I don't own the Marvel universe, I am but one man. Similarly, I am a man, and thus don't own HP.

Hey all. This is the second-to-last full chapter of ATP. I posted this initially on my patty on page during a busy time in my real life, and I wasn't happy with significant chunks of this and the rest of the story. Then, other stories took over my mind. My Marvel muse died and then kept on turning in its grave from the stuff that was coming out from Disvel (or Mouse Marvel?). Well, anyway, a lot of things conspired to stop me from getting back into these final 50,000-plus words, not least of which is my own lack of skill when it comes to editing. This chapter, once I redid significant segments, added nine thousand words and shifted other things to the next chapter, is barely 30,000 words (WAY less than March's Stallion chapter), but despite that and the fact I had already edited several specific scenes, it still took me a lot of time to go through this chapter.

This has been Grammarlied as well. I hope that you all enjoy it.

Chapter 55: Invasion: Then There Were Two

In the mountains of the Himalayas, where the Wreckers had placed the beacon, Ebony Maw, the most cerebral of Thanos' Black Order had created a defense in depth that was gradually growing throughout the Himalayas. This consisted of scattered, shielded defensive points, shields that were strong enough to take even a blow from Fenrir and had heavy guns behind them, along with the Chitauri's version of rocket launchers. Giant elephantine creatures that had nine legs and long snouts, these could only move slowly through the portal and had to be unpacked afterward, the same as some of the other land-based creatures.

The Spitters, a name that even Ebony thought was both apropos and a sign of limited intelligence, consume large chunks of stone, then, in their stomachs, shift those chunks into massive bolts of stone. Shooting them into the atmosphere, these stone creations would come down once more with all the kinetic potential they built up after going at Mach speeds.

The impact these simple rods had once they came down on their target cities was far larger than the limited upkeep necessary. Although the rods could be knocked out of the air, and many had been so far, cities all around the Himalayas and beyond were burning, adding to the death toll that this invasion had already accrued.

Coupled with these rocket stations were numerous technological traps that served as deterrents even against Fenrir or Hela, let alone their companions. These came in the form of mines that fooled even an Asgardian's senses. When they exploded in the attacker's faces, the explosions hit with such heat and force that even Hela, Fenrir and Garm could be flung away, saving that segment of the defensive line, which could then fall back.

Heavy antiair guns, the dung beetle-like cyborgs, defended the Chitauri from aerial attacks. Dozens of fighters and bombers from India, Bangladesh, Nepal itself and even China had been slain, and they were also strong enough to at least smash Hela out of the sky. They didn't hurt much, but she was not a strong enough flier to push through the amount of impact those bolts of energy hit her with.

Worse were strange gravitic traps that could catch even Fenrir, holding him in place despite his mighty strength as the area around them was impacted by gravity several hundred times more than Earth's normal gravity. It had only been luck and the fact he had been ranging ahead of the others that stopped Hela and others from being seriously wounded by that last when they first ran into it.

Thus, Hela had decided to change tactics. Instead of simply bulling ahead as she and the others had hoped, the group sent to do what they could on this front started to use hit-and-run tactics. They ranged all over, using Hela's ability to fly and Fenrir and Garm's prodigious leaps to traverse the mountains, slaughtering bands of aliens or smashing hard points and then retreating under her spells from any attempt to track them. However, even the Asgardians, goddess and beast alike, were having trouble moving around the mountains like this.

That main portal was massive, its aperture five times the size of any of the other portals spread across the planet. This allowed large numbers of Rippers and Death Claws to come through, along with the construction equipment designed to build the anti-air and automated weaponry that Ebony was using to create his defense in depth.

As the defenders spread out, they also created smaller portals on Ebony's orders. These were the size of individual aliens. Thus, while the main portal was being used to bring in a lot of equipment, the smaller ones brought in infantry or skimmers closer to the front line, such as it was. Lots of them, infantry and skimmers both.

The infantry dug into positions spreading out over whole mountains, creating a defense in depth with the smaller infantry-sized portals at their center becoming hard points. These also became the typical targets for Fenrir, Garm and the rest.

But while Hela could use her magic to swat even a Ripper out of the sky with ease or whole flights of skimmers at a time, and did every few minutes, she could only be in one place at a time as well. Unfortunately, like most magic users, while on an attack like this away from her place of power, Hela could not direct her magic out beyond her admittedly amazing line of sight. The rest of the group with her were even less capable of stopping such from spreading out quickly.

Thus, as Hela and the rest did what they could to slow Ebony Maw's expansion of his defense zone, whole flotillas of skimmers, many times the size of the units being used by Supergiant in China or Nebula in France, were now spreading out beyond the mountains of the Himalayas, hitting the nearby nations. Thanks to being connected to Pinoptes, Dennis and Sage's network, Hela was well aware of the carnage this was causing in India, Burma, and even as far as the Bay of Bengal. While most of those nations had some type of air force, they were small and outside of India, not very well maintained or at a technological level sufficient to fight even the skimmers, let alone their bigger brethren. On this front, those bigger brethren were only one in fifty, but that was still more than enough to cause a lot of damage.

That death toll was a true horror, despite it not having lasted so long thus far and the reversals that the attackers had faced. Despite Ororo's best efforts, tens of thousands of civilians had died in Washington, Paris and beyond, and elsewhere, it was far, far worse, particularly in China and near Ebony's portal. Doom had saved Debrecen and the rest of the planet from far worse, but it was only the nature of the portals and the lack of a space-based angle of attack that had kept the planet from being entirely overrun.

The best defense for the area was a United States carrier group that had remained assigned to the Indian Ocean after the Eurasian War. Yet even the US forces who had been quick to take up the same tactics as their counterparts in France and America - launching from out of range and then turning away when they ran out of missiles - were being slowly overwhelmed in the skies over India.

It is a numbers game, and it is one that the humans are losing here. Blast this commander and his defense-first strategy. Ugh, it reminds me of those history books that Ororo and Harry had me read about the First World War. If we had been able to get here before the Chitauri got so situated, things would be different. But that and the terrain have worked against us, Hela thought, scowling as she leaned against the side of a mountain, standing on a tiny path that even a goat would have thought impossible to traverse.

Garm and Fenrir both had some trouble moving across the mountains on the ground like this, and even Hela was finding the going tough at times. It was almost enough to make her think of adding the kind of hover boots Dani used in her combat outfit to Hela's own.

"We've broken contact," Dani reported from the back of the group. "That illusion you just cast is leading away the last group of skimmers that were trying to follow us, Hela. If we just keep moving further in this direction, the only ones we'll need to worry about are the skimmers."

"Very good. In that case, it is time to think smarter instead of harder. Initially we had wished to draw out the enemy commander and the remaining Wrecking Crew. That is not working any longer and the aliens are still just spreading out, digging in further. Instead, we will need to infiltrate, push past their outer envelope to get to something vital," Hela answered, scowling underneath her half mask, her tone grim.

"I dislike that sister. These creatures are prey. No matter how many millions of them there are, they cannot be a true threat to me or even this old wolf beside me," Fenrir half teased, pushing his shoulder against the shorter and far older Garm where the pair stood, taking up the entirety of a small ridge above Hela's current position. "We have slain thousands today. We can slay thousands more if we keep attacking."

"I will have you know, pup, that I probably have killed even more of the enemy than you have. There is something to be said for guile and experience against youthful enthusiasm," Garm retorted. "Listen to the mistress."

"Why not break the group in two?" Dani asked, shrugging. "Let Fenrir and Garm go wild. The rest of us sneak through their lines until we find the main portal."

"It might work, but it would also separate two of our heavy hitters from the rest of us. While I can slaughter even as many as my brother here, my raw physical power is not up to doing both that and fighting the two remaining members of the Wrecking Crew," Hela answered, not dismissing the suggestion but calmly explaining why it wouldn't work. "I can face one, mayhap both in direct conflict. Yet I would have no ability to do that and aid you or Gerda against the other aliens. No, we stick together for now. If we do meet with either of those two, then mayhap splitting up will become viable."

Dani nodded thoughtfully, reaching up and stroking Fenrir's side as the tiny trail she, Gerda and Hela were using wound up and past his current position. Watching them, Hela was again astonished at the connection Dani had formed with her prickly younger brother. Truly, the young huntress has a most magnificent way with all beasts, but her friendship with my brother is perhaps the best thing to have happened to him in quite a while.

Then she shook her head and concentrated on the here and now. "Gerda, come here. I will cover us with illusion once more. And remember, from now on, only attack when I say," Hela ordered. "I am looking at you most particularly, brother!"

Gerda had been scouting out ahead of them and now came down towards them, pushing through under a series of boulders, having hidden herself amongst them almost as well as someone who could use magic to do the deed. Thankfully, the aliens didn't seem particularly good at spotting single people on the move in a natural environment like the mountains from above, or else even she would have been easily spotted simply because of the number of skimmers that flew in the air on random shifts.

The two wolves, however, were, while a massive benefit to the group's combat abilities, simply too large to be anything but threats even in their currently human-sized forms. At Hela's direction, magic encased all of them. First was a dome of magic that blocked others from hearing anything within, a Muffilatio writ large that would allow the group to communicate with one another verbally rather than through hand or eye motions. Which, obviously, the two wolves could not participate in. It also blocked anything that tried to find them in any manner, which allowed Hela to use an electronic map that Spymaster sent to her bracelet-shaped computer, a bit of engineering she was still getting used to.

At least, that was the hope. But Hela understood that there were powers in the universe that were beyond her understanding and thus beyond her magical ability to counter, so she used the electronic device sparingly. Worse, she knew that the Chitauri might be able to discern even her use of magic. Richards and Doom had both come up with scientific means to track magic to a significant extent degree, especially hasty spellwork like this. And they have not found us yet. I will just need to keep trusting to hope.

With Hela's spells covering them, the group quickly began moving once more. Following the direction marked out on Hela's map by Pinoptes, they moved in the direction of the energy source of the main portal. Doing so, they traversed several hundred leagues of some of the most horrible terrain Earth had to offer, with jagged cliffs, huge granite walls of raw mountain, and snow deep enough that if you walked over a hidden crevice and fell in, you would suffocate before you could get out. Despite their monstrous strength, even the wolves had problems, a lack of hands and their size hampering their ability to climb dramatically.

At one point, it got so bad that Hela had to use further magic to help them ascend up into the air from one escarpment to another. "I would wager you have never wished to have our father's ability to transform and shape-shift more than now, brother," Hela teased good-naturedly. "At the moment, turning even into a werewolf would make your ability to move around in these mountains far easier."

"Personally, I think it's a matter of opposable thumbs," Gerda announced with a laugh as she and Dani helped Garm along without the use of magic, which was far more difficult. "Surely, the fact that we have opposable thumbs has helped humans and those like us to evolve past our primitive origins. No longer do we need to fear the animals of the forest."

"Says someone who has never seen monkeys or gorillas," Dani snorted.

Fenrir was touchy, though, and while he was willing to let Hela's comment pass by due to their sibling connection, he took umbrage at Gerda's statement. Looking over at her, he scowled, fangs showing along one side of his jaw. "Keep talking like that, and I will show you that even being a chooser of the slain is not enough to save you from my bite! There is a good reason why your ancestors feared wolves like me."

It fell to Dani to play peacekeeper for a time, but the magical illusions that Hela occasionally sent out and their own invisibility to their enemies worked. The various illusions made the skimmers race away from them whenever they had to simply take to the air again, as flying was a bit too much for Hela's spellwork to hide completely. Because of this, the group passed over the mountains as quickly as they possibly could without taking to the air, which at this point would've been dangerous simply because there were so many skimmers flying through the air over the mountains. They were sure to hit some of them and thus break Hela's magic.

Eventually the infantry posts also became so thick on the ground, such as it was in the mountains anyway, that the presence became known to the enemy once more.

Two aliens turned from where they had been working on setting up another small portal at a noise behind them. At first, they saw nothing but the scree of the mountainside, which was loose here. Spreading out away from their current positions, looked like it had been the site of some ancient avalanche or river. But as they watched, dozens of rocks came clamoring down from a loose band of rock.

Most would have simply dismissed this as something up above them causing a small cascade of rocks, not seeing any danger in it. But the Chitauri had run into invisible enemies prior to coming to Earth. Both infantrymen raised their blasters and began to pepper the area where the rocks and seemingly come from, hitting Gerda and Hela, the hits dispelling her illusion.

Hela could simply ignore the strikes entirely, as even a Ripper's beam couldn't hurt her, although it could toss her off-course. But caught mid-step, Gerda grunted, collapsing onto her side and then rolling down the mountainside towards the two enemy infantrymen.

Both of the aliens fell to shots from Dani before any of the others could even move, and then she was racing down the hill after her friend and trainer.

As a Valkyrie, Gerda was made of quite stern stuff, and her armor was among the best she could wear without hampering her movement. It wasn't quite up to the unpowered armor of the Custodes, but it was way better than that of the Chitauri. Thus, she was not overly injured by the strikes, although the initial impact of the green energy bolts from the enemy infantry had stung her thigh and knee under her armor. The resulting fall only really wounded her pride, and she waved off Dani's hand, pointing above them to the dozen skimmers that had responded. "Look out!"

The skimmers, linked to whatever communication system the Chitauri seemed to share, had responded almost instantly and now came in from every angle. Instantly, fire rained down, such that Hela had no chance of raising another spell to hide their presence or send out magical decoys before they struck.

"Blast it all! Fine, if these fools which to die, slaughter them all!" Hela snarled.

Dodging around the energy bolts coming their way as best they could, Dani and Gerda began to fire arrows up at the skimmers while Hela started to use her magic once more. Bolts of raw magic shot upward, downing fourteen skimmers with her first magical blast, Hela being far too annoyed at present to concentrate on any specific spell. Still more came down at them, though, firing without any care of the losses they were taking in turn.

To one side of where they had been traversing the mountains was a small path. And now, along this path, hundreds of Chitauri infantry skittered across the sides of the mountain like so many spiders scaling a wall. Above them came two skimmers containing Wrecker and Thunderball. "Hah! Ebony was right. They were trying to sneak past us. Fuck them up!"

Seeing that, Hela smiled, much of her earlier annoyance disappearing. Perhaps Dani's plan to split us up will become viable momentarily. "Fenrir, rother mine? If you could concentrate on the two Wreckers. Garm, get in close with those infantry. Gerda and Dani, give them cover fire if need be, but keep your distance."

A second later, a web of red and purple lightning rose from her hands, going off in the air like so bursts of flak. More skimmers began to fall, and the rest pulled back, seeing none of their fellows getting through. They instead fired from further above, which did not do much for their aim. A moment later, another series of spells lashed out into another column of infantry before then, causing a minor avalanche that carried many of them away.

If we can break contact and leave Fenrir and Garm here, then…

Unfortunately, Wrecker and Thunderball had learned from Bulldozer's ignominious end. They had been further outfitted with alien technology to let them move through the mountains far easier, and Wrecker used this now. An Antigravity belt, smaller but based on the gravity traps Fenrir had run into, canceled his weight, and Wrecker leaped forward faster and higher than either Garm or Fenrich had thought he could move. Normally, he would have a leaping power to match a normal Asgardian, but with the anti-gravity belt, he covered a distance that even Hela would've had trouble doing, landing several hundred yards above where Dani and Gerda were standing before racing down toward them.

Before either woman could react, Wrecker slammed Gerda off her feet with a shoulder charge before lashing out at Dani with a punch. Dani was already dodging even before he landed, but even so, a glancing blow nearly broke her arm. Grunting in pain, Dani moved with the blow, letting it twist her around before using her hover boots to kick off the slope behind her. This let her get within Wrecker's reach. The sword she had been training on with Gerda since returning to Earth from Asgard came up, stabbing toward Wrecker's eye.

"Gah, you bitch!" he howled as he twisted away quickly, dodging losing an eye by the skin of his teeth. Instead, her blade opened up a cut just below his eyes across his nose. In Retaliation, his foot caught Dani in the side, and she could feel her powered armor crumple a bit under the blow. The kick hurled her off the steep portion of the mountainside she was currently standing on to crash into a tree below, although even that was better than not having her fall stopped so precipitously.

Thunderball wasn't nearly so lucky because from where he had been charging behind Fenrir, Garm had seen Wrecker fly overhead. Unlike Fenrir, who hadn't stopped his headlong charge into the oncoming infantry and was now tossing the aliens away like so many small toys, Garm had stopped his initial charge. When Thunderball tried to leap over the tumult as Wrecker had, Garm leaped upwards, intercepting him. "Got you! Your meat will line my stomach, fool!"

Garm's teeth bit into Thunderball's leg as he was still jumping forward, and even as he cried out in pain, Thunderball's momentum continued for a moment before his belt fizzled out due to the added weight. Unlike the gravitic traps, the belt was extremely finicky technology, even for the Chitauri.

The pair crashed into the side of the mountainside, tumbling as they hit. As they fell, Garm released Thunderball's leg and bean scrambling at Thunderball's chest and side as the pair followed after Dani in her own pell-mell dissent, quickly passing her position..

Shaking his head to get rid of the blood coding hit his nose and mouth, Wrecker charged again but ignored Dani and Gerda. Instead of helping his comrade or targeting the two weakest members of the defensive force, Wrecker leaped up towards where Hela was standing further up the nearly sheer cliff face. "You're next, you stupid bitch!"

Turning from where she was sending out blasts of electrical flak up into the air, Hela sneered at him, deflecting his crowbar with her sword, grimacing only slightly at the reverberations of the impact. Wrecker was strong, perhaps a touch stronger physically than Hela, but she knew he was a brawler. He swung his crowbar like he was a club, all strength, no finesse. I need to keep him at sword length. I can't let him get a hand on me, but... In a few seconds, Wrecker was bleeding from several cuts, none debilitating, but all of them nasty. I can probably bleed him out soon.

However, despite her advantage in experience and skill, Wrecker's blows began coming in fast and furious enough to nearly make Hela lose her footing and sword in that order. She was able to keep a hold of her blade and turn a fall into a leap away, but couldn't dodge a strike that got through to her leg as she did.

As she landed, the limb collapsed under her, causing her to fall to her side. Another blow to her shoulder got through before she could recover, but it wasn't her sword arm, and in return, Hela's sword came up, cutting at Wrecker's forearm.

He flinched back and then tried to bring his crowbar down on her chest. "Not this time, bitch!"

A blast of magic lashed out from Hela at point-blank range, dumping him to the ground of the somewhat wide (it was a whole six-person dining table in size) cliff they were currently on. This let Hela get to her feet, but she was somewhat annoyed to see how quickly Wrecker had gotten to his own across from her. Blast it! Were he an Asgardian, he would have had trouble shrugging that off. Does he have some more magic resistance thanks to how he gained his power?

Hela dodged backward as Wrecked charged forward, then dodged backward again as rippers appeared among the skimmers in the air above the battlefield. Her electrical flak spell having faded out, many of them started to fire at Fenrir and Garm, uncaring of the fact Thunderball was locked in combat with Hela's companion. That was all she had time to notice before four more began to open fire on her. The heavy energy strikes staggered her and Wrecker both.

But the blasts hitting Garm smashed him off of Thunderball, who instantly took advantage. Leaping forward, he landed on Garm's back. "Got you!" Before Garm could twist away or buck the former doctor off, Thunderball wrapped his wrecking ball's chain. Gripping the chain tightly, he began to pull, choking Garm.

Fenrir noticed this and turned from where he had just bit an alien in half. "ARROOOOOOO!" he howled, the sound causing the aliens and the two Wreckers to flinch. The infantry actually began to retreat while all the rippers within hearing range began to fire at him exclusively. They were soon joined by the majority of the skimmers as Fenrir just laughed wolfishly, hurling himself forward.

This took the pressure off a hiding Dani and Gerda. "Target Thunderball!"

Nodding, Gerda did so, her arrow joining Dani's gauss rifle round. Thunderball had barely a second to blink before he took the arrow in the shoulder. It didn't penetrate but stuck there, and right after it, a boulder the size of a tank round going far faster than any human-made tank could fire slammed into his head. "GAHHH!"

The blow didn't do much, but it did force him to loosen his grip. That was all Garm needed to twist around, fangs biting. Thunderball tried to flinch away, and a Ripper landed nearby, Fenrir having leaped upward and tearing at its throat. The combination of the flinch and the ground jumping underneath him sent Thunderball tumbling to the side down the mountain toward the very, very distant ground below.

The two shooters were then forced back into cover as the Skimmers all turned away from Fenrir, who had been ignoring their fire. The rippers kept on striking him, though, twisting away and rising higher into the air. None of the infantry around them bothered to try and go to the plummeting Thunderball's help, instead firing at Dani and Gerda.

Higher up the mountain face, Hela and Wrecker were nearly ignorant of all this, locked in their own battle. Wrecker's speed and strength were such that Hela could barely concentrate enough to call forth her own magic for a series of small spells, but that was enough to even the playing field along with her own skill with the blade.

And then, as Hela stumbled back from a strike at her shoulder, Wrecker overextended just slightly to aim at her head. When Hela dodged instead of blocking the blow, Wrecker became well out of position. A point black blast of magic blinded him for a second, and he didn't pull back his arm fast enough.

Like Gerda and Dani's blades, Hela's sword had been forged in Asgard. It had been forged not to kill humans but to fight Jotun, beasts of similar strength and other Asgardians, to deal with their armor and their physical durability. And unlike Dani's earlier desperate strike Hela's blow struck true, the side of her blade slicing at Wrecker's wrist. While she couldn't separate the limb entirely, she could cut halfway through.

Blood spurted as Wrecker cried out in pain, his crowbar falling from his now worthless hand. "ARGGH!:

Years ago, when the Wreckers were just starting out, simply physically separating Wrecker's crowbar from his person would've been enough to depower the Wrecker, let alone the rest of his crew. Now, it wasn't. Yet even so, that crowbar represented a lot of the Wrecker's offensive power, and he tried to lunge forward as his eyes cleared, his useless hand flopping at his side. "No!"

Hela allowed herself a sneer as she pirouetted around him and stabbed upwards into his armpit. Again, the sword couldn't penetrate very far, but now Wrecker's other arm fell useless. The tendons there also cut as he screamed in agony. The armpit was one of those places that, human or Asgardian, no matter how tough you were getting hit there hurt! Let alone getting stabbed.

"GAH, no, no!" Doubly crippled, Wrecker cried out, shifting away from Hela, losing his footing. He pinwheeled in place, completely open, and a second later, paid for it with his life.

Hela's sword came up and around again, aiming for his throat, cutting across it from one side to the other. "No! I was promised so much…" He gurgled, blood flowing from his open mouth.

"Perhaps then you should have looked up the historical manner in which traitors are paid," Hela sneered, shaking her head.

Hela kicked Wrecker's body away from her and was about to turn and leap down towards where she could see ongoing fighting going on in the distance when she felt as if a giant fist had suddenly picked her up. A second later, Hela was hurled against the mountainside. She grunted at the impact, not hurt exactly, but certainly getting the wind knocked out of her.

Then Hela found herself being lifted up into the air and literally hurled through the sky so fast she could barely use her magic to slow herself. "A telekinetic, blast it all!"

Hela had occasionally sparred with Jean after the redhead had gotten back into combat shape and knew the signs of fighting a telepath. That didn't mean she was any happier about it, of course. Because this telepath had done so out of her line of sight. And I can't send my magic out past my line of sight here on Midgard. In her own realm, that would be a different story, but the point was mute, really, something to while away the time before the feeling of being tossed away faded, and she could fly back under her own power.

But Hela was not the only target of the currently unseen telekinetic. Fenrir and Garm soon joined her, hurled away from where they had been fighting. This was not in time to save Thunderball. Indeed, it merely hastened his demise. Garm had been in the process of biting his head off when he was pulled away. Garm's bite hadn't given away. Thunderball's neck, on the other hand, had.

As blood gushed from the now headless corpse of the last member of the Wrecking Crew, Gerda and Dani went to ground, hiding themselves as best they could. And soon enough from the same direction Thunderball and Wrecker had initially appeared, came a flying humanoid. He was very much not human, and from her place down below in the forest lining the bottom of the large valley they had been fighting in, Dani had to shake her head. This alien looked almost exactly like one of the gray-skinned aliens from the X-Folders, and for just a moment, Dani had to fight back an inappropriate snort of laughter at the idea of Agent Mully popping up out of nowhere to demand the truth from the alien.

He was short, almost at Dani's own height without her suit, and thin, almost emaciated in terms of his body type. Yet his head was quite large for his frame, his eyes were wide and almost circular, and his skin grey. He had white hair, which did kind of mess with the overall X-Folders alien image, but even so, the resemblance was uncanny.

But as spindly and unassuming as the alien was, there was no denying his telekinetic powers.

Raising his hands, the alien gestured, and telekinetic power blasted down into a quickly returning Hela, Fenrir and Garm, and even the two hiding members of their impromptu team, attempting to crush them to the ground, creating an effect not unlike a massive tornado. While Hela lost control of her hover spells and let both wolves drop, Danny and Gerda found themselves picked up and hurled like so many pebbles out of the valley and further down the mountainside. If not for the armor they wore, they would have been dead many times over.

But as it was, even through their armor, both Valkyrie and mutant huntress took a pounding, and it was only the fact that the alien wasn't concentrating on them at all that saved them from dying so quickly that even the emergency medical array wouldn't have saved Danny's life. Instead, they had been caught at the periphery of the field that the alien had created to capture the two giant wolves and the Asgardian.

Snarling and falling away from Hela, Garm and Fenrir each reacted in the same exact way. Both of them released their hold on their human-sized forms and began to grow and grow until both of them had regained their natural sizes. And when they did, they began to fight back against the force pressing down on them even as Hela did much the same, trying to create a magical barrier around her to defend herself from telekinetic power.

Hovering several miles over the battlefield, the Black Order member Ebony Maw scowled ferociously. He had come forward to engage these enemies when he had seen a report from the Chitauri in charge of this group which seemed to indicate the humans had been trying to sneak through his defense in depth. The fact they were here, barely one mountain away from the beacon, meant they had been succeeding at that tactic most disturbingly. Now it looked as if the only reason they hadn't been trying to simply blast their way through was it might take them too long.

Angrily, Ebony used his powers once more, picking up boulders and hurling them at each of his enemies one after another, sonic booms echoing across the mountains. But while the Asgardian female cried out in pain and crashed to the mountainside below, only the older looking of the two four-legged creatures seemed to even feel the hits. But that snarl was one of animal fury rather than pain if Ebony was any judge. And as Thanos' chief torturer, he was indeed a good judge of the difference between an angry snarl and a pain-filled one.

It would take me quite a bit of time to smash through even that one's normal endurance and durability. Whereas the human female is quite clearly a magic user as well as being Asgardian, which makes her doubly dangerous. The Chitauri had some information on that group, and she certainly fit the mold. To say nothing of the other four-legged beast, which was even now breaking out of his hold on it again!

Perhaps I should have retreated and reinforced the defenses around the main portal? But no, that would've given the tactical initiative to the enemy, and I would've never been able to regain it. Doubling down on this point of contact was the best idea! Ebony thought to himself, even as skimmers and Rippers began to fire down into the trio.

It was time, Ebony decided, to put his other gift into action, the one that gave him the name 'Maw' in the first place. With that in mind, he zoomed down towards the younger of the Four-legged beasts, understanding and seeing him as the main threat. And thus, the one whose turning would most benefit him.

He flashed down and quickly bound the beast in another set of telekinetic shackles, blasting away his older companion and sending him flying down the mountainside into a large copse of trees. The young creature instantly began to break out of them once more, causing Ebony to grimace and strain mentally to keep the bonds in place. But he could still speak as he did so. And that was enough. "You are so strong, such a magnificent beast, so powerful. So worthy. Worthy of acting as you will… But your will is my will, my pleasure, your pleasure…"

The wolf at first seemed to ignore his words, but feral intelligence was no match for Ebony Maw's second power: a mental manipulation based on his voice. Only the most powerful mind could avoid falling under his spell, and it had little to do with telepathy, bypassing the normal defenses as it was carried not through the Astral Plane but physically through his voice.

Fenrir began to succumb. For all his massive power and deadly strength, his mind was not nearly as well formed or protected as even a normal Asgardian, and as Those Who Watch From Above In Shadow had proven, their minds were almost always susceptible to exterior influence. Fenrir's eyes glazed over, his willpower crushed by this oblique assault.

Nearby, Hela also felt the impact of that voice, but she was far enough away that she realized what was happening quickly. She raised a hand to her head and intoned a spell she had learned from her Seidr Man during one of their impromptu magical prank duels. "Mufilatio!"

The impact of the alien's voice instantly ebbed away, and she launched the same spell toward her brother and the alien. I hit one, he stops being able to hear. I hit the other, he stops being able to talk!

Ebony Maw saw the wavelike spell coming his way and hastily leaped away. He didn't stop his insidious assault on the four-legged one, instead speaking to it even as he sent dozens of telekinetic spikes towards the magic user, showing an ability to multitask few telepaths could. "My will is your will! You want to attack the female! You want to attack your fellows."

The spell hit Fenrir and as it wasn't an attack spell of any kind, bypassed his magical resistance, deadening his sense of sound. For a moment, Ebony didn't realize something had changed, but then Fenrir's glazed eyes snapped back to normal, and he snarled soundlessly. Instead of attacking the female, he turned his claws and fangs on Ebony Maw once more, forcing him to retreat in alarm. "Some kind of sound-based spell!? Mind controlling magic, AGAIN!? Damn, all its users to the depths of the eternal ocean!"

Garm had stealthily closed to where he had been trying to influence Fenrir. Now, Ebony's hasty flight brought him within snapping range, and only a hasty change of direction meant he had a gash down his leg rather than no leg at all.

"You, you beast, my power will end you!" Again he created telekinetic bonds around the two wolf-like beasts' forelegs, but before he could try and ply his powers on Garm, a cutting spell from Hela forced him up and away. A second later, he watched as Fenrir and Garm both tore through their bonds and began to stalk up the side of the mountain, staring up at him, splitting apart, trying to circle him despite the difficult terrain.

Something about the way these animals were treating him as simply prey infuriated Ebony, and he gestured. All of the debris from the battle up to this point, bodies, rocks, or trees, rose into the air, and he sent them down like a monstrous rain, carpeting the area even as he skyrocketed higher into the air.

Hela hastily created a Protego over her head, holding it while she returned fire, forcing Ebony to block. His brand of telekinesis wasn't strong enough to block or simply stop her attack spells in place, unlike Jean's. Instead, his shields could only absorb her magic for a few seconds before coming apart, forcing him to dodge.

Meanwhile, back on the ground, Dani and Gerda were forced into hiding by Ebony's wide-angle attack, utterly forgotten in the clash of monsters. Garm grimaced as various things hurled at just below the speed of sound struck him, while Fenrir howled in laughter, unheard by any thanks to the Muffilatio still covering him. Unlike most spells, the Mufilatio could not be dispersed by too much movement, only time or a cancelation spell.

With a snarl on his face, Ebony reached through the ongoing rain to grab at Hela, and the battle continued. He kept his distance and kept hurling things at the attackers but simply couldn't damage any of his three opponents enough. Only once was he able to get an attack past Hela's magical defenses to score across her side, doing nothing. And the skimmers and Rippers still in the air around him were next to useless.

Despite his earlier thoughts on this point, after several long minutes of this stalemate, Ebony began to contemplate retreating for a time. I can hold at the beacon or hide myself high in the sky, wait for the magic user's guard to drop…

A sonic boom from above and behind him broke Ebony out of his thoughts. He hastily twisted around, believing that he would see another enemy and hoping to use his voice on it before the magic-user could interfere. Instead, Ebony's already wide eyes widened further, and he bowed deeply towards the hovering throne of his master, his power disappearing from his voice, a quaver of fear replacing it. "Lord Thanos, please forgive this foolish one's actions. I am horrified and humbled that my lack of ability has…"

"Enough, Ebony. In point of fact, you are performing as well as you possibly could against Asgardians like these. Retreat back toward the beacon for now. I will deal with them." Thanos ordered.

He saw no need to mention that two of Ebony's fellow Black Order had been beaten off by this point. Nebula, ever the disappointment to her father, had been slain even before her portal beacon had been destroyed. Luckily, before that occurred, thousands of Chitauri had passed through into Paris, whereas the loss of Gamora hurt even worse for how total it had been, closing off that avenue of invasion completely, to say nothing of the emotional impact.

"Relay orders to the Chitauri as they come through to continue to maintain a defense in depth. The humans cannot be allowed to close this portal or destroy the main beacon."

With that, Thanos gestured, and several components of his throne went to work just as the larger of the two four-legged creatures below broke Ebony's telekinetic control yet again and leaped upwards. It soared through the air, impossibly fast and high, clearing the equivalent of a skyscraper in an instant.

Only to slam into the defenses of Thanos' hovering throne. "Damn you! At least let me kill that little one before you appear and interrupt my meal!" The animal snarled, trying to bite and gouge his way through the energy shielding around Thanos.

Thanos slowly stood from his throne room, staring at the creature with his head to one side, a sneer on his thick lips. "A beast you appear, and a beast you are. Is this truly the best you Asgardians can produce?"

With a wave of his hand, the shield disappeared. Fenrir tumbled forward, although he righted his course enough to thrust his maw forward, seeking Thanos' body.

But instead, Thanos fist hammered into the side of his head, hurling Fenrir to the side with a gasp of agony. Fenrir slammed into the mountainside below with enough force to actually shatter the mountain. There as a massive booming noise as hundreds of tons of stone cracked underneath them impact, sending up a plume of dust and debris as trees and rock alike were shredded by the backwash.

"Throne, takeover defense," Thanos ordered, as energy the Power Cosmic began to form around his hand.

This was the basic energy of the universe, which Thanos called the Power Cosmic. His race had all been born with a connection to it that allowed them to be nearly ageless, able to use it on a near instinctual level as offensive and defensive powers. Once Thanos had opened his connection to that power more, he had become a Titan. It was the same power source that magic users and gods could only interact with peripherally, although even that was enough to allow them to do a lot, like the Asgardians, who had a natural connection to the Power Cosmic much like Thanos' own people did. But only Thanos and higher-level deities could connect to the Power Cosmic in so raw a manner as to manipulate it like this.

Thanos could not manipulate it like a magic user, could not order the Power Cosmic to, say, shift into a physical form under his command, but that did not matter to Thanos. Nor did it matter to his victims.

The energy blast took Fenrir in the side and shoulder, causing him to howl in pain for the first time since his fight with Surtur.

Garm had also broken out of his telekinetic bonds. He was not as fast or as powerful as Fenrir, but he leaped upward now, aiming for the bottom of the hovering slab of stone that contained the throne of the enemy commander.

He didn't reach it. Instead, he too crashed into a shield, as a mechanical voice intoned, "Kinetic force dispersal shield online. Impact analyzed. Within parameters."

And as it spoke, the shield that Garm had just impacted blasted outwards, not allowing him the ability to try and fall back gracefully, instead hurling him down to join his younger companion. This forced Garm to use one of his mistress's favorite curses. "Blast it!"

Hela had been using her magic to try and dispel Ebony's hold on her, only succeeding when Ebony began to retreat. Now, she turned her own attention towards Thanos, recognizing him as the Mad Titan, the one behind this entire war. "What!? A shield of science that can block magic?"

Black fire arose from her hand and streaked through the air toward Thanos, but once again, a shield protected him. He stood there in front of his throne, his arms crossed behind him now as his throne informed him of the magical powers inherent in that spell. "Did you think I would come back to this star system, the scene of my defeat, without having prepared?"

Thanos was not just a monstrously powerful warrior or tyrant. He was also the last survivor of a highly advanced race, one that had been advanced long before even the Shi'ar had taken to space. And while the AI aboard his hovering throne had no personality whatsoever, it had access to Sanctuary. This gave it far greater computational power than any system, even Doctor Doom or Reed Richards, could have contrived. An entire planet's worth of stored data in order to analyze and overcome anything Thanos encountered. It also had access to Thanos' technology, a technology that had been brought to a level where humans would have termed it the equal of magic.

"Gravity web," Thanos ordered calmly. A small gun aperture opened at the side of his throne, revealing a gun with something that looked like a radar disc at the end, pointing towards Hela. A wide web of black and brown energy flashed forward too fast for Hela to dodge, and she found herself instantly trussed up like a shark in a net. Try as she might, her magical abilities could not cut through whatever energy made up the net, the magic folding around it. As it wrapped around her, Hela groaned in pain as she felt herself dragged down to the ground, where she crashed into the mountainside. The gravity web held her there with the gravity of a black hole, and Thanos lashed out again with an energy beam.

Helpless to move, Hela could still call on her magic. With a snarling growl, she conjured up her own spell, the spell appearing an inch away from her chest and shooting out and up toward the incoming attack.

Roiling lightning intercepted Thanos' energy beam, the backwash of energies covering nearly half as many leagues as Ebony Maw's earlier attacks had covered in his attempt to overcome the Asgardians. Once more, Gerda and Dani were forgotten, and had to basically button down and try to avoid the stray bits of energy that cascaded around them, disappearing quickly, but deadly for all of that.

For more than ten minutes, this went on, the two of them striving against one another, pouring out their energies into this one clash of brute force against brute force. Hela grimaced, seemingly pushing all her will into the spell as she tried to physically fight through the gravity web, having little luck, her bones grinding against one another with every attempt. While behind and around her, another spell began to coalesce.

In contrast, Thanos looked almost amused as he continued to hold out his fist, sending the energy of the universe towards Hela in its raw destructive form while Hela used magic, in Thanos' mind, the bastard child of the Power Cosmic, to block it.

But this clash allowed Garm and Fenrir to collect themselves and close once more to the point they could leap up and attack Thanos once more. Fenrir was hurting a bit from the twin strikes, but his durability was such that even Thanos' energy bolt hadn't been able to hurt him all that much. Garm had avoided anything but the explosion of kinetic energy back into his face from his earlier attack and being choked by Thunderball earlier in the battle.

The impact of the two hits from below overcame the kinetic absorption shield around Thanos' throne. The AI gathered what kinetic energy it could to release on command, but the shield fell, letting the two wolves claw and bite at Thanos and the throne alike.

Thanos quickly turned, his other hand coming up a beam of power coalescing there to match the one he still was sending down at Hela.

Garm was quick and leaped out into the open air, dodging away from the energy beam. In contrast, Fenrir attacked, lunging towards Thanos so fast he couldn't strike him away this time, nor could his throne raise its shield again. Slathering triumphantly, Fenrir bit down hard on Thanos' forearm, fully expecting to bite through in one chomp.

Instead, he found his bite stopped. The metal of Thanos' gauntlet groaned under the force of his bite and warped in places, but metal and Titan alike endured his bite.

"For all that you are an Asgardian, all your abilities are purely physical," Thanos mused as a small trickle of blood appeared between where his armored forearm was clamped within Fenrir's fangs. "Superlative in that frame in comparison to other Asgardians perhaps, but it can be overcome! And if my first strike did so little damage, then I merely need to raise the power level."

However, Thanos wasn't the only one who could concentrate on several things at once. Even as she had been striving power against power with the mad Titan, Hela had been concentrating on another spell, this one a long enchantment. From the air above the battlefield, roiling black energy began to appear, washing across the sky and then coming down in a cyclone cloud toward Thanos. " of Hel come to thy Mistress, bearing the lamentation and grief as thy strength! Wind of the Damned%!"

The energy of this attack appeared in the air, almost like lightning and fire, whose form had somehow shifted into a spiral of smoke. Covering the sky from one horizon to another, it then spiraled into crash into Thanos and his throne, overcoming the shielding of the throne once more and battering against both Mad Titan and his seat of power.

Fenrir also took some hits from the spell, but as Thanos flung him away, he was able to avoid much of the damage done. He fell through the air back down towards the mountainside, now massively changed from what had been due to the numerous impacts of Thanos and before him, Ebony hurling the defenders around the place like so many soccer balls.

Yet once the spell cleared, Thanos and his throne stood, almost undamaged. And once more, the robotic voice of the throne spoke. "Anomalous energy analyzed. Energy exceeds storage parameters. Redirecting stored probability differentiation-inducing cosmic energy."

From the side of the throne again came a blast of power which caught Garm, who had just leaped up into the air once more. All the power that had been contained in Hela's spell was concentrated on a single fist-sized bolt of energy, which shattered Garm's back leg as Thanos turned, launching his own attack toward the ancient wolf. The kinetic blast caught him, and this time, Garm had been unable to get out of the way. Ribs cracked as he was hurled down words to slam into the ground once more with enough force to cause the mountain to quake, the ground underneath him cratering as he struck it.

Although alive, Garm was out of the fight for now.

The sight of her heavily injured companion, her dearest friend, caused Hela to lose herself to fury. "I will have your soul under my bootheel for that, Thanos!"

Flying up into the air, Hela closed, lashing out with magic as she came, flying towards where Thanos stood still on his throne, blasting aside Fenrir as he tried to close. Her spells, however, were all intercepted by the throne's strange defenses. Two of those defenses blew out under her continued onslaught, the energy-redirecting system unable to fully encompass the spells she was hurling at it. Smoke billowed up in separate segments for a time, and then the throne's shield came down.

Thanos jumped forward, crossing the intervening distance rather than waiting for Hela to attack him. This caught Hela by surprise, as up to this point, he had seemingly been happy to remain at range. His fist came down like a piledriver, and Hela hastily raised her blade to defend herself.

The edge of the blade did not dissuade Thanos' blow, however. Although she kept her grip on her sword, the impact drove her back down toward the ground once more, even as her blade shattered under the strike, leaving Thanos' fist uninjured.

A second later, Hela was forced to use another spell to teleport herself to the side to avoid an uppercut that would've undoubtedly done some real damage. Thanos followed, his throne relaying Hela's current position to Thanos the instant she appeared again. An energy bolt caught her in the side, finishing the job of Thanos' initial strike to send her crashing down into the ground below.

Before she could right herself, Thanos was on her, a double-fisted blow coming down. He's so fast! It was all Hela could do to raise her arms and use her magical energies to reinforce her body, thankful for the time she and Harry had taken to recreate the enchantments her paramour had on his crisis suit and raise her hands up to block. "Magia Erebea eighty percent!"

The sound as Titan flesh met reinforced Asgardian was like no sound heard on earth since the dinosaurs had been wiped out. A rolling booming noise shattered the eardrums of the Chitauri still within sight of the battle.

The reverberations from the impact shattered the surrounding mountains along with the one Hela was standing on, causing an earthquake heard for hundreds of miles and blasting them into ruin. Where before a series of mountains had stood, now was a series of jagged hills and scattered fields of rock, the remnants of mighty mountains laid low by the power of the Asgardian and her opponent.

At the center of this destruction, Hela found herself driven to her knees, her body almost up to her waist hammered into the ground, which cratered underneath her as it had Garm earlier. Thanos stood above Hela, his fist once more rising into the air. Blood was running down his forearm where Fenrir had earlier bit it, some of the stress of the hit having blown back into the limb just slightly enough to cause the earlier wounds to reopen.

But Hela was far worse off from the clash. Both her forearms had broken under the strike, her defense not up to the task of stopping Thanos's hit. Her mask was shattered, along with her jaw and a few of her teeth. Hela's eyes also weren't quite tracking, showing signs of a concussion, the only reason she wasn't scrambling to conjure up another mask to hide her features.

Thanos could well have finished Hela right there, and then if not for Fenrir howling and charging forwards again. He alone had withstood the shockwave of their strikes and now charged forward none the worse for wear. "Do not think to cast me aside so easily, creature! I am Fenrir, I am the wolf that will eat the sun! I am the creature that the Shadows used to put fear in the hearts of all of Asgard!"

"And what does that matter to me, beast? To me, you are a minor threat at best," Thanos taunted, turning to prepare himself against Fenrir's charge. Beast of Ragnarök and Mad Titan met, the two of them exchanging punches, paw strikes, and fangs as Fenrir pushed Thanos away from his sister.

Each time flesh met fur, there was a shockwave of sound and kinetic force, scouring the already denuded area. Mountains outside the immediate conflict zone began to tremble, cracks appearing in the raw stone of the mountains. Thanos landed more blows, but they did not matter as much as the blows that got through from Fenrir, his strength such that even Thanos felt them, grimacing occasionally despite his kinetic barrier and Titan durability.

Neither could gain the upper hand for several minutes, but this did allow Hela to slowly regain her senses. She grimaced then. Her Asgardian lineage was coming into play, allowing her to push through the pain and mutter a self-healing cantrip through ruined teeth, slowly pushing her pain aside in order to concentrate on the ongoing battle.

As she watched through now tracking yet still pain-filled eyes, Thanos got the better of Fenrir for a moment. A blow knocked Fenrir off-balance, and Thanos quickly reached forward. Grabbing at both sides of Fenrir's jaw, he gripped it top and bottom as he strained against the muscles of the mighty wolf. Limited by his current size and his footing, The wolf scrambled to bring his full power to bear, and Thanos smirked as he began to force Fenrir's jaws wider and wider until it became painful for the Sun-Eater. "Know your place!"

Dani and Gerda had survived up to this point by being fast enough to get away from the epicenter of the ongoing battle thanks to Dani's equipment, specifically her hover boots, along with her suit's mechanically enhanced strength, which had allowed her to essentially carry her sword master around on her armored back. Now she turned back, and seeing Fenrir in such dire straits and Hela at the foot of the Titan, she dumped Gerda on her rear.

"Sorry, Gerda, duty calls." With that, Dani charged forwards, her hover boots allowing her to cross the difficult terrain created by the earlier impact of Titan and Asgardian. That terrain had been noticeably flattened for miles. Sheer cliff faces had been turned into deep divots or carved-out areas lined with scree hundreds of feet thick.

Not that Dani had any real idea of what to do when she arrived. Even though she had an Asgardian sword, that was a far cry from being able to wield it with enough strength to get through Thanos' skin, if his ability to withstand a bite from Fenrir was any indication. Still, isn't this the essence of being a hero, mindlessly charging into danger?!

So, despite being terrified, Dani charged forwards now, reaching out instead to her mutant powers. And it isn't as if I'm out of tricks.

Dani's mutant powers allowed her to do several things. First, the one she used the most, was a high empathic ability with animals. The second was the ability to pull out images or memories from an area or person. It was this skill which had made her such a fine huntress, and which she hoped to use now. Dani had tested this ability on Emma and Harry, and while Harry could defend against it, Jean could only do so after a lot of practice.

As she closed, Dani concentrated, raising a hand to direct her power, and after a few seconds, despite the distance and his inhuman mind, Thanos' strong mental defenses could not stop her strange ability.

Apparitions rose from the ground all around Thanos, where he was still locked in battle with Fenrir, and his eyes widened. "What… what is this?"

Thanos recognized some of them. One of them was his father. Another was his best friend, a fellow warrior scholar, with whom he had debated the nature of the galaxy and many other things for eons. Before he had found the love of his life before, he had dedicated himself to Death. Before he had slaughtered the other Titans. Even now, several thousand years later, those deaths still at times come back to Thanos.

Not because of any grief. Such was Thanos' devotion to his Lady that Thanos did not feel grief for the death of his race. It was more a lingering sense of regret that those closest to him had never understood his destiny or the true nature of the galaxy.

Other images appeared, other actual regrets over his lifetime, including Gamora, and others appeared as well. They began to reach for him, trying to drag him down into the same mediocrity they had embraced, grabbing at him with hands and even teeth that felt all too real to his mind for the moment, causing him to twitch and try to break free. "What, what is this…"

With a sudden wrench, Fenrir broke Thanos' weakened grip on his jaws. A raised paw smashed Thanos off his feet, and Thanos roared with mixed pain and wounded pride as he found himself crashing into the ground with enough force to embed his body into the bedrock.

The apparitions pounced, but Thanos roared, and from his body, a wild wave of purple energy, the Power Cosmic flashed. Fenrir's pounce towards him was halted in place, and the wolf flung away, unable to brace himself against the energy, while the apparitions dissipated somewhat, losing much of their corporeal nature.

Glaring through the shades, Thanos scowled in anger, trying to determine where this strange attack was coming from. "Some kind of telepathic power that somehow bypasses my defenses?"

Leaping up out of the hole his body had made in the side of the mountain, Thanos landed high above the battlefield on his throne's platform.

As he did, the images faded, which caused Thanos to almost breathe out a sigh of relief. "I see, it is some kind of distance-based ability, good. And yet, you still assaulted my mind. And I will forgive no such trespass!"

Thanos held up his hand and began to lash out at Dani, the only new factor that had appeared on the battlefield. She yelped and, with her hover skates on high power, she tried to dodge away from the strike, pushing off with one leg so hard she felt something in her leg twinge. Luckily, Thanos was so far away that it was kind of telegraphed, and she was able to dodge the first blast.

But she could not have dodged the one after that. Or the ones following it. She bounced off one sheer rock face towards a small incline, staring up as death came for her in the form of a purple beam as wide as she was. "Well… Fuck."

Then Fenrir was there, crouching over her, taking the next strike on his back. He howled in pain but endured it as Dani lay under him. "Fenrir, don't-"

"Shut up, Dani!" the wolf growled as Thanos began to simply empower his attack into a beam rather than a pulse of energy, beating Fenrir down to the point his legs trembled under the continued energy assault. "This, this is nothing, nothing to the Beast Who Ends All!"

By this point, Hela's healing cantrips had run their course as much as they could, and eager to rejoin the fight and take some of the pressure off her brother, Hela slapped her hands down on either side of her, ignoring the added agony this caused her from her still-healing forearms. Spikes of earth rose and shot toward the bottom of Thanos' throne, causing the throne platform's kinetic energy shield to appear automatically.

But a second spell grabbed at the debris created by the impact, and she used it to create a global of soil and dirt, a makeshift smoke bomb to blind Thanos. "Fenrir, Dani, move!"

While Fenrir and Dani were indeed able to move away from Thanos' area of attack, this did nothing to blind the sensors on the throne. A second later, Hela cursed as she was forced to shield herself again from another blast from Thanos.

A moment later, a now furious Fenrir began to grow and grow some more. "RAAGGGHHHH, I will taste your flesh yet, Titan!" Soon, the Sun-Eater was the size of a small skyscraper, and he roared as he launched himself upwards.

The throne's AI attempted to shift backward through the air, but it was too slow. The kinetic barrier flashed into being once more as the now huge wolf's jaws closed, but it was almost instantly overcome, and Thanos was forced to reach up with both hands, grabbing at Fenrir's upper jaw to keep it from closing. Which did nothing to the bottom-most, which crashed into the bottom of the platform.

Yet, to Fenrir's astonishment, another barrier of some kind blossomed just as his teeth were prepared to bite into the metal, absorbing almost all his bite's strength like he had just bitten into rubber, even though, like the kinetic barrier, this was an energy shield of some kind. "Secondary kinetic barrier activated. Kinetic Absorption, 62%. Compensating via instant redirection."

"Fenrir, pull back!" Dani howled, her voice barely heard even through the now tiny communication device in Fenrir's ear, the thing not having changed size with the rest of him. It was only luck and how large, ironically, his ear had become that had kept it in his ear at all rather than falling out like a piece of lint lost in his fur.

Yet even so, it was enough, and before the rubbery energy could explode, Fenrir flinched back, pushing off the air momentarily as if it was the ground, his own personal magic coming into play. This, however, allowed the AI to absorb the energy instead, and a second later, both Thanos and throne alike struck out, blasting not only at Fenrir but at Hela, Dani, Garm and Gerda.

The redirected kinetic energy flashed down in a wave that vaguely resembled a rapidly expanding yellow half-ball, smashing down from the throne to cover the ground, further shattering the landscape. Hela attempted to shield herself and her companions, but while she was able to do so, beyond that shield, the surrounding territory once more paid for being the setting of a clash of near-deific powers. The mountainsides all around them cracked and crumbled, and within moments, Gerda, Garm and Dani found themselves buried.

At this point, Gerda's luck finally failed her. While the Valkyrie had proven capable of fighting the Chitauri and even able to give a good showing against the Wreckers, she was not a deity herself, not even a Vanir, let alone an Aesir. She was merely a servant of Freya, and now, Gerda found herself first pinned in place, then crushed under the weight of tons of rubble, shrieking in fury at such an ignoble second death.

In Asgard, there was a vast, wild garden. A meadow, a cultivated garden and a small forest all in one, this was the realm of Freya, Fólkvangr, the realm of the Valkyries and those souls whose death in battle didn't automatically pass muster do join the host of the einherjar. There it would remain, bobbing gently over the land until Freya returned. For the lady, just as her servant, had gone to war.

Dani, too, might well have died at this point were it not for the fact that she was, once more, guarded by one of her companions. In this case, Garm leaped towards her. Even as Dani's hover boots began to fail and the tons of rubble began to catch up to her, Garm's jaws gently grabbed her up from behind. "Safe landings, Dani!"

The next second, Dani was hurled into the air above the flowing avalanches below, only to be caught by a spell from Hela that had her hovering in midair, similar to the one that Hela had cast on herself. Garm, however, was buried in her place, howling as he disappeared under the rubble. "Blast it all. This had best not be my tomb!"

Above them, Fenrir had similarly come under attack from Thanos. In this case, it was another concentrated blast of the Power Cosmic, and once more, unable to brace himself in midair, Fenrir found himself hurled away. "By Odin's hairy nutsack, fight fairly, you purple-skinned bastard!"

"Now now, while my skin might be unusual, I knew who my parents were. Just because I killed them eventually doesn't mean I was birthed out of wedlock," Thanos allowed himself to quip, smirking as he moved to settle himself on the throne, raising a fist and aiming it at the now-distant form of Fenrir. "Throne, empowerment mode."

"Activating." At that command, the throne's AI emptied all of the various types of energy it had absorbed, first transforming that energy into the Power Cosmic in a manner that only Thanos's technology could do, then directing it into Thanos, empowering him further.

While that energy was next to nothing in comparison to what Thanos himself contained, it still added a bit to the amount of energy he could release in any given attack. This energy he used now on Fenrir, having seen that the now massive beast was his toughest current opponent.

Fenrir had but a second from when he landed on a thin escarpment before he once more felt the blast of Power Cosmic slamming into him. He howled in agony, and now, the ravening energy began to do actual damage, his fur burning off and the lower layer of skin rapidly searing away to reveal flesh and bone.

Hearing her brother in distress, Hela once more went on the offense. Flashing upwards to a point equal to the throne, she lashed out with a series of spells, small, pinprick pulses of dark black and sickly green energy. " the woes of the damned, the regrets of the dishonorable dead will burn thy soul!%"

Another spell powered by Hela's connection to the realm of Niflheim, this spell had more than a touch of Death to it, and the energy shield that sprang up to protect throne and Titan barely stopped the first few. When they struck, the throne and its platform began to take real damage, the metal armor beginning to melt away, turning almost corroded and wrong in some fashion as it began to slough away.

"Danger! Entropic energy detected. Chance of absorption, 10%. Analysis of entropic energy commencing. Chance to survive continued assaults of a similar nature, plus/minus 25%. Chances of the platform's abilities to be impaired by continued assault, 75% after more than five minutes."

Thanos however, had long made a study of death energy. After all, he loved Lady Death, and that meant he loved not just the personification of the ultimate end of all things but the energy that she ruled over. When it hit him, he grimaced but only felt the most slight twinges of pain as his trained Titan body ignored the damage. His armor didn't, but like the throne, it almost instantly began to try and repair itself, the subatomic nanites wound throughout its construction going to work automatically.

Turning away from the now groaning form of Fenrir, Thanos almost lazily raised a fist, aiming it toward Hela despite the ongoing pinpricks of death energy coming through his throne's defenses. "A noble attempt, but not enough." The next second, Hela howled with anger as she found herself once more entirely on the defensive, trying to dodge and shield but unable to get away from Thanos's continued attacks.

"Attention!" the throne blared even as Thanos fired again. "incoming life forms. All life form signatures concurrent with the main enemy targets already present on the battlefield. Supposition: Asgardians inbound."

Thanos snarled at that, and even as Hela's barrier shield cracked once more under the power of his attacks, he turned his gaze upward toward the distant horizon to see a portion of the Asgardian host charging toward him. "Ah, I do believe the Asgardians have chosen to side wholly with the humans. Annoying."

And perhaps life-threatening if Odin is with them. I cannot fight him and Guardian at the same time, and even alone, the god of kings would be a horribly dangerous threat, Thanos thought worriedly. "Can you identify target, Odin?"

Odin had yet to appear on the battlefield, as he had no way of knowing that Thanos himself had taken the field. He had also neglected to communicate at all with his allies, or provide a means with which his hosts could contact one another as yet. For now, as Thanos had initially, the God of Kings and War remained in Asgard.

"Target Aesir Skyfather, Odin, not identified. The leader appears to be-" For a moment, the AI's voice shifted from its computer-like atonal note, as if something inside its programming had skipped a line of code, allowing it to sound almost incredulous. "In the chariot being pulled by goats…"

At the head of the host was Thor on his chariot, and it was indeed being pulled by goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr. In his hand, he was whirling Mjölnir. Behind him, Balder flew while Hogun and others rode flying horses charging down towards Thanos.

Breathing a sigh of relief at that, Thanos barely had time to order the throne to take the host under fire before Thor's voice reached him over the hundreds of miles still separating them. "Have at thee!"

With that bellow, Thor leaped from his chariot hammer, lashing out towards Thanos, crossing the intervening distance so fast it left behind sonic booms that shattered the cyborg hearing of nearly every Chitauri in the mountain range along with the few humans in the same vicinity. Even Hela and Ebony, back near the main portal, screamed in pain from the impact to their ears.

Even as he did, the throne opened fire on the incoming Asgardians. It was too slow to intercept Thor, yet behind him, Tyr and several others reeled under the strikes, and two were even knocked entirely out of the air, their horses slain under them.

Yet even as fast as Thor moved, Thanos saw him coming in time to raise his arms. His forearms caught the incoming hammer, yet the impact nearly sent him off his throne while creating yet another shockwave that rolled through the shattered remnants of the mountains around him.

"Impressive!" He grunted before kicking out. This caught Thor in the leg, causing him to stumble lightly, and Thanos directed the ongoing strike to the side of his throne, thrusting himself upwards, going chest to chest with Thor as he quickly grabbed Thor's arms, wrenching them both to the side. "But not enough!"

For a moment, the two of them stood on the platform, striving strength against strength, as the throne's AI directed attacks toward the other Asgardians. The throne's weapons, energy and kinetic blasts, were so potent, and it had gathered so much energy from the battle up to this point that it was able to smash several of them out of the sky while also nearly finishing off both Garm and Hela.

As for Thor and Thanos, Thanos found his arms slowly being pushed backward. With the machinations of the Shadows finally defeated, his belt and bracers returned to him, the now redheaded Thor was much stronger than he had previously been. Bellowing in laughter, He forced Thanos back, almost forcing Thanos's back to bend as he did.

Yet Thanos was not just a physical powerhouse. He had the Power Cosmic, the underlying energy of the universe to call on in a way even deities could not. This he did so now, and his hands began to gleam with purple-colored energy, empowering Thanos further. From his face, a blast flashed out, slamming into Thor's chin with such force it rocked his head back, causing him to stumble. This allowed Thanos to pull one hand up and slam a punch into Thor's face.

Stumbling back, Thor smiled through now-blood-dotted teeth. "Excellent!" With the hand holding Mjölnir still held out to one side, Thor raised his other hand into a punch that slammed into Thanos's chest, cracking his armor. IT began to repair itself, and then the two began to simply trade blows with their one free hand like brawlers, with the Power Cosmic still flashing from Thanos's hands.

Elsewhere in the battle, Balder cursed as he raced forward, catching Hela as she was tossed out of the sky by the weapons of the strange thronelike dais. He caught her, but then he and her came under further fire while Hogun and the rest were forced to go to ground well out of the range of their own weapons. Not that arrows will mean much to this enemy. He must be the Mad Titan himself, and against such a foe, only magic and the strength of true champions will matter. Alas, for the rest of the host, they will not fair well here.

With that thought, Balder began to roar orders, his voice long trained to command on the battlefield, sending the accompanying Einherjar and Asgardians alike to skirt well around where Thanos and his throne hovered. Within minutes, the host was pressing in on the defenses still in place elsewhere throughout the Himalayas, even as more Chitauri arrived in a constant stream. Ebony, too, began to become embroiled in this aspect of the fight, while back near Thanos, Balder charged, trying to get close enough to engage in close combat.

Even Balder, with his immunity to wounds, could not overcome the momentum of the strikes raining down or the terrain. The very bones of the earth bucked and heaved under him with every reverberation of a strike above, the Himalayas shivering like a living thing under the power of the strikes the two combatants released.

But the throne's concentration on pounding Hela and Balder had allowed Skadi, ever the sneaky one, to close. Ignoring Balder's orders as she could see her lover doing elsewhere on the battlefield, Skadi shifted from one piece of cover to another and, emulating Dani's earlier movements, came at Thanos's floating dais from underneath.

It took her some time, while above her, Thor and Thanos hammered one another in a series of blows that made even the former fight with Fenrir seem lowkey. But thankfully, even the AI's attention was not infinite. Given Hela's continued spellwork and the fact Fenrir and Garm were both on their feet again, it had no computational algorithms to spare for Dani or Skadi, who slowly crossed the intervening distance.

Finally, Skadi was in position. She waited, watching until Helas continued attacks felled the energy shield. Then, as Garm crashed into the kinetic barrier, bringing it down in turn, the Goddess of the Hunt leaped upwards, traversing the distance as only an Asgardian before Dani could do the same. Sorry, lover, but first come, first served! Skadi thought as the dagger bit deep into the metal of his throne, Asgardian steel overcoming the odd composite just enough to find purchase. But this enemy is beyond you. He is beyond me as well, if I am any judge, but I will be damned if I meekly accept that fact!

Thanos's Power Cosmic finally began to allow him to gain some measure of an upper hand against Thor. Not because it empowered him to be physically stronger than the Guardian of the Common Man, only that it was enough to allow simple leverage and skill to give Thanos an advantage. With Thor unwilling to relinquish Mjölnir, Thanos's grip on Thor's forearm allowed him to keep Thor's main weapon out of play, which in turn was enough to let him start forcing Thor back under a series of punches and kicks, a means of combat which Thor did not utilize, seemingly, even as the Thunderer bellowed with laughter and fought on, his returning punches coming faster and faster.

Wincing at the play of energies that flowed out and around the edges of the platform to her current position, Skadi hung there, ironically protected by the bottom of Thanos' dais for a second. Then, as Thor stumbled from another blast of Power Cosmic to his face, she flipped herself up and over, landing behind the throne on the tiny portion of the platform surrounding it there.

She watched as Thor stumbled again before trying to wrench the arm holding Mjölnir free. Then his head was blasted backward with a punch so hard it shook the world for a second or so it seemed to Skadi, anyway. She clung onto the back of the throne for dear life, then leaped up and over it, her dagger in her hand again, seeking the back of Thanos' head.

"Warning, behind you, Creator." Even now, with a direct threat to his master having come so close, the AI sounded dull and atonal. Yet its warning was enough, and Thanos turned. Smacking the dagger out of her hand with one hand, Thanos then grabbed her throat.

So strong was he that Skadi felt like a small kitten in the maw of a grizzly. Then he was twirling Skadi around, slamming her into the recovered Thor, sending them both off the throne into the air.

Snorting in amusement, Thanos ordered. "Throne, release all accumulated energies! Target the hammer wielder, the sword wielder, and the wolf." While he had never made a great study of the Asgardians and the legends that had created them, he knew of Balder and had no desire to face someone he could not in any way harm in close combat. As for Thor, that hammer is dangerous. I have been lucky thus far to avoid being struck truly by it, and I will not allow such to occur. I still have my own personal targets to deal with, as well as a world to offer up in sacrifice to my Lady!

All of the accumulated energy that had been absorbed through the various shields the throne had been using since the Asgardians arrived was now released as raw kinetic energy, almost like Cyclops' beams but far stronger, and blasts of Power Cosmic similar to Thanos's own attacks. Few beings could construct something like the throne, but Thanos had long since devised technological means to surpass most such limitations. Only the World Eater's own ship could be said to be better than Thanos's creations, and now, those blasts crashed out across the battlefield, targeting first the twosome of Skadi and Thor as they were the closest, and then the more distant Hela, Balder and the recovering Fenrir.

Thor and Skadi were blasted out of the sky, hurled hundreds of miles away to crash into a still-standing mountain. Which was no longer standing after they struck it, the entire thing shattering around them. So great was the impact that Skadi instantly passed out, her ribs, arms, legs, and even back shattering under the impact and something else in her stomach giving out, while bits of stone and tree flew so far, they landed in the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, and even further in some territories in India.

Back at the battlefield, three great craters were now torn out of the ground around Fenrir, Balder and Hela as Fenrir's durability met and then was exceeded again by the onslaught. Balder stood, his armor shining and glowing with all the power of a dozen suns, yet the area around him began to crack, sear and melt away from the energies meeting one another.

In contrast, Hela's magic barely sustained her long enough for her emergency medical evacuation runes to activate. Just as he finished digging himself out of the scree that had practically buried the defender of Hel, a single blast from the throne slammed into Garm's head. The impact practically cracked his skull and seared his scalp away before the belt he wore, at Dani and Hela's behest, teleported him away with his mistress.

Even the backlash was enough to cause hundreds of skimmers, Rippers and Asgardians to fall out of the sky across the whole mountain range. Bleeding from the nose, ears and eyes, the Chitauri died, overcome, while the Einherjar's bodies failed them, their souls finding themselves back in Odin's hall, ready to rise and fight again, but removed from the battlefield. The Asgardians like Hogun, Njord, and Aegir found themselves unhorsed as their Pegasi were slain similarly but were otherwise unharmed.

Surveying what he could see of the shattered remnants of the mountain range around him, Thanos scowled a little, knowing that in that clash, he'd also heavily damaged the defenses of the main portal that Ebony had been working so hard to propagate. Indeed, he could see the remnants of hundreds, perhaps several thousand aliens and their creations all around them. Here, half a Ripper poked out of the now-flattened ground, there a dozen arms and legs all tangled together and very obviously not connected to living bodies lay scattered like children's toys. Here and there the remnants of anti-air guns stuck out of the ground, the guns long since torn away by the force of the sonic booms nearby, their owners pulled out of the solid rock that had been so disastrously flung about.

Above the battlefield near the main portal, however, Ebony still flew, having weathered the storm of constant crashing energies remarkably well. And the aliens were still coming through the portal and the portals further away from where Thanos had clashed with the Asgardians.

Yet Thanos knew that that attack would not have dealt with any of his many adversaries. It was too diffuse. Next time, I must target only a single opponent and remain at range, away from that one, Thanos mused, staring at where the roiling energies of the sun could still be seen through the ash and dust thrown up by his attack. Together he and Thor might be able to harm me too much for me to continue this battle.

"Incoming communication."

Frowning, Thanos turned back to his throne, wondering what could possibly have caused someone to call and interrupt him when he was fighting enemies like the Asgardians. Then his eyes widened as he remembered the very specific orders he had left behind him in the dimensional gap on that score to the Chitauri generalissimo who had been left in charge. Guardian or the Phoenix avatar, which has appeared, and where?!

With no further thought of the Asgardians in his mind, Thanos sat down on his throne, forgetting even his concerns about the portal's defenses. "Report!" he barked, his voice an alloy of the anticipation of a fanatic on the hunt for sinners and a man possessed by a great hunger.

"My Lord, the energy readings you told us to be on the lookout for have appeared in Super Giant's conquest corridor. Specifically, the Phoenix avatar's energy signature has been detected," the voice of the Chitauri general announced, and Thanos's eyes began to dance with coruscating energy. "AT LAST!"

OOOOOOO

Several hours before Thanos had decided to become personally involved in the invasion against Hela and the rest of her team, Jean had begun her intervention in Asia. Given the chaos that the Chitauri had caused somehow in the Chinese High Command, that meant trying to stop further conflict between China and its neighbors.

Whatever emergency plans the Chinese were operating under had launched several naval units and the fighter squadrons of numerous bases around the China Sea toward Taiwan. Several elements of the American 7th fleet had also been attacked directly, as had Japan, but those attacks had been somewhat smaller and had mostly ceased in the case of Japan. The battle in the Formosa Strait was still raging as Jean flew down from Babylon, though, or rather, the battle in the air over it.

In all honesty, Jean would have preferred to come straight down toward where they assumed the portal was, considering the movement of the invaders. But given the fact they weren't certain if doing so would stop whatever influence had caused the Chinese to seemingly go crazy, she agreed with Dennis and Harry that trying to contain the madness that had sprung up among China's military leadership from forcing other nations to react even more than the US fleet already was had to be the immediate priority.

This proved even more true when, while still high up in the ionosphere, Phoenix's earbud went off. A second later, Pinoptes' electronic voice echoed in her ear, sounding extremely worried. "Phoenix, we have verified ICBM launches. Chinese nukes are launched toward Taiwan currently. We have intercepted internal reports of fighting around several other nuclear missile silos nearer South Korea and elsewhere, but most still seem to be under the CCP's control and are not being used currently."

"So much for the Mandarin cutting the compromised officers out of the command loop in time, damn it! I know he ordered the nuke silos locked down, but it looks as if whatever invader is spreading this madness was able to bypass that," Jean snarled in return, her words carried into a pickup that was part of her half-mask, which covered the lower portion of her face, leaving her eyes free but moving up and covering her ears to house the earbud. "Are you any closer to figuring out how they are doing this?"

"The Chitauri skimmers are incredibly fast, almost as fast as a jet fighter in a straight line. If they can keep unseen, the individuals doing this could traverse a large portion of China without much trouble. As for how they are infiltrating the Chinese military command structure… other than telepathy, the only suggestion we have comes from Sage. She theorizes that it could be some kind of psychometry, the power to pull specific memories from objects to give whoever is behind this the controls and codes necessary. Unfortunately, whoever is behind this is able to blend into the background of the chaos they've caused far too well."

"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter how this is happening, so long as we can stop it," Jean grumbled, speeding up her descent to a speed that would have put Cannonball to shame.

We should have pushed harder to take nukes away from China! But I suppose at the end of the Eurasian War, we just couldn't. Not when China had been an ally in that war, and we weren't willing to do the same to America. The last thing they wanted to do at the time was to further isolate China. But that thinking had backfired badly before this invasion began, given how much trouble the Mandarin was getting up to in various ways, and now it was coming to a head even further.

Moments later, Jean came close enough to see the ICBMs. Instantly, massive fiery claws reached out. Such was the size of her telekinetic form for a moment, that it was actually visible like a shadow high above the earth far below in places in China and Taiwan. And then, those telekinetic claws reached their targets snagging the ICBMs aimed at the island nation out of the air. All twelve of them, overkill in her mind, were snatched like a sparrow on the wing. Damn, this is a lot easier using my own eyes rather than drones, and without my pregnancy's hormonal shit getting in the way, Jean thought, remembering how she'd done the same to missiles launched from the US and Russia alike during the Eurasian War.

With a mental twitch, Jean carried the nukes straight up, holding them still in her telekinetic grip until they were out of Earth's atmosphere and away, regardless of the thrusters on the nukes. There, the Verdun-class close defense stations, a few of which were in orbit around the real earth rather than moving with the magical illusion, would deal with them.

Thankfully, there didn't seem to be a second wave, and Jean allowed her fiery bird of prey aura to shrink down until it was only about as big as a jet fighter around her. Flying further downward, she soon reached the area where jet fighters normally operated. There, Pinoptes, having already discovered the Seventh Fleet's command network, gave her suit's coms the correct security protocols to link Jean into their local network.

"This is Phoenix. I am on the line to help, as you probably saw just now. But I won't be in the area for long. The actual alien invasion is going to call me deeper into China," Jean stated into the command network without any preamble, overriding everything but the local battle chatter. "But the Custodes would like to get a sitrep from whoever is in command down here."

"This is Admiral Johnson, U.S. Navy. Ah'm not gonna look a gift Phoenix in the mouth," a drawling southern voice said from the intercom set into Phoenix's ear. "I'm gonna presume that the president has activated Operation Overguard?"

That was one of the contingency plans that the Avalon Empire, or rather, Dennis, Steve and Carol, had worked out with the Pentagon to deal with another alien invasion. Specifically, it presupposed an alien invasion occurring on foreign soil with possible partisans among the local populace, willing or not, as had been the case in the Eurasian War.

Jean hadn't been part of that loop, but she knew the name of that plan and knew the correct response to give before Pinoptes could prompt her. "The Custodes Mundi guards all and works with the few and the proud."

Honestly, even as an American, Jean thought that code was a little much, but since she knew Steve and Carol both felt the same and had been overruled by whatever pencil pusher and come up with it on the other side, she was willing to go with it. Given the reports coming out of the area around Washington, say what you will about so-called American gung-ho-ness. There's certainly an upside to it.

By this point, the battle in Washington had been going on for several hours and showed no sign of slowing. But Jean was certain that Cyclops and the rest, already on station there, would do their best.

Any residual tension in the man's voice, barely there but easily picked up thanks to Jean's empathic powers, disappeared, and he gave her a brief overview of what was going on in the area even as she raced towards where she could sense several dozen jetfighters dueling in midair over the Straits of Taiwan. The American carrier group pulled out of the Straits and to the south after hammering several troop transports of all things that had pushed out into the Straits with no air cover. Whether or not those troop transports had been actually full of troops, neither Jean nor the Americans had any way of knowing. Regardless, they had sunk to the bottom by the American planes before they were jumped in turn by fighter squadrons from the mainland.

"Whatever is going on in China means that this assault on Taiwan isn't very organized. The basses launching fighters across the Straits might all be playing by the same rulebook, but it seems like each base got its ordahs at the wrong time or somethin'," the admiral reported, even as Jean came within visual sight of the ongoing dogfight.

F-15s and MIGs dueled in midair several kilometers of airspace alongside the Taiwanese equivalent, whose name Jean couldn't remember… if, in fact, it was a different jet fighter than the American one at all. Hawkers backed up the F-15s, armed for more anti-missile defense, shooting down whatever missiles got through from the MIGs, which had a distinct numerical superiority against the Americans and Taiwanese fighters. Whatever local numerical superiority, the Taiwanese and the carrier group had long since disappeared by this point, although experience and training were still heavily on the 7th Fleet's side.

Even with the example of the Eurasian War and how poorly the Chinese army had done despite local numerical superiority against the Russians, there was only so much that the Mandarin had been able, or willing, to do to change the society of China's military infrastructure. That meant that while many units really were as strong in reality as they were on paper, others weren't. And China still had a massive quality control issue.

Nonetheless, there were a lot of MIG fighters, with more coming in from the mainland. Diverted here, Jean knew, instead of fighting the real enemy over China's own airspace. Whether or not all of the reinforcements were acting on orders from subverted officers, Jean again didn't know and frankly didn't think possible. Not unless the Chitauri were somehow able to infiltrate China before the portals opened. Even their skimmers can't cover that much area that quickly, and each infiltration would also take time. Instead, the various commanders had jumped to presupposed conclusions rather than looking at the data without presupposed notions.

"God dammit, why is it that humans are so quick to turn on each other?" Shaking that thought off, Jean reached out. Telekinetic energies caught more than a dozen Chinese fighter jets, crushing wings and tearing open canopies to pull the pilots out, not even letting them use their emergency parachutes. Able to see them all like this, it was relatively easy for Jean to do so, almost like juggling a dozen balls telekinetically.

Likes, Jean combed through the area, destroying every MIG in the airspace around her and then some, reaching out over the horizon occasionally to grab at hastily retreating MIGs, feeling their presence easily thanks to the minds of their pilots. Those were harder to grab, and every time she did, the bobbing ejection seats and their gathered occupants lost some altitude, but Jean kept at it. Soon, Above and behind her, dozens of Chinese pilots hung, all of them hanging there encased in orange and red globes of telekinetic power, looking for all the world like ripened fruits on the branches of a vast tree made out of energy.

At one point, she had to smack aside bullets coming from one of the American fighters toward the group of captured pilots, and she glared with all the fierceness of a predator towards the jet behind the string of bullets. "I don't know what you are thinking of, but those are my prisoners! We do not allow prisoners to be killed like that. Try that again, and you'll join them."

Either Jean's telepathic shout or his squadron commander's over the squad's comms net did the trick. The man's fighter pulled out of its attack run, twitching up and away, then down, heading out towards where Jean could sense thousands of minds clustered together well over the horizon. No doubt that would be the carrier group.

Satisfied that no other MIG fighter was coming into the airspace here between China and Taiwan, Jean turned her attention back to speaking to Admiral Johnson, who gave her full report on the rest of the conflict going on in the sea of China. The Chinese submarines had taken a toll at first, but the American destroyers had eventually begun to run them down, although they had. Of the carrier group, four ships had been sunk outright, two of them going down with all hands. But in return, China's local submarine force had been decimated, and the pack of surface ships they'd sent out had been wiped out with ease.

"You're certain that they're not going to try to push their way across the Straits again?" Jean asked, already turning towards the distant shore of the continent.

"Positive, ma'am. Like I said, all of this seemed ta come from a good operational playbook, but they hadn't set everything up in time for all the various bases to work together. If they had more submarines in the area, we would've had a very bad way of it. And if their MIGs had come in as one giant fist rather than spaced out into different groups, that would've been just as bad for our air group. As it is, I think I'm going to find the engineers who put together that newfangled Phalanx system of ours and buy them as many drinks as my credit card can handle," Johnson drawled. "Sure is shit saved the bacon on many of our ships from missiles that got through our screens."

Jean nodded at that, as it made sense. She'd heard of the Phalanx system, and even knowing what she did about energy weapons, it still sounded amazing. Although the admiral's continued mutter of, "Why the hell did they just keep on coming? Why didn't they retreat before you arrived on the scene?" made her wince.

It brought to mind what Dennis had been saying in the meeting before she had left Camelot. Even if the upper echelon of the Chinese Communist Party understood what was going on - that aliens had somehow begun to infiltrate their command structure and take over their officers - they might not have bothered to try to override the orders given. The more Chinese who died fighting American and Taiwanese forces, the better their internal propaganda machine could build up the kind of 'us versus them' mentality that The Party needed in order to keep control of its massive population.

Jane passed instructions for her prisoners, and then, after about ten minutes of flight, she began to deposit them on a beach in Taiwan, where several Taiwanese infantry companies were waiting for them. She hovered there for a moment, making her opinion on the mistreatment of the prisoners clear by telepathic voice (shout) and physical presence, then turned once more towards China, easily visible from where she hovered in the air from here. Damn, that really brings to mind how close Taiwan and China are to one another. It's not quite like the Straits of Dover, but it's close enough.

Before she could fly in that direction, Admiral Johnson contacted her and told her that there was another group of MIGs and other Chinese flying units coming towards them now. Several submarines were also detected at the outskirts of his destroyer patrol around his flagship, a Nimitz class carrier.

That was bad enough, but the next report on the heel of the admirals came from Pinoptes, saying, "Phoenix, more bad news I'm afraid. For whatever reason, the North Koreans have finally begun to respond to the chaos spiraling out of China. And they have decided to take advantage of the situation. Missiles have been launched towards Japan and South Korea, and North Korean forces are surging all across the border with South Korea."

Jean winced, remembering what she had read about the Korean War, which had ended while she was still a toddler. That meant more humans were about to die fighting other humans when there were invading aliens around. "Is anyone at the command level still in communication? I need some advice here."

Several seconds later, Storm's voice came online. Harry was still busy, Steve was in combat in DC, and the rest were busy across other fronts. Even Emma was so busy providing telepathic communication to those in the combat zone she couldn't take a break to advise Jean. As for Ororo she was also still busy in America, teleporting massive amounts of civilians out of DC and troops inward. "I am in no way prepared to make any kind of decision on this point, Jean. I'm afraid it's all you."

Only Sage, Sir Dennis and Pinoptes were both still in the command loop and able to advise Jean. Between them, it was decided she should head to South Korea first. It was hoped that if they gave it another hour or so, some kind of central location for the chaos going on in China could be found, as right now, none of them had any idea what was causing the chaos there.

"And barring that, I am close to breaking into the Chinese military's communications system's highest security encryption," Pinoptes reported. "If we cannot find the center of the chaos going around, then we can at least discover its ultimate goal and get there before whatever special forces unit is causing this reaches that target."

This conversation had taken but a few minutes, and then Jean was back online with the admiral. "Admiral Johnson, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave the Straits to you. North Korea is currently busy proving it's led by a madman. From then on, I'm going to have to push into China."

"Miss, you already gave me more than enough time to reload my fighters and get my pilots some coffee. And it's not like I've not been doing anything on my end," Johnson drawled, his southern twang showing more than before. It had been about an hour and a half since Jean had intercepted the ICBMs.

"Seventh fleet might've been scattered all around, but we're all in communication, and I'm pulling in all of them here bar a few destroyers up towards Japan. We've even got some jet fighters coming in from Manila and the Philippines to be restaged out of Taiwan at Taipei and up in Japan at Okinawa. They were slow off the mark, but they're coming in hot. I can't say it's going to be pleasant for a while if the next batch of subs my destroyers are reporting come up from the south and decide to attack, but even if they do, the 7th fleet can handle it here. And 'Merica's got boys on the ground in South Korea, too besides."

Jean heard the pride in his voice and hoped that it wasn't misplaced. But she also sensed through her empathic powers that he was speaking not only for her but for the officers around him in his bridge… or wherever it was an admiral was during a battle. Isn't there a special word for where higher-ranking officers stay on a ship?

Shaking that odd question off, Jean simply told Johnson to keep this line open for Pinoptes. The Many Eyes of the all-seeing AI would add tremendously to his radar and ECM. With that done, Jean then turned her flight to the north, pushing herself to move as fast as a jet could at full bore.

Twice as she flew north she saw American ships out to sea heading southward towards Taiwan, far slower than Jean was moving, but Jean had to assume they were actually moving at what she had heard called flank speed for some reason. At one point, an American ship looked to have taken some damage, but judging from the small clumps of wreckage slowly sinking around them, Jean didn't think they were in much distress.

Once, she saw more MIGs flying out from another base in China over the ocean. Where they were going, Jean didn't know, but erring on the side of wisdom, she swatted them out of the air. As previously, she did so gently, pulling the pilots out of their plains along with their ejection seats, although this time, she allowed their parachutes to activate rather than collect them to drop them off elsewhere. Jean called to Pinoptes and told him where they were so someone else could pick them out of the sea later but didn't pause her flight, instead going even faster to make up for the time wasted.

Even so, by the time she hit South Korea, the reports from the border were bad. The South Korean and American forces stationed along the DMZ were holding, but barely. It had apparently taken the local South Korean high command a while to realize that this was a real push across the borders rather than another attempt to force the South Koreans to fire first, and even then, they'd been reluctant to admit the truth. Thus, they had stupidly not allowed the defenders to fire until actual casualties had been reported, by which time, the North Korean artillery had already wiped out most of its opposite number wherever they could.

Flying higher up into the stratosphere, Jean then boosted her speed as hard as she could, crossing the intervening distance between South Korea's shoreline and the border as she could. Instantly, she could see the reports she had gotten from Pinoptes were all too accurate. Dozens of battles were occurring across the entire DMZ, while in the air, the South Koreans and Americans had begun to win out, the ground battle was going against them. The Anti-air fire was keeping most of the Americans and South Koreans from pressing their advantage, while the North Korean artillery seemed, at least in the first combat zone she flew over, to be the deciding factor.

Luckily, North Korea relied more on mass-produced simpler artillery. China hadn't provided them with anything truly high-tech, so they lacked the range to, say, hit Seoul or any of the other large city centers further back from the front line.

No longer in any mood to take prisoners or forgive these people for their stupidity, she hammered a group of North Korean jets out of the sky with claws of fire before they could engage their South Korean fellows. A fierce, nearly raptor-like screech came from her mouth as she continued forward. "KREEEYYAAAA, you stupid fucking, argghhh!"

With Pinoptes and her own telepathic powers guiding her, she moved along the DMZ, aiming to remove North Korean artillery positions across the whole front. Giant beams of superheated air slammed into artillery positions, or claws of fire flashed down like the talons of a monstrous bird of prey, tearing entire artillery units apart by simply removing the artillery guns. And still, she tried hard not to kill everyone she came across. It wasn't their fault they believed the propaganda, after all.

"I am the Phoenix!" She shouted as she was nearly finished, using both her telekinesis to make certain her words were heard well beyond normal hearing range, telepathically hammering out the words to every mind she could sense… which included quite a lot of people who were hundreds of miles away from the previous armed border with North Korea. Several million, in point of fact. Damn, this isn't going to restart that Phoenix worship crap is it? Fuck it, too late now.

Setting that concern aside, she continued to shout aloud and mentally. "North Koreans, your leader has decided to use an alien invasion as an excuse to try and make war on your southern neighbors! He is wrong. This is not an opportunity. This is an act of stupidity! And all of you will pay for his stupidity and for your willingness to follow him into it."

With the North Korean artillery seemingly being wiped out systematically from on high, the southern forces pushed back hard. And unlike Jean, the locals had no choice but to kill their opponents, nor did they have any inclination not to. Not that she was going to say anything about it one way or another.

Over the next few hours they stabilized the front and then began to dig in once more. In other places, local commanders began to push through the previous DMZ, although Jean suspected they probably wouldn't get very far, considering how large the various minefields were. In the air was a different story, and now that the North Korean air force had been dealt with and Jean had smashed so many of their anti-air units, the US and South Korean aerial forces were also pushing deep into North Korea.

She even tapped into the mind of the local US commander, who was busy organizing a full paratrooper assault on North Korea's capital. Many in the South Korean military were all for it, while their civilian leaders were dithering but not giving out any orders to the contrary, only whimpering about the losses thus far sustained. Of which there had been a lot. Indeed, far, far more people had died in this short, sharp war of barely a few hours than had died out at sea.

But Jean could not allow herself to be bogged down here any longer. She had done her part, and if she stayed around to use her powers in more minute detail, it would just suck away more time. The time in which thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians were undoubtedly dying across China, a death toll to dwarf what had happened here.

Thankfully, the hours that she had spent dealing with this conflict had allowed Pinoptes and Dennis time enough to extrapolate a very vague idea of where the Mandarin was hiding out while his nation burned around him. They had also picked out indications that whoever was causing the chaos in China was making for the military base that the Mandarin had taken over as his command center. Whatever it was, they could also say unequivocally now that however the aliens were doing it, the Chitauri special forces, or whatever, were turning China's own officers against itself. "It's highly likely that you will be faced with another telepath or someone at least with mental domination powers."

"What's the difference in this case?" Jean asked, understanding in a broad sense why Dennis was making that distinction. Someone could dominate another person's mind without having full access to that mind. The Imperio spell, for example. There was also the villain that Colossus and some of the others had dealt with who had pheromone powers that allowed him to dominate the minds of those around him.

"It doesn't seem to extend for very long. The alien, we're pretty certain it is a lone operator, doesn't seem to be able to keep up the farce for very long. The alien takes what she wants, uses it, and then moves on. I also can't conclusively prove that they are able to mimic voices, or not. At times, it seems so. At others, they used codes. The alien appears to know not to keep to a single pattern," Pinoptes stated.

"Well, that's not good. Here's hoping that my mental defenses can stop whatever it is," Jean grumbled, a shiver going down her spine at the sudden fear that whatever it might be would attack her on a physical level. I'm going to need to filter out my air and keep a telekinetic shield up around my body. Not that I wasn't going to anyway, but I'll need to make it more like a RAD suit rather than a shield.

What Jean heard next, just as she reached the border with China, was far more to her liking. "We've even been able to contact a few local commanders: Generals and commandants who have realized what is going on and are willing to listen. Pinoptes has started to help them get in contact with one another and what remains of the Party's High Command. They are slowly starting to build up small segments of order scattered around China. And we are gaining access to their radar systems too, which will give us a much better idea of what is going on," Dennis reported.

A few minutes later, Jean halted in midair for a few moments to examine the image that sprang up from her wrist, which held a small computer screen on the inside. It had been designed by Reed as an upgrade for her and a few others to try out.

Looking at the images, Jean shook her head as she gazed at the examples of the carnage going on across China. It hadn't reached everywhere yet, but there were huge groups of skimmers, many of them over a thousand strong, moving around in various areas of Chinese airspace almost entirely unimpeded. Each group could easily overpower any local air defense since China had yet to organize a country-wide response, and the Chitauri were simply killing or causing carnage wherever they wanted. There were also reports now coming in of hundreds of the larger flying creatures and thousands of infantry moving out from the portal slower but in ongoing waves of alien enemies. Enemies who had no care for the idea of noncombatants.

Cities were being targeted ruthlessly by the larger eel-like constructs, which would destroy every building they could while the skimmers and infantry charged in. The images of towns and villages being shot to pieces from one end to another, men, women and children shot down from on high by skimmers, caused Jean to grit her teeth to keep from crying. And the less said about highways, the better. Skimmers were like jet fighters mixed with helicopters, so anything moving on the highways near a skimmer was just a sitting target. The image of dozens of cars carrying far more people than they should have burning from laser fire was one Jean wasn't going to forget anytime soon.

"There don't seem to be as many of the manta-ray floating anti-air batteries, but those we are seeing are mostly staying around the Chinese invasion portal," Pinoptes reported, the AI's tone dry and clinical but with an undercurrent of sadness. "They are backed up by a growing plethora of the anti-air guns reported in the Himalayas. The various groups of infantry that have not been racing away from the portal are also building a forward defensive position there, complete with shield generators, much like on the Himalayan front at present. That might be in response to the Asgardian assault in Russia or the way the battle in DC is now going against the invaders. I estimate it's only a matter of time before both of those fronts collapse at this point."

"DC will be first," Sage stated. "Rogue's on a rampage, keeping close to the local commander, and with him unable to prosecute the war, the portal device will be destroyed soon. The Asgardians under Tyr and Freya might have a harder time of it."

"Good to know the rest are doing so well. And if these Chitauri think their little defenses will save them when I get near the portal here in China, they had better think again!" Jean nearly snarled, flinching a bit at a video that had just begun to play on her screen. In the video, what must have been an elementary school was being shot up by skimmers. All of it caught on camera and then sent out onto China's internet. I am going to tear them to pieces! Each and every fucking Chitauri I find!

Those more visceral images and reports didn't even count the reports that Pinoptes were now getting from their new allies of infantry units spreading out in every direction. They would use their skimmers to move around, then descend on the civilians or military targets, going to the ground as they did so.

"What's worse is I think that the reinforcement doctrine the aliens have been using up to this point has just changed. Before this, there was a noted difference between each of the battle fronts," Sage interjected for the first time, and Jean could almost visualize the black-haired woman shaking her head. "Each of the local commanders had their own personal style of command and organization that the continual trickle of reinforcements was designed to meet. Now, they're simply pushing in as many troops as possible through the still-open portals in America, Russia, Nepal and China. Evidently, closing two of the six portals means they are no longer willing to allow the local commanders to slow things down with their idiosyncrasies if they can help it."

"Problematic, but not important on my end. Unless you're telling me the Chitauri have something that can slow me down when I get to that portal?" Jane responded with a shrug of her shoulders even as she began to speed forward once more. "There's a reason Harry sent me here to China, after all."

Jean wasn't being arrogant. There was indeed a reason why she had been sent here solo like this, although Jean wasn't so arrogant as to believe that there weren't threats out there that could challenge her. The campaign against Galactus had shown that there was a limit to her powers, and she and Harry had talked a long time about his battle with Thanos. Someone like that, Jean would rate her chances as sixty/forty at best if Thanos had time to prepare, which he'd certainly had going into this campaign. But anything below that threat level, Jean would fuck up but good, and she was very much in the mood to do so.

"China is looking to be a major issue regardless of your presence, given how France, Russia, and America all were quick to start working with us when we responded to the invasion. Those battlefields are going to be confined to one city per nation," Dennis nearly snarled, despite his customary self-control and the almost dry choice of words. The spymaster had looked at the casualty reports from France and the US, and it made for very grim reading.

The battles there were now almost entirely contained, as he had said, within Paris and Washington, and Paris at least was no longer getting any reinforcements. The surviving civilians had also been teleported out in job lots thanks to Ororo from both DC and the City of Lights.

But that didn't mean the dying was done. All it meant was that the dying were now confined to the fighting men taking back their nations' capital cities house by house.

"We're also getting some reinforcements now," Sage interjected, seemingly to keep her fellow spy master's spirits up. "Asgard has responded to our request for help, and their army is on the move. Their first attack groups are already on the way down into Russia as we speak," Sage answered. "Another is going to be redirected towards the biggest portal we've discovered so far, the one in the Himalayas."

Jean smiled at that and then asked Pinoptes and Dennis to make certain that the locals wouldn't fire on her to the best of their ability before pushing her speed even higher. While it was good to know that the war was slowly turning against the invaders, she still had her own role to play against them and now could finally strike at them directly.

OOOOOOO

Supergiant liked to think that when it came to using her Telepovore powers, she was a bit of an artist. Not so much one of paint, ink, or sound, but rather, she felt she was a master playwright, creating a performance for the ages. With every bit of chaos, Supergiant created, with every moment of confusion or carnage, she painted a greater spectacle, a greater show for her lord and master. And here on earth, in this quaint little country, Supergiant had discovered a perfect canvas for her work. The paranoia, the self-interest carefully hidden under loyalty – fear – of the strangely named Chinese Communist Party, the sheer amount of graft, all of it made the country's military magnificent soil for the seeds she planted.

At first, after taking over the minds of several base commanders and using them to launch attacks toward the island called Taiwan, Supergiant traveled across the country, using her skimmer to crisscross the country randomly. She kept away from the Chitauri so that they were not linked in the locals' minds to the troubles that she was causing with her infiltration of the high command, which just served to add another note to her performance.

At times, it had been tough to get to any kind of flag officer. The security at military bases in this country was quite paranoid. But more often than not, Supergiant was able to find a way, taking over one or two victims first, then moving deeper into the bases. From there, she would make her way quickly up the local chain of command until she found her actual target.

All in all, Supergiant felt she was performing excellently. The local military and civilians were united in paranoia against the other nations on this little blue marble before she arrived, and it was almost too easy to set them at their neighbors' throats.

It had, however, taken time, something which she was somewhat annoyed by at that moment. More than half the day had gone by since she had first arrived here, and she had yet to infiltrate the truly high command of the country. Although, thankfully for her mission, she had discovered where the General Secretary had retreated to.

This was a simple military structure, seemingly small, but easily the most high-tech base that she had yet seen in this world. Indeed, some of the scanners she could see from where she was hiding in the forest nearby looked high-tech enough that they wouldn't have been out of place on any Skrull or Kree planet. It almost looked impossible to sneak in without some form of backup, and for a moment, Supergiant wondered about the feasibility of calling in her troops to reinforce her attack or, at the least, to make enough noise for her to slip in unnoticed.

Then, she saw an officer leave and grinned. "I do believe I have my way in."

She retreated, and for the next fifteen minutes, she moved along a road that led to the hidden bunker. At first, she thought that was rather foolish, but then again, she reflected that the humans would need to bring in construction equipment after all, so having a road made some sense in that case if this place was new. But what she found at the other end of the road was a massive helicopter pad and more security. The security here was obviously still being put in place, something that made Supergiant thankful, as it allowed her the opportunity to sneak in.

When she saw another officer arrive and hastily get into the same jeep the first officer had already vacated, heading towards a helicopter, Supergiant moved in quickly. Not five minutes later, she was hidden in the back of the jeep, having taken over the minds of the two guards and the officer. She refrained from eating their brains entirely, just eating enough of their minds to make them her puppets for a time. This worked to allow her entrance into the security zone around the bunker.

Yet to Supergiant's shock, the scanners there still spotted her when she tried to sneak out of the truck despite her cloaking technology.

Two automated laser guns popped up from the sides of the entryway, and after a second, they opened fire. Not just on Supergiant but on anyone in the area, sending the driver, guard and officer in the jeep to the ground as Supergiant ducked aside. While she wore armor, she wasn't about to let it take any hits that she could avoid. At least these humans have a good understanding of the need for security. Kill the interloper and whoever is responsible for them being there.

As her purple lips twitched into a smirk, twin pistols appeared in Supergiant's hands from a holster at the small of her back, and she fired in both directions, showing that she was both ambidextrous and able to split her attention. I might enjoy using my powers more, but there is a different kind of art inherent in the expression of physical violence.

Three guards who had been stationed at the door leading into the bunker had also opened fire on her. Unlike the vast majority of the troops her own Chitauri had faced, they were armed with energy weapons, cumbersome things that had quite large battery packs. Their power was decent, punching through the jeep Supergiant had been using as cover, but she had already rolled away from it.

Supergiant's return fire did not miss. All three went down, their chests exploded from precise pistol fire. It would appear their armor is still not worth the weight it looks to be, even here in one of their most advanced and important bases.

From where she had been lying on the ground, Supergiant hurled herself forward through the opening into the bunker where her latest meal had remained, holding the door into the bunker open as per her last order. But just as she did it, two shots rang out, blowing the man's head apart and putting a bullet in the back of his body, causing him to fall forward out of the way of the door.

But too late. Supergiant leaped over his falling corpse, taking a glancing blow from one of the guns as it tried to traverse to follow her, but getting behind its arc of fire. Her pistols fired again, and two more guards fell. Then she was in the bunker, rolling along the ground for a moment before hopping to her feet. Ahead of her was what looked like a short hallway with several panels open along it. In each were more guns, but it looked as if they weren't hooked up just yet.

Not that Supergiant was willing to take that at face value. Precise pistol shots rang out, destroying each gun emplacement before she moved forward. Nor was she surprised when the elevator controls did not work a second later.

With a surge of strength, Supergiant wrenched one of the doors to the elevator open, finding the elevator cart wasn't there, only the shaft. Shrugging mentally, she began to rappel down the side of the elevator. Another tool came out a moment later as the elevator cart came back up towards her, no doubt intending to crush her against the ceiling. Before it could, her tool, a laser scalpel, allowed her to cut a hole in the top of it, dropping downwards.

There, Supergiant found three more guards. All of them already had their guns raised, warned by the cutting laser, and tracked Supergiant as she came down through the hole, hitting her armored legs and lower torso rather than her unarmored head, thanks to the angles of the shots. Two shots hit her stomach, but even there, the heavy armor weave she wore absorbed the heat of the energy bolts and deadened the impact.

Supergiant's return fire killed all three of them before her feet touched the ground, but a last bolt hit her shoulder and neck even as the man firing went down, causing both to sting something fierce. "Stars take them, there is a reason why I like using my Telepovore powers more than this brute force nonsense," she grumbled. "There's always a chance things can go against you."

Once more, the elevator did not allow Supergiant to communicate with it at first, but again, one of Supergiant's prepared bag of tricks came into play. Opening the control panel, she connected a small portable computer to it. The Chitauri tech-based pocket computer easily overrode the simple halt order on the elevator, and the box began to head downwards a second later. Supergiant was still grimacing a little at the pain in her legs and shoulder but was otherwise eager for the next challenge.

Supergiant could not measure how deep the elevator went into the earth but estimated the elevator had descended more than eight stories before the elevator came to a halt. As it did, Supergiant dropped two small smoke pellets, which quickly filled the elevator room with gas. A second later, Supergiant leaped back up out of the hole she had made previously just as the door to the elevator cart opened as they were programmed to.

Lasers and now physical bullets flashed through the opening as soon as the elevator opened, peppering the bodies of the three dead troopers there and the rest of the elevator with enough firepower to have put Supergiant into a shallow grave. Dangerous but predictable.

From her hiding place back on top of the cart, Supergiant threw several more smoke pellets. They bounced out and into the hallway beyond before she pulled herself back up, rolling away from the hole to avoid any lucky shots.

Smoke bloomed out, and a second later, Supergiant was on the ground and charging out of the elevator. Able to see through the smoke, she marked out the targets for a brief second, and then her pistols spoke, downing several more guards. Just like had been planned above, most of the defenses seem to be automated turrets set into the walls and ceiling, although obviously, these were fully operable. Regardless, they were not armored enough to stop the pistols that Lord Thanos had designed for her personally.

By the time the smoke cleared, all the defenders who had fired at her were down, man or machine.

At the far end of a short hall stood a massive hatch, the door a type that would recess into the wall when opened, adding more strength to the door than a normal door would have. To most, even if you got this far, this would seem an immense obstacle.

But Supergiant had plumbed the depths of her initial victim's brain, savoring it like fine wine, and she had thought about ways of getting through it. He knew how thick that door was, and to me, it's not thick enough. Still, best to add a bit of theater to this…

With that in mind, Supergiant retreated back to some of the destroyed gun turrets that she had taken out a moment ago and began to pull out their emergency batteries, stringing them together. With that done, she moved back over to the bunker door and laid them on it in a small pattern. Meanwhile, as she was doing all of this in clear sight of two security cameras up above, Supergiant was also reaching out mentally.

Supergiant preferred to use line of sight to control her targets because it gave her more dexterity with her Telepovore powers, allowing her to savor each memory or piece of information like a full course meal and because it let Supergiant create false memories to a far greater degree. But here, she wasn't looking to have a meal, only for a way past this final hurdle. Instead, she was looking to take over a mind just enough to give it a single order.

The taste of her target's mind barely registered to her as Supergiant found the mind of a low-ranking human somewhere within the control room beyond, and instantly, her own thoughts slid into his like a dagger between the ribs. "Open the doors. Do not be seen."

Everyone within the bunker was concentrating on what she was doing on the video screen or still trying to give orders to the rest of the CCP's military via the fast communication array that seemed to dominate the room. This included the Mandarin, who was keeping one eye on both the small and the big picture currently.

He was also giving out a few specific orders to those officers who had apparently been in contact with foreigners. For now, he would tolerate that, but their names would be known to him, and after these invaders had failed like all the others throughout China's history had, they would be punished for their disloyalty.

Even the Mandarin didn't notice as one of the security soldiers within was slowly making his way to the control panel for the door.

Outside, Supergiant put on a show as she tried to put together her bomb, as if she was thoroughly annoyed with everything and getting desperate, knowing the humans had help on the way. She even headed back to the elevator to make sure that they would not be interrupted by setting up an obvious IED triggered by a trip wire. In this manner, she helped keep the attention of the people within the bunker on her, giving her pawn more time to covertly move into position. And then, when her makeshift explosion went off, he opened the doors.

The Mandarin turned quickly at the noise of the door, shouting, "What in, get that soldier away from the controls!" But he was too late, and the Mandarin raised his bejeweled hand towards the still-open doorway.

Supergiant dove inward, barely dodging a hasty shot of some kind of energy beam the likes of which she hadn't seen before, gold with a very slight greenish tint to the edges. Her pistols spoke, and two more guards went down before either could get their guns up. Even so, another killed her first pawn and hammered her side with two rounds before a return fire blew his head apart.

A second energy blast caught Supergiant this time. The golden-green energy bolt was far more powerful than the energy weapons the Chinese had been using against her before this, and the hit lifted her up, hurling Supergiant back into the wall of the command room, through two of the consoles there linking this hidden bunker to the rest of the Chinese military. It couldn't quite penetrate her suit, but for some reason, the energy blast had momentum to it, and that momentum had leaked through even if the heat of the bolt hadn't.

Supergiant groaned in pain as she landed awkwardly but then rolled away from a third blast of energy as a dozen radar and communication specialists raced past her in panic to get away from the only entrance. She was about to take over their minds for a second to cause more of an issue but then had to dodge back and out of the room into the hallway beyond, ducking to one side of the doorway with more small blasts of energy following her. Dammit, he is just barely out of my range!

The size of the command room had foiled her attempt to simply take over the mind of the Secretary Chairman, or whatever his official rank was, the moment she entered. And now that same individual was defending himself quite well, not allowing her to close.

The Mandarin was a middle-aged man, fit, but not overly so, with a thin, sallow face and expression, his face clearly showing mixed Chinese and Mongolian blood for those who could understand what they were looking for. A long flowing goatee in the ancient Chinese style, along with long black hair done up in a topknot, showing white specks here and there throughout it, along with long, carefully manicured nails, normally gave him the air of an ancient emperor who had somehow time traveled to the present.

At present, his face was lined with tension and anxiety, his mouth a rictus of anger, watching as his country began to collapse. Whatever else he had ever been, the Mandarin was a patriot, and seeing China coming apart like this was horrifying.

Yet despite those obvious signs of age and concern, there was nothing wrong with the Mandarin's reaction speed. Nor his lungs as he shouted over the tumult of the fleeing operators, tone showing a certain glee at having something to take his frustration out on as he fired towards the woman who was almost undoubtedly behind all of this. "You will not conquer here, alien! China belongs to the Mandarin!"

Another blast of power came from his hands, or rather, from the rings of power that the Mandarin always wore. These were his true claim to fame, the true reason behind his rise to first power in the underworld and then in China's political battlefield. The Mandarin had found these rings while fleeing out into the back of beyond after having been found thieving. The rings had been in a crashed alien spaceship, an alien which had looked remarkably like the ancient Chinese dragons in myth and art.

The Mandarin had killed the wounded alien, claiming the rings for his own. With them and the technology of the ship, he had carved out a criminal empire, controlling almost the entirety of the middle kingdom's underworld of China from sea to mountain. The rings gave him knowledge of the technology, helped his mind grow to a frightening degree, and gave him command of various types of attacks, along with strengthening his body to an incredible degree. One even made him immune to mind control, although that was not a power he was ever enthused about trying to test.

But first a run-in with the Black Widow and Hawkeye, and then his meeting with Harry had curbed his worldwide ambitions. The first two had nearly killed the Mandarin as SHIELD helped the South Koreans beat off his attempt to take over their criminal empire. The fact two seemingly unpowered people had beaten him, and his people had been infuriating. As for Potter/Guardian, the fact there was real magic out there and Potter's simple aura, had terrified the Mandarin for all that he had been able to hide it from the man himself.

For the Mandarin, taking over China had originally been set simply as a step to something greater, and he had been forced to simply settle for second best, knowing any attempt to grow beyond China would be met with lethal force from Potter or someone allied to him. That galled, but more than anything else, the Mandarin was a survivor. If staying within China would let him not come into conflict with the Custodes and retain control of China, that was good enough.

A blast of kinetic energy came from the Mandarin's other hand, exploding the side of the doorway where the Supergiant was taking cover. It hurled both doorway and Supergiant down the core door, but Supergiant was able to roll out of the way before she was flattened, cursing as this opened her up for another blast of energy from the Mandarin as he remained where he had been. Stars take it, he's still out of my range! But his people aren't…

Several of the operators have been caught in the crossfire, gunned down by either Supergiant trying to return fire or the mandarins overpowered beams, but two of them had thrown themselves to the floor of the corridor between the two combatants and were laying there now, keeping their heads down desperately. Reaching out with her Telepovore powers, Supergiant took control of one of their minds, causing him to crawl towards where a soldier lay nearby, discarded in death by one of the original troopers.

The Mandarin continued to fire at Supergiant, but he was now watching the guards closely, much to Supergiant's chagrin. He gunned down both of the operators with short blasts of energy, then continued to fire at Supergiant himself.

It was with some chagrin that Supergiant realized she couldn't close with the man into her power's range, and her armor was beginning to fail, the internal energy shield being overcome, and the armor covering her body beginning to melt away in places. Dammit, I suppose I will have to call in help.

Luckily for Supergiant, a group of skimmers was nearby. As she retreated back into the elevator and then up into its shaft, the Mandarin continuing to fire at her, those skimmers moved into position, assaulting the exterior defenses of the complex. Most of those defenses were automated, which had contributed to the fact she faced so little in the way of defenders inside the bunker itself. And unlike the defensive guns inside the bunker, all the exterior guns were online.

Heavy machine guns and energy beams filled the sky as they fired at the incoming skimmers. More than a dozen skimmers fell before the guns began to get knocked out of the fight one after another. Ten minutes later, a dozen skimmers landed to disgorge their infantry onto the ground while others began to patrol the area, seeing off several attack helicopters as they tried to move in on the attackers.

Before the Chitauri could enter the bunker in strength, however, the Phoenix arrived.

Searing claws of telekinetic force dealt with the skimmers as if they were so many gnats. A second later, the infantry was similarly dealt with, hurled away, or simply crushed into the ground in groups of telekinetic energy. With the Chitauri reinforcements dealt with, Jean entered the bunker, only to run right into Supergiant as she came out of the elevator shaft.

Supergiant instantly reacted, several decade's worth of experience allowing her to use her telepathic powers before Jean could, Jean having been unaware of her presence, as that too was part of Supergiant's Telepovore powers, hiding her from other telepaths like the predator she was. When she launched her attack, it didn't work.

It should have. The Phoenix avatar in front of her was not the first telepath that Supergiant had fought. And thanks to the work that had been done on her powers by Lord Thanos, she was always able to get that first all-important blow in if she was in range. Indeed when attacking telepaths was the only time Supergiant really saw the Astral Plane, as her ability let her bypass it to eat the minds of her victims directly.

Telepaths were not only connected to the Astral Plane but conscious enough to feel and even fight her assault on their minds. It was at times a lengthy process, but the battle always started and ended the same way. First, Supergiant found her mental projection pulled into the Astral Plane, always within range of the victim already, perhaps standing and touching the other telepath's own projection in some manner. Her fingers, like long tendrils, burrowing into the projection of her victim.

It didn't matter what kind of touch it was, all that mattered was the speed in which the contact was made, so fast that no telepath that Supergiant had ever dealt with could react in time. At that point, the connection was established on Supergiant's terms, and she instantly began to feed, the telepath's own power turning against him or her.

No matter how they screamed, the projection could never get away, and soon, it would fade. The telepath's mind would die, dissipating memory by delicious memory. And as it did, the telepath would know, would understand that his or her mind was being eaten, making the taste all the sweeter.

But this time, she ran into something she hadn't ever seen before. Most of the time, automatic telepathic defenses were constructed like a shield, which her touch would've simply burrowed through, letting her get in that first all-important attack before the enemy telepath could rally. But mental constructs given near-life, the belsham trees that Jean had long ago created under Harry's tutelage in Occlumency were far more reactive than a shield, and Supergiant found her attacks parried.

For her part, Jean reeled as the telepathic probe slammed into those defenses, coming up almost from the 'ground' of the Astral plane, as if Supergiant operated at a different frequency than the rest of the realm, almost. Her attack even seemed like that of some kind of sea monster, tentacles lined with barbs and mouths, able to rend and feed at the same time, trying to burrow through her defenses only to be matched in turn by the tentacles of her Belsham trees.

They held for the split second they needed to let Jean get her bearings, and Supergiant reeled backward, shocked. And then the Astral form of the attack faded, the Telepovore not having the strength to maintain her assault against a telepath. As it did, the redhead recovered her equilibrium, and Jean's eyes exploded with power. "My turn!" Pheonix snarled as her own telepathic assault washed over the astral plane and into Supergiant with all the force of an exploding nova.

"N-ARRGHH…." Supergiant tried to fight back but couldn't. She was simply nowhere near powerful or skilled enough to even evade, let alone survive, this attack. What mental defenses she had thanks to her lord Thanos altering her, making her better, was no match. A second later, Supergiant fell, her mind literally turned into mush under the impact of Jean's telepathic assault. All her higher brain functions faded, and her legs gave out, no single being sent to make her remain standing. Drool began to dribble out of her mouth, and it was only her body's automatic functions that kept her heart beating.

However, Jean was in no mind to take chances and even as everything that made up the individual known as Supergiant faded away under her mental onslaught, she reached out telekinetically to snap the alien woman's neck before tearing her heart out of her chest. While the suit of armor weave she had been wearing had stopped any energy or impact-related damage before, Jean's power easily overwhelmed it, and she tossed the alien's heart against the far wall of the tunnel. "Okay… maybe that was a bit far, but fuck if that bitch didn't deserve it."

Leaving the blue-skinned alien's corpse there on the ground, Jean, feeling a bit more relaxed now, moved on, floating down the elevator shaft.

Her shield flared as a strike from within lanced up at her, a kinetic energy strike, followed a second later by a pulse of plasma, the color of which was unusual to Jean. Thankfully, it didn't somehow bypass her shielding. "I am the Phoenix!" she shouted, projecting her voice down rather than trying to reach out with her telepathy. Whoever's down there is probably on a hair trigger, and if it's the Mandarin, Dennis learned he had some anti-telepath tech. Best not to set him off.

"I just dealt with your attacker, Mandarin. I'm assuming you're the Mandarin anyway. That energy bolt matched the information we have on one of those rings of powers of yours."

The fire below stopped for a moment, and then the Mandarin's voice spoke. "And I am simply to assume that you will not use the opportunity this alien invasion has granted you to, shall we say, create a regime change here in China? Americans are always happy to look for such opportunities."

"The carnage and chaos spread across China says you need the help," Jean retorted, again fighting the urge to reach out mentally to the man and do what she had done to Supergiant above. Instead, she continued her way down, alighting in the elevator and staring at where the Mandarin stood in the doorway of the command center, having backed away quickly down the hallway.

"Come no closer, American!" he growled, his hands coming up, the rings on them glowing.

"I actually don't have American citizenship anymore, but I understand what you're trying to say. I suppose your position does force a certain paranoid frame of mind on its holders," Jean said, her tone almost light and jocular for a second before she shook her head as she stared across the intervening distance at the man. "And I'm not going to stand here and shout at you. Let me come within at least speaking distance. And if you think that distance is making you any safer now than you would be then, you should probably think again. Or maybe just outright fire your spies."

The Mandarin snarled a bit, but he had long since gotten used to the fact that he was in no way the biggest dog in the yard, even as head of China. With a curt gesture, he allowed Jean to come closer without firing on her, although several of his rings did twitch a bit on his fingers.

"I don't like you either," Jean retorted to that look, shaking her head. "In fact, a large portion of my mind wants to turn you into a torch right now. But we need to work together to close the portal and shut down the rest of the invaders. I can't be everywhere at once, and even with my telepathic powers, I can't spread out my power on such a wide range to deal with so many small-scale problems. So get off your high horse, stop seeing everyone not Chinese as an enemy, and let's get a move on."

"Never become a politician. You would no doubt cause heart attacks across the globe," the Mandarin muttered before shaking his head and leading the way back into the control room. Much of it had been destroyed, but the main screen across from the entryway was still in relatively one piece and still gaining information from elsewhere in China. With Jean relaying what Pinoptes could, the Mandarin began to piece together the Chinese high command once more. He even called off the ongoing conflict around Taiwan.

Not, Jean thought internally, that there was much of that force left. While the carrier group there had taken losses, with the help of Taiwan and the base in Okinawa, they had chewed up every force that China had sent into the Strait or the waters around Taiwan.

"That was a good gesture on your part," Jean allowed, shaking her head a bit as they turned their attention back to China, the attempt to be diplomatic leaving a bad taste in her mouth. "And now, you need to get in touch with North Korea and tell them that Big Brother is very angry with them right now."

The Mandarin actually snorted in laughter at that before something else on the screen caught Jean's eye. At the same time, Pinoptes shouted a warning into her earbuds. "Phoenix! The Chinese have just launched nuclear weapons… they are aiming at a site within their own borders. Target is the portal!"

Jean's eyes widened, and she whirled to look at the Mandarin, shouting, "What have you done!? Didn't you hear me when I said I'd…"

"I have done what needs to be done! The people of China are no strangers to sacrifice. If I have to create a radioactive wasteland around that portal in order to close it and make sure no further aliens come through, the thousands of lives that take will be a small price to pay in the great scheme of things." The Mandarin waved her off, staring at two screens in particular. One changed to watch the trajectory of the missiles rather than the overall conflict across China, while the other showed a real-time image of the portal.

"You forget the Chitauri have already done a very good job of killing every single civilian or soldier for dozens of miles around that area. If more than one out of every ten civilians in the zone that will be impacted by a nuclear explosion is still alive, I will be surprised. That entire area for miles in every direction is a viable military target. Anyone caught within by our nuclear weapons will all be seen as martyrs, giving their lives so that China may live."

"That might be, but the Chitauri have stopped this kind of thing before," Jean answered tartly. "The portal in Paris and the portal in Russia were both…"

Her voice trailed off as things changed once more, the image on the screen causing her words to stumble to a halt.

The Mandarin had not only worked on trying to raise the technological level of China's military forces and create a better system of quality control but had also revamped their internal security apparatus to a significant degree. Part of that security force was a series of drones, much like the even smaller ones that the Orbital Drop Marines used in combat. These drones, which had been created in groups of a hundred and shaped like birds of various types, had been handed over to the local police and were normally used to spy on China's citizenry.

And, of course, the Mandarin could override the local controllers, using these drones as he saw fit. He had created them, and even if his power as Chairman didn't allow for such, he would have been able to do so.

Several dozen of them had been sent toward the portal when the Mandarin started to piece together what was going on. Their camouflage as birds seemed to fool the aliens, or perhaps they didn't care that the locals were able to observe them. This had allowed everyone in the bunker to see the appalling number of Chitauri coming through the portal, thousands of skimmers, hundreds of Rippers, and more in an unending stream.

Now, they should have allowed the Mandarin, Jean and the others in the control room to see what happened right up until the nuclear weapons hit. Instead, Jean watched in horror no less than what she had felt a moment ago at the news of the nukes as she watched Thanos, the Mad Titan, come through the portal, his hover throne flying above the tide of Chitauri.

OOOOOOO

While Thanos's attention had been completely subsumed by the hunt to come, that did not mean that the rest of the current battlefield was willing to allow his mind to wander. Not without taking some recompense. Garm and Hela were gone, and Greta dead, with Dani, much as she had heretofore refused to admit it, too weak and inconspicuous to matter to Thanos, floating high above the ruined landscape of this portion of the Himalayas while Dani was well below him.

Fenris was wounded, more wounded now than he had been with Sutr, the fire Jotun king. His shoulder was practically gone, flesh and bone alike, letting his foreleg hanging on by mere slivers of flesh and tendons. Fenrir had a series of burns along his side and back that wasn't quite as bad but covered more area than the wound to his shoulder, and worse, his tail was nearly seared to the point that not a single hair remained upon it. It was so bad that when he looked over his shoulder at it at one point when Thanos's assault let up, it caused the proud young the wolf to shudder, as it looked far too much like a rattail for his state of mind.

Yet he was still Fenris, still the Breaker of Chains, the wolf who would eat the sun. Young and raw in many ways Fenrir's personality might be, but his pride was one of his most defining traits. He would not simply lie there and succumb. As the mad Titan had turned back to his throne, sitting down on it quickly, Fenris pushed himself to his feet, crouching low, gathering energy into his three working limbs.

Thor was also wounded. The Power Cosmic had allowed Thanos to overwhelm the Thunderer in a way very few other than Odin himself had ever done. Then come the final blasts that Thanos had sent his way, hurling him through a mountainside and out the other side of said mountain. His back was paining him in a way that Thor was not used to, and his arms were sore, sore to the point that he felt as if he had broken something in at least one of them. The fingers of one hand were also purpling noticeably. Portions of his magnificent beard and red hair had also been seared away in such a manner that Thor felt even Balder and dour Hogun would laugh at him.

Yet still, Thor pushed himself to his feet. Still, he gripped his hammer, his eyes alight with battle lust as he stared through the hole his body had made, which quickly began to be covered by rubble from higher up the mountainside as yet another series of avalanches rocked the area. An instant later, he was in the air, hurling himself upwards with all the energy he could as he whistled sharply.

Thor's chariot had been circling high, high above the battlefield. Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr had been taking some amount of delight at running down any of the giant eel-like enemies that had attempted to fire upon them, evading such fire with needs. Goats were normally not that combative, particularly against enemies who produced loud noises and could attack them at range. However, Tanngnjóstr and Tanngrisnir had taken on some measure of their master's combative personality.

Similarly, goats and chariots should not be aerodynamic. But like normal magic did in many other areas, the magic of Thor's chariot made a mockery of the laws of the physical realm, allowing the pair of goats to outmaneuver skimmers and rippers alike.

As he reached the aphelion of his leap, the goats pulled up beside him, not quite making the rendezvous, but close enough that Thor was able to reach out and grab the side of his chariot, flipping himself into it with his mangled hand. The next second, he was whipping the reins, charging back down towards his opponent.

"Attention, input needed. Incoming Asgardian-level enemies."

Looking up from the data that the Chitauri general had sent him, Thanos had barely a second for his eyes to widen before Mjolnir smashed through the kinetic barrier and then his throne's energy shield before crashing into his side, carrying him off his throne with a cry of pain, the first one Thanos had released this entire fight. Thor followed up, leaping off his chariot and down towards the falling Titan, hastening his descent as much as he could, landing directly on top of Thanos as he crashed him into the ground, grabbing his hammer out of the air as he went.

"Be smashed to dust, foul one!" Thor brought Mjölnir down hard on Thanos's chest, causing the titan to groan in pain again.

But he still raised his hands and blasted Thor off him with a full power double-barreled strike of Power Cosmic. This caused the God of the Common Man to stumble off him, allowing Thanos to roll to one side and get his feet under him. Just in time for Fenris to slam into him from the other side.

The wolf had grown to such a size that when he tried to bite down, Fenrir would have easily been able to chomp Thanos in half, but Thanos was able to get his hands up, grabbing at the slathering wolf's jaws as he had before, this time by grabbing at his fangs rather than his jaw. "When will you learn beast? Your strength is all you have, and even that is nothing to me!"

With a roar, he lifted the wolf off his feet for a second, sending him sideways to slam into four as Thor himself was recovering. The thunder went sideways, stumbling down, then losing his footing, and was sent tumbling down a crevice for a moment, although he was able to get his feet under him before he landed. Then, that most lifted Fenris again into the air, shouting, "Foolish beast, you are no match for me!"

Thanos slammed the beast down onto Fenrir's already wounded side, causing Fenris to flinch and howl in agony, wrenching away from Thanos's grip, which in turn allowed him to slam several blows of the Power Cosmic into the creature, sending Fenrir skipping away, then off the exceptionally large ledge that had been created earlier in the battle. With a final howl of fury, Fenris fell away, but then Thor leaped out of the crevice he had fallen into, hammer swinging. Thanos barely got his forearm up and activated his personal kinetic barrier before the hammer struck, and it was his turn to be smashed off his feet, slamming into a nearby wall of stone.

'Hahaahah!" Thor bellowed in laughter and came after him, landing two more strikes before Thanos returned one, a simple punch to the face sending Thor stumbling for a second, before his free hand caught Thanos, purple fingers and all, pulling Thanos into an elbow strike to the side of the head that had the Titan seeing stars for a moment.

A Power Cosmic blast to the chin sent Thor stumbling away again, something in his jaw giving way before a kick to the lower knee sent him stumbling to one knee. Mjölnir crashed into Thanos's side a second before Thanos's own knee came up into Thor's face, and then those grimaced as his armor began to crack and buckle. But at the same time, several of Thor's teeth had been smashed out of his face by that knee blow.

Even so, he gripped the nose around the middle, lifting him up and off the ground, and performed a perfect suplex, slamming the Titan's head into the solid stone behind him, before rolling away and bringing around his hammer again, only for the throne to start to get involved again, blasting down at him from on high. The kinetic energy of Thor's hammer throw earlier came back to him, smashing into Thor's chest, breaking his Asgardian armor and sending him off of his feet. Then, Thanos was on his own feet, lashing out with the Power Cosmic again, even as he ascended up into the air towards his throne.

Whirling his hammer in front of him, Thor tried to block most of those blows but couldn't and found himself forced backward again and again even as Fenris finally leaped upwards, landing on the platform around Thanos' throne, yellow eyes and slathering jaws speaking eloquently of death. This, however, proved a bad choice, as Thanos simply used one hand to keep blasting Thor and the other to start blasting Fenris, hurling him off the construct again. In this manner, he kept them at range for a moment.

Thanos had left extremely clear, non-discretionary orders for the Chitauri general, organizing the attack from the dimensional gap. He was only to be bothered by news about the energy signature matching the Phoenix avatar or Guardian's. Unfortunately, in this, Thanos had forgotten, or perhaps ignored, the fact that the cyborg Chitauri, with much of their brains having been replaced by cybernetics, were often a little too literal. Especially when it came to orders that he gave them. The cybernetic elements of their brains reinforced the quasi-religious idolatry the Chitauri were all literally programmed to feel towards Thanos.

In this case, that meant that no information about the rest of the ongoing invasion had been shared with Thanos since he had decided to get involved personally. This, in turn, meant that he had no idea that, at around the same time when he had been dealing with Ghigau's strange mental assault, the Severomorsk and DC portals were closing. Although the one who had orchestrated this whole ward did not know it yet, the invasion was very much in danger of ending in total defeat.

The Custodes Mundi and their allies had succeeded in bringing more power to bear at the portals than Thanos and the Black Order had ever thought they could. Worse, the Black Order's own idiosyncrasies, and Thanos' arrogance had worked against them, as had Skrull being unable to close with the planet.

Yet, while his master was completely ignorant of this fact, Ebony Maw wasn't. He got a report first that Severomorsk's portal had closed. Someone had snuck in, found the portal generator, and destroyed it even as the Chiaturi were defending against the arriving Asgardians. Then, almost on the heels of that report, more news that DC's portal had followed. With that, he knew that his own portal and the one in China were the only ones left.

Not wasting any time gloating about Corvus Glaive's death despite Ebony having seen the other, more cerebral commander as his only real rival among the Black Order, Ebony instead ordered as many men and material pushed through the remaining gates as possible. He overrode any commands that Supergiant might have left behind, and soon, hundreds of rippers joined the skimmer craft in China, spreading out everywhere.

This, ironically, caused a large amount of the chaos in China to start to slow down. With so much more evidence on hand, more of the local commanders realized that China was being invaded by an alien source rather than a human one. Not that they were able to do much at first, given how much of a battering China's aerial forces had already taken around the portal and how spread out the Chitauri quickly became, but that could be overcome in time.

At the same time, here in the Himalayas, more and more infantry came out, joining the ongoing scattered battles against Balder and the forces under his command. Still more anti-air guns joined their fellows, along with still more skimmers, spreading out and away as fast as possible in large groups. The only way the invasion could succeed at this point was to create a defensive cordon so large that no force could get to the two remaining portals, regardless of whatever resources they could bring to bear that had already dealt with the rest of the Black Order.

Logically, Ebony knew that unless the Skrull broke through, there was little chance of the invasion winning out. But he would obey his master until he could not, and at the moment, his portal, his avenue of retreat, was still open, regardless of anything else.

Even as the tumult of the battles scattered throughout the rest of the mountain range began to rise to a fever pitch, Thanos and his two opponents remained ignorant of the larger strategic picture. Line of sight and distance meant that they could not see anything that was going on, while the two Asgardians didn't have any means to communicate with the locals. Even Fenrir had lost his earbud at last. The valiant little device had finally fallen out of his overlarge ear.

Eventually, Thanos was able to regain his throne, and with a few buttons, he rose up into the air. A series of hypersonic missiles from one of his throne's weapon systems were sent in the direction of the completely bizarre goats, and the chariot they were pulling caused them to bank away, racing for the horizon with the missiles in hot pursuit. This meant that Thor wouldn't be able to come after him as Thanos rode his throne up into the air.

From below, Thor stared up at Thanos, his face a rictus of fury. Not at his wounds. The various burn marks across his body and the tattered remnants of his armor mattered little to the defender of gods and men. No, what infuriated him was that Thanos was leaving without finishing the fight. "Come back and fight, coward!"

His words fell on deaf ears. Thanos's mind was elsewhere.

Now would have been a good time for Thanos to check in with the Chitauri, to check and see what was going on with the overall war against Earth. But that war had always been a simple means to an end for Thanos. Even his fury and grief at Gamora being defeated was a momentary thing in comparison to the desire and love, the obsession he felt towards Lady Death, which had ridden him for eons. A love that had gone unrequited for some time now.

I have tried to gain my Lady's attention in recent years through the artful destruction of hundreds of souls, given up to her in the most exquisite torture I could contrive, and at other times, I have tried to make a comedy of some deaths. I have tried to gain her attention through the use of sheer numbers, consigning whole planets, whole star systems worth of individual minds and souls to her grace. None have worked to regain the favor I had with her.

But there is one thing that must: the defeat of her counterpart's avatar, the defeat of the Phoenix Force, and, along with the avatar, the death of the being who defeated me the last time I was in the star system. Overcoming an obstacle like that at the same time I lay what can only be called a victory for her at Lady Death's feet, must work to regain her favor. I will have my Lady's gaze upon me again! I will! Thanos thought as he inputted new controls. A second later, a personal portal opened on the same frequency as the Chitauri, depositing him back into the dimensional gap for a moment.

Even as the Chitauri commander, now able to actually see and speak directly to Thanos when he could not have overridden Thanos's orders to call him with other information, tried to get his attention, Thanos turned his throne towards the portal for China. A second later, he was gone, still none the wiser that the larger plan had completely come apart.

OOOOOOO

The video recorders showed Jean and the others in the distant command bunker showed Thanos as he hovered there in midair, sitting on some kind of floating throne thing. Even through this medium, there was something unnatural about Thanos that even the tear in reality seemed normal in comparison, his size, his looks, the way his eyes glowed like small dwarf stars even through the video, turning this way and that before seemingly staring in one particular direction. Everything screamed otherworldly about him.

"Call the nukes off!" She nearly whispered throat dry as her mind became filled with numerous ways this could go wrong. "Those things won't…"

But it was too late. Thanos was already aware of the incoming ICBMs. She watched as Thanos tapped at his throne's armrests a few times, and then, the information displayed on another screen changed. That console was following the ICBMs via local radar. And within a few seconds, the trajectory of the missiles began to shift.

As Jean and the others in the command center watched, the trajectory of each rocket shifted toward where a different nearby city lay.

Wh… no way Thanos was able to target each of those cities so quickly! Some kind of automated targeting device or something more? Desperately, Jean set aside that mystery and closed her eyes, raising her hands above her head. Her aura of the Phoenix appeared once more, muted but still lighting up the command center around her in red and orange reflected glory, causing the Mandarin and several others to back away while everyone else covered their eyes.

For a second, the Mandarin's rings glimmered as he began to also call on his powers, but he paused, watching the Pheonix stare at the console showing the flight of the ICBMs. Realizing what was going on, the Mandarin ordered the drone controllers to shift the feeds to any other drones in the area, trying to follow the missile, trying to give Jean a visual to better concentrate on using her powers long range.

But this wasn't like using the sensors Pinoptes had given her access to so Jean could look down from on high as she had done during the Eurasian War. Instead of one view straight down, even as the men at the controls tried to rapidly shift from one to another, Jean was faced with several different images at once, several in fact for each missile as they separated.

Worse, there were so many minds nearby, and between her and the target, concentrating on finding something that didn't have a mind was far harder. Using her telekinetic powers without seeing what she was doing was always tough, but this was an order of magnitude harder.

Yet even so, despite the distance and everything else, one by one, Jean was still able to grab three of the five missiles that the Mandarin had launched at the portal out of the air. With a near groan, she wrenched the three of them upward, hurling them high into the sky and beyond, held now by her powers rather than being directed by their rockets.

But the other two evaded her best efforts. She kept on trying while still directing the other rockets straight upwards, but both of them slammed into the cities of Wuxi and Wuzhou. Jean tried her hardest, tried to contain the explosions, but from this far away, she couldn't. The next second, both cities disappeared as China's own nuclear devices were turned against it as in the bunker, the Mandarin and his officers stared in horror at what he had wrought.

Slumping to her knees, Jean had to shake her head several times to recover, one hand rising to wipe away sweat from her face. That had taken a lot of concentration, reminding her in many ways of the savage telepathic battles that had been waged during the Asgardian war. Visuals, good ones without any kind of break, were immensely necessary to use telekinetic powers at anything like long range. Damn it! How… how many millions just…

Anger rising in her mind, Jean recovered quickly, and pushing to her feet, she snarled at the Mandarin, barely stopping herself from going full Darth Vader on him and breaking his fool neck. "You, you did this! And when this is all over, your people will know the truth, that you were willing to sacrifice thousands of them to close that portal and that it was your fault that millions just died! If I were you, I would probably seek asylum in some other country. I rather doubt the mob will have any pity for you."

Not, Jean knew, that any international court would have much pity either.

The Mandarin seemed to gather himself, but his tone was lacking in energy, and his shoulders slumped a bit as he answered, giving his words the lie they were. "You, you make the mistake of many throughout history. You believe a hard truth will be believed over a soft lie chosen to fit into the worldviews of those targeted. Regardless of whatever else happens, the Chinese people will never turn on me. Nor would I ever let myself fall so low as to need to throw myself on the largess of another nation."

"You just keep telling yourself that," Jean drawled, shaking her head and turning towards the entrance. "Meanwhile, I'm going to go out and handle the real problem." Moments later, she was in the air over the Mandarin's command post, racing towards Thanos and the portal. "Pinoptes, Dennis, if you haven't already, tell the others: Thanos is here. I'm going to do what I can but I would really like some emerald-eyed help right about now."

End Chapter

I am still not happy with the ongoing fight in the Himalayas or the Jean/Thanos fight. This is one of many problems of going back and editing my own work, LOL. Still, I will try to finish work on them and add them to the rest of what was in the original chapter 56. I may also try to stick the epilogue in on top of that. We will see. But god… concentrating on this was so hard. I found my mind wandering, adding to the month's outlines, thinking up one-liners I wanted to use in some of my other fics. I even wrote out a few full paragraphs for random stories… Curse my ADHD.