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lovemesomerafael · 5 years ago

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Destroying The Planet To Save It Chapter 23: Kind Of A Douche

Chapters 1-20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Read It On AO3

Jarman Arias stood fondling his machine as it emitted its sickly green light. He hated that he had to rely on the foul green orbs he purchased at an obscene cost from a lowlife who’d smuggled them to Earth from the outlaw markets inside Knowhere. Arias didn’t know the origin of the orbs, which was fine with him. The less he knew about the alien crystals he’d had to contaminate himself with to get what he wanted, the better. At least he’d made sure that lowlife smuggler didn’t live to enjoy his profit. The poor fool was one of the very first to be used in a test of the machine. Arias remembered the satisfaction he felt, listening to the man’s screams. It was fit punishment for a traitor to the human race, dealing with dirty rabble from some inferior world.

Arias clenched his fists in rage at the idea of those filthy Asgardian vermin, whom he particularly hated. Treading Terran soil as though they didn’t defile it, with their glowing stones and their pomposity and their ridiculous costumes. At least now, they would never be able to return. Nor would the real evil: those malparido, gonorrea Chitauri.

Arias had been in New York the day the Chitauri came. He had been inside a building, hadn’t even been on the street. He’d been sitting at a large, beautiful table in the hushed, very well-appointed offices of one of his investment bankers. He should have been safe. But the nightmarish, insectoid creatures with machine parts obscenely grafted into their bodies had poured through a hole in the sky, riding some sort of hovering chariots, invading and rampaging at will through the city. And the Avengers? The Avengers had protected no one. The Avengers had been part of the problem. Their wholly destructive – and entirely ineffectual – frenzy of violence had only made things much, much worse. Arias believed it was Thor – another beastly invader – who had hurled that glorified mallet of his into the side of the very building where Arias had been cowering, watching with horror as monsters filled the skies.

A hole five stories high had opened up in the building, leaving Arias kneeling only a few feet from open air, seventy floors above the street. And one of those repulsive reptiles had driven its chariot-thing, with the corpse of its accomplice still onboard, into the very room where Arias clung to the base of the massive table. He’d been too afraid to scream. He had lost control of his bowels and bladder, and could only weep in near-catatonic terror.

Several more invaders had passed the hole in the building, making a noise that still haunted Arias, as the Chitauri beast had dismounted and begun to move toward him. Arias whimpered and drooled, knowing that he had seconds to live before the thing devoured him. Suddenly, his eyes had been drawn to movement behind the creature as that tawdry, red-and-gold electrified tin man blasted one of the flying chariots with his laser beams or whatever the hell they were. The chariot cartwheeled into the building, very near the giant hole that bastard Thor had made, shattering on impact. Shards of hot metal and some sort of burning liquid sprayed into the room. The Chitauri that had been menacing Arias was… How to describe the horrifying sight of the hideous body being torn apart by the fragmented craft, limbs flying and a large hunk of torso landing in Arias’s lap?

But that hadn’t been the worst part. The worst part was the disgusting, putrid sludge the creatures apparently called blood, which had spewed from his severed carcass all over Arias, entering his eyes, his nose, his mouth... Even now, recalling that moment and the vile, rotten stench, Arias retched and had to force himself not to vomit.

He hadn’t been rescued. Not one of the Avengers, the so-called heroes of the day, had tried to help. Instead, he remembered seeing that jumped-up clown who called himself Captain America, presumptuously directing the pitiful feint at clean-up afterward. And then the Avengers, those disgraceful, insolent, unspeakably arrogant pendejos, had simply gone home to their skyscraper.

Arias swore violently, his voice rumbling deep in his chest with the primal rage he felt remembering his horror and helplessness on that day. It would not happen again.

He turned quickly away from the machine, his purple cape swirling around him, and stalked out of the room toward the lower levels. He wanted to check on his guests. Very important guests, actually. Now he smiled with the conceit of a feral cat watching its morally wounded prey writhe under its paw.

He hadn’t even had the idea to “invite” his guests until they, themselves suggested it. But once he had learned that S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, and the United States government all knew of his machines, he knew he had to do something. And when he’d learned that the lovely Anita Herrera, with whom he had been so intrigued, was actually a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, he’d been furious. That had, of course, led him to realize that he would not be enjoying the prestige of employing The Falcon as he’d dreamed, because he had to assume that Sam Wilson was a spy, too.

The idea of the Avengers doing something so ignominious as acting as bodyguards at the Presidential event had always seemed suspicious to him. So he’d set some of his staff to doing research and headed off to his villa for a relaxing weekend. The research team had reviewed the surveillance from the bunker on the night of the tornado, and found footage of beautiful Anita creeping around. Which, of course, had led to a review of the video surveillance of the villa.

Arias had very much enjoyed some of the video of Anita and Sam in their room. But he had decidedly not enjoyed the footage of Anita searching his office, and discovering the ancient implements in their padded drawer, not to mention the robes he was currently wearing.

Arias had considered being ashamed by the fact that he, himself, had been in the room and missed Anita’s covert search on the night of the tornado. He had also actually invited the spies to his own villa. But he was not a security guard. Those were not his failures.

Then, when he’d investigated further, he had learned of the red-haired infiltrator who had been allowed not only to enter his facility, but to wander about unescorted! His guards had fallen for the very simplest of ruses and, worse, had tried to hide from him what they’d done. That level of unprofessionalism, of course, could not be tolerated. He had simply killed the other guards responsible for that breach, but he needed to set an example. Santiago Cárdenas had therefore been the resource who piloted the machine that created the earthquake in Washington D.C.

Still, Arias hadn’t had the idea of “inviting” his guests until Anita Herrera, supposedly a well-regarded S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, had contacted him to suggest they meet. He had wondered what to do about her and Sam Wilson, but when she agreed to simply walk into a restaurant to offer herself to him? The idea had sprung into his mind fully-formed. He had enjoyed their dinner together, watching her spout her transparent lies and try to seduce him. And afterward, he had decided that it was time to utilize his access to the so-called most powerful man in the world. That had actually been somewhat disappointing, really. Arias had simply called his operative in the White House and the pitiful little President had been brought to him almost immediately, like ordering a pizza.

The two would die, of course, as would Sam Wilson. But not before they got him what he wanted. Because he would never, ever, be made to cower again. He had started with intentions of the purest altruism. All he wanted to do was protect the Earth. Of course, none of his top echelon of advisers had supported him in that. They had always argued that he should announce his mastery to the world, be acknowledged for his power, and be rewarded accordingly. He always replied had not done his work for that. But now they had forced his hand, tried to destroy one of his facilities, and were once again imperiling the world with their reckless stupidity. So they would pay the price. How did these fools, who courted invasion with their own wildly irresponsible actions, dare to stand against the only man who could defend the planet?

Arias was deeply, venomously angry. He allowed his rage to flow like lava through his chest. He was in control now, and he would keep the world safe from further violation. By either alien infestation, or these smug, imperious children who called themselves by the hopelessly vainglorious name of the Avengers.

He left the room where his beautiful machine hummed, striding the short distance down the corridor to the end, where it took a sharp right turn. This was the very lowest level of the facility. At the end of the hallway, there was a wider space, and at the back of that space, a door. Guards stood on either side of that door, although there was really no need. For one thing, there was no way to open that door from the inside. And for another, only Arias and his most trusted lieutenant had the key.

He wanted very much to go into the room, to talk with his guests. He had toyed with the idea of having Anita brought to him, to enjoy her before she piloted the machine. He had no hope that S.H.I.E.L.D. will see reason, of course. He knew that, when he declared himself and demanded that S.H.I.E.L.D. acknowledge him, deliver Sam Wilson to him, and imprison all of the other Avengers and their allies, S.H.I.E.L.D. would refuse. That pompous fool Coulson had enjoyed just enough minor success that he would imagine himself and his organization able to deny Arias what he demanded.

Which meant that Anita, alas, would have to be sacrificed. She would be the resource that would pilot the machine to destroy Washington D.C. But he hoped that, once that lesson has been taught, the United States would see reason and capitulate to save their President and avoid further destruction. Once America, that boastful, swaggering giant, was under his thumb, of course, surrender by the rest of the world was only a matter of time.

Arias stood tall, looking contemptuously at the screen that showed Anita Herrera sitting ungracefully on the floor, the President next to her resting against a wall, leaning weakly against her. He appeared to have regained consciousness, but he did not look well. Arias smiled. What a foolish man, to think that he had power, to think that he was any match for the Custodian of the planet.

It was time. Arias swept out of the area outside the holding room and strode back up the corridor, past the room where his machine glowed and purred as its caretakers tended to it. He entered the crowded control room, pleased to hear an awed hush precede him as he crossed to the center.

He nodded to the technician who had been awaiting his arrival, and the technician flicked a switch. Just like that, Jarman Arias, the Custodian, was broadcasting on every screen in the world currently powered up and connected to any cable television system, any streaming service, or any internet site.

“I am the Custodian of this planet,” he began ponderously. “It is my role to protect her, and you, from invasion from outside. I will protect Earth, and her people. And my first step in doing so is to remove those who would aid alien species to attack us, people who have betrayed their own kind, and will do so again, if allowed. I am talking about S.H.I.E.L.D., and those abominations who call themselves the Avengers.”

“Man, this guy’s kind of a douche,” Clint whispered to Natasha as they watched from their assigned position.

“I have two guests here in the facility where I am currently located.” Arias signaled the technician, who touched a screen that switched the video being broadcast. All those screens were now seeing Anita and the President as they sat on the floor of the room where they were imprisoned.

“That man is the President of the United States. He may look different than you are used to seeing him, but I think his current state is a more accurate reflection of his real status than his usual posturing.”

“This guy wants to talk about posturing? While he’s wearing that?” Bruce muttered to Catherine in the close quarters of their location.

Catherine snorted. “Wanker.”

Arias continued. “That woman’s name is Anita Herrera. She is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., a spy, and a criminal. Today, she is going to do something very important. For you. For humankind. What that is will be determined by S.H.I.E.L.D. and its Director. Agent Herrera will deliver to me two things I demand: absolute control over S.H.I.E.L.D. and Sam Wilson, who fancies himself a hero and calls himself the Falcon. Or, if Director Coulson chooses, Agent Herrera will destroy Washington D.C. Director Coulson, you’ve just been sent instructions for contacting me. Do so within thirty minutes. If you do not, you will have chosen to reduce America’s capital to rubble.”

“I really hate it when I’m right,” Sam snarled into the comms.

“We all do, Falcon,” Steve replied. “’Cause you always have to point it out. You in place?”

“Fuckin’ A.”

Sharon Carter knew a lot of people who were quite skilled at swearing. She actually didn’t know many people who didn’t swear. All of her military friends and acquaintances could swear fluently and creatively, and certainly S.H.I.E.L.D. was peopled by some of the very best. Not one of them could hold a candle to Phil Coulson. She has always admired his ability to combine, twist, and conjugate foul language into lyrical expressions of both satisfaction and displeasure.

Currently, Coulson was marching back and forth before a bank of monitors and instruments, waving his arms to punctuate his expletive-filled reaction to Arias’s announcement. It was an astounding display of wicked eloquence Sharon wished could be recorded for posterity.

She simply stood back to appreciate the performance. They had thirty minutes, and they already knew the answer he would deliver to Arias.

“Is the team in place?” Coulson asks Sharon.

“Getting there, Director. Vision is assisting everyone to access their positions. He reports that sixty per cent of the force is good to go. He estimates the rest will be at their assigned locations in fifteen. He can enter from anywhere, so we’ll be ready in plenty of time.”

“Tell him to do it in ten. This Arias fuckwit pisses me off.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“The Custodian,” he scoffed. “Lamest fuckin’ name. Relinquish S.H.I.E.L.D? My skinny, white ass I will.”

Sharon had to work very, very hard not to look at Director Coulson’s ass as she contacted Vision.

Arias turned to the technicians at various stations in the control room. “Tell me when Coulson makes contact.”

“Yes, Custodian.”

He did another of those turns that billowed his cape behind him satisfyingly, then stalked across the room and down the corridor toward the machine. Arias’s lieutenants followed at his heels. They understood that now was the time to tell him that he had delivered his message powerfully and masterfully. They, of course, did not disappoint him.

“Bring the woman,” he said to Olviedo, his second in command, as they walked. “It’s time to get her prepared.”

When Arias turned into the room with the machine, Olviedo continued down the corridor to the locked room where Anita and the President waited. He approached the thick, metal door, but before he inserted his key, he gave instructions to the guards to be especially careful. The President had been drugged and beaten, but he was still not to be underestimated. The guards nodded and took positions just behind him, so that he missed their momentary eye contact and slight nods to one another.

Neither Anita nor President Burke got up when they entered. Olviedo brusquely ordered Anita to stand, with the oh-so-predictable result that Burke objected. While the guards took a struggling Anita by her arms, Olviedo dealt with him. Burke almost got to his feet, but Olviedo landed a surprisingly powerful blow to his left temple, knocking him to the floor once more. Olviedo was occupied, which meant he was entirely unaware of the activity behind him as he kicked Burke unconscious with one quick, well-placed strike of his boot heel.

Anita fought against the guards’ hold, even as one of them deactivated his nanomask, just long enough to show Anita his face. He signaled her to continue her cries and struggles while the other guard briefly deactivated his mask, while she shouted defiantly and resisted. Continuing to scream and fight was easy enough – she was genuinely terrified of this situation, after all – and it kept Oliviedo from seeing her reaction to the fact that the guards were Markus Turell and Bucky Barnes.

Olviedo re-locked the heavy door and signaled for the guards to bring Anita and follow him.

When she arrived in the machine room, Arias smiled warmly at Anita, as though pleased to see her. Which wasn’t entirely false; she was a beautiful woman, and wearing that torn cocktail dress and fearful expression, she looked like several of his darkest fantasies. She feigned unconcerned disgust at seeing him, which didn’t fool him for a second, but he appreciated the attempt nonetheless. He did like a woman with some fire to her.

“Ah, mi Anita,” he greeted her, taking her hand. She attempted to pull it roughly back, but he had her wrist in a grip tight enough to leave a mark.

“You son of a bitch,” she spat. He stepped backward, pulling her with him, and she fought him all the way past the corner of the machine, where her eyes widened as she was confronted with a coffin-like receptacle extending from the machine at thigh level like a drawer.

That was it for her ability to play along with whatever was about to happen. She turned abruptly away from him, jerking her wrist from his grip. Continuing to move in the same direction, she stepped backward, stomping on his foot with the spiked heel of her shoe while swinging her elbow into his face. He stumbled backward, hands clasping to his head, leaving his abdomen wide open for the vicious kick she launched. Her heel probably would have punctured his flesh, were it not for the ridiculous robe thing he was wearing under his cape.

She would’ve continued to go after him, except that she was suddenly looking down the barrels of two sidearms in the hands of the guards, and covered by half a dozen more from others in the room.

“What are you wearing, Arias, you asshole, Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?” She huffed furiously, breathing heavily from her exertion. “Is the ‘C’ for caricature?”

“Put her in!” Arias roared, injured and humiliated before his men, which made him angry enough to kill her himself, if only he hadn’t needed her to pilot the machine. As it was, he knocked her into the drawer-like receptacle with a vicious backhand that left her bleeding and disoriented.

The guards wrestled her into the drawer-thing, strapping her limbs down as she struggled, spitting and cursing. Then, as she screamed, the reservoir retracted smoothly until Anita was entirely within the machine.

“Custodian, S.H.I.E.L.D. has made contact,” a technician announced. “I can connect you whenever you’re ready.”

“Excellent,” Arias responded, pulling roughly on his robe to straighten it, then running a hand through his hair in an attempt to put himself to rights. Fucking bitch. I will enjoy listening to her die. “Begin the program.”

Several of the technicians began to push buttons and throw switches, while one typed something that appeared as strange symbols on a monitor in the control surface of the machine. One of Arias’s lieutenants brought a long, rectangular metal case towards him, holding the case so that the catch faced him. Arias opened it, revealing the metallic objects Anita had found in his office on Marathon Key.

These objects upset him, just as the orbs did. They were the reason for the long, black gauntlets he wore, although he admitted to himself that fashion, too, played in a role in choosing those. He did not want to touch the implements, tainted as they were from being not of Earth. They horrified him, really, with their repulsive markings and the heavy, shifting weight of them, as though something alive was trapped inside.

The machine was now making a number of sounds, as Anita’s muffled screams and the thumps of her attempts to escape could be heard from the compartment where she was imprisoned. The machine whirred and clicked, whined occasionally, and made other unidentifiable noises as… something happened inside it. Anita’s cries reached a crescendo, then quickly slowed, quieted, and then stopped.

“Connect me with S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Arias ordered imperiously, lifting the first metal object from the case. It was irregularly-shaped, with multiple surfaces, all at different angles and of different sizes. It was strangely luminescent, which seemed impossible, given that it was metal. That was another thing Arias didn’t trust about them.

“Arias-“ Phil Coulson’s voice was heard from several speakers around the room.

“I am the Custodian,” he corrected. “That is how you will address me.”

“Yeah, not likely. I just called to tell you to suck my dick.”

At S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, Sharon stifled a laugh.

“Your Agent Herrera will die, and your capital will be destroyed,” Arias said matter-of-factly.

“Meh. Climate in D.C. sucks, anyway. Maybe they’ll rebuild somewhere better.” There was a soft beeping sound.

Arias whirled toward the technician. “Did we lose the connection?” He really did not want to contemplate the humiliation of having his conquest of the planet hampered by something as pedestrian as technical difficulties.

“Uh… No, Custodian. It, uh… S.H.I.E.L.D. has ended transmission.”

Bucky, standing to the side, very determinedly did not smirk at the idea of Coulson hanging up on this grandiose jagoff.

Arias was incensed, and yanked hard on a small lever near the top of the machine, where it was bathed in the ugly green glow coming from the multiple openings in the level above. The noise of a small motor accompanied the sight of a small hatch opening. Inside the hatch was a simple compartment, the exact size and shape of the implement Arias held in his hand. It took him a moment, given its very irregular surface, to find the correct orientation, but when he did, the object slid home and the compartment lit with more of that eerie green light. Arias shoved the lever back up, and the compartment closed. The sound from the machine changed.

“OK, the feed from Bucky’s body cam is showing Arias starting with those objects,” Sharon said into the comms.

Coulson’s voice could be heard next. “Go time, Cap.”

“About fuckin’ time,” Sam’s exhale came over the comms. Steve didn’t comment on that, because he agreed.

“First wave, go!” Steve ordered.

Arias had just finished placing the second implement into its niche when he heard shocked voices over the sound of the machine. He looked up and was startled to see Vision, that machine-made red abomination, who had just come through the wall. At the same time, Arias could hear shouts and gunshots begin up the corridor, seemingly from the control room.

He did not panic. He knew these adversaries, knew they had freakish powers and would try to resist him. He simply touched the ornately decorated collar at his throat, barked a command and went back to his work, pulling down the third lever perhaps more quickly than he had done the first two. The scream of the ultrasonic weapon filled the air.

Vision ignored everyone in the room, simply tossing them out of the way, as he moved to the side of the machine away from the control surfaces at which the technicians were working. He began trying to tear panels off of the machine. Bullets ricocheted off of him, which actually took out one of Arias’s lieutenants. The rest of the men in the room rushed to find cover.

Arias screamed at them to stay where they were, and to stop firing. There was no cover, and the only one hurt by the bullets was on their side. They would have to find another way to deal with Vision. The pilot’s mind was even now being programmed with visions of the destruction she was to cause once the energy began to penetrate, and then saturate, her body. ��They just needed to keep Vision from doing much damage. He couldn’t, really, not from where he was hacking and tearing at the machines’ cowling. Perhaps he could disable the ultrasonic weapon, but that was a small matter. Arias’s guards would simply have to deal with any intruders. Or not. Once the machine was activated and Washington destroyed, Arias himself had a personal escape route that would allow him to simply leave the facility, and the guards, to their fate.

He continued to place the implements into the machine. Four in, three to go.

“Second wave, go!” Steve’s voice came through the comms.

Like cockroaches, black figures began pouring into the bunker through every access tunnel big enough to fit one, and a few that really weren’t big enough, but Vision was one determined dude, whom none of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents wanted to cross. Once they began entering, the flow of agents in tac gear into the bunker didn’t stop.

Arias’s armed guards fought desperately, and knew the underground facility much better than the agents. Still, the agents’ training and numbers gave them the advantage. Besides which, they had Captain America, Ironman, Hawkeye, the Black Widow, and Ant-man with them. It really wasn’t a fair fight, but the Avengers didn’t want a fair fight. Not today. Arias had kidnapped one of theirs, and they were still steamed from their defeat the day before. The lunch room where poor Santi had first brought Natasha began to be filled with disarmed, frightened bad guys.

Joss and Wanda, along with three other agents, only paid enough attention to Arias’s men to avoid being shot. Their mission was to rescue the President, not to engage anyone except as necessary to get to where he was being held. They encountered a surprising number of Arias’s men who, not knowing that they’d already lost, fought fiercely. One popped out from a side corridor, grabbing Joss by the neck and holding a gun to her head.

“I don’t care who the hell you people are,” the guy said in heavily-accented English. “I just want out. Get out of my way and I won’t-“

That was all he got out before Joss made her move, flipping him over her shoulder. Wanda caught him in mid-air, and he found himself slamming into, then sliding down the opposite wall of the corridor, upside-down, to land painfully on his head. One of the agents took his gun, and they moved on, leaving him for someone else to deal with.

Sam was not happy about having to help herd up Arias’s men before he could get to Anita. He had to keep ruthlessly stomping down thoughts of her as he and his team worked their assigned corridor, one where they didn’t expect to find many men. He’d reluctantly agreed that he was too emotionally involved to have been assigned the role one of the guards - not that Steve was likely to back down on that - but still, it was hard. Sam might have taken some chances he shouldn’t have, and was perhaps rougher than he would normally be with the men he disarmed once they surrendered, but who could blame him? He trusted Vision, Bucky, and Markus Turell to keep Arias from activating that machine, but he wanted like hell to be there, already holding her and getting her the fuck out of this hole.

Arias now had the last implement in his hand, as Vision fought with guards who tried to subdue him physically. He couldn’t use the energy from the mind stone, for fear of hitting the machine. Tearing into its guts was taking longer than they’d planned, because he kept having to consult Bruce and Catherine. The two were monitoring Vision’s progress from nearby, outside the bunker, as to which wires or circuit boards to tear out next. But no matter how much of its guts Vision tore out, it didn’t seem to be stopping whatever the machine was doing. As Arias continued to place the objects, the noise was getting progressively louder, the green glow brighter. Soon, Vision was going to have to give up trying to disable the machine and stop Arias from activating it.

There were many other machines throughout the world. They needed to know how Arias activated them, so that they could destroy them without accidentally triggering them. They had no idea how many sets of those weird objects he’d inserted into it might exist. Perhaps one for each machine. They needed to know how to activate the machines, so they would know how not to. Arias certainly wasn’t going to tell them, no matter what they did to try to convince him. So Vision had to let Arias continue until the last possible second. And he had to be right. If not, Anita’s body would be shot through with a beam of energy much more than capable of killing her.

It was a frenzied, slow-motion race that had those monitoring it at S.H.I.E.L.D. and in the mobile command post near the bunker completely on edge.

Bucky and Markus, meanwhile, had been busy taking out guards and technicians. In keeping with Steve’s usual order, they used non-lethal force wherever they could, and sent many disarmed guards and unarmed technicians flying into the corridor with instructions to get out of the bunker. They wouldn’t get out, of course; they’d meet the rest of the team. But they didn’t know that.

As he tossed two more screaming guards into the corridor, Bucky saw Joss and her team jogging down toward him. In her black tac gear, armed to the teeth, her hair once again in that businesslike French twist, she easily could’ve distracted him if he’d allowed it. He gave her a cheeky salute and a grin, which he was pleased to notice made her flush an adorable pink, and went back to work.

The door to the room where the President was being held needed a key. That was unexpected, but S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers were pretty used to the unexpected. Joss signaled to one of the agents, who began shaping plastic explosives on the hinges. Joss banged on the door and tried to yell to President Burke to get as far away as he could, but on the monitor, he didn’t seem to hear anything through the massive metal door. At least he wasn’t right next to it.

The agent gave them a signal and the team retreated behind the bend in the corridor. At a nod from Joss, she called “Fire in the hole!” and triggered the charges.

Seconds later, the team came around the corner again, to find the door entirely intact. Joss displayed some of the colorful language she’d learned in the Air Force.

Steve and his team had cleaned out the rooms in three of the five corridors, and had run out of space in the room where they were putting those they’d disarmed. The conference room became a second holding cell, once Ironman welded all but one door shut. Now it was time to deal with the armory room. Tactically, it was a lousy situation. Several of Arias’s goons had shut themselves up in the room, with who knew how many weapons and an unknown quantity of ammunition. The team stood just around a turn in the corridor and discussed what to do. Ant-Man couldn’t go in and do recon, because the metal doors were airtight; there was no way for him to get in. Ironman was going to have to burn through the door, which was going to take time and give those inside plenty of time to plan their defense. The only good news was that damned hypersonic weapon was finally disabled. They all triggered the buttons on their collars to turn them off, grateful for the relative silence and an end to the uncomfortable pressure on their bodies.

Arias didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what was going on in the room around him, as the machine reached a painful scream of volume. When Vision saw him place the final object into its niche, Bucky and Markus watched from behind Arias, ignored, as he pushed buttons, turned dials, and flicked switches in a sequence long enough that Bucky was glad for the body cams – he was never going to remember that shit. Arias then looked up, and they heard the unmistakable sound of Anita screaming inside the machine.

That was that. Vision had to be satisfied with the amount of destruction he’d caused the machine so far and turn to Arias. He launched himself over the machine, colliding with Arias just as he touched a final lever on the control console, and sent Arias flying. Markus took Arias’s place at the controls, and simply began reversing the sequence of what Arias had just done. Bucky didn’t have much time to be impressed with his memory, because he was around the side of the machine, removing a short pry bar that had been hanging from his belt. There was a muffled explosion from the hallway, which no one in the machine room paid any attention to, as Vision dealt with Arias, Markus dealt with the machine, and Bucky tried to free Anita.

Joss and Wanda’s team stood looking at the hinges of the door, now devoid of paint but still very much intact.

“I don’t know what I can do here,” Wanda said. “But let me try.”

A stream of scarlet flowed from her fingertips to the door and around it, outlining it and the hinges and latch. It was beautiful, but Wanda scowled. “Not that way, apparently. I think we’re going to have to go old school. Back around the corner.”

“Wait, what are you gonna do?” Joss asked.

“Blow the door in. Brutish, but effective.”

“And probably fatal. That’ll blast the door right into the President. Look where he is.”

On the monitor, the President was, indeed, slumped against the wall, directly across from the door. He was awake and alert; he’d heard the initial attempt to blow the hinges, but he didn’t look like he was going to move anytime soon.

“Anyone got any bright ideas?”

For a few moments, the team stood looking dumbly at the door, minds considering and rejecting option after option.

“Do you suppose…” Joss cocked her head, squinting at the door thoughtfully.

Wanda turned to look at Joss. She could see that Joss wasn’t just staring at the door. She was doing something, and Wanda correctly guessed that she was using her telekinesis somehow. “What is it?”

“Shhhh. Bucky and I discovered I can sort of… feel things, even if I can’t see them. I’m trying to… see how this lock works. It’s not easy by feel.”

“Why?”

“My dad’s a locksmith. I love locks. Used to play with them when I was a kid. I might be able to figure this one out.”

Arias was beyond furious. He was outraged that this magenta horror was trying to stop him from doing what was necessary to protect the world. He was just angry enough to consider the unthinkable. It would, of course, destroy this machine and make it impossible to level the city as he’d planned, at least for a time. Arias truly hadn’t thought he would need to use the Pulse. But he was otherwise unarmed and his entire cadre of lieutenants, guards, and assistants appeared to have abandoned him, except for two. Although now that he considered it, he realized they weren’t doing anything to help him. Rather, they were doing something to his machine while this Vision creature lifted Arias from the floor by his neck.

He sighed dramatically. “The Avengers. Always part of the problem.”

He squeezed the small trigger in his hand.

The men in the armory room apparently decided not to wait to be trapped by the Avengers in an inescapable shooting gallery. Without warning, the door was flung open and heavily armed men boiled out of the room. There was a shocking number of them, and the element of surprise gave them a split second to already be among the Avengers when the team shook off their surprise and began to fight back. Scott disappeared into insect size, and soon every member of the team was dodging bullets and fighting one or more armed men.

Sam’s team threw the last of the men they’d cleaned out of their corridors into the conference room. He didn’t even bother saying anything to the rest of his team, or the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents guarding the conference room door, before sprinting down the corridor toward the machine room.

He didn’t make it.

The door to the President’s cell clicked loudly and a crack appeared between the edge of the door and the frame. “You know what?” Joss smiled. “When this is over? I’m totally rethinking my stance on mutant pride. Might even read some of that Xavier guy’s stuff. Because you gotta admit, that was pretty cool.”

The team quickly burst into the room and Joss threw herself to her knees, sliding the last foot or so toward the President.

“Sir?” She looked into his face, very pleasantly surprised to see that, when he opened his eyes, there was a glittering fire in them.

“You get Arias?” He asked hoarsely.

“Not yet, Sir, but it’s in process.” She reached behind her to accept the first aid kit one of the agents handed her.

At that moment, the comms went nuts. Steve was hollering for backup and there was a host of overlapping chatter that made it clear there was a serious firefight going on.

“Natasha’s down! We need every swingin’ dick up here NOW!”

Joss and Wanda exchanged glances. Joss didn’t even have to ask. “No, he doesn’t usually talk like that. It’s bad. I need to go.”

“Yes. Go,” Joss told her. “Mr. President, can you shoot a gun right now?”

Burke made what Joss assumed was his war face. It was pretty gruesome, especially with the injures to his face. “Absolutely,” he growled.

That was good enough for Joss. She looked up from the bandage she was applying. “All of you. Go. I got the President.”

That was when the lights went out and all of the omnipresent sound of humming power, and the screaming coming from the machine down the corridor ceased abruptly. It was immediately disorienting, the quiet even moreso than the dark.

Vision simply crashed to the floor and didn’t move. The machine continued to glow hideously, which is how Bucky and Markus saw Arias seemingly disappear into the wall. They both ignored everything except the desperate calls for help that had begun erupting from their comms. Saving their team took priority over chasing Arias, or even checking on Vision. He’d be fine; he’d just been powered down.

Bucky swore as he pulled his night-vision goggles from his belt and donned them. This is why he hated when Steve split them up on missions. That dumbass always got himself into shit, which meant Bucky had to get him out of it.

#The Avengers #Captain America #The WInter Soldier #Bucky Barnes #Steve Rogers #Natasha Romanoff #Wanda Maximoff #Vision #Sam Wilson #Phil Coulson

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sending-the-message · 7 years ago

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A Mouse in the House by jonny_z

What do you do when you have a mouse? Get a cat, I suppose. Seems logical. What do you do when the mouse eats the cat? Well, I decided to study the fucker. Turns out, that was not the best idea I’ve had. Ok, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up. I live in what some might consider a shithole. I myself, consider it… rustically charming. So, living in an older house with, shall we say, ample opportunities for renovations, you’re bound to end up with the odd, freeloading quadruped about. It started simply enough: little gnaw marks on my cereal boxes, chew holes through my trash bag, small black dookie pellets littered hither and yon. Evidence that I had an interloper who was attacking my Cinnamon Chex. Nobody, but nobody, fucks with my Cinnamon Chex. You see, I don’t have much anymore, after that Harlot left me heart-broken, penniless and with a 400 credit score. My entire world consisted of work, whiskey and Cinnamon Chex, so anyone attacking one of my three pillars of this shit existence was branded as my nemesis.

The first act was to try and catch the sonofabitch myself. I set out about my dilapidated, three story garbage heap to try and find the fucker’s hiding spot. The problem is, I really didn’t have baseboards to speak of and one would be hard-pressed to find a section of wall, floor or room that didn’t have mouse-sized holes in it. After about a week, none of the traps were sprung and I had all but given up on hunting the cereal thieving bastard. Even laying down flour near his normal “dining area” to try and trace footprints back to his escape hatch was fruitless; it seemed that the flour was too obvious for the conniving little douche. So, I decided it was time to up my game and find myself a natural predator. As fortune would have it, my shithole house was in a shithole neighborhood and I had an abundance of semi-feral felines roaming the alleyways. One never had to wait too long before one of the local Toms knocked up an alley hussy and she spit out a litter of furry hell-spawn. It took little more than a hunk of McGarbage on a boot string to corral one of the wee guttersnipes into my foyer so that I could apprehend him. He was a feisty little shit: the first afternoon that I made him my prisoner, after distracting him with the other half of my McYucky sandwich, I attempted to pet him. He bit me for my trouble. I named him Dick. He didn’t care.

I figured Dick would probably be too full of processed beef abominations to want to sniff out my intruder, but I grossly underestimated the voracity of an infrequently fed feral feline and he set about with little haste tracking around the other critter’s munching ground. Low to the ground, I watched Dick as he slinked about my mismatched wood flooring in search of a live, wriggling meal. He made his way, weaseling up the stairs like a slinky in reverse, on to the second floor. He paused for a minute, regained his bearings, acquainting himself with the yet undiscovered level of my domicile before proceeding up the stairs once more, en route to the attic door on the third floor. I personally never made many trips into the attic. When I had moved in, I noted that it was filled with rubbish and ruined furniture from previous tenants, probably dating back a few decades. Between the mildew smell and queef squeak of the floorboards, I found no reason to ever fully explore that particular room. To be honest, my time was spend drinking on my dirty, jizz and tear stained futon with occasional trips to the commode to shit, shave and shower. But I digress. Dick stopped outside of the attic door, which had a sizeable gap between the base of the old, paint peeled door and the discolored floor boards, the threshold long ago either rotted or kicked away. He got almost flat to the ground and began to let out that low, guttural cat yodel, signaling that his target had been acquired. He stared at the door, tail twitching in a perturbed manner and continued to grumble. “Well,” I thought. “This should be short work.” And I trekked back down the stairs to my futon and cheap bottle of whiskey to drink and sulk myself to sleep, as per custom.

The next morning, I expected to find the gory evidence of mouse murder. Gore, I found in spades. Mouse bits? Not so much. What I did find was a ragged, jagged, gnawed hunk of cat tail just outside of the attic door. This was an unexpected turn of events. So, shit-snacks... I may have grossly underestimated my rodent opponent. What should I do now, I wondered aloud, to no one in particular. I’d like to pause and interject here. As I am writing this, I am more or less sober. This a great deal different than my usual states of incredibly drunk or incredibly hung over. In moments like now, I have the virtue of extreme hindsight and clarity. At the time, this was not the case. Instead of realizing that something was truly amiss with this creature sharing my house, I just assumed that it was more ‘rat’ than ‘mouse’, and being that Dick wasn’t full grown, I just passed it off as a battle royale that ended in the rat’s favor. Perhaps, I surmised, there were two or more rats involved. A gang of rats, even. So, I decided to adjust my tactics and impose a heartier predator to take on this vermin infestation. In much the same manner, using my urban fishing skills, I wrangled two decent sized, surly Toms who clearly regarded me as their lesser and they strutted, nuts swinging, across my floor to the plate of McDysentery that I had prepared for them. For sure, I thought, this would be the end of my invader. After all, I had cereal to think of.

In much the same way, the two Toms skulked their way up to the third floor attic door and yowled at the brood beyond. This time, I thought, I was out to win the game. I grabbed my bottle of turpentine flavored whiskey and proceeded back up the crumbling steps to the third floor where to terrible Toms sat outside the door to my attic. In fact, I grabbed a camping chair and a bag of stale chips to complete the ambiance and prepared for a little, quadrupedal gladiator show. I quickly set up camp and opened the door to the attic to set loose those magnificent bastards and was immediately assaulted by the mold scent and a new, yet undescribed funk. Something deep and rich in its awfulness, with the slight twinges of metal at its outskirts. As if the mold wasn’t bad enough, I imagine this was the rotting remnants of poor little Dick from the other day. The Toms wasted no time and bolted in to the shadows in the back of that rotten attic. Obscured by the foul-smelling darkness, the sounds of mayhem and murder ripped through the otherwise silent room. Munching my stale chips, I wondered if I should grab a flashlight to catch the action as it unfolded. The action, however, lasted as long as a Mike Tyson fight. I could tell by the tone of screeching from my two tough Toms that the tide of the battle had shifted against them. The low, guttural war cry sharply shifted to a pleading cacophony of retreat. Retreat, however, was not on the enemy’s agenda. Briefly, I saw the mangled form of one Tom try and drag his way out of darkness into light, like a soul damned to the pit, groping skyward for the heaven he would never reach. The poor shit was dragged menacingly back into that awful blackness to assuredly be ripped asunder by whatever ungodly creature resided in the blackness.

After the melee, I sat for a long time and pondered what had just occurred. In as little as three weeks, whatever had taken residence in my home had graduated from cereal to kitten to full grown alley cats in as much time. This did not bode well for yours truly. Thoughts of whatever was in that attic haunted me in my half-inebriated state. But, much to my later chagrin, whiskey has the dubious moniker of “liquid courage” for a reason. My thoughts shifted from fear to anger at whatever the fuck thought it could intrude on me, eat my cereal and my fucking cats! It didn’t matter that I had them each for less than a few days; they were like my miserable extended family: a reflection of myself in their shoddy, unloved and disheveled state. An inexplicable rage burbled up inside of me like the first wave of violent bourbon induced vomiting and I leaped from my chair and grabbed my now empty bottle of whiskey to swing like a deadly cudgel against whatever mutant rat was living in my attic.

I burst through the entryway like a demented warrior, bottle raised above my head, yelling like a maniac at top lung and hitting the room at full drunken lumber. As I closed my distance into the shadows, time itself slowed to a heated heartbeat pace. Each moment in those few seconds, etched like a camera obscura forever into my thalamus, no matter how much I try to kill the memory with booze….

First heartbeat

I hit the separation between the light from the landing outside of the attic door to the dark of the inner attic sanctum.

Second heartbeat.

The shadows revealed themselves to me, like a two dollar whore dropping her filthy dress to the cigarette burned carpet of a seedy roadside motel.

Third heartbeat.

From the level of my waist, eight glowing orbs, so red that they were black, shot up at my direction and fixed on me; a predator honing in on its prey. They spoke destruction in their gaze, and that gaze was pointed right at where my giblets were housed.

Fourth heartbeat.

A low, hungry rumble undulated from just below the glowing orbs. It was a song of death. My death. I was man-bacon. And I had stepped directly into the motherfucking frying pan.

Fifth heartbeat.

I shifted my forward momentum to one side of my body and spun around on my heel, parlaying my forward drive into centrifugal force, propelling my terrified ass directly out the way I had come. Suddenly sober, I sprinted with every ounce of fleet footedness I could muster. Pure and primal survival kicked in as I heard the scraping its nails made as it dug into the floorboards for traction, preparing to make me into its next meal and presumably grow to full human height. I managed to grab the door, slamming it shut mere seconds before that whatever-the-fuck-it-was locked its teeth into my ass cheeks. I heard it hit with a thud and grunt as I continued into the half functioning bathroom. See, like a proper loser, I kept bottles of whiskey in about every room just in case I found my idle hands wanting. Opening the top, I ripped my shirt off and stuffed it into the open maw of the whiskey bottle (after taking a solid pull from it, of course, because fuck sobriety right now) and produced the Zippo my bitch of an ex had bought me one birthday. Lighting it with a practiced flourish, I set ablaze the Molotov cocktail right as that eight-eyed carnivore discovered the concept of doorknobs.

With the skill that only middle relief pitching in little league could bring me, I hucked that flaming bottle at the mass that held those goddamned eyes. In a magnificent explosion of whiskey fueled fire, the cocktail hit home and set that shit-weasel ablaze. It screamed bloody murder and began to thrash back to the shadows of the attic, lighting the old boxes and musty furniture in its retreat. As the fire quickly spread from shit heap to shit heap, the creature made it’s exit through the window, screeching as it fell. I paused a moment to catch my breath, smiling like an idiot in victory until I realized that my house would probably burn around me if I didn’t get the hell out of dodge, post haste.

Grabbing another bottle of whiskey on my way out, I walked away like the closing scene of a John Woo film, building artistically blazing behind me. I paused, a sudden thought occurring to me… so few times in my life had I fought a battle and won, that it seemed a waste not to revel in my one victory a bit. I took a hearty swig of my dime store booze and sauntered cockily over to the rear of my flaming house to physically piss on my fallen foe.

As I rounded the corner, I saw in full, clear view what I had unwittingly vanquished. Lying twitching on the ground was what looked like a rejected HR Geiger sketch of a spider: the size of a small dog with a pale, hairless, smooth white body, dagger like legs and menacing mandibles which were still soaked in the blood and viscera of my poor, poor pussy cats. I could see that my flaming onslaught had melted three of its eight eyes, but, other than that, it looked more dazed than wounded. Staring at it, swaying drunkenly, I lost myself momentarily in the wickedness of the thing. What a perfect predator: quiet, sleek, ruthless… I wondered for a moment how large it would grow if left unchecked. It began to stir, ever so slightly, proving to me that I had indeed only stunned it. Any moment now, it would shake off the haze like the end of any of my lonely, whiskey soaked nights, courtesy of a heartless succubus who took my time, my money, my happiness and left me for some cocksucker with a better job and a sports car… And then, the angel on my shoulder was smited by the devil on my other as a dark grin cracked over my face, growing until my teeth bared and my skin began to crack.

A box, some tape, a note and a short drive was all it took. She always liked surprises. And I recall, she often told me she was fond of my eyes… well, I have new eyes to show her, and those eyes scream out murder.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

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