190 Opportunities

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I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.

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9th March 2012, New York City

(Jasmine Sayre POV)

The lightning immediately stopped, and suddenly, there was a huge boom and a missile arrived from the top of the tower and started flying towards the portal. Iron man flew next to the portal, protecting the missile from any of the newly arriving aliens. The missile was able to get past them and go through. We could hear a powerful detonation, and suddenly, the aliens that Stark was dealing with died, their chariots falling into the ground.

Stark was able to stop them from reaching the ground by blowing them up, and we celebrated our success.

I used the staff and closed the portal; the battle of New York was over. Unfortunately, seconds after the portal closed, Stark spoke up and sounded haunted, "Guys, we have a situation. There's a nuclear missile launched at New York right now. They sent it off before we won, we have two minutes left until it gets here."

Fucking security council. Shit, what a clusterfuck.

I could technically use the Tesseract to open a portal and send it away, but if there's something I learnt in my long life, it's that you should do your best to use anything at your disposal and not waste any opportunities. And no matter how dangerous this is, the security council's idiotic decision is an opportunity, and I don't mean just politically, the public is going to crucify them for this, but the fact that they're using a very powerful atomic bomb, powered by the tesseract no less. They had scavenged the plane that Rogers had crashed and found the bombs that were there. It's the only way for SHIELD to have access to nuclear weaponry without the UN making a fuss.

This is a very powerful blast, one that I could use later, I just needed to freeze it, to harness and trap it. And the best way to do that, would be to put it in a pocket dimension, frozen in time, to be released at a moment's notice. The dimension itself had to be large, far larger than my reserves would be capable of casting. The last time I had created a dimension this large, I had powered it over decades using ley lines, but I didn't have time for that. Luckily for me, I have an infinity stone in my possession, the Space Stone aka the Tesseract, which I will use to power the runes, and create a space vast enough for me to contain the explosion.

I started devising the runic array in creating the pocket dimension, in my head. It took me a little while to find out how to incorporate the frozen time aspect while the portal to the dimension was closed, but I was quickly able to solve it.

With that done, I needed half a minute to power the ritual properly. I spoke up to Stark, "I have an idea. How long until the bomb gets here, Stark?"

"You have fifty seconds left."

I nodded and grabbed the Tesseract from Erik Selvig's machine put in on the ground. With a wave of my hand, the Tesseract started floating and blue runes started to manifest around it, slowly spreading to the entire roof. Rose was gaping at the display of magic and was pretty much spluttering at this "What? How? I don't understand. What are you trying to do?"

I chuckled, "It's a bit too advanced for you, Rose. SHIELD's security council decided to send a nuke to New York, hoping that it would make their problems go away. I have no idea what they were thinking; the aliens were coming through a portal. After New York gets blown up, the remaining aliens would just continue spreading. Anyway, this should help me stop the blast."

"Why don't you just use the Tesseract?" Jean questioned.

"It's too volatile, and I could accidentally send it somewhere else with people on it. It's why Loki needed a stabilizer."

I did technically lie, since I could make a temporary portal and get the bomb away from there, but it really is unstable. While I could send it off world, having it remain in our solar system could accidentally alter the trajectory of moons and maybe even planets, it was powered by the space stone after all. And just sending it away, the coordinates would be random at best, and I could accidentally start a war with another race, something I would like to avoid.

I looked around and the runes started to return to the Tesseract, which fell down. I smiled; the ritual was complete and there were no complications.

I heard Stark's voice, "Fifteen seconds to impact, Morrigan. You better do whatever you were supposed to do."

I looked at the three girls, "Sorry girls, we'll catch up later. I have a city to save. Leave the Tesseract be but keep an eye on it. Don't let anyone other than Thor take it."

They all nodded and I smiled at them.

I looked to the city and saw the missile which was visibly accelerating towards the middle of the city. I teleported towards it, leaving the Tesseract behind. I barely made it in time. I smiled and started to spread my shadows around me, creating what would probably look like a giant black cloud around me. The missile was coming my way and was being swallowed by the smoke. Inside the shadows, I opened a portal towards my newly created pocket dimension, I waited for it to start detonating and immediately closed the portal, freezing the bomb in the middle of an explosion, only able to continue when I open the portal.

With that done, I created a shockwave using my telekinesis, rattling a few windows. Afterwards, I turned myself invisible in the middle of my shadow, and let my shadows slowly disperse. People would probably assume that I'm dead. It's the safest option, considering how little I knew about the happenings of the last six years. I needed to get my facts straight before doing anything else. And if I needed to, I could come back, say that I was injured and was healing. They accepted it with Rogers, there's no reason they wouldn't do it in my case.

For now, I needed to find Selene and catch up with Wanda and Rose properly. I'll deal with SHIELD and the Avengers later. I had no idea about the mayhem I was going to unleash.

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(Tony Stark POV)

If one were to have told Tony Stark that he would be fighting aliens today, and actually end up winning, he would have called security to send them back to whatever loony bin they had escaped from. The moment he and the other Avengers knew that they had won, a knot loosened in his stomach, and he actually whooped in happiness, something that seemed to evaporate instantly, when the fucking security council had decided to nuke New York City. Fucking nutjobs.

He had resigned himself to die. There was nothing he could do, now. Maybe if he was told this before deactivating the portal, he could have salvaged this, somehow, but the timing was a bitch.

He tried to call Pepper and couldn't get her to answer. If he was going to die, he would have rather have the last thing he hears be her voice. In the end, he just sent her a voice mail, telling her he loves her and cherished the years they had been together. That she brought out the goodness in him, and that he wanted her to move on. He told her that he left everything to her, and this might be his goodbye.

Of course, after a long speech over voicemail, Morrigan of all things ended up having a plan, where she absorbed the nuke somehow and disappeared with it. There had been no sign of the woman anywhere, and she was presumed dead. Of course, the first thing he did when he figured out that he wasn't going to die, was ask Jarvis to delete the somewhat embarrassing voicemail he sent Pepper. The woman was never going to let him forget about it, if she caught wind of this.

Anyway, with this done, he came to the Avengers who weren't in a really celebratory mood. Apparently, Morrigan's sacrifice – which could have been avoided if the higher ups didn't screw up massively – had dampened the mood.

The last thing they had left, was retrieving the Tesseract and Loki, from where the Morrigan had left them. And he had to say, the woman was very effective. They found Loki, chained, gagged, and unconscious. And the Tesseract on the ground, right next to the portal.

Still, after an exhausting day, both emotionally and physically, he offered the rest of the Avengers a few rooms in the tower to get some sleep and recover. Most of them just mumbled thanks and they laid down on the sofa, after Jarvis ordered some pizza, from the edge of the city, where the damage wasn't that bad.

Truth be told, things could have gotten a lot worse. Jarvis estimated the loss of life to be in the hundreds, but the number wouldn't get to four digits, that's for sure. And for a city of over eight million people, it's a very low casualty rate.

Of course, all things come to an end, and Fury and Hill had come to the tower and Tony didn't even bother to stop them. He really wanted to punch the bastard in the face for the stunt the security council pulled. It was his job to make sure that things like that don't happen, after all.

Fury looked at them and didn't even smile, "I wanted to congratulate you on your victory, this evening. By doing this, you made a statement, to the world, to all worlds, that Earth is protected. Normally, I would have let you rest and recover, but unfortunately, the council wants answers, and while I'm disinclined to tell them anything after the fucking nuke they sent, I also want answers." Fury said, and then showed a picture and continued, "Also, who is this and where did she come from?"

The billionaire sighed, "She called herself the Morrigan, either after the Celtic Goddess of Death, or according to Thor, she is actually the Celtic Goddess of Death. Other than that, I pretty much know nothing other than that she helped defend New York and took care of the nuke."

The bald man looked incredulous, "That's it? I put together a team with two geniuses, two spies, a god, and a super soldier, and that's all you have? She could have been working for Loki, for crying out loud. She could have been even under his control"

The billionaire was having trouble keeping his temper in check, "Look, we were desperate, and she was helping us. And don't look at me, Thor's the one who fell over backwards, calling her 'my lady'"

Thor took offense at this, "The Morrigan is a tale, from where I came from, in Asgard. There's a reason my father doesn't involve himself in Midgard's affairs as he does to the other realms, and that's because it's rumored to be under her protection. There's a reason your planet hasn't been attacked by Kree or the Skrull, or any of the thousands of species in the galaxy. Every attack for centuries was repelled by her and only her. Trust me, Fury, if half the stories I heard about her were true, if she wanted to kill us, we would be dead. There's no escaping the Morrigan. I have no doubts that she escaped this blast, and just didn't want to deal with mortals."

Fury sighed, looking at the team who were frowning at him, "Alright, as far as the higher ups are concerned, the Morrigan is an Asgardian who died saving New York. Is that clear?"

They all nodded, and Hill continued, "As objectives go, we have recovered the Tesseract and imprisoned Loki. Do any of you know the location of his Staff?"

Jarvis interjected, "I believe I do. From this footage, it seems like it was in the possession of the Morrigan before her presumed demise. She seemed to have made it disappear or perhaps store it somewhere, while she was on the roof with three other intruders."

The video showed three redheaded women briefly speaking with the Morrigan after she used the scepter to close the portal. The staff in Morrigan's hands disappeared soon after. The footage started to be corrupted when she held the Tesseract in her hand.

Rogers was the first to speak up, "who are they?"

Fury responded, "we call them the crimson roses. They're a group of mutants, who travel the world, saving people. One of them is Wanda Maximoff, a very powerful reality manipulator according to our sources, another is Jean Grey, the most powerful telepath and telekinetic on the planet, and finally, our Jane Doe, we've never been able to identify her properly other than the name Rose. What little we know about her powers is that she's a healer and a teleporter, although the extent of both abilities remains unknown. We have been tracking them for years, hoping to recruit them, but were unsuccessful. Their connection to Morrigan is troubling."