Logs:Operation: A.S.S.E.M.B.L.E.

Operation: A.S.S.E.M.B.L.E.
Avengers Synergistically Shellack Extraterrestrial Marauding Bugs, Liberating Earth
Dramatis Personae Clint, Sam, Hulk, Natasha, Tony, Steve, Fury, Coulson, Lucien, Rocket
In Absentia Bryce	2024-05-20 "Deal with those. Then get a drink." (Right after a less harmonious assembly, Part of Avengers, Assemble! Plot)
Location Quinjet / Midtown / SHIELD Headquarters
The Quinjet is remarkably quiet and steady at cruising altitude above the clouds, and with nothing but endless blue sky outside the windshields it's easy to imagine they're sitting still and not beelining for New York at Mach 3. Clint has a backup bow, naturally. He also has backup goggles, but they are hanging around his neck so he can press an ice pack to his temple. He's been uncharacteristically restless on the flight so far, but it's still startling when he's the one who breaks the silence. "What the fuck was that?" He's overenunciating just enough to sound peeved, though his voice is otherwise as even as ever. "We've faced those mercs before. We are better than they are. But we barely walked away from that fight." His eyes--well, the one eye visible from that angle--cut to Steve. "Captain Care Bear almost got us both killed before he even had the chance to open Pandora's Cube." He jabs a finger pointedly in the direction of the bulls-eye shield. "I do not need to be rescued, Tenderheart." Sam isn't wearing his wings anymore, and has been spinning his goggles restlessly around a wrist. "Your so-called intelligence agency's complete lack of intelligence ain't on him," he's saying with a bristling defensiveness, nevermind that he himself has had only stony silence for Steve since they reboarded. "The hell you even here for. Bring a bow and arrow," though now he's casting an arm out towards Hulk, though he's mostly addressing the others and not the Giant Green Man "and a goddamned nuke to a gun fight?" "HULK NOT NUKE!" Hulk protests, his voice thunderous in the confines of even this capacious superjet. When most of those present flinch from sheer aural pain if not intimidation, he switches to his Indoor voice. "Hulk right here. Little bird man right there. Not crushed." His volume is rising again. "Hulk protect!" Then, a little subdued if not quite petulant. "Hulk not weapon." "Oh, get over yourself." Natasha has flinched along with the rest at that initial thundering boom, but now she's just narrow-eyed, arms crossed over her chest. "We're all weapons. You think you're here for your charm?" Even if this started out directed at Hulk, it's Tony that her glare has cut to. While they wait for more concrete intel on what's to come next Tony's poured himself a measure of Scotch, but he sets this down with a very who, me? point at the glow in his chest. The small lift of his brows and cock of his head suggests that he does, actually, think his charm might have something to do with it. "Real possible," he's saying -- with a nod toward Hulk -- "that a nuke might come in handy real soon, since I just unleashed an evil -- extraterrestrial, ah -- all-powerful god-king on the planet. Oh, no, wait. That was Captain Propaganda over there." Steve is not having an asthma attack, but he is sitting in the tripod position, elbows on his knees and hands on his shield. His eyes track the conversation -- such as it is -- though he doesn't react visibly except to flinch at Hulk's Outdoor Voice. But at Tony's conclusion he is sitting up, "I own what I did. You can get in line to hold me accountable after we've stopped that -- that --" He frowns. "Well, I don't believe in kings, and he's no god of mine. If those jokers subdued him, so can we." He's looking around at the others. "We're not weapons." This doesn't sound argumentative so much as frustrated. "We are soldiers, and we need to start acting like --" "Enough!" Fury has been leaning against a bulkhead, one hand gripping the overhead bar, the other stroking his beard slow and meditative. Now he steps forward, looming over all the battered heroes save for Hulk. "Y'all couldn't find your asses with a six-man team on account of you ain't a team. But that's what the world needs right now. Not weapons, not soldiers, not a goddamn intelligence agency." He scoffs. "Uncle Sam gon' be all too eager to nuke the problem whether it needs nuking or not, and we got to beat him to the punch." He clasps his hands behind his back and walks a slow pace through the cabin, looking at each of them in turn. "When I learned that not only we are not alone in this Universe, but we are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned, I dreamt up the Avenger Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of heroes, see if they could become more than the sum of their abilities, work together to fight the battles no agency, no army, no nation could fight." He executes a neat about-face, precise even half a lifetime past his Army days. "I done brought you together, but assembling a team? That's on all y'all. Now, I still believe in heroes." His gaze drops from the faces of his would-be Avengers to the empty expanse of deck between them. "Well. It's an old-fashioned idea." Whether this speech inspired or discouraged or simply bored, nobody really has a chance to respond to it. "Director, priority one call from Agent Coulson," the copilot up front calls urgently over her shoulder, and does not wait for an acknowledgement before flicking on the cabin holoprojector to display, as promised, one Agent Coulson, his expression grim. He's standing on the roof S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ, to judge by the skyline, but it looks a bit dark for a clear day in New York. "Sir! We're picking up a massive spike in space-time distortion directly over the city. Sci-tech can't tell exactly where it's coming from or where it's going to, but..." He angles his phone up at the sky, where an ominous funnel cloud like no weather any of them has ever seen before is growing darker by the second. "...I think you'd better hurry." Lucien hasn't been saying anything, through this bickering, just seated quietly with his eyes ticking bright and alert between the would-be superheroes. His gaze rivets on the screen once Coulson shows them the sky. His quiet expression does not change, but he's reaching for the drink Tony abandoned, downing it entire in one swallow. --- High above the Stark Tower rooftop, a dark funnel has opened. From sky, the man on the tower roof does not look like much, just a bright-caped figure next to the far more immense upward beam whose ferocious radius of energy prevents the Quinjet from any immediate direct approach. The strange contraption spinning round and round and round beside him doesn't look like much, either, though the cube at its center still glows fierce and bright. One might be forgiven, anyway, for -- for a moment, at least -- ignoring the Asgardian and his workings, because what's starting to pour through the portal is eye-catching all on its own. The swarm of ships that streak out into the air above Manhattan fill the sky like locusts. Panic has already begun spreading below at that first bright-energy blast, at the ominous funnel, roads impassible with the scrambling traffic. As the first of the alien ships begins to fire, though, the screams drown out the NYC-typical cacophony of horns. The Quinjet is definitely violating several FAA regulations--to say nothing of common sense--flying low up Broadway between the buildings to evade easy notice by the alien swarm. It touch down in Times Square just long enough for the Avengers to disembark and for its crew to evacuate the slack-jawed tourists still staring up as though expecting to see the logo of this viral marketing gimmick on the gigantic screens...any minute now. Hawkeye has his new bow deployed and new goggles strapped on, one of his back-up quivers clipped beside the one he'd refilled on the flight. He's already nocked a single arrow but has not drawn yet, sucking in a hard breath as he scans the skies overhead. "Knew I should have brought more arrows." He sounds calm and collected, but his eyes are wide as they tick over the additional information his goggles are feeding him. "But I'll settle for better sightlines." Falcon's wings had started to fold back in as his feet hit the ground, but as he scours the sky they're staying flared wide. Possibly his eyes are wide, too, but the goggles mostly make his stare look hard and intense. "You want height, I'll get you the sky." Hulk's gigantic hands ball into fists, his wordless defiant roar far more efficient than the cajoling of the SHIELD agents at inducing tourists to seek shelter. He crouches down and makes to leap, then hesitates, one fist braced against the pavement. There's only a touch of dubiousness when he booms, "HAVE PLAN?" "You always say that, and you've always managed fine." Black Widow's reply to Hawkeye comes oddly mildly, as she adjusts her bracers and draws her gun. Her eyes have flared wide at the increasing stream of ships, and she takes in a slow breath. "We'll make it work." Iron Man's mask never changes its expression, and as his helmet tips up it's looking as blank as ever. "Huh." Though the repulsors in his gauntlets hum a little louder, he doesn't yet take off. "Deal with those. Then get a drink." Captain America didn't have a backup helmet, but he's wiped away the blood and looks no worse for the previous battle. He narrows his eyes faintly when he looks up, hefting the familiar eight of his shield. "Alright, team. Until we can get at that portal machine, our priority's containment. Falcon, Iron Man, take the perimeter. Hawkeye, watch their backs and call out patterns." He checks his other weapons before pulling his MK-18 from the bracket on his back. "Black Widow, we'll be on the ground getting folks out of the way and taking down anything that dares set foot on our New York. And Hulk? Smash." --- The locust-like swarm descending from the portal turns out to be comprised of not just individual bugs but multiple bugs riding (burrowing?) in slightly larger bugs, or in some cases rather large bugs. Maybe they are just vessels that look like bugs, but Hulk doesn't seem very fussed about the details of the invaders' organic technology. He leaps from the side of a building and lands directly on one of the sleek vessels, punching through its carapace to rip out a Brood warrior along with some vital looking innards, crushing both with the squeeze of one mighty fist. He rides the now-disabled ship down to crush another Brood busily tearing open the door of a stranded charter bus, and stomps on the crumpled mass of aliens just for good measure. The human passengers on the bus had already retreated to the back and, understandably, do not appear much relieved to have been rescued but a gigantic green man covered in alien fluids. "FALCON!" Hulk bellows at the sky. "FALCON PROTECT!" Evidently confident Falcon will, indeed, Protect, he bounds away to smash some enterprising Brood scaling a nearby building. Falcon swoops down just as one more bug is tearing the back door of the bus off. The heavy swat of his wing is not nearly enough to actually harm the alien -- but he's knocked it back toward Hulk without looking, evidently confident his larger companion will Handle That. "My big friend got our back," he's telling the terrified passengers, firm and urgent but with no trace of panic, "come with me, I'll get you to shelter." *** The crush of people fighting to cram into this subway station is probably a danger all of its own. With a cluster of enormous bugs closing in from multiple sides, though -- a few airborne, several stalking through the streets over the bodies of a couple people already downed with their venomous stings -- it's unlikely the panic-stampede is going to slow. At least, until a gleaming streak fwooshes down from the sky in bold crimson and gold -- a missile takes out one of the Brood in midair, a pair of blasts knocking two more back. One of them has dropped one of its weapons in its fall, a long prod of a thing with a far more intensive energy kick than any earth cattle prod could accomplish. "Need a bug zapper?" Iron Man snags it out of the air before it falls onto anyone, and tosses it toward his teammate before blasting off toward the next incoming fliers. Black Widow is just tucking one of her batons back into it holster and snatches the alien one out of the air. She brings it up hard at the joints in one of the creatures' thick exoskeletons, rolling out of the way of its lashing tentacles to slam its companion, as well. "C'mon," she's offering a hand to a young woman beneath a nearby car, that the bugs had been menacing, "New Yorkers can handle some big vermin, right?" *** Hawkeye is ensconced atop the Bank of America Tower, where he has an unobstructed view of the invasion force pouring from the portal high above Stark Tower. "Big one headed for the Theatre District," he says conversationally into his headset. "At least it's dark day. I got the one coming at me, Cap." It's a small Brood vessel at edge of his peripheral vision, but he's already drawn an arrow and started to turn toward it. "You head to Bryant Park. Some people caught in the open and surrounded." He finishes pivoting and looses the arrow, lodging it in the pilot's neck. As the ship loses altitude and curves away to the east the arrow explodes, incinerating its passengers and raining fiery debris onto some unsuspecting Brood busily corralling humans into the park. Looking up, Captain America had just opened his mouth to call a warning, but at the instruction he only says "Roger" and puts on an extra burst of speed as he rounds the corner. There sure are a lot of bugs -- and then there are just a few less as the burning wreckage of their own ship crashes into their midst. "Thank you!" he chirps as he charges into the hole Hawkeye had so thoughtfully punched in their ranks. A swing of his shield knocks one Brood aside and a three-shot burst from his carbine drops another. "C'mon, folks!" he calls to the no-longer-surrounded humans even as he widens their way out toward the subway entrance. "Not sure the F train's on schedule, but you won't be waiting alone." *** A cylindrical pod plummets straight down from out of the portal, burners sputtering in a futile attempt to slow descent, only changing course just enough to crash with an unceremonious bang on top of one of the bugs terrorizing the streets. It's only about ten seconds more before a hissing sound and some smoke pours out of the vessel. A couple of coughs, and Rocket steps outside, arm propped against the frame of the entrance, "Any landing you can walk away from..." He then surveys the city and the chaos that surrounds him and rubs his side. "Yeesh, what a dump." The raccoon walks slowly and pained away from the pod, but stumbles forward from the pressure of said emergency craft exploding behind him. "Oh come on!" he growls, opting now to pick up the pace into a scurry away from this sure-to-attract-attention spectacle in order to reassess the situation. *** Hawkeye hasn't run out of arrows, yet, but this time when he reaches back for one his fingers falter, his eyes fixed on the distant swirling portal. "Hey, guys." His voice is still as flat as ever, but there's something indefinably ominous in it. "You know those things we've been calling the 'big ones'? Those aren't the Big Ones." What he's calling the 'Big One' now is still in the process of emerging from the portal, an eel-like ship half a city block long, carrying dozens of the not-so-big-ones along its underside. "Can I get a lift, Falcon? Close to Stark Tower as you dare." "You want to get closer to --" Falcon's voice, at first, has a hint of incredulity in it, but then he goes silent for a moment. Maybe in this time he, too, has spotted The Big One. There's no answer over Hawkeye's comms, but shortly after ward -- there's an individual hovercraft tumbling from the sky, swiftly followed by the streak of enormous armored wings. Falcon is scooping Hawkeye up, their flight path maybe not as smooth as his passenger would like as he weaves and dodges between several of the hostiles, blasting as he maneuvers. *** There's a slew of fallen bugs littering this part of the street, but. But. Even as Black Widow is felling another one with its own energy weapon she's staring up -- not, actually, towards the much huger progression of ship-creatures that are coming through the portal, but from the streams of them disappearing away from Midtown and into the distance. "We need more air support." she says, over the crackling report of another baton strike. "Get me to one of those craft?" Hulk has just landed on top of one Brood while holding another he's summarily ripping apart and tossing aside. He frowns at "air support", but his thick brows clear with her follow up. "HULK THROW!" He sounds as confident as he is enthusiastic about this. He scoops Black Widow and, as promised, throws her with startling force and precision into the path of the next passing hovercraft. "WIDOW SMASH!" he calls after her by way of encouragement as he leaps up high himself, snagging the next such craft and using it--pilot and all--as a bludgeon to swat others out of the air. *** The giant eelship is still shedding its smaller cargo -- though these ships are blasted out of the air nearly as soon as they've deployed. The bigger ship itself is growing erratic in its path, as though the bugs steering it had a few too many before this invasion. Iron Man is taking full advantage of its confused zags in the air, as if by wildly improbable luck kept in the things blind spot with each sharp jerk. Of course, in this case, "luck" is getting a pretty huge boost, though as Iron Man blasts a final disabling hole through the head of the ship, it's not thanks he's rising to say, but: "If we can do that, ah." His glowing eyes are turning upward. "-- couple dozen more times." Iron Man's "luck" is currently in the process of extricating the shield he had jammed between the armored plates on the now-inert creature's head for use as a primitive steering wheel. Captain America squints up, too, at the still-thickening swarm. "I can do this all day," he insists, notwithstanding his numerous visible injuries, "but Manhattan can't." There might be a Brooklynite's dig at this borough buried in those words, but he looks deadly serious as his gaze tracks aside to the beam of light piercing their sky for the invaders. "We need to regroup. Fight our way through to that machine, by any means necessary." He finally wrenches the shield loose and returns it to his gauntlet. "Let's finish this." *** Nick Fury has had enough of this bullshit. How exactly he bluffed his way into this Joint Force Mobile Command Center is an open question that no one, if they are wise, will inquire too deeply into. "I am in contact with my people on the ground," he is explaining to an Air Force Colonel (non-retired). "That's more intel than you got, and I'm telling you, they can shut that portal down. If you blow them up, they won't be able to do that. It might never close." The Colonel stops even making a pretense of listening when his aid comes in and whispers into his ear, earning a grim nod. "We have confirmation. Clear them for launch." "Belay that." Fury's (very large) (very loaded) gun is suddenly pointed at the hapless communications officer's head. "You are talking about nuking the Island of Manhattan." "You stand down!" The colonel barks. "Whose idea was it to let the goddamn UN rep in? The Commander in Chief has made a decision." "I recognize that the President has made a decision," Fury says patiently. "But given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it. You stand down those fighters, or --" The door of the mobile command center slams shut, the aide having slipped away in the commotion. "Goddammit!" By the time Fury bursts outside, the F-35 is already gaining speed down the tarmac. He strides right out into the middle of the runway and fires his gun. He's not aiming for the tires. He's not aiming for the wings. He's aiming for the pilot's head under the canopy. He must know here's little chance a handgun can take down a modern fighter jet, but he keeps firing until the jet wash from hasty takeoff knocks him down. He rolls into his back and empties the rest of his clip into the glow of the afterburners. He taps his headset. "Cap. There's a bird inbound with a nuclear missile. You got less than five minutes." *** Hawkeye is going through arrows fast where he is now, a stone's throw--or an overdrawn shot--from Stark Tower. "Could just blow the platform under the machine, but that's probably what sci-tech means by 'uncontrolled shutdown'." This sort of casual, but what follows is audibly strained. "Just want to point that out before I use up my last bomb punching this hole." But no objection is forthcoming. "You'll have to fly through the explosion, Falcon. If it's any consolation, you're going to look really cool even if you crash and burn. On my mark." He fires at a personal craft circling the skyscraper, and the bomb on the arrowhead explodes on impact, flipping the vehicle to crash it into a larger one on an adjacent orbit. As the second explosion swallows the first he fixes his last arrow to a grapple line and arcs it toward a gaudy skyscraper, only barely in range. He leaps before it has even anchored, shouting "mark!" over the roar of the wind. Black Widow has by this point gotten pretty good on her stolen craft, even if her motions are quite markedly jerkier than the bugs' eerily coordinated balletic aerial maneuvers. She doesn't need a whole lot of finesse for this current trick, though, aiming her craft straight for the ones about to make contact with Clint's arrow. She's driven her ship straight on a collision course -- kind of dominoing the destruction, tumbling other ships along with it into the heart of the explosion. There's a brief and tenuous moment where there's only destruction to be seen, a bright flare of fire and exploding ships that tears a brief but wide hole in the bugs that have been swirling angry and protective around the tower's platform. It almost seems like a kamikaze move -- until the explosion silhouettes the path of Hawkeye's grappling swing. Where she's been caught Black Widow is, for a moment, trusting most all her weight to her partner, her arms freed to fire several times in rapid succession at the pane of glass they're heading straight toward. She drops the gun a moment before they land, tumbling together to the tenuous safety of an abandoned office in the neighboring skyscraper as the bugs continue to swarm outside. *** Falcon punches through the still-blossoming explosion, firelight glinting fierce on the sharp pinions of his wings and on the smooth dome of his passenger's shield. They emerge scorched and battered but also fast, riding the aggregated shockwave of the threefold blast. The person with the best view of this spectacle is too busy to appreciate it, since he also happens to be on the receiving end of a Captain America dropkick at nearly the speed of sound. The Asgardian prince has no time to brace or quip or cast a spell. He flies backwards, slams into a granite pillar of Tony Stark's penthouse hard enough to crack it, and bounces off onto the helipad below in a crumpled heap. He's nevertheless picking himself slowly back up. But then, so is Captain America, still on the upper platform with the now nominally undefended portal generator. "Don't seem like much of a god to me," Falcon is muttering, as he swoops down low to follow up Cap's dropkick with a barrage of small explosives. Sorry to Tony's house, which is losing several bits of itself in the assault. It's certainly delayed the man a good bit more, crashing down once again just as he'd started to rise. Even so, the man is rising again, and though Falcon's voice is still level enough as he swoops back around for another run, it's decidedly tense. "-- still. Might want to be quick with the wizardry." *** "You want there to be a New York to protect, gonna need you to stay in the ring just another minute." Has Iron Man even been helping his teammates with this Epic Battle at all? His iconic suit has been nowhere to be seen -- but now he's streaking in again fast from over the water. The large missile he's carrying is, perhaps ironically, boldly emblazoned with the Stark logo together with its more arcane series of military designations. "Figure I know just where to put this." The bright speck of gold and crimson is disappearing up through the vortex. Iron Man's comms are crackling, breaking up, but the last fragmentary words that be heard are: "Legolas -- very wrong -- the Big Ones." Through the small snip of space that can be seen through the portal there is, for a moment, a brief bright blip. Against the small fiery flash that it makes there's something silhouetted, the lines of its body far too immense to make out the complete shape where it stretches wide across space. And then, sudden and complete, the bugs are dropping -- mid-bite, mid-attack, mid-flight, a rain of crunching crashing bodies as they and their ships all crumple dead out of the air. The portal continues its spiraling spin, dark and seeming suddenly small against the sky now that no more bugs are streaming out of it. Hulk does not thread the Brood's defenses quite as gracefully as Falcon, but then, he doesn't really need to. Instead of joining the fray he lands beside the machine--and shrinks. Filthy and disheveled but unscathed, Bruce squints at the arcane contraption. "Oh, you're gonna love this. He used the power couplings in your Iron Man catwalk. It'd take me hours to calculate a safe shutdown sequence..." He pries up one of the floor tiles to expose a manual control panel. "...good thing our would-be alien overlord underestimated JARVIS." He looks up just in time to see Iron Man steer the missile through the vortex, frowning as his signal breaks up "Tony--" He flinches away from the flash, but immediately turns his eyes back up though a sky suddenly devoid of invaders. "Come on," he murmurs quietly. "Please. Not again." The shock front of the nuclear explosion keeps expanding and finally Bruce forces himself to look away and throttles down the power to the machine. Its spinning slows, its shaft of blue light winks out, the portal and its funnel cloud dissipate all at once as if it had never been. Save one speck. One bright speck of gold and crimson--no repulsors, no snark, just freefalling. Bruce scrambles to his feet, already transforming mid-motion until it's Hulk who springs from the platform and scoops the limp form of his teammate out of the air. He punches through the side of Stark tower, trailing a long narrow scar of broken glass and concrete and steel as he slows their descent. When they nevertheless tumble into a controlled crash Hulk turns to take the brunt of the impact with his back, shielding his fragile cargo until they skip to a stop amidst the rubble of an eerily quiet Midtown. *** Did he come through the portal? Did he have a ship at all? The crackle of lightning might have been overlook-able, with all the rest of the chaos. But here, on the ruined platform of the towel helipad, is a Strapping Blond in gleaming armor and red cape. This one holds a very large hammer, unlike the other -- -- actually, no, he's the only Big Blond Asgardian; the other man on the tower is leaner, dark-haired. Still dressed like he stepped off the cover of a high fantasy romance novel, though, and he's looking from the blond to the Avengers with a look of apology. "-- On behalf of Asgard," the darker-haired one is saying, "I extend my deepest condolences for the trouble my brother has --" "Trouble?" booms the other. "I came here to put an end to your mischief, brother. I, Thor Odinson --" But somewhere here he's catching on that there's more wrong than just the ruins of midtown, the dead still to bury, the bug-corpses littering the city. He's looking between the faces of the Avengers with a frown that is rapidly becoming perplexed. "I have no quarrel with your -- wait, no -- 'Loki'!" --- Like much of Midtown, S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ's rooftop garden has seen better days. The landscaping is scored and upturned, the trees battered and splintered, but there are signs the agents gave as good as they got, or maybe better. There's a sort of prosaic air to the cleanup now underway, a mostly cooperative but occasionally competitive effort by custodial and sci-tech personnel in coveralls. It is perhaps telling that S.H.I.E.L.D. already has appropriately sized refuse bins and sample containers, though what it tells might be up for debate. The picnic table has been righted, cleaned, and piled high with pizza boxes, several of which have been marked "VEGAN" in serious block print. There's also an eclectic selection of libations ranging from fine single malt scotch to a comically large Capri-Sun variety pack. There's some kind of liquor in the red Solo cup in front of Clint, but he hasn't actually touched it. In between bites of his enormous slice he is sipping from a pouch of Jungle Drink, whose label somewhat puzzlingly features a giant panda giving a suggestive wink. There are several empty Capri-Sun pouches folded neatly beside his grease-stained paper plate. Sam is working his way steadily through his latest slice, folded in half and still a monstrosity. There are reddened indents pressed around his eyes from where his goggles had sat, and this makes his thousand-yard-stare out at the damage to the neighboring buildings look even more distant. At length he's picking up his shiny juice bag -- more mundanely just labeled CHERRY -- to take a slow drink. Bruce's clothes are clean and neatly pressed, which makes the unkempt state of his actual person look all the more jarring. His slice has no cheese on it whatsoever, just a scattering of roasted vegetables and spices, with which he seems entirely content. The juice pouch in his hand was likely chosen purely for irony, the label reading "MONSTER ALARM" and depicting a monster probably most alarmed by the prospect of a lawsuit from Pixar. For all Nat's finesse with a weapon -- with a range of weapons -- her pouch with its somewhat unnervingly smiling lion is, maybe, going to be the thing that defeats her today. She's abandoned a slice of pizza half-eaten so that she can attempt to stab at the proper marked place with the pointy end of her straw, but all this has succeeded in doing so far is smashing the end of the straw blunt. After another couple tries she gives up -- materializes a small knife from Gd-only-knows-where -- and jabs it down at the bag. There's only a little spilling before she puts her mouth to the gash to drink. Tony is slumped low in his chair, one leg outstretched, his head tilted back toward the sky. Maybe he's scanning it for more aliens. Maybe he's just a little tipsy -- he's been supplementing his pizza generously with both rum and a very pink-and-rainbow fairy-unicorn Capri-sun. He's squirting the drink into his mouth. Pouring a measure of rum in along after it. Is this a good combination? Is it a terrible one? His pale and battered haggard expression doesn't change. Steve is probably the reason more pizza boxes keep showing up. He's certainly responsible for a majority of the empty ones, if only by a narrow margin. He's slowed to a somewhat normal human pace of pizza consumption and seems to be somewhat aware of the world around him again. His brows pinch with concern as his eyes tick over each of his teammates. And past them to the agents cleaning up. And past them to the widespread devastation of the city. Then back to the wreck the invasion made of the thriving garden. Then down to his empty plate. He snags another slice, and plucks another Capri-Sun from the box. Gives the pouch in his hand (MULTIVITAMIN, which apparently involves many fruits) a disapproving moue before jabbing a straw into it and drinking anyway. This is not Agent Coulson's first visit to the rooftop, but he has not come to bring more pizza, this time. Or, if he has, something has gone extremely awry with the pizza. He's carrying a bulky black and gray box made of the same tough composite material as the many refuse/sample bins all around, and is similarly emblazoned with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo, but there are numerous (steel-reinforced) slits along the side, and the front of it is a door of stout welded steel bars. It looks like nothing so much as a large and unnecessarily secure cat carrier. "I'm sorry to interrupt your meal, agents..." He catches himself at what is possibly his default term of address and decides to amend it with, "...and gentlemen." His pause is just long enough to feel awkward. "Director Fury didn't even want to hear it, but I think you probably should." He hefts the carrier (gently!) and sets it on a tall stack of empty pizza boxes. The carrier shakes on top of the stack, as its occupant moves from trying to push the roof of the thing off with his feet to reaching his fingers through the bars and snarling and biting at the assembled Avengers. And then he sits down, hunched over with arms crossed. "Alright, bozos," he growls, his wrathful gaze piercing through the bars, "You think you had a tough day with your," his tone turns to a mockingly sadsack one, even rubbing under his eyes for emphasis, "mean little bugs coming to eat your dump of a city?" He scoots forward and wraps his fingers around the bars, "I've been tracking the Brood, and they were not going somewhere, they were running away from somewhere. Which I was trying to figure out before I had to jump my escape pod here cause of all of this." He shakes the door furiously, "Then your idiot friend put me in a TINY PRISON!" His face pushes into the door as if he is trying to push through the gap. "So let me out, give me one of your slop triangles, hand over one of those drink bags, and help me get my freakin' ship back so that I maybe forgive you and help you losers not get extinct in the process." Not far away from the exhausted Avengers' table, Lucien has been engaged quiet but fervent in a long conversation with Thor (real one, probably.) He's stopped when Coulson arrives, and at Rocket's words gives a small hitch of brows. He's lifting the glass in his hand, draining its remainder slow while the raccoon speaks. But then he's walking over, quietly setting a large slice of pizza onto a plate of its own. He takes a moment, gently, to brush away a bug that's crawling up onto the plate, and he's a little cautious of Teeth and Claws when he goes to open the Tactical Cat Carrier and set the fresh pizza slop triangle down in front it. He's poured himself a considerably larger drink before he steps back away.