T.W. violence and mentions of abuse.
ALINA
I was exhausted, sweaty, and pissed. We'd been all over the Avengers building, all around Manhattan. Nothing.
"Look, there's no point in keeping looking." Nat said as we regrouped in the living room of the tower. It was a main room I hadn't really been in before, as while Roara had been kept separate I had been with her mostly. Now she was gone, I felt like I was playing with the big kids. This room alone was on about three different levels, all modern and sleek.
"We find her." Tony said, pointing round the group. He looked as tired as I felt.
"We've looked everywhere Tony." Rhodey sighed.
"That woman nearly killed..." He trailed off, leaving the rest of his sentence unsaid. "She overpowered Barton by pointing at him." Tony gestured emphatically to Barton who touched his neck uncomfortably. I winced at the memory.
"She does sound kinda scary." I turned my head to look at the youngest member of our group, Peter Parker. "But is she all we're up against? I mean how many people can she do that to at once?" He seemed nervous to be speaking in front of so many avengers, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was considering the situation and his heart rate. The only reason I'd never had trouble speaking in front of the avengers, or crowds of people, is because I'd grown up with Stark stuck onto the end of my name. If I could be comfortable making mistakes around my uncle (which, to be fair, I wasn't) then I could be comfortable in front of any of these people.
"If it's anything like me she can't. I can only heal one person at a time, but I can register multiple bodies at once. For example Sam needs to pee, Cap is lacking serotonin, and Tony's been busting out that epinephrine for the last 40 minutes." I shrugged.
"Hey," Sam groaned, "why'd you need to tell them about the pee? I was holding it just fine!"
"You're worried about that, she basically just told the entire group I was depressed." Steve muttered to Sam.
"Your dopamine levels are fine." I shrugged. "You're not depressed per se, just very much not a happy chicken."
"What's epinephrine?" Barton asked from beside Nat.
"It's uh, it's a hormone right?" Peter asked. "Your body produces it when you're stressed."
"Bingo." Bruce sighed. "That'll explain why he's so pissed."
"Of course I'm pissed!" Tony sat down heavily beside me, changing the dimensions of the map of New York. "We just lost our most important prisoner."
"Look, I get the Ascendency is bad." Sam said, "But what actual threat is it to us? Why do we need this lady so badly?"
I sat down beside Tony and glanced at him, then looked into my lap. I couldn't look him in the eyes when I said this. I didn't want to see his face.
"The Ascendency has no mercy. I watched them kill people, slowly, to try and find a way to enhance themselves using other people's powers. They never chose people older than 25 to experiment on. They thought youth would be the answer. Clearly it wasn't, as most people didn't survive the process. If they lived to gain their powers, they were treated so badly that they didn't live to escape. They would walk past the children in cages as they were screaming for their parents and do you know what they would do? They laughed. They wanted to see how far they could push you. If you showed weakness, you were no good for their experiments. If they saw you cry... let's just say I made sure never to cry. There's a reason I have more than one power. I have abilities to control the human body, to understand and use pain. I can also manipulate light and shadow. It's because they wanted to see how many powers they could place in one person, how far they could enhance you before it killed you. They want to make the avengers obsolete, and not to replace them as defenders of the earth. They know the only thing that stands in their way between complete control is us, and they will stop at nothing, and I mean nothing, to get what they want. They would break the fingers of other prisoners, one by one, just to see if I could heal them. If I couldn't, they were... discarded. Just for a broken finger. The enhancement is a painful process, it takes hours, and even then it would only accumulate slowly. In order to do it they'd have to extract it from someone else. I don't know how they did that, but in all my time there I never came across someone who had not gained their powers through the process. My assumption is, it killed them." I looked up, scanning the faces across the room. "I know pain and suffering because of them. They tortured me for hours on end just to get the results they wanted, shouted abuse at me when I didn't do what they asked. We cannot let them reach their full potential, because then we will never defeat them. I am asking you to listen to me. Please. We cannot let them win."
The room was silent, taking in what I had said. In front of them was undeniable proof that the Ascendency could transfer power from one person to another. I was a young black woman that they didn't know, asking an entire room of the most powerful people to listen to her, to believe her. In that moment I remembered something my mother hand told me one time as she braided my hair. I must have been about 15. She told me about how Sojourner Truth had stood in front of the Ohio Women's Rights Convention and asked them if she wasn't as worthy of rights as any man, if she wasn't as strong, as deserving of respect. The courage that woman must have had still astounded me. I wasn't in the same position that Sojourner Truth had been in the 18th century. But that didn't mean there wasn't a very long way to go. If Roara had said the words I had just said, a white girl who looked about the same age as me who had also been through pain, I doubted that she would have been as worried about being believed. She didn't need to think about her words in the way that I did, she took it for granted that her skin colour wouldn't hold her back. So in that moment, I looked up at Sam Wilson. I turned to James Rhodes. I turned to Nick Fury. With astonishment I realised I was the only woman of colour in the room. It stung. I knew there were strong black, asian and native women out there, women who deserved to be in this room as much as the white men, as much as I did. Yet where were they?
It was Rhodey who spoke first. Slowly he walked over to me and knelt in front of me so he could look me in the eye. I think he, Sam and Fury all understood why I had looked at them. They must have fought harder to be seen, to be put into the positions they had. They'd had to be better than the white men of the same rank to even be noticed. They had to go above and beyond for the recognition and promotion as other people, as white people. And it wasn't fair. Not fair didn't even do justice to what it was.
"Alina." He said, taking my hands in his. "We will fight them. For you, for what you've been through, for the people that didn't survive." I felt my lip wobble but I refused to show weakness. "It took courage to say what you said. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we hold you in the highest respect. You've been through all that, and yet you're still willing to fight them. We won't let you down."
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak in case I started crying. Enough tears had been shed.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Tony didn't say anything, but the gesture was enough. I'd said what needed to be said. I'd made it clear why we had to fight the Ascendency, and why there was no point in playing devil's advocate.
The main door to the room swung open. There stood Thor, hammer in hand.
Tony turned to face him. "Nice of you to join us at last twinkle fingers. Where are the others?"
"I do not know. But we have a situation outside."
Steve rose from his seat. "What kind of situation?"
"A bad one. There are 30 men outside."
Peter looked around the room. "I think we can take 30 men."
"Men who can freeze people where they stand, possess their bodies, and make them fight as human shields." Thor finished.
"Next time, let him finish his sentence kid." Tony advised.
"Alright everyone," Cap announced. "I know it's been a long day, but we need to give our best fight. You all heard Alina. We can't let them win."
"You know Steve." Sam sighed. "That really wasn't your best speech."
"I'm trying here but sometimes even great authors get tired. I can't be expected to give my best speech every single time." He picked up his shield. "It's go time."
By the time we got out onto the street, there were 40 pedestrians lined up, eyes closed, waiting for commands. Behind them stood the men Thor had told us about, each with the Ascendency A emblazoned on their armour.
"Friday." Tony said under his breath, "Scan those weapons for me. I don't recognise them."
"They're not something I could understand." I explained to him quietly. "They act somewhat like lasers, but the only time I could get my hands on one to take it apart, it didn't have anything that resembled that technology. No glass, crystal, or gas to interact with the electrons. Given a guess I'd say they were similar to your repulsors, but I could definitely be wrong."
"So basically they've armed a whole load of mind controlled New Yorkers with star wars blasters?"
"Yup?"
"Did someone say star wars?" Peter asked from behind me.
I concentrated and channeled my inner Roara. "Remember when Darth Maul got light sabered and split in half?"
"Yeah?"
"Well that but guns."
"Oh."
"So don't get hit." I winked at him. I looked beside him. Wanda and Nat nodded to me, Vision was levitating off the ground, Barton had his bow strung and an arrow ready to fire. Even Bruce was outside, so I supposed we might even have a hulk to help us out. Wherever Loki and Roara were they were missing a pretty awesome sight.
"You guys ready?" Steve asked.
"Uh huh." I stepped forward, leaving the others in a line behind me. "Hey there!" I shouted. "It's a nice day out, you guys really want to ruin the vibe?"
"232. How nice of you to join us."
I groaned internally. So this is where she was. Hiding in plain sight.
"Axel, come out come out wherever you are." I called in a sing song voice. No matter how scared I was, I was itching for a fight. And I really wanted to punch this woman in the face.
Through the ranks of people, Axel walked into view, taking her time. She knew the power she held. I didn't want to find out what else she could do besides not quite choking people to death, but I supposed I was going to find out.
"You know that's not her name." Tony said.
"What else is fitting for a lab rat such as her?" Axel chuckled.
"I'll find a superhero name at some point. I was thinking Black Phoenix, what are we thinking guys?"
"It's a little generic." Nat replied.
"Eh, I'm working on it." I summoned a ball of light in one hand, a ball of darkness in the other. "Axel, do you really want to go up against us?"
She shrugged. "You don't seem to have the real prize with you. As long as you're busy my minions can search for her."
"Why don't we just go inside then? Have a nice cup of coffee?" Rhodey asked.
Axel nodded to one of the possessed people. A woman. An old woman. With a blast of bright orange light she shot herself in the head, falling to the ground without a word. I heard gasps from behind me. I wanted to be sick. They hadn't chosen her to fight us, her body would have been no good in combat. They had chosen her for that purpose, to show that they didn't care about human life.
"You shouldn't have done that." Thor said, his voice gruff and full of rage as he came to stand beside me.
"Well, I don't care." The sick bitch smiled. She actually smiled.
I screamed and threw my ball of light, blasting her off her feet. Then all hell broke loose. As a group we ran forward, shots were ringing out. We knew we couldn't harm the ordinary people, just put them out of commission. I was throwing beams of darkness in their direction, clouding them so they couldn't see and eventually making them pass out. I saw flashes of repulsor energy coming from Tony's direction, saw a group of people fall as Thor's hammer hit the ground, saw webs push people together and tie them up so they couldn't move. Wanda was shooting beams of red light, and as she passed by the possessed people she touched them on the forehead, causing them to come back to themselves and run away screaming.
I saw a blast of orange light come my way. I was about to scream when someone dived in front of me, a metal circle held out. The blast ricocheted off it and hit one of the Ascendency fighters.
"Thanks Cap," I stammered, joining him behind the shield as we pushed forward.
"Well, I gotta be good for something." He smiled. Instinctively I turned, bright light in my hand, and pushed it into the face of an oncoming Ascendency agent. He screamed and fell to his knees, clawing at his eyes.
"Did you just blind that guy?" I heard Sam shout from the skies.
"What else was I supposed to do?" I screamed back, dashing out from behind the cover of Steve's shield and back onto the field. It was utter chaos.
I heard a roar from behind me and rolled away just in time to see the hulk throw a car.
I heard Steve's voice through my earpiece, "Guys this isn't working, we have too many civilians in the line of fire."
"If we fall back she'll kill them." I replied. "At least this way they stand a chance of," I ducked a flash of orange coming straight for my head, "not dying horribly."
"I can't set them all free." Wanda said, her voice sounding strained in my ear. "There are too many of them, it's difficult to get close."
I hurled a wave of darkness down the street, covering the enemy in shadow for a few seconds, giving myself a moment to collect my thoughts. I looked around around.
"Peter!" I shouted. "I need a hand up."
"On my way!" Suddenly I was being lifted off the ground, a hand around my waist.
"I need to get behind them." I explained to him, not wanting to look down.
"One problem." He explained. "They keep," he threw another web to dodge an explosion of orange light, "shooting at me. Every time I get close to where they are it's," another web, another dodge, another swing, "even worse."
I felt like I was going to be sick from all the swinging. "Drop me in the middle."
"What? Are you insane?" I saw the eyes of his mask widen in time with his surprise.
"Me? Of course." I threw one hand down, summoning the pain of an Ascendency agent who had broken his leg, and threw it Peter who yelled and dropped me. I fell to the floor with a crunch. Ignoring the pain I threw out my arms, covering my surroundings in darkness. I moved pain around like it was butter over bread, spreading it with ease. There was so much of it to go around, it felt pretty unnatural.
"232, you're pulling some pretty impressive stuff." I felt my lungs seize up, my legs begin to shake, the pain was unbearable. I felt to my knees, suppressing a scream.
"What are you doing to me." I panted, my vision blurring. I could see the fight carrying on around me, see Nat's red hair swirl as she turned and shot, saw Cap's shield fly over my head, felt the explosions going on behind me.
"I'm raising your heart-rate. It's very simple. But I like this better." I felt my knees raise off the ground, my entire body lifting into the air. "Oh no, it's not actually telekinesis 232. I can only do it with things that have a pulse. The faster the pulse." She threw me down and lifted me up again. "The more I can do."
"Put. Her. Down." I felt myself fall to the ground, my face hitting the sidewalk. I looked up in time to see vines and webs grab me at the same time and I was pulled backwards to safety. "Arachnid dude, make sure she doesn't die." The voice said.
"I'll do my best." I felt hands under my armpits drag me backwards. "I'm Peter by the way."
"Oh you're Peter. I think we have a lot to talk about." Through my blurred vision I saw Roara step forward. Her arms outstretched, her middle and first finger out on each side. "SLEEP!" She commanded. The civilians dropped to the ground all around us like rag-dolls.
"Is she a Jedi?" I heard Peter whisper.
"No." My voice was hoarse. "Just really cool."
"Axel, I heard you wanted to see me."
"Miss Woodson-"
"It's Omen, apparently." Loki stepped forward to stand beside Roara, a blade in each hand, his head adorned with his horns. "I told her it was a terrible name, but if she likes it who am I to stop her."
"Shut up." Roara said to him. "It's a cool name. I had to come up with it on the spot."
"Omen then." Axel said, the remnants of my shadows finally clearing. There were about five Ascendency agents left, all stood behind Axel, their queen bee. "You can stop this suffering."
"Uh huh, is that by cutting that annoying ass face off your annoying ass neck?"
"It is by coming with us. You have a role far greater than to be one of these." She sneered at the avengers, who were picking themselves off the ground one by one to stare at the stand-off. I felt a metal arm grab mine, and Tony hauled me to my feet, placing an arm under my shoulder to keep me up.
"You okay?" He asked.
"No." I winced. "That really really hurt."
"Axel." Roara right hand filled with flames, her left grew thorns like a rose bush ready to draw blood. From my angle I could see the lines of war markings creep their way up her neck and onto her face. "Stand down. Or I will make you."
Axel threw back her head and laughed. She really was insane. "You'll make me?"
"Ooh." Loki grinned. "This will be entertaining."
"I mean, I could probably get Wanda or Thor to do it." She shrugged. "Face to face they'd decimate you in a second."
"I've already bested Wanda. She remembers what it was like to face me."
"And I'd do it again." Wanda shouted, eyes glowing, hands ready to throw balls of energy. "I am not frightened of you." She spat.
"Omen, I really believe you should think this through." Axel warned. "Together we could accomplish so much."
"Oh you've done enough. I'm done with this chit-chat. Time for business." And with that Roara ran forwards, ready to strike.