Chapter 131: Civil War (Part 2)
Hope you all enjoy!!! EXTRA CHAPTER AFTER THIS ONE!!!
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Hermes laughed as his newly found girlfriend slapped her brother over the head. The trio had been spending their time exploring Paris, the expensive flight payed for exclusively by the son of Drecarios.
"Enough Pietro, the French are not 'cheese eating surrender monkeys'..." Wanda wearily droned whilst her speedster of a brother just shrugged noncommittally.
"They are though, I mean, they surrendered to the Nazis... They lost the Napoleonic wars... What wars have they actually won since the middle ages?" He raved for several moments before another smack landed on his right shoulder, getting a wince out of him. "tsss, ow!"
"World War 1... They won that one." Wanda waggled her hand in his direction before shaking her head and grabbing Hermes' hand. "Aren't I correct Hermes?" She was looking at him with that adorable expression he just couldn't remove from his databanks.
"Ah-huh, they were on the side of the winners for World War 1." Hermes mumbled in agreement, his solid-blue irises fixated on her crimson coloured hair and the way that the sun seemed to dapple across her face, an aura of light suffusing her entire presence.
"WACHOW! You're whipped buddy!" Pietro exclaimed in betrayal before his sister started hitting him in the shoulder again, the trio's antics gaining the chuckles and glances of numerous passers-by.
Wanda rolled her eyes at her annoying brother before hugging into Hermes' side even tighter, her face alighting in contentment as her boyfriend tightened the embrace even further. Pietro huffed at the lovey-dovey-ness of the two before he sped off in a rush of dust and wind, numerous skirts blowing upwards across the Parisian street which were soon followed by squeals of embarrassment and surprise. He had decided to leave them alone, again... For the third time today...
"Would you like to go to a café darling?" Wanda solicited quietly in his right ear, her breath rippling across his nape and causing a distinct shudder of sensation that was quickly logged by his server and examined for potential viruses; though none would be found.
"S-sure... As long as I can get a Green Tea..." He stuttered out with a small blush to his cheeks, his servers pouring over the entirety of Paris in moments to find the perfect café that was near them.
He had just found one when Wanda pointed at a random café that they were walking past. "Let's go to that one, it looks interesting...!" She started dragging him behind her whilst he secretly dumped all of the effort he had just expent, his cognitive functions captured by the sway of her hips and the feeling of her left breast dragging across his arm. How his father seemed to stay so suave despite these feelings was a mystery to Hermes, one he would need to ask about later...
~~~
"Sparrow has landed. Café La Magic. Sparrow's sibling separated, requesting permission to engage?" A gravelly voice inquired as he narrowed his scope onto his target as she entered a café with her date.
"Dominion requests a staggered approach. 5 minutes minimum before engagement. Other assets acquiring positions." A subdued, echoing, voice responded in his earpiece as the sniper growled lowly, his body twitching ever so slightly from the constant re-positioning that he had been doing for half an hour now.
"Roger that... Be advised: A civilian is in close contact with Sparrow. It seems to be a date." He adjusted the pitch of his sniper as he watched the direction of the wind change on his nearby phone.
"Civilian casualties are accepted for this Op. Out." The radio-stained voice replied before the line went dead.
"Of course they are, fuck my life." The man ground out as his fingers pinched a little tighter on the knobs of his scope as he narrowed his sights onto the table that his targets had chosen. "Let's just hope that this ends up better than Budapest." He grimaced behind his black mask.
~~~
Hermes smirked as Wanda sipped her coffee, her eyes widening in wonder as she then went on a minute-long rant about how good it tasted and how she felt a buzz in her stomach. The AI couldn't help but feel happy just sitting with her like this, watching her expressions and happiness.
'I wonder if this is how dad feels when spending time with Rogue and Barriss...?' He pondered, Wanda going on to speak about how much she was enjoying Paris and how much she appreciated him for paying for her brother as well.
"-seriously thank you honey..." She finished softly, her right thumb rubbing circles on the back of his right hand.
"There is no need to thank me Wanda, I just wanted to spoil you and knew that bringing your brother along was the best way to do that without any drama." He succinctly stated, his hand grasping hers as he smiled in unison with her.
"Hah-" She guffawed before starting to giggle, "Hehe, could, you imagine, Pietro just, emerging from nowhere, in the middle of Paris... Hehehe... Asking why we went without him!?" Her laughter was infectious as Hermes soon joined her, the both of them sharing in the bliss of the moment.
~~~
"Reaper, agents are in position. Operation to commence in T-minus: One Minute. God Speed." The voice over the radio harshly broke the wind-contaminated silence of the sniper before that same quiet suffocated the space once more once the voice left.
"God has nothing to do with this." The sniper murmured to himself before watching the couple laugh together, their faces filled with blissful ignorance and joy... Emotions he was soon to snuff from their very being... Their souls to be carted away, as if he were the Grim Reaper. "This is man's work, god only sorts them out."
His finger slightly stretched as he caressed the far-end of the trigger, the cold metal scraping against his friction-resistant gloves. "Praised be Jesus..." He finished a minor prayer before he let his emotions slip into the back of his mind and his baser instincts took over once more...
~~~
Hermes finished his coffee just as Wanda ordered a caramel tart, her entire posture relaxed and comfortable... A detail that confirmed that he was doing well, as far as he was concerned. A grin flickered on his face behind his coffee cup before he felt a disturbance at the edge of the room.
It was a waiter, except they were staggering more than they should be if they worked their job as often as everyone in this café's resumes stated. A ping of worry flared trough his server as he quickly examined the security cameras for the surrounding streets and blocks, their recordings flickering blisteringly fast behind his eyes as he watched twenty people acting strangely in the alleyway behind the café before entering five to ten minutes ago...
Observing the room he noticed the same physical tick on multiple waiters, as well as some oddities amongst the customers that suggested they were carrying firearms. With a minute twitch of his right pinkie finger a military transport from the nearest Frostborn Dynamics tower set off towards his location.
Before these 'people' could catch onto the fact he had caught them he quickly chuckled at Wanda's antics as her waiter wrote another couple deserts down on her order-slip.
"What? I like my deserts!" The red-head pouted cutely as the waiter giggled and stepped away.
"Of course my dear, you can have whatever sweets you want." He intoned deeply whilst his server ran complex computational analysis of the pathway of bullets coming from any direction of the window they were next to.
~~~
"Alert! Civilian across from Sparrow is Hermes Frost, son of Drecarios Frost. Priority Shoot to Kill." The radio buzzed in Reaper's ears before he threw the device away and took a steep breath in, his entire body turning slightly transparent before he released his breath and squeezed on the trigger.
He didn't care if his target was god himself, he couldn't escape the reaper.
~~~
The sound of a fifty-calibre sniper rebounded through Hermes' servers as he stood up and leapt towards Wanda. The little heartbeat started from his father's powers picked up in speed and power as he watched Wanda's confusion turn into fear, his vision granting him the ability to see the reflection on her irises and the several armed attackers behind him, aiming their AK-47's at his back.
He grunted as he impacted his girlfriend, her chaotic powers only just beginning to spring from her limbs before the 50 calibre bullet phased through the brick wall he had launched her and himself behind... The bullet plunging into her shoulder and smattering his body with fresh bloody gore.
Metallic clicks resounded behind him before the frantic boom of gunshots pummelled into his back, his body tanking every single strike with a fleshy thud. The pain was ignored entirely as he watched Wanda scream in pain before her eyes rolled back up into her head and blood started to spurt from her shoulder socket, her arm dropping to the floor as he measured every single moment of this assassination attempt.
His servers were shocked. His breathing, what little of it there was, became ragged as he ineffectually tried to stem the flow of blood from her stump of a shoulder.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Screams dully echoed underneath the cacophonous explosion of bullets from the scum that had hurt Wanda.
'I...need dad...' he panicked and reached out desperately for the dull connection that his father always left open for him and his siblings.
~~~
I watched as Thor was blasted back by a very familiar red glow, his body cratering into a nearby cement wall. Thor's girl immediately dropped to the floor exhausted, her body greying slightly as her own stamina was used to hold back the corrosive effects of the reality stone.
Looking into her body with my powers I felt that her biology was intrinsically bonded to the stone. Her biological connection to it was far deeper than I could understand... Some part of her soul having embraced the power despite the fact that her physical body couldn't survive prolonged exposure to it.
"Jane..." Thor groaned, using Mjollnir as a brace to right himself.
"Don't get close to her. She has the reality stone inside of her and will die if she uses its power too much." I commanded whilst scanning the stone to see if she could be picked up.
"W-we have to help her!" Darcy, or whatever her name was, shouted at me.
I ignored her and confirmed that she could be carried by someone with a superhuman constitution. "Thor, you can pick her up. No one else can, if we try then we will be infected like she is."
"Very well." Thor stated before rushing next to his woman and hefting her into his arms.
"I can-" I was about to say something before Hermes' practically screamed for my help over our technopathic connection. "Fuck! Thor, I'm going to take us to help my son, I will guarantee Jane's safety but we need to go now."
The Norse God whipped his head in my direction just as I grasped his arm and pulled on my magic to thrust all three of us towards the location inside my mind; supplied by Hermes who was suffering some massive level of data overload.
...
In the next second Thor, Jane and I emerged from the swirling vortex of apparition in a stumble. The force screamed at me as soon as I started stumbling forwards, which I listened to and decided to lash out in the direction of the threat.
A massive blast of air sent my hair whipping backwards as the force ripped and tore everything in their direction apart at the atomic level. Shielding my eyes I looked in the direction that I had lashed out in, finding an incinerated shopfront and the sparking remains of twenty armed agents, their ashes turning into base molecules as even their remains fizzled away into nothingness.
"Dad!" I heard Hermes scream whilst Thor clutched Jane in one hand whilst slowly swinging Mjollnir in his other hand, the air thwacking with each rotation of the mythological weapon.
Blinking away my surprise I rushed over to the slumped form of Hermes, his mangled back bleeding glitched-blood. Underneath him was a maimed Wanda Maximoff who was unconscious and losing blood at a rate that would soon kill her if nothing was done.
"I've got it son." I stated as plainly as I could whilst pushing him off of her and connecting myself to the very fabric of reality that allowed me to turn those twenty attackers into atomic waste.
The process of healing her was actually very easy for me as I simply took everything that had leaked out and replaced it inside of her whilst taking her lost arm and bringing it close to her shoulder... The limb reattaching whilst all of the muscles hurriedly reconnected. The nervous system was the last biological aspect I touched and even then I channelled a large portion of my force powers into force-regeneration to ensure that everything returned to the state it was once in. All in all, it took thirty seconds for everyone else to see her healed... Though it felt like an hour for me inside my ability's layer of perception.
Just as I finished a bullet entered my perceptive range and I whipped my head in its direction, my abilities lashing out at the slightly phased. A few metres from the wall of the café the air exploded outwards as the energy and matter of the bullet was transformed into oxygen molecules.
"Dad... Will she, will she be okay?" Hermes looked up at me, his gaze broken and hurt as he clutched Wanda close to himself.
"She is perfectly healed son, now, I have to go hunt some scum." I growled in anger, turning towards Thor. "Wait here, I'll be coming to Asgard with you after this." The Asgardian didn't even get a moment of my time after that as I simply walked up to the brick wall and pressed through it as the brick turned into paper.
Another bullet, a kilometre out, became air as I expanded my senses outwards to the fullest extent I could manage; 3 kilometres. The trail of the bullet came from a tower a kilometre away (Author note: 0.621371 Miles) and I felt the man at the top of said structure chamber another round. With a yank on my magic I flung myself at the tower, my force powers billowing around me in a violent mercury umbra.
Stepping out behind the sniper I watched the man pan his rifle back and forth before he re-aimed at the café.
With a flick of my finger I closed the end of the barrel and bent it upwards, the force singing in tune with me as I collected the discarded earpieces beside the man. At the same time I clenched down on the sniper's body with the force, his life within my grasp...
"U-uragh, w-what is th-is!" He struggled to speak as the force clenched tighter around his throat.
"Vengeance." I hissed as I lifted my hand, his body following the motion until he was 'standing' in the air before me, his black mask crinkling under the pressure of my grasp.
(Caution... 18+ descriptions beyond this point; this is just a warning for those that don't like excessive torture, etc...)
"Y-you aren't god... You can't... judge me..." The sniper defiantly declared, his eyes glimmering in mild madness.
"Who decided that...?"
The man whimpered as the mask was dissolved into sulfuric acid which began eating away at the flesh on his face, his hairs burning away into acrid smoke whilst the sweat on his skin boiled.
"ARRRRGHHHHHHH!" He bellowed his pain as I slowly started separating his skin layer by layer from his body, blood pissing out of his body before I forced it back inside of him. I still wasn't sated by his level of suffering, so I decided to follow in the footsteps of the wizarding world.
"Crucio." My magic whipped out like a viper and plunged into the man, stimulating all of his nerves with pain. The man tried to curl into a ball mid-air but couldn't, his body splayed outwards as if he were Jesus hanging on the cross.
After a minute of intense use of the torture curse I stopped and healed him fully, removing all of the effects, leaving the memories behind... Before doing it again, and again, and again... For ten minutes straight I forced him to suffer in excruciating pain until the last layer of his skin was stripped from his body whilst he was still alive.
He was a fleshy, muscly, humanoid shape hanging in the air before me... And still he tried to speak...
"Go-d wi-ll be m-y jud-ge..." He croaked.
"Then how about I remove your mind. Then he can't judge anything." I threatened whilst pulling out the Mind Stone from my pocket; It never left my vicinity.
"N-n-o... N-O... NO!!!!" He screamed in horror as I destroyed the box that protected the stone and simply plucked it from the air, pressing it forwards instantly into his forehead.
"Experience horrors beyond your comprehension. Feel your mind tearing apart as the entities beyond feast upon its fears... Lose what it means to be you... Become nothing but a blank soul from which nothing can be judged. Welcome to your apotheosis, you shall forever ascend into nothingness... For I am currently your only god and I judge you useless!!!" I roared as the mind stone pulsed into the man as the Dark Side of the force blood eagled the man across the tower's top, his blood curdling along the edges of the balconies as his bones were pushed up and out, creating the wings of a raven in the form of human flesh.
"I cu-rse, y-ou..." The man haggardly moaned out amidst his endless pain.
"You couldn't even hit me. Now fuck off and die." I pulled the mind stone back and kicked him to the floor, his ribs scraping against the stone floor rakishly as numerous oozing substances sloshed on the ground near my boots.
(Scene ended)
Turning away from my victim I plunged deeply into the earpieces, my mind surfing through multiple off-shore servers before arriving at a location that cause me to atomize the entire tower-top.
"Director the mission was a failure, Drecarios has personally interfered." Maria Hill informed the figure standing at the front of a secure command room.
"Unfortunate... Have all agents in France pull out, we need to ensure that this doesn't lead back to us." Maria nodded slowly, her countenance reluctant and concerned.
"Yes sir." Fury waved her away before he tapped on a button and the room closed to all outsiders.
"Hopefully this makes Drecarios do something about Hydra..." Fury murmured. "I can't get rid of them all... The agency is far too compromised to accomplish that..." He finished speaking to himself when a message pinged through his console, a 3D image of Alexander Pierce emerging.
"I promise you my friend, this is for the best... Drecarios presents too much of a threat to the world. Even Rogers agrees..." Fury hummed as Alexander Pierce continued to prattle on.
Shaking my head I ground my teeth against one another, my powers flaring violently.
"I'm going hunting... Hermes, tell Thor to go back to Asgard... If he needs my help all he needs to do is come back." I sent through my connection with Hermes, placing the Mind stone in my pocket before I apparated from the wreckage that was once a tower.
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