Chapter 48: Helicarrier Assault
A/N: The attack on the Helicarrier begins. Some things different, some things stay the same.
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For a moment, Tony is a little worried because… well, he might have made his side too strong. It’s one thing to let Pierce in on his plans, but if he’d had to tell Rumlow and the rest of the Iron Legion to sandbag so Loki could escape, then they might have questions… as well as demands later on. Fortunately, Clint Barton is an exceptional strategist, even while brainwashed.
In the original timeline, knowing about Tony’s Iron Man Armor, the Archer had attacked one of the Helicarrier’s four turbines on their way in so that Tony would be forced to focus solely on making sure that the flying aircraft carrier didn’t plummet out of the sky. This time around, Barton takes the Iron Legion into account and attacks TWO of the Helicarrier’s four turbines on the way in, immediately causing the ship to begin careening sideways.
Tony doesn’t hesitate to tap into the Iron Legion’s comms, putting a finger to his empty ear more for Bruce’s benefit than anything else.
“Rumlow! Legion! Get suited up and get out there. Keep the Helicarrier in the sky at all costs!”
He gets an affirmative response to that and even as Tony pretends to stagger his way across the laboratory to where Bruce has caught himself, he can feel the STRIKE Team hopping into their Iron Legion Suits and racing out to the broken turbines. Slowly, the Helicarrier is righted as a majority of the Iron Legion is forced to anchor themselves and use their Repulsor Boots to mimic the wrecked turbines, while the rest begin working on repairs.
Those repairs don’t last long before mind controlled agents begin firing on them and disrupting their efforts at both turbines however, starting quite the little fire fight. A prelude of things to come between HYDRA and SHIELD, Tony finds himself morbidly noting internally.
Outwardly, he reaches Bruce and grabs him by the shoulders.
“Dr. Banner? Are you alright?”
Shaken but in seemingly no danger of turning green, Bruce looks around wildly. It’s obvious his heartrate is way up… but it’s equally obvious that the medicine he managed to develop is working. Unless he takes enough physical damage to endanger his life, he’s not going to transform like he did last time.
“… Y-Yeah… yeah, I’m okay! What… what’s happening?!”
As the floor stops sloping thanks to the Iron Legion’s efforts, Tony sighs and pulls Bruce all the way to his feet and out of the corner where he’d caught himself.
“The Helicarrier is under attack. Loki’s people have come to break her out, I assume. Can’t have their world conquest plan without their Queen, after all.”
At Tony’s dry tone, Bruce bites his lower lip.
“Should we… I mean, we should stop her right?”
Shaking his head, Tony points a finger at Bruce.
“You don’t need to do anything, Dr. Banner. You’re not a soldier, you’re a civilian scientist. This isn’t your fight.”
Grimacing, Bruce looks to the side.
“I mean… we developed that counteragent for a reason, didn’t we? I have some on me in an injector… just in case. I could take it if you think you need the Hulk.”
Tony grins a little at that. On the one hand, he was glad that Bruce was even entertaining the idea. Before the other man had ever even known it was Tony, they’d exchanged numerous long emails about the Hulk and Bruce’s relationship with the big green killing machine in his head. Tony had done his best to try and help Bruce view the Hulk as a potential help instead of a hindrance, but in the end he’d also made sure to facilitate the creation of the drugs that allowed Bruce to suppress his alter-ego. Because at the end of the day, while Tony liked the Hulk… Bruce was his friend.
That said, he shakes his head at Bruce’s suggestion.
“Think about it for a second, Bruce. The Hulk is a bomb and Loki’s goons already set two of those off on their way in. The Helicarrier is already struggling… we don’t need to add Big Green to the mix. I appreciate the offer, really I do… but I think it’d be better if you suited up and got to safety.”
Bruce blinks at that last bit, only to startle when Tony snaps his fingers and Sneaky appears just a few feet away from them. He doesn’t need to snap his fingers of course… but it is cool. As the armored suit opens up, Tony steps aside and gives Bruce a little push towards it.
“You… you’re trusting me with one of your suits, Tony?”
Letting out a laugh at that, Tony just shakes his head.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Bruce. I’m not trusting you with one of my suits, I’m trusting JARVIS with your safety. You’re far more valuable than any one of my armors. Hell, I’d say you were the most valuable person on this Helicarrier… but eh, I’m here.”
That gets a rueful grin from Bruce, even as JARVIS pipes up from Sneaky’s frame.
“Please mind your step, Dr. Banner. I will be your flying assistant today.”
Bruce carefully steps forward, turning around and backing up into the suit, which envelopes around him. Before the helmet can engage however, he gives Tony a concerned look.
“Wait, what about you Tony? You’re not exactly a soldier either. Where’s your suit to fly you to safety?”
Tony chuckles and shakes his head.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Brucie-bear. I haven’t been a civilian since Afghanistan.”
Then, because he’s scrubbing the footage of this moment from SHIELD’s servers in real time and because he’s a sucker for a worried friend apparently, Tony brings down his sunglasses and gives Bruce a wink while allowing his eyes to glow Extremis Orange for a second. Bruce’s eyes widen and then Sneaky’s faceplate engages. After a moment of receiving instruction from JARVIS, Bruce manages to make the suit nod its head in Tony’s direction, before stomping towards the nearest exit.
After which, Tony connects himself to Natasha’s earpiece. Once he’s made sure the line is completely secure, he speaks.
“Natasha. This might be your opportunity.”
The former Black Widow pauses where she’s at in the hallway, frowning.
“Stark? What do you mean?”
“Loki is going to get away. It’s part of the plan. But if you want to ‘die’ valiantly while fighting her… you could trick her into throwing you off of the Helicarrier. Your ‘remains’ would be unrecognizable.”
He sees Natasha considering the offer for a long moment. He can tell she’s weighing her options and how badly she wants to go for it. He can easily make sure she slots into Coulson’s place in this little production, Tony figures. But in the end…
“Barton’s on the Helicarrier, isn’t he? Right now?”
Tony smiles ruefully, having been half-expecting this.
“… Yeah. Want directions?”
“Please. And sorry for making this difficult.”
Tony shakes his head, even as he rattles off some instructions that will see Natasha running right into Clint.
“Don’t worry about it. There will be other opportunities soon enough. As for Barton… JARVIS thinks that manual cognitive recalibration might be your best bet for freeing him from Loki’s control. Meaning… hit him really hard in the head. Just try not to overdo it.”
Natasha blinks before looking up to the ceiling and giving the nearest camera a nod.
“Thanks, Stark.”
Using Technopathy to continue being the eyes in the sky, Tony is able to confirm that JARVIS is directing Bruce on a route that will not lead him into harm’s way even as Natasha makes her way towards Barton. Loki’s original plan of unleashing the Hulk on all of them is officially kaput and she’ll soon have lost her most valuable asset outside of Selvig, same as last time. At the same time, the Iron Legion is still busy with the two damaged turbines and Loki’s goons trying to stop them from enacting repairs.
Thor, meanwhile, has gone down to stop Loki’s escape just like last time, but he’s brought Sif with him. Tony’s lips purse for a moment because if Loki manages to trap both Thor and Sif inside of the cage and then drop them, he’s going to have to intervene. Thor can survive due to his frankly god-like constitution and the ability to fly using the Hammer to slow his fall right before impact. Sif, while she does have the body of an Asgardian, isn’t nearly as tough as her Prince.
… Fortunately, Tony doesn’t have to figure out a solution because while Thor falls for the same trick Loki pulled last time, Sif hangs back, even trying to call out to Thor at the last second before the gambit is complete and Thor finds himself smashing through a copy of Loki that’s not really there.
Loki drops Thor just like she did the last time around, with Sif engaging her this time. However, Tony quickly realizes that while Sif didn’t fall for the first layer of Loki’s trap… she did fall for the second. The Asgardian woman is engaged with yet another copy and as the facsimile of the Trickster Goddess dodges, ducks, and weaves out of Sif’s attacks its clear to Tony that the real Loki has slipped away.
Eventually, Sif will figure out she’s been had, but by then it will be too late. Of course, where the real Loki is, Tony doesn’t know. Her magic means she’s hidden from SHIELD’s cameras. He knows where she’s going to be however… which is when he finally finds the snag in Loki’s escape plan… and his scheme to let her get away.
Peggy Carter was busy assisting the Iron Legion in clearing Loki’s men from the hallways near the damaged turbines, Fury and Hill were busy doing damage control on the bridge… ah, and there was Loki, revealing herself in order to snatch the Scepter from where Tony had SHIELD tuck it away this time so it wasn’t just out in the open.
As she steps back out into the hallway, Tony also sees Agent Phil Coulson getting his hands on the massive weapon that SHIELD had managed to make out of the remains of The Destroyer Automaton they’d collected two years ago. While Loki is met by some of her goons who lead her towards their stolen quinjet so she can escape, Tony can tell Phil is on a collision course with the Goddess, just like last time.
Tony knows, of course, that Phil Coulson will survive today no matter what. Fury won’t let the man die. He’s clingy like that. But he also knows that the way Coulson comes back is no small amount of damaging to the poor man. So… why not change the future once more?
Making his way out of the laboratory at long last, Tony moves through the Helicarrier with purpose. Bruce finds an exit and is off the Helicarrier, flying away with JARVIS’ assistance as Tony’s baby boy gets his science bro out of harm’s way. Natasha encounters Barton and thanks to the ES3 flowing through her veins, takes him down with ease before breaking him free of Loki’s mind control and knocking him out in one fell swoop.
Sif finally figures out she’s fighting a copy of Loki when the Silvertongue finally gets far enough away to drop the illusion, while at the same time producing a new illusion for the upcoming encounter with Coulson. Peggy manages to take down the last of Loki’s goons at the turbines, allowing the Iron Legion to finally start finishing up their repairs.
Finally, Phil confronts Loki and they have their little chat before Loki stabs the SHIELD Agent through the back. After leaving him for dead, Phil manages to get his fancy prototype weapon focused on Loki and even blasts her with it, but her remaining goons just pull her onto the quinjet so they can fly away.
The stolen quinjet disappears from the Helicarrier’s sensors shortly after, making it clear that Loki had used her magic to erase their trail once more. Even as the Iron Legion finishes the patch job on the Helicarrier’s turbines to keep the damn thing in the air for a little while longer, they find themselves with no one to chase after.
Tony, meanwhile, arrives at Coulson’s side as the Agent lies dying, blood dripping from his lips. Fury is only a couple minutes away, having started running from the bridge the moment he was alerted to what Loki had done to his agent. Alas… you snooze, you lose.
“Ah-ah, Agent. You don’t get to die on me today.”
Tony had come prepared for this eventuality. Pulling an innocuous injector out of his pocket, he kneels down and slams it into the side of Phil’s neck. The SHIELD Agent’s eyes widen as he gets what is admittedly a low dosage of Extremis… nothing too powerful and nothing permanent either. Instead, it could be likened to something like a stimpack from a video game, rapidly increasing regeneration for a set amount of time, about thirty seconds to be exact.
It's more than enough to reverse Coulson’s injuries though, taking him from death’s door to hale and heart in the span of those thirty seconds. Just as Fury arrives at the doorway, Tony is grabbing Coulson by the hand and pulling the healed Agent to his feet.
“Stark… what did you just inject my Agent with?”
Tony grins, his eyes twinkling as he tosses the spent injector to Fury.
“Newest product from Stark Industries, coming soon to an ambulance near you. Rapid healing in a single press of the button. What do you think Coulson? Like it?”
Looking down at the hole in his shirt where Loki had stabbed him all the way through, Coulson touches the now blemish free skin visible there before sighing and giving the blandest response imaginable.
“I certainly like not being dead, I suppose.”
“Stark…”
Fury’s angry growl would be more impressive if… Tony didn’t completely have the SHIELD Director’s number. As it is, Tony just raises an eyebrow at the one-eyed man.
“We have more important things to worry about right now then having another dick measuring contest, Fury. Especially when you’ll just lose this one like all the others. Let’s table this discussion for the time being and focus on stopping Loki, yeah?”
Rather than capitulating, Fury grinds his teeth.
“We’d need to find her first and someone just sent the man who could locate the Tesseract on a joyride.”
Tony scoffs at that.
“I removed a ticking time bomb from your already failing Helicarrier Fury. You’re welcome. Besides, I know where Loki is going. Remember what Bruce said? With the tools she has now, she can make her portal at any reactor on the planet.”
Fury scowls furiously but still nods.
“I don’t see how that narrows it down, Stark.”
Smirking, Tony raises a hand.
“Ah! But she’s not going to use just any reactor on the planet, Fury. She wants a spectacle. She wants to put on the performance of a lifetime, to say that she’s faced Earth’s best and brought us low so that her conquest of our planet is indisputable.”
Fury’s one visible eye widens.
“Your Tower. She’s going to use your tower.”
Tony nods, pointing at Fury triumphantly.
“Knew you’d get there Nicky. Yeah, she’s going to use my tower. And we’re going to stop her.”
For a long moment, Nick Fury’s incredible dislike for Tony wars against his need to do his duty. Finally, he manages to wrestle the former under control and focus on the latter.
“Coulson?”
“Fit as a fiddle, sir.”
“Alright then. Let’s go stop a megalomaniac alien who thinks she’s a goddess.”
As the two men stomp off, Tony can’t help grinning. However, his grin grows even bigger when JARVIS whispers in his mind through their ever-present connection.
Sir… I experienced a breakthrough during that last encounter with Loki. I can now see through her illusions. Her magic is no longer impermeable to me.
Trust his baby boy to figure out the impossible. Heh, this was going to be fun.
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A/N: Deus Ex JARVIS strikes again! Poor Loki is about to get goosed.
Next up, a much more manufactured Battle of New York. Tony's been preparing for this, after all.