“Well, that looks not good?” Hank McCoy said after a moment, as depressed lines, like something heavy had cut up the field while remaining almost unseen from above, came into play on the terrain scanner.

“Prince Thor, a minor matter.” I pointed at the ground there. “Three inches of rain on that?”

“Reduce yon Sigils to mud and muck, instead of channels of sacrifice, indeed!” He lifted up his Hammer as I waved everyone off, and they quickly vacated the area as thunder boomed in a tight area above. Clouds opened up out of nowhere and brought the rain down in a solid sheet that would turn the grounds of Fenway into a swamp, and wash away anything that had been put down in what was basically holy water at this point.

“Hey, Dyna, you’re hovering!” Jewel blurted out suddenly.

I looked down at where little arcs of lighting were crackling all over me, but I was definitely hovering in the air while standing up, not wobbling all over the damn place. “Uh, huh.” I shut off the arcs, and promptly started falling from the sky. I caught myself fifty feet down, stopped almost instantly, and rose back up a bit jerkily, lightning dancing around me.

“That’s not a gravimetric effect,” McCoy said, after a glance at his instruments. “Nor magnetic. How are you doing that?” he asked curiously.

“Not sure. It’s using a good chunk of my juice, and the vibrational alignment of my Kirlian Aura has changed axis and direction...”

“It’s changing the vibrational direction of your atoms?!” McCoy was absolutely delighted. “That is ASTOUNDING! When we get back to the lab-”

“We are going to sleep for a week?” I yawned at him. “Do we not have enough work to do?”

“Oh, right,” he mumbled, and got back to business.

“Bobby, freeze the infield solid. That should complete the nullifying of whatever they did to bring up a Hellportal.”

“Gotcha, Dyna.” Iceman leaned over the side of the Fantasicar, looking at the drowned field covered in water, and basically inhaled, then exhaled.

The frozen wind coming from his mouth only expanded, growing colder as it did. It washed across the infield from one side to the next, and instantly all that water froze solid in mid-ripple.

“Nice. Should tell the city that they’ve got a massive ice-skating rink in Fenway for at least the next twelve hours!” I commented.

“After a night like this, they need some fun,” groaned Stark, sitting in the passenger seat behind McCoy as the Fantasicar, with all its extra passengers, turned smoothly away. The light forcefield took care of the wind, so those standing on it weren’t discomfited, and they could all fly anyways.

I worked on flying upright alongside it, easily keeping up, but kind of bobbing around in place as random kinetic jolts moved me around. Mmm, looked like I was going to need lots of practice at this.

“Mentor has a lot of flying exercises if you need some practice at this,” Richard piped up, watching me fly so erratically.

“Sure,” I sighed, and shifted to a head-first format, which instantly smoothed out everything. “Ah, much easier. More used to this position.”

“Drop me off at the quinjet. I left my drink in my other suit there,” Stark said loftily.

“Glasses enough for everyone?” I asked him calmly.

He glanced around once. “Might want to stop at a Shel-mart or a lemonade stand?”

----------

Dealer was finishing up the mass Purification ceremony on everyone we could find who had been wounded by werewolves, purging the Curse from them. The loudest and most frightened nay-sayers, trying really, really hard not to believe this was all happening, all shut up when the black worms of the werewolf Curse burned on them in silver fire, crawling over their souls as they burned and battled.

If prior experience from Cleansing after other raids was any clue, they were probably going to get religion in a big way.

I had a bottle of hundred-year Glengarry Scotch and another of hundred-year Cognac brandy, and conjured up shot glasses for everyone: mob guys, super-villains, SHIELD agents, cops, even normal folks who’d fought and had to be cleansed.

It was a lot of booze. It should have run out fairly quickly, but that’s what Alchemy was good at. It just kept going.

I even poured a snifter directly for Octavius. He kind of glared at me, and then Mr. Hill just grunted and handed over half a cigar from where he was sitting on a Disk, the scars all over him ugly but closing.

Octavius took the full glass, sat down next to The Mountain, got the cigar lit, and the two puffed away next to one another. His cyber-tentacled protégé Octavia, looking very frazzled, had two glasses of brandy and basically passed out as her mechanical limbs kept her upright.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The Avengers were helping with clean-up, but this area around The Mountain and Dealer had the most people, and General Rogers stopped in to look over everything. To the utter astonishment of the crooks, thugs, mooks, and villains, he had personally thanked each and every one of them for their help, tipped glasses with them, and toasted their success... before quietly noting that most of them had arrest warrants out, were using military hardware without permits (or even more dangerous weapons), and it would probably be good for them to go before someone started pointing all that out.

Oh, and the Tribes had tallies of everything they had done, and they were all getting paid.

Said individuals melted calmly away, smirking knowingly. As the sun rose, The Mountain and the Mick transported whole bunches of them as suddenly the Wagon got much bigger on the inside. The Mick’s Ride purred away down the Road, vanishing from the city, while whole bunches of people were ‘ported by The Mountain out of there.

Most of them kept the glasses. I FOUGHT THE FANGS IN BOSTON was etched on them, with the date.

=============

Something else you can fight!

If you're not reading this on Royal Road, you're helping pay a thief. Please read it in its original home, it's still free! You get the foreword and afterword, author comments, and comments from people with questions! I have not given permission for this story to be posted ANYWHERE ELSE.

=============

The sun cleared the horizon, and I quietly murmured Aru’s Salute to myself. I sat down on a Disk and just sighed.

General Rogers sat down next to me, and Kwannon and Dealer both wandered over.

“How wired in to the Tribes are you all?” he asked us pointedly, as the rest of my people went to go sit down, while Kwannon kept listening to the vestiges of the battlenet.

Kwannon was silent. Naturally she knew what was going on over on the Tribal side, but she had an Oath and a Mark, and hadn’t shared because that was what Loyalty meant. I didn’t begrudge it.

“I’m not on SHIELD’s update list, if that’s what you are asking, and I noted the Tribes made sure any Staters were shooed off politely so they weren’t involved.”

Danny Rand, Luke Cage, and Red MJ had all wound up back in New York City last night, while Castle’s team was here. None of them had been idle.

I had been informed that Black Tom Cassidy had shown up at Mr. Hill’s house where Cain Marko was, and turned into an unholy terror. His ability to manipulate and energize plants meant one hawthorn stake turned into a demonic moving tree that had ripped through vampires like scything wheat, and he’d been happy to snipe off any werewolves impaled on its branches, too.

No, the Sanctum Sanctorum hadn’t had any issues, and Ursula had actually been working with a lot of Thor-worshippers and New York’s Shielders, with Peggy, Blue, and Red coordinating things just like Peggy’s husband had here. Since we had already purged the Burroughs once, they only had to worry about newcomers, so there was a lot less to do.

Peggy had basically harried and run them towards the Sanctum, with Red MJ particularly good at the task, and the Markos and Cassidy had turned the place into an abattoir.

Made some good money off the Tribes, they had.

“The Tribes took out the Detroit Arsenal, Fort Mackinaw, and every military base in between,” General Rogers informed us in a strained voice. “Kill teams went through the Special Forces training areas and wiped out half the teams, and their entire support structure. Half the Joint Chiefs are dead, some inside the White House and Pentagon.

“Department H’s command and support structure was wiped. Their Flights were not on premises and so weren’t taken out, but there are dead men going all the way up to Parliament.”

We all digested that silently. It was totally obvious that the Tribes had taken the botched raid as an act of war, and retaliated mercilessly.

He was The Patriot. He could not be taking this well. Soldiers of the States had died, and his heart had to be bleeding.

He also had to know it was coming, and had been building for years. It had also been surgical, and civilians were not targeted, despite the Tribes’ own being killed. If it was disproportionate, well... he had a Mark sitting inside his nasal cavity. He knew very, very well what Murica had been sending at the Tribes all these years.

“There were at least fifty uprisings all across the country last night of werewolves and vampires, aiming to create new numbers and feed into demonic Rituals of one sort or another. There was plenty of magic at work, too.” He sighed once. “The Champions went into Atlanta. The Aerie was in Louisville. There were Red Star companies, Tribal companies, Coastal Squads, and Shielders and their teams from forty different countries deployed. Indianapolis and Columbia even had Wakandans come in, and Atlanteans were in almost every port from Newfoundland to Florida.”

Everyone was silent as they digested the immensity of the effort that had just taken place. It was a full-scale multinational invasion to get rid of a threat, put together and mobilized in less than twelve hours. Obviously there had been plans in place for this shit for years. Even the Atlanteans knew not to tolerate werewolves and vampires around after Namor’s experience with the Nazis and how they had used the supernatural.

“Was Namor supposed to roll in here?” I asked into the silence.

“The Atlanteans came into every major port on the Atlantic, except here and New York City, because we were here,” General Rogers answered firmly, eyes glancing east towards the ocean.

“And where did the High Guard have to come in?” Dealer asked simply, and everyone sucked in a breath.

“Birmingham and Chattanooga,” General Rogers sighed deeply. “There is no Chattanooga anymore. The vampires made it a major attack, twice the numbers we saw here. The Hellgates they threw up were in place before the whole threat was obvious, and the city was wiped. The Red Stars lost a whole company. There’s a boiling pit where the city used to be.”

“Are they, are they going to try to spin this, too?” Peter blurted out, aghast. He had wandered over to say something, and wound up listening instead.

“They can’t. The Great Bear already stated that Russian lives were lost protecting United States’ citizens from the stupidity of their leaders, and if they blame any of this on those not responsible, there would be repercussions.”

Thor was standing off too, merely listening to this. Mortal politics were not a concern of his, but he just nodded agreement at those words.

The Great Bear’s words held even more weight on the rulership level than those of Primus, who I was sure would be backing them. The average guy believed Primus, the scholars loved Doc Bronze, but the movers and shakers of the world believed The Great Bear.

=======

Author’s Note: The Sheltons are the Walton family of this world, so Shel-mart.