CHAPTER 9: THE AVENGERS ARRIVE - PART 1
The first explosion shattered the pre-dawn silence like thunder made of fire and fury. Pietro's enhanced senses registered the blast's acoustic signature before the shockwave reached his cell—high explosives, military grade, designed for maximum structural damage. Through his small window, he watched orange flames bloom against the Sokovian sky as the Hydra facility's outer defenses crumpled under assault.
"They're here. Finally."
Emergency klaxons wailed throughout the complex as automated systems triggered lockdown protocols. Pietro heard Dr. List's panicked voice echoing through the corridors, shouting orders about securing the scepter and moving enhanced assets to protected locations. Hydra soldiers ran past his cell in combat gear, their boots hammering against concrete in rhythms that spoke of barely controlled chaos.
Pietro reached for Wanda through their twin bond, feeling her consciousness snap to full alertness three cells away. Terror and confusion radiated from her thoughts, but underneath lay something that made his chest tight with protective fury—a spark of hope that their imprisonment might finally be ending.
The cell door's electronic lock disengaged with a sharp beep as facility-wide systems shifted to emergency protocols. Pietro stepped into the corridor and found Wanda already waiting, her chaos magic crackling around her fingers in red spirals of barely controlled energy.
"The Avengers?" she asked, though her tone suggested she already knew the answer.
"Has to be. The scepter's presence here was always going to draw their attention." Pietro grabbed her hand, his enhanced perception tracking the movements of every person in the facility. "Stay close to me. This is going to get complicated."
"Complicated doesn't begin to cover it. I need to help them win without revealing my knowledge, protect Wanda while maintaining our cover as hostile enhanced individuals, and position us for recruitment without seeming too eager to switch sides."
They moved through the facility's corridors as explosions continued to rock the structure around them. Pietro's enhanced senses painted a detailed picture of the assault—six distinct entry points, coordinated breaches that spoke of tactical sophistication beyond anything normal military forces could achieve. The Avengers weren't just attacking; they were systematically dismantling Hydra's defensive capabilities with surgical precision.
Dr. List appeared around a corner, flanked by armed guards, his face twisted with scientific outrage at the interruption of his work. "Subjects Twelve and Thirteen! You will proceed to the secure laboratory immediately. The enhanced assets must be protected at all costs."
Pietro let calculated defiance bleed into his voice. "Protected from what? From freedom?"
"From people who would see you as monsters to be destroyed rather than weapons to be perfected." List's eyes gleamed with fanatical conviction. "The Avengers have come to eliminate Hydra's enhanced program. They fear what you represent—evolution beyond their control."
"Half true. They're here for the scepter, not specifically for us. But List's paranoia serves my purposes perfectly."
Another explosion, closer this time, sent tremors through the reinforced walls. Through the building's structural vibrations, Pietro's enhanced senses detected something that made his heart race with anticipation and terror—the distinctive acoustic signature of vibranium striking concrete.
Captain America's shield.
"Steve Rogers is here. The man who becomes a symbol of everything heroic and noble in this reality. And in about thirty seconds, I'm going to have to fight him."
Pietro positioned himself and Wanda at the facility's main intersection, where multiple corridors converged near the central laboratories. It was exactly where his transmigrator knowledge told him the twins would encounter the Avengers in the original timeline—and exactly where he needed to be to control how that encounter unfolded.
The facility's lights flickered and died as the power grid took damage, emergency illumination casting everything in hellish red shadows. Through his enhanced perception, Pietro tracked the approach of six distinct figures moving with inhuman coordination through Hydra's defensive positions.
Then the wall exploded inward, and legends stepped into reality.
Steve Rogers emerged from the smoke and debris like something carved from American mythology, his shield gleaming in the emergency lighting as he surveyed the corridor with tactical precision. Behind him came Black Widow, her movements liquid death wrapped in human form, followed by Hawkeye with his bow drawn and ready for targets that hadn't revealed themselves yet.
Thor's massive form filled the breach behind them, his hammer crackling with electrical energy that made the air taste of ozone and impending storms. Tony Stark's repulsors provided harsh white light that cut through the smoke, his HUD already scanning for threats and enhanced individuals. Even Bruce Banner was there, staying carefully behind the others but ready to become the Hulk if circumstances demanded it.
"God, they're magnificent. Everything the movies captured and more—power and purpose and absolute conviction that they're fighting for something worth dying for."
Pietro felt Wanda's chaos magic surge in response to the Avengers' presence, her powers instinctively recognizing kindred forces that existed outside normal human limitations. But her emotional state was pure confusion—these were supposed to be their enemies, the people who would eliminate enhanced individuals like them. Yet something in their bearing suggested they were here to save rather than destroy.
Steve's eyes found Pietro across the smoke-filled corridor, and their gazes locked for a moment that stretched subjective eternity. The super soldier's expression showed wariness but not malice, tactical assessment without the dehumanization that would justify lethal force.
"He sees us as people first, threats second. That's the difference between Captain America and everyone else—he looks for reasons not to fight rather than reasons to kill."
But Pietro couldn't afford to appear too sympathetic. He had a role to play, a script to follow that would position him and Wanda exactly where they needed to be for the events that would follow.
"Wanda, now!"
Pietro launched himself toward the Avengers at superhuman speed, his enhanced muscles propelling him across the corridor in a silver blur that human eyes couldn't track. But instead of striking to kill, he calculated every impact to disorient without causing permanent damage—a performance that would establish him as dangerous but not murderous.
He struck Steve first, using controlled force to knock the super soldier off balance without breaking bones. Rogers stumbled backward, his shield spinning away as Pietro's momentum carried him past, and Pietro allowed himself a moment of theatrical satisfaction as he called back in Sokovian-accented English:
"You didn't see that coming?"
The phrase was perfect—arrogant enough to establish his personality, foreign enough to emphasize his otherness, memorable enough to stick in their minds when they encountered him again. Pietro vanished around a corner before Thor could bring his hammer to bear, leaving the Avengers with the impression of a fast, cocky enhanced individual who posed a significant threat but wasn't actively trying to kill them.
"Phase one complete. I've established Pietro Maximoff as a character in their story rather than just another Hydra asset to be eliminated."
Steve Rogers pulled himself upright, his enhanced physiology already compensating for the impact as he retrieved his shield from where it had fallen. The enhanced individual who'd struck him moved faster than anything he'd encountered outside of Thor's supernatural capabilities, but the attack had been precisely controlled—enough force to disable, not enough to permanently injure.
"He could have killed me. Whatever else he is, he's not a mindless weapon."
"Status report," Steve called into his comm unit, keeping his voice calm despite the adrenaline surge that came with encountering unknown enhanced individuals.
"Two targets confirmed," Natasha's voice crackled through the static. "Enhanced speed and what looks like telekinetic abilities. They're working together—siblings, maybe."
"Orders?" Clint asked, his bow tracking potential threat vectors through the smoke-filled corridor.
Steve considered their options. The mission was to secure Loki's scepter and shut down Hydra's enhanced individual program, but their intelligence hadn't prepared them for subjects who might be victims rather than willing participants. The young man who'd attacked him had spoken with an accent that suggested Eastern European origins—possibly one of the local population that Hydra had experimented on.
"Non-lethal force only unless they escalate to deadly threat," Steve decided. "These people might be prisoners, not volunteers."
Tony's voice cut through the comm with characteristic sarcasm. "Well, that makes things interesting. Nothing like fighting enhanced individuals with kid gloves while they're trying to—"
His words were cut off by the distinctive whine of repulsors firing at maximum output, followed by an explosion that shook the entire facility. Steve spun toward the sound, his tactical mind already calculating response times and threat assessments.
"Stark, report!"
"I'm fine, but we've got a problem. The girl—she just generated some kind of energy field that absorbed direct repulsor blasts. And the readings I'm getting..." Tony's voice carried notes of scientific fascination mixed with genuine concern. "Whatever these two can do, it's beyond anything we've encountered before."
Through the facility's damaged infrastructure, Steve could hear the sounds of continued combat—not the mechanical precision of Hydra soldiers following tactical protocols, but something more chaotic and desperate. The enhanced individuals were fighting for their lives, not following orders.
"They're not enemy combatants. They're scared kids with powers they probably don't understand, trying to survive in a situation that's spiraling beyond their control."
The realization changed everything about how Steve approached the mission. They weren't just here to shut down Hydra's program—they might be here to rescue its victims.
Pietro shadow-stepped through the facility's walls, using void energy to bypass normal space-time while keeping the dimensional transitions brief enough to avoid detection. To any observer, it would look like impossible speed rather than reality manipulation, maintaining the illusion that his abilities were purely kinetic.
He emerged near the central laboratory just as Iron Man's repulsors targeted Wanda, their harsh white light cutting through the smoke and chaos with lethal precision. Time seemed to slow as Pietro's enhanced perception processed the trajectory, calculating impact points and energy dispersal patterns that would reduce his sister to charred remains.
"No. Absolutely not. I don't care what it costs or what it reveals—she doesn't die here."
Pietro void-stepped again, this time pushing the dimensional abilities beyond anything he'd attempted before. Instead of a brief phase transition, he forced reality to bend around him, creating a rift in space-time that allowed him to move faster than light itself for the half-second needed to position himself between Wanda and certain death.
The void energy responded to his desperation with hungry eagerness, surging from his soul to manifest as a barrier that existed partially outside normal reality. To observers, it looked like a shield of red chaos magic—Wanda's distinctive energy signature rather than anything Pietro should have been capable of producing.
Tony's repulsors struck the void barrier and simply ceased to exist, their energy absorbed into dimensional space that followed no earthly physics. The feedback disrupted his suit's sensors, causing error messages to cascade across his HUD as systems struggled to process readings that defied every scientific principle in their databases.
"What the hell was that?" Tony muttered, his voice carrying through the facility's damaged speakers as emergency broadcasts mixed with combat communications.
Pietro allowed the void barrier to dissipate, feeling the dimensional energy retreat back into his soul with reluctant obedience. The effort had cost him significantly—his enhanced physiology was already struggling to process the exotic energies he'd channeled, and whispers from collapsed realities were beginning to bleed through his consciousness again.
But Wanda was alive, unharmed, and looking at him with an expression that mixed gratitude with growing suspicion.
"Pietro," she said quietly, "that wasn't speed. What you just did... that was something else entirely."
"She knows. The chaos magic in her soul recognizes void energy when she sees it. I can't hide this from her much longer."
But before Pietro could respond, the facility's public address system activated with Baron Strucker's voice echoing through every corridor and laboratory.
"Attention, enhanced assets. The American terrorists have breached our defenses, but they cannot be allowed to interfere with our sacred mission. Defend your home, protect your creators, and show them the true power of human evolution!"
Pietro felt his enhanced senses detect Strucker's location—the facility's command center, three levels up, surrounded by his most loyal guards and preparing for a final stand that would end with his inevitable surrender to Captain America. The timeline was proceeding exactly as Pietro's transmigrator knowledge predicted, but the personal stakes had grown far beyond anything the movies had portrayed.
"This isn't entertainment anymore. This isn't a story I'm watching from the outside. These are real people fighting for their lives, and every choice I make determines who lives and who dies."
The weight of responsibility was crushing, but Pietro pushed it aside as another explosion shook the facility around them. There would be time for existential crisis later.
Right now, he had a timeline to navigate and a sister to protect.
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