135 Here we come

I finally introduced Tony Stark and Steve Rogers to Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I set up the camera and made sure it was pointed at the two in front of me.

"Is this really necessary?" Steve asked in confusion. He was sitting on my couch in my apartment wearing a shirt depicting his shield and looking a little awkward.

"Yeah," Tony agreed, his hair freshly cut and wearing a shirt with his helmet depicted on it. "I feel like I'm on the casting couch here. Because I'm just gonna put it out here, I don't care how handsome Steve is, I'm not-"

"Okay, no!" I shouted hurriedly with a wince. "Dude, this is what people do! And people are gonna want to know about what you guys thought!"

Tony rolled his eyes while Steve seemed confused.

"Okay…" Steve stared at the camera. "So uh, what do I do?"

"Just talk about how you felt while watching it. What you liked, hated, felt worked best. Your honest reaction!" I said giddily.

Steve looked at Tony. The Iron Avenger shrugged. Steve looked back at me, and I gestured toward the camera. He looked down at it and gulped. "Well uh… I liked it?"

"...And?" I asked leadingly.

He frowned. "Well… I liked the characters, mostly because they were very relatable I think. And I know you said that Aang reminded you of me, but I think Sokka worked better. Watching the soldiers go off to war, wanting to do everything I could to help. That resonated with me."

Huh. That was fair. I mean, on the surface the 'frozen in ice' thing was the only thing Aang and Steve had in common.

"I didn't get what I was supposed to be so excited about, to be honest," Tony admitted. "I mean, it was good but I didn't get a lot of why people are so gaga for this show yet."

"I think for me there's a disconnect," Steve said. "Because you guys are used to animation being so good in the modern-day, but this just way ahead of any animation I saw as a kid. That was really beautifully drawn."

Tony shrugged. "Well, I kinda want to find out what the hell is the Fire Nation, and that Uncle Iroh guy was cool. The whole bending thing was cool, even if that Katara chick doesn't seem to do anything impressive with it. Are there other kinds of bending they haven't discovered yet?"

"Yes!" I said in excitement. "And man you're gonna love it!"

Tony still seemed unsure, as did Steve. But they would learn. They would learn.

"Okay, next episode!"

That was going to go well, I could tell.

Of course, not all of it was hanging with gods and watching cartoons. More work was always available and Director Hill was always updating us. Because I don't know if you know this, but superheroes don't really get days off. And honestly, that was especially prevalent on the 17th.

May 17, 2014

"Why the hell is he even running?!" I yelled angrily as I sped on top of power lines in Feedback form. Some guy had just robbed a bank and booked it in his car while I was patrolling nearby. He'd taken one look at me, screamed, then peeled off through the streets.

My two-toed feet bounced from line to line as I pulled in power from the city itself, my plug-like head tendrils flowing behind me while I sped after the bank thief.

Seriously, a bank thief? In a part of the town that was only a mile away from Avengers Tower? This guy had better be the Shocker or some other badass supervillain because it wouldn't end well.

I lamented that I couldn't just absorb the guy's car battery. Granted, I could get close enough to do it fairly easily, but if I just pulled out all of its energy at once then the car might go spinning out of control. Which, by the way, why did New York City choose now to have no traffic?! You clear things up when a random hood goes on a joy ride?

"Damn it, I'm gonna break your legs," I grumbled as the guy skidded around a corner and into an alleyway. I leaped off a power line to jump towards a building across the way, wall ran for a couple of steps, then jumped again to get a good view of the car as it sped down the alley. Okay, nobody in the alleyway, not even a dumpster or bags of trash that could have a homeless person hiding within.

I raised my hands as I fell and lightning flew from the car and into the open sections of my fingers, filling me with power. As it did, the car hiccuped a few times as it's battery suddenly completely ran out of power. It was almost anti-climactic when it slowed down in the alley, rolling to a stop as the man inside screamed, yelled, and beat on his car.

I landed on the hood of the car and leaned down to look into the windshield with a grin. "License and registration. Oh, and the cash you stole."

"Fuck you, freak!" the young man in the car said eloquently. He raised a gun and pointed it at me.

I'd already had a charge ready to go, one of my head tendrils raising to unleash a single blast through the window as he prepared to pull the trigger. The blast hit the gun to send it flying out of his hand, the guy yelping in pain as he clutched his hand.

"Fuck!"

"Night-night!" I said cheerily.

And then the guy was hit by a few thousand volts.

Later, I was standing in the Enterprise in my normal human form after the bank thief had been arrested. Maria was looking over the police report of the encounter with a critical eye as I paced in front of her desk. "And you say that he attacked the bank in broad daylight?"

"Yeah," I crossed my arms. "But he's one of the few that does it in broad daylight now. I've been patrolling non-stop but it's getting harder for me to find actual organized crime instead of these random morons. People aren't doing crime in the open as often."

Along with the bank thief I'd stopped a single mugging, a purse snatching, some woman who had stabbed a man on the subway and saved a guy from a car crash. Standard stuff for New York City. But nothing from the mob or anything on that level. Just the crimes of desperation that existed everywhere, even after hours of hunting for trouble in every form I had.

"I'm worried about that. I'd like to think that the gangs are all about to go straight and leave me with nothing but random crimes I can stop, but I doubt it. Fisk is still a problem."

I wasn't an idiot. I hadn't just told Hill about the various superhuman threats. Fisk was a massive threat in the comics with nothing but money and connections, bad enough that he'd become a terrorist level threat. Hell, a lot of villains in the comics got elevated to 'super' off their sheer determination and brilliance. Or just plain luck. Can't forget the Hood, a two-bit criminal who ended up threatening reality itself.

"I know. But the FBI has had issues tying him to any sort of crimes," Director Hill sighed. "The criminal underbelly in New York City has been adapting to our presence. They don't use any communication that can't be burned or said in person, they're avoiding any crimes that can't be done by proxies. The fact is, I can't help any further either. BRIDGE has to focus on the international stage, and New York City isn't the entire world."

Fair enough.

"Then I'll just keep grinding I guess," I sighed sadly. "Hopefully the Marvel Knights can take over where I can't… Anything I should know about? You didn't call me up here just to talk about some random bank thief."

"A few things," the Director waved a hand in the air. "We've found some things out about the Rio incident. Namely, that we have some ways to send people back."

"Really?" I asked in confusion. "Time travel, just like that?"

"Not quite," Director Hill steepled her hands together, eyes narrowed. "From what our scientists tell me, the instant we send people back we are creating alternate universes. The sheer fact that they came forward or backward to land in our present means they have some knowledge of the future, and our ability to mind-wipe people is only partially helpful. We managed to find a way to stabilize a few of the portals to send people back. Some have asked to stay, such as that family from the Hundred Years' War. Can't blame them, since they have a better chance in our time. Others, like the young doctor from the year 2098, are going back."

Nobody asked that guy questions. Not even me. Whatever future he came from didn't involve us from the second he'd arrived after all. Knowing about a future that was never going to happen was a waste of time and resources, preparing for outcomes that just might never happen.

"It's all more than a little mind-bending," Director Hill said, looking more than a bit tired. "Fitz-Simmons and Doctor Foster are among the people who figured out how we could force the time anomalies in Rio to work for us so we could send people back, but we've had to double down on security to keep idiots who've watched Back to the Future too many times from diving into one."

"Anyone interesting decide to stay in our time period?" I asked with some nervousness.

"No one on our files or in historical records," Director Hill stood up and walked over to the center of the room. A hologram popped up in front of us and showing a screen with a man pictured on it.

The guy was huge. He had arms larger than Steve's and was bearing them to the world in all their sweaty and veiny glory. He wore a white tabard with the familiar symbol of a red cross emblazoned on it, chainmail under that, and a large full helmet. It looked like he had a battered bucket on his head with an eye slit in it.

"Sir Magnus of the Danes, a Teutonic knight who was found defending the statue of Christ the Redeemer from demons who were trying to defile it," the Director explained as though the sentence wasn't right out of a fantasy novel. "He was rather effective."

"The fact the demons we've been fighting are pretty worthless probably helps," I noted. Not a single demon in Rio had been capable of killing more than civilian so far, with some killing police officers. I wasn't the only one that hated them for their cruelty though, and I couldn't help but smile at the sight of the next slide depicting Magnus slicing what looked to be an imp's head off.

"So, how did he react to the modern world?" I asked. "I mean, he's a knight from back when everyone was all about 'Christianity or death!', so…"

"Yeah, he was a little bit out of his depth," Director Hill said with a hint of sarcasm. "Granted, he seemed willing to listen and he wasn't attacking anything that wasn't demonic, but we had to send for the Vatican to get him to stop claiming the existence of other religions as some great and evil sin. On the plus side, he's not racist as some of the others we got, so that was nice."

"And he wants to stay?" I asked with honest to god surprise. The next slide was a video. It showed the massive armored knight drinking from an almost comically small and dainty cup of tea as a man in priest's garb spoke to him with an earnest look on his face, Magnus nodding along calmly. He had his helmet removed now, showing a bearded face beneath with piercing blue eyes, and oh good lord he looked like the Mountain from Game of Thrones. The image of a poor guy getting his eyes thumbed out as his head was crushed filled my mind for a brief moment before I shook it away. As I watched, he reached out to take a biscuit off a tray nearby with his callused hands, dip it into his tea, and take an elegant bite out of it.

"He seems to be willing to listen and the Vatican requested to let them house and care for him in return for one of their experts on Demonology helping us," Director Hill shook her head. "And I'm once again annoyed that Fury never seemed to have to deal with these kinds of messes all at once. Or he did and just never told anyone."

"That's why you get paid the big bucks," I said with no real sympathy. She glared at me and I shrugged. "Hey, I'm dealing with the mess, same as you. I just get punched more often."

May 18, 2014

Still, those were worries for another day. Today was Savage Day!

I woke up that morning in a damn good mood. I made waffles with peanut butter and chocolate spread, my favorite breakfast, listened to cheery music (Queen, Eminem, and random anime soundtracks) while I ate, and dressed in my armor right out the gate, placing my gun on my back and my sword on my hip, leaving my helmet down. Ruby was resting once more on my couch, the sneaky teen assassin having snuck into my room again, so I placed a blanket on her and headed to the hanger area in a damn good mood, holding a file in my hand.

On my way there, I read the file, which was a report on the mission. Technically I'd been placed in command as the lead Avenger, which was exciting, but probably bullshit. Ka-Zar had given an interview thus far. (Dude, Ka-Zar! For real dude, my life has some cool moments now.) Anyways, the future King of the Savage Lands had confirmed a few things, such as the fact this Savage Land had multiple races running around the place that were sentient beings.

I entered the hanger and looked around for my jet. We had long since made sure to have a couple of quinjets and other vehicles ready to fly us out, with the remains of the Defiant still sitting on the right side of the hanger. I gave my poor girl a sad look, trailing my eyes across her torn apart form before continuing. One day. One day.

Creel and Fantasma were waiting in front of the quinjet we were leaving in, both in costume. Granted Creel's costume was his black tank-top and his newly replaced gauntlet full of materials for him to copy at a whim, but at least Fantasma looked properly comic book superheroic in her purple swimsuit.

"What's up, guys?" I said to the pair of fellow superhumans as they watched some of the BRIDGE scientists and soldiers that would be coming with us pack into the quinjet. "Excited for dinosaur day?"

"Dinosaur day? Dude, are you six-years-old?" Creel asked as I walked over.

"Dude, I'm 28, but that doesn't mean I stopped thinking dinosaurs are freaking awesome at some point," I stopped in between the two of them. "Granted, we saw them in Rio, but that feels like cheating when they're in a city, ya know?"

"I don't know," Creel rolled his eyes. "For a guy who gets into brawls with monsters every week, you can be a real dork."

"'Dork'? I'm sorry, is it the nineties? There is something wrong if you can't get excited about meeting velociraptors."

"I do not remember you two fighting like this," Fantasma said as she gave Creel and me a look, which we returned with a matching grin. "And Creel, you just said you were excited as well."

He chuckled. "Yeah, but I'm still gonna make fun of him for it."

"Hypocrite," I teased. "How about you, magic girl, you excited?"

"Yes," she smiled serenely, clutching her hands together. "This will be my first official Avengers mission and it will be to an unknown land few have ever seen before. It is quite exciting!"

I smiled at that. Fantasma may not have liked the comparison, but moments like this made me think of Hermione. A magical girl excited to see something new. Or… come to think of it, Gwen had been much the same way in Ben 10.

And Creel had power similar to Kevin's. We'd first met by trying to fight each other…

Probably best not to think about how my life ended up so similar to Ben in terms of my friendships.

"Sir," one of the BRIDGE soldiers walked up to me. He was dressed in green elite gear, perfect for jungle work, rather than the all-black I'd been familiar with them wearing. He was a little younger than me, maybe 25, with a buzzcut and tanned skin. I looked behind me for just a second before I realized he was speaking to me. "We're all packed up and ready to go on your orders," he said with a hint of a Hispanic accent. I remembered him a bit from Rio as one of the guys who had joined after BRIDGE had finished cleaning house, some kid out of California.

"...Let's go?" I said hesitantly.

The guy nodded with a severe look on his face. "Understood, sir. Let me know if you need anything," he gave me a salute and walked into the jet, joining the other soldiers within. I looked over at Fantasma and Creel. Creel was grinning.

"Why did he call me 'sir'?"

"Well, you're higher ranked than I am," Creel said easily. "And if they don't have a commanding officer higher ranked than you…"

"I don't have a rank…"

"You don't?" Fantasma asked, her head cocking. "I have a rank with the Winter Guard."

"I'm not military trained though," I said weakly.

"Except by Captain freaking America," Creel pointed out.

Good lord, was everyone else taking me being in charge seriously? They were about to be pretty disappointed.

"So these guys think I'm in charge," I grumbled. I moved forward, my armored books clacking on the metal floor with each step. I stopped at the back door to the quinjet to look back at Fantasma and Creel. "Whatever. Let's go punch a T-Rex in the face!"

"That's animal abuse," Fantasma said worriedly, taking my hand with a quick 'thank you' as I guided her in after me.

"Not if it comes at you first," Creel chuckled, my tall friend stepping into the jet next.

"Look, best-case scenario, we go, walk around a jungle taking in some cool sights while making sure the scientists are safe, then come back," I said. The door to the quinjet began to rise as I looked out at the hanger before turning back to look at everyone in the jet. Three scientists, five soldiers, Creel, Fantasma, a pilot. They were all staring at me. "We'll be prepared for a worst-case as well. We're going into a place time forgot. Our people on the ground have confirmed that besides dinos, we also have sentient beings running around. And we all know that in the choice between one big strong animal and one person just smart enough to be stupid-"

"I'd rather fight the animal," Creel agreed, getting a chuckle across the room.

"Exactly. In the meantime," I said, pulling up the pilot's name from memory. "Baker! Get us there. And if you do the cliche thing and crash us there, I'm personally kicking your ass with Four Arms!"

"Yes, sir," the pilot said with a smirk, turning to look out the cockpit.

"Cliche?" Fantasma asked, confused.

"Just get ready to fly," I mumbled to her, lifting the Omnitrix to get Big Chill or Astrodactyl ready. I sat down in my seat and tried to calm down.

Never read a Savage Land story that didn't begin with a crash landing…