Marvel Iron Age: Lady Deathstrike vol. 2
Chapter 2
@cbishop Got another for the library! Thanks so much for archiving!
Oymyakon
Located in New Latverian Siberia:
Oymyakon was a city that was a mix of the distant past and the future with more than half of the facility the same as it was in the 21st century. King Victor Von Doom turned into a prison for his enemies in and outside the kingdom after the Russian Federation joined New Latveria. The structure crumbled in certain spots and remained in disrepair. It was very uncomfortable for both prisoners and the guards. The more modern parts of the prison were dotted around the perimeter. Just to keep watch from all around the city and to respond quickly in case of any trouble inside the prison. A single hover train brought prisoners and guards alike to the facility.
The cold blanketed the train as it stopped at the first check point before entering the prison. It had to stop at a check point just on the outside of the prison. This checkpoint only had six soldiers stationed. Like the guards on the train, the soldiers at the checkpoint were all dead. Blood soaked the floor as would be inmates greedily took weapons from the dead guards and their armory.
A barely conscious soldier managed to tap the two-way recorder on his helmet. His legs were broken and an entire arm was charred off by hot plasma. What he saw would be sent to the New Latverian military immediately. He looked up to see the train doors slide open. A man concealing his face with a large scarf and visor walked out. Behind him the soldier could see the faintest glimpse of more bodies around him with inmates that tore the uniforms off of his fellow serviceman.
The masked man saw that the soldier was still alive though just barely. The man cracked his tattooed knuckles and drew a pistol on the soldier and fired a bolt of energy between the soldier’s eyes.
Ngumi Takada’s apartment:
Ngumi stood on her balcony in silence as she listened to the Queen of New Latveria tell her about the attack on Oymyakon. Ngumi looked out taking in everything she just heard. “So after that a train full of heavily armed criminals got into the main facility and started a prison riot. How long did it last?” Ngumi asked in a neutral voice.
“Not long.” Answered Carol Danvers, the Queen who oozed exasperation at this point. “The other checkpoints were hit the very same way. After satellite images caught the carnage inside the prison General Kurske in Moscow ordered an antimatter warhead to explode over the prison. Officially killing thirteen thousand inmates and guards.”
A guest of cool wind blew past both women before Ngumi looked to the queen. Carol’s face sunk like she bit into something sour and the part of the wooden railing she held onto started to splinter beneath her super strength. “I’d bring Kurske up on charges if I thought it would help. Those people don’t even officially exist. Apparently he was only, `following the contingencies of our late Lord Doom and that I had not ordered otherwise.’ He also is also the acting Minister of War while Ares is having the most militarily successful campaign of the last few decades. I can’t do anything to him without Doom’s best and most fanatical in the government screaming at me in court.”
“Kurske?” Ngumi said out loud. Ngumi had met Kurske at Valeria Base before it was attacked by Project Wide Awake. The last he had heard he was critically injured and relocated to Doomstadt after the Thanos invasion.
“His facial scars make him look like the Red Skull.” Danver’s explained quickly and with a bit of disgust. “You’d know him if you saw him. He makes me sick.”
“You know if they were all afraid of you like they were of Victor I’d assume those voices of dissent would be more understanding.” Ngumi looked at Carol with a bit of suspicion. “Are you going to ask me to kill them?”
Carol locked her fingers behind her head and backed away from the railing. The edge in her voice was rough when she answered, “Not them!”
Doomstadt,
Night:
Ngumi Takada journeyed into this night with a request from the leader of the last free country on Earth. She wore a black suit and mask that was both bullet proof and laser resistant. Tiny built in machines enhanced her strength and speed to a very small degree. There also was an onboard virtual intelligence that helped hack automated locks and computers. She was also armed with two pistols, grenades and her sword.
Carol Danver’s had given Ngumi the address of S.H.I.E.L.D agent Corey Bjorn who lived on the eighty sixth floor. Ngunmi had met him while being pulled out of San Francisco by a S.H.I.E.L.D team. He had a jagged scar that went from his left eye to his chin and tattooed on his knuckles were the words Sin Eater.
She walked without making a sound. She stood outside the apartment of Bjorn. The lights were turned off except for the holo-screen that played. Ngumi put her hand over the automated lock that chimed as it accepted her as the current resident. “Only a matter of time I suppose.” Ngumi heard from her target who sat on his couch in front of the holo-screen.
In the corner of Ngumi’s eye she could see four knives that hovered in the air on their own. Ngumi dived for the carpet as knives zoomed past her head. She hit the ground and fired three shots. One hit the wall. The other two sank into Ngumi’s invisible target and left two floating blood stains. The body of a man dropped out of cloak. Her target had been wearing his standard issue Shield combat uniform.
Ngumi rolled off the ground and sprang over the counter and shot a knee straight into Sin Eater’s face. The back of his head smacked the wall. He tried swinging a wide punch that Ngumi smacked away as she ducked and drove two of her fingers in a gunshot wound she’d inflicted in Sin Eater’s shoulder. The Shield agent’s scream that followed was cut off; Ngumi smashed the barrel of her pistol into his throat and fired three times. Ngumi looked up at the door right after her kill. A fist was hurtling toward her.
Ngumi turned to defend herself, but was caught by a chest blow that sent her smashing into the large sheet windows that led to a direct fall into the streets of Doomstadt. “Damn it! Now why did I walk into this?”
Ngumi’s attacker was a woman her eyes even in this low lighting were a spectacular green and her hair was black. Ngumi wasn’t going to wait and ask her name. With her pistol still in hand opened fire. The bullets just stopped once they reached her skin. She kept walking. “I guess I’m not the only one who wanted that guy dead. Oh well that just makes you a loose end!”
Ngumi dropped her now empty pistol and charged the other woman. Drawing her sword. Ngumi swung at the woman’s head. Only the woman she was fighting was much faster and caught the blade’s edge with one hand and grabbed Ngumi’s arm with the other. “Swords? What century are you in?”
The woman head butted Ngumi and launched her heel into the swordswoman’s chest. <F%&@!> Ngumi swore in Jananese. Her mask had twisted after the head-butt and obscured her vision. Her attacker continued. A fist that felt like a brick sent Ngumi sailing back to the window.
Ngumi tossed off her mask in frustration and looked at her attacker with her own eyes. Curiously she stopped and looked at Ngumi. Pondering her it seemed like. <Did you just say… f%&@? I haven’t heard that swear in two hundred years and you’re speaking proper Japanese!> The woman was excited and walked to Ngumi as she knelt down to Ngumi’s face. “Well I guess that means something.”
The woman picked Ngumi up by the top of her head and with a sadistic glee provided to slam her body through the glass and dangle the former Shield agent over the streets of Doomstadt. “Now we share girlfriend. Who sent you so I can kill them too?”
“Carol Danvers!” Ngumi growled as she pulled herself up on the woman as she wrapped her legs her attacker and very forcefully launched them both back, sending them crashing into air car traffic. Both women smashed into several cars before both their grips yielded as they landed on the street below.
“Are you out of your mind?” Ngumi’s attacker screamed while giving Ngumi a hard punch to her ribs. As they spun toward the ground Ngumi managed to spin on top of her attacker and leveled her sword above her head. “You bit—!”
Ngumi cut her off by thrusting her blade down the woman’s throat. With a hard thud both women slammed into the trailer of a hover truck and caused it to crash into the street below. Ngumi rolled off the trailer and slide hard into a street light. “That was close.” Ngumi sighed as she winced in pain from breathing. Her body armor had taken the worst of the damage. The mechanical components had shorted out. She also had a hard time moving her leg.
“That really f&%$ing hurt!” Ngumi heard from the wreck in front of her. Ngumi mentally rolled her eyes. Of course her obviously super-powered attacker was still alive as well. The attacker hopped off the crushed truck with Ngumi’s sword in her hand. She spat out a mouth full of blood as she marched forward.
“I was going to just drop you off a building, but instead I think I’m going to chop off your arms and legs. Then I’m going to carve my name all over your broken carcass!” She screamed in a raspy voice.
“Super strength and high invulnerability. How high?” Ngumi thought as her attacker plunged her sword into Ngumi’s shoulder. Ngumi stifled a scream by biting her lip until blood drew.
The woman looked at her curiously as if looking at some alien object. “Usually people are pretty freaked out at this point.” The woman’s face turned into a bright smile and twisted the blade in Ngumi’s shoulder more. “I think she likes it!”
The sky lit up with the New Latverian military shinning spot lights on the pair. Sirens roared in the distance and got closer. “Another time sword girl.” The woman said as she took off in a sprint away from the authorities.
Ngumi’s eyes followed the woman. The hum of a speeding aircraft cut through the air like a knife. It gusted past Ngumi and sped toward her attacker. “Self-destruct on target!” Ngumi ordered as the small craft latched on to the woman and shot upwards away from the buildings and exploded.
Castle Doom:
Ngumi spent the rest of that night at Castle Doom’s medical center. By morning the worst of her injuries had mended. Her ribs were covered in blue and yellow bruises that terrified Kikone and Kylie when Carol brought them to visit when she didn’t come home last night. “What happened, Queen Danvers said you got into a car accident? When we saw at first you looked like a mummy!” Kylie whimpered.
Kikone promptly elbowed her sister in the arm and shouted, “Shut up!”
Ngumi smiled. When she got in her ribs were smashed and her leg was broken. They had wrapped her body and by morning Ngumi was peeling them off. Ngumi shifted and sat up to look at the girls, “Don’t worry a scruffy old man made me drink a special potion so when stuff like this happens I can get right back up!”
The automatic doors to Ngumi’s room opened with a hiss. Carol Danvers and Dr. Janis Snow, the girl’s psychologist. Ngumi looked back at the two little girls and said, “The queen needs to talk to me so, go talk to Snow while we do that.”
The children nodded and did as they were asked. Once Ngumi and Carol were alone the questions began. Ngumi killed Sin Eater and then was attacked by some other assassin. “Who was she and what does Carol know?” Ngumi thought. Carol nodded and answered as if picking up on Ngumi’s thoughts. “You were attacked by a killer named Kimura, she was a part of Wide Awake and has been on the loose ever since the attack. Well since you captured her.”
“Captured?” Ngumi exclaimed. Ngumi actually felt a little insulted at her attackers continued existence. “She’s alive?”
“You did put a hurt on her though. How did you get a goblin glider by the way?” Carol asked.
“When you gave me your blessing to go out at night I made several small requisition orders. Didn’t you sign off on them?” Ngumi asked in a mix of sarcasm and confusion. “Or do you just sign things without reading them? By the way those lenses worked perfectly.”
Carol dropped her heard and rubbed the back or her neck, “Note to self, read the requisition orders of independent field agents more closely.”
“Does this mean Wide Awake is still around?” Ngumi asked with a dark edge in her voice. “If they wanted Sin Eater dead then they must have had something to do with that prison riot and must have realized we’d close in. But why?”
“I guess I made a mistake in thinking this was going to be over with.” Carol Danvers said out of nowhere and turned to exit the room. "We'll talk later." The queen finished which lead Ngumi to believe the queen wasn't telling her something. [To be explained in coming War Machine issues of Iron Age]
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