Naruto tried again, forming another swarm of clones.
Again a scythe cut through the clones, this time though a black tentacle stabbed out - going through the real Naruto's right thigh. Then it began reeling him in.
"Byakugan!" called out Hinata before slapping her hands into the tentacle.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball!"
The creature opened a mouth full of razor teeth and a long tongue and screeched at them, apparently not wounded in the slightest. Just aggravated.
"Evil, meet my atgeir, Nornblade. Nornblade - meet evil!" Sakura dropped down near the tentacle still piercing Naruto and brought her blade-spear down.
The spear made a sound like a heartbeat, the blue runes on the blade pulsing in time with it and shifting to bright green. The edge touched the black stuff and flames of green light caught on the substance.
Venom screamed again, this time in pain.
"Nice," said Naruto as he pulled the tentacle out as it was softening to goo.
"I've been training with the einherjar and Valkyri," said Sakura. "I'm not sure if I found this - or it found me. It accepts me though."
The large guy recovered from whatever that attack had done and started running forward. Sasuke tensed.
At which point someone rushed in and flattened the big black guy. Literally flattened. Naruto blinked a couple of times as the guy basically looked like an ink splatter on the ground.
The blond woman in black then sped off, flying faster than a kunai to bodyslam someone else who was flying. If she'd seen them she gave no sign of that.
"Now might be a good time to hide," realized Sasuke.
"Yeah, even with Nornblade, we're in over our heads," agreed Sakura.
"What exactly is that?" asked Naruto.
"Magic axe-spear," said Sakura as they ran towards a partially shattered wall. "All the Valkyrie use spears of some kind. The Einherjar use just about everything."
Ducking behind it, Sakura held one finger over her lips as a request for silence.
At which point they saw the body of Brayth, his chest blasted open, eyes staring blindly at the sky.
Naruto stared, the feeling of excitement and adventure and his enthusiasm for it had dropped the moment he'd seen the old man. Even getting speared through the leg with that black stuff (which, by the way, had HURT) he'd been able to keep some of that enthusiasm.
The old man had reminded him of Teuchi at Ichiraku's, just older and a little more grumpy. He'd met him several times over the past week. His spear was near one hand, but snapped in half.
While he watched, Hinata shuffled closer and closed those staring eyes.
Naruto glanced at Hinata when he could tear his eyes away, and noticed she was staring at something. Naruto traced the line-of-sight and noticed the little arm visible under the rubble.
Sakura realized that the child couldn't have been more than six or so. Probably one of the "Midgard orphans" mentioned by Fandral in one of his flowery speeches back when they'd arrived.
The presence of Brayth and that of the child meant that the elder had been trying to get a child to the shelter when they'd been found and slaughtered. No other word for it when you were dealing with a child this young and an old man who could barely walk.
So this was war. Sakura couldn't help but feel that she didn't like it at all.
She felt numb, some sort of distance had settled into her mind. Otherwise she felt she might be screaming or crying at the evidence before her. Was this child one of those she'd talked to over the past week? Was it a complete stranger?
"There are more attackers arriving," said Sasuke, keeping an eye on the battle. "Be ready to move."
He'd had a momentary flashback to That Night on seeing the child and the old man dead. Then he'd simply shoved such feelings aside.
He was aware of Naruto trying to pull rocks off the kid, except some of the chunks were too big for Naruto to move. It was hopeless anyway, wasted effort. Sasuke wasn't going to say anything about that though. Or of Hinata touching Naruto's arm and indicating that it was too late.
Of course, with her flashing that Byakugan of hers every so often, she'd be able to tell.
No uniforms, no forehead protectors, nothing to indicate who was on who's side. Chaos.
Most of them seemed to recognize each other though, and held personal grudges.
Sasuke started checking his inventory, glancing up regularly to keep track of the fights. Six kunai in his holster along with four explosive notes. In scrolls he had twelve shuriken, two fuma shuriken, sixteen more kunai, a wakizashi. He also had the weapon he'd been training with the past week in another scroll - but without a clear indication of who was an enemy and who an ally he wasn't going to take the bow out. The horn and wood bow was of a size he could use, though he wasn't about to use the term he'd been told to describe it. Hornbogi didn't sound right.
Oh hell. Someone had spotted them. Now, was it a defender or an attacker?
He wasn't someone on ANYONE'S call list. What had he been called once by a SHIELD agent? Oh yeah. Fourth rate magician.
Really, was there a ranking system out there? He was a mage because he had some magical ability, mostly self-trained. The only time he'd ever really interacted with another magical being had been when he'd knocked on Doctor Strange's door and asked if there was a Recommended Reading List for aspiring mages. You know, someone should really put one together along with a list of "you don't want to open these" books and scrolls and such.
His main thing was enchanting, and by the scale that people like Doctor Strange used - maybe he WAS a minor little "hedge wizard" and such.
Still he'd worked with FEMA and a couple of other agencies, like Heroes Without Borders. Fly his broomstick into disaster areas to deliver supplies or scout out survivors so that the helicopters could get to them quick.
Then this Registration Act had come in - and he'd found himself DRAFTED. Now he couldn't do his normal volunteer stuff but had to be ready to be fielded up against whatever big-time menace had shown.
He had no illusions there. If he went up against Juggernaut or something, he'd get squished. Not one enchant or spell he had would keep that from going into utter curbstomp territory.
Now this. Asgard was under attack by the United States of America. He really shouldn't be here, but he'd been just a couple hundred miles away and he HAD planned on coming here sometime. Just get permission to go through their library and maybe learn a few things about those runes and such. Would have been sweet but there was always something going on and he'd have to fill out all sorts of paperwork as a Registered Metahuman. Not that he felt at all super especially in his current environment.
Hell. He was a LAB TECH at a hospital for crying out loud. Magic was just kind of a hobby he'd gotten into when he'd found he had some Talent.
So he kicked in the speed and dove towards some kids who had apparently wandered into the warzone because this was the kind of work he did with Heroes Without Borders. The broomstick was his latest work, allowing him to fly about 120kph and hover. He could do brief stints of faster speed but he'd had trouble stabilizing everything beyond that with the wind-screen function.
This was why he'd actually come. There were civilians in the line of fire. FEMA had put out an evacuation order, though that Osborn guy had countermanded it and put a martial law edict on. Who was he going to listen to of the two? He'd worked with FEMA before.
A directed-speech spell was on a paper-megaphone he'd put together. Also useful in natural disasters. It only lasted a couple of uses, but sometimes you just needed something like this. Like when there was a flood.
"Hey, you kids! It's dangerous here! Follow me and I'll get you to safety!"
He could see a way they could get out of danger. It wasn't 100% safe but if he could get them out of Asgard...
He had a brief glimpse of the Sentry before the world went dark.
Asgard was falling. She could see that the one in the cape was going after pillars and support structures.
The large guy on the flying broom came apart just as quickly as stone and brick after he'd offered to help them.
Her Byakugan was on and she could see it all. She could see the shelters where the very young and old had retreated to. She could see the ceilings come down and crush them.
Blood. There was so much blood.
That one man. The one in the cape. He was turning darker, things erupting from his body.
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(Posted Sun, 08 Mar 2015 16:36)
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