May 4th

 

And as the night turned to day and the morning arrived, Victoria stepped out of her hotel with determination blazing inside her chest. This was the day things were going to take a bit of a detour, not too much, as to damage the entire timeline, but just enough to contain the damage as much as possible. She still wasn't sure if the Sorcerers would find her intervention to be a good thing or not after all, and she'd rather not get thrown into cosmic jail or worse for trying to help out where she actually could.

After this she'd probably have to call Jess to make sure she knew she was okay, her friend knew beforehand that Vicky would be downtown for a few days for some business with the police department about the attack she went through.

That was nothing more than a little, well, a big lie, but Jess didn't need to know that. At least not yet. Victoria still worried about what her friend would say once she found out she willingly went into this whole thing, or what her reaction would be about her new superpowers and the whole list of secrets she was keeping close to her heart, but she had more pressing matters at hand.

Jessica and her family were still in Queens, Victoria made sure of that information before departing. Queens was just outside the danger zone, unless the Invasion force focused on spreading out more instead of taking down the Avengers, they would be safe from the debris and the brunt of the attack.

A few of her father's stores were in Manhattan however, that would be a tough hit to endure, but Victoria was going to give her best to try and keep the damage costs relatively low. Maybe leverage her participation to prevent a future villain from becoming a thing? Vulture was created just because the man lost his job and needed an alternative. If only Tony had contracted their company under Damage Control he would've never existed.

Well, his villain counterpart at least, she would have to make sure of that.

She didn't want Peter to go through too much trauma after all. Even if it somewhat endangered his development into the actual role of Spider-Man, Victoria was still going to try her best. Because that's all she could do.

Exiting the building was easy enough, leaning against a nearby wall for a few moments and concentrating her full attention inwards, she sent out the largest pulse she could manage. The radar detected movement, thousands upon thousands of footsteps, conversations, work, fights, all of it. But it also detected something that would be her main concern of the day.

She sensed it, at the very top of Stark Tower, a lonesome man constructed the beacon one piece at a time. Victoria could try to avoid the fight, but she still had time, all she needed was one of her batons, a high enough vantage point, and...Victoria clenched her hands around the wooden cane, not hearing the faintest sound of the creaking wood under her fists.

'Let it happen. Breathe. Focus.'

She regained her concentration, breathing deeply and getting a move on. She had an hour or two at most until the beacon was complete and the battle ensued. Another pulse, five minutes from her first one, revealed another presence in the tower. That was Loki. Victoria moved to the closest residential building, a high-rise apartment that was one of her priority evacuation points.

She ignored the looks she got from the people at the reception, instead, she used Telekinesis to break the security button that she had noticed the day before. Victoria didn't have the time to deal with the guards and drag them to safety afterward. With pressure building inside her chest,t she moved towards the elevator and dialed the uppermost accessible floor.

As she waited, she sent another pulse, catching a third figure arriving, clad in a suit of armor.

"Shit. Don't have time." She cursed before focusing on her right hand.

With a single gesture, the elevator stopped for half a second as she secured her footing and grabbed the railing on the side, before gesturing with her index and middle fingers toward the ceiling, causing the elevator to rocket through the shaft until it was about to smash directly through the concrete above.

Thankfully Victoria managed to stop it before it could, reaching the floor just beneath the penthouse. Those above could directly see what was about to happen, so she didn't need to worry about telling them where to go. Instead, she rushed towards the hallways, making her way to one of the rooms before she heard it, and felt it at the same time.

The beam was fired.

And the sky pulled itself apart.

Victoria, hurriedly, sent out another pulse. She felt Iron Man charging up into the space rift, and she also felt the incoming force. She couldn't sense anything beyond the rift, but she knew what remained in waiting until the beacon stabilized and there was no way of shutting it down.

By the time she reached the first room, another three burst open. She had less than a second to assert her presence and instruct them where to go, so she focused. She inhaled as much air as she could and used her Telekinesis on her voice to project it all around the building. Forcing the waves of sound to reverberate through walls, the floor, the ceiling, the vents, everywhere.

Her voice echoed throughout the entire apartment complex, and for a moment, the sounds of explosions and death outside dimmed.

"To the underground parking lots, NOW!" 

"NOW!"

"Now!"

"....now!..."

The echoes continued without stopping for a few more seconds, at first causing the civilians to panic and look at her in horror, before a few followed her instructions and the rest, like sheep in a herd, moved in unison. The promise of death if they refused was implanted in their minds, they had seen, or at least heard the explosions outside. Running into the streets would do nothing for their survival.

Following pure instinct was one feature that humans tended to do whenever they found themselves in these sorts of stressful situations of life or death.

So Victoria guided them, through the staircase because the elevators would no doubt stop functioning soon enough. If the explosions hadn't done enough damage to the stability of the building by the time they started carrying the civilians down, then her banshee-like scream certainly would've.

Pushing them, keeping the stray ones from losing their way, Victoria felt like she was a herding dog for a few minutes as she rushed to get them all to safety. Soon enough, the multiple underground levels were filled with people. Thankfully there was enough space to accommodate most of them, as the apartment complex had been just recently inaugurated. 

Once she was certain that at least the majority of the civilians were safe in this building, she rushed to the entrances and used Telekinesis to block the one that led directly to the main street, leaving only the staircase free for more people to rush down if needed.

Then, she turned to see the men and women, the children, the people who were about to be caged in that place until everything was over and smiled as brightly as she could manage.

"Stay here and don't run out! Everything's alright now, you're safe!" She exclaimed as loud as she could without manipulating her voice. She wanted it to feel as natural as possible for them.

A few nodded, others simply hugged their legs and waited, a few of the older men and women were already doing a headcount, and the children clung to their families as if their life depended on it. With that, the first building was done without any wounded, so she shifted her grip on her backpack and rushed up the stairs once again, moving as quickly as she could towards the main entrance, blockading it with a nearby vehicle, before sending another pulse throughout Manhattan.

Death and destruction.

The movie did not sell the entirety of the chaos as well as she would've hoped. She could smell the burnt corpses in the streets, the gore sprawled throughout the abandoned cars. The rushing velocity at which the alien vehicles were moving. It was disorienting, Victoria barely held onto her sanity as the stimuli hit her all at once. 

Still, she breathed deeply and steeled herself. She had a job to do.

Ripping a door from a nearby car, she raised it and used it as a makeshift shield to protect herself as she rushed into the streets proper. There were still civilians trying to run out from their office buildings, only to make themselves easier targets. As she was about to yell at them to go back indoors and lock themselves in, an explosion knocked the car door away from her influence, throwing her onto the pavement.

If she hadn't prepared herself for the impact, she would've broken something. Instead, she used her Telekinesis to raise four batons at the same time, using them to beat the absolute living crap out of the alien that had opened fire on her.

"Go back inside, lock yourselves in! Don't try to run, or you'll get shot!"

She yelled her instructions, some still tried, but after promptly being shot at by aliens with piss-poor accuracy, they rushed back in and locked the doors. A few still tried to peek through the windows, which infuriated Victoria. How could they be so...She held back a groan as the horde of aliens was growing by the minute.

She sent out another pulse. Six Chitauri were surrounding her but seemed to be mindful of their approach since they had seen her previous display of kinetic abilities. They weren't the best shots on this side of the galaxy, but at least they were smart. Victoria had a moment to think before she ripped four car doors from nearby vehicles and rushed the small squad of aliens.

The first one was severed in half as she threw the car door with enough force to carve him in two.

The second managed to fire twice, missing once and hitting one of her makeshift shields with the second, receiving a counter-attack and getting his skull exploded against the pavement.

The remaining four opened fire as they tried to distance themselves, but Victoria was a small-ish target and she had plenty of material to work with. She rushed through the vehicles and the corpses, not tripping purely because of the 360° "vision" that her passive radar granted, evading shots left and right until she got into melee again.

The third fell as the second-to-last car door slammed him into a nearby wall, impaling him in place. The fourth went down from her last car door hit before she had to retreat into cover.

There, she took the tasers out of her backpack and used Telekinesis and another one of her pulses to fire from behind solid cover without needing to peek out. The two remaining aliens fell to the ground, their bodies spasming out of their control. Victoria didn't take any chances, and just ripped another car door, cleaving through their skulls like they were silly-putty.

A deep exhale escaped her mouth, and she focused on yet another pulse.

The situation was going about how she expected. Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye had just arrived at the scene and were trying to get the incident under control. The police department was opening fire, and Cap approached one of the officers who seemed to be in charge.

The areas closest to the rift were the most densely populated, so she headed towards the perimeter for a bit. Moving from cover to cover, without engaging aliens as long as she could, Victoria reached another of her priority evacuation points. It was close to the landing point of the Quinjet, one of the buildings that was about to get demolished by one of the bigger vessels. Creatures? of the Chitauris if she wasn't quick to evacuate people from the upper floors.

She took a deep breath, and a tingling sensation started to spread throughout her head. She was putting a little too much strain on herself, she knew, but she kept going.

Her sides hurt as she breathed, but she ran into the building and charged the stairs directly. There was no time to wait on an elevator, and she didn't want to use Telekinesis for everything or she'd end up passing out from exhaustion.

Instead, she ran as quickly as she could up those stairs, until she eventually reached the upper floors. The panoramic view was straight from the movie, so she knew what was about to happen. Another deep breath, another pulse. She ran.

As she reached the windows that peeked down at the streets of Manhattan, she felt its presence. The massive thing was about to ram them head-on. The civilians panicked, more than a few frozen in place. She didn't have time or the delicacy to pull them all back. She knew what she had to do, and who was going to help out.

She heard it first, then she felt its presence.

Like a mad hound, the Hulk charged through the office building, and Victoria had only a few moments to step aside before he jumped right through the reinforced glass. He was diverting the trajectory of the beast, but it was about to damage the building anyway, so Victoria focused.

She breathed.

She extended her right hand.

She tightened it like a leash around the beast's head.

And then she pulled down with all the mental fortitude she could muster.

Victoria felt the beast give in to her invisible force, being leashed and reeled into the ground, collapsing on top of another squadron of Chitauri and squishing them all to death. The Holk didn't seem to notice her aid, and just kept on rampaging throughout Manhattan, bringing down more aliens in his path.

Victoria turned around and felt the employee's gazes falling upon her.

"To the underground, now." She didn't need to raise her voice this time.

They all simply did as she said, and marched down the stairs glad to not be dead.

Victoria could no longer feel the presence of the creature, only its corpse lying on the street. She felt something dripping from her nose and eyes, but paid it no mind as she kept moving. She had to keep moving. There were too many lives at risk still.