chapters 106-110

chapters 106-110

Andrea continued to give me a deadpan stare. I just gave her a smile like I didn't just ask her something completely ridiculous.

"You want to do what!?" Andrea exclaimed. "Blow up the planet? Why?"

"Death asked me to. And it was kind of an 'offer you can't refuse' situation."

"Who the fuck is Lady Death!? ...You know what? I don't even care anymore. Do whatever you want." Andrea said with a sigh.

The rumbling thunder from nearby told me that we could table this discussion for now. I wanted to go see how Sif was doing in her fight against the undead Thor.

"We'll talk about this later," I said. "Let's hope Sif is almost done with her battle. I think destroying a large chunk of the city might end up drawing more attention than we would like."

"You think?" Andrea said sarcastically. "Did you really have to go this far just to take care of the Hulk?" She gestured once again to the completely ruined section of the city.

Did I have to go that far? No, no, I did not. Was dropping what amounted to a magical nuke on top of his head awesome? Yes, yes, it was. "I'm sorry, but the Hulk was really strong. It was the only way to beat him," I lied.

Andrea sighed. "Thank you for finally letting Bruce rest at least. I'm sure now he's in a better place."

"I didn't know you were religious," I commented.

"I wasn't until yesterday. Then I found out angels were apparently a real thing. At least in another dimension..." Andrea replied.

I didn't give her another response as I spread my now five pairs of black wings and started flying towards the rumbling thunder a few blocks away. When I approached, I could see arcing lightning bolts flying in every single direction. Down on the ground, surrounded by hundreds of charred zombies, were Sif and Thor. I wasn't sure why Mjolnir was still working even though Thor was dead, but it was pumping out a tremendous amount of electricity. Every single swing of his hammer must have come with a couple of million volts.

Sif seemed to be holding her own, however. With the [Lightsword] I had given her, she was deflecting all of his powerful hammer attacks as fast as they came. She almost made it look easy to fight like that, but I knew it was anything but for her. Even though the [Lightsword] I had given her wasn't conductive to electricity, she was still getting zapped by the aftershocks of each blow. I could see that she was visibly shaking. The Extremis inside her must have been working overtime to keep her muscles from constantly seizing up on her.

Andrea caught up finally and hovered next to me as we observed the battle from the air. "Huh? She's still going pretty strong. I didn't expect your dimensions Sif to be so strong. The way Thor talked about his old companions, they kind of sounded like useless tag-a-longs in all of his quests."

Yeah, from an MCU standpoint, that sounded about right. From the strength of the Hulk and what I was seeing from the zombie Thor down there, I figured we were in a dimension similar to the MCU powerwise. At least when it came to the Avengers. I know there exist many Marvel universes where the Hulk would have shrugged off my final attack and kept coming. Thankfully we weren't in one of those. The powers that be also seemed to have kept the infection to Earth alone here. Death wouldn't have asked me to destroy the planet if the disease had already spread throughout the stars.

I watched as Thor released a devastating punch to Sif's cheek that had her head whip backward. He followed that with a powerful swing of his hammer that sent her flying back dozens of feet before crashing into the ground.

Thankfully, the hammer hit her armored chest, and Penemue's war armor from the Great War was strong enough to tank the blow. Sif let out a cough as she shakily stood up. I don't know if it was her pride, but I'd noticed she was once again fighting Thor head on. Why!? She was faster than him and more agile. She should be dancing around him and wearing him down instead of tanking his powerful lighting blows over and over.

Her pride to best a version of Thor by matching him at his best was costing her what should have been a relatively easy victory. My Light Manipulation Level 6 should have made that [Lightsword] in her hand a deadly weapon against any undead.

Sif's cheek momentarily glowed orange. The large bruise forming there faded away. She was still moving much slower though.

"She's completely exhausted her stamina it seems." I said. There was also the possibility of Lady Death's words to be taken into account. if the zombie virus had gone airborne, was the Extremis formula inside her fighting it off this entire time and tiring her out quicker?

"I won't lose to you, Thor! This time I'll win for Layla! I swear it!" Sif roared out as she took another shaky step forward before she started charging head on towards Thor again.

Mjolnir in his hands started discharging more electricity. He raised his hammer high and a lighting bolt descended to connect with the hammer. He was about to blast Sif with a massive amount of lighting.

Well he would have. If his head was still in existence. Too bad it was not. Zombie Thor's headless body dropped to the ground. He had died without even knowing what happened. Mjolnir landed next to him with a loud clunk onto the mostly destroyed asphalt.

I lowered my hand and let out a sigh. Yeah, I had thrown a [Lightspear] at the back of his head while he was completely distracted powering up his next big attack...

"Really, Layla?" Andrea commented next to me. "Can't you see that was going to be Sif's big moment where she turned the fight completely around and emerged victorious?"

"Um...no?" I said while scratching my cheek.

"Yeah me neither." Andrea said and we both laughed.

Upon seeing her opponent defeated, Sif finally lost all of her adrenaline–or the Asgardian equivalent–and passed out. She landed face first on the ground, which thankfully wouldn't injure a being like her. I flew down and picked her up gently. I then went over to this dimension's Mjolnir and stashed it in my inventory. It wasn't emitting any more electricity and seemed to have shut down after Thor's re-death. We'd deal with it later.

"We should go, Layla. Jarvis just told me that a whole bunch of powered zombies are converging on our location." Andrea said. I opened a portal back to her bunker and walked through while carrying Sif.

XXX

"Welcome back, everyone! I watched the battle from the remaining camera feeds in the city. Although it does seem that hundreds of cameras all stopped working at once for some reason at one point." Jarvis commented.

"Layla Angel-Nuked the city." Andrea said bluntly as she plopped down on a couch. She didn't even bother removing her armor first. All she did was take off her helmet.

She looked tired but relieved at the same time. I've inferred that in this dimension, she was in some kind of relationship with Bruce Banner. There also might be some survivor's guilt thrown in there now that we've dealt with the Avengers. Well, most of them anyway.

"How come Captain America wasn't there?" I asked Andrea.

Andrea grimaced. "I don't know. Steve landed at that airport and attacked a bunch of people to spread the virus. After that, I've never seen him since," she said. "Maybe someone put him down, or he's still out there somewhere just wandering around?"

Well, that wasn't ominous at all. I set Sif down on a chair and took a seat myself. Now that we'd taken care of Thor, we were supposed to immediately leave. Unfortunately, Lady Death gave me an annoying task first.

"So what now?" Andrea asked with a sigh.

"I was kind of hoping you had some ideas? I don't suppose you could build a bomb big enough to take out the world. Maybe find a way to knock the moon out of orbit and crash it into the planet?" I asked with a laugh.

Andrea rubbed her forehead. "Destroying the planet? That's a lot harder than it sounds. Could I make some bombs that wipe away most of the surface life? Sure. But they're not going to actually scratch the planet's crust at the end of the day. You really have to 'Death Star' the whole world!?" Andrea asked.

I nodded. That's what Death asked for, so that's what she would get.

Andrea took a second to ponder. She then glanced over at Sif sleeping in her chair. "Hmmm. There might be a way. It was something Thor mentioned about the Bifrost. Loki, at one point, turned it into a weapon supposedly and fired it at his home world. If Thor didn't stop it, then Jotunheim would have been destroyed." Andrea said.

My eyes widened. That could work! If Asgard was in the same spot here, then I could also just portal us there too! That was an easier plan than trying to find Thanos and stealing the power stone from him...

"What do you think Asgard's stance on this will be?" I asked. "Did they ever even send help down here after Thor was–you know?"

Andrea shook her head. "That's the weird thing! Asgard never sent any aid at all! Nobody came to help evacuate people or anything! Isn't that strange?" Andrea asked with a look of concern.

That was strange.

"Their immortal-ish Crown Prince dies on another world and they do nothing to investigate? Now that just doesn't make sense." I commented. "Something must have happened in Asgard at the same time as here. We'll have to be careful when we go there. We can't be sure what to expect."

"You think a zombie outbreak happened there too!?" Andrea asked fearfully.

I shrugged. Something must have happened there. "We won't know until we go there. For now though, you and Sif need to rest. After that, we'll fill her in on our plan and head to Asgard.

"Mam, might I make a suggestion?" Jarvis cut in.

"What is it Jarvis?" Andrea replied.

"Once we're on Asgard, you should upload me into one of their consoles. I can figure out how to operate the Bifrost and fire it." Jarvis said.

"That's good, Jarvis." Andrea said. "It could take a while to try and figure out how to operate the bifrost on our own."

Yeah, the movies just showed Heimdall controlling it with a sword.

A Sword!

How does that work? Its a comic book universe–fuck you that's how.

"Will Jarvis be able to interact with Asgardian tech?" I asked.

Andrea smirked and gave me the 'what do you think' look. I suppose we were taking him with us then. We couldn't really leave him anyway considering the world was about to get destroyed by a space laser.

Huh? I really was about to 'Death Star' the world wasn't I?

...

After our plans were set, Andrea decided to go get some rest. A few hours later, Sif had awoken and immediately looked upset. She had tears in her eyes as she looked at me.

"Are you alright Sif?" I asked her with concern.

"I'm sorry I lost and you had to save me..." Sif said somberly. "The whole fight was my idea in the first place. We could have just left. This isn't even our world after all." Sif then started crying.

"Hey Sif, it's ok. You can't win every fight. That's why we went in as a group in the first place." I said gently.

–Andrea Stark–

"OK Jarvis. Here we go." Andre said as she inserted the drive holding his AI into the Asgardian console. Layla had asked Sif to take Andrea to Asgard's archive room.

Sif had commented that the layout of this palace was relatively the same as her own dimension's.

"It will take me a few moments to download all of the data here. Luckily there doesn't seem to be any firewalls whatsoever." Jarvis replied.

Andrea turned towards Sif who was looking around soberly. "So what's your dimension like?" Andrea asked.

Sif sighed. "To be honest, I don't entirely know. I thought I did, but I'm not sure how many of my memories are actually trustworthy. I haven't even stepped outside of the nine realms more than a handful of times in the past thousand years."

Andrea raised her eyebrow at that. Sif was apparently a very sheltered Goddess. "Is there a reason for that? Didn't you go on adventures with Thor?" Andrea asked.

Sif shuffled a bit. I didn't go on as many adventures as people would think. There's a reason we were referred to as the Warrior's three AND the Lady Sif. I spent quite a bit of my time actually with Queen Frigga learning from her on how to rule. Everybody expected Thor and I to be we'd. It was never to be though." Sif said.

Andrea nodded before smiling slyly. "But you're happy with Layla now aren't you? After all, Jarvis told me that he had to stop you two from getting it on last night." Andrea said with a smirk.

Sif blushed. "Yes... I am happy with Layla. Although I am not her only paramour. There is also the new Queen of Asgard Hela and another woman known as Natasha. I have yet to meet her.

"Natasha!?" Andrea exclaimed in shock. "As in the black Widow?"

Sif nodded. "Layla said something along those lines when she mentioned her. She had some longing in her voice. Apparently Natasha has been away on numerous secret missions searching for a Hydra. Tis a noble hunt! Hydra's are fearsome beasts after all!" Sif said.

Andrea didn't correct Sif on the fact that she completely misunderstood what Hydra was. She was too blown away by finding out that Layla had actually hooked up with Natasha Romanoff! "Wow, I guess Layla gets around huh?"

Sif nodded with a sigh. "My love is just too beautiful to resist..."

Andrea laughed. She wasn't wrong. Andrea wasn't into girls but even she could admit the Fallen Angel had her questioning herself when she laid eyes on her.

"Is there anything you want to take with you while we're here?" Andrea asked. "Maybe check out the other Sif's quarters. She could have a spare sword lying around." Andrea suggested.

Sif seemed to ponder that before she sighed. "I suppose I could use a new blade and set of armor. I'm not a fan of having to borrow either. Hopefully her quarters are in the same location as my own were." Sif said.

A few minutes of small talk later Jarvis finished plundering all the technical knowledge of Asgard and the pair headed towards the alternate Sif's room. Luckily, Sif was able to immediately tell by the spare weapons and armor sets adorning the walls that they were in the right place.

Andrea waited outside while Sif changed. After that, they were supposed to meet Layla in the treasury.

...

Is that what I think it is? And it's just sitting out in the open?" I muttered while using [Observe.]

[The Tesseract→An Asgardian relic designed to control and contain the Space Stone.]

Well, there it was. Not even a few steps into Asgard's treasury–which was unlocked by the way–and I'd already majorly scored.

My first infinity stone!

XXX

"Yoink!" I exclaimed once again as I grabbed the Tesseract.

[Did you just say 'Yoink' again...]

I ignored the system attempting to shame me; I was in too good a mood. This was my first Infinity Stone, after all. Also, the System didn't say anything when I said 'Yoink' and grabbed Gungnir!

[There's a difference between a gaudy golden spear that shoots lasers and the physical form of one of the six fundamental forces of the universe...]

I ignored the sarcasm because I was literally holding an Infinity Stone. I couldn't wait to play with this thing back home! I wonder how it stacks up compared to my Sacred Gear? I mean, it's an Infinity Stone, it has to be able to do more than just open portals. The MCU just made it seem like a less cool sling ring after all. When it was not being used as a battery...

[Well, I hate to ruin your mood, but that stone will only work in this dimension. Taking it with you will be pointless...unless.]

I frowned upon hearing that. Well, that sucked. All my plans immediately went down the drain.

'Unless what?' I asked.

[Unless you feed it to your Second Sacred Gear. Even I'm not quite sure what that will do, but it should allow the stone to somewhat function in another dimension not linked to it.]

I glanced down at the Tesseract in my hand and shrugged. What was the worst that could happen? I moved the blue cube towards my chest. It started to sink into my soul, and I could feel my Orb of Anywhere growing—excited? That was the best way to describe it.

[The worst that could have happened was that your artificial Sacred Gear rejected the Infinity Stone, and you exploded...]

'That's something you're supposed to mention beforehand, System!' I lamented. What was with this dimension and trying to make me explode!?

I felt the Orb inside me swallow the Tesseract, and then...nothing. I stood in the treasury and waited with baited breath for a few moments more and still nothing happened.

"Well...that was a letdown." I said out loud. "It had to have done something right?"

[It should have...It was an Infinity Stone after all. Unless...]

'You've been saying -unless- a lot.' I noted. 'Unless what?'

[What exactly did Azazel make the Orb of Anywhere out of?]

"Huh?" I pondered that for a moment. I never asked. It didn't really seem that important.

[I'd wager it was pretty important considering whatever it was just gobbled up an Infinity Stone with no issues at all.]

I shrugged. There's no way to no unless I ask him. I'm sure whatever he used as a base for the sacred gear wasn't too dangerous. Or at least I'm hoping it's not considering the thing is now permanently fused to my soul...

A few moments later as I was making myself familiar with the objects in the treasury, I heard a pair of footsteps coming down the stairs. Sif and Andrea had arrived. I smiled at the pair of them and spread my arms wide. "Welcome!" I said with a laugh. "Welcome to the royal treasury of Asgard! Would you like the tour?"

Andrea laughed back. "Sure thing, Layla. What are these things?"

"Well," I started off pointing towards a blue casket. "Over there is the casket of ancient winters which can call forth terrifying blizzards." I pointed to another object. "Overthere is the Warlock's eye. No idea what that one does but it looks fancy."

I noticed Sif facepalming at my antics. "Layla, the Warlock's eye can mind control almost any being in existence. It's only surpassed by the Mind Stone in power." She explained.

I nodded. That sounded interesting. I wasn't exactly a fan of mind control though so that would be staying here. "And what's that one?" I said pointing at another weird eye-looking object.

"THAT..." A new, yet very familiar, voice called out. "...Is the Tuning Fork. It can call forth an Eldritch creature from outside our Universe Known as the Lurking Unknown. I recommend NOT touching it." I turned and gulped as I saw Hela stride into the room. In her hand she held the crown of Sutur which she casually tossed to the floor. "I leave for only a few hours to go and put down a rebellious fire Demon and I already have rats breaking into my palace and treasury!" Hela seethed out. She was looking at us with pure hatred.

"Hello Hela." I said to the angry goddess.

A flash appeared around Sif nearby. She was immediately donned in a new set of silver armor and had a new sword strapped to her waist. I feel like she was jumping the gun a bit. We didn't have to fight Hela here. We could talk this out.

[She literally caught you robbing her...]

'Yeah, but she killed everyone in Asgard...' It's not like I was robbing a Saint here...

Andrea once again ran over and took cover behind me.

"So you know the identity of Asgard's new Queen and you still dared to steal from me?" Hela asked coldy.

I shrugged. "Are you really the Queen though after killing all your people? The whole palace was covered in bloodstains." I pointed out.

Hela glared at me with hatred in her eyes. Her own armor and helmet materialized over her. "Those traitorous beings refused to bow down to me. Of course I killed them all. I also killed my foolish step mother and younger brother as well when they did the same. I am Hela of Asgard and this kingdom is my right!" She exclaimed as she conjured a pair of black swords in her hands.

[Talking really worked out great there huh?]

I used observe on Hela to see what I was up against here. Her level was about what I figured it to be. As someone who had single handedly wiped out Asgard, it made sense that she'd be a decently high level. I figured the 50's was where most Ultimate Class beings started.

[The Goddess of Death Hela. Level 55: Years of isolation on Helheim have left this Hela deranged. She will kill anyone who stands against her.]

Before yesterday, that level would have made me nervous. But now? I could take her.

XXX