Commissioned by [Austin] on Patreon.
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]
Manhattan, New York [Stark Tower Periphery]
–Tony Stark–
"Stark, are you seeing this?" His comms crackled to life as Captain's incredulous voice reached him. The disbelief was strong in everyone right now because the scene in front of him was downright ridiculous, even after all the shit he had been through the past couple of days.
"Seeing? Yes. Still not believing it, though."
SCREEE
"Jarvis, noise filters, please." He winced as the pained sounds of those Leviathan echoed throughout the city, dizzying him for a bit as the Leviathans reeled from the vicious attacks on them.
Jarvis was hard at work, already analysing everything and to his dismay, the results came back the same. Water. Just water with the same composition as the local water body, which in this case was coming from both the river and the ocean.
"How the fuck does she do it?" HE asked himself as he flew back to deal with the stragglers, not that there was much left after Weber was done with them, mostly the ones who stayed hidden from the beginning. It was just water and in her hands, it turned into the world's most deadly material, turning into giant skewers that just pinned the Leviathans in place.
His breath hitched as he watched her change tactics as the lances of water turned into water once more and covered the entire body of those Leviathans before….
He blinked as there were now purple coloured clouds in place of those Leviathans as Weber had just turned those giants into fine mists after putting them through her water blades. It was…graphic to say the least but hey! Atleast there was no fallout this time, no buildings destroyed that would have to be rebuilt by relief efforts.
There was a sudden silence on the battlefield once the Leviathans were turned into mist as new arrivals from the portals actually stopped for a moment. He turned around to make sure nobody was left behind and also to enlarge the perimeter since there was no telling what the retaliation would be from the other side.
Thor described them as an endless horde of "unfeeling, emotionless, cannibalising monsters created only to kill" and that was a pretty damning explanation. He had a hunch that monsters like them were not going to back down just because they hit a harder than expected wall.
He also did not know for how long Weber could do all of this and hold the line for all of them. They had to deal with the root cause of this before they lost their chokehold on the portal. Thankfully, Loki was out of it, thanks to Weber, and would have been really out of it had Thor not gone berserk.
"Jarvis, speak to me!" Seeing that there were no people in the original perimeter, he expanded the virtual perimeter radius around the Stark Tower and forwarded it to all the law enforcement as well as the Captain who was still coordinating rescue efforts with local law enforcement.
Flying towards the top of the Stark Tower, his eyebrows rose as he saw an unconscious Selvig, lying beside the machine that was shooting the portal energy from the Tesseract.
"Energy barrier is pure energy. Contact ill-advised." The warning came swiftly as he had raised his hands to try a repulsor blast, knowing it would not work, or else Weber would have done something already.
There was nothing in SHIELD's notes about this and he did not have Banner on hand to discuss this. Plus, they were in a kind of hurry.
The entire machine was shrouded in the barrier, and it was self sufficient now meaning that unless they broke through the barrier, they would not be able to dislodge the Tesseract from the machine. "Shit!"
"Stark!" His comms crackled to life as Cap spoke with a sense of urgency. He immediately rocketed off the tower after instructing Jarvis to remove Selvig from the situation and headed straight to Cap's last location.
"What? I am headed your way!" He said as Jarvis began accessing the nearby cameras, something that was becoming harder and harder because the city had shut off electricity to most areas due to fears of water logging and live wires, most of the fiber infrastructure was up in flames, and not many CCTV systems had battery backups.
"Warning, Chitauri have begun coming out in even greater numbers." Jarvis' warning should have brought stress to him but that stress vaporised as he saw something.
One of the cameras managed to find Cap standing there, talking to someone, relaxed. Even still, he increased his speed and smiled in relief as he saw who had arrived.
Banner was here. And that meant one thing and one thing only.
HULK Smash.
___xx____
Helicarrier
–Nicholas J. Fury–
"Director, the council has come to an important decision."
He cursed under his breath as he faced all the members of the World Security Council someone who would normally never deign to meet him twice in such a short time period but today, he wished they just stayed in their bunkers and didn't contact him.
"And since I can still see my team holding the line, I will not be authorising a strike on a civilian population." He countered, his fists clenching as a map appeared on the feed in front of him, showing the rough civilian population around the Stark Tower, showing it moving away from the center of the supposed explosion point, marked with a pulsing red dot.
"The civilian population impact will be vastly reduced in just a dozen minutes. Once that happens, there will be little if any fallout from our actions. We must make sure that we are the ones who close down the portal from hell, not some freaks." He sighed, there goes the most openly racist woman to ever grace the position of the World Security Council.
To be fair, each and every one of these people were racists of the highest order but they kept it under wraps, not like Councilwoman Hawley who displayed it for the world to see.
"With all due respect, we are not even sure if nukes are the answer. We can't just condemn one of the most important cities on the planet on a what if. We need concrete analysis before we can even debate this question. You are talking about thousands dead instantly and then millions over the course of years."
There was a heavy silence in the room before Pierce spoke, "Fury, I understand the hesitation but you must realise that we have to cut this situation before it spreads. We cannot afford a prolonged conflict with an advanced force, especially since the only one who can fight with them on equal terms is someone we have no leverage over."
The feed of Weber literally skewering giant flying lizards the size of the Helicarrier came to the forefront of the display as he sighed. They were right, she was the only one holding the invasion at bay and they still had no leverage over her and if he was right, they might never.
After all, all the people she ever cared for were buried six feet under.
He nodded before replying, "She scares you, doesn't she?"
The silence in the room was deafening. He could almost imagine all the people in the Council recoiling from his statement. Before the avalanche of rebuttals came, he steamrolled over them, "I get it. She is scary and that is a fact but that is no reason to try and bury the city of New York with her in it. There is no guarantee that the nuke will help, and unless I see some concrete evidence that either my team is slipping or nuking the city will actually help, I will not be sending that bird."
Saying his piece, he shut down the feed and left the room, uncaring of their act of bypassing his authority to keep the VC on.
"Hill, lock down every runway. I want every bird grounded yesterday. Pull the fuselage from the Jet if you have to. Nothing is leaving the Helicarrier without my say so." he ordered Hill while running to the deck.
He still had some coordination left to do. The National Guard and the first Air Force responders should have reached by now, and despite Weber's commendable holding of the line, he was sure that even she must have been tired by now.
This encounter had opened his eyes to what Weber could actually do if she wished to. The videos of the aliens bloating and then exploding was still fresh in his mind. He had seen grislier shit but that was right up at the top.
"Sir! We have a rogue bird!" Hill shouted through the comms and he grimaced as he immediately pivoted and began running to the runway, his leg screaming in pain.
"JT-981, you do not have authorisation! I repeat, you do not have authorisation!" Hill ordered through the comms but he knew that they had bypassed him and had received orders straight from the WSC.
The pilots believed they were doing the right thing.
The doors opened as he aimed the RPG he had picked up on the way here at the general entry point and aimed it in the general direction of the sound. The launch jerked him back and due to his injured leg, he fell flat over his ass but the sound of the explosion made him sigh in relief as people helped him get up to see a Jet with half its wing on fire.
His relief, however, was short lived as in front of his very eyes, another Jet flew through the air.
Slumping, his hand went to his comms, "Hill, ordinance report of the bird please." After ordering the cleanup of the accident, he immediately began running back to the deck. He had to warn Stark and the others.
Weber might be powerful but even she must have limits, and even if she did survive, he did not want the city of New York to become a radioactive wasteland over the fear and delusion of some senile old people.
Even as battered as he was, he still felt the pang of frustration when Hill's voice came over the comms and confirmed what he feared the most, "The bird has tactical ordinances, sir. Along with the necessary launch codes. The Council has pulled the authorization plug, sir. We will need two Alpha level access codes to begin the process of restoring the codes."
"Contact Stark. Tell him that a nuke is on the way. I'll be there soon," He sighed and began limping his way to the command deck.
He had two Alpha access codes but the time it would take to restore access was longer than it would take for the bird to reach Manhattan. In hopes that the Helicarrier could be of use, he had ordered for it to come as close as possible to Manhattan, just in case, and that had come back to bite him in the ass.
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