Disclaimer - I don't own Marvel/Disney IP. I am just a humble keyboard warrior. Also, the Chaos Gacha was made by Bronz here. I am just dipping my toe in the water, so to speak.
–Mike–
It was a very rural area, but fortunately, Doors were a common concept around the planet, allowing him to quickly dip in and out of his Pocket Dimension, retrieving Alcina, who was sitting on the ground, since the furniture inside was pretty much destroyed, something he intended to rectify soon, and reading some of the books she'd requested early on.
Well, raiding a book store was very devastating and made him feel ickyall over, but he made sure to leave more than enough cash to cover everything. Even so, he planned to go back to Winnie's Book Store in New Jersey and compensate them for the loss, ten times over if necessary. It would be rare in the future to see bookstores that were not corporate chains, and it would really suck if he ended up being directly responsible for the end of a mom and pop book store.
After getting her out, he felt slightly relieved, only to nearly fall from the sky mid flight, as the pressure on his mind increased exponentially, a feeling of annoyance being transmitted to his mind, forcing him to slow down and take a breather.
Breathing in and out, he ignored the concern he could feel from Alcina, as he tried to think past the sudden fog that had now covered his mind, due to the pressure that seemed to have increased without any warning. A fresh jolt of annoyance came through the Familiar space, making him grunt again as the sheer weight behind that emotion was enough to nearly overwhelm him, despite all the defences of the Familiar Space.
Somehow, the Ghidorah was sentient and, more importantly, powerful enough to send feelings through the Familiar space that contained him for now. It was annoyed, of that he was certain, of what? Maybe being confined?
Shaking his head, he held onto Alcina tightly and increased his speed, accelerating to his maximum, in the direction of the one place that had very little in terms of human population, a place that had little to no electricity and no thermal energy whatsoever, for Ghidorah to siphon off.
He knew that he could control Ghidorah, but to what extent? From what surface level knowledge he had, Ghidorah was not just a monster, but a walking disaster. Now that disaster ranged from a continent level to straight up extinction level, depending on what, where, and how Ghidorah acted.
He could command Ghidorah, but what if Ghidorah itself could not control some of the effects it had on its surroundings? The constant massive storms overhead, the energy siphoning, the sheer damage done by it just moving around, and more, on top of some esoteric ability to command other monsters. Could it control all of that? Or would he have to put down his biggest trump card within moments of bringing it out of the Familiar space?
The winds parted around him on command, reducing the drag on his small body, as he accelerated full tilt, breaking the sound barrier with ease, all so he could reach his destination a bit faster.
"Brace yourself," He told Alcina, who heard him due to the subtle control over the winds that was afforded to him by virtue of being a Thunderbird, as his form shifted, from a normal human to a magnificent Thunderbird. Holding onto Alcina with his claws, his speed increased manifold as he controlled the air around him, ignoring the implications of his speed for now, hoping that his low altitude would help somewhat.
He did NOT fancy his chances with a missile right now, especially with the mental Sword of Damocles hanging above his head.
About a couple of minutes into this ridiculous venture, he realised that he was not going to make it to the snowy continent that was Antarctica, not without Ghidorah bursting out of the Familiar space midway, in the middle of nowhere.
Worst, it would be in the ocean, where Ghirdorah's innate ability to generate supermassive storms with its mere existence would wreak havoc, destroying any shipping lanes nearby, not to mention the repercussions of the storm increasing in intensity.
As a last gambit, he roared out in the wind, his vision a blur as he accelerated to speeds he had never reached before, all with a single, but ultimately futile goal in his mind, "Open the portal!" He ignored the flinching from Alcina, who must think him mad for doing all these activities. It must be a whiplash for her.
He did not waste any words on the where, the how, and the why, trusting the Ancient One and her freaky ass future seeing ability to know what he was alluding to, ifshe even opened the portal anyway. After all, she did open a portal to Wakanda and even gave him that little bit of protection for when Bast came knocking, but ultimately, he had to leave that place, leaving him with an option he had never planned for.
And it was coming back to bite him in the ass, as he knew that he was never going to reach anothercontinent with just his Thunderbird powers. His mind flashed to the other high tier ability he had on hand, but without a platform behind him, the kinetic lasers would not have any meaningful impact on his speed.
Even as he pushed himself as much as he could, he saw no portal opening, no sign of the Ancient One or any other member of Kamar Taj coming to his aid, which was what he expected to happen, honestly. Cursing at his circumstances, he smiled bitterly, realising what was about to happen.
It would seem that his gambit to contain the chaos had failed, and spectacularly at that. He never got the chance to talk to SHIELD about Ghidorah and even the nuke, never got the chance to even converse with King T'Chaka because their Patron Goddess hijacked the conversation before it even happened, and now, his last and desperate gambit to get as far away from civilization to unleash Ghidorah was going to fail because Ghidorah was increasingly pushingfrom inside the Familiar Space, something he did not think possible, vastly reducing the time he had to reach a safe place.
Yet another push from the Familiar space had him grunting in pain as he focused on just increasing his speed, not caring about the radars that could potentially become a pain for him later on, when he was carrying around something that was going to become a pain for the entire world.
That's what I get for trying to limit Chaos as the very Agent of Chaos itself.
Even when the push from Ghidorah became more frequent and his limit fast approached, he focused on creating as much distance as possible, holding onto Alcina, because he would need her help, just in case he was knocked out.
The moment came a lot earlier than he even expected, Ghidorah, having sensed his freedom being close, worked a lot harder to get out as one moment he was staring at open oceans, with nary a ship in size, and the next, everything around him darkened, as the violent ejection of a monster the size of Ghidorah made him stagger mid air, before they both pathetically flopped onto the ocean floor.
He had the presence of mind to transform during the dive, and send in a strong strike of lightning that disturbed the surface of the water where they were going to land, sparing them the fate of feeling just how it felt like hitting a block of concrete from a height.
Happy at not being knocked out, he immediately looked up, the entire area shrouded in darkness as Ghidorah quite literally blocked the sun from where he was seeing.
Titanic height, apparently floating on top of the water, three heads looking around, as the golden glow of its body glinted due to the sunlight hitting it. His eyes widened as Alcina nearly screamed his name out loud, the titanic wave headed their way being the reason.
Cursing at the apocalyptic stuff already starting, he shot out of the water, heading towards the three heads of Ghidorah, already cursing the absence of any telepathic communication between familiars. He had to get this under control and fast.
The rumbling above them did not instill confidence in him whatsoever, as he reached the three heads, while they were in the middle of charging up and attack or something, what with their throats glowing yellow with yellow lightning arcs all around their necks.
Strange thing was that, despite being a thunderbird, he could not sense that lightning at all. It was outside his sphere of influence, which came with interesting connotations.
____xx___
[A Few Hours Earlier]
–Nick Fury–
"What do you mean they disappeared?" He snapped at the agent who was their point of contact with HQ in their remote base. The Quinjet was half shredded to bits because of the attacks from jets that were reported as lost years ago.
Another thing he had to get to the bottom of. It was the best option, to hunker down in this bunker and wait for transport, not just for him but also for the Quinjet. That jet might look like half scrap right now, but it held technology that was decades ahead of the rest of the world. They could not, under any circumstance, let that fall into any country's hands, let alone enemy ones.
As for his irritation with the situation, his breath quickened as he looked at the satellite imagery, of the last recorded location of the Mike, the newest mutant on the scene.
Absurdly powerful, with nothing tying him down, as far as they could find anyway. It was as if he did not exist at all, which was yet another point of concern for them. He had planned to peel away all the mysteries surrounding him slowly, after he had hired the one mutant who was free of all the drama and baggage that usually came hand in hand with any truly powerful mutant.
It would have been his rare chance to show the fools sitting on the council that mutants could be integrated into the existing SHIELD workforce, without any issues, especially with his plan to use the mutant as a very heavy sledgehammer at the beginning, with gradual integration later on in the process.
SHIELD was handicapping itself by not dipping into the mutant talent pool, not to mention pushing the public perception of mutants to the worse, by limiting their options. Right now, mutants' only option, atleast in the Americas, seemed to be joining a school or a team headed by a pacifist, naive fool who would only endanger your life or a literal terrorist who had no qualms killing innocents to get to his goal, on top of being nomadic as well, so no stability there. Both bad options.
The less he thought about the mutant warlords and fake deity pretenders in parts of Africa and Asia, the better. The hold they had in their respective areas was so heavy, that SHIELD couldn't even go in to take them down, even if they had all the proof they needed.
International Status Quo was more important to the Council than working towards a future where they would not have to deal with the modern rendition of the Witch burning, only this time, the chances of said Witch snapping and killing people en masse was infinitely higher.
Sighing, he looked at the tablet, showing the last recorded energy spike consistent with Mike's energy signature, before it disappeared, along with all imagery as well. It looked like Mike had disappeared, but how? He did not fly from there, and no matter the form, teleportation always leaves behind a trail that could be tracked by the advanced SHIElD satellites that were on Mike's general location.
They might not be able to track that signature all the time, but as long as the select few satellites were being used to cover a relatively small area, nothing could escape SHIELD's range. That was how they knew that Mike's energy signature had warped heavily, with only trace amounts of his previous energy signature present in deep scans.
This new one was far higher than the previous one, but that was just another question he intended to ask over the longer term instead of trying for an interrogation with a human shaped WMD in their first meeting.
Shaking his head, he lamented the loss of such a game changing opportunity as the chances of cornering the man yet another time were next to none. All he could do now was make sure that he did not fall into one of the two camps that were seemingly fixed for all mutants, as that would just disturb the power balance, and he did not want that to happen to either group.
If that happened, the politicians who were more than happy to ignore both the groups and just adopt a wait and watch policy over the impending crash, would begin to take interest, and once that happened, SHIELD would be called in for stuff he absolutely did not want to be involved in.
F*cking politics.
He looked at the ETA of the convoy and after confirming that they were arriving on schedule, he retreated to the small office this place had and settled in to wait for a couple of hours while going through the reports that had been generated in the few hours that he had spent away from a screen, just so he could personally recruit someone he thought stood a chance at turning the impending tide against mutantkind.
Alas…
He shook his head, ignoring that line of thought before focusing on the reports at hand. His paranoid ass would not let him delegate beyond the absolutely necessary, which meant more often than not, he spent every waking moment either staring at a screen or after drying his eyes out, looking at sheets of paper that required his personal approval before they could move forward. He did not want anything to slow down because of him, but he also did not want to delegate any more than was necessary, hence the absolute lack of sleep.
Just another entry in the long list of sacrifices he had—
His neck snapped up, looking at the alarms blaring all over the facility. He scrambled out of the office, half his attention on the road and the stairs in front of him as the base had multiple sub levels to it, with his office being at the top, and half on his tablet in hand. It was supposed to warn him first! He had–
He stopped in his tracks, leg extended mid way, as he slowly put it down and looked at what the Level 10 alert was about. Multiple red alerts flashed on the screen, something about abnormal weather patterns and high energy congregation, but he might as well have been blind to all of that.
All of his focus was on the video feed that showed a monster, a Kaiju, just smack dab in the middle of the ocean, just off the coast of South Africa, with a massive storm forming right on top of the monster.
He felt his knees go weak as the satellites' preliminary analysis reached his tablet, with the words Extinction Level ringing in his mind as he numbly reached the control room, which was the picture of chaos all around.
The same Extinction Level Threatwas blaring on all of the screens, with some of the eggheads staring blankly at the screen, some staring blankly at him, some looking despaired, some on their knees, some crying profusely, some calling their loved ones, and some who ran past him, heading outside, trying to foolishly outrun the end of the world.
He looked down to see calls pouring in from…everyone really.
The World Security Council. POTUS. His contacts in the Army. The UN. NATO. NORAD. Basically, any organisation worth their salt.
He blinked as he saw Peggy of all people calling him for some reason. Just went to show how spies did not retire, at all, even when they were half gone in the head.
He sat down on one of the chairs, staring numbly at the rising level of energies in that region, along with the satellite feeds glitching out due to the storm that was now smack dab on top of that monster. Ignoring the fleeing, crying, and despairing agents all around him, he realised what it had come down to.
Despite all his preparations, all his negotiations, all the plans he had SHIELD come up with, it could not compare to a single monster. All that was left was a waiting game.
The energy buildup was reminiscent of that of the Tesseract, only it also came with weather changes that would result in mass deaths around the globe, eventually resulting in the destruction of the world as they knew it, even if he ignored whatever that tremendous energy build up was.
A waiting game to see what will do the world in. Would that energy attack just destroy the planet in one fell swoop, because it certainly had the potential to crack at least one of the continents with ease, or would the weather changes result in a slow death down the line? With food and water shortages fueling the anarchy that would inevitably lead to nuclear weaponry being used.
Or would the world leaders just see the writing on the wall and decide that humanity deserved to go down fighting at the very least? Some would say that it was a better fate than fighting for scraps down the line. Atleast this way, they could go down with dignity.
Before he could even completely process the sad thought that he had no one to make one last call to, the alerts abruptly disappeared.
His neck snapped up, stumbling to the terminal, as he frantically began pressing buttons to check if his mind was playing games with him or not.
Double, triple, quadruple checks revealed the same.
The storm was abating, the energy buildup had disappeared. The only reason he believed all of this to be true was because the monster was still there, the Kaiju was still there, and–
His eyes widened as the first nuclear missile was launched.
From North Korea.
"Shit! Get me POTUS! Now! Scramble the Jets we have in the area. Pull in the recovery ships to the South African coast, now!" Only half of his commands were received, as some agents must have simply left their terminals.
Thankfully, he was still able to reach POTUS.
"Fury! Holy f*ck! What is happening? Is the world ending?"
He took a deep breath, his entire body feeling as if he had run the longest marathon of his life before replying with a shaky smile.
"It would seem, sir, that for now, the world stays as is."