(Don't say it's short, more than 1720 words, and oh yeah, turn off your brain maybe)
...
Hela's POV
Ah, sweet home Alabama — nothing quite soothes the soul like watching Scott get pancaked by a stray chunk of Magneto's flying scrapheap.
Honestly, that's what side characters are for, isn't it? Get flattened, look tragic, and most importantly, stay the hell out of the way of the people who actually matter. Scott really should've learned that by now. Maybe the third concussion will help it stick.
As for the anti-Brotherhood crowd? Win, lose, spontaneously combust mid-speech — I couldn't bring myself to care.
Sure, I have a soft spot for Barton and Natasha. Loyalty's a charming little quirk. But sentimentality? Please. If they ended up as red smudges on the pavement, I'd probably manage half a tear... assuming I didn't get distracted by something more pressing, like a passing squirrel.
Really, the only one who's contractually obligated to survive this circus is Jean — and let's be honest, even if Magneto took a running start, a miracle, and a nuclear bomb, he still wouldn't manage to off her with me watching.
Eventually, Magneto wrapped up his dramatic villain monologue — some heartfelt nonsense about Charles sending kids to do a grown man's job while enjoying the perks of wheelchair life.
And credit where it's due, he wasn't wrong.
It was practically a public service announcement: 'Hey mutants, don't bother with Charles. He'll recruit you to fight your own people while he rides around being inspirational from a safe distance.'
But honestly? All I could think about was S.H.I.E.L.D.
Surely even they didn't believe this ragtag sitcom cast had a snowball's chance in hell of beating Magneto on live television, right?
There had to be a Plan B. There better be. Otherwise, this wasn't a battle — it was just an extremely expensive, very well-broadcasted group suicide.
...
Hela, as it turned out, was giving S.H.I.E.L.D. way too much credit.
Yes, they had a Plan B — just not the kind she'd hoped for.
It wasn't 'brilliant counterattack' so much as 'nuke Cape Citadel off the face of the Earth and pretend it was never there.'
Meanwhile, Nick Fury was watching the whole fiasco spiral into a cosmic joke, nursing a migraine so vicious it probably deserved its own codename.
His instincts had been screaming for days, and now, watching live footage of the world's most expensive disaster in real-time, he knew why.
Just yesterday, the military's attempt to tinker with their own Super Soldier Serum had gone gloriously wrong, producing a lovely little green monster now topping government kill lists.
Then there was the cherry-picked disaster with Ms. Viper — because nothing says 'good day' like finding out Hydra had been nesting in your own house like a bunch of roaches you thought you'd already exterminated.
Turns out Ms. Viper wasn't just a loyal little foot soldier either. No, she had aspirations. She wanted the whole damn throne.
It explained a lot: the conveniently messy deaths of Stark's parents, the endless sabotage of Fury's operations, and pretty much every gray hair on his head.
And just in case his blood pressure needed a final kick in the teeth, someone had unearthed a little something in New Mexico — codenamed Thor's Hammer.
A hammer nobody could lift, because of course.
Fury was just waiting for the next shoe to drop. Would it be a Goddess of Death showing up? A killer AI uprising? Maybe both, just to keep things spicy?
Still, it wasn't all doom and migraines. There was one silver lining:
The whole world had just gotten a front-row seat to what mutants were actually capable of.
Fury could already picture it — the sleepless nights piling up for every self-important politician who'd ever thought they were in charge. He could almost hear the frantic scribbling as they signed off on his pet project.
The Avengers Initiative wasn't just greenlit — it was practically getting gift-wrapped and hand-delivered.
"Oh, great. Now she's talking to herself. Perfect," Fury muttered under his breath, watching the screen with an expression that suggested he was seriously rethinking all his life choices. "Is she losing her damn mind?"
The file on her was clear enough. Jean Grey. Powers similar to Charles Xavier's—telepathy, telekinesis, the full mental buffet—but just a notch weaker. Emphasis on just.
Fury had read through it twice, each time growing increasingly skeptical. How could two mutants have nearly identical abilities and not share a bloodline?
Either the universe had an exceptionally lazy imagination, or someone was lying.
Hell, even Fury, a man who considered trust issues a core personality trait, couldn't shake the thought. Maybe this Jean was Charles's kid from some secret shameful affair he didn't even know about. Stranger things had happened.
But whatever the case, the file said nothing about psychosis, schizophrenia, or any other "talking-to-the-air-like-a-homeless-preacher" disorders.
Yet here she was: whispering to the wind, eyes slightly glazed, like a patient freshly escaped from Arkham Asylum.
Onscreen, Magneto carried on with his monologue about the plight of mutants, the cruelty of mankind, and a future of righteous vengeance.
You know, the usual Saturday morning sermon. He didn't even spare Jean a glance. Probably thought the poor girl had finally cracked under pressure, too.
"Beep! Beep! Beep!"
Fury's head snapped around at the sound of his Beep-3. Not a good sound.
That particular device only went off when the World Security Council demanded his immediate attention—generally when they were seconds away from making a bad situation catastrophic.
Fury could already predict their conversation. 'Do you have a backup plan, Director Fury?' 'No? Then nuke the damn place and let God sort them out.'
He sighed, reaching for the Beep-3, fully prepared to tell the Council exactly where they could shove their impatience, when something weird happened.
Jean—the muttering lunatic—suddenly straightened. Her entire posture shifted, sharp and sure, like someone stepping onto a battlefield with the full intention of dying gloriously.
Her face hardened, her eyes closed, and for a moment, she looked... almost serene.
Fury blinked, hand frozen mid-air. Well, that's different.
Without warning, Jean's hair began to change.
It darkened, the fiery red shade collapsing inward into something deeper, more sinister—a shade of red so dark it was nearly black.
The transformation was unsettling, like watching a time-lapse of a fresh apple rotting in seconds.
The change didn't stop there. Her lips followed suit, staining into a rich, blood-black color that should've looked ridiculous but somehow just added to the horror-movie vibe. And when her eyes opened—
Jesus.
Even through the camera feed, Fury felt it: an electric chill, racing up his spine like a rat fleeing a sinking ship. The woman staring out from the screen was not Jean Grey. Hell, she wasn't even pretending to be.
An ominous aura clung to her, swirling and coiling like a living thing. It radiated wrongness so strongly that Fury briefly considered reaching for the emergency bottle of whiskey he kept in his bottom drawer.
He watched her lips move, and the camera's enhanced zoom caught the words:
"Haha, finally left Hell again."
Oh, good. Possession. That's what he needed today. Fury ran a hand down his face and muttered, "Oh god, don't tell me she's been possessed by some thousand-year-old demon who's finally decided to come back and start a murder-spree."
He wasn't even religious, but he briefly considered converting. Maybe start small. Attend a church service, light a few candles, beg God not to let this woman eat the East Coast.
Fury had seen a lot. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, alien—but this? This was a new flavor of nightmare.
And unlike Ghost Rider (who was technically a problem you could solve with a lot of holy water and a fire extinguisher), this thing wearing Jean's body didn't feel like it had any built-in weaknesses.
Instinct screamed at him. Survival instinct, the one that had kept him alive through two wars, fourteen assassination attempts, and three very bad dates. That voice was practically howling now: Dangerous.
This woman—this thing—was dangerous. Danger on the level of a certain someone punching a spaceship apart because it looked at her funny.
The Beep-3 started wailing louder, but Fury ignored it. His eyes stayed locked on the screen, heart pounding harder with every second.
"Director!" Maria Hill burst into his office without knocking, her face pale and her usual cool professionalism abandoned somewhere between the hallway and the door. "We have a situation!"
Great. Another one.
Fury didn't move, didn't blink. "When don't we have a situation?"
Hill shoved a 'tablet' into his hands. "You need to see this. Now."
The screen showed satellite footage: an enormous black cloud, spreading from Mexico and racing toward the U.S. border. Not drifting. Not blowing. Charging across the land like an angry god late for a meeting.
"How long ago did that start?" Fury asked, voice flat.
"Sixty-one seconds ago," Hill replied, grim. "Covered a distance of more than 2.200KM, a distance that would take roughly ten minutes even in Mach 10."
Mach 10 speeds. Fury mentally compared that to their fastest jets and felt a headache blooming behind his eyes.
He sighed, rubbing his temples. "Let me guess. It's her."
Before Hill could answer, Jean—no, whatever she was now—lifted her head. Her gaze turned toward the incoming storm like she could see it.
And then she smiled.
It wasn't a nice smile. It wasn't even a bad smile. It was the kind of smile you see right before someone throws you into a woodchipper.
Fury shivered.
On the screen, she summoned something—a blade, maybe? No, not a sword, something... wrong. It shimmered in the air, a dark green weapon that seemed less forged and more grown, like a cancer given form.
She raised it high, pointed it skyward, and screamed in a voice that shook the camera's audio:
"ODINNN! Your daughter has returned! I will bring the destruction of Asgard!"
Is this considered a cliffhanger?
Okay, guys, I honestly don't know if you feel like there's too much drama, but you should at least trust me—I'm the kind of person who likes to keep things logical.
And let's gooo!! We're now Number FIVE in the Power Stones ranking! If we manage to climb one more spot, I'll update two chapters tomorrow!