𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑 | parker¹

vii. glorious purpose

Fury looked at Clint, his head tilted. "At this end?"

"Yeah, the Cube is a doorway to the other end of space, right?"

"Doors open from both ends. Like Narnia," Aster thoughtfully finished for him, eyes still locked onto the Tesseract.

Before anything else could have been said, the Tesseract crackled to life and a small burst of energy shot out of it. The entire facility rumbled underneath the agents' feet as the glow grew stronger.

Aster put her arms out beside her to stabilize herself, getting into a defensive position. She felt like her ears were buzzing and her chest was tight with anticipation as the cube suddenly shot a beam of light, hitting the platform across the room and forming a blue vortex

Everyone in the facility was on high alert as a portal grew from the vortex and opened up somewhere in space. Aster held her arms up to shield her face when a gust of blue energy spread through the entire room like a wildfire.

As soon as her eyes focused back on the platform, she noticed a strange man standing there, crouched over and holding a spear. "What the..."

"Hell," Clint finished for her.

The SWAT team slowly began creeping in on the platform, passing Aster, Clint, and Fury as they surrounded the man.

The man from space lifted his head, a sickening smile on his face as he scanned the room. When he saw Aster, he seemed to do a double-take, his eyes widening and head tilting as he studied her.

Clint and Fury both saw this, simultaneously taking a step forward in an attempt to shield Aster from his view. Fury's eye dropped to the spear in his hand. "Sir, please put down the spear."

The man slowly lifted the spear in his hands and stared at it for a moment, pretending to ponder Fury's words before his arm shot out and fired a blast of blue energy with the weapon.

Clint tackled Aster and Fury out of the way as the SWAT team began shooting, their bullets deflecting off of the man as he dove through the air.

Aster's eyes were wide as she watched him attack the agents, swiping her gun from her belt while she stood. She and Clint both shot at the man, a natural response despite seeing that the bullets didn't do anything.

Aster pulled Clint out of the way when one energy burst came hurtling at them, her eyes wide as she watched the scientist it hit disintegrate in thin air.

In her moment of astonishment, Clint rushed forward and dove at the man. The intruder caught his wrist and disarmed the sharpshooter with a thoughtful nod of his head. "You have heart."

Aster kept her gun out in front of her, desperate to divert his attention from Clint. "Hey!"

The man's eyes traveled over to Aster as a smirk overcame his face. "Darling, you know that will do me no harm."

Aster didn't have any time to ponder his familiar accent as the man pressed the tip of his spear to Clint's chest, the blue energy traveling up his torso and into his eyes. Aster watched as Clint stopped resisting and instead stood up straight, holstering his gun.

"Clint?" Aster nervously called out to him.

The man from space turned and put his scepter to another agent's chest, doing the same thing that he did to Clint. Aster's eyes strayed over to Fury, who was loading the Tesseract into a briefcase. When they made eye contact, he motioned her to get out while she still could.

"Please don't... I still need that."

Fury turned to the strange man and spoke slowly. "This doesn't have to get any messier."