The glow in Natasha's eyes dimmed—first flickering, then vanishing altogether.Her body went limp in Clint's arms, the tension draining from her frame as the demonic threads that had once obeyed Loki's will turned to smoke and scattered in the air.
"Yeah… that's it," Clint breathed, lowering her gently to the deck. "You're done fighting, Nat."
He brushed a strand of hair from her face, exhaling shakily. "You always were stubborn as hell."Viper's shadow falcon hovered above him for a moment before fading into embers, its task complete.
Then the ship shook again—a deep, echoing boom rolling through the corridors. Clint glanced up, frowning. "Guess the party's not over."
He adjusted Natasha in his arms and rose, his demonic wings fading into ash. "Hang in there. I'll come back for you," he murmured, laying her beside a bulkhead before drawing his bow again and sprinting toward the next deck.
On the other side of the Helicarrier, chaos reigned.
Steve Rogers and Tony Stark were pinned down near the shattered observation platform, fighting to stabilize the carrier's control relay before it went into a death spiral. Sparks showered from the ceiling, and the deck plates trembled beneath them with every blast.
"Cap, we're losing altitude fast!" Tony shouted over the comms, his armor half-charred, the HUD flickering. "If I don't reroute the power feed, this whole thing's going down in less than two minutes!"
"Do it!" Steve yelled, blocking a surge of enemy fire with his shield before slamming it forward into a blast door. The impact rang like thunder, scattering several mind-controlled crew members back into the hall. "I'll hold the line!"
"Yeah, that's what I was afraid you'd say," Tony muttered, diving back into the wiring.
Further down the command deck, Maria Hill fought with calm precision—but the opponent before her was anything but human.
Further down the command deck, Maria Hill fought with calm precision—but this time, she wasn't fighting alone.
Behind her, a faint, ghostly shimmer filled the air—a pair of spectral wings unfurling like liquid light. Her demonic familiar, Luma—the Phantom Demon Butterfly, hovered close, its translucent wings rippling with psychic energy.
Through their link flowed a steady pulse of telepathic power—sharp, disciplined, and lethal when needed. It was what allowed Hill to stand her ground amid the chaos.
"Focus, Maria," Luma's voice echoed inside her thoughts—calm, silken, and edged with that faint hum of psychic resonance. "Three signatures ahead—former agents under Loki's control. Their neural patterns are unstable. They'll break if you strike too hard."
"I'm not planning to kill them," Hill muttered, crouching behind a sparking console. "But I'm not letting them overrun the deck either."
The first controlled agent rounded the corner, weapon drawn, eyes glowing faintly blue. Hill moved before he could aim—rolling low and snapping off two precise shots. The stun rounds hit center mass, and the man went down hard, weapon clattering away.
Two more came from the opposite side—faces blank, movements mechanical. They opened fire, bullets tearing through consoles and walls. Sparks rained down as Hill ducked behind a support beam.
"Now, Luma," she whispered.
Her familiar's wings flared wide, flooding the command deck with a faint, shimmering light. Reality bent for an instant—reflections twisting and multiplying as Luma's Illusion Creation ability took hold. Phantom copies of Hill scattered across the deck, darting between cover and drawing the enemy's fire.
Confused, the possessed agents turned and fired at the wrong targets, bullets passing harmlessly through afterimages. Hill used the opening, surging forward with her baton crackling with low-voltage charge. She struck one across the wrist, disarming him, then swept his legs out and drove an elbow into the other's chest. Both went down before they could react.
"Careful," Luma warned, her voice steady in Hill's mind. "Loki's influence feeds on confusion. He'll strengthen their link the longer this lasts."
"Then we don't give him time," Hill replied, glancing at the nearby holographic console. It flickered with red warnings—multiple security locks disabled. "Can you suppress the psychic field?"
"Yes," said Luma, wings beating slower, their glow deepening to violet. "But it will take focus."
"Do it."
The air rippled around them. Luma's psychic veil expanded, flowing across the bridge like invisible waves. The faint blue in the agents' eyes began to fade, their bodies going limp as the control slipped away. One by one, they collapsed—alive, unconscious, freed from Loki's command.
Hill exhaled slowly, lowering her weapon. "That's all of them."
Luma's wings dimmed, her form flickering faintly in the low light. "The interference is receding. Loki's reach on this deck is gone."
"Good," Hill said, straightening. She looked around at the fallen agents—none dead, just stunned. "We hold this position."
Through the bond, she felt Luma's quiet pride, warm and steady.
Hill holstered her weapon and scanned the corridor one last time. Smoke hung thick, but no movement remained. The chaos that had engulfed the deck moments ago was now replaced by silence and the faint hum of the ship's stabilizers trying to recover.
"Alright," she said into her comm, voice composed again. "Deck secured. No casualties. Proceed with containment."
As Luma's wings folded behind her and faded from sight, Hill took one final look at the unconscious agents and muttered under her breath—"Not on my watch."
The other agents went back on work to stabilize the Hellicarrier.
"Stabilizers online!" one of the technicians shouted as systems flickered back to life. The Helicarrier's tilt began to even out, though smoke still rose from several damaged panels. Hill exhaled sharply, giving one last glance to the restrained agents before turning back toward the command platform.
"Get more men down here. Secure the lower decks," she ordered. "And someone tell Banner we need containment protocols ready just in case."
Then she opened her comm link.
"Captain, status?"
Static crackled for a moment before Steve's voice came through, steady but strained. "Engines three and four are still offline, but we've stopped losing altitude. Tony's working on the manual restart. I'm heading down to give him cover."
Hill's eyes darted to the monitor showing the engine bay feed. Through the smoke and flickering sparks, Steve was already sprinting along the catwalk, shield raised against falling debris. Below him, Tony hovered near the damaged turbine, his armor scorched but still functional.
"Come on, big guy," Tony muttered to himself, rerouting power through his gauntlet as he aligned the rotary coils.
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