The Ant and the Boot

It was like jumping into a nightmare, filled with flashing lights and gnashing teeth. I suddenly had jarring memory of that night on Asgard when they came for me out of the walls – the night I died. All I could hear in my head for a moment was the ghost of Natasha screaming my name as she held my broken body, my vision too blurred to see her face.

There was fear in the pit of my stomach as I flew at them, wings spread wide. Those things had killed me once.

I gave a fierce grin. But I had come back. And now – now I wasn’t alone, or even mortal, and I had a responsibility to the people of my world to keep them safe.

“Not today,” I growled, then unleashed my fury upon them in a wave of blue light.

My power, strangely, came out in the form of whip-like vines that severed heads as they struck in a blur. There was nothing remotely beautiful about the way my power approached besides the dancing blue light; it was a destructive force, a force of nature that had no other will than to destroy. What my power didn’t strike it seared with a white-hot, blistering force, giving off the heat of tiny condensed suns. The Chitauri screamed and reeled away from me, their bodies erupting in blistering burns and the smell of charred flesh.

I was untouchable.

I was a god.

I was in awe of myself.

A loud shout came from somewhere far below me, where mortals still traveled on foot. My eyes tore down to the earth, scanning the ground where dust had been kicked up into a whirlwind. I saw bodies there, mostly Chitauri that I had dropped from the sky in my first attack, and blotches of red that painted the ground like bursting roses on a sandy canvas. But amidst that spreading redness I saw a single streak of blue, spinning and shifting as a black mass of creatures encircled it. The red, white, and blue shield in his hand blurred as he moved, blue pushing back the rolling wave of black on red.

Then the blue streak dropped to the ground with another loud cry, the black mass pressing in on him in a flurry of angry hissing and gnashing teeth. I saw his shield lift to his head, the star standing in stark contrast to the darkness around him.

”Steve!

I plummeted down, my body making an arc and then a line completely perpendicular to the earth. At this moment I wasn’t a dove; I was a hawk.

And as I neared the ground, I swung up my wings, my power spreading out as talons that scraped up and crushed the monsters that fell upon Steve’s shield. They screamed before simply ceasing to exist.

I extended my arms and they fell in droves under waves of blue light.

As the creatures began to fall, I descended to the ground and scooped Steve out of the fray. As I took to the air again, my wings spread out in arcs of white-blue light, each one extending for feet, then yards in each direction. Each flap of my wings sent tornados tearing apart the earth, catching up the creatures as they ran.

As we ascended higher, higher, I could see the barren ground left in my wake: the trees torn free of their roots, the boulders misplaced – and the creatures that fell away, a receding shadow against the red earth.

Not far away I could see the city they had planned to attack: poor, nothing like an American city, with nowhere near the defense that it would have taken to fight off these monsters. I could see families crowded outside, watching as they held their children to them. Some of them looked at the ground; some of them looked up at me. In both, fear petrified their features.

A pang of shame radiated through me: After this, would they remember me as a hero or an Angel of Death?

But my thoughts were derailed as I felt heavy, pulling weight slam down upon my shoulders, growing more insistent as milliseconds ticked by. With terror it dawned on me that I could expend too much: that with displays like the one I’d done, my power could run out.

I heaved Steve and I back to the ship, wings beginning to dissipate with every flap. I could feel my grip on him slipping at the edge of my power, the magic wrapped around him beginning to fray like thin fabric.

No, no, no! I screamed in effort as I threw the both of us through the open hangar, the last of my power crackling into the air in the wake of that final burst. I could feel it stinging my fingertips as I collided with cold steel, burning me – the magical equivalent, I think, of overworking muscle to the point of heavy tearing, except instead of only on my limbs I could feel the ache against the very essence of my being.

Darkness crept into the corners of my vision as I rolled my head, watching to make sure that Steve got up. I could see an angry black cut against his leg, but soon he began to push himself up.

Good. He’s alright. I hadn’t failed.

“Steve…” I murmured, but the silent cry of my mind overwhelmed me and everything was swallowed in black.



“Okay, anyone want to explain why the young demigod went unconscious? Cap, I knew you needed to lose a few pounds, but really?”

Cinderella had moved the tiny goddess to the sickbed adjacent to the bathroom and now took up about half the hallway looming over her. Cap, who sat behind me in the cockpit area, gave me a cold glare.

“I want to know what happened just as much as you do, Stark,” he snapped, hands wound tightly around the wound his leg. The black tar-ish material seemed to ooze, discoloring and thickening his blood. I worried for a moment that the injury would turn out to be something really nasty, but then remembered that Cap is a big boy who managed to survive being frozen in a giant ice cube for fifty plus years and could probably recover from an ugly scratch. Probably.

“It is simple: her power is drawn from a limited reserve of the Tesseract. All gods have a source of power, and those sources of power are not infinite. She did not understand the bounds of her own strength, overextended her bounds, and it has taken a toll physically. She is weakened, however, and must be guarded and attended to.”

That was the most scientific Thor had ever sounded. I turned to look at him, blinking.

“That was… Surprisingly helpful, Cindy.”

“Of course. It is a frequent struggle for young Asgardians.”

“Oh? Did you ever knock yourself out?”

“A couple times, yes, but it was usually Loki. He would try to do illusions too vast and would tire.”

“Oh? Did he try to make the illusion that he had social skills? That seems like a pretty draining one, in his case.”

“No, he tried to vanish the entirety of the Palace of Asgard.”

The ride went on pretty much in silence after that, aside from a few growls of pain from Captain Twinkle Toes. Still, to his credit he offered to carry Dove off the ship upon landing despite his injury – when the Capsicle almost tripped down the stairs like the old man that he was, Thor took over.

I spent a lot of time pondering that evening, wrapped in the arms of my beautiful wife with a nice bourbon in hand. Specifically I was pondering how, gosh darnit, Loki had actually given us some real, credible advice: he’d told us where and when to find the Chitauri, and lo and behold they were actually there. We got the first strike in, took out the invasion force, saved some people. Point one for Team Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

Loki was… helpful. I still had some major problems with the fact that, while delivering the news, he tried to make twins on my couch – and everything that happened before that – but Loki stuck his neck out to help us. I couldn’t ignore that, as much as I’d love to.

“Son of a bitch has a lot of atoning to do, more than he can ever get done, really, but maybe he come up to bat after all,” I mused, taking a sip of my bourbon. “Interesting.”

Later that night I left the room, never really getting to sleep so instead getting another glass – perhaps scotch this time, just to change it up a bit. As I walked down the hall I slowed, hearing muttering. I listened, getting ready to put Jarvis to work blowing a crater-sized hole in the speaker.

But, after a moment, I recognized that it was Capsicle’s voice, saying something over and over behind his closed bedroom door.

“You see, children need… No, too nineteen-forties. You see… What I mean to say is… No, no, can’t say it like that… You’re a really swell gal and – what am I even doing?… Dove, you deserve to have someone at your side, someone who can give you and your kid the love and care you’re owed. And, ma’am, even if I’m not the dad, I think I can be a great father.”

Two words: Called it.



My love had performed brilliantly that day.

I almost came out of the shadows when I saw her power begin to fail her – almost, until she made it into that horrid metal contraption and flew off. But in her wake the Chitauri lay decimated, nothing but black ash upon the face of the mortal realm.

She was truly powerful now, beyond all doubt worthy of my affections. When we were reunited I would praise her for her strength and beauty in battle.

“You are most lovely, my bride,” I whispered into the air. I knew, however, in the back of my mind that I was sitting here not to bask in the victory of my bride but because I was stalling – I was uninterested in facing Thanos’ wrath. But soon enough I felt the black pull on my mind, and I slipped between dimensions into the abandoned building where the rafters had already begun to tremble under the strain of Thanos’ ire.

”Do you think that you can defy me, puny Asgardian?”

“Defy you? I have done exactly as you ordered, my Lord. I’ve maintained my search for the remaining pieces of the Tesseract –“

”Did you think that I would not realize?” he thundered on, one massive fist shaking the building, large pieces of loose ceiling bouncing off his shoulders.

“My Lord –“

“The insolents suddenly find us when we strike? What was the difference in this attack that they were able to locate us? It was you, Asgardian, traitor –“

“Lord –“

“You must be punished!”

Luckily for me, the oaf was painfully slow. I had transported myself to his other side by the time that he hurled the large section of cement at my head. I continued, knowing that soon his tantrum would end.

“Or, sir, they have simply advanced their technologies enough to detect us. I’ve warned you before not to underestimate them.”

He turned to look at me, apparently surprised that I’d managed to evade his blow. But he did seem to ponder – slowly – what I had said. Soon he smiled (I believe), something I wasn’t sure was good or bad.

“Asgardian, my loyal servant, see to it that they find us for our next attack,” Thanos ordered, his voice suddenly smug.

“Of course, my Lord. And to what end?”

“I would like you to prove your loyalty, Asgardian, and make those insolents squirm. Allow them to believe they’ve won, then kill the poisoned one. He will be the first of my prizes.”

I shifted, watching his expression.

“Poisoned, my lord? How do I know which one is poisoned?”

Thanos’ grin grew fiercer, savager.

“You will know him by his black blood.”