TGS - #72

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Johannesburg, Australia

–Tony Stark–

Well, there he went, running his pretty little mouth once again. The woman in red was clearly very dangerous, judging by the corona of red that floated all around her while she floated mid air, without any visible apparatus.

It would be safe to say that they had found their mystery culprit and it was one hot woman. God, why did all the villainess have to be hot?

"Stark," She said his name with a resigned tone for some reason. Before he could ask her anything, Steve Rogers, the Captain, the greatest captain of all time, stepped forward and asked,

"Who are you? What have you done?"

Yeah, no shit Sherlock. Super soldier Sherlock. Like she was going to tell them everything they needed.

"Who I am is not important and if everything goes according to plan, you will never heard from me ever again but for now, please step away from the Hex,"

Well, wasn't that a little ominous. And Hex?

"Hex?" Apparently, the question was shared by the resident archer and Romanoff as well as they arrived in…suits?

Huh, looking closer, he could see, or more importantly, Jarvis could see, scan, and tell him that they were wearing advanced exo-suits. Not completely covered like his own but enough to tell him that the suits will be giving both of them a much needed boost to their base physical stats.

Ah, there we go. Jarvis was granted access and look at that, enhanced speed, strength, defense, and energy shields, all packed in a single, tightly wound nanite package no larger than a volleyball.

Damn, he had to start working on nanotech as soon as he got home.

Apparently, the woman was not willing to talk with them or knew that it was just going to be a waste of time, so he had to be the first one to dodge as the ground itself turned into red mud, drawing them in. Even his repulsors were unable to generate enough thrust as he found himself throwing his body into a puddle of red quicksand that was not normal by any stretch of the imagination.

There were similar cries of distress before, with a loud boom, Romanoff, and then Barton freed themselves from the quicksand. His eyes widened as he saw the red quicksand, wither into thin air as they were blown apart by the Wakandan suits.

He could see Jarvis trying but the mud had sprouted hands that had latched on to his suit's ankles and were now pulling him deeper into what he was pretty sure was deathland. 

"A little help, Romanoff?" He asked, feeling utterly helpless as he did not have something capable of mimicking the large blast that Romanoff's suit emitted from its feet that allowed it to to blast off anything that had latched onto the suit's legs. Well, not without blowing up his feet, and most of his lower body as well.

Something for the next iteration then.

"Feet swallow your chicken legs, Tony?" He rolled his eyes at the snark but he had no choice but to enlist their help as another hand had emerged and was in the process of regenerating its stump once he had hit it with his repulsor blasts.

Finally, with a mighty heave, Romanoff blasted apart all the hellish hands that were sprouting from the quicksand, with what looked like a very advanced Repulsor blast. Good Lord, did that girl not leave any of his tech behind?

Like, yeah, he did not have a patent on the latest gen Arc Reactor, much less the repulsor technology but it was ubiquitous with his name.

Oh, he was going to sue.

"Ah!" He would die before admitting that he yelped like a little girl when a giant wave of red hit him just as he was lifted back into the air by Romanoff. His feet repulsors have apparently been chewed off by something, rendering his suit incapable of flight at the moment.

He scrunched his eyes shut as the red wave hit his suit, afraid of what might happen because so far, anything that the red energy had touched, had turned into the most horrifying, horror movie worthy version of themselves.

"Oof" He grunted in pain as his back found itself onto solid ground, some rocks sticking into his back as he opened his eyes and saw Romanoff heading straight towards him.

Huh? He could see Romanoff? And his back hurt?

He scrambled up in a panic and looked around as he saw himself dressed in the hastily given, badly designed, T-Shirts that Wakandans had given him.

His suit lay, half dissolved a little further away, its blue eye lenses flickering before it entirely disintegrated, turning into red motes that too disappeared into the atmosphere.

Holy Shit!

He quickly scrambled to fit inside one of the suits that Jarvis promptly brought to him. Thank god Jarvis had the sense to do it immediately, and then flee from the area as well as a vast wave of red suffused the area, obscuring his vision and every other sensor that Javis had on board.

He could see Captain being hoisted by one of the remote drone platforms that Jarvis had launched, along with Barton and Romanoff floating beside each other, covering their blind spots.

He looked at the still slowly expanding huge expanse of red that covered what was happening inside and then at the much smaller but still pretty big fog of red that hid that woman.

"Jarvis, any ideas?" He asked Jarvis, aware that Jarvis was probably the best strategist, scientist, anything that required thinking really, as he was now given true sentience along with the advantages afforded to him by virtue of being a digital entity.

"Platform S-01 on the way, sir. Brace for impact," Jarvis' ominous words did not inspire confidence as he opened his mouth to ask what was going to happen when he, along with all the people in the surroundings had to be jerked away remotely by Jarvis, as a massive blue beam of energy came roaring down from the sky and impacted the fog with some much force that he could see the red ground, the freaky red ground turn into lava.

"What the hell?" He muttered to himself as a whole new platform made itself known to his systems. 

He could see the exact location of the impact and was very shocked when he saw the Red Woman from earlier hobbling out of the location, with a red screen around her flickering between red and dark red for some reason. She had to hastily redraw her shields as Jarvis' shiny new platform, something that he had kept hidden from dear ol' Dad, peppered her with multiple smaller blue beams, inflicting visible damage on her shields, forcing her to wave her hands, creating another fogy wave that hid her form.

"Jarvis, buddy? You have something to tell me?" He asked Jarvis as the aptly named S-01 made itself visible to him.

It was cloaked, which was–sure why not, and massive. Not massive as in helicarrier level but that was a manned boat with space for pesky things like oxygen. This was a large truck sized block of hardened alloys, not coloured-not his style but hey, J could choose as he wished.

It was littered with little holes that continuously emitted blue light, creating a halo of light around it. He could see dozens of Fourth Gen Arc Reactors in the drone as well, along with hardware that he had not even heard of.

Where in the hell did Jarvis get the time and resources to make this? And why wasn't he told about this?

This was….so cool!

"Stark, that yours?" He looked to the side as Barton slowly floated to his side. What a stupid question.

"No, that's Queen Victoria's throne," He deadpanned at Barton.

"Mr.Stark, I have not yet solved the energy issues of S-01 and can only do the previous large attack two more times before the energy falls back on emergency power. We have to make sure that the shots hit her this time."

Well, that's easy. As if.

"I was able to track her before this but her form has become even more blurry to me. I can still roughly locate her but not accurately enough that the smaller beams can hit her. We need to fish her out," Jarvis said as a huge crack appeared in the land in front of the red fog, stopping at the edge of the fog as the woman now had the power to stop earthquakes.

As if she wasn't ridiculously overpowered enough as is.

"Whoa…" He looked to the side as Barton muttered something. He turned around to see what was happening.

He made sure that Jarvis was keeping an eye on everything before looking at the huge spectacle happening in front of him. Whereas before, nothing except Red could be seen through the so-called Hex in front of him, now they could see twin flashes of blue and green clashing together in seemingly a dozen different locations all at once.

"Jarvis?" He asked as they had to scramble away from the fight, to see if there were any civilians that needed to be evacuated because the fight was seriously taking its toll on the surrounding land.

According to Jarvis anyway, most of the civilian population within the city had been mysteriously evacuated, no evacuation would be the wrong term. No, the entire population around the area where the Hulk had first landed, had just upped and left the city, leaving the entire city on buses, trains, and any vehicle that could take them to remote locations.

Money never exchanged hands as this massive evacuated procedure happened in an absolutely orderly fashion. There was only one answer to that, mass mind control.

Something that only further fueled his determination to make sure the woman didn't see the light of day again but alas, he had to make sure that people were safe, first and foremost.

Property could be rebuilt, not even that expensive for someone who could teleport to any place within the galaxy within a moment's notice, for free. The US Government would probably sell POTUS and his entire family if they could get their hands on Jack's Portal ability.

His thoughts screeched to a halt as he continued to pepper the red Rog with his repulsors, to try and fish out the woman or not giving her time to regroup, either one worked. 

Yes, Why was Jack not using his portals? Why not just teleport the Hulk to some remote corner of the world or better yet, to the moon or into space, or on Mars, where he could safely cool down and could be rescued once he fell unconscious?

He had done enough research to know that the Hulk was more than capable of surviving the vacuum of space for long periods of time. Something was wrong here.

And speak of the wrongness and the entire universe would scramble to deliver the latest disaster on his doorstep.

With a thunderous boom, that created gales of wind that threw out entire buildings out of the fog, he could see the twin flashes of green and blue clashing for one more time before they just began going up and…up.

His vision flickered to infrared as he saw Jack, whose energy signature was completely alien, and Hulk, whose energy signature was similar enough, if not massively amplified, and mixed with the energy of the Red Woman who was still inside the fog, even as the Hex in front of him began flickering and falling apart when he saw Jack breaching the Hex, taking Bruce along with him.

He was about to follow but Jarvis forcibly took control of his suit, cutting him off as he tried to make sense of what was happening. 

Then, in a flash of lightning, his vision was bombarded with white, blue, and red as the suit jerked forward into the red fog that surrounded the woman. He yelled at Jarvis but his voice fell on deaf ears or mics, as his suit collided with something solid before Jarvis just jerked his entire suit to the right, and then opened it and threw him right into the waiting open backside of another suit as another flash of blue seared the very air behind him, burning his back as he was promptly engulfed in another suit.

He almost passed out as a cool sensation spread across his back and the suit which began heading faraway from where he had been almost burned to death. 

The last scene he saw before he closed his eyes was three other blue beams of energy bombarding the fog, along with a dozen other suits surrounding the entire area, constantly peppering the now rapidly dwindling rog with repulsors.

"Att–a..boy," He muttered with a smile on his face as the exhaustion finally did him in.

_______xx____

–Wanda Maximoff (Not)---

Curses.

She hastily redrew another shield as the attacks just kept on hammering at her shields. She had overextended herself.

Casting A Hex of that range, even with her powers, was too much for her. Worse was that the attacks were somehow converging right on her location, even when she created life-like clones using what little Chaos Energy she could spare at the moment.

She had done her part, she had facilitated the fight and even amplified the Chaos by empowering the Hulk. Unfortunately, this Jack character was turning out to be even bigger of a headache than she had thought him to be.

Being capable of defeating the Hulk was one thing but defeating a Hulk who was so massively empowered, not just by her powers but also by the Hex that allowed the Hulk to become the master of all the Gamma Energy within that domain, allowing the Hulk to subconsciously manipulate all Gamma Energy, internal and external, as if he had spent decades training, was a whole other feat of strength.

Sending all those people away had been a mistake but she had to make sure that she did not fall on that slippery slope of not valuing normal people's lives enough. That was how she fell into the Darkhold's influence the first time.

Thankfully, this body could now channel more of her might because they had made a stop in Kamar Taj. Stealing the CHI Stone, something that supplied everlasting CHI was not something that would register in the senses of the Sorcerer Supreme because it truly had no real value to the world of Sorcerers, but it was something that had allowed her to carry out forced evolution and growth of this body as a vessel for Chaos Energy.

That was the only way she was able to go from being barely able to escape from the Ancient One to being able to cast a city wide Hex capable of influencing hundreds of thousands of people, along with supremely powerful beings like the Hulk and this Jack Sullivan as well.

"Argh!" She grunted as one of her shields flickered and some of the energy passed through, burning her hand and part of her arm with it. 

She snarled and waved her left arm, summoning forth, even more, might as a wave of red burst forth, something that was promptly snuffed out by the blasted blue beams of energy.

"Shit," She spit out blood as the backlash of the Hex bursting apart damaged her body and soul, leaving her no choice but to resort to exceptional measures.

With a flicker of her left wrist, a series of red barriers emerged in front of her, abandoning the obfuscation fog and focusing on taking out something that was not hers. No, it belonged to someone else and she will make sure that he got the gem, as he did in her life as well.

Just as she was about to summon it from her bag of Holding, her shoulders slumped in relief and a little bit of exasperation as she felt him arriving.

God, the little shit, circling half the planet because he could not stay quiet in one place. 

With a smile on her face, she dispelled the barriers in front of her and cast a short range teleportation spell, locked on to her blood brother's location.

One moment, she was staring down an incoming wave of blue that would no doubt kill her and dozens of Iron Men suits that had their repulsors ready to blast holes into her body, the next moment, she was sprawled on her back, looking at the stupid smug face of her baby brother.

"Fancy a lift, M'lady?" He asked her and she giggled at the corny delivery, only to cough as the bruises and burns made themselves known.

God, this was so messed up.

She was messed up but if she had to mess it up a little to carve her own little slice of happiness?

Well, the world already knew her answer.

Word Count - 2869

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