"Wade, that armchair!" Hiding at a distance, Weasel poked his head out, gesturing and miming, calling out in a low voice for fear the Chitauri would notice him.
His old pal Wade caught his meaning at once, pulling back the katana already swinging for the enemy's neck, snatching up a high-backed chair that looked older than Coulson, and smashing it over the Chitauri's head, then spinning around and blowing its head off with a single shot.
Weasel muttered to himself the whole time, jotting it all down in a little notebook.
Drinking glasses, the bar counter, tableware: two whole pages crammed full. Lorna peeked over and was furious.
She grabbed Weasel by the collar. "What is this you're writing down? A vending machine? Does this dump of a bar even have one of those?!"
The sleazy man in glasses immediately crossed out the vending machine and apologized with a smile, saying he must have misread his own list.
The man's sheer shamelessness left Lorna torn between laughing and crying. Still, she knew that Weasel, highly respected among mercenaries, and the very capable Wade Wilson were important firepower on their side, so she didn't push him too hard.
This little band of students, ordinary citizens, and mercenaries stood like a solid rock, holding its patch of street, one of many such strongpoints, a microcosm of the city as a whole.
...
"Look out!" Captain America, leading the special-ops team, reached the hospital's underground parking lot, spotted the enemy, and instantly hurled his shield, then leapt and kicked a Chitauri flying, saving a woman he vaguely recognized as his neighbor.
"What's your name again? Sharon?" From a distance Cap had recognized this woman whose features fit his taste so well at a single glance, and seeing her uniform, he realized his neighbor was actually a nurse at this hospital.
"Thank you. Thank you for the help." Sharon Carter itched to draw her pistol and join the fight, but both Nick Fury and Daisy had ordered her to keep playing the role of Captain America's neighbor. With so many agents and soldiers already in the field, one more wouldn't make a difference; left with no choice, she could only tag along with the doctors as a nurse.
The hero had saved the damsel, and the two quickly wrapped up their exchange. Cap sought out the man now in charge of the hospital, the long-faced Doctor Strange. The situation was too dire for many words; leaning on his considerable charisma, Cap won everyone's trust, then led the special-ops team in covering the doctors and wounded as they withdrew to a safe zone the military had established.
Elsewhere, Hill had also led a team to begin the rescue effort in Central Park. Time had been short; many of the people out enjoying the park had never seen any TV address, and only started running in blind panic once the aliens descended.
When Hill arrived on the scene, blood and filth covered the ground, and here and there Chitauri were butchering ordinary people.
"Team One, west to east. Team Two, east to west. Team Three, with me!"
Daisy had to maintain relationships on every front, and with her deep-rooted prestige she had no need to show off her strength, so she thought nothing of swapping identities back and forth.
Hill was different. Her reputation within S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't great to begin with, more criticism than praise. Vanishing from the battlefield for any length of time would breed real resentment, so even if it stoked the government's wariness of her, she had to secure her standing inside S.H.I.E.L.D. first.
She tapped the White Tiger Amulet at her throat, and with a soundless tiger's roar, the power of the White Tiger settled over her. To the watching agents, their commander suddenly surged forward, as if wielding some divine weapon, slashing left and right; two Chitauri soldiers, weapons and all, were hacked into several pieces.
The remaining Chitauri hurried to open fire, but Hill, now graced with a beast's instincts, dodged every shot with ease.
"Commander Hill is this good?" The agents were a little taken aback, but there was no time to dwell on it; with Hill as their spearhead they pressed on, clearing the Chitauri out of Central Park.
On the way they also ran into Frank Castle, who had come to investigate the murder of his wife and daughter. This one-man army was dueling a pack of Chitauri from inside a car, his body draped with weapons, taking on ten at once and leaving the aliens screaming for their lives.
With Hill's support, Frank Castle grew even more unstoppable, not a shot wasted, one kill per round, not a single enemy escaping his sights.
"Who are you?" Hill eyed Frank Castle's getup with deep suspicion. What kind of person walked into a park to relax draped head to toe in weapons?
The remaining agents trained their guns on the dangerous man as well.
Frank Castle tossed aside the emptied M1911 pistol, ignored the agents' guns entirely, and pulled open the car door.
"Hold it." Hill grabbed the door; Frank Castle pulled twice and couldn't budge it.
He glanced at the S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia on Hill's arm and said in a hoarse voice, "Your commander knows me. You can go check."
Watching Frank Castle drive off, Hill first put in a call to Daisy. The two of them were so "well acquainted," after all.
"Frank? Yeah, I know him, he's a war buddy of Nick Fury's." The battle was urgent; Daisy exchanged only a few words with Hill, saying Frank wasn't a bad guy and he could do whatever he wanted, something both directors had signed off on.
Hill frowned. She thought the decision by Daisy and Nick Fury was far too careless, far too unprincipled. Just because you were on good terms, you let a man roam the city with a carful of weapons?
There was an alien invasion on now, but what about when there wasn't? How much bloodshed would a man like that cause?
She resolved to have a proper talk with Daisy about it once this was over.
...
Hanging up on Hill, and sighing a little at the woman's principles, Daisy swapped identities for the third time and threw herself back into the fight.
After destroying the twelfth Leviathan, Daisy's gaze narrowed. She had spotted Supergiant, the Scepter in her hand.
Supergiant had been in the city all along, merely hidden by some profound technique. Watching the Chitauri suffer heavy losses, she could finally sit still no longer.
She gently stroked the Scepter. As with the White Queen's use of Cerebro, wielding it carried the risk of losing control, of losing herself.
Supergiant didn't much want to wield the Scepter either. Using it now and then was fine, but if she immersed herself in it completely, she might lose her sense of self, a warning that Thanos, whom she revered above all, had told her to hold firmly in mind.
The Scepter amplified her psychic power a hundredfold. An ordinary person had a psychic power of one; amplified, that became a hundred, which a strong-willed person could still control with some effort. But a psychic powerhouse like Supergiant was different. She already stood at a thousand, and a hundredfold amplification made it a hundred thousand, far beyond her own limit of control.
Rather than directly attuning her own psychic power to the Mind Stone, Supergiant chose to absorb it bit by bit, first drawing out a force roughly equal to her own power, then, using herself as the foundation, gradually drawing out pure psychic power.
"Professor! Quick!" Before Daisy could finish, Supergiant noticed her. Several kilometers (a few miles) apart, yet their eyes met, and a near-physical wave of psychic power stabbed toward Daisy like a sharp sword.