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Laura was completely in awe of the black-haired woman's killing power. "Damn, she killed everyone."
"Not yet." Natasha pointed at the other screen with a bony finger. "More are inbound. They'll throw everything they have to keep us pinned here."
Laura put her hand up, letting the symbiote tendrils place the comm device on her palm. She connected to Ororo with the press of a button.
"Ororo, we have a situation here."
"What is it?"
Laura detailed Ororo about the appearance and power of the woman outside.
"It could be an enemy or it could be Dante's ally."
Laura nodded. "I'll ask her."
"Be careful."
"Never
In her symbiote suit, Laura launched herself out through the door and web-slinging in a long arc toward the goddess-like figure.
She landed on the back of a Broodling, using it like a surfboard. "Hey! Did Dante send you?"
The woman turned her head, gazing at Laura with deep green eyes. "You know Dante?"
"Of course I do. He's my boyfriend."
The woman's brow creased, faintly puzzled. "He is a man. He should be a man-friend."
Laura blinked in surprise. It had never occurred to her that there existed a person unfamiliar with the word boyfriend, especially a woman older in her late twenties or early thirties.
She let the symbiote pour over the Broodling thrashing beneath her feet, smothering it to stay quiet under her control. "I meant he and I are lovers."
The woman's eyes became sharp. "Where is he?"
"Went out for business. He'll be back tomorrow."
The woman hurled one of her black swords with a flick of her wrist. The sword moved with a deafening sound and skewered four Broodlings on a building like beads on a string, killing them instantly.
Laura knew the woman was capable of defeating her in an instant. Even with the symbiote and her Healing Factor, she was far too weak to compete with the real heavyhitters.
The woman threw a few more swords, casually killing fifty Broodlings. "Deliver him a message from me. Tell him Hela came to Midgard in his absence and saved one of his cities from disaster. Now he owes her."
"I'm here too, you know." A new voice, light and dripping with mischief, announced. Then a young man with slick black hair stepped out of a shimmering green portal. "Don't go thinking you'll hoard all the favor for yourself, dear sister. I did half of the work by informing you."
"Don't push your luck, Loki." Hela didn't so much as glance at him. "Or I'll kill you and your mother."
Loki's face boasted the grin of a man who had everything in his grasp. "Mmm, you can't, dear sister. He needs us both in Asgard, and that means, you're stuck with me for a few thousand years."
Hela snorted with disdain. "Don't think you're irreplaceable, Trickster."
"I'm one of a kind treasure. Even he recognizes that. Why else would he leave every responsibility on me rather than you?"
Hela glared at him before flying into the horde of Broodlings.
Laura felt utterly lost. From the way they talked, the 'he' in question could only be Dante. But if that was true, why did they have barely-leashed hostility at each other over him? Was this the thing people meant by sibling rivalry?
Loki smiled at her. "Dear lady, would you please step aside for a moment? Loki has a present for our enemies."
He slowly drifted up and spread his arms. His form split into two, then four. He continued multiplying until his duplicates formed a massive circle in the sky.
All the Lokis raised their hands toward a point in the sky, where green energy began to accumulate. Laura ditched the Broodling and web-slung her way back to the ship.
The green energy had now become a massive orb, crackling as if it contained electricity. It slowly drifted toward the sky and hovered there.
With that, every Loki assimilated with the original.
"Behold the combined craft of a witch and Asgardian."
He grinned and snapped his fingers. The orb exploded, sending out a green shockwave over hundreds and thousands of meters. The clouds took on a green hue as they started raining dark drops of water. A Broodling approaching Laura had its flesh melt away in moments, its bones scattered on the street below.
"The Brood shall burn."
Loki's evil laughter rang across what felt like the entirety of New York.
***
The Brooklyn Bridge had become a graveyard of Broodlings, which Piotr had lovingly dubbed sleazoids.
Piotr Rasputina currently stood at the center of the chaos, every inch of him gleaming in silver. Two Broodlings came screaming at him, their tentacle-limbs spread wide to give him a big hug. Piotr crushed one's skull and gave a backhand slap to the other, sending it tumbling over the railing and into the river below. When a group tried to swarm him from behind, he simply spun, his steel body turning into a living wrecking ball that crushed everything in its path.
He was like a steel mountain given the fists and will to fight. The Broodlings were nothing for him. His fists came down on them like demolition hammers, each impact ending a Broodling in a wet crunch of shattered exoskeleton and endoskeleton.
"Come, then!" He waded forward step by step, a one-man advancing wall, filling the bridge deck behind with the corpses of Broodlings that had dared to strike him. "There is plenty of Piotr to go around!"
The Brood's Psi-Scream Weapons would've made Piotr an easy target to put down. The only reason it hadn't hovered above the bridge, her red hair whipping wildly around her face as her eyes glowed. Jean had disabled those cannons as soon as they entered the picture, allowing Piotr to run rampant.
She wasn't sitting idle either. She closed her fist and over twenty Broodlings burst in a synchronized spray of blood as if someone had exploded them from the inside. Her telekinesis had crushed them from the inside out. She moved her hands and limbs were torn from another group. They still tried to bite her, forcing her to rip their wings off. They were free targets for Piotr as soon as they crashed down. She swept her arms and closed them together—two charging swarms slammed into each other midair and tangled into a single ball of disgusting flesh. Another burst of psychokinetic power ripped the heads clean off a cluster of advancing Brood, making them collapse in a grotesque pile.
Every hand gesture she made bent the battlefield to her will.
Between the steel titan below and the telekinetic goddess above, they had slain over two thousand.
But power like this was never free.
Jean's head was growing heavier as a dull, throbbing pressure built behind her eyes. She had been pushing her telekinesis far beyond safe limits. Piotr was exempt from these limits as his steel form considerably slowed down his exhaustion.
"Jean, hold on!" he roared up at her, flattening another Broodling underfoot. "Only a few hundred left! We are nearly through!"
Jean drifted down and took a more passive approach, only occasionally moving to intercept the Psi-Scream weapons and other ranged weapons.
"Argh, chyort voz'mi (damn it!)." Piotr grunted a curse through gritted steel teeth as he smashed two more aside. "I only hope Illya and the others are faring well."
"They are." Jean relayed telepathically. "I can feel their minds."
"Hah. That is a relief."
They fought on, grinding the last of the horde down to nothing, until the final Broodling fell twitching and the bridge went quiet. And to the very end, not one of them had shown fear in the face of certain death. The hive-mind made them tireless and fearless.
The silence that followed was eerie. She stood there, feeling the cold wind brushed past her damp cheeks.
"It's over…"
She took a sigh of relief and dropped onto the hood of an abandoned car, allowing herself a moment of rest. The nauseating stench made her wish she could fly back to her bedroom. "Ugh. I can really use a shower and a bed."
Piotr walked over to her side. "Well, I could use some vodka. A drink after a hard-fought battle hits differently."
"Men are different creatures."
Piotr chuckled. "Do we know who commands these things?"
"One entity." Jean pressed two fingers to her temple, tracing the connection she had found in all Broodlings. "It's the Brood Queen. I can sense her presence, but it's near-impossible to pin down her location."
Piotr stretched his arms over his head with a groan. "That is plenty for one day, da? Let's leave a little work for Comrade Dante. It'd be rude to take all the fun."
"Wouldn't want him to feel useless."
The two shared a smile, knowing that the man in question was working harder than everyone to keep this world safe.
They rested for a few more minutes before walking back through the carnage. As they neared the bridge's end, they found a figure waiting for them. A woman with dark brown hair, wearing a mercenary-like outfit with a tattered cloak hanging from her shoulders. The striking streaks of white in her hair set off every alarm in Jean's mind.
'Anna Marie?'
Piotr, still riding the high of victory, lifted a hand and approached her with a broad smile. "Lady, it's not safe here. We don't know how this alien blood affects ordinary humans, so please wait a while before crossing. Or better yet, take the other bridge."
"Piotr." Jean called to him through telepathy. "Get back."
Her appearance could've been a coincidence as it wasn't hard to find another woman with the same hairstyle as Anna Marie. But the thick psionic shield around the woman's mind proved she wasn't a civilian. A shield that dense meant telepathy on the order of Xavier himself.
Piotr caught the warning in Jean's voice and took several quick steps back, trusting her judgment without a second's hesitation. "Who is she, Jean?"
"Anna's adopted daughter. Anna Marie."
The woman raised her right hand toward him. With a chittering sound, her entire arm crystallized, turning into glittering ice. A sharp spike made of ice launched at Piotr's chest. Jean reacted instantly, catching the projectile with telekinesis before it could hurt him.
"Anna Marie, we're friends with your mother. Try to remember—"
She tilted her head without an ounce of emotion on her face. "I'm not Anna Marie."
A pair of white-feathered wings unfurled from her back. The pristine and angelic wings were quite at odds with the torn, tattered black cloak hanging from her shoulders. Three gleaming claws of adamantium punched through the back of her left fist, spurting blood onto the pavement. Her eyes glowed a familiar red, the very same crimson glow Jean had seen in Scott's eyes.
"I'm Prototype Number Zero."