Ground Zero

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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)

"Huh, the staff. How fitting…" I looked at him and spoke up, "Loki Laufeyson, you are not to move from this place. You will be bound and unconscious until your return to Asgard."

Before he could do anything, I conjured some chains and bound him. I then telepathically knocked him out. He wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.

I slowly walked towards the staff and picked it up. I could feel it wanting to influence me, to break into my mind. It was subtle and barely used the power of the Mind Stone. I was able to resist wielding it and spoke into the comms, "Loki is down, I know how to close the portal, we need to use his staff, which is in my possession."

Yeah, this should be ending soon.

Rogers immediately responded, "Good Job. Get to the portal and wait for Stark's weapon to fire. Be ready to close it at a moment's notice. We have the upper hand for now, and we'll end this on our terms."

"Understood. Stark, how long until the weapon is ready?"

The man snarked back at me, "Well, you said it should take Jarvis ten minutes to make things work. That was six minutes ago. Don't they teach you math at Grim Reaper school."

"No, they only taught us how to take souls. I wonder when I'll be able to take yours as well. It'll be quite the reunion."

"What reunion?"

I snorted at him, "Well between you and everyone you ever killed. What did they call you again? Oh, right, the Merchant of Death."

I can tell I rattled him with that. It was a bit of a dirty move to bring up his dirty past, especially with how traumatized he is with what happened in Afghanistan. But he should learn not to take out his insecurities on me. For now, he's probably feeling vulnerable without Jarvis. The Virtual Intelligence had been at the billionaire's side for years, a constant reassuring presence helping him. Losing him even if it's only for a few minutes would have rattled him.

Rogers obviously noticed the discomfort, "Enough, you two. This channel is only made to deal with the invasion. Deal with your grievances later."

I spoke up, "Alright."

However, Stark, as usual, wanted to make a big deal out of this, "Do you guys want to go for some Shawarma later? I've always wanted to try it, but I never got around to it."

I snorted, "I tried it a few times, didn't like it much, but I could go for a bite."

Before Rogers could admonish us, Barton answered, "I'm in. I haven't eaten anything for almost a day, and I'm starving."

Thor sounded confused, "What is this shawarma you're speaking of?"

Black Widow responded, "It's a meat sandwich. Trust me, from what I heard about Asgardians' appetite for meat, you should like it."

I decide to bring things back on track, "Alright, joking aside, I'm feeling pretty useless here, so, I'm going down to protect the civilians. Let me know when I should close the portal and I'll get up there."

I put the staff in my pocket dimension, and I teleported down to the streets. I was immediately attacked by Chitauri on their flying chariots. I immediately put up a shield that stopped every energy blast coming at me. I, then, conjured a few necro swords and banished them towards the chariots, which immediately exploded from the impact. I then summoned some spikes and made them rain at the survivors.

Afterwards, I gathered a few shadows under me, and solidified them, which allowed me to fly. It must have looked weird, some grim reaper figure, riding what looked like a cloud of smoke, massacring aliens left and right.

On my left, I saw some civilians hiding from a small platoon of Chitauri soldiers. I immediately materialized my shadow and sent it towards the aliens who died immediately on impact.

I floated up and found another wave of Chitauri chariots flying towards Barton. The man looked like he was out of arrows and was thinking about jumping off and doing some sort of ridiculous stunt. Instead, I created a beam of darkness that disintegrated them in seconds.

The archer was gaping at me for a few seconds, before just shrugging and nodding to me in thanks. I nodded back and conjured a quiver with a few hundred arrows, threw it at him and flew away.

With that done, I started flying around, sniping soldiers left and right, making sure that the civilian casualties were minimal, until I found myself seeing the Captain trying to fight off a few dozen aliens at the same time. The man had burns on his chest, and his uniform was blackened. He was obviously sluggish, and probably injured. I landed next to him and created a shield of shadows stopping any blast coming his way.

I gave him some time to take his breath and spoke up to him, "Hold up your shield, I have a plan."

He nodded, and I conjured a War Hammer, and added a small unbreakable enchantment on it. I then told him, "Crouch and hold your shield tightly. Don't move."

He nodded and put up his shield. I dispelled the shadow shield and swung my hammer with all my strength. The impact created a shockwave that sent everything flying back in almost a block. I then conjured dozens of necro spikes that fell from the sky towards the fallen Chitauri, killing them immediately.

The World War two hero looked at me in shock, "How the hell did you do that?"

I shrugged at him, "You shield is made of Vibranium, it's capable of absorbing the momentum of anything that hits it, but if it's overloaded and it takes more than it can handle, then it releases all the energy stored inside in a shockwave. It's a very useful property of the metal."

He looked down at his shield and smiled, "How do you know that?"

I shrugged, "When you've lived for as long as I have, you learn a few things. At least to pass the time. You have no idea how boring things get when you get past a thousand years of life."

He didn't seem to know how to respond to that, so I chose to change the subject, "I see that you have this under control for now. I'll go check on the rest."

I flew away, killing the occasional stray Chitauri, and chose to join Thor who was on top of the Empire State Building and kept firing lightning at the portal, stopping anything from getting out. For now, the situation seemed under control. Romanoff had come down and joined Rogers in protecting the civilians from the occasional Chitauri. Stark was in the air, destroying whatever Chariots he could find.

Barton was using the arrows I conjured to make sure no one was being attacked from the back, and finally Hulk was doing his own thing, jumping around and killing aliens left and right. I couldn't see him following a plan, just smashing things around. I really needed Banner to get his shit together so that he could actually follow delicate plans in the future, where he probably won't be allowed to smash things around.

We seemed to have things in hand; there were no new Chitauri coming from the portal thanks to Thor and the ones that had come before the God of Thunder started throwing lightning around, were being hunted down one by one by us. I looked at Thor was who visibly starting to tire and I spoke to him, "Thor, how long can you keep doing this?"

Thor was struggling to answer, "A few minutes at best. I've never held lightning for this long."

For now, the situation hinged on Thor's lightning stopping the Chitauri from coming. He was single handedly stopping the casualties from becoming too much.

"Don't worry, the missile should be ready anytime now."

The son of Odin nodded and asked, "My brother?"

"Unharmed. He's just unconscious and bound. Nothing more. After all, despite how much he acts like a spoilt brat, your father still loves your brother. I will come with you to Asgard, Odinson, I have much to speak to your father about."

He looked resigned at this, "Thank you for your mercy, lady Morrigan."

I nodded at him and teleported to the roof of Stark tower. "Alright, the ten minutes should be up anytime now. I'm back by the portal."

Stark nodded, "I'll let you know when Jarvis comes back."

I looked around and found the three girls studying the force field around the portal. Rose was muttering, "I don't understand why we can't break the ward. The arithmancy makes no sense…"

I snorted, startling them, "Of course it doesn't. That's because it's not powered by magic, but by the cosmic energy of the cube itself. You'll need something with a similar energy signature to break it."

Rose looked at me with a curious light in her eyes, "After all this time, you're still lecturing me on things. You know, I'm supposed to be the next coming of Merlin to the magical world, and yet here you are schooling me in seconds."

I snorted, "Don't be proud of that, that guy was a dick."

"So your portrait says. But she hasn't mentioned anything about cosmic energy."

I smiled at her enthusiasm, "That's because it's probably not relevant to your education. You've been studying magic for a few decades, not millennia like I have. There are things that you simply don't have time to learn. As you probably know, you absorb magic from the planet itself, and add it to your reserves for later use. At its core, it's still coming from the planet. If you go to the moon, you'll barely be able to do anything, because you won't be able to refill your magic there. There's just no magic on the moon. Cosmic energy on the other hand, is the energy that was used to create the universe in the first place. It goes through everything on this plane and very few know of it, let alone could use it. It's said that ancient beings called Celestials have used this energy to create entire galaxies."

"And it's in the Tesseract."

I chuckled, "The cube is far more powerful than you can fathom. It's one of a few artifacts that have existed since the dawn of the universe itself, they're powerful but also volatile and very dangerous."

"But if cosmic energy is as rare as you're saying, does that mean that we'll have this portal in the middle of New York for the foreseeable future."

I retrieved the staff from my pocket dimension, "no, this can go through the force field easily. We're waiting for Stark's weapon to close the portal."

"What? why?" Jean exclaimed.

"You need to see the bigger picture. If we just close the portal, they will come to Earth the long way round, meaning that while we'll have some time to prepare, the entire planet will be attacked, not just New York, and we won't have the advantage of having the portal as a bottleneck. We need to kill them first before we close it."

They nodded at my answer, and I immediately got Stark's confirmation, "Jarvis is out, the weapon is ready."

I nodded, "Excellent, fire when you can. Thor, you can stop with the lightning, we're detonating the missile."

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 to close 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.