit in a fight. "Better, perhaps, to take our target away from there, once we see her."
Bruce is filling his lungs as he moves for the portal, and fabric is ripping as he surges through it and out into the fresh daylight. He does not even wait to take stock of the situation. The creature
that greets New Jersey as he barrels out into the open air is huge, monstrous, the fitted denim splitting from its sheathing of his muscular thighs to leave his decency proteected by only an absurd and narrow shadow of black.
He bellows. His roar smites the air, his eyes abulge with wroth, his fists huge at his sides as his hide gleams bright green over the breadth and mass of muscle that is his gargantuan form.
<i>Someone. Something.
Jennifer's eyes strain in the haze, and against the light. It gets blotted out by the ink of shadow, the rumble in her stomach gaining momentum. What is that? It is familiar to her as well, though not in as passing a manner. Perhaps a glimpse, in waking dreams. Only then does she see the threads of cords winding in and around her arms, and cease her wriggling. She has no idea where they lead--
Another rumble permeates her surroundings. This one she has felt before.</i>
Sif's portal deposits them just on the median, so that all three will have to be careful not to nudge each other off the narrow triangle of concrete here between lanes of traffic. Or, Bruce could Hulk out on his way through and save them the trouble.
Sif exits after Thor, portal lingering a moment as she surveys their position before letting it close. "A dragon," she calls the familiar-looking thing, "Like the skeleton we found, or near enough."
She rolls the hilt of her sword around her palm, blade swinging in silent, slowed imitation of Mjolnir's path. "You come from above and I will take below?" she suggests, already starting forward, jogging towards the careening truck, dodging traffic (accidents) in Hulk's wake.
"A sound plan," Thor says to Sif, despite that he's squinting out at Vision and Amora, further afield. He glances at Bruce-- the Hulk, rather, his blond brows tipping downward. "Though you must change course, if you find yourself in his path." A jerk of his head at the green one. The next instant, the god of thunder is airborne.
And the instant after that, so is Jen.
It's an almost indifferent kick of the 'dragon's foot that sends the eighteen-wheeler cab-over-trailer. The creature is left standing on the vacated stretch of bridge, shaking a sloppy skein of fluid off
its green skin, masked face turning this way, then that. There are people screaming now, mostly those closest to the creature; running out of their cars, others trying to drive away, drive through each other, and between. The semi flips through empty air too fast for Thor to catch it-- miraculously crashes down between two civilian vehicles rather than //on// either. The rended roof pukes fluid across the bridge, a liquid wave that threatens to swamp Amora's shoes, if Amora is more concerned about her shoes than the fact Jennifer Walter might have been inside of that. Or that there are humans stampeding toward her and Vision both.
Or that the culprit-- Chinese, clearly, from their vantage-- is getting away. Three more running steps, and he'll be over the edge, parachute-ready.
The Chitauri looks at the Hulk. Hundreds of yards might as well be nothing. It reaches up, rips the mask from its face. Roars in turn, imploding the cracked glass of a nearby vehicle. It //charges//.
Amora's lip curls, but then she's wading into the liquid, heading for the trailer. She pauses for a moment, mutters another curse, and creates a illusion in front of herself and Vision. There's a twisted car wreck right /there/. On fire and everything. If people running this direction don't want to run into it, they'll have to veer to the side and go around. Hopefully Vision is getting on with the rescue while she's working.
In the midst of shattering glass and burgeoning chaos, the Hulk bunches for a leap. He fears the challenge as a fish fears water. There are men fleeing, men he might pursue with burning vengeance and desperate curiosity -- but monsters are the monster's meat, and he hurtles for the Chitauri with both fists raised to come down like pummelling hammers as he bounds to meet the alien creature mid-charge.
This is gonna go great.
//Her liquid world pitches, spins, drops her stomach out of the bottom. She hits the end of the tether on her right wrist, and there's a grinding// click //in her shoulder where bone separates from
socket. Jennifer hits glass with her back. It cracks, sharper pain patterned like lace through the force of blunt trauma. The tubes wrench, tear, and the skin tissue of her arms tears with it like so much paper//.
//Silence//.
Sif nods to Thor, agreeing, "And you as well." A look to Hulk to gauge an approach around him instead brings the fleeing criminal into view and she changes course abruptly. No time to inform Thor, and he's already in the air in any case. She sprints away from Chitauri and towards the Chinese fellow, inhuman speed deployed to fuel a leap, arms outstretched to catch him and/or his parachute before he can jump.
<i>The sensation of gravity vaulting up, down, around-- is something Jennifer hasn't felt in a long time. Not since the Ohio State Fair when she was seventeen. It never leaves you, that feeling. Metal grinds, the world churns, something tempered cracks, audible through muffled liquid. Her shoulder pops, her spine tossed and wrenched like a doll, skin torn to the nerve. Before long, air seeps through. The crisp of winter leaving, with the touch of green spring.</i>
Any approach by Amora or Vision to the gnarled mass of metal that is the tossed truck trailer, is met with the abrupt sound of something smacking hard against the wall. A convex dent blossoms across the unlabelled broadside.
"Well, this is chaos," Vision says with just enough inflection to convey resigned exasperation. "I'm going in. Stay staff, Amora." he says, to be kind. And then he's stepped back his density and is
jog-darting through the fleeing people to reach the trailer. He's got infrared vision slipping right /on/. Because ruined hulks of trailers are not, typically, super well illuminated.
Amora will stay outside...for now. She lets her illusion fade into the landscape, and goes to touch people at the edges of the crowd. Go, she convinces. Go there, out of the way. She keeps touching until there's enough leaders to make the whole crowd flow that direction, so they're not getting in her way if she returns to the trailer. What, you thought she was getting them to safety?
Vision sees glass first- then cords torn and dangling from the innards of what used to be some manner of containment pod. The slop that has leaked out onto the street seems to have originated there. But the truck is not so big as to hide all of its contents. Vision is not alone. His sensors read it before his optics. A gamma signature, bubbling over like a pot of water.
An arm, too big, too sinewy, is lurching for him just as his sight comes. Dark nails, long fingers, attached to an arm heavily muscled down to where it meets torso, and as he can see-- well past that. The mass of hair is unmistakable. The rest-- well.
The rest is about seven feet of hulk. Her eyes blaze, even in the infrared light.
His shadow blooming on the asphalt, Thor slams down his landing into the pavement behind the monster. Straightening, he steps away from the cracked median, his eyes narrowed on the creature's back first, then scanning the crowd the next. Oh that's nice, they're organizing amongst themselves, heading out of the middle road and away from the chaos, led by various household matrons and grizzled old fellows with voices deep enough to carry over the squealing. Oh, that's nice, it's Amora. Oh, lovely, they're all carving //that// path because she has the imperatives of a sociopath.
Albeit a loyal sociopath. Some odd cross between a scowl and a smile changes Thor's face. The creature pays him no mind, which suits him just as well. He pulls Mjolnir back, taking aim. When the 'dragon' leaps into the air, massive arms swinging propulsion, he waits still; for another bound, then a third, the creature gaining speed as it goes to meet Bruce. On the fourth, he throws. Mjolnir slaps the creature like a gong. Instead of knocking the monster off-trajectory, instead, it propels the creature forward still, dead-center and pinwheeling funnily, over the cars to meet the Hulk hauling through the sky.
By the time Thor twists his head to look around, Sif is out of sight. There is an Asian man screaming at her and the sea gaining speed from below. Inertia snaps her ponytail, and her quarry, soundly caught in her arms, seems to be trying to point a sizeable revolver in her face. Brand has advised her against holding handguns one-handed-- they kick hard. Presumably, he's making the sacrifice because his other hand is wrapped around the ripcord.
"Oh," Vision says as the arm lurches more or less through his chest. "Oh. It isn't--" It is difficult to calculate in a would-be violent dark. He tries to communicate to the rest of the team through that
internal radio, for all they're all busy, if they are even bearing a radio at all. "I think I may have found Jen. Although something is wrong." Understatement made from uncertainty. Vision finds
transformations, hypocritically, discomfiting. "Excuse me!" he calls to the hulk in question. "I am here to rescue you, do not be alarmed. I am harmless and you cannot harm me."
The Hulk -- that is, the Hulk that once was Bruce Banner -- slams at full velocity into the Chitauri, his massive fists striking with startling force against scale and flesh. The force of his bellow might
almost be a shockwave, as the rage that bears him onward sends his fists -- and then the hard slam of his tousle-headed skull -- into the modified beast. Between his own momentum and the impelled force of Mjolnir, they crash downward to crater the concrete beneath.
Though someone's car, first, which fails to get out of the way in a hideous crack and scream of metal and glass, "cushioning" their fall.
Not quite what Sif was going for, but here they are plummeting off the bridge anyway. Oh well. The gun in her face is a more immediate concern, and she wrenches the arm up and away with a grip and a twist that's liable to do terrible things to the bones in his wrist. She doesn't really know how parachutes or ripcords work, though, so river here they come.
Her eyes narrow, hand grasping at nothing. Vision speaks, and his reply is bared teeth staying in that angry grimace. The other arm is dreadfully askew for as long as it takes to discard attempts at Vision, lift the good hand, and wrench it back in place with a snap-pop of joint and gristle.
Either Vision got through, or this one apparently has ceased to care about his presence. The concave dent in the side of the truck already has a suspiciously foot-shaped indent. She coils up and lets loose a punch, popping through the steel as if it were aluminum. Light spills in, illuminates Emerald City green, tatters of a papery gown, swathes of black expanded precariously and sheerly over modesties. Forethought. Someone had it. Both hands find the sides of the hole, and tears the truck a bigger one.
Jennifer's face turns away from it and back to Vision. Her face is her own, broadened, strengthened, exaggerated at the cheekbones, the lips, the blaze of smile that flickers white just before knees bend, muscles coil, and she vaults out of the truck; bare feet crunch down into asphalt when she lands, a rumble in her chest and on her breath, wind from the river whipping that mane of hair from her shoulders.
Four or five blocks away, the bolt of energy that the Chitauri-creature had loosed hits a building in Manhattan. The building abruptly has no front for a few of its stories. Not especially bothered by the waste of effort, the 'dragon' is momentarily preoccupied with head pain. It scrabbles to get its feet into the ground, troughing up concrete with dully-clawed toes. It twists, trying to get its
bio-weaponized arm between itself and its enemy, and pull the trigger into the Hulk's gut. Mjolnir topples off its back.
The hammer punches a fat dimple into the hood of a lovely Jaguar. The next moment, Mjolnir is rolling back into the air to meet Thor's hand.
The god takes to the air the next moment, calls pulsing clouds into the sky overhead. He starts to circle the two green monsters with a churning wind-- a shield, as best he can manage, but it only picks up about as much as a breeze because he notices one of his best friends ever is heading toward the harbor head-first, in the company of a Chinese man screaming in agony.
To said Asian's credit, he tries to hit headbutt her off him and pull the cord at the same time. Whoever took Jennifer Walters, he paid good money for a reasonable professional. In a moment, Sif's prey is jerking in her arms, snagging her body in empty air. It's a bad pull; the parachute only partially inflates, but their fall slows, giving her perhaps a few minutes to keep Tyson off her pretty head.
"Fantastic." Vision permits himself this thread of exasperation and lilts down after Jennifer, treading on nothing and shadowing at her back. "Dr. Banner will be thrilled, when he is able to process it. Ms. Walters, perhaps we should go somewhere else. Off the bridge. Into Jersey. Out of the way." This must be patter. Even Vision doesn't seem to think he sounds effective.
Well, look at that. Amora disappears suddenly into an empty patch of wreckage born of illusion and starts circling around, trying to get behind this new Jen.
The Hulk is a warrior of many things, but finesse is not high on his list. The scrabbling, scraping grapple of strength only surges him to greater heights, the pummel of his fists raining a shower of
blows upon his opponent, but even as he lifts a huge-knuckled hand for another strike, the pause for the <i>wind-up</i>, essentially, is what gives the Chitauri the chance to strike.
Energy crackles, and then bursts, in a great, powerful FOOM.
The Hulk goes flying on the impact of the bioweapon, hurtling backward not quite end-over-end; he sails through the air that cracks into the side of a building, shattering glass in a torrentous rain of shimmering fragments and the complete destruction of someone's corner office. Shedding bits of plant and a number of darling photographs of somebody's horrifically adorable pug, he starts to charge over the brink of the now open-air building for another leap and then stops, skidding to a halt on the verge of soaring momentum with arms lifted to pinwheel. If there was any way he could lose more dignity than the black short-shorts his transformation has made of his jeans--
What.
Jaw hanging loose, the Hulk stands there and looks stupid for a moment.
<i>What?</i>
When Amora reaches Jen, reaches out to touch--there's just a moment of decision before she does. Then the decision is made, she touches, and the suggestion slides in, threading through the mind with considerable strength. There's something not on her friends' side to fight, over there. Why doesn't she expend herself on that, rather than Vision? Fight the Chitauri. That would be satisfying, wouldn't it?
The sun is shining, and the earth is turning. It is a good day. Jennifer looks back, eyes alight, mouth in a snarl, hands flexing into fists. The motion carries through the thickness of her arms, and into broad shoulders. They are too close. One arm cracks at the knuckles as she draws it back, Amora reaching her just in time. The enchantress suffers a pause, weighted, heady, the sound of the She-Hulk's breathing all that comes from her.
"<i>You</i> better get outta <i>my</i> way, <i>Scarecrow</i>." Whatever that means, it is lost on them. Memories convalescing. Same in a lot of ways. Less in others. Her voice too carries that familiar rasp, deepened into an appropriate pitch. She looks up, finds green against her surroundings. The monstrosity she sees first. Hulk second, and she fixates for long enough to draw him in.
"<i>Round two!?</i>" She shouts, and it carries high. Just so. Jen pivots on a bare heel, whirling and lunging into a sprint for the Chitauri remnant. She remembers <i>you</i>. You're the <i>enemy</i>, a dozen-times over.
Vision hangs back, now, drifting and diaphenous mid-air. "I have no idea what is happening," he announces to all and sundry. "And it deeply disturbs me."
Amora lets her illusion slide away--to Vision, she suddenly appears. "She's wearing herself out," she says, utterly confident, no sign of any worries she has about whether her little plan is going to work properly. She'll just...stand to the side here, out of the action.
After a thousand years of acquaintance, Sif is probably sort of accustomed to being intercepted when she falls. It's familiar to her, the thump of impact at her side. Thor's muscled arm claps shut on Sif's waist, hauling her up with her own quarry in hand. Thor growls irately when the tangle of parachute swamps them in colorful shadow.
Dozens of yards below Sif's boots, a faint shout: there is a tattered-looking boatman looking up at them, a Hispanic man, somewhere in his middle ages, crows-feet showing around his squint as he shades his eyes with a hand. Despite that he was right on location to receive the kidnapper, he winds up absurdly waving at Thor and his lady companion. Hello, you are celebrities. It probably hasn't occurred to him he was going to be offed as soon as the package landed.
A mortal woman staggers past Vision in time to hear his statement. "//Run!//" she screams at him, pointing back at the monsters, as if he hasn't managed to catch glimpse of them. The next, she turns on her stockinged feet, and keeps hoofing it toward the end of the bridge.
Granted, she isn't the only one experiencing distraction. At the New York end of the bridge, two Asgardians pause in the midst of catching falling civilians, squinting at the bridge. There is an unusual amount of green out in the battlefield, today. Volstagg and Fandral exchange glances, shouldering their respective screaming humans higher on their shoulders.
"//Mr. Hulk//." There's a SHIELD agent with a megaphone on the street below. He gestures back at the bridge. "//Will you be smashing anymore?//"
It's probably a good idea. The creature is lunging toward Jen now, weaponized arm swinging like a bat to knock her straight into the trajectory of her two friendly bystanders.
"Well. I am officially beyond useless," Vision says as a gal goes staggering past him. Trying to be helpful. "At least our target seems . . . healthy, and probably invulnerable, and may all sort out." He withdraws after Amora, still ghosted.
The Hulk fills his lungs again, inhaling the long drag of breath through his nostrils. He backs a few paces into the rubble of the office, but only to give himself room to run. Shaking off the shock
slower than he shook off the shock of impact, he nonetheless rises to the challenge: taking two huge steps forward, he comes again to the precipice and launches himself back into the fray. As he takes to the air again, he roars, if possible, even louder than before. His bellow is wordless, a tidal wave of fury gone all the fiercer for all that it is less primal.
<i>Protective</i> fury.
He charges, first airborne and then over the obstructed ground, with the velocity, and likelihood of redirection, of an oncoming train.
Sif is not someone easily headbutted, though falling does complicate the situation. She keeps a grip on Tyson (Tyson?) as the parachute half-opens and they jerk hard, briefly testing her grip before their descent slows. Her plan never really included leaving the bridge let alone after, so apprehending him now is somewhat tricky but she will start with getting a grip around his throat and demanding at a shout, "Where were you taking that creature? What is it for?"
The thing about getting your sea legs, the addage goes for more than the ocean. The monster whacks her off her feet quite easily, and she sails right back to where she had been coming from, arms and legs and heavy green likely to do as much damage as anything. Good for them that they are- ah- able individuals. Jen lands in a sprawl, regardless of where her now fellows end up.
"<i>Whuuups, my bad--</i>" She is quick to reassess and spring back into action, pushing up with one arm and planting a foot down to propel herself upwards and onwards again, barrelling after her larger cousin's path with a lengthening sprint, fists balled and nerves raw. Let's try that again, shall we?
"//This//." The Chinese man's accent is heavy, but discernible, even though Sif is interfering with his respiration and speech. "Experi-ment." And then, helpfully also: "Fuck you," and a gob of spit in her eye. He is a spirited fellow. Thor nudges him with a boot, scowling, the moment before he brings them up to land on the sidewalk again.
"Vision," he shouts, looking around perplexed. "Amor-- Fenrir's teeth, is that the girl?" His eyes go to the three green figures now at an entirely abandoned section of bridge, his brows hiked.
Something like emotion changes the Chitauri-beast's face. It starts toward Jen again, weapon arm swinging up, a telltale light already glowing up at its nozzle. One lunging step from meeting the female, he catches the Hulk in the shoulder, sending both crashing like a misshapen bowling ball through a dozen skidding vehicles.
Sif wipes at her eye and then snaps her fist across the man's nose just in time to make sure he lands on his face instead of feet when she drops him on the pavement. She gives Thor's shoulder a friendly pat before releasing him. "Thank you for that," she says, "I-- what!? Odin's bloody eyepatch, is the whole family like that?" She stares at the Hulks, giving the prisoner a kick in the ribs for good measure. "Shall we, or should we leave them to it?" she wonders to Thor and Vision both.
Again the Hulk is struck, and again the Hulk hurtles backward. This time, his trajectory crunches in a more downward warc, smashing him into a great, broken crater of a hole in the street. A dust storm of broken asphalt clouds the air around him. He reaches blindly until his seizing fingers close upon the metal and jagged glass of a car door, green and white from some decimated taxi. The driver is long gone. The Hulk wrenches it free and groans as he surges back to his feet, shaking himself all over and stumbling.
"Rrrrgh," is what he says. He gives the She-Hulk a sideglance, uncertain of her, amazed by her, and somewhere in the back of his head, screaming silently and throwing some kind of tantrum, of the kind that, really, only gives him more momentum.
He adds, "Grmph." His fingers crunch into the metal.
Turning his bulging-eyed stare upon the mass of the Chitauri, he grins in a feral rictus of an expression, and charges again, the broken door held in some half-conscious parody of a shield.
Vision is in partial withdrawal, but what hurry does he have, about as vulnerable the river beneath. His expression is still cramped in bemusement. "There must be something locked in their genetics. They do appear to be doing fine, I have to say. I could put a leg in, but it'd be torn off to no purpose."
"Nice pants, coz." She is certain, where he is not, untangling herself from the ground before she so readily answers his grunt. Jennifer's smile echoes his manic grin, when it comes, and the third time's the charm. Bracing her legs, she vaults upwards, hair streaming when gravity throws her down towards the Chitauri.
Both fists are raised high up, swinging down hard when she gets close. Survive and <i>smash.</i>
"I know not of these 'genetics,'" Thor responds, "but I agree, theirs is a family of uncommon fortune. It is not a fate I wish to share, but it can not be helped; and I agree, they have things in hand." He nods at Vision, offering Sif one burly arm this time. He knows her well enough to figure she'd rather hold than be held. "Raise the alarm if things turn sour-- I will fly Sif and the prisoner to SHIELD before he can rally himself."
A wind whistles through empty cars. The monster gazes upon his two oncoming foes, his breath moving in and out of him with a grinding sound of a train. He shakes himself, like a dog or a gorilla -- or indeed like the Hulk himself, //bellows//, loud enough that pigeons take off halfway across the breadth of Manhattan. He pitches forward, fists digging into the street, gallumphing toward the two, all maddened eyes and maniacal rictus exposing his teeth.
Its arms open to grab both-- one-- either, veins tenting under his green flesh, and jaws wide.
"To watch and alert, this I can do," Vision phrases almost like a vow as he windwalks some steps upward for a better vantage. "But I have faith in the sheer unmatched destructive power of our friends." It's a compliment. It will serve. He settles to watch.
"Uncommon indeed," Sif agrees, "A good fortune, for today, at least. Wise, Vision," she adds, "There seems little need to risk injury at present. I hope that you are recording this for the others to watch later."
She picks the senseless captive up by his belt and links her arm through Thor's like they're going to go for a perfectly proper stroll through the gardens before tea. "Lead on," she says, turning a smile on him.
Distraction! the Hulk throws the shield, sending it flying before him in a hurtle of only semi-aerodynamic twisted metal and shattered glass. The frame of the door smashes into the other monster's face, flying shards scattering to catch the light in a shimmering blazon as alien mutate is hit with a chunk of taxi in the teeth.
The Hulk follows it, hitting like a semi with the full smashing force of his impact. He twists the wrench of the Chitauri's arm, yanking it back behind the monster's head, grappling for purchase as his monstrous feet grind deep grooves into the asphalt underfoot, and answers bellow with roar.
The roar might be for Jen. It's hard to tell. Kind of chaotic out here.
Jennifer comes down hard on the creature- the slam to its shoulders digs its legs into ground up to shins. Her feet hit the ground a second later, and the upwards slam that comes next can be felt in the air, ringing with impact through all three of them. A big green fist meets the Chitauri's head as it screams with rage, pinned back against Hulk-- CRACK!--
Tarry fluid spits across her chest, a spray that arches almost as wide as the jaw gone from its face. A second punch from the other hand caves the rest in, metal and bony remnants crunching in the most particularly satisfying way.
The creature shudders. And promptly falls apart like so much decomposed cake. Green blood sloughs over the Hulk's toes, leaves his tiny pants alone, spatters loose over the female's bared arms.
Choppers slide nearer. A couple of them bear news station numbers, but a handful are unmarked, utilitarian black, no doubt the property of SHIELD. The air reverberates only vaguely as they grow closer, their proximity reflecting their objective: to do no more than //check things out// as yet. Earth's government entities know their green people enough, by now, to play it safe. Further beyond, high in the sky, thunder rumbles gently: congratulations.
Look, Hulk. You didn't even murder the bridge. Not to count our blessings or anything!
A peculiar quiet falls over the two cousins now, allowing them the temporary illusion of privacy. Even the wail of approaching ambulances is muted by the passage of an indifferent wind. The fleeing crowd has fled stage left and right, and the cars like emptied peanut husks discarded all around them. The day was certainly fit for theater.
The Hulk lets fall the fallen in a slumping splat across the still-standing bridge beneath their great green feet, and his hands fall after to dangle for a moment loose at his sides, along with the level
of his gaze. His great brow is furrowed, the deep grooves of a baffled scowl writ across his distorted features.
There are kinds and kinds of family. Bruce has found his, in form and kind; the Hulk, though, is a monster alone, rootless but for what root he takes in Banner.
In the rumble of the threatening storm, he stares at her. If there are any words obscured behind the bulging eyes, they do not escape, despite whatever illusions may be lent in the temporary quiet.
She-Hulk, as the world will know her, lifts her chin on knowing that one will never be getting up again. Her eyes, flecked through with green, meet his, with a sharp upturn of her gaze.
"You know what, big guy?" Words come naturally, if through unnatural means. Jen shifts on her feet, stepping over the fallen foe and putting a hand out for the Hulk's broad shoulder, keeping her eyes fixed and a twisted little smile on her lips. A quick test of space, a bold move to close distance, literally and figuratively. She-Hulk moves, where Bruce's cousin would never. "You won't be alone any more."
The Hulk grunts. More eloquent responses have come, in answer to such a declaration. His hide is hard under her hand, though solid with body heat beneath. His breath puffs from his great nose in a long gust, and he turns his head to look at her more sidelong. He goes, "Hnh."
It's very affectionate. At least the part where he does not haul off and punch her.
---
May 7th, 2013
Sif has disconnected.
It's seven thirty in the morning when the commlink goes wild with alert. SHIELD chatter, JARVIS' exclamations-- //Sirs and ladies//-- but in the time it takes for triangulation and data processing to
translate to the language that humans require to learn what they know, Vision has a clear understanding of the situation. The ones who took Jennifer Walters have come out of the woodwork. The GPS dot throbs vividly in his mind's eye despite that the cellphone is offline.
It's remarkable, what you can do with technology these days.
Odd thing: the signal reemerges out of nowhere, at breakneck speed and already in-transit, flashing along the New Jersey Turnpike-- which any map, be it holographic, paper, or the contents of Vision's mind will tell them turns into the George Washington Bridge. It's six or seven miles from the mansion to the bridge; further, if they want to bank on the remote hope of intercepting them before the bridge; sooner, if the plan is to stop them getting across. SHIELD is already sending a chopper. It's probably best no one pauses to brush their teeth.
But magic occasionally pitches in where technology's utility reaches its limits. A seam of light opens in the murky morning light of the kitchen, and a second later JARVIS' crisp accent is emanating across the house. It's the AI's version, uncommon as it is, of raising his voice:
"//Sif and Thor have arrived at the mansion. Please proceed to the kitchen for transport//."
Amora arrives at the front door of the mansion and lets herself in a beat after the other Asgardians. Does she get a big annoucement? She doesn't seem to want one, slipping into the action as she is, inviting herself along to help, of all things. Her ulterior motive must be more complicated than usual. She's not dressed for fighting as much as Sif undoubtedly is, but she's wearing leggings under her tunic-length dress, and her bodice looks like it's doing its job holding everything secure as opposed to just shaping prettily.
Vision happens to be tooling around on a set of contextless joints when the alert comes in. He translates, swiftly, almost thoughtlessly, pinging Avengers and data-snagging and dropping, if the actual application for logistics proves unnecessary with Sif and Thor involved. He ghosts down to the main floor, as he does. Just to ghost.
Already (or perhaps, <i>still<i>) buried in the depths of his laboratory, wound up in hologram interface and deep tension, Bruce takes a little longer to scramble than those who are actually close to the kitchen. He looks up with the announcement, frown pinching his brows above the gleam of his spectacles. His hand closes nearly tight enough on the light pen he has been fiddling with to break it even with the ordinary human strength to which his broad hands are currently limited.
"Thank you, JARVIS," he remembers to thank the house as he sweeps out of the lab, striding on long ground-eating strides for the elevator.
//Seven miles away, glass drifts cold into her cheek, and a muffled rattle seeps into her hearing. Lurch and slide. The movement is enough to get her awake; but perhaps what'll get her// awake //is the cold realization she's in submerged darkness, her lungs full with liquid that she can somehow breathe. Worse, that she can't move much further than that. Her wrists are bound wide, and ankles too. She can't see her hands or battered body, never mind the enemy. She is afloat in a womb of no natural making//.
"Where are the others?" Thor roars at Vision once he sees the robot. He prbably doesn't mean to come off tremendously aggressive or hostile; he's merely somewhat stressed out, that family of a friend is imperilled and they aren't yet there. He raises Mjolnir, red cloak flaring around his shoulders. "We must go to New Jersey."
Or not. Vision will know it's too late for that.
"Coming, I'm sure," Vision says, cool and abstracted, as if his attention were elsewhere. Which it probably is. "They're heading for the George Washington Bridge. It may be too late to intercept them on it."
Sif matches Thor's urgency if not his aggression, shutting the portal behind them once she's stepped through and lowering her sword but keeping it naked in hand, ready to put to use again imminently. She tugs on a piece of armor, securing a buckle like she too was rushed to readiness. "I need to know where we are going," she instructs-- everyone and no one in particular, "A map would be best, unless it is close enough to simply fly." Simply. As you do.
Who actually ever wants to go to New Jersey? Silly Thor.
<i>Her last memories are fresh. Maybe they are. There is no scale, where she is. For the best? Perhaps. The lurch of turn and distant rumble of wheels is familiar enough-- she's moving. Something is
moving her, rather. Her mouth is open, lungs filled, and no sound comes from her chest; the ring of effort vibrates in her skull when the muscles in her chest attempt to dispel whatever is inside it. The twine of wrists against bonds pulls an echo of ache through her shoulders, then hips, then core, when all four limbs twist at the roots, valiant and fruitless. This is wrong, that much she knows for certain. The rest is a foreign occupation of her body, and sends a ripple of panic through the pain behind her eyes and down her spine.</i>
"We must go to where they will be, not where they have just been," is Amora's (unhelpful) contribution. She keeps at the side of the room away from Thor, but she makes her way toward Sif, perhaps to remind everyone there's two teleporters in play.
"JARVIS," Bruce directs with only a shadow of his usual humble courtesy, his voice and body limned with tension, even as he lopes up from the elevator to join the others. "Can you please show up a map of the bridge?"
A long sweep of dark blue dress shirt and coal-black jeans, he lifts his hands to manipulate the shimmering image of the holographic map even as the AI brings it up, floating in convenient projection away from the entertainment center in the Great Room. Bruce reaches up to spread the zoom of the intersection where bridge meets road again.
"Here," he says. "We can block them from getting off it again. Before I break the bridge."
Not entirely or even mostly unhelpful. Thor levels Amora a slightly dark look, but concedse her point-- and Vision's with a grunt, letting his arm fall back to his side. His pale eyes cut to the map that Bruce brings up, narrowing slightly at the glowing network of streets, the long, high stretch of the bridge over open water. The next moment, his eyes refocus on the scientist behind the map, sketching a brief look over the Hulk's face. Not green yet. That's a good sign.
"JARVIS," he says. "Have Fandral and Volstagg join SHIELD on the New York side. Our brothers will help where they can." He pauses to watch a globe-shaped marker bloom on the East end of the Washington bridge, nodding his head. "Do we know anything of what awaits us?"
JARVIS calls up a tiny mesh truck, like a toy riding through Bruce's map. Closer to reality, traffic camera footage rolls through Vision's mind: the truck is massive, eighteen wheels and a fender broader than a human body, chipped blue paint.
//The next thump that reverberates through the medium of Jennifer's prison doesn't sound like traffic. Sharper, no cadence-- and it comes from above. She sways again, and something brushes her finger, thin, plastic. Tubing.//
"Who travels with me?" Amora looks at Vision first, since they're...friends? Right? Kinda? Her hand held out to him is every so slightly preemptory. Her glance at Bruce is more cautious, in contrast. The Asgardians she ignores.
Vision takes Amora's hand without so much as an I will. It's perhaps preemptory in turn, lightly possessive. But he's no sooner seized the hand than described, "The truck is immense, 18-wheels. Not that I expect this will be a problem for anyone here."
<i>Is there someone there?
The object brushes past like a ghost, and startles her into a jerk of awareness. Something is in here with her. Thing. It felt hard and plastic. Her fingers stretch out to try and grasp at it, pull it,
desperate to try and be a catalyst. The sharp noise was something...small, right? Feet? A muffled noise echoes in her head again, somewhere between fear and panic.</i>
"No," Bruce says with the barest shadow of what might be a smile in less tense circumstances touching his mouth at the corners. "I got to say, I don't care that much who rides shotgun on who." He rubs his thumb along the knuckles of his opposite closed fist, breath puffed past his nose in a hissing exhlation as he turns slightly outward on one foot. He yanks off the glasses, next, and throws them aside; they bounce lightly off the surface of the coffee table and then come to rest.
"Let's go," he says, unbuttoning his sleeves first at the cuffs. He is immune to the need to plan, I guess.
Well.
It's not like there is much doubt about what he is going to do.
Sif steps forward to examine the map carefully, requesting JARVIS zoom out before studying the spot some more. She gives a quick, decisive nod and steps back to Thor's side. "Very well," she says, with a glance aside at Amora and Vision as she lifts her blade, "I can take whoever else requires it."
She'll step back away from the others then to carve the portal, which is unlikely to be perfectly precise and so hopefully does not open right into traffic. Maybe Bruce should go first just in case.
Yeah, Bruce can walk through a portal rather than hanging onto Amora's hand if he's going to do that. Amora glances at the map too, and then she and Vision are gone, calculated to appear at the side of the road, but far enough from the truck's predicted path that they can wait for the others to arrive before throwing themselves into action.
"I will go with you," Thor tells his old friend. He's different now; none of that discreet caution, awkward tact, gentleness that he'd come to her with in the morning, to ask about Loki, about the days that lie ahead. This time for the here and now. He moves after Sif, attention set on the glowing portal ahead.
And in a blink, morning on the Washington bridge brings its chorus of birds, traffic, and light winds. At fourteen hundred yards, the truck is still imminently recognizable. In part because it's blue; and not the least because it's sliding haphazardly over the median. Its massive frame knocks cars and taxicabs out of its way, fiction sparking orange in the grey light.
Only to scream into deceleration, burning tracks into the asphalt eight hundred yards out. The trailer swing madly, threatens to tip, knocks a Volvo ass-over-teakettle. A figure launches itself out of the cab, running. Made tiny by distance, he's hard to make out, but might well be Asian. Just as the massed traffic is jigsawing into a disorganized stop, headlights popping and bumpers nudging into barriers, the man makes a run into it. He leaps, rolls over the roof of a dented sports car. Runs for the edge of the bridge. The pack on his back probably doesn't contain a lunchbox.
Beep beep. The GPS dot in Vision's head moves toward the edge of the bridge. That explains that.
A split-second later, the roof of the truck rips wide open.
//Sunlight floods through. It's too bright. At first, Jen thinks it might be the artefacts of momentary blindness or corneas on her retinas, but another blink promises otherwise. Her arms are corded in
intravenous tubing, needles rubber-banded to her veins, up and down her wrists, the thin skin of her inner-arms, a pots-modern crucifix. The next moment, the light blanks out with a shadow, and the space around her// heaves. //The thing above her is twice her size. Thrice. More. Vague arms, a hulking torso; it pulls itself out into what must be open sky.//
Thor blinks. "It looks familiar," he says. Mjolnir is already spinning, the wind picking up.
He's right about that. Tarnished metal shapes something like a mask, at the peak a supple mountain of ropey, green muscle. Something like a cannon gleams on its arm, recognizably weaponized, but warped, scarred into the bone and flesh of its anatomy. Perhaps the creature used to be Chitauri.
Vision unholsters his sidearm, plain, plain pistol as he and Amora rather materialize within eyeshot of the embodiment of GPS dots, as well as skidding trucks. "I am not sure," he says, without
inflection. He has not been using any inflection at all. "I am not sure we will be needed, here. But in case of delicate work." He cuts himself off. The creature in your due unfolding existence does not look very delicate.
Amora hisses a curse while she frowns at the creature. "Delicate," she agrees, shaking her bracelet down to pull it over her palm, hooked over her middle finger, as is her habit in a fight. "Better, perhaps, to take our target away from there, once we see her."
Bruce is filling his lungs as he moves for the portal, and fabric is ripping as he surges through it and out into the fresh daylight. He does not even wait to take stock of the situation. The creature
that greets New Jersey as he barrels out into the open air is huge, monstrous, the fitted denim splitting from its sheathing of his muscular thighs to leave his decency proteected by only an absurd and narrow shadow of black.
He bellows. His roar smites the air, his eyes abulge with wroth, his fists huge at his sides as his hide gleams bright green over the breadth and mass of muscle that is his gargantuan form.
<i>Someone. Something.
Jennifer's eyes strain in the haze, and against the light. It gets blotted out by the ink of shadow, the rumble in her stomach gaining momentum. What is that? It is familiar to her as well, though not in as passing a manner. Perhaps a glimpse, in waking dreams. Only then does she see the threads of cords winding in and around her arms, and cease her wriggling. She has no idea where they lead--
Another rumble permeates her surroundings. This one she has felt before.</i>
Sif's portal deposits them just on the median, so that all three will have to be careful not to nudge each other off the narrow triangle of concrete here between lanes of traffic. Or, Bruce could Hulk out on his way through and save them the trouble.
Sif exits after Thor, portal lingering a moment as she surveys their position before letting it close. "A dragon," she calls the familiar-looking thing, "Like the skeleton we found, or near enough."
She rolls the hilt of her sword around her palm, blade swinging in silent, slowed imitation of Mjolnir's path. "You come from above and I will take below?" she suggests, already starting forward, jogging towards the careening truck, dodging traffic (accidents) in Hulk's wake.
"A sound plan," Thor says to Sif, despite that he's squinting out at Vision and Amora, further afield. He glances at Bruce-- the Hulk, rather, his blond brows tipping downward. "Though you must change course, if you find yourself in his path." A jerk of his head at the green one. The next instant, the god of thunder is airborne.
And the instant after that, so is Jen.
It's an almost indifferent kick of the 'dragon's foot that sends the eighteen-wheeler cab-over-trailer. The creature is left standing on the vacated stretch of bridge, shaking a sloppy skein of fluid off
its green skin, masked face turning this way, then that. There are people screaming now, mostly those closest to the creature; running out of their cars, others trying to drive away, drive through each other, and between. The semi flips through empty air too fast for Thor to catch it-- miraculously crashes down between two civilian vehicles rather than //on// either. The rended roof pukes fluid across the bridge, a liquid wave that threatens to swamp Amora's shoes, if Amora is more concerned about her shoes than the fact Jennifer Walter might have been inside of that. Or that there are humans stampeding toward her and Vision both.
Or that the culprit-- Chinese, clearly, from their vantage-- is getting away. Three more running steps, and he'll be over the edge, parachute-ready.
The Chitauri looks at the Hulk. Hundreds of yards might as well be nothing. It reaches up, rips the mask from its face. Roars in turn, imploding the cracked glass of a nearby vehicle. It //charges//.
Amora's lip curls, but then she's wading into the liquid, heading for the trailer. She pauses for a moment, mutters another curse, and creates a illusion in front of herself and Vision. There's a twisted car wreck right /there/. On fire and everything. If people running this direction don't want to run into it, they'll have to veer to the side and go around. Hopefully Vision is getting on with the rescue while she's working.
In the midst of shattering glass and burgeoning chaos, the Hulk bunches for a leap. He fears the challenge as a fish fears water. There are men fleeing, men he might pursue with burning vengeance and desperate curiosity -- but monsters are the monster's meat, and he hurtles for the Chitauri with both fists raised to come down like pummelling hammers as he bounds to meet the alien creature mid-charge.
This is gonna go great.
//Her liquid world pitches, spins, drops her stomach out of the bottom. She hits the end of the tether on her right wrist, and there's a grinding// click //in her shoulder where bone separates from
socket. Jennifer hits glass with her back. It cracks, sharper pain patterned like lace through the force of blunt trauma. The tubes wrench, tear, and the skin tissue of her arms tears with it like so much paper//.
//Silence//.
Sif nods to Thor, agreeing, "And you as well." A look to Hulk to gauge an approach around him instead brings the fleeing criminal into view and she changes course abruptly. No time to inform Thor, and he's already in the air in any case. She sprints away from Chitauri and towards the Chinese fellow, inhuman speed deployed to fuel a leap, arms outstretched to catch him and/or his parachute before he can jump.
<i>The sensation of gravity vaulting up, down, around-- is something Jennifer hasn't felt in a long time. Not since the Ohio State Fair when she was seventeen. It never leaves you, that feeling. Metal grinds, the world churns, something tempered cracks, audible through muffled liquid. Her shoulder pops, her spine tossed and wrenched like a doll, skin torn to the nerve. Before long, air seeps through. The crisp of winter leaving, with the touch of green spring.</i>
Any approach by Amora or Vision to the gnarled mass of metal that is the tossed truck trailer, is met with the abrupt sound of something smacking hard against the wall. A convex dent blossoms across the unlabelled broadside.
"Well, this is chaos," Vision says with just enough inflection to convey resigned exasperation. "I'm going in. Stay staff, Amora." he says, to be kind. And then he's stepped back his density and is
jog-darting through the fleeing people to reach the trailer. He's got infrared vision slipping right /on/. Because ruined hulks of trailers are not, typically, super well illuminated.
Amora will stay outside...for now. She lets her illusion fade into the landscape, and goes to touch people at the edges of the crowd. Go, she convinces. Go there, out of the way. She keeps touching until there's enough leaders to make the whole crowd flow that direction, so they're not getting in her way if she returns to the trailer. What, you thought she was getting them to safety?
Vision sees glass first- then cords torn and dangling from the innards of what used to be some manner of containment pod. The slop that has leaked out onto the street seems to have originated there. But the truck is not so big as to hide all of its contents. Vision is not alone. His sensors read it before his optics. A gamma signature, bubbling over like a pot of water.
An arm, too big, too sinewy, is lurching for him just as his sight comes. Dark nails, long fingers, attached to an arm heavily muscled down to where it meets torso, and as he can see-- well past that. The mass of hair is unmistakable. The rest-- well.
The rest is about seven feet of hulk. Her eyes blaze, even in the infrared light.
His shadow blooming on the asphalt, Thor slams down his landing into the pavement behind the monster. Straightening, he steps away from the cracked median, his eyes narrowed on the creature's back first, then scanning the crowd the next. Oh that's nice, they're organizing amongst themselves, heading out of the middle road and away from the chaos, led by various household matrons and grizzled old fellows with voices deep enough to carry over the squealing. Oh, that's nice, it's Amora. Oh, lovely, they're all carving //that// path because she has the imperatives of a sociopath.
Albeit a loyal sociopath. Some odd cross between a scowl and a smile changes Thor's face. The creature pays him no mind, which suits him just as well. He pulls Mjolnir back, taking aim. When the 'dragon' leaps into the air, massive arms swinging propulsion, he waits still; for another bound, then a third, the creature gaining speed as it goes to meet Bruce. On the fourth, he throws. Mjolnir slaps the creature like a gong. Instead of knocking the monster off-trajectory, instead, it propels the creature forward still, dead-center and pinwheeling funnily, over the cars to meet the Hulk hauling through the sky.
By the time Thor twists his head to look around, Sif is out of sight. There is an Asian man screaming at her and the sea gaining speed from below. Inertia snaps her ponytail, and her quarry, soundly caught in her arms, seems to be trying to point a sizeable revolver in her face. Brand has advised her against holding handguns one-handed-- they kick hard. Presumably, he's making the sacrifice because his other hand is wrapped around the ripcord.
"Oh," Vision says as the arm lurches more or less through his chest. "Oh. It isn't--" It is difficult to calculate in a would-be violent dark. He tries to communicate to the rest of the team through that
internal radio, for all they're all busy, if they are even bearing a radio at all. "I think I may have found Jen. Although something is wrong." Understatement made from uncertainty. Vision finds
transformations, hypocritically, discomfiting. "Excuse me!" he calls to the hulk in question. "I am here to rescue you, do not be alarmed. I am harmless and you cannot harm me."
The Hulk -- that is, the Hulk that once was Bruce Banner -- slams at full velocity into the Chitauri, his massive fists striking with startling force against scale and flesh. The force of his bellow might
almost be a shockwave, as the rage that bears him onward sends his fists -- and then the hard slam of his tousle-headed skull -- into the modified beast. Between his own momentum and the impelled force of Mjolnir, they crash downward to crater the concrete beneath.
Though someone's car, first, which fails to get out of the way in a hideous crack and scream of metal and glass, "cushioning" their fall.
Not quite what Sif was going for, but here they are plummeting off the bridge anyway. Oh well. The gun in her face is a more immediate concern, and she wrenches the arm up and away with a grip and a twist that's liable to do terrible things to the bones in his wrist. She doesn't really know how parachutes or ripcords work, though, so river here they come.
Her eyes narrow, hand grasping at nothing. Vision speaks, and his reply is bared teeth staying in that angry grimace. The other arm is dreadfully askew for as long as it takes to discard attempts at Vision, lift the good hand, and wrench it back in place with a snap-pop of joint and gristle.
Either Vision got through, or this one apparently has ceased to care about his presence. The concave dent in the side of the truck already has a suspiciously foot-shaped indent. She coils up and lets loose a punch, popping through the steel as if it were aluminum. Light spills in, illuminates Emerald City green, tatters of a papery gown, swathes of black expanded precariously and sheerly over modesties. Forethought. Someone had it. Both hands find the sides of the hole, and tears the truck a bigger one.
Jennifer's face turns away from it and back to Vision. Her face is her own, broadened, strengthened, exaggerated at the cheekbones, the lips, the blaze of smile that flickers white just before knees bend, muscles coil, and she vaults out of the truck; bare feet crunch down into asphalt when she lands, a rumble in her chest and on her breath, wind from the river whipping that mane of hair from her shoulders.
Four or five blocks away, the bolt of energy that the Chitauri-creature had loosed hits a building in Manhattan. The building abruptly has no front for a few of its stories. Not especially bothered by the waste of effort, the 'dragon' is momentarily preoccupied with head pain. It scrabbles to get its feet into the ground, troughing up concrete with dully-clawed toes. It twists, trying to get its
bio-weaponized arm between itself and its enemy, and pull the trigger into the Hulk's gut. Mjolnir topples off its back.
The hammer punches a fat dimple into the hood of a lovely Jaguar. The next moment, Mjolnir is rolling back into the air to meet Thor's hand.
The god takes to the air the next moment, calls pulsing clouds into the sky overhead. He starts to circle the two green monsters with a churning wind-- a shield, as best he can manage, but it only picks up about as much as a breeze because he notices one of his best friends ever is heading toward the harbor head-first, in the company of a Chinese man screaming in agony.
To said Asian's credit, he tries to hit headbutt her off him and pull the cord at the same time. Whoever took Jennifer Walters, he paid good money for a reasonable professional. In a moment, Sif's prey is jerking in her arms, snagging her body in empty air. It's a bad pull; the parachute only partially inflates, but their fall slows, giving her perhaps a few minutes to keep Tyson off her pretty head.
"Fantastic." Vision permits himself this thread of exasperation and lilts down after Jennifer, treading on nothing and shadowing at her back. "Dr. Banner will be thrilled, when he is able to process it. Ms. Walters, perhaps we should go somewhere else. Off the bridge. Into Jersey. Out of the way." This must be patter. Even Vision doesn't seem to think he sounds effective.
Well, look at that. Amora disappears suddenly into an empty patch of wreckage born of illusion and starts circling around, trying to get behind this new Jen.
The Hulk is a warrior of many things, but finesse is not high on his list. The scrabbling, scraping grapple of strength only surges him to greater heights, the pummel of his fists raining a shower of
blows upon his opponent, but even as he lifts a huge-knuckled hand for another strike, the pause for the <i>wind-up</i>, essentially, is what gives the Chitauri the chance to strike.
Energy crackles, and then bursts, in a great, powerful FOOM.
The Hulk goes flying on the impact of the bioweapon, hurtling backward not quite end-over-end; he sails through the air that cracks into the side of a building, shattering glass in a torrentous rain of shimmering fragments and the complete destruction of someone's corner office. Shedding bits of plant and a number of darling photographs of somebody's horrifically adorable pug, he starts to charge over the brink of the now open-air building for another leap and then stops, skidding to a halt on the verge of soaring momentum with arms lifted to pinwheel. If there was any way he could lose more dignity than the black short-shorts his transformation has made of his jeans--
What.
Jaw hanging loose, the Hulk stands there and looks stupid for a moment.
<i>What?</i>
When Amora reaches Jen, reaches out to touch--there's just a moment of decision before she does. Then the decision is made, she touches, and the suggestion slides in, threading through the mind with considerable strength. There's something not on her friends' side to fight, over there. Why doesn't she expend herself on that, rather than Vision? Fight the Chitauri. That would be satisfying, wouldn't it?
The sun is shining, and the earth is turning. It is a good day. Jennifer looks back, eyes alight, mouth in a snarl, hands flexing into fists. The motion carries through the thickness of her arms, and into broad shoulders. They are too close. One arm cracks at the knuckles as she draws it back, Amora reaching her just in time. The enchantress suffers a pause, weighted, heady, the sound of the She-Hulk's breathing all that comes from her.
"<i>You</i> better get outta <i>my</i> way, <i>Scarecrow</i>." Whatever that means, it is lost on them. Memories convalescing. Same in a lot of ways. Less in others. Her voice too carries that familiar rasp, deepened into an appropriate pitch. She looks up, finds green against her surroundings. The monstrosity she sees first. Hulk second, and she fixates for long enough to draw him in.
"<i>Round two!?</i>" She shouts, and it carries high. Just so. Jen pivots on a bare heel, whirling and lunging into a sprint for the Chitauri remnant. She remembers <i>you</i>. You're the <i>enemy</i>, a dozen-times over.
Vision hangs back, now, drifting and diaphenous mid-air. "I have no idea what is happening," he announces to all and sundry. "And it deeply disturbs me."
Amora lets her illusion slide away--to Vision, she suddenly appears. "She's wearing herself out," she says, utterly confident, no sign of any worries she has about whether her little plan is going to work properly. She'll just...stand to the side here, out of the action.
After a thousand years of acquaintance, Sif is probably sort of accustomed to being intercepted when she falls. It's familiar to her, the thump of impact at her side. Thor's muscled arm claps shut on Sif's waist, hauling her up with her own quarry in hand. Thor growls irately when the tangle of parachute swamps them in colorful shadow.
Dozens of yards below Sif's boots, a faint shout: there is a tattered-looking boatman looking up at them, a Hispanic man, somewhere in his middle ages, crows-feet showing around his squint as he shades his eyes with a hand. Despite that he was right on location to receive the kidnapper, he winds up absurdly waving at Thor and his lady companion. Hello, you are celebrities. It probably hasn't occurred to him he was going to be offed as soon as the package landed.
A mortal woman staggers past Vision in time to hear his statement. "//Run!//" she screams at him, pointing back at the monsters, as if he hasn't managed to catch glimpse of them. The next, she turns on her stockinged feet, and keeps hoofing it toward the end of the bridge.
Granted, she isn't the only one experiencing distraction. At the New York end of the bridge, two Asgardians pause in the midst of catching falling civilians, squinting at the bridge. There is an unusual amount of green out in the battlefield, today. Volstagg and Fandral exchange glances, shouldering their respective screaming humans higher on their shoulders.
"//Mr. Hulk//." There's a SHIELD agent with a megaphone on the street below. He gestures back at the bridge. "//Will you be smashing anymore?//"
It's probably a good idea. The creature is lunging toward Jen now, weaponized arm swinging like a bat to knock her straight into the trajectory of her two friendly bystanders.
"Well. I am officially beyond useless," Vision says as a gal goes staggering past him. Trying to be helpful. "At least our target seems . . . healthy, and probably invulnerable, and may all sort out." He withdraws after Amora, still ghosted.
The Hulk fills his lungs again, inhaling the long drag of breath through his nostrils. He backs a few paces into the rubble of the office, but only to give himself room to run. Shaking off the shock
slower than he shook off the shock of impact, he nonetheless rises to the challenge: taking two huge steps forward, he comes again to the precipice and launches himself back into the fray. As he takes to the air again, he roars, if possible, even louder than before. His bellow is wordless, a tidal wave of fury gone all the fiercer for all that it is less primal.
<i>Protective</i> fury.
He charges, first airborne and then over the obstructed ground, with the velocity, and likelihood of redirection, of an oncoming train.
Sif is not someone easily headbutted, though falling does complicate the situation. She keeps a grip on Tyson (Tyson?) as the parachute half-opens and they jerk hard, briefly testing her grip before their descent slows. Her plan never really included leaving the bridge let alone after, so apprehending him now is somewhat tricky but she will start with getting a grip around his throat and demanding at a shout, "Where were you taking that creature? What is it for?"
The thing about getting your sea legs, the addage goes for more than the ocean. The monster whacks her off her feet quite easily, and she sails right back to where she had been coming from, arms and legs and heavy green likely to do as much damage as anything. Good for them that they are- ah- able individuals. Jen lands in a sprawl, regardless of where her now fellows end up.
"<i>Whuuups, my bad--</i>" She is quick to reassess and spring back into action, pushing up with one arm and planting a foot down to propel herself upwards and onwards again, barrelling after her larger cousin's path with a lengthening sprint, fists balled and nerves raw. Let's try that again, shall we?
"//This//." The Chinese man's accent is heavy, but discernible, even though Sif is interfering with his respiration and speech. "Experi-ment." And then, helpfully also: "Fuck you," and a gob of spit in her eye. He is a spirited fellow. Thor nudges him with a boot, scowling, the moment before he brings them up to land on the sidewalk again.
"Vision," he shouts, looking around perplexed. "Amor-- Fenrir's teeth, is that the girl?" His eyes go to the three green figures now at an entirely abandoned section of bridge, his brows hiked.
Something like emotion changes the Chitauri-beast's face. It starts toward Jen again, weapon arm swinging up, a telltale light already glowing up at its nozzle. One lunging step from meeting the female, he catches the Hulk in the shoulder, sending both crashing like a misshapen bowling ball through a dozen skidding vehicles.
Sif wipes at her eye and then snaps her fist across the man's nose just in time to make sure he lands on his face instead of feet when she drops him on the pavement. She gives Thor's shoulder a friendly pat before releasing him. "Thank you for that," she says, "I-- what!? Odin's bloody eyepatch, is the whole family like that?" She stares at the Hulks, giving the prisoner a kick in the ribs for good measure. "Shall we, or should we leave them to it?" she wonders to Thor and Vision both.
Again the Hulk is struck, and again the Hulk hurtles backward. This time, his trajectory crunches in a more downward warc, smashing him into a great, broken crater of a hole in the street. A dust storm of broken asphalt clouds the air around him. He reaches blindly until his seizing fingers close upon the metal and jagged glass of a car door, green and white from some decimated taxi. The driver is long gone. The Hulk wrenches it free and groans as he surges back to his feet, shaking himself all over and stumbling.
"Rrrrgh," is what he says. He gives the She-Hulk a sideglance, uncertain of her, amazed by her, and somewhere in the back of his head, screaming silently and throwing some kind of tantrum, of the kind that, really, only gives him more momentum.
He adds, "Grmph." His fingers crunch into the metal.
Turning his bulging-eyed stare upon the mass of the Chitauri, he grins in a feral rictus of an expression, and charges again, the broken door held in some half-conscious parody of a shield.
Vision is in partial withdrawal, but what hurry does he have, about as vulnerable the river beneath. His expression is still cramped in bemusement. "There must be something locked in their genetics. They do appear to be doing fine, I have to say. I could put a leg in, but it'd be torn off to no purpose."
"Nice pants, coz." She is certain, where he is not, untangling herself from the ground before she so readily answers his grunt. Jennifer's smile echoes his manic grin, when it comes, and the third time's the charm. Bracing her legs, she vaults upwards, hair streaming when gravity throws her down towards the Chitauri.
Both fists are raised high up, swinging down hard when she gets close. Survive and <i>smash.</i>
"I know not of these 'genetics,'" Thor responds, "but I agree, theirs is a family of uncommon fortune. It is not a fate I wish to share, but it can not be helped; and I agree, they have things in hand." He nods at Vision, offering Sif one burly arm this time. He knows her well enough to figure she'd rather hold than be held. "Raise the alarm if things turn sour-- I will fly Sif and the prisoner to SHIELD before he can rally himself."
A wind whistles through empty cars. The monster gazes upon his two oncoming foes, his breath moving in and out of him with a grinding sound of a train. He shakes himself, like a dog or a gorilla -- or indeed like the Hulk himself, //bellows//, loud enough that pigeons take off halfway across the breadth of Manhattan. He pitches forward, fists digging into the street, gallumphing toward the two, all maddened eyes and maniacal rictus exposing his teeth.
Its arms open to grab both-- one-- either, veins tenting under his green flesh, and jaws wide.
"To watch and alert, this I can do," Vision phrases almost like a vow as he windwalks some steps upward for a better vantage. "But I have faith in the sheer unmatched destructive power of our friends." It's a compliment. It will serve. He settles to watch.
"Uncommon indeed," Sif agrees, "A good fortune, for today, at least. Wise, Vision," she adds, "There seems little need to risk injury at present. I hope that you are recording this for the others to watch later."
She picks the senseless captive up by his belt and links her arm through Thor's like they're going to go for a perfectly proper stroll through the gardens before tea. "Lead on," she says, turning a smile on him.
Distraction! the Hulk throws the shield, sending it flying before him in a hurtle of only semi-aerodynamic twisted metal and shattered glass. The frame of the door smashes into the other monster's face, flying shards scattering to catch the light in a shimmering blazon as alien mutate is hit with a chunk of taxi in the teeth.
The Hulk follows it, hitting like a semi with the full smashing force of his impact. He twists the wrench of the Chitauri's arm, yanking it back behind the monster's head, grappling for purchase as his monstrous feet grind deep grooves into the asphalt underfoot, and answers bellow with roar.
The roar might be for Jen. It's hard to tell. Kind of chaotic out here.
Jennifer comes down hard on the creature- the slam to its shoulders digs its legs into ground up to shins. Her feet hit the ground a second later, and the upwards slam that comes next can be felt in the air, ringing with impact through all three of them. A big green fist meets the Chitauri's head as it screams with rage, pinned back against Hulk-- CRACK!--
Tarry fluid spits across her chest, a spray that arches almost as wide as the jaw gone from its face. A second punch from the other hand caves the rest in, metal and bony remnants crunching in the most particularly satisfying way.
The creature shudders. And promptly falls apart like so much decomposed cake. Green blood sloughs over the Hulk's toes, leaves his tiny pants alone, spatters loose over the female's bared arms.
Choppers slide nearer. A couple of them bear news station numbers, but a handful are unmarked, utilitarian black, no doubt the property of SHIELD. The air reverberates only vaguely as they grow closer, their proximity reflecting their objective: to do no more than //check things out// as yet. Earth's government entities know their green people enough, by now, to play it safe. Further beyond, high in the sky, thunder rumbles gently: congratulations.
Look, Hulk. You didn't even murder the bridge. Not to count our blessings or anything!
A peculiar quiet falls over the two cousins now, allowing them the temporary illusion of privacy. Even the wail of approaching ambulances is muted by the passage of an indifferent wind. The fleeing crowd has fled stage left and right, and the cars like emptied peanut husks discarded all around them. The day was certainly fit for theater.
The Hulk lets fall the fallen in a slumping splat across the still-standing bridge beneath their great green feet, and his hands fall after to dangle for a moment loose at his sides, along with the level
of his gaze. His great brow is furrowed, the deep grooves of a baffled scowl writ across his distorted features.
There are kinds and kinds of family. Bruce has found his, in form and kind; the Hulk, though, is a monster alone, rootless but for what root he takes in Banner.
In the rumble of the threatening storm, he stares at her. If there are any words obscured behind the bulging eyes, they do not escape, despite whatever illusions may be lent in the temporary quiet.
She-Hulk, as the world will know her, lifts her chin on knowing that one will never be getting up again. Her eyes, flecked through with green, meet his, with a sharp upturn of her gaze.
"You know what, big guy?" Words come naturally, if through unnatural means. Jen shifts on her feet, stepping over the fallen foe and putting a hand out for the Hulk's broad shoulder, keeping her eyes fixed and a twisted little smile on her lips. A quick test of space, a bold move to close distance, literally and figuratively. She-Hulk moves, where Bruce's cousin would never. "You won't be alone any more."
The Hulk grunts. More eloquent responses have come, in answer to such a declaration. His hide is hard under her hand, though solid with body heat beneath. His breath puffs from his great nose in a long gust, and he turns his head to look at her more sidelong. He goes, "Hnh."
It's very affectionate. At least the part where he does not haul off and punch her.
