Xmen Avengers

Once upon a time, the world needed more than one team of heroes.

An ancient figure called Apocalypse — his true name was En Sabah Nur — had been alive for thousands of years. In all that time he had come to believe one cold, hard thing: only the strongest beings deserved to survive. Everyone else was not worth protecting.

To prove his belief, he released a virus into six cities across the world.

It was not an ordinary virus. It found whatever ability a person carried — however small or large — and pushed it past every safe limit. People who had never hurt anyone became uncontrollable forces they could not quiet or turn off. Six cities were in chaos.

The X-Men received the alert. The Avengers received the alert. And everyone understood, without needing to say it, that this was a moment that required both teams working together.

Hank McCoy drove to Avengers Tower. Tony Stark was already there — jacket off, sleeves rolled, writing equations on every surface he could reach.

"Tell me what you know," said Tony.

"Sit down," said Hank. "This will take a while."

For seventy-two hours, they worked.

Tony's engineering mind and Hank's biochemical knowledge fit together in unexpected, satisfying ways. Each of them finished thoughts the other had begun. They argued about the chemistry of aerosolization and about carrier compounds and the correct volume for laboratory music, settling on moderate classical as a compromise that satisfied neither of them. They did not once stop working.

By hour seventy-two, they had the answer: an aerosol cure. A fine, invisible mist that, breathed in or contacted by skin, would find the virus in the body and neutralize it completely, gently, without any side effects whatsoever. Precise. Elegant. Effective.

The challenge was delivery. Six cities. All at once. Because a cure that reaches five cities and misses one is not, in the end, a cure.

That was the part that needed everyone.

Thor stood on the roof of Avengers Tower in the grey morning air, Mjolnir in hand, and looked up at the clouds. Hank had explained exactly what was needed: a controlled weather event — a vast, purposeful storm — that could carry the aerosol cure on its currents to every corner of every infected city simultaneously.

Thor understood this on his first hearing. He swung Mjolnir once. The air shifted. He swung it again. Above New York City, clouds gathered and spiraled inward with the particular intention of a storm that has a destination.

Inside, Jean Grey sat in the center of the building with her eyes closed and her hands folded in her lap. She sent a psychic frequency outward — quiet and precise — guiding the storm's reach toward each of the six distant cities.

Captain America coordinated the ground teams in all six locations simultaneously, keeping people safe and moving. Cyclops and Storm flew above the affected zones.

Hank stood on the roof with the first canister of cure and looked out at the city and the great purposeful storm rising above it.

For one moment he felt the full weight — the six cities, the thousands of people, the long distance between a formula on a laboratory bench and the real world where it either works or it does not.

He looked at Thor.

Thor looked back and smiled.

Hank opened the canister.

The cure went out on the wind — invisible and very quiet, drifting through every street and open window and crowded public space of every infected city, touching everyone it reached with something gentle and precisely curative.

They watched the monitors.

Four hours later: the virus was being contained. Eight hours later: it was completely, permanently gone. Every person who had been affected was safe, unharmed, returning to themselves.

Tony Stark walked into the empty laboratory and looked at the equations still covering every surface.

"Good work, McCoy," he said.

"You too, Stark," said Hank.

They shook hands. Tony left to find food — he had not eaten in two days and was only now noticing.

Hank sat for a while in the quiet of the empty laboratory. The problem had seemed impossibly large seventy-two hours ago. It was completely solved now.

He felt that warmth, particular and good. The warmth of finished work.

Then he picked up his telephone. The Xavier Institute answered on the second ring.

"How is everyone?" Hank asked.

His students were fine. Bobby Drake had built an ice rink in the common room to keep the younger ones calm during the crisis. It had been extremely popular and had caused a minor flooding incident in the hallway.

Hank laughed. He leaned back in the laboratory chair and let it ring out in the empty room.

Outside, the storm Thor had built was dispersing, and the sky above New York was clearing back to its ordinary blue — the kind that means a perfectly normal day is beginning.

It was a very good blue.

Hank gathered his notes, left the laboratory clean, and went home.