Man Out of Time - A Captain America / Avengers Fanfiction

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

"This is better than watching one of them action flicks on Imax," the old Caretaker said, his odd combination of cold-war era night vision goggles and teeny tiny birdwatcher binoculars pressed against the glass of Liberty's crown.

"It certainly is," Bernice said, lacking his enthusiasm for the battle unfolding across the harbor. Or perhaps that was because she knew Steve was as vulnerable and capable of getting killed, despite his enhanced physical capabilities, as any other human. The only thing 'super' about a superhero, she was finding out, was other people's perceptions of them.

She counted. One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one. The odd delay Steve had spoken of when she'd asked him about his encounters during the alien invasion. Her binoculars afforded her a much better view than that of the Caretaker, but it was still anything but perfect. Between the distortion created by the eerie green light of the night vision goggles and the limitations of the binoculars themselves, she could just barely make out enough features to recognize who she was looking at.

Nick Fury shot another shoulder-held rocket at the mini-Leviathan, doing little harm. The creature reacted the moment the rocket exploded against its hull, as though it were in pain. It seemed to recognize, of its own volition, an immediate threat, but it ignored smaller ones. And threats that were unfamiliar. The way even the bravest human might recoil from stepping on a snake, but walk fearlessly past an old rusty canon perched in a war memorial. The bigger Leviathans had been part machine, part technology, so she assumed the little one was as well. Did it have independent survival skills beyond whatever program the Chitauri were using to make it behave as though it were a ship? Like a war horse, trained to ignore enemy fire and carry its rider into battle, but which might occasionally rear up and do something other than the will of its rider if it was directly threatened? Bernice incorporated this idea into her counting, trying to note when the baby spaceship acted like a machine, and when it acted like a frightened animal.

She noted another delay when Natasha jumped up on top of the Excursion and swung onto an alien glider, aiming it to knock a second glider out of the sky before leaping back to the ground milliseconds before it crashed. Sometimes the gliders would stay in formation no matter what, even if it meant a Chitauri soldier's death. But other times, a creature would veer off at the last second, recognizing a threat that could have been avoided earlier, but reacting a half-second or so before it normally would have reacted if the two-and-a-half second delay Steve had noted was set in stone.

Mindless chatter her video game developing friends had prattled on about over far too much beer and pizza, geek talk that had made her brain hurt about handicaps, vitalities, reaction times and skills as they had begged her to bring their video game heroes to life for them visually suddenly clicked into place. One computer program, multiple live players, and game-pieces with independent survival skills like well-trained animals. Was this whole thing a game? A great big game for some sick alien god? The answer to the problem was too absurd to contemplate, but wasn't that why she'd been brought on board in the first place? To look at the obvious and piece it all together, no matter how preposterous it might sound to someone who had been trained to know better?

She noted another delay when Iron Man zigzagged in front of the alien ship, alternating between taunting it and shooting his pulse weapon at it. It appeared as though the creature was indecisive, warring with itself over which program to follow. Pursue? Or chase another target? The mini-Leviathan had released six more gliders moments after lifting itself out of the ocean, bringing the total now swarming the Avengers like flies up to nine. Unfortunately, no matter what they did, the presence of the Leviathan with its heavier weaponry meant they were seriously outgunned.