15273/AVENGERS FOREVER: Battlefield '44

AVENGERS FOREVER: Battlefield '44
Date of Scene:	19 July 2023
Location:	Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes, France
Synopsis:	The heroic Agents of SHIELD travel through time to capture a moment in an alternate D-Day Landing!
Cast of Characters:	Carol Danvers, Natasha Romanoff, Quiet, Steve Rogers, Darcy Lewis, Bobbi Morse, Wanda Maximoff, Richard Stadler
Tinyplot:	Avengers Forever

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Carol Danvers has posed:
The briefing had been, for lack of a better word, brief. Kang was frustratingly vague on the exact mechanisms that allowed travel in this sense, and had only been clear that the device they sought was a specific moment that had somehow crystalized to be used as a source of power. When asked to elaborate, he'd simply said:

"You will know it when you see it."

                                * * *

This isn't the World War II from the history books.

The waves foam and slam against the hull of the landing craft, cleaving through the water towards the shore. A plume of diesel smoke belches upwards into the gloomy sky, and the soldiers of the 116th Infantry Regiment huddle together and wonder whatever chaos awaits them on the shore.

The team for this mission had been given instructions and disguises to allow them to blend in amongst the soldiers. The first strange and noticable thing being that there were not only other female soldiers present, but that it seemed entirely usual. Each member of the team wears a simple, period-accurate A-11 wristwatch with a miniature communications device built in. Through it, Carol Danvers' voice crackles.

<<Remember, once we're on the beach, we're on the look out for this 'moment'. It's part of how Immortus is powering his army. But keep your profiles low - we want to cause as little disruption to the timeline as possible. It mightn't be ours, but there's people out there relying on how things happened here.>>

As Carol speaks, a streak of blue plasma hisses through the air above the landing craft and the soldiers turn their eyes skyward. There is a roar of shredded steel and a great, box-like airship with 'USAF' stenciled on one side hoaves into view. Smoking, it plunges towards the waves and with a deafening splash it crashes down. The landing craft is thrown into the air, the soldiers - the time travellers included - spilling out into the air before plunging into the waters.

On the shore, beyond the rise dotted with concrete bunkers and pillboxes, stands a great bipedal machine. Like a canon with mechanical legs. The barrel smoking, the air before it shimmering.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
The group goes to spill out, and Natasha Romanova looks around. Hair tied tightly under her helmet, the old rifle held in an arm. she doesn't particularly like the weapon - US WW2 era equipment isn't particularly reliable or accurate, but one works wiht what they have. She moves to stay close over to the ground, sweeping through as they're deployed/dropped.
    They're fortunately close enough to the beach that they're not going to risk drowning when they spill out.
    Natasha might know these beaches from extensive study, but for some of the others it's as a life experience. She has her first objective present as she charges forwards - namely some of the anti-tank hedgehog that's a few dozen meters away. She runs for it, even as shrapnel goes off around her. She moves to charge over to it and ducks behind it for cover. Even as she goes to surveil the area, looking for signs of what they're after. Not paying too much attention as other soldiers are blasted apart near her by shrapnel, the crash.. Or not as fortunate to land as close to the beach as they are, sinking landing craft having troops not able to swim with heavy backpacks, drowning..

Quiet has posed:
Stefani had made some rather severe alterations to the clothing she'd been given. The sleeves had been ripped off, for instance and the army drab trousers had been torn up in specific places to allow better airflow. She'd tried the helmet on, but when it continued to slip around on her head, she'd just thrown it over a shoulder...

Inside the landing craft, however, Houston had pulled a tarp directly over her head, and was 'hiding' under it as the water started to splash up over the edges of the craft and across those within it.

Those who know her well know that salt water is essentially acidic to her body, and having it spray across her constantly was both uncomfortable, and unwanted.

It wasn't until the crashing began, that the tarp was thrown off of her head, a streak of black went across her very-annoyed eyes, and Stefani Houston just vanished in a cloud of black smoke!

She did not reappear for several moments, not until she was confidently on the beach, confidently stowed behind a bit of cover and already raising her sniper rifle up toward the enemies in the distance.

She doesn't hesitate a second, her rifle is charged, and she begins to fire... and fire, and fire, picking targets and locking them within her deadeye scope.

Bang bang bang!

Steve Rogers has posed:
For many veterans of D-Day, one could understand if finding themselves back in that situation again might cause them to cower, to go into shock and lock up at traumatic memories come back to life.

Steve Rogers might not find the current moment any less troubling, though it doesn't cause him to lock up. He'd helped get everyone into the landing craft, familiarity with working their way down the rope ladders and cargo netting to the vessel, timing their entry in the rolling waves. He'd made sure motion sickness pills had gone around to anyone not used to the waves before they'd left their own time.

And now? Now it was too much like he remembered, if not exactly. The sound of machinegun fire, peppering the waves and pinging off the landing craft's armored sides. The soldiers huddling to keep their heads low.

The blast of the aircraft above leaves Steve know what's coming as the vessel plummets in their direction. "Brace yourselves!" he yells, expecting a big wave. But not the one that results as they are thrown into the air and out of the landing craft.

Steve finds himself underwater. A soldier next to him is foundering, sinking rather than swimming. Steve unfastens the man's pack, letting it sink to the ocean floor, but giving him more buoyancy as Steve shoves him to the surface. It makes himself sink deeper, but then he's swimming hard for the sunlight above, head breaking the surface. "Head for shore!" he calls as he begins swimming that way with strong strokes. Seeing another soldier floundering, Steve grabs him by the back of his collar and tows him to where the waves are breaking and they can stand.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Since their first meeting with Kang, Darcy has basically been living on the Damocles. Trustworthy or not, alterior motives being whatever they might be, even the infinitesimal bits he's been willing to share with her are revelatory, like glimpses through a pin-sized peephole into an entire world of understanding. On the 'fancy science' scale of things, anyway. She's not any closer to understanding what they're really doing all of this for, but it's a cool couple weeks in space.

By contrast, this is very much not space.

And yet, people sare still shooting at them with plasma cannons. That's a real bummer. So is being dumped in the ocean. She vanishes beneath the waves for a few moments, and then pops back up. Buoyant! It's about all she has going for her, as coughing and spitting, she starts swimming for shore. Unlike the various other very military-minded folk here, this is far from her comfort zone, not some archetypical conflict of the ages thatt she has, perhaps, imagined what it would be like to fight in. Or remembered, in the case of their valiant leader! After popping back up, the first thing she does is look around her in the water, for a pack that ends up being floating on the surface nearby, still tethered to her, and thus having conveniently not floated away. She grabs on to it, and starts swimming, doing everything she can to... well, mostly just not die, until she can floppingly pull herself onto the shore like a beached whale, and then crawl toward whatever passes for cover.

Hack, hack, wheez.

Once she's' coughed up the seawater and isn't immediately shot, she starts digging in the back she's pulled with her. "I know he said we'd know it when we saw it, but I'm going to see if I can get any readings. This doesn't feel like a place we want to be wandering around aimlessly!" Obviously, her bag is filled with SCIENCE TECH GIZMOS.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
This was a test. A test to see just what kind of partnership Kang wanted to have with their Earth, their timeline. Just how disposable did he think SHIELD and Avengers assets were. Bobbi needed to see everybody come back alive from this - it's World War 2 after all, even if not their own, and that was a deadly campaign.

Bobbi can't help but feel very responsible for everything taking place right now. They had a choice - fight that Kang or see what his deal really was. Fighting didn't seem like the best option. It was lose-lose. Now she had to make sure there could be some kind of upside.

This is not her time nor her war. This is Steve's. Sort of. Not what they have in the history books or films certainly. But the gist is the same. When Steve calls out 'Bruce yourself' she does just that.. and then finds herself tumbling out of the craft and in to the cold waters.

Survival adrenaline kicks in and she orients herself. Several soldiers drift deeper next to her trailing sinuous of blood. The shrapnel get them. She kicks and swims to the shore. Staying low as she comes out, she scans the battle field.

True to D-day, it's chaos on a massive scale. Bobbi calls in to her watch- <<"Sound off!">> This is truly one of those moments in her life when she's realised she's in way over her head.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
'Keep a low profile' probably means do not pull the whole Waterrifying, floating witch stunt. Back in a timeline that her father may be more familiar with, at least in theory, also reinforces the conscious effort for Wanda to avoid obvious displays of otherness. She has had a lifetime of experience in that, if not the battlefield.

Besides, having "Lensherr" or "Maximoff" stitched onto her uniform anywhere would arguably subject her to some side-eye if the combatants in this war were the same as the other. Being summarily dumped in the Atlantic is not her idea of a good time, but she keeps her mouth shut and her eyes trained skyward to their destination even when a violent beam blows apart all suggestions of safety. Carol and Kang's reminders of what they seek require her full attention.
Water rages around her, trying to sweep her down like everyone else. Marionettes with their strings cut, too many of them, thrashing around in the shallows where they can be picked off at leisure. No amount of seeing the still photographs or clips from British Pathe can prepare anyone for the real thing. Not her. She can hear Steve shouting, Bobbi calling for a sound-off. English translates, somewhere in her mind.

Instinct overrides some of that extensive training to avoid such reactions, but her abilities operate off intent and sometimes the mind reaching out subconsciously shifts things in reality. She is all-in-one. The tweak bars seawaWater from funnelling through her nose, breaching her lips. Blurry shapes like legs and fallen weapons and maWateriel resolve in front of her eyes, but she cuts forward under the waWater long as she can until forced to surface. The minute protection of that unconscious shield holds until a fresh breath can be taken, the distance substantially cut once the drowning risk is slashed. "--Scarlet--" she gets out, and that's enough, darting under again as a wave tries to pummel her to the seafloor.

Richard Stadler has posed:
    Indecision about his place in this organization wasn't going to stop Stadler from signing up for the odd mission or two. I mean, he went to an alien space ship just a few weeks ago. Where could he go that would top that? No where, really.

/When/ could he go... well, that was an entirely different story, and he once again found himself in a situation that would most likely get him committed if he tried to explain it to anyone else. If he didn't die on this beach, first, which, while honestly a rather interesting epitath, would be exceedingly suboptimal.

The uniform was the toughest. There weren't many soldiers in general pushing 50, so anything he wore would have to come with a story. Eagles were right out; the fraternity there would have been too small not to be noticeable. Gold oak leaves were a good compromise. Some REMF staff officer coming up with one of the waves, missing the last set of LC's and on this one. Gear had been suprisingly easy; this universe apparently saw nothing out of the ordinary on going in with what seemed to be the equivalent of an FAL, chambered in a familiar .308. The frankenstein even had what looked to be a Picatinny Rail, thought the sight was a heavy hunk of metal and glass. It's weight was easy to carry, at least, as the waves buffeted the LC and left him feeling just a little green around the gills. Sea Duty wasn't...

Oh, there was something. Not only was their an air ship, but it had Air Force markings. It should have been the Air Corps until, what, 1947?

Bracing didn't help as much as he wanted to, however. The smashing concussion throws them up and out, causing them to spill into the water, and Rick to kick and tread as much as he could. The pack went first, gear falling down to the sea floor. Combat webbing would have been next, but his boot touched ground before that, and he was able to drag himself toward the shore, sucking in air in exertion before he could feel the sand dry out as he ran.

He wanted to rest, but that could happen in about 30 seconds. He pushed himself furthur, running toward cover and, when passing, grabbing Darcy by a strap on her gear and pulling her along with him as she crawls. "You better get something fast." He manages to wheeze out, bringing up the rifle and aiming it toward a pillbox on the beach, squeezing off three rounds. "Because there's a lot of dead people in the sand right now."

In the watch, he responds. "Here, Six. Lewis is with me. Unless we've got a moment plotted, we need to get off this beach and away from that... thing."

Carol Danvers has posed:
As the waves crash over Wanda, a hand grabs the pack she wears and hauls her upward. It's a chaotic mix of salt water and screaming air until they reach the sand, the blonde-haired Marvel forsaking her usual colourful costume for the olive drab of the infantry. Even the bullets fired that happen to strike her seem to atomize upon hitting and otherwise invisible shield about herself.

"C'mon," she shouts to Wanda over the roar of battle, "We can't stay here."

She speaks into her comm as she runs up the sand, helmeted head bowed low and "Grease Gun" clasped in her hand. She throws herself against the sandy rise with an oof, rolling onto her back to watch for the rest of her approaching sand.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM

A deafening, deep tone like a great horn that rumbles in the pit of the stomach suddenly washes over the battlefield. The world around the agents seems to stutter. One moment there are other soldiers on the beach with them, the next they are several feet ahead, then several feet behind. Leaving an after image. Like an old VHS on pause. Impacting everyone except the agents. When the sound of the horn subsides, time begins to move normally again.

In her bag, Darcy's science doodads sound off frantically.

It came from somewhere over the rise. Somewhere beyond the bunkers and pillboxes.

<<Quiet, clear us a path up to the bunkers.>>

She glances from side to side, like someone looking to commit a crime and not get noticed. Her hand glows, and the barbed wire barricade before her melts away. There's still a climb and a concrete box full of Nazis to contend with, though.

Over the horizon, the bipedal cannon fires again. Part of the beach to the west erupts in fire, smoke and screams before leaving behind a patch of blackened glass.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff would look up and over at the bi-pod. Trying to analyse it in her mind. The heavy bulk of the frame is decidedly inefficient. It's at least well designed enough to be functional rather than theindications of something jury rigged. So the engineering here seems to at least have done more of hte things - or had the technology long enough to have made dedicated platforms for it.

But the fact it's bulky and inelegant is a bit contrasting to the rest of the realm around them. Even the mass produced technology here is better crafted, better welded, and far better streamlined. Bullets ping over off the hedgehog she was ducking behind, and at the orders coming over she goes to give a quick nod to the other members of SHIELD and the Avengers present.. Then she's going to start to zig and zag, heading along towards the beach. And probably not the best for them to simply charge on through and power their way through eveyrthing. she goes to take a scan along the beach, looking for unit insignias behind the pillboxes and trenchlines.. Good, they're garrison dvisions still. Conscripts with a minimum amount of training and eqiupment. Once htey get shoved hard they'll break.

Five inch shells from destroyers blanket across the beach, not properly sighted, going off kilometers away from the target and of ships too far out to shoot accurately.

Quiet has posed:
Quiet wasn't able to lend a helping hand directly to her team in the water, sadly the water was like lava to her... just like the game kids like to play in their living room. In order to help her companions on this mission, she had to get over the water and in to a sniping position behind one of the metal bracket barricades put in place to keep heavy vehicles from advancing on the beach.

Stefani had her issued Springfield rifle in-use already, finding it to be wholely lacking in the modern day features and abilities that she's gotten accustomed to in her life's work, but that's not to say she didn't bring a little something stashed away on her back, wrapped up in a black and green canvas roll.

Electing to aim for anyone trying to even consider firing upon her team, Quiet is as rapidly as she is able to, targeting the enemies ahead through her Springfield scope! It's a very gorey affair, one that might be best to not think too deeply about as her accuracy is rather ungodly good...

But the damn rifle, it makes Stefani growl in frustration as she can't be as quick as she'd like to be.

When she hears Carol call out to her, she drops the Springfield in the sand, then crouches and whips the bag off her shoulder. She rapidly begins to assemble something far more befitting her style.

When Quiet comes up again she's holding a much larger, much more 'modern' rifle. One that she slapped an ammo cartridge in to the ammo well with rounds the size of half a beer bottle...

Now aiming for the direct path they're headed toward, Stefani fires again, her own gun booming like a cannon all its own, obliterating the targets she's firing upon now, even blasting through some of their cover positions to tear them to pieces on the other sides of it!

Steve Rogers has posed:
Steve Rogers is helping other soldiers up out of the surf, getting them moving towards the scant cover afforded by some of the tank barricades and the raised dunes where Carol is gathering the team.

Cap fires off a few shots, only to hear a voice behind him. "Steve? I thought you were parachuting in!?" the surprised voice says.

Steve Rogers turns to see a thin kid of about 22. Dark hair is soaked from a plunge in the ocean. The GI is carrying an odd looking rifle, but other than that, he's all too familiar. Steve not even needing to look at the nametag that identifies him as PFC Jenkins.

"Jenkins?" Steve says in surprise, the sight of the young soldier like a punch to the gut. The surprise lasts just a second before being replaced by urgency. "Jenkins, get to the dune, get to cover. You can't stay out here in the open-" he manages to get out, before the crack-whip sound of a bullet passing close by. Jenkin's body jerks and he goes down in a spray of red mist that goes to coloring the sand and water.

Steve grabs him before he's even hit the sand, laying him down gently. He just looks at him for a moment before rising to hurry on to join the team.

"Not everything is different here," some of the team might hear him to murmur, before Steve pops his head up over the sandy ridge and starts firing on a pillbox, joining Stefanie to suppress fire while the others move.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Darcy has only just made it to one small bit of cover when Richard catches up and promptly starts hauling her toward the next. She doesn't resist. But she DOES keep fiddling with the stuff in her pack, which sort of amounts to 'not helping,' and thus complicates the process all the same. This might be very stupid of her, or maybe what's she doing is important enough to risk it. Either way, it might be dangerously slow going for that next bit of cover...

...but fortunately, they have cheats enabled?

At the very least, the time blip gives them a moment (relatively speaking) to move fairly unopposed, which is good because Darcy's backpack is doing ALL the things. "Well that was weird. Hmm. Calculating in the Hilbert space, the eigenvector-" Time is back, and blast of sand reminds her that now probably isn't the time for elaborate technobabble explanations. Suffice it to say, she definitely got some interesting readings off of whatever just happened. "Stadler, I'm going to relay you some coordinates. Military-speak them for the rest of the team, yeah?" It might make more sense for him just to read them, except... well, if he looked the actual numbers are gibberish. She's doing some crazy math to turn what might be spacetime vector notations into normal-world map-useful distances.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Bobbi, back to the sand to keep a low profile, whips the big gun around she's carrying. She knocks it a few times to get the water out and then taps on the ... pressure gauge? just what kind of weapon is this. A big barrel of bullets and an engine.

She yanks on the start cord a few times to get the engine going. It gives a puff of black smoke as it splutters to life kicking off any remaining seat salt. "Holy shit.." she says primarily for herself. A diesel powered gatling gun.

This thing was meant to be heavy, but for super soldiers they could pay the weight game no heed. She clicks the fire settling from A to 1. There's no need to go all Rambo with this thing. They're not here to make waves.

The sudden frameshift as if time had been disrupted is nauseating if only for the briefest of moments. It was hard to miss given that every agent on the team experienced it. <<"I'd say we have our target then..">> She catches sight of Steve holding the body of a GI and her lips twitch. This is likely going to open a lot of old wounds.

"You heard Danvers let's move." She rolls over and rises up on to a knee. The big gun is held like it's nothing as she pulls the trigger sending the heavy rounds uphill at the pillboxes. Even so the weapon has some serious kick and she lets out a /Woooo!/, then rises up and starts to move with their semi-covet time unit.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
In the mass of combatants struggling to shore or emerging in the brown surf, Wanda can easily be overlooked. Or 'Scarlet,' as she's opted to call herself. Her method of camouflage works until Carol fishes her up like a pearl from the deeps. Such treasures need a few seconds to get her land legs, though she manages her footing rather quickly. Blame Pietro games as a child perhaps. She pulls her wet braid away from her throat, shoving it under her collar. "Turning all the bullets back would be a bit unsporting, don't you think?"

The bullets in her own gun, wet though it may be, hopefully not included.

Strange jolts of time and motion rattle her somewhat more than they must Carol, since their brave captain isn't faltering. Nor the Russian spy or Cap himself. Albeit when she looks back, witness to a private moment of grief, the timing is all wrong. Her gaze averts.

Still, the afterimages flashing through her skull leave something to be desired. She veers to the side, twisting her hands together and plunging them down into the soil. Feeling for lines that converge and twist beneath them all, the source of energy for her the way others might need food or the sun.

Darcy's art is science of the cutting edge. Hers is probabilities being enchanted and enticed by a vermillion siren song. Wanda moves across the battlefield in time with whatever mana might well up or not. Every couple of steps she puts down an invisible marker, another arcane needle spinning on a compass. It's like scattering seeds through a field except under fire from the Norman cliffsides and more Nazi resistance than Johnny Appleseed or Prosperina ever faced in their endeavours. Zigzagging for the rearing limestone walls pockmarked by enemy forces takes priority.

But with SHIELD making a toehold, the witch is doing her part in creating a web of fortune for when they need it.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Stadler looked around, briefly, from their position. There was the thought of grabbing some of the soldiers on the beach itself to assist; concentrate fire toward targets, using engineer resources to clear obstacles. But the sound rolling over the beach, and the way the soldiers move, stuttering like film, showed they would be of limited utility. Which meant they had to use their own resources to try and work through this hell.

Darcy has the right idea to move when the world is litterally glitching around them, and his own movement is as quick as he can make it, before the sand kicks up and he tries to yank Darcy into cover mid-technobabble. "Not a physicist, Lewis, you're going to need to translate!" He says, before raising his own rifle again, firing off another few bursts towards the pill box in front of them, before he's told there's going to be some coordinates relay'd. "Give me-" He pauses for a moment, searching his sopping wet jacket, before unfolding a laminated map, spreading it out on the sand as she relays.

<<All right; net call, listen up. Lewis has something triangulated. Assuming landmarks are the same, we're looking at grid square, Lima Gulf Too-Wun-Six-Ate-Niner-Niner-Fife-Tree. I say again, Lima Gulf Too-Wun-Six-Ate-Niner-Niner-Fife-Tree. This should be..." He pauses for a moment, looking up to the bluff, and back to the map. "Past the pill boxes on the rise here, over it, maybe 300, 400 meters past. We're going to try moving up.>>

With that, he's at his belt, and, with a pull of a pin and a fling of a handle, tosses a cyndrical grenade toward one of the pillboxes closest to them, as it sputters and coughs up grey-white smoke. "Come on, Lewis, we've got covering fire." He says, before dashing off toward the rise in the cover of smoke.

Carol Danvers has posed:
Carol moves up the sandy rise with one hand extended before herself, the other clasping her service weapon. It may simply look as though she is holding a palm forward to say 'stop', but the low-energy shield provides an invisible and bulletproof cover to crouch behind. Grouped with Quiet's covering fire and Wanda on the threads of fate, it means the squishier members of the team don't have to worry so much about rogue bullets.

<<Remember,>> Carol continues over the crackling radio, <<Hit the button on your watch once we have the moment and it'll send us back. There's only one charge, and once we're out of here there's no coming back. We've only got the one shot.>>

As they crest the rise, they find the network of trenches between bunkers and churned-up Earth that overlooks the beach below. Behind them, a flood of soldiers pours onto the beach with more still following behind in landing craft. Ahead of them, a stretch of Norman countryside and in the distance the bipedal cannon stomps forward to reorient itself.

"Ameriakner!" cries an electronic voice, and a moment later a vaguely-octopoid machine emerges from its place half-buried in the dirt. Something like an iron sphere suspended on many telescoping legs, it lashes out at the group while glaring balefully through a glowing red eye.

It doesn't take long to notice it isn't the only one, either. Several more emerge, all in varying states of disrepair.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Well, she's not sure if these things are native to here or not. The Wermacht garrison seems to be mostly treating them as it - not that that means much of anything. Hmm. Natasha makes a mental note to try and grab an officer along the way to get some infromation out of. She moves to dart through cover, even as bullets and explosives fly back both directions. People are dying - that's nothing new.

As she goes to dart her way towards one of the large octo-drones, she moves to fire at it several times with her rifle. THe bullets do nothing. About as much as they might against a Kryptonian. Natasha reevaluates.. Then goes to take out a small regulation GI Canteen.. That she's filled with cheap hogwash. She goes to stuff a small sock into it, and then throws it over at the octo-drone. She hurls it towards the main body, where it shatters and catches fire! Even if the drone is heavily insulated against fire, having it's mechanics burnt at such high temperatures will hopefully mess wiht it. Then back to the rifle, firing shots along joints and servos.

Steve Rogers has posed:
Perhaps the moment earlier tripped something in Steve Rogers. As the octobots rise up out of the sand, Steve vaults over the ridge from which he was providing covering fire behind.

He sprints forward, leaving anyone moving at regular human speeds behind. One of the robots turns to orient on him. A leg swings along the ground as if to bludgeon him, but the super soldier deftly jumps above it, coming down near to the robot. He brings the barrel of his gun to bear on the robots glowing eye. Bullets shred whatever material it is, while the tentacles wave about, slamming into its own body to try to crush the attacking American.

Steve slides across the top, evading the pummeling robotic limbs. He jams the gun in through the eyehole he's shredded and pulls the trigger again, unloading the weapon. He abandons the gun and leaps away moments before whatever powers it detonates in a loud WHOOMP that sends pieces of metal arcing through the air to rattle down on the beach.

Quiet has posed:
When Steve comes up beside her, Stefani looks over at him with her eyes still covered in a strange layer of ebony hue, she stares at him with angry green eyes... not angry at him, but at their enemies and this situation as a whole.

She puts her eyes back to work though, aligning her scoped heavy rifle for another banging shot that blasts apart another large chunk of the enemy cover atop the rise!

But the group is soon clear enough to push forward, with Quiet staying near to the very last moment before she finally moves...

Well no, she starts to move, then stops. A few seconds are spent throwing off the sleeveless military drab jacket that she'd been wearing, just electing to toss it aside in a wet lump of sandy covered material, leaving her in much less attire beneath.

Her heavy rifle is grabbed up again then, and Quiet is off running behind the others, not far from where Steve is in fact, feeling most comradery with those she knows have the most military experience.

On the way up the ridge, two enemy soldiers rush in to raise weapons upon their position, but once more Stefani flashes in to her smoke element form! The soldiers barely have time to even register it before she reappears between them, putting a 1911 handgun to the side of one's head, and pulling the trigger! The second spins toward her, raising his rifle up to fire upon the invader, only to have his gun kicked aside by a swinging leg from Stefani who dances around the weapon, and drives her combat knife up in to his throat!

Before the two bodies can settle in to the dirt, she's gone again... back in to smoke form, she trails in to the sky.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
After Richard relays the info, Darcy gives him a quick upnod that seems to confirm he got it all right. After that, she closes the main flap of the pack. There isn't that much more she can do with any of that gear: her knowledge of this stuff is mostly restricted to more theoretical than practical, and they'll have to rely on those watches for the backward trip.

And then octo-nazi-bots appear!

Presumably, the fight isn't really why she's here, so she hunkers down a bit as Richard no doubt returns fire. Except, no, she's still fiddling with the backpack. There's a narrower pouch on the side, kind of a cylindrical one. Like one of those water bottle holders on a hiking pack, except, well, a lot bigger. Inside, not so strangely, there is some kind of metal tube. She pulls this out.

BANG BANG, POW POW

Shots continue going off, from both sides. She pulls, the cylinder telescopes a bit. Flips a latch, yanks something else, and a little handle pops out. Click. Snap. "Ok, this goes in here and..."

After many suspensful moments of assembly, the battlefield IKEA telescope is complete. Well, that's sort of what it looks like, anyway. Until she hoists it up on her shoulder. "Stadler, cover me." Uh...

And then, suddenly, the otherwise unassuming SWORD agent pops up from behind their cover, and presses a button. There's a weird hum, that first rises in pitch, but then suddenly drops, into a frequency so low it's felt more than heard. Both ends of the tube glow blue, but there's no 'shot,' at least not one they can see.

Several of the octo-nazi-bots simultaneously fall over. "Wow, wasn't sure that would-"

Oh right, cover. She drops back down right as a blast strikes the area in return.

Bobbi Morse has posed:
Ambushed underfoot. The octobot rises out of the sand in a shower of particulate. Bobbi points her big gun down and begins to fire. The penetrating ammo rips through the tip of its chassis before one of its long legs whips up and trips her sending her tumbling down to the ground.

She fires directly up at it from beneath this time. Whatever the internal mechanisms are she isn't trained in them. This is blind fire and the best she's done is jam up some of the legs. More like cincobot now.

Its stabbing foot shoves down at her and she rolls out of the way and back on to a knee and a hand. As it twirls about to come at her again she rolls to the side and grabs one of its legs. With a groan she yanks the machine until it tumbles over. It's already inverting itself as she pounces on to its chassis again.

Gripping through the bullet holes she puts her feet to the articulating joints and puuuulls. With a groan the metal gives way revealing the interior of the thing. With the plate itself she smashes in to its insides again and again and again until the thing eventually stops moving. The legs still twitching like a dead spider.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     It made things a bit... surreal for Stadler to know that you could just leave a combat zone at the press of a button. That and the difference in time left the sore temptation to look at this less like a mission and more like a game... something the strange and weird anachronisms and machines around them only encouraged. In which case, it was important to remain grounded with the fact that yes, he could still die here.

Case in point, those robots leaping up from the dirt in front of him. Those limbs felt like whips, tearing and ripping through fabric on his body and leaving bloody streaks as he returns fire. The weapon may have been ancient, but the ammunition wasn't. Black tip, armor-piercing rounds would work well aganist the simple metal and steel of bots like this, if they would simply slow down. "Lewis, Do you know how to shoot?" He yells behind him, firing a round at another machine, and another. Damn it, they were like goddamn landmines. "Lewis-"

He turns his head, and sees her moving to assembly some Device with a capital D. And asking for cover. "What the hell do you think I've been doing, planning a goddamn vaca-"

And then there's that hum, Up, and then down, and then crashing bots. "Oh."

Clearly, he could only aspire to that level of mad science.

"We've got a break, then. Let's go."

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Violence is never the answer unless it's Nazis. Then it is basically the only answer, and a fine one.
Battered contraptions built from weathered parts can be subject to the elements. Seaside conditions corrode metal and stress liquids. Moisture getting into delicate articulated limbs or electronics wreaks all sorts of havoc. Not to mention, rust. In the presumed infancy of robotics and submarines, protection against the salt and prevalent damp may not factor in greatly.

Engineering capable of making plasma cannons and diesel-punk contraptions still presents danger for her darting between pillboxes and hiding behind corpses, ruined landing craft, or mines that simply don't go off by proximity.

Blasts hiss and seethe overhead, and the witch throws out the widening net of probability alteration by running rather boldly straight for the vertical cliff rearing over her head. Where, presumably, she will not be able to reach the top without some especially nifty talents.

Limestone is, very much like a contraption reliant on delicate machinery, exceptionally pervious to water. Funny how erosion just takes its place, and all the booming and thudding and banging has a nasty way of destabilizing the ground.

It simply needs a nudge. A gesture and Wanda's soft-spoken incantation gives the rough-edged section of rock and stone a reminder of what it is. Always has been. <You fell. Lie softly by the sea.>

Those barbs of luck left scattered every few steps spread their roots. Arcane shoots form. Several of them get hauled sideways to the cliff, which is no longer a cliff, but a landslide that hopefully gives enough of a slope for everyone to move up as necessary. And as for the unfortunate Octobot buried under all that rock?

If it crawls out, it's going to get squished.

Carol Danvers has posed:
Even while trying to keep their capabilities less obvious, the agents make short work of th octobots. Many lay broken or crushed under debris and earth, even as others rise up further along the embankment. A pair of soldiers emerge from the bunker, rifles drawn, only to suddenly go down in the barking of a submachine gun and a grisly pink-red cloud.

Carol looks down at the smoking Grease Gun in her hand, frowning. She doesn't hesitate, however, instead bounding out of the trench and onto the crater-strewn field that stands between them and the Moment they've come in search of.

"C'mon," she yells, eyes partially obscured by the rim of the helmet on her head - looking at Cap longer than any of the others, "We're not here to change how things went. Move move -- "

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM

The world around them stutters again. Soldiers from both side, war machines straight out of nightmares all hang suspended in time. A gout of flame from a spewing flamethrower is suspended in the air like some terrible, deadly flower.

There, in the distance, they can see it now. A white glow from which ripples emanate outward and across the battlefield. Somewhere amidst the ruined stumps of some trees, near the feet of the bipedal cannon. When the sound fades, so too does the glow.

"That what we're looking for, Doctor Lewis?"

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha glances over at the direction of the giant glow. "I don't think most of us can make it there that quickly." She evaluates. Right as everything just /freezes/. And looks over at the beach, bogged down from the fighting with none of the vehicles having made it ashore intact. She looks over at the Nazis, the bunkers covered in craters from shell hits and bombs that make it look like the dark side of the moon. It's a moment out of time and space - rather literally.

"How do we stop it then?" She moves to discard the rifle she was using. She doesn't particularly care for it - now that they have what they're after. And hse doesn't trust Kang - this Kang, any Kang. There's a price and some sort of backstab coming that's inevitable. But they still have a job to do.

Quiet has posed:
When Stefani reappears she's found a new perch to present herself upon, and through her, present her rifle once more. The 'Sinful Butterfly', as it is labeled, makes seemingly minor adjustments in her arms as she lines up another shot on another robot. The heavy ammunition bursts out of the gun's elongated barrel, sizzling through the smoke-filled air of the battlefield, and tearing its way through the Bot, leaving it torn to shreds upon the scarred earth.

When things go 'haywire' again, Stefani raises her eyes up from her rifle's scope. She stands up then, drawing her rifle up against her bare stomach, holding it aimed horizontally now as she scans over the visible presence of her companions.

She nimbly drops off of her new sniping nest, falling with a reduced speed down to the ground, having ditched the remnants of her issued fatiguue trousers, Houston now wears a pair of black fishnets over her legs, giving her ample agility and her ever-so-desired oxygen. She starts off in a dead run to catch up with the others now, her rifle swaying in front of her as she pumps her arms side to side, her combat boots kicking up wet earth in her wake as she sprints toward where Carol, Steve and the rest are.

Steve Rogers has posed:
<< Alright, we need to take the mobile cannon down. Don't cluster up and let it get a bead on us. Mockingbird and I will try to keep its fire focused on us. Scarlet Witch, help protect us if it looks like it's got a clear shot one of us,>> Captain America says into his comms. <<Captain Marvel, you and Scarlet Witch are our heavy guns against it. Quiet, Richard, try to keep any infantry off of us,>> he directs before starting forward, leaving the wreckage of the octobot behind.

Steve sprints across the battlefield, crossing in front of the giant canon, trying to draw its attention and keep it away from the rest of the Avengers and shield. Up ahead there is a bunker that took a naval shell on the front side, but the back of the cement and rock bunker still looks sturdy. Cap heads for it, ready to dive in for cover if the giant mobile cannon targets him.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
As she lands back behind the cover, Darcy gives Richard a bit of a grin. "There are advantages to working in the lab where they keep all the experimental sci-fi nonsense weaponry, alien death rays, and assorted other fun toys." The spent tube she quickly refolds, and shoves back in the pack. It is presumably frowned upon to leave time-wreckage laying about. Pack it in, pack it out!

The request from Carol comes in over her radio-watch, and she peeks up, only barely in time (or... out of time?) to see anything before things snap back into normal speed and the glow fades away. But this time, she doesn't need to do the math again, and just holds her wrist up to give an answer. "Spatial position is correct. I'm thinking that what we're seeing, in that back-and-forth rubberbanding effect, is probably some kind of frequency oscillation. That however our coordinates are fixed relative to that object," and she says however, because she really has no clue how Kang manages THAT part of the whole thing, "we're still not actually synched to the local timeframe. More like we're layered or injected on top of it, next to it, however you want to think. But imperfectly. And if the string has a native vibrational frequency, that could be what we're seeing."

She's doing it again.

"Uh, translation, we want that spot, but we may also have to 'time it,' to match up. I'll see if I can't get us a countdown on the next one."

After that, she looks back to Stadler. "Might be we need to be local with that disturbance. So now we gotta move." And while she hefts her pack into place on her back, and makes a 'ready' pose, crouched ready to run, she waits for him to lead the way out across the field. "After you!"

Bobbi Morse has posed:
"Playing keep away with a walking cannon." Bobbi's smirk grows instantly at Steve's orders. "Let's do this." She scoops up the puffing diesel powered gatling gun and takes off at a mirrored angle. She takes cover, then waits for Steve to take cover.

As the big cannon starts take notice, she pops up and takes a few shots towards what she hopes might be a cockpit. Then, she starts running again to pull the attention away from Steve. She slides in to a drainage ditch and down in to a bunker there.

Much to her surprise and the surprise of the Nazi officers inside greetings will have to be violent. She strikes one with the butt of her gun and kicks the other. As the third draws his pistol she spins the first around and lets him take the shot, then charges his bleeding body in to the third slamming him against the cement wall.

As the second guy recovers from the kick, Bobbi turns and shoots him with the big gun. She pauses, listens, then counts, "3.. 2.. 1.." Steve should be about to take cover again. She runs out of the bunker and back out in to the open and takes some shots at the walking cannon again before she begins to dart across the field to find new cover.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Oh, that was a... rather interesting effect. They were talking through a battlefield at one moment, and then the next... something happened. And they were walking through a diorama frozen in time. The sound of battle, jarring as it was, was at least predictable. Hearing that low sound and only that for a few seconds almost gave Stadler a bit of a headache. And then things were moving again, and Stadler was at cover.

<<Engaging infantry, Cap.>> He said, and moved to take down a few of the soldiers nearby the machine, a stuttering retort echoing among the trenches, mixed in with a dozen others as he aimed for anything wearing a stahlhelm.

He could argue rank, or who was really in charge here, but, honestly, if Captain America gives you an order, it's an opportunity to follow it.

"I'll bet it does. You're lucky; my lab just requires me to wear a couple layers of sealed protection or I die a horrible death in the very best case scenario." He notes, moving to eject a magazine and insert a fresh one, as a round slams into the cover next to him. "At least this is quick." More technobabble from the Mistress of it, and Rick would like to think he was keeping track of things if he wasn't trying to clear the infantry from the charging Avenger. No worry, though. At least what they had to do was simple.

Looking back to see Darcy ready, he nodded, and reached back into his belt, coming out with another smoke grenade, tossing it in the direction of the enemy. "Remind me to run you through some drills later, Doctor Lewis. An extra gun here would be a bit helpful." As the grenade sputtered to life, he dashed off, hoping to hell Lewis wasn't going to trip on her face on a stray root behind him.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Behold the glowing creation. How strange, how fascinating.

"Has anyone considered duplicating it?" Because people just duplicate crystalline temporal instants all the time, do they? "Dr. Richards perhaps?" Make him figure it out. Wanda isn't afraid to extend the possible requirement to the founder of the Fantastic Four a dimension or time-branch away. She brushes the dirt from her face and scrambles up onto the lunar no-mans-land awash in the strange light and odder shape hulking above the trees.

<<Roger.>> The directions are understood, and she briefly strains to pick out any obstacles in the terrain that might put the others at risk or serve to their advantage.

Their wanderings and peregrinations toward their target in peculiar temporal resonance. She spreads her hands again at her sides, drawing up the invisible energy from the leylines to arm herself in the event they need offense or defense. AC/DC - it doesn't matter which way the current goes. Unlike Stefani and Carol, the point of a gun is mostly lost on her. Not that Bucky hasn't taught her how to shoot things, but she's better as a hands-on kind of woman.

Bobbi and Steve streaking toward the cannon, taking brief cover in the bunker, are enough for her to send a volley of bad luck down on any target that thinks to move and fire. Wicked shrapnel from a wicked sorceress. Of the east, actually. Not west.

The effects range from subtle to profound; a misfiring weapon, a shot going astray, ankle twisting, mechanical elements totally failing. The aforementioned stray roots for enemies. The sound and form of doom takes a great many brilliant aspects, all turned back on anything or anyone not among SHIELD's allies that happen to step wrong. Hopefully.

Carol Danvers has posed:
<<Don't let yourself get blown up because you're trying to keep a low profile,>> Carol calls into the radio, <<We're past that now. We don't know how much of this tech was put here by Immortus to keep us away. Or how much of it is native to this timeline.>>

She pauses, ceasing to talk into her radio and glancing sidelong to nearby Doctors Lewis and Stadler. Over the din of battle, she pushes her helmet down to keep it from flying off her head and shouts out to them.

"Time travel is - " an explosion nearby blots out the word she uses, "-ing ridiculous!"

As the others provide the distraction, the olive drab-clad Marvel bounds across the field. She moves faster than perhaps a human ought to, but slow enough and not flying - it counts, right?

Despite the distraction, the cannon is bristling with more weapons than expected. A mounted machine gun emerges from the underside, the gunner wheeling about in his transparent housing to aim it on the two strange-looking nerd soldiers on the battlefield (with apologies to Doctors Stadler and Lewis). He opens fire.

It's then that the roaring of Harley-Davidson WLA can be heard. Sailing through the air, it momentarily casts a shadow over the Doctors. Atop it is a man seemingly clad in the American flag, and on his arm is a painted shield. Not circular, but a red-and-white escutcheon. The bullets bounce off of it and he brings the bike to a stop in front of them, sidecar and all.

It's Captain America, Jim, but not as we know him. His mask more like a military helmet with added elements. He reaches out a red gloved hand to the pair.

"Come with me if you want to live."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
She's coming to hate alternate realities. She's presuming that this Captain America isn't the local version - but at the very least he seems to recognize them for what they are. There's an annoyed look that passes over her face very quickly as she goes to clear out one of the nearby bunkers through the firing slits to give them a bit mroe range of motion. she speaks calmly to the radio

<<Orders?>> She's more than happy to delegate them to someone. Even as she coordinates over with the rest of the team and goes to do a quick check over on Mockingbird. Then she's heading towards Richard and Darcy to give them backup, moving to fire several shots from a picked up Thompson over as suppressing fire to try an help give them a bit more cover as they dig in!

Quiet has posed:
Quiet is salvaging a bit of loot off of a fallen enemy soldier as her eyes roamed over the distance, and the giant cannon enemy they're forced to face off with. She snaps the buckles of a utility harness around her bared midrif as she squats down to pick up her Butterfly rifle once more. When she bounces back up to her full height, hoisting her gun up with her, she nods to what Cap orders of her to provide, and once more she vanishes in to a puff of smoke!

The plume of black floats over one of the abandoned soldier bunkers, before it reforms from the ground up, from Quiet's boots up to her nose.

She's already in a crouched position with her rifle being aimed down scope.

With Captain American, theirs, rushing toward the battlefield, he's undoubtedly quick to draw enemy attention... but with the cover of a good sniper....

Off to Cap's right side, a pair of soldiers stand up from their trench, aiming their machine guns at Cap, only to have a spout of blood burst from each of their necks, as a massive bullet bursts through one man's throat, and in to the next beside him!

Both bodies fall to the ground with a thud before they can shoot at the out-of-time Captain Rogers!

Quiet pops the spent ammo magazine from her rifle, pulling a fresh from the hip pouch hanging on her right side. The half-naked woman slams the new mag in to the rifle's ammo well, then yanks on the weapon's charging lever...

Steve Rogers has posed:
Captain America and Mockingbird work together, their speed drawing attention to them as targets. The cannon blasts away at Cap only to have him dive into the bunker for protection. It swings back ponderously to take aim at Mockingbird as she darts at above human speed only to elude the weapon's shot by sliding into the ditch and bunker.

And then Steve is running again. The cannon operators not realizing in their zeal to hit the enhanced American soldiers just how much time is being wasted aiming it back and forth between the two.

He sees the machine gunners, too late to react. Only to hear the crack of Stefanie's sniper rifle as she takes the men down. Cap races on, grabbing a length of rebar with a hunk of concrete on it that was blasted from the roof of a cement bunker by the naval bombardment. He spins with it like a hammer throw and sends it flying towards the cannon's barrel, hoping he might time it to enter the barrel about the time it shoots. Though he's already running for a hillock behind which he hopes to take cover in case it fails to work.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"I took out three of them with that last shot, and you're complaining?!"

All quippery aside, Richard isn't totally wrong! In a spy agency of elite badasses, Darcy stands out in the completely wrong way. Good thing she's got a helmet, because she makes up for all of it with that thing up in her noggin'. "Just go!" And she, valiantly, will 'just go' right after her, doing her very best to keep up, even if it kills her later. The smoke helps, in terms of giving them some relief from the weapon fire, and getting them across the field toward what is apparently their objective. But it can't cover them the whole way. And with most of the gear stowed in her bag, Darcy is carrying only one small device now, not doing anything with it as they run, but waiting in case there is another one of those time 'blips.'

Unfortunately, reaching their objective does put them in the course of the big bad walker-cannon, and despite having Carol, once they're out of cover, they're at risk! Who will save them, if not Carol?!

... Captain America, it turns out. Well, _a_ Captain America. As for the catchphrase? Don't have to tell her twice! And while between the car and the bike...? Yeah, she's hopping on behind Cap #2. "Hey there boss. You know where we're going? Gotta get near the big gun on legs. Not a lot of time to explain, save the world-and-maybe-more stuff." If this one is anythinglike the other one, he'll get it!

Bobbi Morse has posed:
This place seems very diesel punky.. right.. Bobbi is justifying things to herself. They must have jet packs. Everyone knows what a jetpack is. May be they're rare - fine. Sure, no one would have a jetpack that looks like what she's packing.

But this cannon has gots'ta'go.. With Nat in her ear asking for Orders and Steve's near meet and greet with nazi bullets, her eyes set upon the giant walkable cannon. <<"With me Widow">> ... code names and all, Bobbi whips out her glasses and puts them on. The yellow doesn't really fit with military green, but then neither will anti-gravity wings.

Time for some air and super soldier superiority. She waits for Nat to catch up to her, wraps an arm about her, and then leaps in to the air. Her wings burst to life, a pulse of energy ripping out the sides of the back of her uniform and she flies up and on to the top of the walking cannon.

Her hands grip the large steel wheel hatch and she turns it, popping it open. "Shut it down Nat." Because there is literally no one better she knows at hand to hand close quarters ass kickery than Natasha Romanoff. And with that, she hops on down in to the beast with Nat.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     "Yep! Makes me feel better about my own inadequacies!" Rick calls out as they advanced forward. Of /course/ time travel was ridiculous. They were fighting a Giant Nazi Robot (GNR for short), and Stadler had only done that once before. All right, maybe not as ridiculous as it could be, but it was still more than a bit weird-

Stadler should have expected that. It was bipedal, but it was still armor, and it would be foolish to set armor up without some anti-infantry capability. Like a ball gunner on the underside. The smoke that he had sent out was behind them now, and couldn't conceal them. There was a bit of a movement, a quick consideration on knocking Lewis out of the way. It wouldn't help much; that caliber and that volume of fire would chew through pretty much anything-

What in the /hell/.

Stadler simply looked at the Star-Spangled man in front of him, from the uniform, to the shield, to the motorcycle, and forced his brain to work a bit faster. Not fast enough, apparently, as Darcy moved to get behind the... other Cap. Which, admittedly left...

To his credit, he didn't grumble, just hoping in the side car next to him, and not mentioning how no one, literally /no one/, looked badass in a side car. Oh well. He brought his rifle up, and angled it just past Caps Shield, aiming for the armored glass protecting the gunner and firing off two quick bursts.

First time for everything.

Carol Danvers has posed:
"You can bet your bottom dollar, soldier," Motorbike Cap answers with a glance over his shoulder and a winning smile that actually seems to catch the light and sparkle, "That cannon spells trouble, no doubt about it. But I'm not one to back down from trouble. I'm always geared up to face it head-on, for the sake of the Red, the White, and the Blue!"

Both scientists aboard the bike, he revs the engine and takes off across the battlefield. The motorbike swerves, dodging turret fire as they go. The bike hits a dirt hillock, flying through the air as Motorbike Cap holds up his shield to almost non-chalantly deflect an oncoming bullet. They're speeding towards the cannon, and before long skidding to a halt between its huge feet.

It's just then that Disguised Cap throws the piece of rebar, catching the cannon as he does. It obscures the barrel, blocking it enough that when the next burst of plasma fire comes through it explodes! The barrel bursts outwards like an iron flower, molten metal raining down on the battlefield below. But it's main armament is destroyed.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!

Once more, time slows for an instance. And there it is. Not more than fifty feet from the Doctors. A white crystal, almost like the shape of an anatomically-correct heart, suspended in the air.

When time catches itself again, the hatch beneath the cannon's head opens and a figure descends clinging to a lowering ladder. He wears a blue suit with the emblem of the Nazis emblazoned on the chest, a black leather great coat thrown over it. He's blonde, square-jawed and with a haircut one could set their watch to. Disguised Cap would recognize him immediately as the Nazi's own super soldier who was killed by the Invaders. It is ...

"Master Man!" Motorbike Cap says with a frown, glancing back at Darcy over his shoulder, "You better do what you came here to do and do it fast, Soldier. This palooka is no joke."

Quiet has posed:
Quiet is keeping up her cover for Captain America, firing more shots at the soldiers and enemies that are tracking him toward his cover that he hides behind. As their Cap goes down behind that hilloc for cover, though, Quiet catches sight of the motorbike with the side car...

She raises her head up from her sniper scope to stare out at the battlefield. A second Captain America? Oh, what a flutter to be felt within one's fierce and fervent feelings!

Focus.

Her head snaps back down to her rifle, and her hand goes to the trigger once more to provide the bike riding American Hero some additional friendly cover, but the sound of someone shouting beside her causes Quiet to look away to her right. A enemy soldier has spotted her, and rushes at her with a jagged bayonet! He jams it right down at the rather unusual looking woman, only to have her entirely vanish in to thin air.

The bayonet stabs in to the rock she was perched upon, and the man rapidly looks around in utter confusion.

Steve Rogers has posed:
Steve Rogers hears the comment from this timeline's Cap caught by Darcy and Richard's comms. Steve stands staring at the Nazi as the cannon's debris rains down all around him. Sidestepping one big chunk of metal at the last piece.

"There's only one ending for empires like Nazi Germany's," Steve says, striding forward clad in his GI fatigues. He pauses only to pick up a fallen weapon left behind by a downed soldier. He checks the chamber and pulls back the lever on the submachine gun.

He's trying to draw Master Man's attention away from the oncoming motorcycle. As the sound of the approaching bike gets louder, Steve moves to the attack. Running at an angle to further draw the Nazi's attention awhile, while spraying submachine gun fire his way.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Darcy has one real goal here, and it has little to do with blowing up the giant robot. The fact that Old Fashioned Cap achives that (or mostly so) while bringing them in is a bonus. A pretty impressive bonus, to be sure! "Nice one!" she shouts, as the explosion goes off above them. But it's not what she's there for.

She's there for the Inception sound effect. Well, and the other stuff.

As time slows again, this time, Darcy is ready. While she doesn't have the big crazy gear in the pack out, whatever all of that was for, she has a smaller device still in hand, that she's been trekking the whole way with. And as time hiccups, she presses something on it. "Zero point three two five four H psi-" -that's the greek letter psi, mind- "sub e..." OK, obviously this is more gibberish to most, but to her, she's talking through the equation outloud, perhaps to make double-sure she gets it all right...

"OK got it!" she finally shouts into the watch comm. "I think I have the oscillation timing down. Should hit another in, fifty-four, three, two seconds." She's watching the pad as she counts it off.

As for Cap on the bike, as they skid along: "I don't really know what we need to do. Just put us down right up ahead there, and we'll figure it out. And you can go punch Captain Uberdorkenschitzen. Danvers? You getting this? We all gotta just stand there or what?"

Richard Stadler has posed:
     Was this real life? Stadler felt just for a moment that it might not be. That he had stepped onto the page of a 4 color. He was going to give Steve (their Steve) a lot more lee way in the future for his attitude, when it was compared to this saccherine mix of perfection wrapped in the American flag. And it felt almost like a roller coaster as they were flung about, dodging left and right to the blasts of plasma and bursts of machine gun fire, Rick's stomach leaping up into his throat as the motorcycle briefly caught air, and then there was a chucking of rebar like a spear and just how more ridiculous...

Oh, come on. Come /on/.

"You... ahh.. you got it, Cap!" He tried his best to sound like this was normal, but that was going to be very difficult. At least Darcy seemed to have figured out what they were supposed to do... Or not.

He was off the sidecar, moving toward the crystal, his rifle pointed toward it. "Briefing was a bit short on what we were supposed to do. Break it? Grab it? Shoot it?" He said, looking over to Darcy. "If we need to grab it, tell me you've got some containment device in that magic bag of yours."

Carol Danvers has posed:
"You look familiar, soldier," Motorbike Cap calls to his alternate universe counterpart, "But I like the cut of your jib. Let's send this Ratzi back to Adolf with his tail between his legs!"


The motorcycle pulls to a stop and Motorbike Cap leaps off of it, shield in hand. It looks like Darcy and Richard will need to fend for themselves. Master Man seems preoccupied with the two Captain Americas, charging Disguised Cap while Motorbike Cap chases after him. It's a surreal sight, that's for certain. The Nazi super-soldier able to hold his own against the pair for now.

It's then that the horn sounds again.

BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM

More urgent this time. The white, crystalline heart suspended in the air. It's right there. At the top of the ladder Master Man just climbed down. It hovers there, almost beating. Darcy and Richard will see shades of themselves, dressed differently, aged differently, sometimes even in superhero costumes. They flicker, reaching for the heart.

"I don't know," Carol calls out, taking the moment to ascend upwards and rend one of the time-frozen turrets asunder, "Grab it and port out! Or shoot it! You're the time doctor!"
%

Quiet has posed:
At the far end of the battlefield, Quiet is just lost in her own world now, squaring off with the man who tried to skewer her. Having reappeared behind him, she put an arm around his throat to lock him in a sleeper hold, but his beefy strength allowed him to drop off the building to use gravity as a wedge between he and his strange female captor!

Stefani descended after him, only to find him fleeing in to a half-submerged bunker where more soldiers of his ilk reside.

What follows is a series of screams, gunshots, splashes of blood, and even a severed hand flying back out of the bunker's open entrance!

Lastly a powerful explosion rocks the inside of the bunker, with flame and black smoke pouring out of its open doorway.

Steve Rogers has posed:
Steve Rogers and this world's Captain America work together almost like they were of a mind. Their fighting styles so similar. Steve covers the Star Spangled Man when he's staggered by a hit, throwing his own kick at the Nazi before the man rebounds on him and knocks Steve back. Only to take a shield from the now recovered costumed hero.

Back and forth they go. Steve is more focused on keeping Master Man away from the ladder and giving the SHIELD agents a clear path than he is on the man's defeat.

But let's face it. He's a Nazi, he's punchable. And if Steve Rogers can help leave this world a little better off, he is going to do so.

The costumed version throws his shield, bouncing it off Master Man's head, only to have uniformed Steve catch it on the carom and whip it back off the Nazi's chest. Master Man grabs a big chunk of metal, bashing Steve and knocking him into the mud. Only to have Captain America deliver a flying kick and follow it up with a ground and pound when the Nazi is knocked down!

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"Three, two..."

And it's there.

"Yeah sorry Dr. Rajmuttun didn't cover floating crystal time organs in my legitimate and serious temporal mechanics coursework!" Darcy shouts back at Carol. There is a point where legitimate, carefully-practiced, rule-abiding science runs its course with nonsense this high-grade. "So uh, pure guesswork here."

Carol, for her own part, has suggested a fairly simple smash-and-grab. Well, maybe it would be a bad idea to actually smash it. But at the very least, she is right there when it comes into being. Possibly Rick, too! "You all probablyh wanna hit your buttons close to when I do. I don't think we want that vibrational frequency getting too far unsynched. Might scatter your particles across the timestream or something. Or be perfectly fine. But, safety first, right?"

Anyway, she's in position. Her timing also gives her the small window before the whole effect will end. It is long enough for the prior heroic banter, and just a little more. "Well, here goes. Grab on, Doc." Other Doc.

She reaches out with her hand that has the watch, bringing down her other hand for the button, to try and time it to about line up. She's not taking any chances with her atoms, kthnx.

Richard Stadler has posed:
    mit There we were, as Darcy moved forward to go up the ladder to the device. Stadler was right behind her, and not entirely enthused with the fact that Darcy seemed to have little more idea on what to do than he did. But he was in unspoken agreement that shooting it would be counter productive. Once you destroyed something, it was very hard to stich it back together.

Like his particles.

He moves to place his hand on the other side of the crystal., hand gripping it and moving to his watch. "Right then. Extraction it is. If you don't mind, Lewis, I'd try to do a count." He says. "All right, folks. On Go. Five. Four. Three. Two. One."

"Go."Button press.

Carol Danvers has posed:
The Captains America make short work of Master Man, the Nazi Super Soldier toppling to the ground with an 'oof' as Steve delivers the final one-two. It's then that time stutters again, and Darcy's warning comes through the radio for all to hear. Button press now.

Carol winces as she watches Darcy reach for the crystal, silently wondering if it shouldn't be her. She had dealt with the strangeness at the heart of stars. Darcy wasn't especially sturdy or durable. At least, not that she knew of. But the decision had been made, and it was too late now to change it.

She holds up her wrist and taps the button on the side of the otherwise antique timepiece. Everything goes white.

                                * * *

The agents will find themselves just where they were when they left. The same moment, in fact. Their fatigues soaked and filthy, they lay scattered in an empty room aboard the Damocles. One of the technicians is even in the process of wishing them a good trip.

" - luck ... huh, didn't wor-- "

The technician can see them all. Much more ragged than when they left. His eyes go to the crystal in Darcy's hand which has now ceased to glow or hum, instead seemingly inert for now. He approaches with a glass 'hazardous material' box, opening it and wincing as he tries to put as little of himself near it as possible.

"Just in the box here, if you can, Doctor Lewis."

Quiet has posed:
To go from being in the middle of war, to suddenly not being in it... it's an odd experience. But to also suddenly realize that you're back on a space ship in orbit of Earth, far in to the future of a completely different reality? How do you even begin to feel normal about that?

Well, for starters... you go pick up your clothing where you left it, and maybe spend some time getting dressed again.

Agent Houston just looks around once they return to wence they began. She huffs out a heavy sigh, and drops her rifle down to its butt on the floor beneath her muddied boots. She lets her eyes roam over everyone's presence, then deftly nods once with a confident posture. She marches off toward where her high tech material suit was last located, her rifle swaying gently at her side as she marches with a determined step.

Steve Rogers has posed:
Steve Rogers rears his fist back, ready to throw another punch, and then suddenly his opponent is gone. Steve lowers his arm, letting in a few deep gulps of air to catch his breath.

He stays silent as the agent comes over to take possession of the item from Doctor Lewis. Steve just watches and then finally turns his eyes to the rest of the team to make sure they are ok. Bobbi and Natasha get nods of his head. Carol gets a faint smile from Cap. Quiet gets a nod of approval, as does Richard. Darcy will have to wait until she's given the crystal over to get hers.

"Successful mission, Wanda," he says quietly and then lets out a sigh as if letting himself relax. "I don't really sound like that, do I?" he asks the others.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
After blinking a few times at the suddenly right-back where they were shift, and realizing what's happening, relinquishes hold of the crystal. Hastily, even, once she gets around to it, given the container being held out. "Knowing my luck, this didn't even give me superpowers. Probably just regular old cancer."

By comparison, her English Channel-soaked, sand-covered, exploded Nazi robot diesel smoke-smelling fatigues are an item of lesser concern. What she does, other than give up the crystal, is take another immediate look at her scanner device. Which prompts a disappointed: "Boo." Evidently, while whatever calibrations were working correctly for timing those rubber-band pulses, they prove incorrect for whatever process has yanked them back to their original time, with her little scanner screen showing a happy list of error codes and 'NaN' values.

Next up on the concerns is making sure they're all here. She looks around, spotting Richard nearby first, then some of the parting agents, and finally double checking that they didn't mix up their Captains America.

"Ugh. I need a shower."

Yeah turns out the fatigues ARE on the list.

Richard Stadler has posed:
     There it was. Stadler pressed the button, and suddenly they were just back at the same... the almost exact point they left. As if what they had just done never happened. If not for the dirty grimmy fatigues, missing gear, the scent of cordite that infused everything, and the fact he was certain he had sand from the beaches of Normandy.

Danger and grim to a silent, climate controlled ship was a bit of a jarring sensation. It looked like everyone was hear, however, and he could at least hear Darcy's remark on cancer. "Oh, have a bit of vision. Parts of your cells are probably now at significantly different ages; It's a host of new problems to enjoy. Superpowers are overrated anyway."

They were, but he still remembered those glimpses of himself, flashes of things that could have been. He was just glad the crystal seemed to be inert now. That sort of peering into a portal of 'what ifs' couldn't have been healthy.

Carol Danvers has posed:
"Never heard you call anyone a palooka," Carol admits to Cap, "But the flag stuff seemed familiar. But hey, you're our dorky patriot guy."

Carol removes her helmet, tossing it to the ground and letting her blonde hair free with a shake of her head.

"C'mon, we can worry about whatever that thing does after. I also need a shower and food."

The chatter of the group fades away ...

                                * * *

On a distant battlefield, in another time ...

The armored man, emerald green cloak wrapped about him, stands within a perfect square of light that hovers above the war below. The great, bipedal cannon explodes. A man in red, white, and blue speeds across the battlefield on a motorcycle. Time stutters for a moment, and then in a great white flood of light the moment is released. The timestream floods onward where it had been stoppered, and leaves in its place the great expanse of nothingness.

The square he stands on deactivates, and the armored man once again finds himself in the warmly-lit confines of stone and wood he is familiar with. A great castle, overlooking a sprawling city below.

He moves across the room, fetching up the sort of gilded and bejeweled goblet one might expect a monarch to drink from. He removes the iron mask he wears, his features concealed by the dying flames of a guttering candle. He takes a sip, and when he speaks it is a voice of peerless authority.

"SHIELD have a Moment. Reach out to them and arrange a meeting. Bring them here and cater to all their requests for safe passage and quarter."

He affixes his mask in place once again, the latches fastening with a pneumatic hiss. He steps forward, the scowling steel visage visible at last.

"It is time Doom let them know just what chaos their new bedfellow will bring ... "