chapter 235

Chapter 235:

The next morning, I arrived aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier with my older brother, Kokabiel. We were here to discuss the upcoming invasion, of course, and how to properly counter it. I wasn't expecting S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers to help fight the alien army off, but they could help with coordination and logistics.

"H–Humans built this?" he asked me in shock. "And it actually flies!?" His eyes wandered all over the exterior, taking in the helicarrier's massive size.

I nodded. The Helicarrier is certainly impressive every time I see it. I honestly have no idea how it even manages to fly either. For all intents and purposes, it should not be able to according to the laws of physics.

[Not that those laws even really exist in the Marvel Universe.]

"It can fly, it can sail, and it can rain death at over 3 million rounds fired every minute. The Helicarrier is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s pride and joy." Nick Fury explained while walking towards us. He and Steve Rogers met the two of us on the flight deck.

Kokabiel looked very intrigued. I could tell he immediately wanted one of these for his legion. "And how long can it stay in the air?"

"It can fly for months at a time, but we usually stay in the air during missions or when the weather is bad. On clear sunny days like this, the crew prefers being in the water." Fury explained.

I looked off the starboard side at the crystal-clear water below in envy. I would honestly love nothing more than to take a vacation at a beautiful resort with my family and all of my girls. That was definitely going to happen once summertime hit.

"Good to see you, Layla." Steve Rogers said while holding out his hand to shake. He seemed a lot more confident of himself compared to the last time I saw him. Granting him my blessing was the right decision.

I checked his level to see his progress and almost blanched at the number!

–Steve Rogers Level 50–

He's Level 50!? What in the actual…?

[That's certainly unexpected. He's at the peak of high class or a mid-rank god at this point.]

He sure was. The handshake he just gave me had some real strength behind it! "It's good to see you again, Steve. You certainly got a lot stronger." I told him. "What happened?"

Steve shrugged and gave me his nice guy smile. "Killing a god will apparently do that. I wanted to talk to you more about that topic actually. Do you know anything about a purple-haired woman called Pandora?"

"Not really?" I said questioningly. I knew Pandora Lovegood, but she had been dead for years. I had no idea whether or not she had purple hair. Her daughter Luna certainly doesn't.

Luna has occasionally been sending letters to Heather to tell her how Hogwarts had been going. The school is now, to no one's surprise, a much better place of education once Dumbledore was gone and S.H.I.E.L.D. fixed its curriculum. Students now learn all the Muggle topics along with only useful magic. They no longer waste years of their lives learning worthless spells. Transfiguring a beetle into a button? Why!? What is the point? Transfiguration isn't even permanent so outside of combat it's not even a useful magic subject to learn. The school curriculum has gone through many changes, needless to say.

I told Steve about Pandora Lovegood, and he shook his head. He told me it was a different Pandora he met. This Pandora looked like a young girl and had apparently told Steve that she was now his mother…

I couldn't help but snicker at that.

Something about his situation rang a bit familiar to me, but I couldn't quite remember exactly what it was. Maybe the details didn't even matter anyway?

Whoever this Pandora was, she had given Steve a huge power boost, and if the only thing she wanted in return was for him to call her mommy… then I told him he might as well start doing that.

Steve sputtered at my response. "Are you serious?" he asked me.

"Did this Pandora woman seem like she was trying to trick you or that she was malicious in any way?" I asked him.

He paused and thought for a moment before he shook his head. "No, she seemed pretty straightforward," he told me.

"Then there you have it."

A couple of minutes later, Fury stopped bragging about his ship to Kokabiel, and we headed inside to meet with the other Avengers.

The Avengers were a thing now… I had missed the debut when they stormed into Japan and took down the Hand's secret headquarters. The Beast ended up being overwhelmed almost instantly when Thor and Steve teamed up against it. From the description of the fight I had received, I would estimate its level to have only been in the 40s at best.

We followed Fury to the situation room where there were a few familiar faces waiting for us.

"Welcome, Sister-in-Law!" Thor boisterously ran up and wrapped me in a tight hug as soon as the door swung open. "Thank you so much for bestowing my Lady Jane with an Apple of Idun! I thought they were extinct!"

I patted the large man on the back before he let go of me. "No problem, Thor. We're going to be family after all. Is Jane doing alright with being an Asgardian now?" I asked him.

Thor blanched and looked to the side awkwardly. "She's… adjusting. I've been giving her some space and helping out the humans here battle their foes."

Kokabiel walked up to Thor and nodded at him curtly. Thor nodded back at him. That was the extent of their interactions. From one warrior to another, I suppose.

I looked at the other people in the room. Andrea Stark was not here, but Tony was. He was chatting with a nerdy-looking scientist who I vaguely recognized.

They appeared to be in the middle of a debate.

"I'm telling you, Tony. If we want to track dimensional energy, then we need to calibrate our sensors much tighter." The man argued. He seemed annoyed that Tony wasn't agreeing with him.

Tony shook his head. "And I'm telling you, little green, we need to cast a much wider net. This ship could pop out anywhere, and we might end up missing it before it's too late."

"Hi, guys!" I greeted the two of them. I smiled at the nerdy man who blushed profusely at me. "We haven't met, have we? I'm Layla of the Fallen."

"N–no… we haven't. I'm Doctor Bruce Banner. S.H.I.E.L.D called me in to help detect where your Alien spaceship is going to emerge. I almost didn't believe it, but then again, I didn't believe in Angels a few months ago either." He told me.

"Is that the only reason she'll ask you to come?" I asked Bruce.

He sighed. "That's the only reason they gave me. I'm not stupid, though. I have multiple PhDs. Obviously, I knew they were going to ask me to help fight off the aliens. Well, not me specifically, but the other guy…"

He was talking about the Hulk. He didn't seem enthusiastic about letting the Hulk out.

I gently placed my hand on his shoulder. "If there was ever a time you could let the Hulk out with no repercussions, it would be to fight off an alien army," I told him.

That drew a small tired laugh from him. "I suppose you have a point. I'll think about it… if the battle is somewhere without civilians nearby."

Tony laughed. "I say let him out! It's good to destress once in a while!" Tony suddenly lunged towards Bruce. "Raaaaggh!" He yelled loudly.

Bruce startled and jumped in place. I caught a brief flicker of green in his eyes. He sent a glare at Tony while taking some deep breaths to calm himself down. "Please don't do that. Startling me is a bad idea."

Tony waved him off. "Don't worry about it. Layla's here. If the Hulk comes out to play, I'm sure she can handle him," he said.

I did my best not to preen. "While I'm glad you're confident in my abilities, the Hulk would still cause a lot of damage while I subdued him inside the Helicarrier. Unless I could trick him into falling through one of my portals." I added as an afterthought.

Tony snapped his fingers. "There's a thought!" He turned to Bruce with a mischievous grin. "Does the Hulk need to breathe? How does Big Green handle being in a vacuum? Can you please transform and Layla will put you on the moon? For science?" Tony asked hopefully.

Bruce backed away nervously from Tony and his enthusiasm…

I could tell he was just joking… mostly. Part of him may be genuinely interested in seeing how the Hulk serum handles space since we're still trying to synthesize our own serum. Tony wants to go "above and beyond" like the genius he is.

In his words, "Why settle for a simple strength and bone density enhancement? Why not upgrade the human race while we're at it? Angels can survive in a vacuum, so why can't humans?" Essentially, Tony wanted to make it so humans would be able to survive in space without suits – at least for a little while. Space travel was the future of the race after all. More and more aliens would be visiting Earth pretty soon and they weren't going to stop.

If he could pull it off, I had no reason to protest.

"Alright then, now that everyone is acquainted, we might as well begin our briefing." Fury said as he walked over to the holographic command table in the middle of the room. Kokabiel stood next to him, marveling at the technology.

"Wait?" I asked. "Is this everyone?" I said while looking around. "Where is Andrea?" I asked Tony.

He sighed. "She didn't want to be here while another Bruce was here. She said she wasn't ready for that yet," he said. "Where's Natasha?"

I grimaced a bit. "She's helping get my two new… girlfriends settled into our home." I had slept on the couch last night as Natasha said I would be. Natasha then did something I wasn't expecting. She took Rias and Sona under her wing. She gave me a mischievous grin before the three women stayed up for hours last night, probably chatting about me.

Kokabiel gave me a judgmental scoff but didn't say anything. He wasn't pleased that I was now dating two Devils. Even if they were two devils from another Universe and they didn't need to eat souls to get stronger. I'm sure I would have gotten a lot longer of a scolding if we weren't on a time frame here.

Tony raised an eyebrow at me. "Two new girlfriends? What does that make your total? Seven? Damn, you're lucky! You know how hard it is to talk Pepper into the occasional threesome!? You should probably slow down though. Despite popular belief, there is such a thing as too big of a harem," he advised me.

First of all, wow! I didn't know Pepper was into threesomes. Second of all, Tony had a point. I never planned to have a harem in the double digits anyway. I have a big heart, but not an infinitely big one. I would only take one or two more girls at most at this point.

Bruce seemed interested in our conversation and spoke up. "Who's Andrea? And why would my presence here matter to her?" Bruce asked. "The other guy didn't hurt someone she knew, did he? I know he's killed quite a few soldiers so far…and some civilians who got caught in the crossfire."

"Andrea Stark is Tony Stark from an alternate universe. In her world, you two were engaged to be married. A zombie apocalypse hit the world, and the Bruce Banner there succumbed, turning him into the Zombie Hulk…"

Bruce stared at me in confusion. "...What?"

"Yeah, it was a whole thing. That universe is also the one that the evil aliens are coming from originally." I told him.

"No, seriously, what?" He asked again.

Thor crossed his arms and nodded sagely. "Asgard has long known about other universes, but we never dared venture into them. We thought it could only bring trouble… and that has indeed happened here." He said while looking at me.

I feel like he's trying to judge me here…

[That's because he is judging you here.]

In fact, all the other men in the room were all giving me poignant stares. I threw my arms up in the air with a pout on my face! "I'm sorry, alright! How was I supposed to know that Thanos from another Universe was going to follow me home!?"

"Well, regardless, he did. How are you going to make up for that, Layla?" Fury asked me. "I have no doubt that people will die in the fight to come. Can you live with that? And what about all the property damage that may occur?"

"The property damage…I'll cover all of it with my looted Asgardian gold." I told Fury with a grimace. I was praying that the Ancient One would come through with a way to make Thanos's ship appear where we wanted it to with her magic. The middle of a barren desert with no one around preferably. The only thing she needed to guarantee that was the coordinates of where his ship would first pop up. Tony and Bruce were working on figuring that out by tracing dimensional energy fluctuations around the planet. How were they doing that? I have no idea.

[More Marvel science bullshit. That's how.]

"What looted Asgardian gold!?" Thor asked me in shock. He was mumbling something about Asgard's vaults and how they were supposed to be impenetrable.

He was temporarily ignored…

"And what about all the people who might die in the fight?" Fury asked me. Steve, Tony and Bruce were also looking at me disappointingly.

Did they not know yet?

I waved them all off. "That's not a big deal. Anyone who dies, I'll just bring back to life. Try to keep the casualties down though, because I can only revive one person a day. Lady Death might let me bump that number up though if I make her happy…" I trailed off with a blush.

[And how are you going to make her happy?]

'I think you know exactly how, System…' Some very lewd images flashed in my mind.

"Revive the dead!?"

"Are you serious!?"

"How!?"

"Are you serious, Sister!?"

This time, everyone in the room blanched at me. Even Kokabiel surprisingly!

…Oh right, he didn't know that I could do that now either.

…

Four days later…

"It's so stupidly hot out here! My armor is struggling to keep the AC going." Tony complained while staring off into the sand dunes. "Whose bright idea was it for us to fight out here anyway?"

"I'm pretty sure it was yours, Tony…" I mumbled. I didn't want to open my mouth too wide or sand would fly in. It was everywhere out here! At least, there was a thin layer of Light Energy projecting over my skin to keep all the gross sand off of me. I now totally knew where Anakin Skywalker was coming from.

We were in the middle of Death Valley California at noon. Why here? Because no one who's sane comes out here in the middle of these swelteringly hot days! It wasn't even summer time yet, and it was already over 100°F outside!

This was where we were going to have our battle with Thanos and his followers.

It had been a busy four days…not really for me though. Everyone else had frantically running around preparing for the inevitable invasion, while I mostly sat around waiting.

After fighting each other for a few days, with some occasional hair pulling, Tony and Bruce had learned to work together. They figured out where Thanos's ship was going to originally pop up. Directly above New York City.

That would have been very bad obviously.

Thankfully, we had the Ancient One with us. She and the Sorcerers of the Kamar Taj worked their magic. When Thanos's giant ship appears in our universe, it will be immediately teleported above this desert. That's when our current forces will launch an immediate assault on it.

I glanced behind myself at our current amassed forces and grinned. Floating in the air, led by Kokabiel, were 2000 of our most vicious Fallen Angels who had been excited for this battle for days now. On the ground was the National Guard with over 10,000 armed troops. The President insisted on sending them when he found out what was happening. Fury couldn't say no considering most of S.H.I.E.L.D's funding came from America.

At least they came with a few hundred tanks…

Iron Man and Iron Woman were nearby giving their suits their final inspections. Thor and Sif were chatting nearby as well. Thor was holding a second Mjolnir in his offhand and grinning like a loon about it. It was just sitting in my inventory wasting space, so I figured I might as well give it to him.

Off in the distance, I could see the S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier. Captain America, Bruce Banner and Fury were onboard. They would be directing the battle from a few miles away. The Helicarrier would move in after we knocked Thanos's ship from the sky. Then they would join the fight.

We were ready.

"All units, hold fast. Something is coming!" Captain America's voice rang out from the receiver in my ear.

In front of us, a massive section of the sky started to warp and shimmer. A giant pitch black spaceship started to push its way into existence…

XXX