Disclaimer - All the usual Yada Yada Yada. I don't own any rights to any characters in this fic save for my OCs. Don't sue me.
Anywho, without further ado - read on.
Earth-6161 [May 2012]
Helicarrier
–Steve Rogers—
He paced inside his own quarters, with quite literally nothing much to do. He had tried helping the agents as much as he could but after all the rubble was cleared, the injured were carted off to the medbays, where that woman…
He clenched his fists as he struggled to reconcile the fact that Samantha Weber was more than capable of healing or outright stopping Loki from not just attacking the ship but also from escaping but she just chose not to.
It was just such a foreign concept in his mind. Like, objectively, he knew that there were people far more evil than Samaantha whose evil was just inaction but even then, the amount of power she held in her hands and the fact that the world had not chosen to unite itself against her meant that there was still something good in her, something that stopped her from crossing the final line.
And yet, it still disturbed him greatly that such a being existed, that such overwhelming power was in the hands of someone who was utterly indifferent to the suffering of others. He couldn't imagine being in the same position and not trying his hardest to help people, to make a difference.
He sighed and collapsed on the chair in the temporary quarters assigned to him.
Guess Dr.Erskine was right, the serum enhances qualities that go beyond just the physical.
He had been through the injured ward and the doctors there all say the same thing. Some of them sing songs of her miracles as if she had done something truly impossible and the rest all say the same thing.
It was all so complex, so varied that she probably could have outright pulled them away from danger rather than just stopping them from dying, that would have been less of a hassle.
Shaking his head, he was about to head out once more and see if he was needed but before he could open the door to his quarters, a voice rang from the intercom system built into each and every inch of this flying boat/ship, something that he still couldn't believe was real.
"Avengers, please assemble at Bay 19. I repeat, Avengers, please assemble at Bay 19. Prepare for deployment, I repeat, Avengers, repeat for deployment."
Shaking his head once more, he slammed his foot down on the edge of his shield, grabbing the handle built into the back of it with one hand. Checking his SHIELD issued standard black uniform, he gave his old Captain America uniform hanging on the wall a forlorn gaze, and instead of getting the whole getup, he grabbed onto his special jacket, gifted to him by Agent Coulson, draping it over his shoulders as he ran like hell, finally ready for something that would not make him feel useless.
Halfway through his run, something that was really exhilarating as he was running at full tilt, he heard a whoosh of rocket behind him as Tony rocketed above him. "Too slow, Captain!"
He shook his head and ran even faster since there literally was no time to waste now. Slowing down as the doors for Bay 13 finally opened, revealing a large empty space containing just one QuinJet.
His eyes lasered on the standing form of Iron Man with the faceplate off, right next to Director Fury along with Agent Hawkeye.
"Agent." He shook hands with the clearly cleared agent, since last he heard, the de facto best agent of SHIELD was under Loki's mind control. "Captain."
He was about to ask something to the Director but his mouth was clamped shut as a projection appeared from Tony's suit, showing New York with a…hole? In the sky?
"Severe Energy readings measured. Tesseract readings activated on top of Stark Tower. Arc Reactor control hijacked. Enacting Security measures. Shutting down Arc systems, shutting down Alpha servers. Switching VI to Servers Beta. Initiate in 3…2…1.."
After that, the feed glitched and then reappeared, the same as before, with the same blue hole in the sky. And yet, everyone gathered knew that something terrible had happened.
"Fuck!" Tony swore and yet, somehow, as if the world itself was playing a joke against him, his mouth opened on its own as he uttered, "Language!"
Temporarily ignoring his slip up, everyone exploded in action, as Tony's faceplate shut off and he flew straight into the hole in the ceiling, the hole closing in after him.
"So he is in New York. Get in the Jet, Barton knows how to use one, it's the fastest one we have. I'll see about reinforcements," Fury shouted at them as both he and Barton rushed into the Jet.
The bay's doors opened up. Barton clearly did not care much about optimum take off and landing processes as the Jet shot forward with maximum velocity the second after he was done strapping himself in.
He felt a popping sensation in his ears as a red warning appeared in front of his seat, which was the co-pilot's seat. It showed the speed of the Jet: Mach 1.6 and accelerating, as the entire Jet trembled at having gone at speeds beyond Mach 2. Slowly, the counter increased, more and more until it finally stopped at Mach 3.2.
The Jet was throwing warning after warning and yet it showed no signs of damage, aside from the entire thing trembling but the speed was warranted. After all, they needed to reach the city faster than anything else on the planet, and if the Jet happened to be a little damaged after the ordeal, he was sure that Fury would not mind.
He turned to the side as he heard the man say something. He tried to hear what the man was trying to say but all he heard was, "I hope Stark doesn't mind."
Before he could say anything more, the madman, because he was clearly one to fly something like this at such speeds, flipped something on the stick, making more and more warning signs pop up on the HUD. With increasing alarm, he watched Barton flip more and more switches off a second stick that popped up right beside him, glowing blue.
It was very ominous.
What was more ominous was the man turning straight to him, with a manic grin on his face, shouting, "Giddy up!"
If it was even possible, he braced himself as the warnings all ceased showing themselves as a single large blue loading bar appeared in front of him. The contents of that warning made him damn near get out of his seat and stop the man.
ARC PROPULSION ENGAGED
The loading bar finally reached the end, and as if an explosion had happened behind the Jet, it was thrown ahead at such speeds that he felt his eyes almost pop out, and his body being pressed into the reinforced metal speed as if he was about to become one with the chair.
A secondary warning appeared in front of him and through blurry, dazed eyes, he saw the message and his eyes almost popped out of his eyes a second time.
MAX SPEED REACHED : MACH 7.61
He was going to die. Yes, he was going to die trying to reach a place where people were in danger. His extreme ambition to save them all was what was going to kill him.
This was worse than the Nazi super ship. At least then, he was at least trying to save the world. Here, how was he going to save the world if he was nothing more than a bloody mist in the air?
If you guys would like to support me or read upto 4 chapters ahead, you can head to my P*treon.
I run weekly snippet polls on Patreon, with the winner of the fic getting 2-3 chapters over the weekend.