Chapter 84

Maggie had worked as an assassin for most of her life. Then as a fugitive on the run from the law, then a prisoner, and then a member of a four-person superhero team.

She had never in her life been a part of an army.

She soared across the Wakandan plains, her shadow passing over dozens of troop transports filled with soldiers and Avengers as she and Sam flanked Rhodey in the air, and a thrill ran down her spine. Ahead of them the five alien dropships waited in the forest, emitting thick plumes of smoke. Maggie's wings stretched wide to either side of her, the wind blew in her face and she kept pace with the hovering transports below. Her blood sang at the oncoming promise of battle.

She was part of an army now.

At that moment a few hundred feet below, Bruce (wearing the Hulk Buster armor they'd brought from the Avengers Facility) tripped on a rock and slammed face-first into the grass, carving a gouge in the ground. Maggie winced.

"You alright Dr Banner?" she called as she rocketed overhead

"I'm okay," he said in a lower voice, "it's okay."

Maggie lifted her head again as she, Rhodey, and Sam outstripped the hovering troop transports and soared across the plains.

"I've got two heat signatures breaking through the tree line," said Rhodey.

Maggie pushed more power to her engines and followed War Machine as he soared low over the heads of the Wakandan forces already waiting on the final grassy hill overlooking the edge of the dome. Maggie caught a glimpse of colored robes and glinting spears before she too flew over their heads.

The dome was a faint shimmer of blue in the air, and as Maggie approached she angled sideways so she could see through it without smashing into it. Beyond the dome lay a hundred feet of grass, and then the thick forest. Brush-fires flickered in the trees. Maggie's goggles locked on the approaching heat signatures and zoomed in as they emerged from the treeline. Her teeth ground together.

"It's the big one from New York and the female from Edinburgh," she called. Her goggles zoomed in further, taking in the larger alien's new metal claw hand and then the horned female alien's face: the alien's sharp eyes flicked up to Rhodey, Sam, and Maggie as they flew across the inside of the dome, then down to the forces amassing on the hill. A smirk curled her lips.

Maggie's eyes narrowed.

"There's just two of them," called Sam, wheeling away when no more aliens emerged. "Looks like an envoy situation to me. Cap?"

"We'll come down," Steve replied. "Hang tight, everyone." Maggie glanced over her shoulder and saw the Wakandan forces solidifying on the hill – they stood lined in orderly regiments, their spear tips glinting in the sun with the spires of the Golden City rising in the distance behind them. She spotted the red and gold figure of Bruce amidst the Wakandan soldiers. War chants echoed down the hill.

"We better circle back," Rhodey muttered, and Maggie rolled away from the dome, flying back to the main bulk of the army. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled – she hated putting her enemy behind her – but she trusted that if the dome could keep out a whole spaceship it could keep out two aliens. As she angled down toward her army she saw three figures break away and begin striding down the hill: King T'Challa, Natasha, and Steve.

She swooped low and dropped lightly onto the grass at the front of the army, into the spot Steve and Natasha had just left. To her right the cohort of bald, red-and-gold armored women looked over and ran their eyes over her wings. She met the eyes of their leader, T'Challa's fierce-faced general Okoye, and nodded. Okoye tipped her chin in reply.

Maggie turned to her left, where Bucky stood with his rifle propped in his metal arm. "So, how's Steve's history with peace talks?"

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Not fantastic." He jerked his chin down the hill at the smoking dropships and the small conference occurring at the base of the dome. "I don't think those guys are here for peace talks, though."

"Hey Wyvern, what're you doing down there?" came Rhodey's voice. She glanced up, peering at War Machine as he hovered a few hundred feet over the army, repulsors burning. The Falcon flew circuits overhead.

"Just saving my strength," she shot back, rolling her eyes even though Rhodey couldn't see it. "What, is the view better from up there?"

"You know it is," Sam replied. "I've got a great view of T'Challa telling those guys to go screw themselves."

Despite the nerves shooting up and down her spine, Maggie smiled. She could think of no better place to wage this war, in a country that would fiercely defend itself in the name of life. She and Bucky stood together at the front of the shining army, one dark red and one dark blue; the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier together again.

At the base of the dome, the female alien lifted her blade with a snarl. On that signal, each of the dropships let out a metallic groan and began to move: their outer casings slid up, rising dark and ominous. Maggie looked over her shoulder at Dr Banner and the Hulk Buster armor shrugged at her.

She turned back and watched the spaceships groan open, frowning, as Steve, Natasha, and T'Challa walked back.

Steve took his place beside Bucky again. Without taking his eyes off the dropships, Bucky asked: "They surrender?"

"Not exactly," Steve murmured.

"C'mon Wyvern, you planning on walking?" called Sam, his voice tight. Maggie didn't reply, too focused on the spaceships – before her eyes they seemed to ripple, change… she blinked, and suddenly realized that there were things pouring out of the ships and into the forest below. Her pulse fluttered in her gut.

Twenty feet ahead of his forces, T'Challa let out a cry: "Ibambe!"

As one, a thousand voices around Maggie roared Ibambe in reply. She didn't know what it meant, but it called to the fighting instincts sparking through her blood and to the fire burning in her stomach. Her wings whirred. The chant roared on around them, punctuated by the stamp of spear butts against the ground, as Maggie stood in silence with Bucky, Steve, Bruce, and Natasha.

On the other side of the dome the female alien swiped her weapon down, and at that signal a dark mass swarmed out of the treeline. Hordes of what at first Maggie thought was some kind of black skinned animal ran out into the open plain, and her mouth dropped open when she realized the creatures were four-armed aliens with horrific razor-sharp mouths and leathery black and yellow skin, snarling like wild dogs. They kicked up dust as they surged across the plain toward the dome.

Bruce had warned them about these: Outriders, he'd called them.

"What the hell," Bucky intoned.

Maggie swallowed. "Okay, yep, coming up now." She turned to Bucky, and as one they reached for each other's hand. They didn't need words – they never had, when it counted. Bucky's sea-grey eyes gleamed and he gave her the barest nod.

Maggie's hand slipped out of Bucky's, her wings flared out, and she stepped into the sky as easy as breathing.

Her hand still tingling from Bucky's touch, Maggie rocketed back to the edge of the dome with Sam and Rhodey, and watched the roaring, squealing Outriders hurl themselves at the energy barrier. The barrier zapped and flared, burning the creatures and making them scream in pain. Maggie watched one wrench itself through only to be sliced in half and fall, shrieking, to the dirt.

"They are killing themselves," came Okoye's horrified murmur. Maggie didn't deign to reply. The scent of burning flesh reached her nostrils, black and acrid.

Beyond the dome the horned female alien just stared across the expanse of space at Steve and Natasha with the barest hint of a smirk on her lips.

And then, as if the energy field could only handle so many alien bodies launching against it, a few whole Outriders started to slip through. Their skin still sizzling, they raced down the embankment and into the river. Back up the hill on T'Challa's orders, the Wakandans activated a line of smaller blue shields. Maggie didn't intend to let the Outriders get that far.

She and Sam swooped, raining down energy blasts on the loping aliens. Her shots landed sure, slicing through their damaged bodies and bringing them to tumbling halts in the grass, and she soared over their bodies with her eyes fixed on her prey.

T'Challa shouted something in Wakandan, and the grass plain lit up blue as his forces fired lasers of their own at the Outriders. Maggie heard Bucky's machine gun amidst the laser blasts, and found the sound almost comforting. Yet more Outriders pushed their way through the barrier.

"Watch your height, Sam!" Maggie called, and a half a second later Sam let out a cry as an Outrider launched up and tried to snatch him out of the air. He spiraled out of the way and swung his arm back to shoot the Outrider in a neat move which Maggie took mental note of.

"Thanks for the tip," he said breathlessly, and they crossed paths in a whine of engines.

Maggie hurled a cluster bomb at a knot of Outriders and wheeled away before she could see them disintegrate in a flash of fire and shrapnel. She and Sam were birds of prey on this battlefield, one with fleet narrow wings and the other with webbed dragon's wings, swooping sharp and deadly out of the sky.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sam hit a button on his chest and three red-plated drones spring out the back of his wingpack. Redwing. He'd been doing some updates. The Redwing drones buzzed to the ground and slammed into the running Outriders, plunging through their vital organs and then bursting out the other side.

"Cool trick, Falcon," Maggie called as Sam soared over the wake of his drones. "Watch this."

She tilted her wings and surged downwards to meet a group of about ten rampaging Outriders head-on, her blood singing as the wind roared in her ears. She looked into the aliens' wide, gnashing jaws. At the last moment she sent a flow of nanotech down her heel spurs, forming it into a heavy, lethally sharp spike ball, and with a flick of her wings and a boost of power to her engines sent the ball slicing through the Outriders, ripping them to shreds. Their blue blood misted in the air.

Maggie retracted her nanotech and pinwheeled away, feeling the outer tip of her left wing brush against the grass.

Sam tutted into the comms. "Man, I knew you were a show off." They soared up together, firing downwards. "You see the teeth on those things?"

"Alright back up you two," Rhodey called, "You're gonna get your wings singed."

Maggie's wings juddered as War Machine rocketed over her head, wafting her with backdraft. He banked sharply so he flew parallel to the inside of the dome. Slots on the back of his armor opened up and she watched as a series of canisters flipped out and tumbled to the ground, before erupting in a massive fiery explosion that consumed the Outriders breaking through the barrier. Flaming, squealing aliens raced into the river. Maggie let out a whoop.

But then, as she swooped again to pick off more Outriders, she spotted dark bodies thundering around the edge of the dome.

"They're circling," she warned, then had to look away to drive her heel spurs into the Outriders trying to run around the Wakandan forces inside the dome. Their leathery skin felt sickening as it gave way under her Adamantium barbs. One of them swiped at her and its claws sparked against her nanotech armor.

She listened with half an ear as the others on the hill discussed the development.

"Cap, if these things circle the perimeter and get in behind us, there's nothing between them and Vision," Bruce warned.

"Then we better keep 'em in front of us," Steve said in a hard voice.

"How do we do that?" Okoye.

A silence. Maggie and Rhodey looped around each other and then jointly fired on a group of five flaming Outriders.

"We open the barrier," T'Challa said grimly.

Maggie's stomach lurched even though she knew it was the best option – the Outriders might be single-minded beasts but their fangs and claws were wickedly sharp, and they moved lightning-fast in unexpected ways. She chased a group of the thundering creatures as T'Challa radioed back to the Princess, and picked them off while the Wakandan generals expressed their worry and defiance.

T'Challa shouted another order, and the individual blue shields at the front of each battalion flickered away. Anticipation crackled through the air.

"Get ready to cover the ground forces," Maggie muttered into her, Rhodey, and Sam's comms. She and Rhodey wheeled to one side, picking off Outriders trying to flank the army, and Sam wheeled to the other side. The sun shone hot on the side of her face, and sweat rolled down the back of her neck.

There was a moment of stillness on the Wakandan plains. Most of the Outriders within the dome had been picked off, and the Wakandan forces stood straight-shouldered and steely eyed, staring down the enemy beyond. Maggie's engines cut out and she glided on the hot air rising from the plain. A breeze wafted across the grass.

And then a single voice rang out:

"Wakanda forever!"

The stillness shattered with a clash of metal and a deafening roar, and Maggie got a birds-eye view as hundreds of motionless, ordered battalions surged forward as one. They flowed across the green field, a glinting, roaring tide with King T'Challa and the fugitive Avengers at their crest.

Maggie, Rhodey, and Sam dropped out of the sky and soared over the charging army. Maggie blew over Steve and Bucky's heads just low enough that her downdraft spurred them on, then surged ahead of the sprinting soldiers.

A blue line appeared in the dome ahead, expanding into a ten-foot gap. The hundreds of Outriders pressing themselves against the blue barrier surged forward with a snarl.

Maggie had reared up to fire off a round of grenades, so she saw the moment the two armies met – Steve and T'Challa streaked ahead and launched themselves at the Outriders in a clash of Vibranium and fangs in the middle of the river. Seconds later the Wakandan forces collided with the mass of roaring creatures with a clang that resounded even in Maggie's ears, a hundred feet above the battlefield. Bucky's blue vest became indistinguishable from the tangle of human and alien bodies ripping into each other below.

Blood and water sprayed. Metal sliced into flesh. Bodies flailed.

Maggie dove. She plunged out of the sky and didn't stop before she hit the bulk of the charging Outriders. Instead she tugged with her mind, sending nanotech flaring out around her – the bony ridges at the forefront of her wings sharped into a razor edge, nanotech flowed up and around her head in a protective shell, her heel spurs extended and sharpened, and all over her body metal barbs sprouted like green shoots in spring. When she hit the Outriders, she'd become a human wrecking ball.

She wasn't conscious of much while she plowed through the creatures. She only saw flashes of the trampled green ground, leathery black bodies, and blue blood. Her entire body shuddered with impacts. But when she lost velocity and had to pull upwards again, she looked down to see she'd gouged out a swathe of the thundering Outriders, leaving a mess of four-armed bodies in her wake.

Her flash of satisfaction only lasted until the Outriders swarmed over their fallen companions as if she'd never made a mark. She lifted her gaze, assessing: the Wakandans had halted the Outrider's mindless surge but the aliens were tearing into the army, inching forward toward the city. She spotted Steve on the ground, raining blows on an Outrider. Five more ran past him.

She overheard T'Challa urge his sister to hurry, and her reply that she'd barely begun.

Maggie looked over her shoulder. "Shuri, are you able to open another portal?"

"Where? And why?" came the Princess's harried voice.

Maggie swallowed, tossing up risk factors and odds of survival even as she swooped over the Outriders, blasting them with her energy cannons. After a second of hesitation, she gave Shuri the coordinates. "Just open it for a second."

Five seconds later a single square portal opened up in the blue energy field, a hundred feet above the ground. With her wings wrapped close against her body Maggie rocketed through, and a second later the portal closed behind her feet.

She'd hoped that no one had noticed, but: "Wyvern, what are you doing?" came Romanoff's breathless, puzzled voice.

"Don't worry about it." Maggie didn't look down at the Outriders surging across the plain below, instead fixing her gaze on the five smoking ships resting in the forest. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., assemble all firepower!"

"All?"

"You heard me – rockets, artillery, lasers, energy pulses. All of it!"

"I would not recommend unleashing that much power all at once, you have not tested-"

"I'm about to test it," Maggie cut in grimly, and the A.I. didn't respond. Maggie wouldn't have heard her if she did – she narrowed her vision to the nearest dropship, taking in its sharp black angles, trying to judge the sturdiness of its casing, and eyeing the open hatches from which the Outriders still poured out. She felt the whir of nanotech as machinery opened up across her suit – rocket launchers, energy cannons, blasters, even a shoulder-mounted machine gun. Whatever the nanotech could create, it did, until her shoulders, back, wings, and arms resembled a forest of artillery.

The closer Maggie got to the dropship, the larger it seemed – it loomed into the sky like a metal behemoth, casting a large swathe of forest below into shadow.

Maggie just had to get close enough to aim. But not too close…

She rocketed over the treeline, and the crosshairs at the center of her HUD landed over one of the dropship's open hatches.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y., now!"

With a judder that Maggie felt down her spine, a deafening surge of firepower launched out of her nanotech weapons: four massive energy beams, two lasers, and a volley of rockets, flares, and gunfire that streaked toward the dropship. Ears ringing, Maggie reared her wings and turned just as the scorching ray of firepower sliced right through the open hatch of the dropship.

For an instant, all Maggie saw was the blinding blossom of light that erupted from the side of the ship. Half a second later came a wave of noise like a massive shotgun blast, and a shockwave that caught her up like a wave and tossed her tumbling through the sky. Past the ringing in her ears, she heard her fellow Avengers cry out in surprise.

Disoriented and spinning through the air, Maggie tried to divert power to her engines to regain controlonly for her heart to skip a beat when her engines didn't respond.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y.!" The world blurred in her goggles; streaks of brown, blue, and burning red.

"The launch knocked out the power relays, working on getting them back now!"

Maggie's heart leaped into her throat and she started desperately beating her wings, trying to halt her freefall with just her cybernetic connection to the wings alone. She managed to stop the spinning but she was still plunging fast toward the trees and snarling Outriders below. "F.R.I.D.A.Y.!" She tried turning and managed to catch more air in her wings, but then found herself swerving towards the dropship she'd fired on – plumes of fire consumed its entire right side, and the air rippled with smaller explosions.

She threw out her limbs to add more air resistance, and her pulse rushed in her ears when she looked down to see tree branches rushing up to meet her. She heard someone shouting her name over the comms.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y.!"

A high-pitched whine sounded, and in the next second Maggie jerked out of her downward plunge. Her newly kindled engines shot her forwards, dizzying her with whiplash, and she felt her boots brush tree branches as she yelped and beat her wings to surge up and away. Once she'd gained enough height to be able to stop contemplating how it would feel to be impaled on a tree, she turned to admire her handiwork.

She hadn't blown up the dropship, but she'd taken out a chunk of it. Most of its right side was a fireball, raining sparks and shattered metal on the forest below, and the screams of burning Outriders filled the air.

Eyeing the exposed inside of the dropship, Maggie reared her wings once more. If she could just get in there-

"Wyvern, the other dropships have locked on to your position," came Rhodey's terse voice.

"We can't cover you from here!" added Sam, shouting in the middle of his sentence as if he was in the middle of grappling with something.

Maggie let her laser focus slip away, and took stock of her situation: she hovered a hundred feet up from a snarling, bloodthirsty horde of creatures, on the wrong side of the protective energy dome, having just blown a chunk out of a giant alien spaceship. The four other massive dropships had just focused the entirety of their weapons arrays on her. Missile turrets glinted in the sun. She glanced down and saw the horned female alien point her weapon up at her in a very obvious signal.

Maggie gritted her teeth. Gun runners and cults and metal robots she could apparently handle – giant alien dropships might be a bit above her paygrade.

"Okay," she said breathlessly. "Coming back now. Shuri?"

She rolled backwards, pushing all power to her engines as she shot back towards the dome. The wind shrieked in her ears and her HUD lit up with red flashing warnings as the other dropships fired. She sliced through the air, focus fixed on the blue energy field rushing toward her, and her eyes widened when she saw a hazy reflection of herself in the barrier: herself, with what looked like a veritable forest of jet-black projectiles dogging her path. She had nowhere to go but forwards.

Maggie didn't flinch or take her eyes off the buzzing blue field, and she was only feet away when the barrier in front of her shivered and then slipped open, a small square opening in the protective shroud.

"Phew," she breathed to herself as she slipped through the gap, and glanced back to see the portal snap shut just in time for the dropship missiles to smash against the dome. The explosions bathed Maggie in orange light.

War Machine buzzed past her, firing repulsor beams at the still-charging Outriders below. "You're so stupid!" he shouted. "We just have to hold them off from inside the dome!"

Maggie shrugged to herself and tilted her wings down to follow after him. "Figured I'd give you less to hold off." She glanced to her left and watched as part of the outer casing of the dropship she'd hit groaned and fell away, flattening a swathe of forest. Imbalanced, the entire dropship listed to the side.

With a smirk, Maggie rolled down and rejoined the fight.

Titan

In the shifting ruins of his planet, Thanos and Dr Strange argued over the ethics of universe-wide genocide.

"With all six Stones I could simply snap my fingers… and they would all cease to exist. I call that mercy." A light shone in his eyes.

Strange stood, not breaking eye contact. "And then what?"

Thanos gestured to his ruined home. "I finally rest." He looked up into the pale orange sunset on the horizon. "And watch the sun rise on a grateful universe." His eyes drifted downward. "The hardest choices require the strongest wills."

"I think you'll find our will" – with a clap of his hands Strange summoned his glowing shields – "equal to yours."

Thanos looked up. "Our?"

And then Tony dropped a building on him.

Wakanda

Maggie had only been gone about two minutes, but things had gotten dire. The Outriders flooded through the Wakandan army, isolating individual soldiers and picking them off when they were alone. The Avengers were getting more and more spread out, and they weren't strategically seeking out places to fight in any more – they were just surviving. She could hear their shouts and grunts of pain over the comms, a chorus to the clamor of metal, shouts, and gunfire across the plain.

Maggie soared down and drove her Adamantium wings through a swathe of Outriders, grunting at the hard bite of their bodies as she cut through them. Another Outrider launched itself at her and she pinwheeled inches above the grass to catch the creature by the throat and tear her claws into it. They struggled in midair for a moment, swerving drunkenly across the battlefield, before Maggie clenched her fist around something vital and tugged. The Outrider fell lifelessly to the ground and she pulled out of her turn, breathing hard. She rocketed over the Hulkbuster's head and shot a few energy blasts into the Outriders surrounding him.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of dark hair and glinting metal disappear beneath a massive snapping Outrider. Two more leaped forward, fangs out.

Maggie didn't think, but her wings reacted anyway.

Bucky fell back under the Outriders with a cry, reeling from the force behind their muscular arms. They'd knocked his gun away so he flipped a knife from its holster behind his shoulder and stabbed up at the Outrider pinning him down. It howled and reeled back, but another Outrider leaped on it and swiped for Bucky's throat. They scrabbled in the dirt, a tangle of limbs, teeth and blades.

Roaring, Bucky plunged his knife into the first Outrider's mouth and tore upwards, even as the second one tried to chew his metal arm off. A clawed foot sank into his thigh and he shouted, wildly stabbing past the blue blood falling into his eyes.

And then suddenly, the weight on top of him disappeared. Bucky rolled to his feet with his knife bared, shouting, only to see Meg standing before him; she'd wrenched the second Outrider off him and hoisted it over her head. He watched as she slammed the creature to the ground, sank her heel spur into its chest and shot an energy blast down its howling gullet just for good measure. She whirled, and Bucky allowed himself to take a breath. Meg's eyes burned as she stood before him, metal wings flared, her clawed gauntlets glistening darkly and her face streaked with grime and blood.

"Need this?" She tossed him his fallen gun and flashed him a breathless grin before turning to swipe her wing barbs through an Outrider that had just leaped at her back. When she turned back, Bucky had recovered himself enough to shoot her an I'm irritated that you put yourself in danger but proud of the results expression that he knew she could read as clear as day. When he'd seen her flying out on the other side of that dome, isolated from everyone who could help… it was all he could do not to run after. He could tell she'd learned a few new tricks and gained new weapons since they'd last fought together in Germany, but she'd apparently gained Steve and her brother's tendency to put herself in danger. Still, she'd come back. He'd been worried that she wouldn't.

Scowling, Bucky swung his gun up and shot at a pair of Outriders stampeding past, and Meg turned with her energy blasters raised to face a whole pack of the creatures that had just torn through a group of Wakandan soldiers. Standing over the fallen bodies of the aliens they'd killed, sweat sliding down their faces, Bucky and Meg fired on the hordes of Outriders. The aliens were overwhelming like this – they flowed inexorably forward like a snarling, mindless wave, ripping everything before them to shreds.

Bucky's back hit Meg's. He felt the recoil of his gun shudder through his body and into hers, and in return he felt the backdraft of her red energy blasts. They moved in tandem, twisting and firing in an exact mirror of each other. His metal arm slid against her wing with a metallic chime.

Meg's hair brushed his face when he jerked his head over his shoulder and shouted: "You've gotta get back in the air, doll!"

Her muscles bunched, but he sensed her reluctance. He knew why: he would never leave her alone and surrounded by dozens of Outriders.

So he was surprised when she reared her wings and leaped upwards, blasting the encroaching creatures with her downdraft, before she tapped a red button on the inside of her gauntlets.

Bucky flinched as the Outriders surging towards his back suddenly lit up with flame. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Meg beating her wings a few feet up in the air, twin streams of fire scorching out from the blasters attached to her wrists. The reflected flames glowed in her red goggles. The Outriders beneath her squealed and reared back, and with another beat of her wings Meg circled, blasting down fire on the Outriders trying to tear Bucky apart.

Bucky allowed himself a moment of awe before he continued firing on the Outriders. In his memories, HYDRA's other assassin was a being of shadow and ice, silent and deadly. But this, he realized, was what Meg meant when she called herself the Wyvern – this glorious woman blazing red and black in the sky, raining down fire on her enemies.

With new light in his eyes, Bucky lifted the butt of his rifle to his shoulder and re-joined Meg in the fight.

The flamethrowers had been Tony's idea. Thanks, Tony.

When Maggie had set fire to all the Outriders surrounding Bucky, giving him a few moments inside the circle of flames to recoup and fight his way out, she cut off her flamethrowers and surged back across the battlefield.

She didn't get far. As if a switch had been flipped in the battle, the resistance against the Avengers suddenly became intense. She saw Rhodey go down, knocked out of the sky by the big alien's hammer, closely followed by T'Challa disappearing beneath a horde of Outriders. The big alien and the horned female strode through the opening in the blue dome.

The air around Maggie became fire and violence, and it was all she could do to stay airborne. The Hulkbuster armor went down. An Outrider kicked Natasha and she went flying. Maggie heard Bucky shout in pain over the comms.

She turned, planning to drop a line of cluster bombs just inside the dome opening, but she strayed too close to the ground and an Outrider leaped up and seized her leg.

"Agh!" She tried to kick it off but a second Outrider leaped up and grabbed the first, climbing up it and wrapping its claws around her other leg. Before she knew it there was a whole chain of the creatures hanging from her legs, trying to climb up each other to get to her and slashing and clawing at whatever they could reach. Her heart leaped, and her breath sounded loud in her ears. She felt long teeth gnash against her armor – the nanotech held but the pressure made her wince, and she beat her wings to try and get away but realized with a lurch that the weight of all the creatures was pulling her down to the ground–

A scorching white beam of light blasted down through the air and landed in the middle of the battlefield, and for a moment Maggie thought they've broken through the barrier, it's over. Her wings faltered and the pile of Outriders pulled her down to the ground with a crunch. The breath rushed out of her lungs, and she winced as the light raining down burned rainbow sunspots in her vision.

But instead of the Outriders storming forward and missiles raining down, something incredible happened. Abruptly the weight of gnashing, snarling Outriders above her vanished, and she rolled over to see an axe whirling away through the air, sparking with electricity. What in the-

Maggie sat up with a gasp, staring at the axe as it smashed through the racing Outriders, knocking them off the fallen Avengers like an electrified missile. It circled back to the beam of burning rainbow light, alive with lightning, only coming to a halt when it was caught by-

"Oh hell yes," Maggie breathed.

In the heart of the battlefield, standing in the center of a massive rune burned into the ground, stood none other than the God of Thunder. Maggie had never even met him and she recognized him in an instant: lightning sparked across his Asgardian armor and in his eyes, and his red cloak flowed behind him. She didn't recognize Thor's companions (a raccoon carrying a gun, and what looked like a tree with legs) but at that moment she couldn't think of a sight more beautiful.

Across the battlefield, Avengers got to their feet. Maggie rose, breathing hard and not 100% sure she wasn't hallucinating, her wings unfurling. About fifty feet to Maggie's right, Bruce flicked back the helmet of the Hulkbuster armor and crowed: "You guys are so screwed now!"

Maggie glanced around, looking at everyone else to make sure they could see what she saw, and made eye contact with Bucky where he stood a little further back from the epicenter of Thor's landing. His eyes were wide and glinting with hope. That, as well as the way the horned female alien took a few steps back from where she stood in the portal opening, made Maggie's chest swell and her chin lift. Keep swinging.

Thor turned away from the staring Avengers and looked to the female alien and the larger one. Lightning crackled around him, and he stepped forward.

"Bring me Thanos!" Thor broke into a run flanked by his unusual companions, the three of them roaring as lightning broke around them and the Outriders ahead stampeded forward to meet the challenge. Maggie's heart leaped.

Thor launched into the air, lightning coalescing around him as he raised his axe, and when he brought it down Maggie had to shield her eyes from the electric blue blast that demolished the Outriders around him with a clap like breaking thunder.

Maggie realized she was grinning. Thor looked so much cooler than the footage she'd seen of him. The fact that he was saving their asses didn't hurt either.

Her feet planted in the dirt, her wings spread wide on either side of her, Maggie felt hope bloom deep in her chest. She thought of what Tony had said before he disappeared on the spaceship: You got this, Maggie. I'll see you on the other side.

She finally allowed herself to believe.