Disclaimer: All characters depicted in this story are eighteen years of age or older. Any sexual content involves only consenting adults. This is a work of fiction.
A Marvelous Devil.
Chapter 49: When the Curtain Opens.
Dante Andromalius.
I returned to the pseudo dimension, wrapping my arm around Tandy. She buried her face on my shoulder and cried silently for the man who had just died.
I felt the moment when my spell disintegrated Yinsen's brain and his soul went into his afterlife.
"Do you think I should have forced his decision now, my light? Should I have saved him regardless of his wishes?" I patted her back.
"He said no," Tandy shook her head. "He knew what was coming since the start, right?"
"Death was all he wanted," I nodded calmly. "Did you know his family died because of Tony's weapons? I wouldn't have helped him survive, but that's just me."
I shrugged in amusement, even if I felt a fair bit of respect for the man Ho Yinsen was.
I didn't get it, honestly. I found all that morality and his decisions baffling for someone like me. Still, I respected his freedom to do what he did.
"I don't think I would've done it if it were me," Tandy chuckled against my shirt, a wet sound coming out of her throat before she shook her head and observed the way Tony created a mess inside the camp.
"Hm," I grunted, letting a lull of silence fall between us.
Tandy's cries petered off as we watched the show. She began to jump in excitement, eager for violence, as she watched Tony use his flamethrower on a weapon cache. The cache exploded seconds later, burning the terrorists around him.
Or when his shoulder pads opened, revealing micro-missiles that launched into the air, locked onto clusters of enemies, and exploded among them in a bloodthirsty act. I didn't think the man had it in him.
It was interesting to watch the normal civilian die little by little with each act of violence. He transformed into something else.
Quite a beautiful sight, to be honest.
I didn't even realize when a grin grew over my face as I watched the show.
As entertaining as it was, the crude armor was already reaching its limits. A few rounds hit the more armored parts of his suit.
Not that those rounds were enough to cause any problems for the mortal. The probability manipulation I blessed Tony with a couple of hours ago still protected him.
Next to me, Tandy was practically vibrating. Her Light Force bled into the pseudo-dimension. It reacted to her pent-up frustration and her lingering thirst for violence after Yinsen's death. She wanted blood.
My light was adorably mortal still.
"Alright, that's enough," I sighed. I decided the merchant's soul was tempered enough for his first time. It wasn't like Tony wasn't planning on running away soon.
His energy source was already dwindling.
I extended a fraction of my will. A wave of mind-muddling magic washed over the physical plane. It was just a blunt psychic hammer that hit everyone in a half-mile radius.
I wasn't particularly careful.
Below us, the battle stopped in place as their minds blanked. The terrorists froze mid-shout, their fingers slackening on their triggers, their eyes going glassy and confused.
I pushed a single command into Tony's adrenaline-soaked brain.
"Leave," my words reverberated inside his skull.
The crude armor reacted instantly. The dual thrusters on his boots engaged with a deafening roar. He launched out of the valley in a wild arc.
It was quite an amusing sight, if I were to be honest.
Pieces of his armor fell to the ground as he soared into the sky.
He flew through the dessert for several miles before the fuel died. It sent him crashing violently into the distant sand dunes.
His consciousness snapped like a twig upon impact.
I shrugged. He would be fine. Maybe. Probably. Hopefully? Nah, I didn't care that much.
"If anything happened, I'll fix it later," I murmured. I turned my attention back to the frozen camp. The terrorists shook off the mental fog. They screamed and pointed at the sky where their golden goose had just flown away.
I looked down at Tandy. She glared at the mortals with a dark scowl on her face.
She reminded me of how she glared at her best friend during her first training camp.
Those were fun memories.
"Your turn, my light," I chuckled.
Before Tandy could react to my words, I swatted her firmly on the behind and used my power to open a hole in space beneath her feet.
Space folded around her, dropping her through a portal. She fell a thousand feet above the center of the camp.
"Dante, you asshole!" Her voice echoed through the air, but was quickly drowned out as her power exploded from her body.
As she plummeted, the sky above the desert lit up like a second sun. Two massive wings burst from her back, arresting her fall. They resembled the leathery wings of devilkind, yet beyond the bat-like membranes, the similarities ended there.
Her wings were a sight to behold. The blinding, searing Light Force coating them was as glorious as it was nonsensical to the people back home. To the few devils who had witnessed them, they were a terrifying contradiction.
My unholy angel, preparing herself to slaughter her enemies. I was so proud.
While she rained daggers of solid light down upon the screaming terrorists, I stepped into the darkness and got to work.
I didn't particularly care about the hostages in the deeper caves, but Yinsen's death put me in a generous mood. I flicked my wrists and small tears in space appeared and swallowed the confused, terrified slaves, depositing them directly into my pseudo-dimension.
I also took a moment to walk through the armory where the suit was created by the pair of geniuses. I grabbed a stack of worn journals from Yinsen's workbench.
When I stepped back into my pocket space, the noise was utterly unbearable.
Two dozen mortals were crying, praying to whatever gods they believed in, and screaming in panic.
"Quiet." My voice echoed through the dimension with a bored tone.
Most of them flinched and shut their mouths. A few were too hysterical to stop. One, a rat-faced mortal in finer clothes than the rest of the slaves, didn't shut up.
I glanced at him and rolled my eyes. I didn't blame him for helping the terrorists keep the others in line. Still, I wanted silence. A willing collaborator didn't matter in the grand scheme.
He raised his hands, shouting at a group who flinched and took some steps backward.
I snapped my fingers, sending a blade of wind soaring through the air.
His head was cleanly detached from his shoulders and tumbled to the ground with a wet splat. This earned fear and, surprisingly, gratitude from a specific group.
Women, to be exact.
Ugh. I didn't have an ounce of pity for mortals that took advantage of others that way.
I flicked my hand in his direction and burned the two pieces of his body.
At least they shut up. They kept glancing between the empty spot and me, eyes wide.
"That's better, thank you," I nodded calmly. "You're guests here. I expect you to follow my orders. I'll drop you somewhere else soon. Now shut up. I want to see what my light does."
They all understood what I said. I had forgotten that the Devils had a lessened version of Allspeak back home.
They fell silent, and I looked at the projection, feeling satisfied. My light was once more showing her worth.
The slaves couldn't help but watch, too. They viewed in awe and horror, and just a little gloating, as the beautiful blonde with perfect wings dismantled the camp that had been their hell on earth.
Calling it a fight didn't feel right. She was too high for the terrorists to hit with their pathetic mortal weapons. She executed them, and I loved seeing the lack of disgust at her own actions.
She was frowning cutely, her nose twitching at the smell of blood she undoubtedly felt. Apart from that, she didn't stop.
Her light seared their limbs. She wielded it like a whip, pulling her arm back so the light lashed out, cutting everything in its path. Vehicles shone orange from the intense heat created by each movement of her arm.
A bastard that was probably the ugliest man I had seen in this life tried to run away. Fucker was uglier than Uatu.
Not that his weight aided him. By my estimate, he weighed at least 600 pounds. The surviving terrorists looked at him for orders.
Probably the leader of the terrorist cell.
Tandy finally graced them with her presence, her wings flapping gently as she lowered herself onto the ground, just in front of them.
"Your name?" she asked the man coldly, her eyes almost as bright as her light.
"Who are you?!" he shouted, "what did we ever do to you?!"
"To me? Nothing. You're incapable of that." Tandy snorted. She looked at him as if he were an ant. "Answer my question, pest."
What did it say about me that I found hot the way she was acting?
He didn't follow her directions. He barked orders at the dozen survivors, who fired in unison against her.
Tandy didn't move; she didn't blink as she stared blankly at them.
Then she nodded.
"Then you can die unnamed," she lifted her hand.
It was trembling.
I watched curiously. A small orb formed in her open hand. She poured more and more of her light into it, yet its shape did not change.
No, it only got brighter. To the point that it turned blue-white.
It was bright enough that the slaves behind me screamed and shielded their eyes.
Snapping my fingers, I lowered the projection's fidelity to more manageable levels. I wanted them to see my light in action.
One specific slave looked slack-jawed, like he understood what Tandy was doing.
And a wide, excited grin grew on my face.
What a beautiful expression of pure control.
She was pushing into the rank of Ultimate-class by sheer grit, barely, and only because of the nature of her power.
The orb should have expanded the more energy she funneled into it, but it didn't. That made what she was doing horrifying for mortal minds.
Any normal construct carrying that much light force should have become unstable long ago. The energy would have exploded somewhere else in uncontrollable bursts.
Yet, it remained perfectly still in her trembling hand.
Her frown grew more pronounced, and I could see her sweat matting her hair.
The air around her hand started distorting first.
The heat must have been unbearable, but her expression didn't change. The grains of sand around her blackened and fused into glass beneath her feet. There was some static moving around her.
The terrorists stopped firing as the wounds on her form closed almost instantly, not a single drop of blood falling into the ground because it turned into vapor before they could.
Some stared, others screamed and tried to run.
The orb brightened even more.
And a blue flash filled our vision as the slave that knew what was going on cursed in disbelief.
A shockwave emanated from the orb as the superheated air slammed into the ground, knocking them hard enough to send them flying.
But they didn't die. They just screamed.
Their hands flew into their ruined eyes as their retinas were burned into nothingness. Their skin blistered, and their clothes melted against their forms. The exposed flesh turned to char in an instant, spreading across their cheeks and arms as the sheer radiation cooked them from the inside out at a distance.
Tandy shuddered, but she didn't stop. I could feel through our link the way her light was working overtime, healing her own body from the repercussions of her insane attack.
More than half of the survivors vomited into the ground, their innards wanting to be anywhere but where they belonged.
The other group convulsed, blood seeping through their eyes, nose, and mouth.
Their so-loved weapons glowed red-hot before they threw them away.
Tandy started walking toward them in silence.
Each step sounded final against the glass that formed beneath her feet.
The orb hovered innocently in her hand, humming as the air made a strange sound around it.
The glow illuminated my light's face, reminding me of how beautiful she truly was. But I doubted everyone watching the moment felt the same way.
The air began to pull itself into the orb.
Then the sand started flying before turning into glass that broke and still flew into the orb.
The shell casings from the bullets followed.
And by that point, everyone watching understood that they were seeing something special.
The terrorists weren't that stupid, and one of them cried as his body lurched forward. His body was flying into the orb the same way everything else was doing.
He clawed at the burning sand desperately, his skin almost boiling as he opened his skin, trying to tear into the ground to hold something. Until the pull overwhelmed him completely.
The moment his body touched the orb, his scream and begging ceased with finality. He was consumed instantly.
The sphere pulsed once and became slightly heavier.
Through our link, I noticed that Tandy's body was losing ground; she was getting harmed faster than she could heal herself. Not worryingly, but enough that small details started appearing on her body.
Her skin was turning pink, then redder by the second.
And the others soon followed the same fate, with Tandy staring unblinkingly at the scene.
"Right," I clapped my hands with a proud grin. But I was aware I was short on time… Tandy didn't know what to do in the face of such an attack. She broke her limit through sheer anger.
"Show is over, everyone, hope you liked it," I waved my hand and pushed everyone gently into a portal. In front of SHIELD's main offices, of course. Courtesy of the multitude of Hydra spies that entered my café in the last few months.
Well, almost everyone. There was a single one that I grabbed by the collar before he entered the portal.
"Sun-Tao, right?" I asked calmly at the panicked man who didn't stop watching the orb on Tandy's hand.
At my voice, he turned his terrified eyes to me.
He swallowed thickly, bobbing his head.
"Your master was a good man, and he wanted you to have something," I told him calmly, "he bought this for you, so don't waste it. Also, look for Dum Dum where I'm throwing you, tell him I'll visit personally if they try to take away your gift. Tell him he won't like what I do against someone who meddles in my dealings."
I didn't wait for his gratitude and threw him into the portal, laughing silently at the clusterfuck that was about to happen back in the states.
With a sigh, I stepped into the real world and approached Tandy.
The orb was working overtime trying to affect me, but I ignored the uncomfortable heat as I beamed at my light.
"Feel better, my love?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Tandy took a deep breath and nodded silently.
"Good, let me prepare some containment. You went a little overboard," I smirked, focusing on the area to make sure no one of importance remained. I didn't think Tandy would let me live if she killed a civilian without meaning to.
Her hands shook, but she gritted her teeth. Her skin was already vivid red, and she panted for breath as she tried to control the orb.
I helped her heal with my own just to be safe, before focusing on what to do.
My cosmic power created a dome around the destroyed camp, making it sturdy enough for what I knew was coming.
"Now, clean it up. Scorched earth, my love."
Tandy's grin turned feral.
She lifted her hand, letting the orb drop into the ground. And the world turned white as I took us outside the area.
Dante Andromalius.
Later.
I dropped the cosmic dome, and the ambient air of the desert rushed into the vacuum, superheating instantly as it met the epicenter of Tandy's little overblown spell.
I whistled, genuinely impressed as I surveyed the destruction.
The terrorist camp was gone. The weapons caches, the reinforced caves, their vehicles. Hell, every single proof that they had even existed had been erased. In its place was a smooth, perfectly concave crater of glowing glass that spanned for a mile. The residual heat was enough to make the air shimmer and warp, but to me, it felt like a pleasant summer breeze.
It would have been a bit bigger, but my dome prevented from affecting the rest.
Tandy swayed slightly on her feet. Her perfect wings retreated back into her body. She was breathing heavily, a fine sheen of sweat matting her blonde hair to her forehead. She looked exhausted, but the manic, proud grin on her face told a different story entirely.
She turned to me with bright eyes. "Did I do good?"
"You did perfectly, my love. I'm proud of you," I smiled softly, stepping forward to pat her head affectionately, pouring a small fraction of my cosmic power into her, enough to soothe her injuries but not enough to erase the toll of her first real massacre.
She needed to remember everything she had done clearly.
She leaned into my touch, her eyes fluttering shut as she let out a massive yawn. "Can we go home now? I think I need to sleep for a week."
I chuckled, my hand sliding down to rest on her shoulder. "In a moment, my dear. Right now, only you have had your fun. I believe it is my turn."
She blinked, looking at me confusedly. "Your turn? But there's nobody left."
"Not here, no," I agreed.
I turned my gaze toward the eastern horizon. For the past few minutes, hiding beneath the blinding glare of Tandy's localized sun, I had felt a distinct, incredibly annoying tug on the borders of the Dark Force. Someone, somewhere, was using something deeply connected to my domain to scry the battlefield.
They were peeking through the Dark Force to watch my light's work.
I found it only a tiny, tiny bit offensive.
Lowering my hand, the Dark Force sprang to life and snared the presence behind the fog.
Reaching through space, I grabbed the tether connecting the being with my own fog and yanked it toward us with a bit more force than was necessary.
Space tore open with a violent crack.
A mortal man was violently expelled from the tear, stumbling as he crashed onto the fused glass a dozen meters away.
He recovered instantly, twisting his momentum into a flawless roll and coming to a crouch.
Hoh? A martial artist. I wondered if he would scratch the itch that Sairaorg failed to.
One couldn't say that my friend wasn't a good fighter; he absolutely was, but compared to some of the beings I had seen through both lives, he was still far behind in the technicalities.
He was an older man, dressed in some robes that blended modern tactical armor with ancient eastern aesthetics. But it was his hands that caught my attention. Ten glowing pieces of jewelry, five on each hand, thrumming with an absurd amount of energy.
He was older than he looked, but still mortal. Hm… He kept his youth with the aid of life force, or internal energy, I remembered reading about that in Kamar-Taj. Similar to Sai.
He looked quite regal for someone who was thrown to the ground.
I tilted my head, actively shutting down the passive soul-reading that usually fed me a mortal's history. For the first time in a while, I wanted to be surprised.
There was no point in using this opportunity to make my name known if I used his weaknesses against him. I needed it to last.
"I don't believe we've been introduced," I said smoothly. "Name?"
The man didn't answer. His sharp eyes swept over the glassed crater, then over Tandy, and finally locked onto me. His eyes reminded me of the kind some of my generals had, those that thought before acting, unlike the other idiots under my command that believed hitting harder was always better.
He probably read the situation in that second, but I gave him all the time he needed. The better prepared he was, the better.
He simply raised his right hand.
The ring on his pinky finger flared with pitch-black energy. A shroud of the Dark Force erupted around him, forming a spatial portal to carry him away.
Heh, what an amusing man. At least he was wise.
"Oh, no, you don't," I tutted, grinning.
I snapped my fingers. The Dark Force around him shattered like cheap glass, dissolving into harmless black mist. The absolute shock on his face was delicious. He had probably used that artifact for centuries, assuming it was an infallible escape route.
"You're quite unlucky, mortal," I grinned, showing a bit more of my inhuman nature than what I was used to. "You're already here, and I intended to make myself known after all. You should be sufficiently strong for that, I think."
The man's expression hardened into focus. If he couldn't run, he would fight.
I found myself respecting him just a bit more.
"Tandy," I said, my voice turned serious as the weight of my demonic power and his own lifeforce came into the open. "Sit back and rest. Watch how the adults play, and you might learn some things from this."
The man moved with a speed that reminded me of Sairaorg, perhaps just a bit faster. The ring on his right middle finger flashed, and a localized vortex of hyper-compressed air launched him into the sky.
Before I could even compliment his mobility, he thrust both hands forward.
From his left hand, a wave of absolute-zero ice exploded toward me. From his right, a blinding beam of superheated plasma followed.
Ice and Fire. How quaint. I didn't move.
Summoning a Kamar-Taj mandala with a flick of my wrist, the golden sparks flared to life. The ice hit first, shattering against the mystic shield, followed immediately by the plasma. The resulting thermal shockwave detonated like a small nuke, completely vaporizing the glass beneath my feet.
His eyes had a twinge of recognition. Hm… he knew a lot. A bigger grin grew on my face as a plan formed in my head.
When the steam cleared, I was hovering casually in the air, unharmed.
"Good output," I praised him. "You'll do just fine, my friend. Again, a name? Wouldn't be fair to use you without knowing who you are."
His eyes narrowed. He raised his left thumb, and the ambient light around us warped.
Rude.
Suddenly, my body plummeted. It felt as though a mountain had been dropped directly onto my shoulders. The sheer gravity pinned me to the crater floor, cracking the bedrock beneath the fused glass. At the exact same moment, the ring on his right index finger pulsed, unleashing a sonic wave so concentrated it visibly distorted the air.
"A bit better," I laughed, my voice fighting through the crushing gravity. I flared my clan trait around my body, and it shone silvery blue; the gravitational pull simply forgot I was there.
I punched the sonic wave out of the air with a fist clad in demonic power, the collision sending a shockwave that leveled a distant sand dune.
The man was relentless. He pointed his right ring finger at me, and a pale, strange beam I didn't recognize lanced through the smoke.
I didn't sense any heat or kinetic force from it, so I casually swatted it away with my forearm.
The moment the beam touched my skin, the atomic bonds of my flesh, muscle, and bone simply ceased to exist. A clean, perfectly circular hole appeared through my forearm and my shoulder.
I blinked, genuinely surprised as I looked at the disintegrating wound. "Well, isn't that fascinating?"
The ring lost its shine, but I wasn't that surprised. The weird energy inside the ring plummeted into nothingness, but I could feel it regenerating. Slowly.
Around twenty or so minutes? Interesting, and flawed.
My cosmic power kicked into overdrive instantly, stitching the atoms back together in a fraction of a second, but the fact that he had an artifact capable of sub-atomic erasure made me nod in respect. Wonder where he got those trinkets.
The silent man saw me regenerate from a wound that should have been fatal, and for the first time, a sign of genuine frustration crossed his stoic features.
He unleashed a massive concussive beam from his right hand, aiming squarely for my chest.
I stepped into the Dark Force, letting the beam pass through my afterimage. I reappeared a hundred feet above him, ready to rain hellfire down, when I tracked the trajectory of his missed concussive blast.
It was sailing over the ridge, heading straight for the dunes where Tony Stark was currently unconscious.
Ah. My investment. The attack was strong enough that the simple blessing I had given him wouldn't save him.
I rolled my eyes, snapping my fingers. A portal opened directly beneath Tony, dropping him into an oasis further south.
It would have been a wasted effort if he died because I was having fun.
But my momentary distraction cost me.
The warlord didn't attack me. He realized his attacks were useless against the me, so he targeted the exhausted Tandy sitting on the edge of the crater.
He pointed the ring on his left ring finger directly at my light.
Instantly, I focused hard on it before nodding to myself. A respectable surge of psionic energy soared across the battlefield, driving itself like a psychic drill straight into Tandy's mind.
Back in my chest, the Relay Piece trembled, holding the effects at bay. The Evil Piece inside Tandy instantly raised a spiritual ward, blocking the mental intrusion to the best of its ability.
I could have shattered his mind right then and there. I could have blinked the mortal out of existence for daring to attack my light.
But as I looked down at Tandy, I saw her eyes wide with panic. She was tired, drained, and had let her guard down because she assumed I would handle everything.
I was strong, obviously, but I couldn't say I would be there to protect her the whole time.
Making a snapshot of her brain and memories for a moment, just in case, I mulled about the consequences.
Another lesson was long overdue, I thought pragmatically.
There were way too many beings around the cosmos that focused on the different kinds of mind arts, and she hadn't prepared against these kinds of attacks as much as she should have.
I reached through our connection and deliberately didn't enforce the wards with my own power.
The psionic energy flooded her brain.
Tandy gasped, her body going rigid. The beautiful, bright amber of her soul was suddenly clouded by a sickly green not that dissimilar to the mortals's.
It offended me deeply, but she could learn a thing or two out of this. He altered her perception, feeding her lies that became so absolute that they rewrote her reality.
When Tandy opened her eyes, they weren't looking at me with love. They were looking at me with absolute hatred. To a level not even Gerald matched during his very short life making Tandy's miserable. Not even D'spayre, or even the Maggia.
She screamed and launched herself into the sky.
Her wings erupted from her back once more, completely ignoring her physical exhaustion. She raised her hands, and a barrage of condensed light-spears rained toward me at hypersonic speeds.
At the same moment, the warlord capitalized on his new pawn. He flew up to flank me, unleashing a torrent of lightning and poison gas from his rings.
A two-on-one.
"Now this," I laughed aloud, my voice echoing across the desert, "This is entertainment! I wonder what they'll think."
I could feel many presences watching with different methods. The vast majority was tech-based, which went ignored. The one that took my attention the most was a cosmic one.
Hm. It seemed that someone close to Dor mammu was watching. I wondered how the flaming bastard felt when Mephisto cut his arm all those decades ago.
The other interesting ones were a few magic ones and a single divine one. The Asgardian voyeur was looking, and I could feel his sight trying to unravel my true nature before I blocked his sight with cosmic power. I couldn't have Odin paying me a visit at this point.
The magicals were curious. Two women, really powerful and insanely attractive.
Hot damn. What the fuck.
I smirked in their scrying direction, at which the first pale woman just cut the connection with her spell and did everything she could to hide her location. Shame.
The second one smiled, and I felt her greed and avarice heightening as she continued watching. Her attention was not only on me, interestingly, but there was also a pure hunger aimed at Tandy.
I ignored her for the moment.
I didn't hold back my strength anymore. I met Tandy in the air, moving faster than her eyes could track. She swung a sword of solid light at my neck, but I caught it with my bare hand, the Light Force burning my skin even as I healed it.
Her light force was a level beyond the shield we had against holy-based energies at this point. While a normal angel or fallen wouldn't harm us, I couldn't do much at the start against someone higher in the food chain.
"Too slow, my light!" I mocked, throwing her backward with a gentle pulse of gravity.
I spun mid-air, facing the mortal. His lightning struck my chest, doing absolutely nothing but singeing my shirt. I closed the distance instantly, grabbing his wrists. He tried to use his matter-rearranger to solidify the air around my head, but I flared my demonic power, completely shattering his control over the elements.
I threw him downward, straight into the path of Tandy's retaliatory light-blast.
He barely managed to erect a shield of magnetic energy to deflect her attack, and the resulting explosion leveled the entire northern ridge of the valley. A mountain peak simply vanished, reduced to raining rubble.
For the next five minutes, the Afghan desert experienced an apocalypse.
I danced between them, basically becoming a blur as I weaved and teleported between their attacks. I used the Dark Force to swallow Tandy's light, turning her most devastating attacks into nothing.
The baby was amusingly happy as he ate the Light Force, even if a bit worried about our light.
When the man tried to catch me in another localized gravity well, I simply shattered the space around him with a Kamar-Taj mirror dimension strike, forcing him to desperately maneuver through folding reality.
It was exhilarating. The mortal was easily a Satan-class threat with those rings, adapting to every counter I threw at him. At least, theoretically. He could enter that weight class thanks to his disintegration ray and a few other interesting rings, and his internal energy was no joke.
Not that Serafall wouldn't wear him like a glove if she really tried.
Finally, Tandy began to burn out. Her soul was sputtering, with the forced psionic command draining her lifeforce to keep her fighting.
The lesson was over.
I stopped playing. I let my true presence fall over the battlefield. The sky darkened, the clouds spiraling violently above us. The sheer pressure of my existence slammed into the earth.
Tandy froze mid-air as the psionic illusion in her mind was completely shattered under the weight of my soul. Her eyes gained clarity, blinking in confusion before rolling into the back of her head.
I caught her gently as she fell unconscious, cradling her against my chest.
Tapping her head, I erased everything the man had done and rewrote it from the snapshot I had taken before. She would have the memories so she wouldn't forget the lesson, but they would be muted and wouldn't affect her thought process.
The man was forced out of the sky, crashing onto his knees on the glassed earth. He gritted his teeth, trying to raise his hands to fire one last desperate blast, but the gravity of my presence was absolute.
I floated down, landing softly in front of him.
"You fought well, mortal," I said, nodding respectfully. "Those artifacts of yours are truly marvelous. But you're still too green to challenge me."
I didn't kill him. I just pulled every hint of information he had about this planet's current hidden forces. Sufficient payment for sparing his life.
His fate was still tethered and shining brightly, connected with someone else. Someone close to him.
He fell unconscious.
I healed his worst wounds, "Nice fight, Wenwu. I appreciate your help," I smirked and used the Dark Force to teleport him back to his bed.
I looked around the valley, only to see it was totally unrecognizable. Mountains that used to be there were missing, gouges the size of lakes littered everywhere I could see.
And my investment slept through it all quite peacefully.
"Well," I sighed, adjusting Tandy in my arms. "That was a good workout."
With a thought, the Dark Force swallowed us into our bedroom. My light deserved some rest.
James "Rhodey" Rhodes.
Eight miles away, hidden on the crest of a jagged peak that had somehow survived the cataclysm, James Rhodes lowered his prototype binoculars.
His hands were shaking so violently that he almost dropped them.
The helicopters behind him were shut down, and they had done their best to anchor them to the rocks. Everything that was happening prevented the vehicles from flying safely.
He lay flat on his stomach in the dirt, the camouflage of his uniform covered in a thick layer of dust. Beside him, dressed in a sleek, black tactical suit, agent Hawkins slowly lowered the scope of his specialized sniper rifle.
Where he came from, Rhodey couldn't say. It was obvious the name was an alias at best, but at this point, any help was appreciated. Because he had no idea what he smoked before getting on the heli. This felt like a bad trip, the kind Tony told him about.
Neither man spoke for a long minute.
They had been tracking the terrorist cell for weeks. Even though he suspected Agent Hawkins had known all along, they finally got a lock on the location they believed held Tony Stark. They had moved into an overwatch position an hour ago, waiting for the extraction team to move up.
Then... the valley had exploded.
They had watched a man in an iron suit fly away. They had watched a blonde girl turn into an angel and vaporize an army. And then, they had watched a man fight something that could only be called a wizard, resulting in the literal disintegration of the geography around them.
"Hawkins," Rhodey finally rasped, his throat dry. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the massive, glowing crater in the distance.
"Yeah, Colonel?" the agent replied, his voice almost as hollow as Rhodey's own.
"We're seeing the same shit, right? Do you know anything about it?"
The agent slowly turned his head to look at Rhodey's, then looked at the tumultuous sky, almost pale. "Yeah. I think so."
"I was told that there were some problems back home, a bunch of survivors appearing out of nowhere inside a government building. I didn't believe it."
Rhodey swallowed hard, looking back out over the apocalyptic wasteland. "What the hell are we dealing with here, man? Is Tony even alive at this point?"
The agent started packing the rifle with robotic movements, "I was told that that man was here to ensure Tony's safety… I hope he did move him out of the way before he got into that pissing contest."
"As for what's going on?" Hawkins snorted, shaking his head in disbelief, "I have no idea, man. And here I thought that the green monster from a couple of years ago was the worst there was."
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