Manhattan ⇻ The Avengers [1]

chapter nineteen

The emergence of aliens flying through an interdimensional portal seemed to get New Yorkers out of the buildings much faster than any of the fire alarms were. But when they just stood there instead of running, well, Winter took the matter into her own hands.

The assassin drew her gun, raised it up and shot a Chitauri soldier directly between the eyes as it flew overhead, causing all eyes to turn to her, "I want everyone out of the city! Go through the subways and for goodness sake! Don't get killed!"

When no one moved, she shot four more of the invading aliens, an action which seemed to spur them all into a stampede of sorts, the mass of them heading for the nearest subway station. Then an explosion went off and Gen was back, zooming through the stores that had been hit and searching for any stragglers.

As soon as she was done, the speedster began zooming through the streets, trying to anger any Chitauri that she happened across. Once she'd gained at least twenty pairs of them following her, she spotted Tony, who was also leading quite a few toward his tower, she ran to meet up with him, his followers merging with her own.

She grinned wildly, "What do you wanna do with these guys, Stark?"

"Don't know yet," he called down, "I'm just trying to keep them busy. How'd it go with the evacuation?"

"Hold on a second!" Gen called before taking off at top speed, knocking out a string of Chitauri that were on foot, breaking most of their weapons, then swinging back around to join Tony again, "It's pretty good, all of the people that were in the buildings nearby are past 39th street!"

"Stark, Legion, we're heading north east," Natasha told them over the comms.

"What? Did you stop for drive thru?" Tony retorted, causing Gen to laugh.

"Just swing up Park," Gen said, she'd missed world ending events like these, "Stark'll lay 'em up for you."

"What about you?" Steve asked, sounding concerned.

"I'm going to go see if there's a way up to that portal," Gen told them, "Barry once dealt with something like this, except it was a black hole. Anyway, I'm sure I might be able to close it."

"I'm not going to ask who Barry is, Sparky," Tony said as he swerved to the side to avoid a Chitauri pair that decided that they wanted to chase him too, "But you might get stuck in space, you are not equipped for that."

"Fine," Gen huffed, skidding to a stop and letting Winter at the Chitauri.

Winter took up a position at the middle of an intersection, shooting down any Chitauri soldiers unfortunate enough to go her way. As more and more bodies piled up around her, more and more living soldiers began to go after her, so when she had the chance, Gen took control again and did another sweep of the city, making sure that everyone was either in the subway system or out of the city.

While she was on her way back to the tower, she spotted a family inside of a pet store, she quickly scooped them up, one at a time, and dropped them off right at 39th street. Before she left she turned to them with a smile,

"If you're thinking about getting a pet, go to your local pet shelter. You'd be surprised at what awesome pets you can find."

With that, the speedster left the awestruck family behind in favor of debilitating more Chitauri soldiers. However, right as she was in the middle of looking around from the top of a building, the city moving in slow motion below her, she noticed the quinjet smoking and in a tailspin toward the ground.

Gen rolled her eyes and took off, trying her best to clear the area so that they had the possibility to land safely. When time returned to normal, she was stood off to the side, and was the first to help the three (thankfully unhurt) Avengers out of the demolished quinjet.

"What the hell happened to you guys?" she scoffed, stomping out the faint smoke that had started on her shoes.

"Loki happened," Clint sassed.

Gen was about to retort when a roar began to rumble throughout the city, causing all of them to look up, "What the-? How the hell are we supposed to fight that?"

"We'll figure it out as we go," was Romanoff's answer.

"Cool..." the speedster muttered, taking off once more.

We're almost done with this book, you guys. We only have maybe three or four more chapters left and then it will be onto Age of Ultron (the cover for which I've already started planning). The only real reason why the entire battle isn't just one long chapter is because I tend to prefer that my chapters are consistent in length rather than having one giant chapter, so that was why I decided to stop the chapter here rather than later on. Speaking of chapter length, this chapter was the one that got page count past 50. :) Also, Gen's a wonderful advocate for pet adoption, don't you think? Saving the world and saving some animals' futures. Anyway, I hope you all have a fantastic week, and I'll see you all again on Friday with chapter twenty.
~ Aria