∆ {1⁸} {SPACE MEGALODONS} ∆

WHEN SHE HAD been crouching in that 'hayloft' in London, and she'd heard that more people were coming, Roxi felt like she'd be one of two people facing a small army. Now, that was reality. Six or Seven of them against an army, and not only that; an alien army. She listened to the thrum of the quinjet's engine, allowing the soft vibrations and constant droning to wash over her and carry away and emotion she didn't need to be feeling. Fear, anticipation, an impending sense of doom. All gone. She let the calmness course through her like the tide, ebbing and flowing as she fought back her emotions. When she was fighting, she'd take it out the Chitauri (Steve had told her their name on the way) and Loki. She had to contain it until then, in case she didn't something rash, which wasn't totally outside the range of possibility. 

As they approached New York (Roxi hadn't been pleased when she found out that it was such a highly-populated place), a huge beam of blue-white energy shot upwards that almost reminded her of the bifrost - she'd seen pictures. It seemed so stop before it expanded suddenly, ripping a hole in the sky, allowing Chitauri to soar through in the hundreds on their speeders. 

Roxi watched them through the windscreen. They were ugly things, tall, with basic metal armour and black twisted skin that pulsated with some kind of purple energy. Their speeders were big, with one steering and one or more on the back to help keep it running or ward off intruders, though they seemed like the typical bad-guy lackeys, so they probably wouldn't be too hard to wipe out, but there were so many of them. There must have been at least a million as they continued pouring through the portal and into the airspace above New York. They began to rain fire down at the city below, just as the R and the K from the huge STARK that adorned the outside of Stark tower fell. Natasha, who was in the co-pilot seat, informed the tin man where they were going.

"Stark, we're on your 3, headed North East."

"What did you, stop for drive-thru?" He asked.

"Not the time," Roxi scolded him. She found his sarcasm highly annoying, even if she was a sarcastic person as well. 

"Swing up Park, I'm gonna lay them out for you," he continued, ignoring her chastising. They went down Park, shooting the Chitauri on their speeders as they chased after Stark. That was something Roxi understood. There were some times when she'd like to give him cognitive re-calibration. Clint took them upwards sharply to avoid crashing straight into the building on the other side of the huge black cloud of smoke that the speeders had produced after they'd been shot down. They continued swirling up around Stark tower, shooting the Chitauri straight out of the sky. They took a hit to the metal of their wing, but managed to keep flying. They pulled up to the level where Thor and Loki were fighting. So they had at least six people fighting the hordes of aliens. That was a bonus. 

"Nat?" Clint asked, his gazed trained on the pair.

"I see 'em," she responded. Clint swung the jet around so that Natasha could get a good shot, and as she aimed, Roxi's nerves began to build, even when she tried to push them away. She began to shoot, somehow not hitting Loki, as he fired a beam of energy from his sceptre. It hit straight into the engine on the left side. Clint tried to keep them in the air, but Roxi could hear the engine clicking as it slowed down and the reassuring hum she'd been listening too became strained as the remaining engine tried to do the destroyed one's job for it. He couldn't hold the m there any longer, so the four off them were sent gliding towards the ground trapped inside a flaming quinjet. Cap grabbed onto the metal handles attached to the ceiling, Roxi following suit, though with much more difficulty because she was quite a bit smaller. Clint tried to steer them to a clear landing zone as he turned corners, clipping several with the wings as he did his best to control it. He managed to land just shy of a car park, avoiding crushing some as they jolted to a stop when the wing of the quinjet caught on a pillar of a multi-level car park, the ground tiles erupted from their crash. The ramp opened and thew four of them made their way out, ducking to avoid the sparks falling from just above the opening until they stood in a sea of rubble. 

They ran past several abandoned cars and down Park towards Stark Tower. They stopped in front of the building they'd barely avoided crashing into a few minutes before, looking up at the portal as a loud noise reverberated through the air. They all stood and stared as a Chitauri leviathan soared through the portal, opening its mouth to reveal its huge, wicked teeth in a roar. Roxi stared at it in shock. It was huge, as wide as four 18-wheelers and as long as eight. It's teeth reminded her of an angler fish, so for the moment, she was going to affectionately name it a space megalodon in her head. It was ugly as well, with the same pulsing, twisted skin and huge metal armour spikes running in ridges down its full length. It flew down towards the city, turning up just above the building in front of them, destroying the statue that stood on top of it, before continuing over their heads. She watched, still dumbfounded as Chitauri were fired out from some of the metal ridges on the leviathan's side, her eyes following them to where they would grab onto the buildings and slide down, using their claws to slow them into a screeching descent to the floor. Some crashed through windows, some landed on top of building and some just fell when they didn't find any surface until the ground. 

"Stark are you seeing this?" Cap asked, now watching the Chitauri on the speeders as they continued their plight of destruction. 

"Seeing, still working on believing," he supplied, which was something that Roxi could actually agree with. 

"Has Banner shown up yet?" He asked.

"Banner?" Steve asked in confusion. That got Roxi wondering where the scientist was. After the fiasco on the helicarrier, she didn't know what had happened to him. She'd have t o ask at some point. The four of them on the ground had ended up sheltering behind an abandoned taxi, trying to avoid the blasts from the Chitauri. Clint looked up one of the streets.

"We've got civilians trapped up-" Roxi didn't hear the rest of his words as his voice was drawn out by speeders zooming by overhead, one of which had Loki on it.

"Loki," Cap informed Natasha and Clint, and probably meant for it to be informative to Roxi too, but her eyes had somehow caught the flash of green and gold that was Loki. Cap looked down at the street below the overpass they were on, where the Chitauri and Loki were raining fire.

"They're fish in a barrel down there," he stated, obviously planning to do something to help them, jolting back as an energy blast shattered the windscreen centimetres from his shoulder had been. Natasha and Roxi were both picking Chitauri off with their guns as Clint hurried over to a car and hid behind it probably going to use his bow and arrow. 

Roxi would've preferred to be using her self-made quarterstaff, but in the circumstance, it was better to keep the fight long range if at all possible. Clint was still slightly suspicious of why she was here fighting, when she operated best alone, and Natasha was focusing on the fight, but in the back of her mind was wondering about Agent Ryder. Roxi, Natasha and Steve crouched behind a taxi again as a Chitauri landed on one a few meters away, completely crushing the roof and shattering the glass. They must've been a lot heavier than she thought. 

"You think you can hold them off?" He asked Clint, who was also sheltering behind an upturned taxi. The assassin looked at the soldier.

"Captain," he began, readying his bow, "It would be my genuine pleasure." He grabbed an arrow and spun around nocking it in simultaneously, before taking out a group of Chitauri with one of his special arrows. Cap jumped off the overpass onto one of the busses below as Natasha fired at the Chitauri on the speeders as Roxi put her pistol away and brought out her quarterstaff to fight the advancing (small) group of aliens on the ground. She smiled slightly as the black metal extended from the cylinder and then as the blades sprung out from the ends and she felt a slight pull of accomplishment. Then she was in the middle of rubble that had once been the skyscrapers of New York fighting aliens commanded by an Asgardian God. 

Clint began helping people off of one of the stranded buses just as Roxi's first close range fight for the day came just near enough that she could hit the weapon out of its hands. She didn't quite understand how it was so easy to do it. She guessed whatever she was fighting wasn't smart enough to think she'd take out the weapon straight away. Maybe it was the fundamental stupidity of disposable soldiers, maybe it wasn't that common to do. Who was she to judge? 

The tip of the blade pierced the Chitauri's stomach, which drew Roxi from her thoughts as she realised she'd been fighting on autopilot for a few moments. The alien collapsed to the ground, just before she moved onto the next one, simply slicing this one's throat before moving to the last. This one already had some armour missing, but it had a bigger, meaner looking weapon, which it didn't waste any time attacking with. It swung at her at first, but when it realised that she was just going to continue to dodge, it sent a blast her way, which Roxi hadn't fully been prepared for. The blast hit her left forearm where it was exposed because she was holding the quarterstaff and she let out a slight yell of pain before mustering her strength and shoving the blade into the Chitauri's face. Over the noise of the destruction, she heard Natasha say to Clint

"This is like Budapest all over again," from where they were firing behind another upturned car. Another Chitauri came at Roxi, just as Clint replied

"You and I remember Budapest very differently."  She hit the alien in the side, though she wasn't sure how much harm it would do, and was pleasantly surprised when it left a gaping gash, causing the strange purple blood to spatter over Roxi's hands and the body of the Chitauri to fall to the floor.

"I don't know," Roxi called over, attracting their attention as much as she could when they were focused on the fight.

"This reminds me of London," she continued. Glancing over at Clint, who met her gaze for a second. He tore his gaze away and after a moment and after slight hesitation, in which time he killed another Chitauri.

"That, I can see," he responded. Roxi grinned, but heard the scarping of a Chitauri's armour behind her and swung around just in time to block a blow that would've decapitated her. For a little bit, while she could spare the time, Natasha watched Roxi and the way she fought. She moved with a certain fluidity and the quarterstaff in her hands seemed to be the perfect weapon for her; it was almost as if she was dancing. She caught herself at that point and focused back on the fight, becoming angry that she had allowed herself to go that far, especially when they were trying to save the world. 

Roxi plunged the blade fully into the next Chitauri's chest, in a crack in the armour that had been opened up by a previous attack, scrunching up her face as the purple blood oozed out of the wound, pulling out her quarterstaff as quickly as she could, before moving onto the next one. She hadn't been expecting the alien to already be swinging, so she was caught off guard when it's metal covered lower-arm slammed into her temple, sending her sprawling to the ground. She held up her quarterstaff as a block as the Chitauri swung its weapon down at her, managing to hold it off for a little while before her arms started shaking and pain lanced down her left arm from the burn mark where the blast had hit her earlier on. Her left arm collapsed and the pressure and she only just rolled out of the way before the bladed weapon crashed into the floor right where she'd been a moment before. She quickly got onto her feet, her arms still shaking form the pressure and her head thrumming with pain and stored up emotions and made her way towards Clint and Natasha who had also been fighting, just as Steve jumped in and attacked a Chitauri with his shield, sending it to the ground with a clang.

Just as the Chitauri began to surround them, lightning branched down impaled them, and it was so bright that Roxi took a step back and covered her eyes until she could no longer see white through her eyelids. Thor landed with a thump, making the ground shake and causing one of the upended cars to screech a little before it eventually toppled over. He stood up with a slight limp as Steve went to greet him, the three assassins following suit. 

"What's the story upstairs?" Cap asked, checking his shield to see how much damage it'd sustained. 

"The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable," Thor explained, thunder stirring in his eyes, no doubt sue to the emotional turmoil of having to fight his brother, who until recently, he though was dead. 

"Thor's right. We've gotta deal with these guys," Clint supplied, gesturing to the speeding Chitauri above their heads. 

"How do we do this?" Nat asked, all the while Roxi was trying to keep her emotions under control. She knew that bottling up emotions wasn't good, but it helped her in the short term, and she'd soon be able to work it out anyway. So, she continued to try and push it down for the moment, trying to ignore the nagging fear, guilt, grief and even pure terror that gnawed at her stomach - and that cloud-like feeling was still there as well.

"As a team," Steve said.

"As you may have gathered, I'm not great at that," Roxi put in, trying to focus on the conversation to distract herself from her rising tide of emotions. The four of them barely spared her a glance, trying to focus on the full battle rather than an Agent they were on a team with that they barely knew.

"I have unfinished business with Loki," Thor said to Steve, as though that would give him first crack at the God of Mischief.

"Yeah? Get in line," Clint told him, obviously pissed about the mind-control. 

"Save it," Cap ordered, "Loki's gonna keep the fight focused on us, and that's what we need. Without him, these things could run wild. We've got Stark up top; he's gonna need us to-." He was cut off by the rumbling of a motorbike engine as it rolled up amongst the rubble, with none other than Bruce Banner on top of it. Roxi stayed more behind the others as they made their way over, still not entirely sure what'd happened after she'd set off for the bridge, though he obviously hadn't been on the plane after that. 

"So. This all seems.. horrible," he said plainly, his face worn with tiredness and his voice fraught with sarcasm. 

"I've seen worse," Natasha spoke for both of the women present, looking the scientist up and down with her emerald green eyes. He gave her a slightly incredulous look, which was at the same time filled with empathy and sorrow.

"Sorry," he said shortly.

"No, we could use.. a little worse," Natasha told him, and although she wasn't a fan of the Hulk since he chased her through the engine room of the carrier and threw her against a wall, Roxi did recognise that they would probably (definately) need him if they were to win this fight.

"Stark, we got him, just like you said," Steve reported to him through the comms. 

"Banner?"

"Just like you said," Cap affirmed, and Roxi wondered how much it pained him to say that.

"Then tell him to suit up," Stark ordered, causing her to once again wonder if that was the catchphrase around here. It was while they were standing there having the conversation that she felt something warm yet strangely cold trickle down her neck, and when she reached her hand up to it, she found it to be blood. She followed the trail up to here temple, which either came from the quinjet crash or from the Chitauri slamming its metal gauntlet into the side of her face. 

"I'm bringing the party to you."

{A/N:} Okay so I think this fight scene is going to be a lot longer than I thought it would and there'll probably be at least one or two more parts to it and unfortunately I didn't get to the plot twist. Also I wrote two chapters in one day O_O. I'm sorry about the quality of this chapter, I can't write fight scenes haha. I hope you enjoyed it, please leave a comment or a vote, it would be highly appreciated.

JabberJay11

3015 Words

Written: 16 / 07 / 2020

Published: 22 / 07 / 2020