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While Harry had been attempting to question Loki, before ultimately deciding to get on with it and release the soul of the twisted god's wife to do what she would with him, the invasion of the Earth progressed quickly. The number of dimensional doorways was not ideal in terms of pushing through the majority of the Chitauri forces all at once, but, the Chitauri were still old hands at their preferred method of conquest, and the Black Order members were extremely adaptable as well.
Thanos himself planned to wait until the second wave before going through. This was not because he didn't wish to be involved, nor was it a sign of the Mad Titan's ego. Rather, it was a strategic decision decided instantly as the six dimensional gates opened around the monstrous, gas giant-sized, artificial planet that was the Chitauri's homeworld. "I will remain here, where I can most easily move to counter the one called Potter… or assault the Phoenix Force's Avatar," Thanos explained to his followers, a small smile tugging at his purple visage for a moment as he envisioned the painful deaths of both the one who had wounded him so severely and the servant of that which was the opposite of his Lady.
Behind Thanos, a viewing port over three hundred feet wide looked out over the Chitauri mobilization. The writhing mass of soldiers was rapidly organizing into six armies, The race's own military officers, to a one experienced with planetary assaults, were more than up to the task of taking command for the initial movement through the gates. "Remember, slaughter all who stand or cower before you, but the Avatar is mine. I must be the one to end it, the one to kill that which has been imbued with the opposite Force of My Lady Death."
As one, Gamora, Nebula and the rest of the Black Order knelt, bowing their heads, and Thanos raised a hand. The gesture was half-benediction, half gesture of dismissal. "GO! Cleanse this world in my name and for the glory of Death!"
Without pause, all but Black Dwarf—who was more enforcer than general—left quickly, making for the functioning teleportation areas. Left behind, Black Dwarf would teleport to join the Skrull Fleet, ostensibly to ensure that Len'Dok had a super powered individual to set against any such sent out to fight them. More importantly, he would insure the Skrull did not suddenly lose their courage.
And so it was that the telepath Ebony came through the main teleportation window. He was one of the best generals among the Black Order, however, unlike the others, his powers and abilities leaned to the defensive just as much as offensive actions. While Gamora or Proxima Midnight were warriors with few equals, only Ebony Maw could keep an area as well defended as he could subjugate it.
Now, as Ebony and the Wrecking Crew watched, the gash in the sky leading into the void between dimensions slowly expanded, and from the blackness came several hundred large metallic… creatures. Even from a distance they were clearly an amalgamation of flesh and metal, it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. They looked like a type of piscine for the most part, although many appeared more eel-like in nature, having far longer bodies than their fellows. Each had their joints covered by iron plates that shifted and moved organically like scales on a fish and, regardless of size, there were six cannons embedded into their sides almost like the broadsides of a warship.
"…What are we looking at here?" Bulldozer asked, frowning in puzzlement. While obviously huge from their discernable size even from such a distance, the fish-metal-creature things looked more like aerial tanks rather than jetfighters.
His confusion was only increased as seconds later, hundreds of open-air hover vehicles flew out of the breach and began to circle the larger creatures. Each of these vehicles held a group of three aliens riders, two manning guns of some kind, which were set to the sides of a central raised area on pintle mounts, while the third 'drove.' As the various trios flew closer to ground level, an energy field of some kind flickered into existence around each flying vehicle.
Which probably means it will take a lot of firepower to knock down, cause I don't think those things have the range of missiles or rockets, Bulldozer thought to himself, scratching at his chin. They might look faster than jetfighters, but if they don't have the range… Regardless of the string of decisions that had led him to this point, he'd been a marine at one point and understood modern warfare and weaponry far better than the others who didn't care about weapons and vehicles unless they were somehow dangerous to them.
"You see before you the Army of the Displaced, the Chitauri. They are the foot soldiers of my Lord Thanos. Centuries ago, they reached the extremely logical conclusion that my Lord is a god as a species, and now worship him as he deserves to be; the final arbiter of life and death," Ebony answered, his tone making the statement seem mundane despite it's content. "You see before you our armored fist. Tremble, and be grateful that you have chosen the correct side."
The three surviving Wrecking Crew members could only nod, watching as from behind the first echelon of Chitauri came what looked like a pair of pyramids. That is, until they rotated slightly, revealing that they were not in fact pyramids, but pyramidal structures stuck to a floating sphere. As the sphere and pyramid attachments floated through the portal, the structure emitted some sort of diffuse yellow energy beam down into the ground. The beam didn't seem to do anything at first, and all three humans wondered if perhaps it was some sort of scanner.
Moments later, the strange thing touched down, and instantly, thousands of mechanical arms grew from the sides of the pyramid, each and every one reaching down. Soon the sides of the triangle opened, and out from the blackness inside came several conveyor belts of enormous size that dug down into the ground. Metallic saws the size of houses, and hundreds of other tools beside, appeared from the structure, stabbing into the ground or moving into positions all around the initial landing area. It appeared to be setting up what looked like some kind of construction site, although for what reason none of the earthers could tell immediately.
Meanwhile, different looking skimmers were now touching down, hundreds of them, each carrying large, truck-sized balls of metal, on top of which eight twin-barreled guns could be seen, sticking out of the balls back in a row. As each skimmer touched down, the metal balls started to move, revealing themselves to actually be some sort of creature with longish snouts and large mandibles, at the front, looking for all the world like cyborg stink beetle perhaps. The bugs instantly went to work digging into the ground all around the main portal, seeming not to care a bit whether they dug through dirt or stone. Soon enough, only the eight guns of each bug themselves could be seen, twisting independently as they aimed up into the sky.
"Anti-air guns. Out here, with the mountains to move through, air's the only area you're possibly vulnerable," Bulldozer muttered, his military training letting him realize what was happening.
With a wordless sneer, Ebony Maw gestured for the Wrecking Crew to step onto a series of skimmers that had just touched down in front of the trio. Each came complete with a driver, but instead of the established two gunners, there was space at the back for each of Wrecking Crew. "For now, I am to serve as commander here. You will assist me. Soon, still more portals will be activated nearby, expanding this landing zone outward by increasing orders of magnitude. As that occurs, still more of the Chitauri will come through, and once enough have gathered, we will begin offensive operations from this point."
Wrecker nodded, smiling faintly to himself. Seeing all this and knowing it was just the beginning, Wrecker felt like they really were going to be on the winning side of this. After the past few weeks, and Piledriver's death, it was a good feeling to have. And all this is without even meeting this Thanos guy. Who knows how powerful he must be if he was able to force this guy and Loki into following him? Even the Custodes won't be able to fight whole armies and superpowered opponents at the same time.
"So after all of that, you're just using this portal as your incursion point?" Thunderball demanded, still somewhat confused and very angry at how Ebony had cowed them before. "What was all the effort of setting up other portals for then?!"
"Oh no," Ebony chuckled condescendingly, a supercilious smirk twisting onto his face for a moment. "Make no mistake, we are using those as well." His following laugh was perhaps the least humorous sound that any of Wrecking Crew had ever heard.
But all of them knew by this point that the die was well and truly cast. The new overlords of the world would take over, and the three of them would live like kings above whatever remained. Or the invasion would be thwarted, and the Wrecking Crew would be remembered as the ultimate quislings, traitors to their entire race rather than merely a single nation. It was literally all or nothing for the three of them, and they knew it.
OOOOOOO
True to Ebony Maw's words, the other portals that the Wrecking Crew had set up were being used as well. Far from each other, but with disturbing synchronicity, bolts of lightning strikes launched through each just as the main gate was opened. Though singularly commanded by Thanos' Black Order, the groups who emerged from the portals all had slight differences, although that hardly mattered to the civilians of the cities in which the portals had been set up.
And although the placement of the other five portal beacons was somewhat random, that didn't mean their locations were without any merit. For example, the beacon in Paris allowed the Chitauri to target not only a huge civilian population numbering in the millions, but also the capital of a country all in one.
Nebula, the one in charge of this invasion route, was uncaring of this fact at first. It hardly mattered to her if her portal dropped her in a hamlet or a royal palace, the end result would always be the same. As she flew out of her portal, the blue-skinned cyborg shrieked at the top of her metallic lungs, "KILL them all, slaughter the humans in the name of Lord Thanos!"
At her command, her contingent of Rippers, the massive flying beast-like cyborgs that had been noted by Bulldozer, dove down into the city. Immediately, innumerable screams rose into a cacophony, the normal background noise of a big city dying as the beasts crashed into buildings in mass, smashing them to rubble and killing hundreds of civilians in a matter of seconds. Then they began to fire, firing plasma bolts the guns on their sides while larger beams blasted out from the maws of the Rippers. Fire spread quickly as civilians were gunned down, cars exploded, and carnage raged.
Above the bloodshed, Nebula smiled, finding her work done so far as good.
Yet even as the first group through the portal began the culling, Nebula knew that she had quite a large task ahead of her. She, of all of the Black Order, knew the price of failing the Mad Titan. I will not fail! Not here! Not again! Activating one of the features from a past… gift… from her Lord, she snarled as information began to flash across her eyes, pulled from the local communications structure.
As fast as thought, the blue-skinned cyborg disseminated the information thus far gleaned. Blinking as her organic neurons caught up to her superior artificial ones, Nebula now understood that she had arrived in a city called Paris, which was in a country called France.
The knowledge the invaders had gathered on the humans through captured radio signals and chasing down old light to discern what had occurred in the various space battles fought in Sol. From the radio signals they had discovered that this species was still divided into different nations, which would each individually attempt to fight off the invasion if given the opportunity. If possible, it would be best to quell that kind of thing quickly, as Lord Thanos would no doubt grow displeased if there were any delays in his plans caused by uppity insurgents. And just Nebula's luck, according to her own analysis, this nation called France appeared to have one of the larger, most professional armies on the little rock of a planet. Perhaps it might not even be a complete pushover?
Strangely, many humans didn't seem to think so highly of this France, from what she was seeing on the communications network, at least. There was an odd, illogical dysfunction in many of their beliefs regarding the country that Nebula didn't quite understand, but in all honesty she didn't need to in order to achieve her objectives. And truthfully, this positioning put her closer to the island nation called Great Britain than any of her fellows; glory ripe for the taking. Their data mining had previously discovered that the island nation had been one of the first allies of the most dangerous of the humans, Harry Potter, and his faction of superpowered individuals.
Nebula hastily sent a signal back through the portal, demanding additional troops and the Super Skrull. This particular Skrull had mastered his race's shape shifting ability to such a degree that it could mimic the aspects of the Fantastic Four, which made him extremely useful in situations such as this.
As she awaited for her orders to be carried out, Nebula dove down to join the slaughter, a wide, mad grin stretching across her face. She gunned down any of the pestilent humans she could see, of which she was quite spoiled for choice. I must show my Father that I am eager for this work, I must!
Swinging her power staff about, bolts of plasma flashed out to strike a few fleeing humans even as she physically stepped forward and smashed several more with the ends of her weapon in quick succession. So powerful were the blows that the humans she struck, a middle-aged male, a young female, and a child, just came apart, blood and viscera flying everywhere.
Astonishingly, upon seeing the young female being culled, a young male screamed and charged forward, attempting to grapple with her of all things. The foolish human died to a single punch, but it amused her nonetheless.
And that male would not the last to charge headlong into death. Three others soon followed his example, shouting in their native tongue as they came at her. Two grabbed up larger pieces of debris to use as weapons while a third hurled bricks at her. A fourth, part of a martial force perhaps, fired at her with a small kinetic projectile gun that fit into his hand.
Nebula caught the brick with ease, crushing it while laughing in glee as the bullets bounced off of her, ricocheting and killing two other humans that had been trying to flee. Quickly getting over her bout of humor, Nebula then launched herself forward, slaying the pair closing with her before firing at the other two, killing them with precise shots from her power staff. "Fools! No matter how many of you come at me, it matters not. The cleansing is here!"
Within a minute, the brave amongst the immediate crowd of Parisians surrounding Nebula were slain, along with dozens of others. Far from satisfied, , she took to stalking through the streets next, slaying any unfortunate soul she came across while around her the Chitauri did the , more and more of the Chitauri came through the portal, spreading out quickly as they received orders.
Download complete. Military data analysis commencing… complete. Actionable summaries will now be displayed. Grimacing at the sudden internal intrusion from the computer part of her brain, Nebula turned away from her task, taking to the air once more via her skimmer. As she gained altitude, she glanced down at the now burning city, staring at one of the Rippers as it smashed into and through some strange arch-like structure that had sat in the center of a transportation hub. All around, she could see evidence of hundreds of the military units within the city had gathered and summarily slaughtered. I commend their speedy response if nothing else, but not their common sense.
Shaking that errant thought away, Nebula turned her mind to the data packets her hacking software had automatically pulled from the native communication network.
Just then, the Skrull super soldier appeared. Pausing her data debrief, Nebula moved over to the soldier's skimmer, which could move faster in a straight line than the Skrull—whose name she hadn't bothered to learn—could move on his own. Wireless connecting to the skimmer's onboard computer, she downloaded the information her had discerned into it. "Take a force to this base, then move towards the nearest ocean. The next base you'll hit is naval in nature, destroy the ships there."
The Skrull Super-soldier slammed a fist into his chest in salute and raced off, immediately being followed by more than a hundred basic skimmers. With him gone, Nebula turned over control of the forces within the city to one of the Chitauri officers, ordering the Chitauri to continue the slaughter. "Kill them. Kill them all and protect the portal. Send the skimmers out to counter any response forces that crop up and use the Rippers to destroy the city. I will engage the nearest military base myself, but no doubt others will begin responding soon."
The Chitauri bowed obsequiously, and Nebula gathered her own strike force of several hundred skimmers, racing away from the city.
However, even as she flew away from the besieged city of Paris, Nebula happened to spot something in the distance. Using her enhanced vision… courtesy… of her Lord Father, she just caught a glint of metal as something crested over the horizon. Half a second later, she realized it was rockets she was seeing, flashing towards her and the skimmers escorting her. "Evade!"
But she was too late.
In an instant, four skimmers exploded, their shields unable to take more than two of the human missiles. Nebula's instinctual dodge barely saved her from one that instead shot right over her head. Unfortunately, that maneuver placed her right in the path of a second, which exploded against her skimmer's shields, collapsing them in a flare of actinic energy. "Evade! Evade! Spread out and close! Use your Over Drives you useless fucking bugs!"
The missiles, which had come from now visible jetfighters, gave the humans a very nasty edge in range, but at Nebula's command, the Skimmer's Over Drive activated and they collectively shot forward, instantly hitting Mach 3. The pilots of the French jets were stunned, one of them even spiraling into the ground after being sent out of control by one of the skimmers passing it too closely. Others reacted better, evading the initial charge, but Nebula and the Chitauri soon opened fire on them with their energy-based weaponry at close range, and the French Mirage 2000s had no shielding like the invaders did.
After a bloody scramble, the last surviving jet fighter rocketed away at a steep angle, and Nebula scowled furiously. Calling her troops back to her and radioing back to the Super Skrull. "Triple the size of your forces and add a Ripper to each. The fucking humans are reacting far too damn fast, and while their weapons are primitive, they can still pack a punch. I will continue on. I will make these fools pay for even having the temerity to believe they have a chance against us!"
OOOOOOO
In the Russian city of Severomorsk, the invasion's forces were led by Black Order member named Proxima Midnight. She was a blue-skinned alien, one who wore extremely skintight clothing of mostly black, with a white area over her chest with golden highlights, over an equally extremely svelte body. She also wore a helmet with something that looked like horns, or perhaps a strange plumage, curving upwards from its forehead.
But perhaps Proxima's most striking feature was her eyes, which glowed an eerie white. At a glance they appeared somewhat like Storm's whenever she used her mutant powers. But upon closer inspection, unlike the queenly heroine, whose eyes were always emotional even when she used her powers in battle, Proxima's eyes were simply… blank white. There were no windows to the soul to be found in those glowing orbs. There was instead… nothing; not Nebula's psychopathic joy in destruction, not Thanos' elation in death, not even a simple delight in exercising her own power. If eyes truly showed the soul of the being behind them, then Proxima Midnight's soul came from the Abyss itself.
Proxima had not been involved in the war against the Brood. She, along with her husband Corvus Glaive, were amongst the most intelligent members of the Black Order, as well as the most dangerous physically, and had thus been kept in reserve by their Lord as he burned the infection from his new Empire. That was often how it happened, one or the other managing things if their Lord were ever away. Thanos trusted them to act without his direction in as intelligent and ruthless a manner as was needed.
Whereas Nebula became personally involved with the death and destruction she wrought upon the city of Paris, Proxima was more controlled, something that began with the mix of troops she'd chosen to bring in first. Only four large Rippers for her first wave, which she'd then sent not into the city itself, but out to destroy the shipyards and the remnants of the Russian's Northern fleet, such as it was. They would then return to the city and aid the following waves. Since the city she found herself in was, according to the data networks of the natives and the severe nature of the battle below, the center of this country's local military command, it made sense to Proxima that the insects who existed here would be desperate to retain control of it. Her positioning would allow the Chitauri to take the defensive for a time instead of expend resources hunting down more vermin.
To that end, Proxima quickly brought in thousands upon thousands of skimmers of all types and makes, including the Chitauri's version of large hover-trucks and anti-air units. The hover-trucks were far slower than their smaller brethren, obviously, but they could carry quite a lot of material in return. And so, while some infantry squads descended into the streets of Severomorsk, others began to emplace anti-air artillery around their position. Those civilians who didn't fight back would make for hostages to keep the humans from using weapons of mass destruction, or even fight back at all within the city. Later waves would focus further on anti-air units.
All of this Proxima had already set up with the Chitauri officers, and thus could leave them to handle, for there was one way she and Nebula were alike; they both enjoyed getting their hands dirty. Now, even as a third wave of giant flying creatures appeared through the dimensional rift, Proxima led out nearly half of her available skimmers in a single assault force. They would head to and destroy the nearest military bases beyond the city limits while the remaining infantry on hand would enter the country's underground cave system, the existence of which Lord Thanos and the others only knew very little about thanks to the human's radio signals.
The fighting underground there would no doubt be particularly violent, but neither Proxima nor the Chitauri cared. This was a holy crusade to the Army of the Displaced, a religious act devoted to Lord Thanos—no price was too high to pay. And as for Proxima?
I will build a mountain of human skulls for my Lord Thanos. And while my troops do so en-masse, I will contribute the old-fashioned way, one slaughtered weakling at a time, Proxima thought coldly as she led her forces forward.
OOOOOOO
While Russia had been gravely battered and depleted by the Eurasian War, that didn't mean that it was entirely without protectors. As Proxima Midnight led her forces out from Severomorsk, those remaining defenders were rallying, and quickly.
It might've been true that they hadn't been able to put as many of their forces on alert as France or America had, what Russia did have was an already established industrial base hidden in the underground tunnels built during the buildup to the previous war. And not one, but two preexisting powered armor programs: the Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man suits.
Neither were as easy to fabricate as the ODM suits, or as powerful as Tony Stark's Iron Man suit. Nor could they be uniquely suited for individual wearer as the suits that Carol and Wyatt, or Uzume and Coyote, used. Yet even now, the Russians could still make them, even if doing so went against agreements made with other powers after the Eurasian War. In fact, several suits of each had still been commissioned after the war, a fact that would surprise no one. After all, when had Russia ever kept to any agreement it wasn't forced to at gun point?
So it was that two Titanium Men and four Crimson Dynamos were soon flying through the air toward the invaders. As they closed, the radar that had been keeping track of the aliens pushing out from Severomorsk abruptly ceased to return any readings. "I am no longer getting any return from my radar," The leader of the squad, callsign Rasputin, stated. "Are any of you?"
"Negative," came the response from the others, and Rasputin cursed. "Is it something portable, or something to do with this strange portal specifically? Spread out, break sunward, begin basic recon."
"Should we send for mundane reinforcements?" Asked one of the Titanium Men. "If we're being ordered to reclaim a whole city we need more boots on the ground. Even with their upgrades our suits can't be in more than one place at a time."
"Reports from the Northern Joint Strategic Command have stated that enemy troops had been spotted leaving Severomorsk via their own flight units, some sort of odd hover-type devices. Those are our primary targets right now. After we destroy them, we'll spearhead a force to retake the city," Rasputin reminded everyone. "Until then, any unpowered would only dead weight."
The airwaves fell silent for a moment before one of the Crimson Dynamo's, callsign New-boy (he'd wanted it to be Lenin, but that had been vetoed most harshly by his more senior fellows. He was lucky not to be called Chernozopi or FNG) spoke. "Do you think it's the Potter? Has he finally begun his conquest of the world as we have feared?"
"Nyet, and you need to stop taking that magazine tripe you like to read as real news," The second Titanium Man, callsign Wall, growled out. "Why would the Potter need military force to take over the world? His politics and economic strongarming are doing that for his new Empire all too well already."
"Then it is aliens," murmured another member of their six-man team, callsign Sonja, for she was the only woman in the Armored Arms Corps. "Another group of aliens have decided Mother Russia makes for good target."
"Hmph. We will know when we—" Rasputin began, only to be interrupted.
"Contact! Contact, numerous small craft visible in the distance, eight o'clock."
All six of the power armor troopers turned their heads to the indicated direction, staring towards the contact the last member of the Dynamos, callsign Spinner, was frantically pointing toward.
Flying out from Severomorsk on strange floating disks were entities that were clearly alien in nature. Each disk had two gunners to the back on either side, with a pilot at the front. They were moving quite fast as well, perhaps just above Mach one, despite not appearing at all aerodynamic or even having any defense against the friction of wind pressure.
"Crimson Dynamos, I want us to get some altitude. Titanium Men, get their attention. Draw them further to the ground. Fall back slowly, if possible, to allied forces." There weren't many of those left, but some tank and infantry divisions were still out there, and all of them had anti-air capability. They'd better, as rebuilding its anti-air might had been a high priority for Russia after the Eurasian War, least any opportunistic neighbors get any ideas.
With that, the six-man team broke apart along its natural divisions. The Titanium Men dove down, leveling out closer to the ground and pushing their speed forward while the Crimson Dynamo's flew straight upward, gaining as much altitude as they could. Power suit or plane, height was life in a dogfight.
Moments later, the two Titanium Men engaged. First, from over their shoulders they pulled out large rotary cannons that looked as if they'd been cannibalized from some sort of anti-air gun from the Soviet Era. The rounds they fired were large, and not very quick, but had extremely good range.
Opening fire, they immediately downed two of the alien hovercrafts, causing energy shields to flare up around several others as they slowed down. The only exception was a blue alien woman, her form distinct from the rest of the invaders. She instead dove through the lines of fire, as if she barely felt them, as she sped towards the Russians so quickly that they had trouble adjusting their aim.
"Keep firing, I'll take her on," Wall growled out, dumping his shoulder cannon and switching to his suit's inbuilt energy guns. Without pause, he began blasting at the incoming woman.
But once more the alien woman ignored his fire as if it was nothing, and a moment later her fist crashed into Wall's hastily raised arm. The blow hurled the Titanium Man down towards the ground, where he rolled upon impact and burst back skyward, thrusters firing at full power. Snarling as he fired again, Wall charged the alien bitch while also releasing newly designed constrictive force rings to try and incapacitate her.
Snarling herself, the alien woman snatched up a thin, ovoid object from her waist, which enlarged into a spear once activated. The spear's wicked edge barely formed before it cut through the constrictive ring, the solid-state energy falling away in a screech of sparks. Whirling under Wall's punch she countered smoothly and he barely managed to block a blow that would have taken him in the chest. He still suffered from the force of the attack though.
As his partner continued to fire at the incoming aliens above the alien woman, Wall once more found himself hurled off his feet, his armor's arm dented badly and his real arm throbbing in pain despite its metal shell and inner padding. Then, his eyes widened and he roared, "Bunker, watch out!"
The warning came too late. The end of the woman's spear glowed, and a blast of blue-green energy spat out of it, cutting through the air and one of Bunker's legs just above the thigh as if a laser had hit a chunk of butter. The other Titanium Man's armor had been absolutely no defense against the superheated energy beam of the enemy, something that appalled Wall almost as much as watching his friend be maimed in such a way.
"ARGGHHHhhh!" Bunker screamed, falling out of the sky to crash to the ground. The pain of his sudden wound had knocked him unconscious for a few seconds, but then, upon crashing to the earth, he'd woken right back up and found he was in no better of a position.
At that point, the Crimson Dynamos finally arrived from above, four avenging angels dyed in red. Diving down into the aliens from above, they scattered the group, knocking more than half out of the sky at the same time.
"Attack that cunt from long-range, she has super strength and insane durability!" Wall bellowed. "The bitch got Bunker!"
Seeing this, Rasputin ordered his fellows to fire their smoke rockets. Once the battlefield had been covered in the smoke screen, he dashed forward and down, grabbing up their injured fellow. "Just how durable is she?"
"She barely noticed my cannons or the energy guns," Wall snarled back. "And her hits dented my fucking arm!"
Cursing, Rasputin could only watch as beams of energy blasted out from the woman. She was seemingly firing blindly from within the smokescreen, but even so nearly clipped Sonja and New Boy more than once. "Damn it! Retreat. We will need to work wi—"
That was as far as he was able to get before the alien woman appeared in front of him, having been drawn by the sound of his voice. Crossing the distance between where she had been and Rasputin was within an instant, the Crimson Dynamo's armor proved no defense as her spear stabbed straight through his chest. "GUUUGGQ!"
Desperately, Rasputin reached out, but the woman was already pulling her weapon back, and the shaft of the spear was too long for him to reach her. He fell out of the sky, watching as his life's blood dripped out of the gaping hole in his chest as the woman turned on his fellows. "R-Run…" he rasped. "Run…"
They didn't. They didn't get the chance.
Moments later, Proxima Midnight pulled her spear from the head of the man whose leg she'd bisected near the start of the skirmish, her lips twitching in some faint mockery of amusement. "All armor, no substance these fools. Onward! We have billions more dead to see to for our Lord Thanos!"
OOOOOOO
Perhaps the most insidious member of Thanos' Black Order was a alien name Supergiant, who was, oddly enough, also a blue-skinned alien woman. When compared to Nebula or Proxima, Supergiant's features were slightly more robotic looking than even her associate Nebula. As with Proxima, she too hadn't been a part of the military side of the campaign against the Brood but had instead been very busy behind the scenes as her phrenovore power served best in that sphere.
A human might well have thought of Nebula or Ebony Maw as a comrade in arms, or an acquaintance purely based on the fact they were both in the Black Order. That couldn't be further from the truth. Such terms had no place amongst such a group, beyond the inexplicable relationship between Proxima and Corvus. Those two were an exception to the rule. The rest of them competed against one another in hopes of proving themselves more to their Lord Thanos in any way they could, with backstabbing, sabotage and hatred towards one another being the norm.
Yet despite that overwhelming need to impress their Lord, the first few minutes of Supergiant's campaign against the country dubbed China would definitely not have pleased Thanos if he'd been watching her particular portal. And while she would never dream of making excuses before her Lord, it wouldn't have entirely been her fault. Because instead of opening within a city like the others had, the portal in China instead opened over the nearest army base to the city on Hangzhou. A military base that belonged to the 28th Attack Division.
On top of that misfortune, although they might have responded to any intelligence about a possible alien invasion passed on to them from the Avalon Empire with derision, China had not relaxed the military forces that had been put on alert from the recent battle with the Wrecking Crew. This meant constant drills, and lots of trigger-happy anti-air units prepped around any and all military bases.
"FIRREEE!" came the shouts of many an officer and noncom, and in response Type-63 anti-aircraft guns opened up into the air the instant the portal tore into existence there. These ugly, blocky, self-propelled guns fired flak into the air from two barrels, with around four companies worth of quick reaction forces responding as quick as their name suggested. The Type-63s were soon joined by the base's own larger, immobile anti-aircraft arsenal. This was an eclectic group, composed of simple flak cannons a few decades out of date and a series of weapons designed by the Prime Minister himself.
For anti-air defense the Mandarin had developed two different systems and then evenly distributed them in groups of four squads each to various important military bases across China. Since the army base currently in question served as a backup to the nearby naval base at Ningbo and protected the city of Hangzhou itself, it was one such base.
One of the systems was based on kinetic missile technology. The Dragon's Fangs were small, truck-portable missile launchers with twenty missile tubes each. One out of every six missiles would lock onto the assigned target, meanwhile the others would either follow the first's signal or explode at precisely the same distance the initial missile would reach only spread out in a sphere around them. The gunner made the decision of which setting was necessary.
Here, the local officers inevitably lost some control, as individual gunners had to hastily make these decisions for themselves in the moment. This meant that there were dozens of of the invading alien force's aerial units that were struck all at once by several missiles and smashed out of the sky immediately… and others that were merely scattered as other missiles exploded in midair, doing little real damage.
The second weapons system developed by the man once called the Mandarin was the Sparkling Spear. Say what you would about his past, and few Chinese who even knew about it would willingly say anything at all, but the Prime Minister did have a flare for nomenclature.
The Sparkling Spear was essentially a lightning gun. What it would do is fire a net of highly negatively charged particles into the air before ratcheting itself up with an equally high positive charge. The result was a bolt of man-made lightning, more or less. More anti-rocket defense than offensive weapon, the range of this new weapon had proven to be quite a bit higher than anticipated, and now it came into play, striking out and weakening the shields of hundreds of Chitauri skimmers if not altogether causing power overloads and explosions.
Riding her own skimmer, Supergiant hadn't been amongst the first groups of Chitauri through the portal. Instead, she'd planned on leading from the rear, as she felt that was the correct position for a leader. That being said, even from where she was Supergiant was able to see the carnage being caused in the air through the dimensional portal. Enraged, she snarled out orders. "Let me through! Cover me as I enter, these insects cannot be allowed to bring up any more anti-air guns!"
On the other side of the portal, reports were rapidly being sent out from the besieged base to the rest of China's military command, and jets were slowly getting airborne. Even so, enough of the skimmers were getting through the hectic defense by the anti-air units to hit other jets as they tried to take off. And neither the jets nor the attack helicopters, or even the tanks and anti-air guns had energy shields like the invaders did. Inevitably, humans began to die, their fire slowly being suppressed. But elsewhere in China, jetfighters and ballistic missiles were activated and fired towards the defenders.
One such missile arrived on the battlefield just as Supergiant was exiting the portal. In a moment of complete luck for the Chitauri, the otherwise massive payload simply passed between their ranks and kept on going until it phased through the void between dimensions, where it was easily dodged by the remaining forces arrayed around the portal.
In contrast, the arriving jets instantly began to have an impact. One of the few Rippers that Supergiant had deigned to add to her forces which had gotten out of the portal died as she watched, perishing in a ball of explosive fire as six or more missiles hit it one after another.
Though now dead, the Ripper had still managed to wipe out several of the anti-air units while slagging numerous buildings across the base. But worse for the defenders than that was that Supergiant had also gotten through the portal by this time. On her lone skimmer, the blue alien woman dove steeply, getting below the Chinese defensive envelope. There, she raised her hands with a growl, thrust them out, and sent forth her telepathic powers.
Now normally, Supergiant preferred to use her unique form of telepathy as it was meant to be used: on only one mind at a time. Such precision allowed her to utilize it as nature had intended, as a parasitic mental invasion. With it, Supergiant could find the most intelligent or driven minds among her enemies and literally eat them, absorbing everything within her meal's memories. Such indulgence left her victims as empty husks, but that was fine, she could then control them like puppets to do her bidding.
But Lord Thanos was not only a master of mechanical engineering but biotics and genetics. Over time and agonies untold, he had forced Supergiant's powers to evolve to the point that Supergiant could use a more regular form of telepathy as well, if in a far blunter manner than a true telepath. This she did now, reaching out to the minds of the insects around her with a simple command of "STOP FIGHTING!"
The mental command blasted out from the blue-skinned alien woman, erupting like an invisible bubble more than twenty miles in diameter. She even caught a few of the jetfighters.
Instantly, fighting from both sides inside her sphere of influence stopped even as more Chitauri came through above them. Seeing no active violence, the soldiers refrained from automatically attacking the Chinese on sight. Such actions would have broken Supergiant's telepathic control.
With the battle thus paused, Supergiant sent out two more commands. They were simple ones, but the strength of her will alone still overrode that of the Chinese soldiers she had caught. "Attack any humans you see beyond those with you now! Do not attack those nonhuman among you!"
Yet even as this occurred, jetfighters from outside Supergiant's range of influence fired their missiles. One such pilot was a man named Wen Shiang, who'd just seen his wing mate Bo Zhao, who'd flown ahead, halt his fire for no reason. One moment, they'd been exchanging radio calls, and Zhao had just shouted "SPLASH!" before falling silent. As he watched, Zhao began to turn his plane around, making to come back towards him. "Cobra 5, what is your status?"
There was no response and Wen hastily pulled up, flying above his comrade as maneuvered to intercept him. Anticipating that perhaps his friend had seen something coming up behind them, Wen turned to look over his shoulder but saw nothing. Instead, Cobra 5 shot between the pair of Cobra 7 and 8, who'd been behind them, and then Wen stared in shocked horror as in short order Cobra 5's missiles locked on and then shot out from under his wings towards Cobras 9 and 10.
Neither of them had a chance to evade, and 9 exploded. Immediately after, 5 moved to follow 10, coming up behind him. 10 followed after his wingman in death quickly.
Before Wen could comprehend what was going on, Cobras 1, 2, 3, and even 4 all followed suit, turning back on the rest of the ready squadron of the 71st Air Defense Brigade. For a moment, all Wen could do was duck and dodge; darting down toward the ground, going nape-of-the-earth before pulling the control stick of his J-10A back hard, zooming up through the combat of his friends turning on one another. Just as sharply, he hastily twisted down and back toward the ground again, desperately trying to throw off anyone who might've been tryting to lock onto him. What, what just happe—it must have been some sort of mental domination. My friends were loyal and would never turn traitor! I must call this in, the Party must be warned!
Unfortunately, before Wen could do so, fire from the enemies he'd actually been there to fight caught him. Having left the rest of the human-on-human skirmishing behind, his plane was easy pickings for the Chitauri skimmers who had flown away from the rest of the battle.
While this little drama was playing out in the air to one side of the previous battle, Supergiant stumbled, scrabbling at the controls of her skimmer and cursing herself for being too proud to acquire a driver for herself. As she steadied out, she desperately tried to concentrate through a now blinding migraine. Curse it, am I truly so weak? Even after Lord Thanos perfected me so that I could become a true telepath rather than a mere phrenavore,I still cannot sustain long-term, widespread use of my power… Nnngh… not without a source of food anyhow…
Scowling, Supergiant landed roughly, and moved into the insects' base, searching for its commander through half-closed eyes while a team of skimmers moving above her. Moments later she spotted an obviously decorated officer rushing out of a bunker along with several soldiers. Even as she watched, he was turning around, ordering his beguiled troops to ready themselves for an assault on the nearby city, his mind translated her simple, overpowered command into wholesale slaughter.
Seeing this, Supergiant decided to wait a moment, forcing herself to ignore the pain raging in her skull as missiles continued to streak through the sky towards her troops, blasting them out of the sky. But once the officer had finished giving his pointless orders, Supergiant gestured with a hand, ordering the Chitauri above her. "Kill his guards."
The Chitauri obediently fired down into the humans, none of which had previously seen them as threats thanks to her mental dominion. Now, those same soldiers all fell, causing him the officer to snap free from Supergiant's control. Naturally, he screamed out in fear as he realized where he was and that all the men around him were dead. Panicked, he rushed to the nearest shelter.
Of course, he was far too slow.
Supergiant reached him quickly, grabbing his head from behind. Desperately, the insect wrenched away, one hand going down to a small firearm at his hip. Supergiant's grip on his head was impossible to break, and she smiled thinly, smacking the pistol out of his hand with her other hand. Lifting him into the air, she turned him about so she could look into horrified and fearful eyes. "Don't worry, the pain will be over soon," she crooned, opening her mouth wider than a human ever could.
From Supergiant's mouth flowed out a black mist, enveloping the insect's head even as he began to scream. The mist entered the human's eyes, ears, mouth, and nose, the blue-skinned woman shuddering in delight, feeling the flow of the man's mind into her via the mist, the visible representation of her phrenovore powers. Unbidden, a low hum of ecstasy left Supergiant as the migraine she'd been dealing with left her.
Finishing her meal, she released the insect, leaving him to slump to the ground. While unmoving, the body may have still been technically alive, but the human who'd commanded the base was no more. Supergiant had eaten his mind, subsuming all the memories, personality, and will within. Now full, she could look upon those memories almost as if they were her own, like a series of books she could pull off a shelf and read at any time. She had all that the insect had been, had ever known; command codes, callsign cycles, passwords, everything.
"Ahhhhh…. Now, to cause some chaos!" Supergiant breathed, before communicating with the nearest Chitauri officers. A series of orders flashed out, and the invading forces instantly obeyed. The only other two rippers that Supergiant had brought with her landed inside the base's perimeter. Both of them would remain there, providing defensive fire for the portal, while the Skimmers would spread out, hugging the ground in order to avoid enemy radar.
Such a tactic obviously meant that the Chitauri would be much more visible to civilians, but, based on their collected data, it would take time for civilians, even hundreds of thousands of them, to get their warnings out to the government at large. Especially if I muddy the waters further, Supergiant purred to herself."You," She growled out, gesturing to the empty husk of the base's commanding officer. "Get up."
Without a mind of its own, Supergiant's orders acted almost like a spider's web inside a cave, stretching from wall to wall and creating the facsimile of life connecting all of the walls representing the body's functions together. But really, the cave was still there, still empty, and a spider's web was extremely fragile. Inevitably, it would eventually collapse, leaving nothing behind but ruin. But for the moment, Supergiant could give the living corpse that had once been human commands, and they would be carried out.
With Supergiant's orders driving him, the former officer reentered his command building, finding it empty. The blue-skinned woman's previous orders were still in effect, and any soldiers that would've normally stayed behind to take care of the base or the communication needs of its troops had already left, bewitched to eagerly attack their own kind elsewhere. Alone, the officer in charge of the base was dialing up a connection, quickly getting into contact with the nearby naval base.
Meanwhile, Supergiant herself traveled to that very same base as quickly as possible, also hugging the ground as best she could with a guard of five skimmers around her. Her destination, she had discovered, was called the Ningbo Naval Base. Abruptly, two of her guard were felled by enemy fire, detached units of the army out on what the officer who's brain she'd eaten called maneuvers, but Supergiant ignored this insignificant loss and swiftly moved on.
Upon arriving at Ningbo, Supergiant left her guard detail outside the gates. From there, she continued on, using her suit's cloaking technology to pass straight by the guards stationed outside and into the base proper, despite how on edge the insects were. Rumors had spread about what was going on elsewhere, but with no confirmation of it, paranoia would only set them on edge instead of into motion.
Once within, Supergiant headed straight for the central command building, eager to dine on her second human victim of the day. Like with any military, there were levels to the command structure, and certain things that lower ranked officers either didn't know about or couldn't command. After eating the mind of the insect from earlier, Supergiant knew her first victim was a more senior member of China's military than the officer commanding this base or even those leading the naval units that used it as their operational headquarters. That being said, she also knew that certain types of orders would nevertheless need to come from higher up in the chain of command. That was unless she just devoured several officers present in the naval base and use their husks for her designs.
Due largely in part to the cloaking technology built into her suit by Lord Thanos, Supergiant was able to pass through the base entirely undetected, entering the command center without even breaking a sweat. There, she found dozens of insects scuttling around, each and every one trying in vain to get a grip on what was going on further inland, while the main officer was shouting into a device her stolen knowledge recognized as a LAN-line phone in his hand.
Supergiant's mental powers allowed her to translate what she heard being said, and she had to hastily cover a fleeting giggle of all things at how angry the poor insect sounded. "I do not fucking care that you keep parroting the call signs back to me, dammit! I am asking you why—did the Chairman… You… Your base was under attack! I recognize that you are the man on the ground, but without the Chairman's orders… This and all these reports about aliens sound like a giant prank. I am not as low down the Party line as you—damn it! Why are you just repeating your orders like that? It's almost as if… almost…"
Feeling that was her cue, Supergiant stepped further into the room, lock it behind her for the moment. The sound of the lock being engaged, had several of the communication specialists turning in her direction, despite stilling being under cloak. Supergiant held up a hand, a telepathic command flowing out from her to envelop the room. "Silence and cease all movement!"
The commanding officer had just turned to see why his people were suddenly halting their work and caught sight of Supergiant as her cloaking tech faded. His mouth fell open, agape. "Ah, that makes this much easier."
With that, Supergiant opened her own mouth, breathing out. For the second time that day, her birth power reached out, enveloping the insect's head and seeping into his every orifice with ease. And once again, Supergiant shuddered in place as she devoured everything the human had ever been, delighting in the treat. Unlike her first victim, this insect had actually had something of an intelligence, although it had been severely constrained by his severe, near fanatical devotion to the rules of his Communist Party and the inner turmoil caused by the fact he'd quickly realized he could not rise higher within said Party without playing the patronage game.
Blissful as it was, Supergiant couldn't linger over her latest meal for as long as she would've liked. Instead, she finished quickly, and then, with a smile far too wide for one committing such acts, went to the next officer, then the next . They were truly insects at this point, like so many flies trapped in a spider's threads; none could move, none could cry out, and none could fight back as she definitely didn't skip around the room, eating their minds while they were fully conscious of what she was doing. Roughly thirty minutes later, her newest cadre of flesh puppets got to work, calling in the captains of various warships both still in port and at sea. And these puppets had specific callsigns to back their words.
The play Supergiant chose for her flesh puppets to perform was both simple and entirely made out of dreams. To those who heard the orders being passed on, all of the rumors and speculations boiled down to the Taiwanese having apparently released some sort of virus against China, one that made those exposed to it hallucinate and eventually go mad. Horribly, the entirety of the upper echelons of the Party had been caught by one such attack, and stills others were spreading throughout the country.
This was precisely the sort of doomsday scenario that the Chinese Communist Party fed its members. Such scenarios, once merely born of spite and paranoia, had grown even wilder since Taiwan had reached out to the Enemy, known as Harry Potter, and the magician had practically guaranteed the breakaway province's continued independence. Thus it was incredibly fertile soil that Supergiant's seeds of chaos were sown in and quite eagerly accepted as complete truth by the officers her puppets contacted.
If her estimations were correct, the Chinese navy would soon cascade into deciding on a retaliatory strike against the clearly aggressive Taiwan. With several last minutes' worth of effort, Supergiant programmed her new flesh puppets to such a degree that they would even seem to act like themselves for a time. Her work would fade quickly, however, especially once a real battle was joined, as there was a very hard limit to how many different scenarios she could program into their hollow minds..
But really, that was all right. By the time the lack of true life of these insects was discovered, the first shots would have long been fired. And as someone who had ignited wars and conflicts on hundreds of different planets, involving primitive and sophisticated species alike, Supergiant knew that once a war's first shots had been fired, neither side would be willing to stop anytime soon.
With the Chitauri branching out ever farther in small bands to target various infrastructure points throughout the country, Supergiant and her remaining guards moved on. There was yet still one other kind of base of operations that she wished to visit in order to cause even further disorder among the humans. I will show Lord Thanos… I will show the others of the Order. It's not about raw violence, vitriol, or brute force as Black Dwarf espouses, nor the cold cruelty and single-mindedness that Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive ahere to. All you need is deviousness, and access to the right toolset, and a world will fall at your feet.
OOOOOOO
Easily the most randomly chosen city amongst those the Wrecking Crew and Loki left beacons in was Debrecen, Hungary. Not remotely a world-class military power, the average citizen in Debrecen had next to no knowledge of potential alien threats in general, let alone any idea what the hell the giant black thing that had just appeared in the sky was.
This prong of Thanos' invasion was led by Gamora and much like Nebula and Proxima Midnight, she led her forces from the front. Like with the other locations, it was the skimmers that were the first units through the portal, spreading out quickly. Unlike the other forces however, were the orders they carried; not to engage, but to radio back everything they saw as they quickly spread out over the city and beyond.
The lack of defenses around the city she found herself in was astonishing to Gamora. She could only shake her head at the information coming in from her scouts, shocked at what she was seeing. A whole city like this, with no material defenses? Aren't these humans supposed to be warlike? Is this just local stupidity, or were the reports we received wrong or exaggerated? Gamora was leaning heavily towards the latter, but really, it didn't matter in the end.
Gamora wasn't nearly as bloodthirsty as her sister, or the other Black Order commanders, . She had no wish to mindlessly slaughter, to build pyramids of skulls for her father. Rather, she would conquer. Gamora was very much a pragmatist with an optimistic bend. She believed that Lord Thanos, her father, would be content enough with the deaths of the Phoenix Avatar, Harry Potter, and enough of the humans that their genocide would add to his glory in the eyes of his mistress, Death itself.
If such a being even exists, and it all isn't just his nihilism at play, Gamora thought, not for the first time. And like all such occurrences of said thought, she quickly buried it very deeply indeed.
And so it was her… well not hope, but more expectation, that many of the humans might well survive this invasion, to be added to Thanos' ever growing collection of empires he had begun to gather. She hoped that Lord Thanos was rational enough to not simply slaughter them all. I could be wrong, as I was with the Kylosians, but I hope I'm not. I have no desire to add still more blood to the gallons I have already spilled, Gamorathought, shaking her head slightly.
Above her, large scale hovercraft the likes of which Proxima Midnight was also using in the country called Russia appeared. These were carrying not troops, however, but mass communication devices. Basically high-tech megaphones really.
As shrieks and shouts of shock began to abound throughout the city below, these com units moved out, spreading into a formation that would cover the entire city. Once they were in position, Gamora cleared her throat and began to speak into the microphone she held in one hand, her firm voice carried throughout the city. "Humans. Do not resist. Defiance will be met with deadly force. Remain in your homes. The invading forces will not enter your homes unless fired upon. I repeat, do not resist. Stay in your homes. Remain calm. If you are discovered outside of your home, keep both hands visible by placing them on your head and continue about your business. Remain in whatever buildings you are currently in if at all possible there until a provisional government has be set up to replace any rebellious elements within your own which will reveal themselves."