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Maria ignored the Avengers communicator chime. She ignored it pointedly and continued packing her tote bag. There were already two messages from Natasha and one from Sharon on her personal phone--she was already late for their spa day. She wasn't supposed to be late. She was supposed to be sitting in the sauna with her head back and her eyes closed sweating out her stress so she could be glowing for her dinner date tonight.
She was not supposed to see Steve's stony expression flashing at her from the clever little screen of her work comm.
Maria closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Steve knew she had plans. He knew because Natasha and Sharon had made no secret of it. He wouldn't call her on her day off unless he absolutely had to, unless he had no other options.
Whatever it was had to be bad.
She couldn't just ignore that. No matter how much she wanted to.
Maria snatched the comm up from her dresser and answered the chime. "Hill."
"Maria!" Steve's voice came through, the connection so clear and sharp that it was impossible to mistake the long, deep moan for exactly what it was. "God, Maria, I need you."
The involuntary heat that slid down her spine and pooled in her belly stole her breath. Maria closed her eyes and counted to three just so she wouldn't tell him what he could do with his need, then she snapped, "Report, Captain."
Steve groaned. "We can't take this thing alone. We need you."
Maria frowned. "What thing?" Steve was usually a little more precise than that.
"Please, Maria. Please just come. Please."
It wasn't like she was dead. Of course hearing Captain America say those things like that would get to her. But she didn't like it. It felt too intimate. She pursed her lips. "Fine. Where are you?"
"Hoboken," he moaned. "Oh my God, Maria, please. Please hurry."
"I'm on my way, Cap."
The sound he made then was pornographic. Maria ended the call in a hurry, a frisson of unwelcome pleasure sliding down her spine.
She could have lived her whole life happily without knowing what Steve Rogers sounded like when he came.
***
Since splitting from SHIELD, the Avengers and their growing support staff had taken over several former SSR properties. One in Brooklyn served sometimes as a satellite operations facility. Maria had all Avengers audio and video feeds routed to the command room there and had her assistant meet her.
On her way in, she texted Natasha and Sharon that she would be even later. She refused to admit that she might not show up; whatever was in Hoboken would have to kill her to keep her from enjoying at least part of her day off.
She so rarely got a day off.
Natasha replied almost immediately to ask if it was a call to assemble. Maria wasn't going to bring in anyone else unless she really had no choice; Steve had only asked for her, and she trusted him enough to believe that if he'd needed the rest of them, he'd have asked. Radio news was suspiciously silent about whatever was going on in Hoboken, so as long as civilians lived and the city stayed mostly-intact, she was willing to risk letting Sharon and Natasha stay out.
Maria didn't bother changing into her uniform even when she got to the underground facility. She carried her tote right into the ops command center, wearing her flats and loose skirt and scoop-neck t-shirt. She had no plans to stay. She would not waste the day.
The instant she stepped through the doors, her assistant was at her elbow, handing over one of the secure information tablets.
"It's not good, ma'am," Charlotte said.
Maria bit back a sigh and dropped her bag into the command seat. She would not be sitting down.
On the tablet was a high-definition image of the monster terrorizing Hoboken.
"What is that thing?"
"We don't know."
"Where did it come from?"
"We don't know."
"What do we know?"
Charlotte looked embarrassed. "Well." She cleared her throat. "It speaks. And it seems to send out physical energy waves. It's only affecting people, not property or electronics."
"What's it doing?" Maria asked, even as she pulled up a shaky video from the War Machine suit and started to play it.
"Well..."
On screen, the thing started to move. It was fifty feet tall, at least, dusky pink-brown and distinctly phallic. It looked like a penis. Just a giant circumsized penis with huge wrinkled balls for feet and an unsettlingly humanlike face near the top, pulsing all over with bluish veins.
Maria did not get paid enough for this. She resolved to bring that up to Stark during her next evaluation. If the Avengers were going to fight fifty-foot dicks in New Jersey, she needed a pay raise.
And worst of all, she knew--she knew, with stomach-clenching certainty--exactly what it was doing. She didn't need Charlotte to explain it.
Charlotte did, anyway. "It seems," she said, her voice deadpan (and Maria understood why Charlotte sounded so dead), "to be forcing orgasms on human victims."
Maria closed her eyes. "I don't believe this."
"You're not the only one, ma'am."
Maria blew out a long breath and opened her eyes to finish watching the video. Rhodes flew close to the monster, and she could see the veins pulsing faster, watched as it seemed to retract some--to squish itself shorter in a disgustingly familiar way--and open its mouth. It seemed to say something, and then the camera wobbled and War Machine fell out of the sky.
She thought about Steve and the way he'd sounded over the comm. Maria did not turn on the sound.
"All right." She pinched the bridge of her nose. Damn it, she had a date tonight. In Manhattan. A date with a very attractive, appropriately-aged nobody with a boring job and--most importantly--very nice hands he was not shy about using. She was not going to miss that date. Not for work, and certainly not for a giant walking cock.
"All right," she said again, and looked at Charlotte. "Get the news on. I need to know what they're saying. I need photo, video, and audio routed to my station." She tapped her fingers on the back of the tablet she held. "I know we have Cap and War Machine out there right now, but who else have we got?"
"Falcon and the Winter Soldier," Charlotte said immediately.
Maria frowned. "Where are Marvel and the Witch?"
"Out of country. They're running a mission for Fury. That's all I know."
"He needs to stop taking my people," Maria grumbled. She reached for the headset folded into its place next to the computer at her station. "Where's my captain?"
Charlotte's fingers flew over her own tablet. Maria pulled on the headset and positioned the microphone.
Steve's voice flooded over the channel, thick and breathless and needy. "Maria, are you there? Please--"
"Talk to me."
"We can't fight it," he said, words tumbling out atop each other. "Every time we make some progress, it-- Oh, God." He moaned, long and low, obscene.
Maria winced. "Steve." Stay with me, Cap...
"Yes..."
"Focus, Captain. What's happening?"
"Some kind of physiological weapon," Steve panted. "We can't fight it. We need help. Please, Maria."
"Stand by." She cut off the communication and looked at Charlotte. "I want to talk to Sergeant Barnes."
The words were barely out of her mouth before she heard him.
"Barnes." His voice was low, breathy. He sounded like he was clinging to control and like he didn't want to give away his position. "Hill, we need backup. We need it now."
"What can you do?"
"Nothing." His breath hitched and he breathed a soft expletive, and when he spoke again, his voice was warm and lazy. "Every time someone gets close, it hits us again."
"How long has this been going on?"
"Two hours. Since morning rush hour." Bucky groaned. "You have to do something, Maria. This isn't just-- Oh ." He sighed the word, drawing out the consonant. "We're looking at dehydration, exhaustion, and muscle cramps at the least and-- oh my god --I think Sam broke his arm." He hissed. "We can't keep up like this. We need backup."
"I'm on it, Barnes. Just stand by." She clicked off the comm and looked at Charlotte. "I don't even want to ask, but I need to speak to Rhodes and Wilson. I need to know how they're doing." She set the tablet down and switched on the computer at her station. "I need all the video we've got. War Machine's feed, Falcon's feed, all local surveillance, anything. Do we have an eye in the sky?"
"No, ma'am."
"Get some drones up there." Maria braced her hands on her desk and stared up at the big screen in the center of the wall across from her, where War Machine's video feed had been routed.
There was no sound, and Maria was grateful for that.
Her comm crackled to life.
Colonel Rhodes huffed, his breaths short and ragged. "Rhodes."
"How are you doing, Colonel?"
"Hanging in there." He groaned, long and deep. "Gonna need to get the suit cleaned."
Maria winced. "Have your weapons had any effect on it?"
His breathing caught and he moaned. "Can't get close enough to get a lock with the missiles, can't aim with the guns."
On screen, the monster contracted and sent out another whammy blast.
In her ears, Colonel Rhodes screamed.
Maria did not need to know he was a screamer.
"Help is on the way, Rhodey. Stand by." She switched off the comm and looked at Charlotte. "Barnes said Wilson might have broken his arm. Get me a scan on him as soon as the drones are in the air."
Charlotte nodded. "Wilson's waiting for you."
She did not want to check in with Falcon. She didn't want to. There were things she did not need to know, and she already knew too much today. Maria did it, anyway. She switched to the line he was on.
"Talk to me, Wilson."
"I don't know what it is or where it came from or what it wants, but-- oh oh oh --Maria, you gotta figure something out, goddamn , this thing is taking whatever we throw at it and it's-- oh my god ."
Maria closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Barnes said he thought you broke your arm."
"I set it. No anesthetic or pain killers." Sam groaned deeply. "It's making this whole thing a lot weirder than it has to be."
No kidding. "You got a live camera in your goggles?"
"Yeah."
"Stand by." Maria switched over to the team frequency. "Falcon, War Machine, my drones are still five minutes out. I need you to do a flyby. Get as close as you can and get me footage I can use."
"Copy-- oh --that," Sam said.
Rhodey managed, "Copy," before he yelped.
Maria yanked her headset off. "Split screen, Falcon and War Machine feeds, main monitor," she barked. She reached for her phone. "Local feeds on monitors two and three, and on my screen." She fired off a text to Sharon and Natasha-- Emergency. Don't wait for me. --and tossed her phone back into her bag.
Maybe she'd miss spa day. Maybe she'd have to go to dinner with bare nails and the same haircut, but she was not going to miss dinner .
"We have visual," Charlotte said.
Maria looked up.
Rhodes and Wilson were approaching the monster from opposite directions, Wilson high and Rhodes low, and both had switched their cameras to wide-angle so she saw not only the thing , but also the area around it. Rhodes went around it, circling, before he flew off; Wilson flew directly over. Maria got a good long look at the monster and at the streets.
"This is a joke. This has to be a joke." She looked around the room. The expressions on the faces of the ops staff ranged from disgust to open amusement. Maria sighed. "You." She locked eyes with the junior agent sitting nearest the main exit. "Go up to the roof and yell for Thor. If this is a joke, maybe it's Loki."
The kid blinked. "Go outside and--"
"Did I stutter? Go!"
She really did not like Loki.
Maria eyed the split feeds on her screen and then the main monitor. The monster didn't seem to be doing much in the way of actual damage to the city and it didn't seem to have an objective beyond the orgasm whammy. Most physical damage seemed to have been done just by the thing moving, or by the Avengers--collateral, with few injuries. That was good. Legal was still going to have a fit, but some bullet holes and broken windows were better than a pile of dead civilians.
All the civilians Maria could see were alive and still moving. There were streams of people still flooding out of office buildings and stores, running from the monster. At first she thought they were all affected the same as the Avengers: fine until the whammy, then helpless for half a minute to three minutes depending on their proximity to the monster and the strength of the pulse. Then she realized that wasn't true.
It was overwhelmingly the men who were incapacitated. The women, she noticed, were moving even when the men weren't, pulling them out of the street and out of the way of the running mobs, even shouldering them into fireman's carries and staggering off. There were a few women affected, mostly women that appeared to be in their thirties, but... Maria focused one of the streetlight cameras on one of the women running. When the man beside her fell to his knees, expression on his face pure bliss, she paused only long enough to put a hand on the building beside her and frown before she hauled him up and dragged him on stumbling feet.
Maria frowned. So this thing was forcing people to orgasm. And people who were good at not achieving orgasm weren't as badly affected.
She closed her eyes and hung her head. Really? Really?!
She definitely did not get paid enough for this.
"All right." Maria raised her head to look at Charlotte. She pushed herself up so she wasn't hunching over her station. "I need bioscans on Rogers, Barnes, Rhodes, and Wilson. I need bioscans on the hostile and on targets I designate." She paused to select cameras on her screen and threw them to the main monitor: four women, five men. "End scans after the next whammy."
"Scanning now."
"I want full medical analysis on all scanned targets, including diagnoses. My display."
The same voice confirmed, "Copy that."
Three tense minutes later, Maria was reading a brief medical assessment and her theory was confirmed.
She flicked off her tablet and left it on her desk as she turned to Charlotte.
"Assemble a field team," she said. "Eight medics, two snipers, four special ops infantry, and four pilots in two quinjets with medical bays and six short-range missiles. Female only, no male agents. In the air in two minutes." Maria smiled tightly. "And will you lock my bag in my office, please?"
***
Strapped into a jumpseat in the back of the quinjet, Maria felt the whammy as soon as they were within the monster's pulse range. Heat boiled through her veins and flushed her skin, got her wet and made her breasts feel heavy. She needed . And it pissed her off. She watched the women strapped in across from and beside her carefully and felt the dip of the jet as the pilots took the hit, too. And she watched, as she expected, each of them immediately recover. Their expressions ranged from disgust to annoyance, and the pilot came on their headsets to apologize for the turbulence.
Maria gave the woman across from her a tight smile.
None of them had believed her when she'd briefed them back on the tarmac. She hadn't believed herself. She wasn't exactly happy about being right, but it was nice to know her assessment was correct.
She checked her mini-tablet for the bioscan readings she'd had the AI run on her quinjet and on the other. The scans all showed exactly what she expected: arousal, but none of it debilitating, and in most cases, the readings were the same as they would have been for adrenaline spikes.
By the time they landed, everyone was ready to go. The pilot lowered the rear ramp and the four medics, sniper, and two agents filed out after Maria, the medics sticking close and the sniper and agents forming a defensive perimeter. Across the street, the rest of her field team was exiting their quinjet.
Maria clicked her comm to life. "Once the Avengers are clear, we'll fall back far enough for you to make strafing runs on the target."
The pilots clicked back to confirm.
When the ramps were up, the quinjets lifted off.
Maria led her half of the team across the street to the other half and once she was sure everyone was listening to her, she began giving orders. "I want two medics on each Avenger. Barnes is on a rooftop--" She rattled off the address of his last known location; Barnes was good about not moving unless he had to. "Alpha, you're on him. Beta, Charlie, Delta, stick close. The others are within a half mile of the hostile. We'll switch to their frequency and bring them to us. Getting them medical help is our first priority, copy?"
She received a chorus of confirmations.
"The rest of you--" Maria turned to the snipers and soldiers. "Once the Avengers are clear, we're taking that thing down. The quinjets brought the heavy firepower, but we're going to slow it down. Stop it if we can. I want one sniper in Barnes' position and one across the street." She looked at Kelly and Monroe. "Let's set up the Barretts at the end of the block it's on."
The stocky blonde and grim-faced redhead hauling the twin M82s nodded at her.
Maria looked around at the rest. "Are we clear?"
After another round of confirmations, she gestured for the agents to follow her.
It wasn't a standard op. They could stroll right up the center of the street if they wanted, and they didn't have to watch for hostiles--though they did, because some habits never died. The streets were bizarrely devoid of civilians, abandoned cars parked haphazardly across the streets, and Maria called back to base to have the recovery teams on standby.
At the end of a street, near the water, they found it. It looked so much bigger in person. So much bigger and so much more disgusting.
"Come for me," it moaned, so loud Maria could feel it rattle her bones, and another pulse slammed into her.
The orgasm whammy.
Maria clenched her teeth and kept moving. Behind her, she could feel the rest of them keeping pace.
"Who the fuck comes up with this sick shit?" muttered one of the agents--ex-Army, Maria thought, hunting for the name. Lawrence.
Maria was still hoping it was Loki. If it was Loki, Thor could just bully him into fixing it and Asgard would pick up the cleanup tab so Stark's Avengers wouldn't have to.
War Machine zipped by, shoulder gun firing, bullets tearing into the monster's flesh. His comm crackled. "Cavalry's here! Afternoon, ladies."
"Rhodes--"
She was cut off as the monster set off another whammy pulse, squishing down low and throwing out a shimmering clear wall of energy that hit them harder than the one before.
War Machine screamed through the comm and fell out of the sky.
Maria felt the tightening low inside, felt the tingling in her fingers and toes and lips, and her breath caught. She gritted her teeth.
"Bravo team, on me. Let's get War Machine." She scrambled toward Colonel Rhodes.
The medics were right behind her.
Maria looked at the agent who'd slipped into her point position and waved her on. "I'll catch up," she said.
With a nod, the woman turned away from her and gestured to the rest of them. They brought their weapons back up and advanced.
Rhodey was trying to pick himself up when Maria got to him. The metal suit was cool when she put a hand on his shoulder and pressed. She couldn't keep him down if she wanted, not while he was War Machine, but she could tap into his suit's AI and access his bio readings.
She slipped her sidearm back into its thigh holster and rapped on his suit's faceplate.
It popped open, revealing Rhodes' colorless, sweat-soaked face and glassy eyes. He looked almost gaunt.
"You're done," she said.
"But--"
"You're done, Colonel. I've got your life scans right here. We've got this." Maria backed up to let him stand. "Get the suit off and send it back to base unmanned. You're going with the medics." She backed away, letting the medical team swarm around him. "Get him to the quinjet," she told the medics. "And keep me updated."
The rest of Rhodey's protests fell on deaf ears. Maria was turning to rejoin the rest of her team when the corner of the building above her exploded and shards of brick and chunks of mortar rained down over her. She looked up, and then across the street.
Barnes.
"Alpha?"
"We're almost on him."
The words hadn't even died in her ears when Maria saw the silhouettes appear over the edge of the rooftop, moving toward the street side.
"Go with them, Barnes." Maria steeled for the fight.
Barnes sighed, relief and surrender. "No argument here, ma'am. I hope they brought a stretcher."
Barnes was her favorite. She never had to fight him to get him to do what was best--for him, for the mission. "Where's your partner?"
"Throwing himself through windows at that thing," Barnes said weakly. "Should be coming out of the building right above you any second now."
"Come for me!" the monster bellowed.
The following whammy was strong enough to make Maria's knees wobble.
"Fuck that ," came Kelly's voice over the comm, and the street suddenly echoed with the sound of .50 caliber gunfire.
Maria almost chastised Kelly for her language--the comm was wide open, not just to the Avengers, but to the ops team back at base--but as Barnes predicted, the windows above her shattered and Steve flew over, an angry ball of red-white-blue launched right at the penis monster's face.
He hit with a sick thud and clung to one of the throbbing veins over the thing's face. He started hacking at it with the edge of the shield, leaving deep cuts in the flesh, tearing out bloody chunks.
"Come for me!"
Maria braced herself against the next whammy. "Captain, stand down."
"Just a few... more... inches..." Steve's hacking got weaker and his grip on the monster's vein loosened.
"You are relieved, Captain," Maria snapped. "Get down from there so we can get you back to medical."
"We're taking the sergeant back to the LZ," Alpha called to her.
"Good work." Maria moved closer to the monster, step by careful step, eyes on Rogers the whole time. "That was an order, Captain!"
"But I've almost--"
"Come for me!" the monster bellowed.
The whammy that crashed into her then nearly bowled her over. It twisted her gut and burned her skin and it was only sheer stubborn will that kept her upright, kept her moving.
Rogers wasn't so lucky. He lost his grip on the monster and tumbled back, falling twenty feet and bouncing limp as a rag doll off one of the monster's giant balls only to fall the last ten feet to crash to the pavement. He landed in a moaning, writhing heap on the street.
"Charlie team!"
"On it, ma'am." Two medics rushed past her. "Captain, don't move, sir. Please."
"I can--"
"You're done." Maria tuned out Steve's protests and scanned the sky. As soon as Wilson was clear, they could finish this. "Falcon, where are you?"
"Right here."
The rush of air from behind her made Maria turn. What she found made her wince. Wilson's arm was in a field splint, and there was blood on his elbow. He looked gray around the edges, haggard and weak. It was clear that standing was more effort than he could afford.
Maria eyed him. "Is it going to be a fight to get you to go with the medics?"
"Have they got a stretcher? I don't think I can walk anymore." Wilson's knees gave out and he cradled his injured arm to his chest as his wings folded back into their pack. He tore off his goggles and looked past Maria at the monster. "What is that thing?"
"I don't know."
"Did you bring enough firepower to kill it?"
Maria's mouth firmed into a hard line. "I hope so." She looked around, ready to call for Delta team, but she didn't have to; the last two medics rushed to Sam, one of them already yanking her backpack off to unpack the field stretcher. "I need a civilian status report," she barked into her comm as she backed away.
Charlotte's voice filled her ears. "All civilians have been cleared, ma'am. You're free to eliminate the threat."
"Come for me!" the monster bellowed again.
The next whammy gave Maria goosebumps and made her scalp tingle and curled her toes in her boots.
"Kill that thing." She yanked the M16 off her shoulder and flicked off the safety and brought it up. "Fire at will."
The quinjets hovered over the tallest buildings on the block and opened fire with the miniguns, pumping rounds and rounds of glowing lead into the monster's body. Kelly and Monroe took the monster's ball feet with their .50 cal machine guns and Bradford and Green took turns launching RPGs at the thing from their opposite rooftops.
Maria aimed for the monster's left eye and started squeezing the trigger.
It bellowed and groaned. "Come for me!" It pulsed again and again, one whammy immediately following the other, but their fire never stalled, never wavered. Flesh fell in massive chunks, bouncing against the pavement. The air all around them ripened with the scent of burned flesh, the sticky-musky-sweet scent of release, the blooming reek of mushroom.
Maria wished she'd thought to bring a facemask. The smells made her want to gag.
Lightning flashed close, burning the air around her and raising the hair on her arms. Thunder crashed, booming so loud and near it nearly knocked her off her feet. She smelled ozone and petrichor and wet metal, and when she looked, Thor towered beside her, studying the monster in tatters before them with a thoughtful look on his face.
He glanced at her. "Dare I ask?"
Her heart sank. "You don't know what this is?"
Thor raised an eyebrow at her, and when he realized she wasn't joking, he shook his head.
Maria swallowed a curse. Her eyes fell to Mjolnir, dangling by its strap at his side. She frowned, nodding to it, then jerked her head toward the monster. "Do you think you could--?" She had only a moment' trepidation asking.
If a god--a fertility god, at that!--couldn't control himself...
Thor gave her a dazzling smile. He brought Mjolnir up and started to whirl it. "Of course." A moment later, he was gone, and streaks of hot white-blue lightning joined the grenades and missiles and bullets.
"Come for me!"
The monster contracted again, but when it tried to pulse out another whammy, it just exploded.
Weapons fell silence, and the following stillness was nearly deafening. Blood and fluid and flesh fell around her and the rest of her team like the weirdest, most disgusting rain ever. Maria flipped the safety on her rifle and slung it once more over her shoulder. She started wiping what was left of the monster off her face and picking it out of her hair and she wondered how long decontamination would take.
Maybe she could still meet Natasha and Sharon...
Thor landed beside her with a regal whoosh.
"Thanks," she said.
He gave her the tight-lipped smile he seemed to use only when he was amused in a way he didn't think the humans around him would understand. "My pleasure."
Maria glanced at what remained of the monster as the cleanup crews landed on the street behind her. She could hear their boots on the pavement, hear their chatter on her comm. "You really don't know what that was?" She didn't bother to conceal the hope in her voice.
Thor shrugged. "I'm sorry. This never happens on Asgard."