C156 Spider-Man (Patreon)
Content
“Where is that coming from?” Peter asks after hearing the odd alien language. ‘Is it the Chitauri?’
“I have no idea.” Tony asks as the ship goes silent. “Though I think we should find out...”
“Heh, you think?” Peter says sarcastically.
The Chitauri are a sentient species of cybernetically enhanced beings. Most of them are simple-minded dogged creatures, similar to insects, operating under a hive-mind intelligence.
They are the personal army of Thanos, which he mainly uses to throw at his enemies or cull half the population of entire planets. Whatever the job may be, as long as it pertained to war and death, the Chitauri will follow the Mad Titans' every order faithfully.
“Let’s get to work, I guess...” Peter says as he starts to familiarize himself with the exposed control panels. “Give me a quick rundown on what you figured out so far.”
——————————————
While Peter and Tony put their heads together to, hopefully, get the ships moving, Fury spent hours interrogating as many Kree soldiers as he could.
Through these long hours of unending questioning, He started to get a good picture of what was happening.
“Who’s Thanos?” Fury would ask every Kree this same question.
Most would clam up and refuse to speak, each of them too scared to say a word, which was odd as the Kree seemed fairly confident in every other area.
It was only the name of the Mad Titan that seemed to bring out this collective fear in all of them.
Though that didn’t mean Fury didn’t get an answer to his question. Out of the thousands of captive Kree, one of them had to break.
“The Mad Titan isn’t someone you should be asking about...” A more talkative Kree woman said in a hushed tone.
“Why?” Fury asks curiously. ‘Mad Titan?’
“Thanos is one of the strongest beings in the universe. You may have beaten us and Ronan the Accuser, but when it comes to Thanos, even the great Kree and Nova empires must be respectful. Otherwise, the consequences would be astronomical.” She explains with a trace of fear in her tone.
Of course, since Fury found a cooperative Kree soldier, he made sure to milk her for all of the information she had.
“Sounds like a scary man.” Fury comments as he asks further. “Is it true another army is coming?”
“Yes, a small portion of The Mad Titans personal army...” She goes on to give a small explanation about the Chitauri. “You should leave this planet while you can. Encountering the Chitauri is a mark of death. It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose this battle. Thanos already set his gaze on your planet. If his army fails, he’ll send another or worse...”
“Worse?” Fury asks, loving how open this Kree is being compared to the rest.
“He could visit this planet himself.” She says as a shiver runs down her spine. “Either way, I’m sure we’ll be killed for our failure.”
“Huh...” Fury grunted as he leaned back in his chair. “How long until this army gets here?”
“They were supposed to arrive 18 hours after our arrival.” She answers without trouble.
Instantly, Fury realized that they were on a short clock, as they had a bit less than 5 hours before another alien army arrived at Earth's borders.
“How many ships do they have?” He continues fishing for information.
“The same number as us, I think...” She says after a moment of thought. “I don’t know much though. You’ll have to ask Nebula for more details...”
“Who?” Fury asks with a raised eyebrow.
“Thanos’ daughter...”
—————————————————
Speaking of Nebula, the unloved daughter of Thanos and her Kree subordinates are currently occupying the house of a married couple that are out of town for their anniversary.
They spent the day infiltrating various government buildings, searching for any clues that could lead them to the Tesseract.
Sadly, their efforts bore little to no fruit.
Sure, they learned about plenty of government facilities, though they wouldn’t know what was inside until they start poking around more.
As the Kree stealth squad was raiding the kitchen for food like a bunch of animals, Nebula sat on the couch and familiarized herself with the TV.
“These humans really need to update their technology...” Nebula comments as she flips through the channels. ‘What’s this?”
A man in spider-themed clothing stood on a podium surrounded by a crowd of eager people.
“The alien army that was threatening our planet through our TVs and radios has been dealt with. They were in orbit around our planet, waiting to invade. We, the Avengers, acted quickly and launched an attack before they could enter Earth's atmosphere, as that would keep all of you away from the fighting...”
‘Impossible...’ Nebula thought in disbelief.
Suddenly, a Kree soldier who was in hearing range dropped a cooked chicken leg onto the floor and stared at the TV in shock.
“Lies!” He exclaims, drawing the attention of the other Kree. “Our army would never lose to these apes so easily.”
After playing that clip, a news anchor started speaking.
“Spider-Man, Earth's most loved hero and co-founder of the Avengers, says the alien threat has been dealt with.” As the newswoman says this, the newly arrived Kree watch in shock. ”Some were skeptical of his claims, but he had this to say.”
The screen changed to a similar clip, except this time the oddly dressed man was talking about commandeering Kree ships and interrogating the surviving captives.
“How dare they spread lies about our army...” A Kree says through his grinding teeth.
‘Hmm... I don’t think he’s lying though.’ Nebula thought as she wondered what to do now.
“We should return to the ship.” One of the Kree voices their opinion. “Ronan needs to hear of this.”
“What if he isn’t lying?” Nebula asks thoughtfully.
“...” No one had an answer for her, though they all thought that was highly unlikely.
“That doesn’t matter!” One of them says angrily, as he glares in Nebula's direction. “We’re returning to the ship. Ronan the Accuser wouldn’t lose to some weak backwater planet.”
Nebula seethed as she was treated harshly by some random grunt. This is all due to Ronan’s attitude toward her. He disrespected her at every moment he could, and now his subordinates have learned to do the same.
“Look at me like that again, and I’ll cut you into tiny little pieces.” Nebula earns as she takes out a knife from her belt.
After all, her father wouldn’t care for the loss of a random Kree nobody.
“Humph, try it.” He counters and draws his laser pistol.
Without another word, Nebula flicked her hand and launched the knife across the room. Before anyone could react, the knife flew into the disrespectful Kree's left eye, piercing straight into his brain.
As he lifelessly collapsed onto the floor, the other Kree grabbed their weapons tightly and aimed at her.
“Clean this mess up and meet me at the shuttle. We might as well check for ourselves if Ronan lost or not.” Nebula says as she walks out of the house, ignoring the guns pointed at her the whole time. ‘Is it wrong to hope the He's dead?’
———————————-
Time slowly passed as Fury extracted as much information from the captives and called the Avengers to assemble once again. Just when they thought the threat was taken care of, another alien army was only hours away.
Though two people didn’t get this message, as they were currently in space.
Tinkering with the ship's control panel, Peter and Tony worked steadily to figure out the many wires and started working on a port that Jarvis could connect to the ship through.
After a couple of hours of work, in which Peter had to make a few trips to Tony’s workshop for supplies, the two were only a few steps away from completing the port.
“Connect the blue wire next...” Tony backseats Peter's work.
“No, it’s the grey wire, you idiot.” Peter comments as he grabs the grey wire.
“No, the grey wire connects to the scanners, not the databanks.” Tony corrects with a huff.
“How much do you want to bet?” Peter asks with a challenging look.
“$100,000 and a single tweet from the others Twitter account.” Tony offers, accepting the challenge.
“Deal.” Peter says as he grabs the blue wire and plugs it in.
Instantly, the monitors in the room started lighting up, as the scanners started to pick up a million nonexistent intruders on board.
“Looks like I win...” Peter says as he replaces the blue wire with the grey one. “I only take cash, by the way.”
“Whatever, just hurry up.” Tony started pouting like a child.
Finishing the last few tweaks, Tony was finally able to plug Jarvis into the newly made port through his phone.
“Good luck, buddy.” Tony says as Jarvis’ code floods through the port and into the ship.
“Connection secure.” Jarvis’ voice plays through the ship's speakers. “Accessing ships databanks...”
“Haha!” Tony laughed triumphantly. “It worked!”
“Translating foreign alien coding and language... 1%... 2%... 3%... 4%.”
[1 hour, 57 minutes, 07 seconds]
A/N: 1526 words :)