The Last Shifter (a Loki romance)

Chapter 75

Without Steve here to give orders, I wasn't going to follow Stark's lead, so I made sure Loki was ok and went out to the balcony. Already, I could see Chitauri ships pouring out through a dark portal five hundred feet up. Stark was on his way up towards the entrance, taking out everything in his path, but he wasn't enough, dozens had already escaped and were on their way down into the city. Not on my watch, they weren't. I leapt off the Tower, restoring my size and going after them one at a time. But even with my added aid, it only delayed their entrance into the city. It only gave the people about an extra minute or so to find shelter. As soon as the first wave hit the streets, chaos broke out. Cars flipped, sidewalks were crushed, and glass was shattered. Not to mention there were a few explosions too. I already knew this battle was going to come with a high death toll. My first attack was always up close and personal, grabbing the alien with my claws and throwing it at another one, trying to cause an explosion and take out as many as I could with the blast. I had to save my breath weapon for a last resort, even with the flammable whiskey in my stomach.

In a spare moment, I glanced at the Tower in search of Loki and found him locked in combat with Thor. At last, another ally. Not only him though, the firing of a large gun drew my attention to the Quinjet that had arrived. Finally. To my horror, it turned and made ready to fire at Loki and I couldn't let that happen. I prevented the blow by diving between the jet and the balcony, giving Loki the opening he needed to take a shot at the jet. His aim was true, damaging one of the turbines and making it descend to the ground.

But the grounded jet was the least of the Avengers' concerns. Thanos had pulled in his ace. The leviathans. Giant creatures that rivaled me in physical power, surpassed me in length, and covered in nearly impenetrable armor, they were going to be the biggest challenges of this fight. Two of them came through to begin with, but that was more than enough to make me panic slightly. It went straight down, below the tops of the buildings, somewhere I was going to have a lot of trouble following. Without a com system, I had to go by what I saw the others doing. I saw Stark heading towards it, so I pulled back and returned to seek and destroy, focusing most on those that were breaking away from the most concentrated areas of battle.

A few minutes later, I flew past the Tower again and glanced back at the balcony only to find it vacant. Great. Now I was going to have to be careful as to which speeders I tossed around.

After awhile I noticed that almost all the fighting had stopped, and that five of the six were gathered on the street about a block from the Tower so I landed on the already destroyed building in front of them and lowered my head to be level with them. But I wasn't there for long, Stark came hurtling around a building with the leviathan close on his tale. I reared my head, ready to go in for the kill, but Banner beat me to it, transforming into the Hulk and punching it hard enough to make it stop short and somersault onto its back. Well, it would've if Stark hadn't planted an explosive in its skin. The Chitauri roared in dismay, but the joy of the Avengers did not last long. Two more leviathans came through the portal, along with what had to be more than one hundred more speeders.

"Guys."

"Call it, Captain."

"Alright, listen up. Until we can close that portal, our priority is containment. Barton, I want you on that roof, keep an eye on everything and call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter, anything gets more than two blocks out you turn it back or you turn it to ash."

"Wanna give me a lift?"

"Right, better clench up, Legolas." The two of them vanished and Steve turned to me.

"You and Thor have to try and bottleneck that portal. He's got the lightning, so light the bastards up. Arista, after he gets it under control, you go after the..." He gestured to the nonexistent remains of the leviathan, "Those thing, you're the only one who will be able to combat them and win one on one. Try your best to keep the damage to the city minimal." I nodded my understanding and pushed off. Thor was already on top of the Chrysler building, gathering a stormcloud. Once there was enough energy, he sent it towards the portal. I got out of the way just in time as it tore apart not one, but two new leviathans. However, there were still two more of them out there. One of them was being....handled by the Hulk but the other was roaming free. My first big target. I herded it towards Grand Central Park and attacked head-on. It may have been larger than me, and even though I was more agile by far, what the leviathan lacked in agility, it made up for in armor strength. After a few runs at the thing, it became clear that poking the armor wasn't going to do more than make it angry. Something that worked to my advantage. As soon as it turned and roared at me, I regurgitated the some of the whiskey from earlier and ignited it. The fire went straight into the leviathan's mouth and had pretty much the same effect that Stark's explosive had had. It blew it up.