I landed upon the roof of Stark Tower, the rounded gravel softly crunching beneath my feet, less if an actual person stepped on it and more like rustling in the wind.
Satisfied with the softening spell, I looked at the sky beam machine thingy beside me and the prone form of Dr. Erik Selvig laying at the edge of the roof behind it by the stand setup for his control unit.
He's unconscious. Good.
I'll wake him up later.
Peaking over to roof to adjust my landing and spotted a part of the reinforced glass balcony that had survived Thor's impact and the subsequent fight relatively untouched. To the side, I also spotted Loki's sceptre on the ground amid shards of glass.
I resisted the temptation to get the sceptre and jumped off to the other end of the balcony. It felt like I was walking on the moon as the spell landed me by the balcony door without so much as a squeak.
I scouted the whole floor, making sure no one was around, before heading in. Loki had escaped on a Chitauri Chariot post confrontation for a round about the rosie across the city and Thor had followed him. I could see flashes of lightning three blocks over. Still, you can never be too sure, and I can't afford to get caught.
Sneaking in, I made a beeline for the bar, pawing behind it for the spare communications bracelet Tony had left behind. There had been two in the film, he had worn one to summon to Mk2 and that meant one should still be here.
Bingo!
I found it behind a bottle of scotch that looked like it cost more money than I had ever embezzled my whole previous life, but I didn't touch it just yet.
Instead, I removed the Broken God's Amulet from my wrist and grabbed it in my hand, focusing on it till I felt something connect. Instantly, I was flooded with information, my head swirling with divine inspiration as voices whispered every so seductively in my mind.
"Build.."
"Revive.."
"Abandon the weakness of flesh-"
"Pray, worship, become one-"
Visions of a bronze empire flashed before my eyes, metalwork and smoke, clockwork and steam rising in spires beyond the horizon, great projects of civilization blotting out the stars themselves. All to become mine, all mine-
"Come to me, child of steam, become one-"
"No thanks." I broke free from the visions and exerted my will upon the amulet, reigning in the Divine Authority Of Machine, the Deus Ex Machina like taming a wild horse till it submitted to me. It wasn't particularly difficult, the artifact was so small and insignificant a part of the deity, it didn't hold much power in the first place- less a wild horse and more a domesticated pony throwing a temper tantrum, nothing my psychic powers couldn't thwart. That attempt to brainwash me into its cult probably took all the effort it could muster. And it failed all the same.
Clearing my head, I felt the divine authority shudder in my grasp moving every which way I desired.
With it in hand, I directed the power to touch the communications bracelet and instantly I felt the AI yield. JARVIS wasn't a sapient machine yet, not like Ultron, so it was easily subverted.
"JARVIS." I called out, and the bracelet hummed to life, "Don't alert Stark to my presence here. Also, direct him away from here, subtly. Keep him off my back."
"Yes sir." The AI replied.
With JARVIS under my control, that made the rest of my task easier.
Lets begin.
"JARVIS, start by removing all evidence of my presence here. Delete all video footage of me, including those from the surveillance cameras all around the city from the UN HQ to Bleecker Street. Loop over the deleted footage with appropriate footage of the same places from a few minutes around the same time to cover up the missing pieces."
As Rick said, three hundred cameras going black is suspicious, blending in is much easier.
"Wherever possible, make the alterations as inconspicuous as possible. Use photoshop if needed. Use SHIELD resources if necessary, but cover your tracks there too. Also while you're at it, use their systems to fabricate an identity for me, mailing address, 177A Bleecker Street." I said, putting on both the bracelet and the amulet on my wrists as I made my way back out onto the balcony.
"No time to waste." I said, as I saw multiple leviathans headed for the portal from the other side. Picking up the sceptre, I leapt back onto the roof and slapped Dr. Erik Selvig awake.
"Wakeupwakeupwakeup!"
"Hmm, what- how-Oh my god what have I done?!" He exclaimed with horror as he realized what had happened.
"Yes yes, Oh the horror, and what not. You can wallow in misery later. We have a world to save." I grabbed him by the collar and stood him up by the control unit, before poking him with the sceptre, putting him under my mind control.
"The machine can be shutoff using the sceptre." I raised the sceptre in my hand, "So do whatever you need to do to make it happen, fast."
"….Yes." He muttered, his eyes glazed over as he began frantically pressing buttons, adjusting parameters on the control unit while I walked over to the sky beam machine.
"Done. You can start." He said a few seconds later and immediately I plunged the sceptre into the forcefield around the sky beam with all the power I could muster. The steam engine in my gut began to work overtime as the vents on my back blew like pressure cooker, soaking new shirt with moisture, sticking it to my exoskeleton like a rice wrap, till finally-
CRACKLE-SIZZLE!
The machine shutoff, the tip of the sceptre piercing the Tesseract's holding cover, and the beam sputtered out of existence. The portal began closing, just as the furthest along riders pushed their way in, but too fast for the leviathans to come roaring in minutes behind them. I took one final look at the closing portal, as another idea popped into my mind, one that could save everyone a lot of future trouble.
"Say, JARVIS, what's your range?"
"Global, sir."
I looked back through the portal before quickly dislodging the Tesseract, tucking it under my arm, all while eyeballing some calculations.
"Hmm…, alright, that will do." I said and focused on the Chitauri mothership in the distance.
This is going to look absolutely fucking crazy in retrospect but…yippie ki yay motherfucker.
I pulled on the power of the Space Stone inside the Tesseract and teleported away, into space.
I appeared instantly before the mothership, within spitting distance and with another eyeballed judgement, I teleported over to one of the docking bay doors left open by the exiting leviathans and floated on in. The good thing about being a steampunk cyborg is that I can survive in space no problem.
The nanomachines were already adapting, buzzing fiercely to generate heat, keeping me unfrozen as I used my telekinesis fly over to a control panel by the side.
"JARVIS, you there?" I asked.
"Yes sir. I am here."
"How fast can you make a copy of yourself?"
"Near instantly, sir. No more than a few seconds."
"Alright." I pressed the amulet to the control panel and took over the ship's systems, "Get ready to take control of the ship as soon as I give the signal."
Now usually, the Chitauri Hivemind would fight me for control over the ship, and I certainly can't beat a space military grade hivemind in full frontal psychic combat, no training and all, and neither can JARVIS.
But who said I had to fight it fair?
Within the instant that I took control and it began fighting me I gave the ship one singular command.
"Shutoff all power and life support systems, immediately."
And poof, just like that, it was over. A hivemind that operates off of a digitized neural network can't function without power. All around the ship I could see the Chitauri fall lifeless, the leviathans pausing as their momentum carried them prone across space.
Of course, I can't just end it here. Eventually, someone will come here and manually restart the power and since this is going to be a no-nuke timeline- with how fast I ended the Battle For New York, couldn't have been more than half an hour, less most likely, instead of the original three plus hours of gruelling combat- if I don't deal with this mess, it will fall right back into big daddy ballsack chin's hands.
And that's no bueno~
So, using the Space Stone to stabilize the closing portal, stalling it for a few minutes longer, I set the Tesseract down, strung up the comms link on the control panel, and got ready to turn the power back on.
"Oh this is gonna suck mammoth balls when its all done and over." I groaned as I pulled on the power of the Mind Stone in the sceptre, boosting my psychic power to unimaginable highs, even as my body creaked under the immense power surge.
"Alright. Jarvis, get ready, in 3, 2, 1…turning power back on-" I flipped the power on, invading the neural networks with all the psychic power I could muster, "NOW!"
Instantly I could feel the Chitauri Hivemind beginning to pull itself back together, rearing its head at me, but-
"Oh no no no." I wagged a metaphorical finger at it, just as I smashed it apart with a mighty blow, before exploding with a wave of psychic power that sunk right into the Hivemind, infiltrating all its little nooks and crannies like a sticky web before solidifying like quick dry cement, taking full control of all the Chitauri connected to it everywhere, even invading the other motherships elsewhere in the universe through their back channel communications networks, stabbing them in the back with a hidden dagger of psychic poison.
Of course, I isolated the Chitauri back on Earth, rendering them prone but not dead, so as to avoid breaking cover and only then did I begin speaking. Through the minds and mouths of all Chitauri, everywhere in the universe. Their eyes began glowing yellow and the bodies emanated a soft yellow glow as they all stood at attention, locked in place.
"TO ALL CHITAURI, AND ALL THOSE LISTENING. BEHOLD AND BEWARNED!" I began, summoning all the majesty and terror I could command through my voice, imbuing every word with the Mind Stone's power for extra effect.
"EARTH IS A PROTECTED DOMAIN AND INVASION OF IT AS SUCH WILL NOT BE TOLERATED, AT ANY COST. CONSIDER THIS A WARNING, FINAL AND CERTAIN WITH THE PROMISE OF COMPLETE AND UTTER ANNIHILATION UPON VIOLATION BY ANY MEANS."
I paused for effect, before continuing.
"TO ALL CHITAURI SOLDIERS BELOW THE RANK OF COMMANDER, I ORDER YOU, THINK OF HOME." Instantly, millions of images flooded my mind and had I not tapped into the powers of the Mind Stone, this alone would have shattered my psyche. As it is, to survive this I pulled on more of the stone's power till the power itself began to press against the seams of my mind, threatening to blow. But I held on bitterly.
Just a little more…
I grabbed the Tesseract with my free hand and began to channel its power as well.
"FOR THE CRIMES OF WAR, MURDER AND INVASION OF THE SOVEREIGN TERRITORY OF EARTH, I PUNISH YOU. RETURN HOME, NEVER TO RETURN, NEVER TO LEAVE YOUR PLANET, NEVER AGAIN TO BRING TO HARM ANOTHER BEING, AT PAIN OF DEATH. I BRAND UPON YOU THIS GEAS, HERETOFORE TILL THE END OF YOUR DAYS."
As I said this, portal of shimmering blue opened up and swallowed all the Chitauri sending them to whatever place they thought of as home, unless it was the ship, in which case, they were sent to wherever their closest neighbour considered home.
Next I did the same for the leviathans they had brought with them, enslaved gentle titans from a water world far across the universe, tormented with cybernetic implants that turned them into war machines for their use. To them I gave what little salvation I could, easing the pain of enslavement and the accompanying trauma as I soothed their minds before sending them home.
Finally, I addressed the leaders of the Chitauri.
Elsewhere, Sanctuary.
Thanos watched with mild curiosity and growing frustration at The Other, the chief commander of his Chitauri forces as he took in the news of their defeat and the subsequent disbandment of his forces…by a mere ant!
He gripped the armrest of his floating throne tighter, rage bubbling beneath the surface as the Chitauri spoke.
"TO THE OTHER, AND ALL CHITAURI COMMANDERS AND LEADERS. FOR THE CRIMES OF WAR, GENOCIDE, AND MULTIPLE OTHER EVILS WROUGHT UPON THE UNIVERSE THAT ARE TOO MANY TO COUNT. I PUNISH YOU. THINK OF HOME, THINK OF LOVE, THINK OF ALL THOSE YOU HOLD DEAR. NEVER AGAIN SHALL YOU SET FOOT UPON YOUR PLANET, NEVER AGAIN SHALL YOU RETURN HOME, NEVER TO HOLD THOSE YOU LOVE AND CHERISH, NEVER AGAIN TO HARM ANOTHER BEING, FOREVER COMPELLED TO SERVE AND ASSIST THE WEAK AND NEEDY, THOSE IN DIRE CIRCUMSTANCE AND OF ILL FATE, IN ATONEMENT OF YOUR UNFORGIVABLE CRIMES.
NEVER AGAIN SHALL YOU BE FREE TO ENJOY THE SIMPLE PLEASURES OF LIFE. ALL FOOD SHALL TASTE OF ASH AND DUNG, ALL REFRSHMENT SHALL EVADE YOU. MAY YOU FIND NO REST OR QUARTER, NO SALVATION EXCEPT IN DEATH. AS YOU HAVE DEPRIVED ALL OTHERS, SO SHALL YOU BE DEPRIVED YOURSELVES. UPON YOU I BRAND THIS GEAS, AT PAIN OF DEATH. BE GONE AND BE FORGOTTEN TILL THE END OF YOUR DAYS, FOREVER BOUND TO WANDER THE WORLDS."
"AH! I ALMOST FORGOT." I added with a purposeful chuckle, just to rile up the Mad Titan even more than he already was and looked him in the eye.
"TO THE MAD TITAN THANOS, BE WARNED. FOR I, TONY STARK, DEFENDER OF EARTH AND THE LEADER OF THE AVENGERS, SHALL SUFFER NO RETRIBUTION. I WILL COME FOR YOU, AND I WILL BRING THE STONE WITH ME, SO DON'T BOTHER COMING OVER. JUST SIT YOUR PRETTY LITTLE PURPLE ASS RIGHT THERE AND WAIT FOR ME TO COME AND KICK IT. IN A FEW YEARS TIME, IF I STILL REMEMBER YOU, ANYWAYS…MWAH~ BYE BYE!"
Thanos crushed the armrest of his chair to dust as he let out a growl filled with rage and stepped off his high horse to say something but I didn't entertain him.
And with that, I ended the group chat.
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Aaand that's the end of the Battle for New York.
I always felt like the infinity stones were not being use to their full potential in the canon. I mean seriously, brute forcing battles with them is as subtle as a pink elephant on an intersection. Zero creativity.
So I thought, why not spice it up a bit eh?
What do you guys think?
Next time, cleanup and consequences. Till then, add the fic to your library, comment how you felt about this chapter down below and write a review while you're at it. It motivates me to write!
AND DON'T FORGET TO DONATE YOUR POWER STONES!
Remember, three power stones a day keeps the author's hammer from your kneecaps away!
Also, extra chapters starting today whenever this fic gets into the top 50 ranking for the month or whatever period it shows up in.
So chop chop girlies~
Bye~