Interlude 4 - Anger and Loss

[Greetings Eli, I hope you don't mind that Natasha has given me your contact info. I am currently planning to free some mutual acquaintances. I was wondering if you wanted to lend a hand. Sincerely, Steve Rogers] said the message from Cap.

[Don't bother, I'm already on my way] was my reply. They would need a Hulk or two to stop me from ripping apart that prison to find Jessica.

I followed Ross' helicopter, because his surface thoughts told me he was going to the Raft, and the helicopter was possibly needed to get the other Avenger prisoners back safely.

"Stark sent a message. We need to up security. I don't take much stock in his warning, but he said to go to the highest security level possible and to unfreeze Blonsky. Sadly, he sent the same thing to the president, and the president agreed, so that's what we will have to do. Get to it," Ross announced to his followers once he had landed and ran out of earshot of the loud helicopter.

The raft was closing back again and apparently sunk. It really was rather close to New York, Ryker's island.

I read the surface thoughts of the guards and learned who Blonsky was. I really jinxed myself with the Hulk thought earlier. But he was like a budget version of the Hulk, so I'll go free the prisoners first.

When I read minds on where to find the prisoners, I felt like I was missing something. But that could wait because all Avengers in the raft were in the same wing, and that's where I was going.

Once I arrived, hidden by my magics from any form of detection I could think of, I unleashed Shatterstar and my full armor.

The armor gained a few more enchantments over the year I spent with my father. The vambrace now allowed me to pour magical energy into it to gain an energy blade akin to a laser cutter at my knuckles, very practical. The breastplate allowed me to hide from senses other than sight and hearing, I became truly invisible now.

Anyway, I arrived in the wing with the disgraced Avengers, counted the cells, and immediately noticed what was wrong. I only saw Clint, Sam, Wanda, and a dude in his early 30s I had never seen before.

"Where are Jessica and Pietro?" My voice rang in the middle of all the cells in this circular holding room.

"Finally a friendly voice. Took you long enough, kid. They can listen to every sound in here, by the way," Clint answered.

"No, they can't, so keep your head down all of you so they can't read your lips when you talk," I told them. "Now tell me, where are Jessica and Pietro."

"They took them somewhere else half an hour after they locked us in here," Wanda spat in very obvious fury.

"Oh. Well, in that case, my interrogation will have to be a little more painful than I thought," I said after a bit of contemplation.

"Uh, guys, who are you talking to? Disembodied voice, are you here to help us get out?" The guy I didn't know asked.

"That's Eli, Jessie's boyfriend, tictac," Sam explained.

"Nice! So how come I don't see you, can you shrink like me? I'm Scott, by the way, not tictac."

"You can shrink? Nice power."

"Yeah, I can do a whole bunch of cool stuff with my suit," Scott explained.

"Well, let's talk about that at a later date. Some dude named Blonsky will get released because Tony warned them I might be coming. Apparently, that's some kind of Hulk reject. And security will be set to the highest level. With these kinds of odds stacked in their favor, who wants out? Show of hands please," I ordered.

All four of them raised their hand facing away from the cameras, though Scott only did when all the other three did. He looked a little skeptical, too.

"I don't mean to be mean, but how sure are you that you can beat a Hulk?" Scott asked with a thoughtful frown.

"The Hulk? No real chance of winning unless he stays still for a minute or two to let me charge a spell. Granted, I would need to be stupid, too, to get beaten by him. Some weak copy that won't even see me before I cut out a good part of his spine?" I scoffed the last part.

"Okay, Clint, you got any strategies you want me to implement, anything I need to prepare or will I just cut you all out of your cells, and we beat down everything in our path? Keep in mind, we will definitely have to sprinkle in some torture on Ross to find Jessica and Pietro," I mused while looking at the archer.

"Got a way out for us?" Clint asked immediately.

"Helicopter Ross came in on. I'll give it a little speed boost."

"Know if they got our equipment locked up here somewhere?"

"None of it is here, birdcostume and bow and arrow are at the Avengers compound. The other two didn't have equipment to be locked away, apparently. Jessica's armor is with Tony. Apparently, everyone is mad about it. They all wanted to run experiments on it. Weird how they didn't count on me being the most mad about all of it."

"Hey, don't call it birdcostume!" Sam yelled.

"Sorry dude, that's what all the guards thought. It was here for two weeks, and a bunch of dudes tried it out."

"Oh lord, why tell me that? Now I'm just extra sad," Sam said in a sulking voice.

I only offered a shrug...he couldn't see in return.

"Okay, if you came fully prepared, we'll just have to do with what we have. Get us out of here," Clint said while standing up.

"Got it. All of you get away from the glass door."

After cutting out Clint out of his cell, the alarms started ringing, and additional shutters rammed down the other cells, but all it really did was delay my freeing them by half a minute at best. Last one to get out was Wanda, who I also had to remove a collar from.

"Don't break their minds before we find out where Jessica and Pietro are. Ross is mine," I told her as she began to flex her red glowy powers.

"I will not be gentle."

"Yeah, you won't see me care. I just said there will be some torture sprinkled in."

"Good," Wanda said with a nod and glowing red eyes.

We fought our way to the hangar one guard team at a time. None of them knew anything about Jessica or Pietro. At the hangar, we found Ross making his way to his helicopter with a grey mass of muscle the size of Hulk right behind him.

"And you thought Tony was crazy, eh? Glad it got me outta the freezer, though," the mass shouted between the blaring alarms.

"Shut up. We have an unknown invisible enhanced individual here with some kind of tech that can cut through 20 inch steel like a hot knife through butter. My money is on that Asgardian emerald blur freak," Ross shouted. He looked behind to see us entering the hangar.

"There's the criminals, get 'em Blonsky."

"Got it, boss," Blonsky chuckled darkly as he jumped in our direction with as much as speed as his face showed glee at getting to inflict some more damage to someone.

Nobody in our group flinched, except for Scott, who screamed like a little girl.

However, when that abomination had closed half the distance from Ross to us, he suddenly grimaced in pain. His running grinded into a sudden halt, and he roared and screamed in pain. All Ross saw was a deep cut in the middle Blonsky's back, a back he thought unbreakable.

Of course, it was my cut. The Hulk and his variants might have more endurance, recovery speed and natural defenses than any other powered being on Earth, but a magically-charged Uru-cast sword stabbing into his spine between the vertebrae was still nothing he could shrug off. After the first successful stab, I removed the sword with a twisting motion to inflict more pain and stabbed again two vertebrae lower. That should be enough to ground him for a while until I am done with Ross and the crew.

With my scarf on, I removed my invisibility and moved toward Ross. Some of the guards wanted to raise their weapons, but in my year in space, I really unearthed my potential in telekinesis - it was way too convenient a power not to train in zero gravity. And these guards were just regular humans.

No matter their training, I could easily overpower the strength in their arms with my mind.

"You are attacking a United States State Secretary and breaking out dangerous criminals from a super-max prison. No matter the service you provided in defending New York and defeating Ultron, you will be a wanted criminal!" Ross shouted, trying to grandstand me.

"Jessica and Pietro, where are they?" I asked instead of answering his pathetic threat to get his thoughts on the matter to the forefront of his mind. He would never tell me willingly, not the full truth anyway. So, I would just rip the information out of his mind.

"Why would I tell you?"

I did get my answer, and I had to use every fiber of my being to not rip everything that is this prison into pieces.

"Because you have sold them to get experimented on. Tell me Ross, why should I not obliterate you and everyone involved right where you stand?" I spat. My eyes were starting to shine a pale green as the winds picked up in the hangar.

"The US needs deterrents to threats like you! I won't apologize for doing my duty!" Ross screamed as he strained every muscle to raise his gun.

"Threat? Me? If you hadn't made me one, I wouldn't be a threat," I said, gnashing my teeth. I turned to Clint.

"What do you know about Cybertek and Roxxon? A guy named Li Oshiro and two scientists called 'Ott' and 'Diaz'?"

I didn't look at Ross' widening eyes, but I still read his mind to get more answers. This was going to be tricky. They didn't even tell Ross where they would hold Jessica and Pietro.

"Bad news, Cybertek used to be HYDRA, belongs to Roxxon. Li Oshiro is the CFO of a big Roxxon division, I think in New Orleans, and Dave Ott and Rick Diaz were lead scientists on something called 'Centipede Project' at Cybertek. They escaped arrest. Don't know the details. The project tried combining Super Soldier serum, Extremis, and other bad juju with alien tech to make... super super soldiers," Clint explained.

"Huh, that is enough to discredit your entire life and besmirch the honor of your beloved country even after your 'heroic death' trying to prevent a prison break. Any last words before your actual last words will be nothing but whimpering?" I asked, turning back to Ross.

"You will not be able to prove anything," Ross shot back with a resigned look after a few moments of struggling.

"Oh? You're saying I can't pry all your personal computers and phones from your dead corpse and hack them to get all your dirty laundry?"

"No human tech can get into my computers. Not even Stark could, before it all gets deleted," Ross mocked.

"Good thing I'm not human," I said, walking to the now shivering man. Ross was thinking about how he thought he had more time to get results from Roxxon before Thor, Hulk, or I arrived back on Earth. He had miscalculated and overplayed his hand. And I hoped Tony didn't know about any of this or I would do to him what I would do to Ross now.

"You get anything else from the guards? Any whereabouts, maybe?" I asked Wanda as we both floated out of the raft. We didn't kill all the guards, only those few in the inner circle of Ross and the man himself.

Sam and Scott didn't like that but could do nothing but frown and repeatedly shout towards the cameras that they were being freed against their will together with Clint. Something I made them shout so they wouldn't be implicated in the death of a state secretary or not as much.

Wanda and I didn't care. They had Jessica and Pietro, so anyone who cared to investigate the break-out better hope they weren't involved.

While making the helicopter fly towards New York extra fast, I called Misty to get everything on Oshiro, Ott, and Diaz. Ott and Diaz had fallen off the grid, but she knew where Oshiro was.

Wanda could fly, but not nearly as fast as I, so she got on my back, and we arrived in New Orleans in minutes. Wanda looked like she wanted to complain, but in the end, she didn't. Pietro's life was at stake.

We both used our powers, entered the gigantic Roxxon Corporation building, and made our way to the office of the CFO. I had seen his deal with Ross in a memory of the now dead secretary and the greed in Oshiro's eyes, so I didn't care much and broke into his mind for answers.

Oshiro paid for six hidden facilities by cleverly diverting funds, but I also learned a guy named Scarborough would know which of the six the Cybertek rogue scientists would stay at. So Wanda and I left a drooling Oshiro behind and went to the office of the Chief Executive of Risk Management.

With my powers, it was all too easy. I recognized Scarborough's need or rather greed for self-preservation, but I still left him catatonic. He shouldn't have let his lust for power involve Jessica.

With more blackmail material copied from their computers, Wanda and I moved to a hidden facility close to Lake Borgne. Scarborough had some kind of obsession with the place.

I told Wanda that most of the people there were either mad scientists or people that enabled them, so we were a little more liberal in the use of our powers.

Uncaring for the state we left the captors of our girlfriend and brother in, we arrived on the third basement floor that had rows and rows of capsules filled with people. All of them were corpses but two.

Ott and Diaz were discussing something in front of a capsule with a man who was missing his legs that were slowly growing back with a light blue glow inside. We arrived here without giving anyone a chance at ringing an alarm, so the two were unaware of their impending doom. Wanda's fury was carved deep into her face when she saw the man without legs. It was Pietro.

"He was powered even before the Extremis, and it evolved beyond what it should be. It's always fascinating to look at it work."

"Same with the chick. No matter what we cut off, it comes back. Our extremis variants had limits. This one doesn't."

"Can't believe Hansen managed to drop off the grid in a way that neither HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D., Roxxon, or The Ten Rings were able to find her."

"It's a shame, it would have sped up ou-"

Before he could finish his sentence, both his legs were ripped from under him as the rest of him was left floating where he was before. His screams were deafening, and Diaz tried running away immediately instead of helping after he saw what happened to Ott.

I cut off one his arms and held him by the throat as I dragged him back to his legless friend.

"Tell me then. What does it feel like? You're making very unhappy faces," I asked Diaz, who was looking just about ready to faint. But I wouldn't allow that. No, these two would be feeling even more pain than Ross.

In silent agreement, Wanda and I each slowly broke one of the two, gathered every bit of data we could find in the room and finally we could delay it no longer and turned to the pods with Pietro and Jessica inside.

Jessica looked incredibly weak. She was missing a hand that was that regrowing, the severed limb laid next to the pod in the middle of dissection. Half of her head was shaven, the hair only growing back a little.

I didn't find a scar on her head, but I did see a big chunk of diced brain sewed back together in a bottle close to her pod. I feared the worst, hence why I did everything that needed to be done before waking her.

With a heavy swallow, I moved next to the pod, opened it, and looked at her in worry. I caressed her cheek, unable to find the words.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you had to go through this, and I wasn't there to save you, Jessie."

She slowly started opening her eyes, her face twisting in pain. She looked at me and the tears spilling from my eyes. I saw no recognition in her gaze, and my worst fears came true.

"Who is Jessie?" She asked, sounding incredibly hoarse.

The tears increased, and I took a good minute to find my next words.

"You are. Your name is Jessica. Do you remember?" I said in the softest voice I could manage.

"... no... Your tears, who... are you to me?" She asked after a while.

"We're friends, best of friends," was all I could tell her. As long as her memories are gone, this wasn't my Jessica. It wouldn't be fair to make myself out to be more to her than I was. Because right now, we were strangers to each other.

I broke my gaze away from her, swallowing the big lump in my throat, and looked towards Wanda and Pietro to see how they were doing. Both of them were hugging and crying. Clearly, Pietro was spared the hackjob-brain-surgery.

"Will you need a minute, or can we move out? I would like for you to get somewhere that isn't a lab used for human experimentation. Get you to a place where you can heal," I eventually asked Jessica.

"Do you know where I live? Where can I even go? I don't remember," Jessica whispered while clutching her head.

"You can go home, our home," I said, giving her a light hug.

I should probably call ahead and have Misty move Jessica's stuff into the guest bedroom.

We all moved out of the facility eventually, and under the pretense of going back inside to destroy the place, I did what I needed to do and called Misty to tell her what happened. After that very unpleasant call, I did what I promised, and with Shatterstar and my ever rising anger fully unleashed, I leveled this entire facility.

When I ran back outside, I saw Wanda talk to a young black man shrouded in black mist and a young woman clutching a dagger made of white light. Things were agitated.

"You killed them all? Why? This was one of our last leads!" The young woman yelled.

I moved closer, and my eyes widened in recognition of their powers.

"Lightforce and Darkforce. How did you gain a connection to those dimensions?" I asked them. A book from my mother's hidden library talked about the various dimensions filled with energies that can be wielded and molded into spells. A favorite of the sorcerers from Midgard outside their so-called 'Eldritch Magic'.

The young woman turned to me, and all her anger about our supposed actions slipped away.

"You know what this is?" She asked, lifting her dagger.

"I do, I could even train you in using these powers. Be warned, though, I just made myself an enemy of the US, probably the UN, too. Not that they would ever be able to do anything about it."

If they agree, I just found two more fighters in the coming war against Hela, now that I... lost Jessica...