Natasha turned the sceptre over in her hands, examining the alien metal carefully. The empty space in the head, where the artifact’s power source had been, still had some jagged blue crystal sticking to it. The way the gem had been moulded to the top of the device had meant that it couldn’t be removed without being broken. She’d found a handful of blue shards in the bin next to the bed and there were a few more stuck in the carpet. There was much more than she’d have expected if they’d just snapped the gem off the sceptre to keep it, but nowhere near enough to account for the whole thing, which was consistent with their theory that Wanda had taken something from inside it.

She glanced up as Tony awkwardly flew in through the shattered wall of the hotel room, balanced on the two repulsors that were still working, the one on his left foot cutting in and out erratically. He landed heavily on the carpet, looking over to where Steve stood vigilantly by the door. “Find anything?”

“Not a lot,” said Steve, shaking his head. “You?”

“No sign of them. The gamma signal’s vanished completely. Wherever that portal went, it was far away from here.” Tony rolled his neck and the lights in his faceplate dimmed for a moment. “Ugh, I’m not sure who did more damage, you or her.”

“Sorry, Tony.”

“No, no; you hit me, I dropped you off a building. We’re even,” he said. Servos whirred and sparked in protest as the front of Tony’s suit opened up. He stepped out, wincing and stretching his neck, before glancing back over his shoulder at it. “Sentry mode.” The armour started to close up but got stuck halfway through, jerking upright as though tugged on by invisible marionette strings, then fell over. He closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “Yeah, that’d be about right.”

Once the team had recovered from the fight, they’d spent some time surveying the area and gathering up whatever evidence they could from the ruins of the hotel room that the Maximoffs had been staying in. There was a laptop, which Nat had already pulled the search history of—a preliminary look didn’t reveal anything too enlightening, though they’d looked up several seemingly-random businesses in New York, which was concerning, and had downloaded some of the SHIELD/HYDRA data that Nat had leaked a while back. She resolved to pay the Nelson and Murdock Law Office and Alias Investigations a visit once they’d gotten back to the city, just to cover all their bases and make sure the employees had no links to HYDRA or their wayward Enhanced.

“Thor far off?” asked Clint, who was currently crouched over the carpet, carefully extracting needles of blue crystal.

Seemingly in answer to the archer’s question, there was a muffled boom from outside. A moment later Thor vaulted from the neighbouring rooftop, joining them with an easy leap down through the hole in the building. The Asgardian prince surveyed his beaten allies for a moment, then grinned.

“Not a word,” said Tony, which just made his smile wider.

“Alright,” said Steve, heading off whatever comment Thor was about to make in response. “Now that everyone’s here that’s gonna be here, what do we know?”

“We know we got our asses’ kicked,” grumbled Tony.

“You were overconfident. You should have waited for me before you attacked them,” Thor said, the smug smile still tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Not sure you would have done much better, Point Break.”

“A weak mortal mind is more susceptible to enchantment than that of a god. I would not have succumbed so easily,” he responded. “And while the brother may be fast, I am mighty.”

“What were those portals she created?” Steve asked, trying to get everyone back on track. “Those weren’t in HYDRA’s files.”

Clint scratched the back of his head. “The sceptre’s power source? Leftover power from the Tesseract, maybe? We know it can create wormholes.”

Nat shook her head. “I don’t think so. The energy used to create them was red, same as her other abilities, not blue.”

“It’s lucky that all energy is colour-coded for our convenience,” Stark snorted. “There was a lot of microwave radiation mixed up in my readings, along with the gamma. I’ll get it back to Bruce and maybe we can make heads or tails of it.”

Steve ‘hmm’ed thoughtfully. “Are her abilities more flexible than HYDRA thought? She’s learning new ways to use them?”

“Okay, but why break the sceptre?” Clint asked.

“Doesn’t make any sense,” Tony said, nodding. “You steal a magic staff that lets you control peoples’ brains only to break it? Why? What do they want with the power source?”

“It’s not like she had much difficulty controlling brains as it is.” Nat shared a look with Steve and frowned uncomfortably as she remembered the way Wanda had invaded her mind, making her body move against her will. That wasn’t an experience she was eager to repeat.

“These Enhanced, their abilities were created by the sceptre in the first place, were they not?” Thor asked. “Perhaps it empowers her.”

Steve nodded. “It would explain her new capabilities.”

“That just puts us back to square one,” Clint interjected. “We still don’t have any idea where they’re headed or what they’re planning.”

“We know exactly what they want,” Tony said, his tone a bit more subdued. “No use tiptoeing around it. ‘We’ll come to you when we’re ready’.”

Steve shook his head. “I don’t buy it, Tony. She had you dead to rights, didn’t she? If they just wanted to kill you, she could have done it then and there.”

“Maybe. She seemed pretty sure that her brother would have killed me if he was still there. I don’t know why she held off but, honestly, I wouldn’t blame ‘em. Both sides of the conflict that killed their parents were using Stark Industries weapons.”

“You’re not responsible for that, Tony,” Nat interjected. “Stane sold those weapons, not you.”

“Aren’t I?” he snapped back, a little more harshly than she was expecting. “I ran an arms manufacturer. I had my fun showing off to the US military, and was happy to let the company do whatever so long as it made a profit. The bottom line is I signed off on making those bombs.” There was a long pause, then he sighed. “They know about the gamma radiation, but Jarvis has hooked himself into news, law enforcement channels, and social media, looking for keywords,” he said, changing the subject. “Even if they avoid being picked up by the tracking algorithm, we might get a hit from another source if they use their abilities anywhere with witnesses.”

Steve looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s regroup back at the Tower. We’ll get some rest and be ready to move when they show up again—they won’t stay hidden forever.”

--

Without knowing exactly where to start, we took a short detour to pick up a new laptop so I could do some pre-travel research, thanks to a random coffee shop’s free Wi-Fi. We didn’t end up wasting any actual time visiting Johannesburg—I knew that Ulysses Klaue’s operation was based in a ship salvage yard on the coast, so that meant it was further away from the city than I’d initially thought it was. Some quick browsing came up with a few likely locations, and thanks to Google Street View giving me visual references for my portals and Pietro’s ability to quickly scout once we arrived, working our way through them only took a couple of hours.

Our destination was a short trip from Richards Bay, a small city that sat on a 30 square kilometre lagoon of the Mhlatuze River. It was one of the largest harbours in the country, hosting a port that was once the biggest coal export facility in the world. A leisurely super speed run north along the coast was the salvage yard: several small buildings, a fenced-off dirt parking lot, an assortment of broken and rusted vehicles, and piles of other, less-identifiable junk. All of it was spread roughly around the edges of a sand flat with a half-dozen beached, decommissioned cargo haulers looming quietly in the sun.

We snuck in quietly, Pietro running us into the lee of one of the main buildings. There were a handful of workers scattered around, breaking down salvage, loading or unloading things from nondescript white box trucks, and doing whatever else people who worked in junkyards do. There was a gentle sea breeze rolling in, but it was mostly overwhelmed by the reek of iron, rust, oil and an acrid chemical smell I couldn’t identify. Peeking around the corner of the building, I looked out at the beached ships—each was an enormous, impressive-looking vessel. I guessed that they formerly hauled coal, back when the port at Richards Bay was more profitable.

Stolen novel; please report.

“So, the man we’re looking for, his operation is based out of one of those?” Pietro asked, appearing at my shoulder and following my gaze.

“Yeah,” I said absently, scanning the ships to see if there were any clues as to which was our target. We were a bit too far away to pick out any unusual details, and there were no signs of movement. I glanced over at him. “Okay, here’s the plan: we portal to the top of a ship, you do a quick scout around to see if there’s anyone there and take out any lookouts, rinse and repeat until we find the right one.”

“Sounds good.” Pietro reached up to crack his neck.

“Don’t do that, it’s bad for you,” I scolded, but he just rolled his eyes in response. Sighing, I chose a spot on top of the nearest ship, sheltered from the view of the others by the cabin on the main deck. I spun up a portal and Pietro was through in a flash, with me following a second or two behind.

The cargo hauler was in horrible condition. The deck seemed almost fifty percent rust by weight and I stood on it gingerly, half-expecting my foot to go right through. I had no idea if Wanda had been up to date on her tetanus shots—Sokovia’s healthcare system left a lot to be desired, from what I could tell—but I really hoped so. Pietro was nowhere in sight, so I stayed put and waited.

I didn’t need to wait long. About ten seconds after I’d stepped through the portal, he appeared next to me. “Clear, no sign of anyone.” I nodded, and we repeated the process on the next two ships. On the fourth ship, Pietro returned to me with a nod and a grin. There’d been three lookouts abovedeck, who he’d neatly knocked unconscious before they had a chance to alert anyone else. “Now what?”

“We only want the leader—his name’s Ulysses Klaue. The rest aren’t important.”

Pietro shrugged and looked at me questioningly. “So we kick their asses?”

“I’m not keen to fight if we don’t have to… I have an idea, let me see if I can clear everyone out.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, holding my hands out to either side as I summoned strands of scarlet energy and wrapped them around the Mind Stone at my neck. My consciousness slowly blossomed outwards over the cargo ship, allowing me to sense the minds of the men inside. Near-invisible wisps of chaos magic crept through the rusting hulk, connecting me to each of them: there were fourteen, including Klaue himself, who paced in a small room overlooking the main interior cargo space.

In the original timeline, Wanda had helped evacuate Novi Grad by reaching out to people’s minds in the area—this was the same principle, just backed up by the power of the Mind Stone. Given the subtlety I’d been able to act with back at the hotel in New Delhi, I was hoping I could push everyone to leave the area without even understanding why they’d done it.

First, though, I focused on Klaue. I didn’t want him to be alerted when his men started abandoning ship. I already knew how to cloud someone’s perception of myself, so I figured that theoretically I should be able to expand the effect to dull his awareness of anything outside of the cabin he was in. I took in the cabin around him, using his senses to build a picture of it in my own mind until it was almost like I was standing there, next to him.

And then I was standing there, next to him.

Klaue reacted instantly, stepping back to grab a gun from the desk, training it on me. “What the fuck? Where did you come from?”

I stared back at him with wide eyes, hands raised in a placating gesture. “Uh, what…?” In the back of my mind, I could still feel myself back on the deck of the ship, channelling the power of the Mind Stone—it felt vaguely reminiscent of the disoriented sensation of being in two places at once that I got when I tried to control my body while astral projecting. I stared at the back of my hand for a moment. It looked solid, normal.

“Who are you?” Klaue demanded, thrusting the gun forward slightly to emphasise the question. “How did you get in here?”

I took in his greasy, messy hair, the grubby clothes that might have been tan-coloured at one point, and the smell of sweat and grime. He looked real, too. My fingers twitched, summoning a wisp of chaos magic. “Easy, I—”

I was cut off as he fired his gun. It was point-blank, and I didn’t remotely have enough time to conjure a shield. Whatever was happening broke and I jerked back into my body, gasping, one hand flying up to my chest where I could still vaguely feel where the bullet had hit me.

Pietro was behind me instantly, his arm already behind my back steadying me, eyes wide with surprise and concern. “What happened?”

“I don’t…” I trailed off, slightly confused. It had kind of been like I was astral projecting, but not—Klaue had seen me, without me having to forcibly visibly manifest, and I hadn’t been translucent or anything. It had been uncannily like I was actually, physically there, even though I knew I hadn’t been. Klaue had shot me, and… I snapped out of my reverie. “Uh, sorry, they know we’re here. Plan B.”

“Kick their asses?”

I nodded. “Kick their asses.”

It wasn’t much of a fight. Pietro sped off and I heard muffled gunshots begin almost immediately. Once I’d taken a few moments to steady myself and check to make sure I didn’t have an actual physical injury from seemingly being shot in the chest, I took the stairs leading belowdecks to find that Pietro had already essentially taken down the whole crew himself. I just followed the trail of bodies. They were unconscious for the most part, but at least one had gotten riddled with what I assume had been friendly fire.

As I walked, I mused about what had just happened. I’d actually completely forgotten that, at one point, Loki had used the sceptre to project his consciousness an unknown distance across the galaxy to communicate with one of Thanos’s servants. Immediately, my thoughts turned to space. I’d originally written off space as a lost cause for now because I had no way of getting off-planet, but if Loki could communicate across the universe, perhaps I could, too? Would it be as easy as calling up the Guardians of the Galaxy and asking them to come pick us up in exchange for information and an alliance against Thanos?

I’d caught up to Pietro at this point, who had just casually disarmed Klaue and had him cornered in his office, so I shelved the thought for later. Getting my game face on, I stepped inside and met the arms dealer’s eyes. Pietro stood ready, bouncing gently on the balls of his feet.

“Ah, the Enhanced. Strucker’s prize pupils.” The arms dealer chuckled, more relaxed now that he thought he realised who he was dealing with. Seemingly unconcerned with his predicament, he sat down at the chair next to his desk and reached over to pick up a small dish of wrapped sweets, wiggling it in our direction. “Want a candy?” When neither of us immediately responded, he placed it back on the desk and continued talking. “That was a neat trick, the way you popped in here. Looked about as surprised as I was, though.”

“You shot me,” I said, flatly.

He shrugged. “You startled me.” He looked back and forth between the two of us, his gaze thoughtful. “I hear Strucker’s supposed to be on his way to the Netherlands soon, though of course he’ll ‘escape’ before NATO can finish the transfer. What are the two of you doing here?”

“We’re not with Strucker anymore. HYDRA is done.”

Klaue scoffed. “You think they’re just going to let you walk away? Strucker put a lot of effort into developing the two of you. He’s going to be looking to recoup his investment.”

“We’ll take that under advisement. If I were you, I’d be a lot less concerned about us, and a lot more concerned about myself,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.

He looked back at me like he would a small child. “Is this your first time? Intimidating someone? I'm afraid I'm not that afraid.”

I remembered the similar scene that played out in the original timeline, and couldn’t resist the canned line. “Everybody’s afraid of something,” I said, stepping toward him and letting some chaos magic bubble up from the surface to make my eyes flash red.

Klaue raised a finger as though I’d made a good point. “Cuttlefish. Deep sea fish. They make lights—disco lights. Whoom, whoom, whoom!” he made a noise with his mouth, gesturing with his hand as he did so. “To hypnotize their prey, then whoosh!” He lashed out with a fist, closing it around imaginary prey, then nodded at us seriously. “I saw a documentary; it was terrifying.”

Despite his bravado the arms dealer still flinched slightly as Pietro blurred, stepping over to the desk to retrieve one of the sweets from the dish before returning to his previous spot, moving almost faster than the eye could see. I shot him a disapproving look and he shrugged at me, unwrapping the candy and popping it into his mouth.

Klaue sighed. “So, if you're going to fiddle with my brain and make me see a giant cuttlefish, then I know you don't do business, and I know you're not in charge,” he said, standing up as he looked evenly between Pietro and I. “And I only deal with the man in charge.”

Pietro looked at me and I let out a small chuckle before nodding. “Fine then. How about the woman in charge? Let’s talk business.”

The arms dealer spread his arms out in a welcoming gesture, his face splitting into a wide grin. “Alright, that’s more like it. So, what are you in the market for?”

“I’m looking for something special, and I’ve heard you’re the only supplier this side of the Wakandan border.”

“Ah, a woman of discerning taste I see.” Klaue said, inclining his head in understanding. “Come on, then, and I’ll show you what I have.” Standing back up, he indicated the doorway with a hand.

I stepped back and gestured for him to go first. Klaue met my eyes, snorted in amusement, then headed through. Leading us down to the main cargo storage of the ship, Klaue paused for a moment once we arrived and looked around. After a moment, he scowled slightly and glanced at me. “I’d have preferred my men intact.”

I kept my face expressionless. “We’ll be more tactful in future.”

Sucking his teeth reluctantly, the arms dealer led us further down and stopped in front of the door to one of the cargo bays. The metal door was thick, but moved relatively easily in its track to show a cramped space, crammed full of decrepit drums marked as toxic waste in thick, stencilled lettering. A hidden keypad to the side of the door caused the entire space to shift downwards like an elevator, revealing the real cargo stored here.

Klaue ducked inside and plucked one of the steel-capped glass canisters from the rack, stepping back out to offer it to me to inspect. A shard of luminescent blue and black ore glowed faintly inside, as long as my forearm and twice as thick. It looked cool as fuck. Inside the cargo space was at least another thirty exactly like it. “Vibranium,” I breathed. I passed it to Pietro so he could look too.

“You know, it came at great personal cost,” Klaue said, unconsciously scratching at the brand on the back of his neck. “It’s worth billions.”

“Oh, I know,” I replied. “And I know how protective Wakanda is of their miracle metal. So, I’m hoping returning all of this will open a few doors for us there.”

The arms dealer turned, alarmed, making a face like he’d just sucked on a lemon. “You what?”

I flicked a hand toward him, threads of chaos magic wrapping around his body and hoisting him into the air. “I’ll be handing you over to them as well, of course. I understand that King T’Chaka has taken your escape from their land as a personal offense, and I need all the bargaining chips I can get.”

Klaue’s eyes had shrunk to pinpoints as he glanced around, realising that he was trapped and had absolutely no way of escaping from me. “You really want to go to Wakanda? They won’t be grateful to you—they’re savages,” he spat, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. “To them, you’ll be just an outsider. You’re crazy to think that you could walk in there.”

“Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” I said, stepping forward, one hand wrapping around the pendant containing the Mind Stone while the other reached out toward Klaue’s temple. Chaos magic played over my fingertips before slipping into his mind, my control focused and sharpened by the stone. “You’ll take us there yourself, in fact.”