Look What You Made Me Do (Wanda-SI/OC)

Natasha drummed her fingers anxiously on her knee. Forty minutes in the Quinjet with nothing to do but worry about Wanda, followed by everyone’s phones going off simultaneously and a rushed message about a HYDRA raid on the Tower—and then another forty long minutes heading back the way they’d come—had not done any of them any favours. At least JARVIS had been able to fill them in on what had happened and why they hadn’t been alerted earlier.

He’d called in not long ago to inform them about HYDRA abducting Wanda, the spoofed duress alarm signal, the worm that had taken the Tower’s communications offline, and the raid targeting the Mind Stone. JARVIS had assured them that Wanda was fine and was awaiting their arrival, but Nat was still worried about her. She knew Wanda had issues with feeling trapped and wasn’t great at working through those emotions… Being captured by HYDRA had probably triggered some unpleasant memories for her. They’d do a full debrief if Wanda was up to it, but after that Natasha would be prescribing her ice-cream and cuddles on the couch.

“We’re coming in now, JARVIS,” Tony’s voice came in over the comms. He was about a minute or two behind them—the Mark 43 armour was faster than the Quinjet was, which meant he’d gotten closer to their original destination and subsequently had further to go when they’d had to turn around and come back.

“Very good, sir. Ms Maximoff is awaiting your arrival in the briefing room.”

“How is she?” Natasha asked. She glanced toward Pietro, who nodded thankfully at her.

“I believe she is doing as well as can be expected, Ms Romanov. Fending off the raid with limited power available was stressful, but she has taken the time to collect herself.”

“Glad the Iron Legion was able to help hold the line,” Tony said. “When I get in we’ll run some diagnostics, make sure that worm they hit the system with didn’t hide any nasty surprises for us. We’ll need to start working on some contingencies, too—make sure something like this can’t happen again.”

“Of course, sir.”

Avengers Tower loomed large ahead of them and Steve heaved a sigh, letting go of the flight stick and unbuckling his safety belt. “Take us in, JARVIS.”

He stood up, leaving control of the vehicle to JARVIS’s remote piloting, and headed back to join the rest of them in the cargo area of the Quinjet, followed closely by Clint, who had been manning the secondary console.

“Of course, Captain Rogers.”

Natasha stood up, giving Steve a tight smile as he stepped past her, but then the Quinjet suddenly tilted upwards with the familiar mechanical sound of the front-mounted minigun deploying. She wasn’t the only one who reacted—Steve already taking a step back toward the cockpit and Bruce and Clint both turning in surprise—but none of them had time to do anything useful before it opened fire, a hail of bullets tearing through the side of the Tower.

“What the fuck?!” Pietro yelled, looking toward Nat in alarm.

Steve lunged for the pilot seat, Clint and Natasha close on his heels. “JARVIS?!”

Without any warning, the thrusters kicked in and the Quinjet surged forward with a burst of speed, sending everyone inside stumbling and scrabbling desperately for handholds. Natasha barely had time to process what was happening before they rammed the Tower, smashing past the internal balcony of the lounge and ploughing through the briefing room. The whole vehicle jerked and spun as it crashed in a cacophony of shattered glass, shrieking metal and small explosions.

Nat lost her footing on the initial impact, launching forward to bounce painfully off the secondary console before tumbling over and landing behind it, awkwardly splayed between the console and the pilot’s seat. She caught a fragmentary glimpse of Steve as he twisted in midair, barely managing to brace his shoulder for impact before he smashed through the front windshield and disappeared from her view. Clint bounced off the wall of the cockpit and managed to get a hand through the webbing and catch himself with a grunt, wincing in pain.

The Quinjet ground to a halt, tilted at an odd angle. The sounds of metal groaning and sparking wiring echoed around them. “Sound off, everyone,” Clint called out as he disentangled himself and peered out the shattered windscreen.

“Yeah.” Natasha winced in pain as she extracted herself from behind the console.

“I’m up,” Steve’s voice came through Nat’s earpiece. “What happened? JARVIS?”

“What the hell just happened?” Pietro asked from out of sight, his voice almost hysterical.

“Here,” Bruce called through gritted teeth, his voice distorting. Nat pulled herself forward, staggering up into the cargo area to find him hunched over in one of the side compartments. He was breathing heavily, his neck and arm discolouring a familiar green as he fought to stop himself transforming.

“Hey, hey, easy,” she said, trying her best to steady her voice. “Sun’s getting real low, Bruce.”

“What the hell’s going on?” Tony’s voice came through the comms. “JARVIS?”

Pietro pulled himself out from the other side compartment, almost losing his footing on the sloped ground. He paused to glance at her. “I’m going to find Wanda.”

Natasha reached over to the emergency release on the side door closest to her and firmly pulled it. The whole door detached from the side of the aircraft, pushed clear by a small burst of compressed air. Pietro nodded at her and blurred, vaulting out after it and vanishing.

She looked back down at Bruce. “You okay?”

He straightened up. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” He looked over her shoulder toward the cockpit and his eyes widened. Before she could say anything, he dove forward to grab her, turning to interpose himself between her and a wall of fire as an explosion violently ripped through the front of the Quinjet.

 

--

 

An oddly-shaped and textured steel pillar tore through the building from above, ripping a hole through the ceiling and continuing down through the floor in an instant, only barely missing reducing me to a bloody smear. I scrambled back and a moment later a second pillar tore clean through the corridor. The third hit what I presumed was a structural support beam, biting deep into the metal. They looked like Stark tech, but I had no fucking clue where they’d come from—I didn’t recognise them as weapons I’d ever seen Tony use.

A slight glow on the side of the pillar was the only warning I had before a lash of electrical discharge spat out at me, raking along a shield that I barely managed to conjure in time. I reeled back, almost into the path of a fourth pillar as it rammed itself through the building. I reversed direction, intending on darting past the third pillar as my shield blocked another burst of lightning, but the sides of it flicked outward and expanded, blocking the corridor with a sudden wall of steel.

She was forcing me back toward the lounge. I’d initially ducked further down the corridor to avoid the sudden burst of gunfire, but after the crashing sound of something tearing through the lounge—the Quinjet?—things were relatively quiet in that direction. I could only assume that when the other me had said she was out of time, she meant that the Avengers had arrived.

Fine. I turned and ran, two more crashes behind me signalling the arrival of two more of those odd pillars. I skidded around the corner at the end of the corridor and started up the stairs to the lounge, taking them two at a time. When I reached the top, my eyes widened—the Quinjet had indeed crashed into the building and was now perched nearly sideways, the cockpit poking into the briefing room. One wing had been shorn off as it passed through the corridor below. Oh, God. I hoped everyone was okay.

A red and gold armoured figured swooped in through the side of the building that the Quinjet had smashed through and I raised my hands, summoning as much magic to them as I could and weaving a shield interposed between us. “Wanda? What the hell’s going on?” Tony’s voice came through the suit’s external speakers as it landed, head tilted to one side.

I kept my shield up. “No time to explain. We need to get everyone out of here, right now. JARVIS is compromised, lock him out of your suit if you haven’t already,” I said, eyeing the Iron Man armour suspiciously as he took a few steps toward me. It looked like the Mark 43 armour, which Tony would have worn to mount a rescue mission, but that didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t controlling it… His voice had come from its speakers, but she could have synthesised it. Could she seize control while Tony was actively piloting a suit? I had no idea. Ultron never had, but Ultron had never assimilated JARVIS either so I couldn’t discount it as a possibility.

“Compromised how? What are you—”

There was a clang and a clatter at the far end of the lounge as a side door popped off the Quinjet and fell to the floor, drawing our attention. A moment later, there was a blur of motion as Pietro vaulted out of the aircraft and sped over, joining us in an instant.

“Wanda!” He moved forward to grab me in a hug, but I pushed him off with a gentle but firm telekinetic shove, still watching the Iron Man suit.

“I’m okay, Pietro, but we’re not safe here. We need to leave, right now.”

Tony suddenly straightened up, turning to face the way he’d come. “Incoming!”

I raised my hands, following his gaze just in time to spot a thin white contrail in the air. It was about all the warning we had before everything exploded around us. Reflexively, I reinforced my shield and drew Pietro back in close to me, protecting the both of us as a series of explosions ripped through the Tower from every direction. The two of us hunkered down together, but Tony wasn’t as lucky. One of the small missiles impacted the floor near his armoured feet and he vanished from my view in a rolling curtain of fire. My shield held, but the floor buckled and started to collapse beneath us. Pietro pulled us back out of danger as the flames cleared slightly, a haze of smoke filling the area.

I glanced around wildly, peering through the smoke and praying that those blasts hadn’t killed anyone. As far as I could tell, the Tower had just been hit from at least three directions at once—the balcony to our left had been engulfed by an explosion, there was the one that had hit in front of us, and to our right the Quinjet had also been hit—the front half of it now a guttering wreck. There was a roar of thrusters and something massive flew in through the open wall. Smoke scattered in every direction as it landed with a heavy clank and loomed ominously over us with glowing eyes. The Hulkbuster armour.

“Uh oh,” I said, quietly panicking.

“That’s the appropriate reaction, yes,” my own voice came back at me out of the suit’s speakers.

It was enormous, a red and golden juggernaut at least ten feet tall and almost as wide. In the original timeline it had beaten the Hulk in a fight, even while making efforts to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible. I could maybe damage its internals the same way I’d done the Mark 43, but it was packing Hulk-level ordinance and I might just get utterly pasted by it instead. Pietro wasn’t going to be useful here… he probably couldn’t even hurt the thing. If Tony was still here, between the two of us I think we could have taken it, but I didn’t know where he’d vanished to.

A metal fist bigger than my torso flicked out to the side and a pair of thick steel rods crackling with electricity deployed from the golden housing mounted above the armour’s wrist. Pietro didn’t wait for an instruction, sweeping me up in a bridal carry and starting to head toward the corridor behind us in a flurry of blurred motion.

“No!” I yelled. “It’s a dead end!”

We were already a dozen paces in when I managed to get the words out—Pietro skidded to a halt as a short whine signalled a powerful repulsor beam firing down the corridor after us, at least twice as big and nasty as one from a regular Iron Man suit. Pietro zoomed into motion again, wrenching us out of the way of the attack and reversing direction to head back out into what was left of the lounge area. The Hulkbuster was already lunging toward us, boosted by the thrusters on its back and feet, trying to catch us before we could clear the corridor’s exit.

There was another whine and pair of blasts and the hulking armour rocked to one side, narrowly missing us as it slammed bodily into the wall. Flying up on the far side of it, Tony’s voice blared out of the Mark 43’s speakers. “Hey! Come on, now. That’s mine.”

“There’s no one in the suit, Stark!” I yelled. “She’s piloting it remotely!”

The Hulkbuster turned and Tony started to fly around it, a micromissile unit deploying from the shoulder of his suit. Before he could fire it, another figure dove down, slamming into his midsection and hammering him into the floor—the Mark 45 Iron Man suit, a bit scuffed from our earlier tussles but still apparently fully functional. It fired its thrusters right on top of him, shooting skyward again before turning to line up its repulsors.

Tony’s thrusters fired as well, sending him skidding along the floor, narrowly avoiding the blasts, before he got his feet back under him and sprang up. The two Iron Man suits wove through the air, each trying to tag the other while evading each other’s attacks. The Hulkbuster raised both hands and added its own series of powerful repulsor beams to the aerial ballet, Tony darting agilely between them.

“Put me down!” I yelled, pushing insistently at Pietro with a hand. “I’ll help Tony; he can’t take both at once! You make sure the others are okay and see if you can get them out of the Tower!”

He grimaced and made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, but complied and sped off toward the smoking remains of the Quinjet. If I’d had access to my vibranium spears, maybe Pietro could have been more help in the actual fight, but as things were, I really didn’t want him in the line of fire of two entire Iron Man suits—he wouldn’t really be able to damage them and he could only dodge for so long. I had no idea if Tony and I would be enough to hold them off, but we had no other choice… what we really needed was an assist from Bruce.

The Hulkbuster suddenly turned on a dime and lunged forward at me—it was a lot faster than I expected something of that size to be, making liberal use of the thrusters in its hands, feet, and back to accelerate its movements. I bounced backwards with a discharge of red energy, then hastily wove a shield, only just barely deflecting a repulsor beam. I reversed direction and ducked forward, dodging around the massive armour’s leg. Lashing out with tendrils of telekinetic energy, I sent my magic into crevices to try to tear at its internal electronics with a series of ripping gestures, just as I’d done to the Mark 43 once before.

It was less effective than I’d hoped. As the suit wheeled around to follow me it jerked slightly, almost losing its footing, but I was forced to abandon the attack and focus on defending myself as it lashed out with its fist. The harsh smell of ozone trailed in the wake of the arcing electrical rods protruding from the housing at its wrist. I supposed the Hulkbuster had more rugged internals than the Mark 43—it was designed specifically for durability, to be able to take an extended beating from the Hulk, after all. It made sense that it had more redundancies and fail-safes.

I dodged under another wild swing, stumbling and banging my knee painfully on a piece of twisted metal protruding from the floor, but the Hulkbuster’s arm continued around. I realised—too late to interfere—that I wasn’t its actual target. Tony’s back was toward us as he dodged and weaved with the Mark 45, and he didn’t see the Hulkbuster aim the crackling steel rods toward him and fire. They shot out from its wrist at high speed, trailing steel cables between them. One clotheslined him, the rods wrapping around him and almost taking him out of the air entirely. The entire mess crackled with electricity, though that didn’t seem to bother Tony overmuch.

“Sorry about this, Tony,” I heard the other me say quietly, voice issuing from the Mark 45’s speakers as it levelled its repulsors at him.

The Hulkbuster armour turned on me once again, rapidly re-orienting itself on its thrusters, blocking me from helping him. I scrambled to weave another red energy shield to protect myself. Just then, a familiar star-spangled disc flew out from the corridor leading to the lab and briefing room, followed closely by Steve diving out and down past where the balcony used to be. He hit the ground in a roll before coming back up on his feet, maybe a dozen metres away from me—he was clad in his full Captain America outfit, blackened and torn in a few places.

Sensing an opening, I darted forward, my heart in my throat, not really sure what I was doing. The Hulkbuster lunged toward me and I ducked forward under the attack, narrowly avoiding its massive fist. One of my feet went in behind the armour’s knee and I stepped up, climbing up onto it by using its upper thigh as a second foothold as I drew deeply on my magic, gathering glowing red in my hands. If I got in close, maybe I could do some actual damage. 

Above us, Cap’s shield struck true, bouncing off the Mark 45’s helmet hard enough to knock its repulsor blasts off-target, narrowly saving Tony. It deflected downward directly toward me and the Hulkbuster. A thread of telekinetic energy helped me catch the shield and I slammed it down with both hands, wedging it in the armour’s shoulder. Then I blasted it with as much magical force as I could muster, pushing myself up and off at the same time into an impromptu backflip. The shield sheared through the metal and the limb severed entirely, flopping free with an electrical discharge and loud clank. The shield continued down to bounce off the metal floor, ricocheting directly back up into the Hulkbuster’s face and knocking it reeling back several paces.

I caught the shield with another thread of energy and drew it to my arm as I landed heavily in front of the giant suit of armour, facing it down. Despite the desperate situation, I bared my teeth in something that was almost a grin. That was awesome. It was a good thing Yelena wasn’t here to see this.

There was a deafening roar of rage from the right side of the room as an over-muscled green giant burst out from near the wreckage of the Quinjet. The Hulk leapt forward, landing in the remains of the lounge with a snarl.

“Oh, come on,” the other me growled from the Hulkbuster’s speakers, frustration leaking into her voice.

The armour’s damaged shoulder detached and fell to the ground just as, from above, several small self-propelled devices flew down and started clicking into place, rapidly assembling a replacement to the lost limb in-situ. In the heat of the moment, I’d completely forgotten it could do that. Well, fuck. So much for a battle of attrition. I looked up. The ceiling was mostly gone at this point, leaving the top of the Tower open to the air. Hovering far above the building was a symmetrical mobile service platform—four large, red-painted bays set around a grey steel core, glowing thrusters keeping it airborne. Veronica. Oh! That’s what the odd-shaped pillars had been, earlier: the Hulk containment cage thing. She’d used its pieces as impromptu missiles.

The Hulk didn’t wait, tearing toward us in a dead run, leaping again to launch himself bodily at the Hulkbuster, giant fists raised to smash. The armour whipped up its free hand to intercept him, and, using the Hulk’s own momentum, with a heave of effort the armour turned and threw him towards Tony, still mid-air and struggling to free himself from the cables he’d been caught in. The Hulkbuster’s replacement limb finished assembling itself just in time to shoot a powerful follow-up repulsor beam from its palm, accelerating the Hulk’s uncontrolled arc. The massive green body swatted Tony out of the sky like a fly. Both went hurtling out of the Tower toward the streets below just as Steve reached my position.

“Where’s Kaecilius’s ring?!” I yelled at him. He perked up, surprise on his face for a moment, before he nodded and reached into a side pouch, withdrawing a sling ring from it with a flick of his wrist. I looked at him incredulously. “You were carrying it?!”

Steve thumped it into my waiting palm. “We thought something might have happened to your ring. I was bringing it in case you needed it.”

The Hulkbuster turned back toward us, the Mark 45 armour hovering in the air above it. “Where were we?” the other me said through its speakers.

Pietro suddenly appeared on the other side of me in a blur of motion, the three of us facing down the two rogue suits. I tossed Steve his shield with an easy motion, red wisps of energy still curling around its edges. He grabbed it out of the air with one hand, spinning to give it extra momentum and immediately threw it up at the Mark 45. The suit easily dodged the attack, turning back toward us with repulsors raised. At the same time, Pietro darted to one side, scooping up a twisted bit of metal wreckage. He blurred past the Hulkbuster and tried to take its knee out—it was a solid hit, but bounced off without much effect. It lunged ineffectually at him in response, its giant, metal hand closing only on empty air.

I yanked at the magic around Steve’s shield and reversed its direction, smashing it into the Mark 45 from behind and sending it hurtling toward the floor. It recovered just before impact, but Steve had already grabbed his shield out of the air and clubbed the suit with it edge-first, right in the centre of the chest, swatting it from the air. It landed on its back and fired its thrusters to escape, skidding away and back up into the sky to gain some distance. As it recovered, I saw a thin, dark projectile shoot out from somewhere near the remains of the Quinjet—an arrow, I realised. It detonated in a small explosion right in the armour’s face, sending it reeling back again. A wide beam of orange energy tore through the sky as Tony rejoined the battle as well, narrowly missing the Mark 45 as it scrambled to recover.

The Hulkbuster advanced toward us. I slipped on the sling ring and focused, spinning up a portal just under its foot as it lunged forward. It stumbled down into the gateway for a split second but immediately caught itself on its thruster. The portal snapped shut, missing its mark.

“Pietro!” I yelled and spun another portal next to him, a vibranium spear falling out. He grabbed it with undisguised glee and lunged in a blur at the Hulkbuster. The spear bit deeply into the armour’s right hip joint and the suit jerked suddenly, wheeling around in a vain attempt to clobber him as a trail of sparks shot from its hip.

I heard thrusters behind me and dropped to the floor, narrowly avoiding a self-propelled device that had launched from the service platform—not to replace a Hulkbuster limb, it seemed, but as another impromptu projectile to try to catch me off-guard. It slammed into the floor next to me and I saw the nozzles on its side just in time, conjuring a telekinetic shield around my face an instant before I was blasted with a white mist that was almost certainly some sort of Hulk-strength knock-out gas.

Flipping back up onto my feet, I grinned as a roar and a tremble in the floor beneath me signalled the return of said Hulk. The green giant had half-jumped, half-climbed back up to the top of the Tower and threw himself at the Hulkbuster again with reckless abandon, wildly beating at it with both fists. For the first time since the fight had started, I felt like we had this. The Hulkbuster had beaten the Hulk in the original timeline, but he wasn’t fighting it alone this time. Tony was keeping the Mark 45 busy, and while he might lose to the more advanced suit if it was just a one-on-one fight, with our support he should be able to win there, too.

With the other me distracted by the Avengers, I wove a portal beneath myself and dropped through it, almost losing my footing as I landed perched directly atop Veronica, the service platform hovering nearly a hundred and fifty metres above the battle. This thing was being a real pain in the ass, and I knew just what to do with it. Kneeling down, I pressed my hands against the cold metal and sent wisps of energy cascading over the entire platform. I pushed at it telekinetically and it fought back, its thrusters trying to keep it stable in the air. Focusing, I sent red tendrils into its engines and squeezed, the metal deforming and crushing under the force of my magic. I felt the platform jerk beneath me and start to lose height, but strengthened my hold over it to keep it from falling out of the sky as I looked down at the fight below, trying to time the next part right.

There. I took a couple of deep breaths and sprang forward, jumping off the platform and letting myself fall toward the crumbling top of the Tower, winding up as though I was about to overhand pitch a cricket ball. With a motion that almost sent me into an uncontrolled spin, I ‘threw’ forwards with as much force as I could muster and the entire platform shot past me. It streaked toward the Tower like a falling meteor, right towards the Hulkbuster.

The Hulk lunged at the armour again, pounding at it with his fists. It clamped a metal hand on the giant’s left arm, circular bindings deploying from its wrist locking them together. My eyes widened and I swore, trying vainly to course-correct the falling service platform with a burst of telekinetic energy, but it was already falling too fast for me to recover. The Hulkbuster didn’t even look up, firing the thrusters in its back and feet at the last second to pull the Hulk into the line of fire before releasing its hold on him.

The green figure vanished under Veronica as it impacted, smashing through the Tower’s top floor, the floor below it, and the one below that, disappearing into the depths of the building accompanied by a cacophony of tortured metal and sparking electricity. I landed in front of the Hulkbuster on a cushioning pulse of telekinetic energy, still swearing under my breath.

“Finally,” the other me growled triumphantly from the Hulkbuster’s speakers.

But her attention wasn’t on me.

Tony jerked upward suddenly, disengaging from his fight with the Mark 45. He spiralled upward and out to the side and, when he reached the height of his arc, the front of the suit opened, spilling him out and sending him tumbling unprotected toward the street below. As he fell, the Mark 45 wheeled around and lit up the other side of the lounge with a rapid series of repulsor blasts—I couldn’t see who it was attacking, but they’d just have to fend for themselves. I ran toward the edge of the building closest to Tony, raising my hands to spin up a portal.

Tony’s suit closed back up, already levelling its own repulsors at the falling figure. Something streaked toward it, a blurred grey line that I almost didn’t recognise, and the suit jerked and twitched, almost falling out of the sky as a hole was ripped through it from hip to shoulder. As I sprinted forward, my portal opened and the vibranium spear that Pietro had thrown shot out of it like a cannon, slamming through the suit a second time before embedding itself two feet deep into the side of the Tower. The Mark 43 went dark, its thrusters failing entirely, and it fell, dropping like a rock toward the street below.

As I reached the edge, I looked down and saw Tony falling toward the pavement—I didn’t have time to decelerate him so simply wove another portal below him, exit pointed upwards. He fell through and was launched up into the air with a yelp of surprise, bleeding momentum. As he reached the top of his arc, I spun up another portal and he tumbled out on the far side of the lounge, away from the worst of the crumbling floor.

I heard the roar of thrusters behind me and spun, barely managing to get a shield up as the Hulkbuster blasted me with its repulsors, flinging itself bodily toward me. The shield shattered under the force of the assault and I was knocked back, off-balance, almost tumbling off the Tower myself. Somehow, I managed to keep my feet underneath me, skittering around the edge of the building to try to avoid the massive armour’s lunge and weaving another shield as I went. Fuck. She’d turned that around on us neatly. My mind raced as I tried to work out what I could do to gain the upper hand again.

The Hulkbuster reversed direction and whipped a giant metal fist in my direction, too far away to actually hit me, I thought, until the fist detached with a roar of thrusters and streaked toward me at high speed. My half-ready shield broke under the force of the blow but still managed to absorb a good chunk of the projectile’s momentum before it slammed into me, taking me off my feet and into a pile of rubble right next to the now-demolished elevator doors.

I lay there in a daze for a moment. A rocket punch? That was hardly fair. It felt like I’d been hit by a truck, the entire side of my body lighting up with all sorts of interesting pain signals, my head swimming. Fuck. We’d been winning for a moment there. What had happened? My vision was blurred slightly, but I still had no problem seeing the Hulkbuster as it loomed above me, its massive metal arm raised and ready to finish me off.

I lifted my hand in a feeble attempt to weave a shield before it crushed me, but had trouble grasping at my magic. Some part of me distantly realised that I wasn’t going to be able to stop the next attack. Oh well. Guess that’s it, then. Was I concussed? I might be concussed.

A streak of blazing yellow and orange speared into the side of the giant armoured suit and it was smashed aside so fast it almost seemed to vanish. A moment later, a pair of red, metal-shod boots landed lightly in front of me, traceries of burning energy playing across them. My vision travelled up along blue-clad legs to a shapely backside, then further up to meet the gaze of a familiar blonde woman, who was currently glancing down over her shoulder at me.

“O Captain, my captain,” I muttered, smiling faintly up at the very welcome sight of Carol Danvers—Captain Marvel—standing protectively over me.