Agent Coulson had, for once, slept until the afternoon. By the time he emerged from his bedroom, still bleary-eyed, it was nearly time for Annie to get out of school. Usually, one of him and Melinda would have gone to pick her up by now. He couldn't understand why Melinda was still here.
"What's wrong, Melinda? Aren't you going to pick Annie up from school?"
Coulson called out to her, then headed for the kitchen to find something to eat. Lunch had long since passed, but it was still a little too early for dinner. If he didn't eat something, he'd never make it until then.
"Annie and the others have an extracurricular activity this afternoon, so they'll be getting out a little later. There's no rush; I can go in a bit." Melinda stared at Coulson expressionlessly for a moment. "What about you, Coulson? Have a nice, comfortable sleep? Do you know what time it is? You're only just getting up?"
"You have to understand, anyone who'd spent the whole night flying around in the sky, then come back after a night of running around and still had to spend over an hour helping little Annie with her homework would sleep until the afternoon, just like me! Honestly, last night wore me out. I could barely fall asleep before dawn!" Coulson found a loaf of bread in the Fridge and grabbed a bottle of ketchup. At least he had his lunch sorted out.
"What's wrong, Melinda? Did something happen again?" After hastily cutting off a couple of slices of bread and spreading ketchup on them, Coulson ate while studying Melinda curiously. He could tell something was off with her. With all the bad news lately, he was getting used to it.
"I've got two pieces of bad news. Do you want to hear them?" Melinda still wore an impassive expression.
"Oh? Let's hear it. It's not that evil god Loki escaping again, is it?" At the mention of bad news, Coulson frowned. There really had been a lot of it lately. After Thor had taken Loki away last night, he'd fought Iron Man and Captain America, flattening a small patch of forest in the process.
Still, things had worked out in the end. After some negotiation, Thor had obediently taken Loki back to S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters and locked him in a special prison! So if Melinda had bad news now, surely it wasn't that Loki had escaped again? He'd been locked in a special prison under the watch of a whole bunch of Avengers. Could he really have gotten away despite all that? Was he actually that capable? And Coulson seemed to remember that Hulk—Banner—had also arrived at Headquarters. How could so many people fail to keep an eye on one Loki?
"You guessed right! Loki really did escape! And that's not all—they nearly destroyed Headquarters, too. They almost made that Helicarrier crash! Most of its functions are now out of commission, and there's more: Thor, one of the Avengers, is missing. After Hulk tore up Headquarters, he was driven off the carrier, and no one knows where he landed..." Melinda sighed.
She felt like everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. had been thoroughly played by the evil god Loki. Maybe he'd deliberately shown up in Germany last night and caused a huge commotion just to lure S.H.I.E.L.D. into capturing him. Looking at the mess he'd caused aboard S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier, it seemed he'd accomplished his goal. If he really had some scheme in mind, S.H.I.E.L.D. probably didn't have the time to deal with him now. The only good news might be that Hawkeye had been brought back in custody.
"So you're just going to sit here and do nothing?" Coulson was so stunned by the explosive news that he didn't know what to say.
"What can I do? Drive your car to Headquarters and help out?" Melinda asked, laughing in exasperation.
"Oh, right! We really can't get to Headquarters without a plane. My Lola can't fly that high or that far!" Coulson realized she was right. There really wasn't much the two of them could do to help.
Coulson was actually very lucky. Because of Annie, he and Melinda had been given the important task of keeping an eye on and looking after the little girl, which had kept them away from the chaos at Headquarters. If things had gone as they had in the original story, he'd probably already be long dead, with Loki's staff through his heart.
"Then should we check in with Headquarters and see if there's anything they need us to do?"
"Forget it. Don't go adding to the Director's troubles. Just finish eating and get ready to pick Annie up." Melinda shot Coulson an annoyed look.
Headquarters was probably still in total disarray. The mighty S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters had nearly been taken out completely! The Helicarrier had suffered serious damage, and plenty of people had died. Wouldn't checking in now just add to the chaos and get them chewed out? She was sure the Director was fuming. Who would be stupid enough to provoke him right now? Were they looking to get themselves killed?
"OK! I'll head out in a bit!"
Coulson had just decided to eat a couple more bites before leaving when he suddenly heard the distant, shrill wail of an air-raid siren. He exchanged a glance with Melinda, and the two of them raced toward the house's intelligence receiver. They had to find out what was happening right away! Someone had sounded the city's air-raid sirens at a time like this? If it wasn't a drill, then something terrible was happening!
As the air-raid sirens echoed across the city, the teachers and security guards had gathered all the students and were getting ready to board the bus back to school. Now, they were at a loss. They hadn't received any notice of an air-raid drill today. Why were the sirens going off? Was it a false alarm? Had some careless fool gotten drunk and hit the wrong button?
While Ms. Maine, still puzzled, continued gathering the students and getting them ready to board, urgent music began playing from Annie's backpack. It was the S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued emergency communicator Coulson and Melinda had given her. But ever since it had been put in Annie's backpack, it had never been used. No one knew why it had suddenly started ringing today.
"Huh? Uncle Coulson? Aunt Melinda? Is something wrong?"
With her teacher and classmates watching, Annie had no choice but to take a small device out of her backpack. It had a dazzling black casing marked with the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem. It looked like a cellphone. After fumbling around for a moment, Annie pressed a button, and the communicator projected a screen displaying three-dimensional images of an anxious-looking Coulson and Melinda.
"Hello? Annie? We just got the latest news. The evil god Loki has opened a Space Gate on top of Stark Tower, and the Chitauri army has started attacking New York. Be careful! And if you can help, that would be great!" A cacophony of noise and rumbling came through the phone. It sounded like a battle had already started on Coulson's end. He was too busy trying to look after himself to do more than notify Annie.
"Whoa! I can see them already..." Annie hung up and looked up to see a large group of flying craft speeding toward the park.
The craft looked like oversized jet skis, except they flew through the air and were a little bigger! Three or four Chitauri rode each one. The rider at the front controlled the craft, while the two or three behind fired laser weapons at the ground. Their attacks struck the ground with a series of explosions, and the people in the park immediately panicked, running in every direction.
"Ah~! Help! HELP! ME!"
"Ah!!!"
A group of women in bikinis had been lying on the grass, enjoying the sun. They had just gotten to their feet and hadn't even had a chance to run when laser blasts struck them. After the explosions, blood and severed limbs splattered across the ground, staining a small patch of grass red...
And that wasn't all! More flying craft began swarming in, and the energy weapons they fired indiscriminately set many of the park's trees and bushes ablaze. Smoke and explosions, fire and blood, and a panicked, helpless crowd transformed a pleasant park into a scene straight out of the apocalypse in an instant!
Seeing how brutally the aliens attacked, the crowd grew even more frantic!
People scrambled on all fours into any building they could find or behind anything that could shield them. One big, adult man even stuck his head into a concrete pipe, leaving his comically large, round butt wedged outside because he couldn't squeeze in any farther!
The group of elementary school students beside Annie was just as terrified. They stood frozen in place, too stunned even to remember to run! When a severed hand—who knew which young woman it belonged to?—was blasted into the open space in front of them, little Angelina was the first to collapse onto the ground and burst into tears. Her crying set off the rest of the students, and they all began wailing at the top of their lungs.
"Oh, God! Oh, my God! Wh-what is happening?" When she heard the students start to cry, Ms. Maine finally snapped out of it. She knew she had to do something. She had her students to think about. She had to protect them!
"Kids, come on! Stop crying and be brave! Get up and follow me to that building over there! We'll hide inside! Hurry!"
She tried her best to pull the children to their feet, but there were too many frightened students for one person to move. If anything, her attempts to pull them along only made them cry louder when they saw how panicked she was...
"Oh, no!"
Just then, a Chitauri craft spotted the group of elementary school students huddled on the grass. It turned toward them and flew straight over. From far away, it fired two blue energy beams. Ms. Maine had time only to cry out inwardly before instinctively closing her eyes and shielding her students with her not-so-broad back...
"Hmph!"
At the moment Ms. Maine thought they were as good as dead, she seemed to hear Annie give a cold snort! She had closed her eyes and resigned herself to death, but after a while she realized that she and the others hadn't been hit at all. She opened her eyes, and what she saw was astonishing!
Annie held out one small hand toward the sky, palm up. A huge, fiery-red, hemispherical shield covered her, Ms. Maine, and the other students. More blue laser beams continued to strike it, but they only sent ripples across its surface. They couldn't penetrate it.
"Hmph! I won't let you get away with this!" Annie's usually cheerful little face had gone completely cold. She was angry now—furious! And the consequences would be serious! Those had to be bad guys, really, really bad ones. She had to burn them up at once!
Then she began to rise into the air, slowly floating outside the shield. Watching the Chitauri craft still circling overhead and occasionally screaming past, Annie raised her right hand again. A violent surge of magic gathered around her, as if countless energies were converging in her hand. The next moment, a giant fireball formed above her small palm. Its scorching heat made the surrounding air boil and even warped the light.
"Fire! Shatterfire! Go!"
Annie glared at the Chitauri still attacking from the sky, her brows knitted. Then the enormous fireball in her hand exploded with a roar, instantly splitting into countless smaller fireballs, each the size of a basketball! They shot skyward at high speed, howling through the air. As if guided, each one spread out, caught up with a Chitauri craft, and latched on before exploding violently... Clumps of flame swallowed them whole!
Amid a series of deafening booms and the Chitauri's dying screams, not one of the more than a hundred Chitauri craft in the airspace near the grass survived! The passengers and machines were all blown into burning pieces, which began raining down to the ground like a shower of fire.
That was what Ms. Maine saw when she opened her eyes, arms spread to shield her students! Even many years later, whenever she thought back on that moment, it still seemed almost impossible. Before then, she would never have imagined that little Annie—the naughtiest, most mischievous, troublemaking student in her class—would save them all.
"My God! Annie, how did you...?" Ms. Maine stared at the transparent shield still protecting them and at Annie floating in the sky after destroying all the terrifying monsters. She was so stunned she didn't know what to say.
Annie frowned as she watched the Chitauri in the distance still flying around and attacking the ground. Smoke billowed across the entire city, and explosions and screams kept rising... Annie really liked this city. Even though she wasn't from Earth, she didn't want a bunch of bad guys to destroy it!
"Ms. Maine! It's dangerous outside, so don't leave the shield, okay?"
Annie looked down and reminded her teacher not to leave the protection of her magic shield until the danger had passed! Then she beckoned with her left hand and cast Mage Hand, pulling Tibbers out of the backpack lying on the ground. Afterward, she sped off into the distance. She had decided to give the bad guys a thorough beating today and teach them what happened when they made her angry!
Annie thought that she'd been brought to Earth for no reason, and it was still uncertain whether she'd ever get to return home to the Voodoo Lands! She was already miserable enough! Now she'd finally found somewhere she liked, and had a little home and a family, along with teachers, classmates, and friends. This city was her unofficial temporary territory! Annie had decided: wherever she lived, everything within a hundred miles was her territory!
And now, just look at them: after she'd been tricked away from home and stranded on Earth, these bad guys had even dared to invade her territory? They were practically asking for death!
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