KnightofTempest
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Chapter 30
🕑 Added 2024-08-11 08:10:57 +0000 UTCThe Border between Serbia and Symkaria was largely dominated by the Southernmost stretch of the Carpathian Mountains. The Town of Belovo sat in the midst of the Durad Pass, named for the Serbian Ruler who founded the town, as well as the closest Major City, Smederovo, Durad Brankovic, back in the medieval period. The Town itself was built around the Belovo Fortress, a small fortress that held the pass through the mountains between the Serbian Despotate and the Symkarian Principality. The fortress had been important enough that the Ottomans hadn't razed it to the ground during their conquest, instead choosing to occupy it, a key factor in the Symkarian Principality choosing to submit to the Sultan instead of resist, as their neighbors in Wallachia and Latveria had.
The importance of the fortress and the town around it had remained through the centuries, even after the slow decay and withdrawal of Ottoman power, being modernized consistently. Indeed, the Battle of Belovo during the First World War between the Central Powers-allied Symkarians and the Allied Powers Member Serbians had demonstrated that such mountain fortresses could still be utilized to deadly effect, as the Symkarians were beaten back, largely thanks to the Fortress' Artillery Battery.
Symkaria was forced to switch sides shortly afterward, as King Pietro of Symkaria faced invasion from Latveria, whose King, Paul of Latveria, sought to use the war as a pretext for annexation of his neighbor. To avoid partition between Latveria and Serbia, King Pietro signed the treaty switching sides, much to the annoyance of Serbia, though the Latverians were placated by the annexation of the Province of Puternicstan which frequently changed hands between Latveria and Symkaria and had recently been awarded to Symkaria after victory in the Second Balkan War a year before the First World War started.
When the Axis attacked into Symkaria after the fall of Yugoslavia, it was from the Belovo Fortress that German Troops attacked along with forces in Romania, forcing King Phillip of Symkaria to join forces with his father's old enemy, the aging King Paul of Latveria to repel them, and though the Axis-aligned Romanians occupied the province of Eptrios on the Romania Border, the troops from the Belovo Fortress were forced to pull back after reversals in Greece during the battle of Ptolemaida at the hands of Union Jack and his Commandos forced their redeployment.
Even during the Cold War, the Belovo Fortress was modernized into a fully functional, modern, base, largely because both Symkaria and Latveria were Western Allies, though Latveria would declare neutrality after the Von Doom Coup ousted the Fortunov Dynasty under King Vladimir in the middle phase of the Cold War. The town even had its own SAM Site to defend it from aerial attacks whose radar used the fortress as its station.
All this was to say that Belovo should have been impregnable, yet as our transport flew over the pass for a bird's eye view, what we found was that the town was very much in ruins, with shops, cafes, and houses blasted and caved in, bodies slumped in the street with devastating wounds, and cars burned out husks of themselves. Even the fortress was a blasted-out wreck, part of the sloping earthworks had caved in, and several of the outlying modern bunkers, including the SAM Site, Motor Pool, and Artillery Emplacements were pounded to rubble, with bodies of dead Serbian Soldiers strewn in varying states of completeness.
Furthermore, something had happened to the mechanized battalion stationed in Belovo, alongside the infantry battalion that lay dead around the town and fortress area. As we flew over the town, we saw several wrecked BVP M-Eighty Infantry Fighting Vehicles.
"Look there! Those are BVP-M-Eight-Cs!" Called out Tony as we flew overhead, pointing to one specific trio of vehicles.
"I thought that was still in testing?" Questioned Cap.
"I guess the defeat by Mors Cruentia had them rush the testing procedure." Frowned Tony.
"What's different about this version?" I queried.
"I find myself curious also, in truth the naming conventions of Mortal Machines of War confuses and escapes me." Chimed in Thor.
"The M-Eighty-A and M-Eighty-B are a pair of old Yugoslav Army designs, the first comes in a bunch of variants and has a few different varieties with different configurations, mostly in terms of armament and electronics. The second is an Advanced Version with Cogmium Armor Plating that was produced during the Bosnian War to counter the bits of SHIELD Laser Weaponry in use by NATO Troops during the intervention. It was useful against small arms versions, but not so much against heavier weapons versions." Explained Tony.
"And this version is supposed to be tougher than that one?" I pressed.
"This version uses an improved Cogmium Alloy for armor and has a thirty-millimeter railgun in the turret along with various advanced sensors, courtesy of AIM. Honestly, it's likely that the Cs will be withdrawn from rushed service and improved using the Crimson Dynamo Technology. I'd expect Carbonadium Alloy Armor and Laser Cannons, as well as an improved engine and sensors." Frowned Cap.
"I see, and with how these appear to have been torn asunder by someone's hands, methinks that they were not designed with certain opponents in mind." Nodded Thor.
"What do you mean torn apart with someone's hands?" I asked.
"Look there, I have seen armor plates be ripped apart many times. E'en had a part in the ripping mine own self a time or two. Those armor plates were torn apart like so." Informed Thor before miming plunging his hands into a plate of armor and then prying it apart like a pair of elevator doors.
"Cogmium Alloy isn't easy to damage. It's an advanced memory metal so it can repair itself with just a bit of electrical current run through the hull. The M-Eighty-Cs were designed so that sort of current would run through the hull automatically. Hypothetically speaking, to do what you're claiming, we're talking someone with strength in the ballpark of at least Class Seventy-Five to eighty." Frowned Tony.
"It is worse than that, I am afraid." Spoke up Doctor Strange, who'd been silent up until this point. I'd known he'd been using his mystic senses to scan the area for any sign of whoever had done this, thanks to my own mystic knowledge.
"What do you mean?" Questioned Cap.
"I have been attempting to pin down the assailant, and have discovered traces of him inside the wreck of the fortress. I fear we are dealing with a Lemurian." Intoned Doctor Strange.
"Meaning?" Queried Tony.
"You know Namor, right? How his people were forced to adapt to underwater life after the Great Cataclysm? Well, Atlantis wasn't the only civilization that Cataclysm sunk, and of the Two, Lemuria is the one you definitely don't want to visit. We're talking Deviants, Dark Sorcery, Ancient Technology, and Remnant Set-Worshipping Serpent-Men." I pointed out.
"Set? The foul serpent yet has worshippers? This is grave news, my friend." Growled Thor.
"Indeed. I myself once defeated a group of such worshippers in a town called Starkesboro in Massachusetts. One of his Spawn, Sligguth, started a cult there in colonial times and the colonists interbred with Serpent Men over the centuries." Added Doctor Strange.
"Actually, Doc, Starkesboro is completely free of Set Worship now. Even the townsfolk who have Serpent Blood in them turned away from Set after you killed Sligguth." I informed.
"Is that so? How did you come by this information?" Asked Doctor Strange.
"I may have found myself in Starkesboro a while back, helping the town out with various issues. They've completely renounced Set, but the Town's been suffering economically for it. I guess Sligguth was a sore loser and when he died, the blessing he laid on the town for economic prosperity was revoked. I've been helping them economically for a while ever since they helped me set up my tower off the Massachusetts Coast, sending shipments of gold from my mines to help replace the lost prosperity." I answered.
"Truly? You are certain they have turned away from Set?" Pressed Doctor Strange.
"Absolutely. There are only a few half-bloods left in town, and they've adapted to be more like the average person than you'd think for folks who need a certain amount of blood in their diet. Beef blood apparently works just as well as people blood for them and the town seems less dark for it." I confirmed.
"That's good news." Grinned Doctor Strange.
"Verily, whenever a population is redeemed from the grasp of the Elder Gods it is cause for celebration, few though examples may be." Concurred Thor.
"Moving on from that, can we get back to the matter at hand here?" Cut in Tony.
"Yes, you can tell the Doctor about Starkesboro later. We need to focus on Belovo now. You said Deviants, Serpent Men, and Dark Sorcery, right? Which one does it seem like this is?" Demanded Cap.
"I'm not quite sure. The Fortress walls are difficult to sense through from this high up without actively astral projecting down there. That would leave my body vulnerable to countermagic if Dark Sorcery is involved." Answered Doctor Strange.
"In truth, it sounds as if we needs must descend down into the ruined fortress to solve this mystery." Responded Thor.
"I mean, we'd have to go down there eventually anyway to deal with the culprit, right?" I questioned.
"Yeah, a plane like this can't circle forever. Turboprops may be fuel efficient, but this is a Soviet Era Model. Soviet transport planes aren't exactly known for reliability." Smirked Tony.
"Then it sounds as if we're going down there." Nodded Cap.
For a few moments, nothing else was said as we prepped for insertion. Doctor Strange, Thor, and Tony could all fly, but Cap and I needed to use two of the Parachutes Provided, as I didn't trust my apparition to get me down there accurately and I'd left my broomstick back at my Tower before heading to Avenger's Mansion for the Party. I hadn't realized I'd be drawn into an adventure so soon after the party, after all. I was betting that if I tried to apparate down there, I'd probably end up missing the drop zone outside the fortress and wind up right next to whatever had wrecked Belovo.
The only problem was, I'd never parachuted before. Fortunately, Cap was an old prop at that and he took the time to explain to me how it all worked. Between the chute, the reserve chute, when to pull the cord, and all the rest. He was a good teacher too as he distilled what was effectively the basics of the three weeks of US Army Jump School into a short, ten-minute, talk. Fortunately, my magic made sure that I wouldn't break my legs by landing incorrectly, and Cap would walk me through the proper exit technique.
I got the feeling that if I wanted to do this properly without using my magic to reinforce my body and having Cap there to walk me through the procedure, I'd definitely need the full three-week course, but as it was, I was cheating pretty heavily with superpowers. I still drifted off-course from the jump zone when it came time to actually go.
I leaped from the open door the way Cap told me when he told me to do it, hit my chute, and still found myself drifting off course. Apparently, I'd opened my chute too early and wound up drifting past the drop zone that Cap had suggested in the town square in front of the Belovo Fortress. Instead, I found myself landing in the wrecked main keep of the Fortress, which had been part of the original, medieval fortification and which had housed the main barracks for the administrative staff of the fortress. I landed inside thanks to the roof having partially collapsed in the fighting.
As I landed hard on the medieval stone of the floor, I landed next to the body of a Brigadier General, though I only knew that thanks to the epaulets having a single starburst above crossed sabres over an olive wreath. The man didn't have a head, after all, and his chest was a mess of pulped bone and flesh.
"Gah!" I exclaimed, standing up away from the bloody ruin of the body of what had to be the commander of the Belovo Fortress. I took a moment to calm myself and shrug out of the parachute before taking in my surroundings.
The General had died with a radio microphone in one hand and an RPG Launcher in the other, which explained the hole in the roof. I looked to see that the microphone was detached from the base radio, which had been smashed to flinders along with the desk full of maps of the town that it had sat on. Nearby several bodies lay in varying states of wholeness, some still gripping Zastava M-Seventy Assault Rifles or Zastava CZ-Ninety-Nine Pistols. In one case, a legless Sergeant and three privates missing a head, arm, and foot respectively were still clutching what looked to be the twisted wreckage of First-Generation AIM Laser Rifles in one hand.
"This must have been the command center during the attack. It seems like whatever hit the Town hit it suddenly enough that there wasn't time to head to the nuclear bunker in the cellar." I frowned, as I looked around.
The more I looked around, though, the odder things started to look. Two of the officers, a Lieutenant Colonel and a Lieutenant seemed to have shot each other with the pair of AIM Tractor Rifles that lay discarded nearby, rupturing each other's organs with gravitic force, but without having fired at anyone else. One headless Major seemed to have shot himself in the head for seemingly no reason, and an elderly Colonel appeared to have undergone a heart attack from sheer fear. The dead who had massive wounds and missing body parts were still the majority, but a significant minority of the dead looked to have been self-inflicted casualties or suffered friendly fire.
"I've got a bad feeling about this." I muttered as the Force warned me about the situation.
There was only one Lemurian I knew of who both had super strength of the level needed to rip open the Improved Armor of the M-Eighty-C's and who could play fear-based, illusory, tricks on opponents, after all. Tutinax the Mountain Mover, a Deviant Gladiator from Lemuria who was known to be the physically strongest Lemurian Deviant from back during the days of the Deviant Empire before the Great Cataclysm. He was one of those opponents that Thor would have to stop holding back to beat. He also was a deviant supremacist from back in the ancient days who tended to only show up thanks to time travel shenanigans.
Had the garrison of the Belovo Fortress been mucking about with time travel and accidentally pulled Tutinax into the present? If I remember, that was what had happened during his last appearance before now, but I thought he'd gotten sent back to his own time afterward and wound up in Lemuria instead of imprisoned in a mountain this time around. It was a long way from Lemuria to Serbia, after all. Tutinax being here didn't add up unless someone had pulled him out of the past again, in which case there would be two versions of Tutinax on Earth right now, one here and one in Lemuria.
That in and of itself was bad, time-wise. You'd think that any of the Time Cops would have shown up to avoid the temporal paradox from destroying time. The TVA, Nathaniel Richards, or even Immortus or Kang ought to have done something. At the very least Kang and Immortus wouldn't tolerate the time stream unraveling simply based on the fact that if time was destroyed, then their future empires would never get a chance to be, while Nathaniel Richards and the TVA would seek to protect Reed Richards and the Timeline respectively.
"Well, I'm not gonna find out just standing here. Let's see if there's anyone still alive in this charnel house." I sighed to myself.
Then I opened my senses up using the Dragon Pulse, trying to find any hint of anyone who might still be alive. There were only a few life signs I could sense with the Dragon Pulse in the fortress environs, two of them stood out like beacons, one which my mystic radar told me was Thor, was near three smaller life signs that had to be Cap, Doctor Strange, and Tony. A ping on my Mystic Radar of the same size as Thor confirmed one of them as Doctor Strange, which cinched that thought for me. They were moving through the exterior bunkers at the moment.
The other giant ping felt off somehow and it took me a moment to figure out why. It was subtly not human, like if you supercharged the vital energies of a Homo Erectus or Neanderthal. That seemed to confirm for me that we were dealing with a deviant, though it didn't necessarily confirm the Deviant as Tutinax. After all, what were deviant if not the Celestial-made, Mutant Versions of Homo Erectus? That particular bonfire appeared to be somewhere near the Second Large Armory, about halfway through the fortress structure between the outlying bunkers and where I was in the administrative center.
"I'm not going to get anything from any of them. Thor and the others came here with me, and I doubt I'll get any answers from the perpetrator of this little war crime." I grumbled.
Continuing to try and search with the Dragon Pulse, extending my senses to try and find someone living, I eventually found someone. Their life signs were weak, definitely needing to be healed, but they were alive somewhere in the bunker complex dug into the medieval cellars of the Fortress. That's where I was headed since it was my best bet at getting answers.
I made my way out of the command center, down the stairs, and past several corpses clutching weaponry of varying makes, from Zastava Rifles and other conventional weapons to AIM Manufactured Tractor Rifles and Laser Carbines. I bypassed a supplemental armory that was absolutely wrecked, the walls caked in blast marks as the cooked human bodies of the Armory personnel seemed to have set a number of explosive charges off all at once out of fear, destroying whatever was in the armory and blowing themselves up in the process. I walked through a floor that was filled with empty cots and small rooms, a barracks for various officers and men who would never sleep there again.
"This is damned eerie." I groused as I made my way down a second flight of stairs past a machine gun nest whose occupants were missing heads.
Descending down into a mess hall where a melee had broken out as the men eating here had been butchered in an orgy of violence, many sporting wounds from friendly fire while others appeared to have had limbs ripped off and chests pulped by main strength. I exited the other side of the bloody mess and passed through a group of offices a few of which had bodies that had shot themselves while others were torn apart by brute force. Then I made it down to the ground floor.
Here, there appeared a large number of hastily prepared defensive positions. Flipped-over desks piled together to form barricades with uniformed corpses strewn over them, some still clutching ruined weapons. Machine Gun nests that appeared to have been pre-arranged for excellent lines of sight which hadn't availed the defenders in the least. At least one section of the outside wall had been blasted open by a wheeled Pack Howitzer that had been hastily pulled out of storage in one of the various armories and which had been turned on the attacker to no avail. Judging from the shell fragments strewn about, they'd hit the attacker once and missed once, putting a hole in the wall of the keep. The gun crew hadn't gotten a third shot, as their torsos were slumped over the howitzer, all missing limbs.
Swallowing the gorge that was rising in my throat, I made my way through the scene of carnage to find the stairs leading down into the cellars. In medieval times, these cellars would have housed barrels of wine and foodstuffs for the garrison, though the advent of modern preserved foods had eliminated the need for such underground storage spaces. During the Cold War, the Cellars would have housed dissidents who were awaiting transfer to proper holding facilities for interrogation. Since the end of the Cold War, they'd been converted to holding contraband that had been attempted to be smuggled in from Symkaria and served as the main customs lockup for this section of the border. Surprisingly, the crates of contraband were untouched, the Deviant that had done this damage having no use for the Bricks of Cocaine, the Banned Western VHS Tapes and Magazines, or any of the embargoed or illegal goods that were stored here. I did find the bodies of several customs agents that had been torn apart or, in two cases, shot with the pistols both corpses still clutched in death.
There was another pair of corpses that were far more interesting near the entrance to the bunker complex, where the tempered Cogmium Door had been ripped off its hinges. Two, beekeeper-uniformed, AIM Guards lay dead, chests pulped by vicious blows and the wreckage of current-generation AIM Laser Carbines in their hands. From my Jan memories, I remembered that a big deal had been made of the post-Milosevic Government agreeing to suspend Serbia's Research Cooperation Agreement with AIM. That clearly hadn't been done if they were still here.
"That's gonna be up to Cap to figure out what to do with the information." I shrugged before heading into the bunker complex.
As I picked my way through toward where the Dragon Pulse told me the Survivor was, I noticed a number of other AIM Guards had been killed in various gruesome ways, but there were a number of other corpses of military personnel also lying about in various states of wholeness. So it seemed as if the AIM Presence had been in the middle of being drawn down when whatever they'd messed with to cause this had occurred.
I eventually found the Survivor hiding in a utility closet. A glasses-wearing, red-haired, labcoat-wearing, woman. She was petite, incredibly so, as if she stood taller than five-foot-two inches, I would be incredibly shocked, with a facial structure that had well-defined cheekbones and jawlines. Sort of like if you'd put Kiera Knightley in a lab coat and glasses while dying her hair red and making her smaller by five inches or so. Unfortunately, she seemed delirious, muttering in Russian while she bled from a nasty gash on her forehead.
"Great, I don't speak Russian." I sighed.
Fortunately, I had a Force Power that would help. I could utilize the Dathomirian Spell of Interpretation to temporarily speak and understand a language. it was a power I was still figuring out, but I figured I could use it to temporarily be able to communicate with the Survivor here. At least long enough to shove a healing potion down her throat and try and get a sense of what she'd been doing here and what had happened.
Drawing on the Force, I reached out and placed two fingers on the Survivor's temples, enchanting the mystic language of Dathomir and copying her knowledge of Russian into my own mind. This wouldn't last more than a few hours, though. With the full ritual, I could make it last for days, but there was no time for that. It was just my luck that the power I had for this was Dathomiran, and the Witches of Dathomir just loved their rituals.
As soon as I felt the language settle in my mind, I reached into my bag of holding and pulled out a Healing Potion, pinching the Survivor's nose shut and pouring the contents down her throat. She had no other choice but to swallow the potion, allowing the cut on her scalp and the concussion she'd suffered to heal up instantly. The Survivor's eyes fluttered open and she bolted upright shortly after the potion did its work.
"Who are you, what are you doing here?" She demanded.
"Easy. I'm with the Avengers, we've been sent to find out what happened here by General Aram. You were the only survivor of the Fortress." I responded.
"That thing! You've got to stop it! If you're with the Avengers, you should be able to!" Insisted the Woman, wildly.
"I need to know what happened first. Thor is here, and so is Iron Man. They should be able to handle anything if they know what they're up against. So, can you tell me what happened? Who are you and how did the fortress get destroyed?" I tried.
"My name is Doctor Nina Pushnikov, I'm a physicist specializing in exotic particles, gravitons, chronotons, that sort of thing. I was hired by the Serbian Government to help reverse engineer the wreckage of some sort of device supposedly capable of time travel. Something called a Null-Time Sequencer obtained during the Milosevic years via the AIM Partnership that the General Believed would be the key to obtaining futuristic weapons from the distant future that could be used to secure Serbia's borders against further aggression." Began the Woman, Doctor Pushnikov.
"AIM was told to pull out as part of the peace settlement, though." I intoned,
"Yes, I'm getting to that. We worked for a month straight on the project even as AIM was in the middle of pulling out of the country, getting a prototype device ready, a temporal gun that functioned similarly to the AIM Tractor/Repeller, save that instead of pulling or pushing objects and beings through space, it pulled from and sent to the timestream. It still needed testing, but AIM was almost finished pulling out of Serbia as per the demands of the peace settlement. We didn't want to lose the wreckage of the device, but AIM was going to take it with them when they finished pulling out, even if we hadn't finished testing the prototype. Doctor Cenkovic wasn't having that, though. He'd worked too hard and too long on the prototype to have outside forces suspend the project, he said." Continued Doctor Pushnikov.
"Let me guess, he decided he would test the prototype himself and it pulled a monster from the past out of the timestream?" I queried.
"Indeed. That thing was not only ungodly strong, over four and a half meters of inhumanly powerful muscles, but could somehow pull your worst fears from your mind in the process. Doctor Cenkovic was cut down with the crude blade that Beast carried, and the prototype was damaged. We scarcely had time to hit the alarm before all Hell broke loose. I ran and hid in the closet as the guards rushed to stop that Thing, I must have hit my head in my hurry and knocked myself out." Finished Doctor Pushnikov.
Fifteen feet tall with rippling muscles and a crude blade sounds exactly like Tutinax, especially with the illusory fear manifestations thrown in to boot. The problem with that was that Tutinax was the kind of enemy that it'd take Thor to stop holding back to beat, and if there were still people trapped in the town proper, Thor would refuse to do so out of fear of collateral damage. Fortunately, it sounded like the Temporal Gun Prototype could both pull people out of and send people back through the time stream.
"Well, I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that the Being you pulled out of the timestream is named Tutinax the Mountain Mover. He's an ancient Deviant from a time when his people ruled the Earth. Think of a Homo Erectus who had their genes altered by all-powerful, advanced, aliens in order to be a superbeing and whose people built an empire that then got wiped out by those same aliens deciding that their experiment was a failure. He was the strongest of them too, which means that any fight that would wind up putting him down would also destroy whatever is left of Belovo and probably a decent chunk of the surrounding area." I sighed.
"You definitely know how to give a girl bad news. I would hope the good news is just as dramatic." Deadpanned Doctor Pushnikov.
"The good news is that if you can fix the Temporal Gun, it may not come to that. You should be able to send him back to his own time the same way Doctor Cenkovic pulled him out. Can you fix the Temporal Gun?" I asked.
"Probably, if the labs aren't too demolished. It should still be where Doctor Cenkovic fell, provided this Tutinax isn't still lurking in the labs." Frowned Doctor Pushnikov.
"He isn't." I intoned, concentrating for a moment on the Dragon Pulse. As I did so, I picked up that Thor, Cap, Tony, and Doctor Strange were moving toward Tutinax, who seemed to be waiting for them near the Medival Fortress Barbican.
Opening my eyes I said, "Tutinax is waiting at the Medieval Barbican for the rest of my team. I think he's planning to fight them there."
"Good enough. Follow me." Nodded Doctor Pushnikov as she pushed herself to her feet and headed out of the utility closet.
I followed her past another corridor and into a room that had several more dismembered corpses strewn about in both AIM Beekeeper Uniforms and Military Gear. One of the Corpses, an Older Man in a Labcoat, looked to have been bisected in half from shoulder to him by a blade. That must have been Doctor Cenkovic. Lying near his bottom half was a tube-like gun that was attached by a number of wires to a box with a number of switches and dials on it that was clipped to the belt of the bisected corpse of Doctor Cenkovic. Part of the box appeared to have been hit with the blade as Doctor Cenkovic had been cleaved in half, resulting in damage to it.
Doctor Pushkin scooped up the damaged prototype Temporal Gun and began heading down another corridor. I followed her and soon enough she set up in one of the labs. This one looked untouched, Tutinax preferring to kill people over destroying equipment. Doctor Pushnikov managed to get the cover of the box section off of the prototype and begin her analysis. Five minutes after she started, there was an echoing boom from above and the bunker shook with impacts. Tutinax had finally engaged the others. A minute after that, Doctor Pushnikov began writing a list of components she'd need to fix the prototype down, then shoved it into my arms.
"I need these if I'm going to fix the Prototype. I've given you descriptions of the components as well as their names, in case Component Storage is a wreck. They should be in component storage on the other side of the experiment space from here." She informed.
"I'll grab them." I nodded.
"Hurry, it seems as if your teammates have begun fighting the Brute that slaughtered everyone." Warned Doctor Pushnikov.
"You can count on me." I answered. Then, without saying another word, I turned on my heel and headed out to get her what she needed to fix the Prototype. Once it was fixed, we should be able to send Tutinax back where he came from.
Hopefully, the others could hold out until then. . .
XXXX
AN: All right, so here we find out exactly what happened to Belovo. It was Tutinax the Mountain Mover, the strongest of the Deviants of Lemuria and perennial opponent of both the Eternals and Thor. He's literally a person who beating the conventional way isn't possible without destroying a giant swathe of the surroundings. He doesn't tend to get used a lot because of that.
Fortunately, there's another option. Doctor Pushnikov can send him back to Ancient Lemuria with the Prototype Temporal Gun if she can fix it. Mind you, she was bright enough to be considered for a job working with Reed Richards in Canon. Granted, she used that job to team up with a villain to steal one of Reed's Gadgets, but just getting the job in the first place means she's got enough smarts to fix the Prototype. It's just a question of how much damage the fight with Tutinax does in the meantime.
Also, yes, I have AIM working with the Milosevic Government in this fic. Given how they tended to fund their operations by being Arms Dealers that sell Supertech to criminals and dictators, it made sense. Their being forced to pull out of Serbia as a condition of the peace treaty with NATO after the Bosnian War is what caused the Prototype to be rushed into testing and pulled Tutinax into the present, to begin with.
At any rate, the next chapter will involve the second part of the Belovo Incident.
Stay tuned. . .
