26 Chapter 26) – Greenlight

A/N: Aloha, Banana here again. Just a couple things before the chapter.

First, with this chapter, the story so far is now over 100k words! Woohoo! 🎉Thanks for reading so far, and I hope you continue to enjoy it into the future!

Second, I will be going on holiday for a week - starting the 10th of May. I have already written chapters 27 & 28, they just need proofreading and editing. I will try to set the auto-publish correctly, so they release while I'm abroad, as I will have limited internet access. Hopefully I'll have 27 release on the 11th of May, and 28 on the 15th of May.

Lastly, this chapter is another long boi. Unfortunately for Baa and the rest, Sylph's comment had more votes and as such, I haven't cut the chapter down. This one is 6.2k words (Think it's the longest so far?).

As always, any feedback would be greatly appreciated, and thanks again for reading. ❤

******

Rather than sit in the VIP area like Pepper and Natasha did originally, according to Mara, we were stood leaning on the same banister that we had rested against the first time my host and I visited the Expo.

Looking over the handrail, the entire seating area for the main pavilion was visible and we had a clear, unobstructed, view of the stage.

With the human pair giving their full attention to the stage; red, white, and blue lights, clearly signifying the colours of the American flag, began to shine around the stage.

Accompanying the moving lights, the sound of a saxophone began to play. The sound was the entrance music that Hammer had decided upon – Pick up the pieces by Average White Band.

Making his way onto the stage, by himself, Justin Hammer performed a rather peculiar dance routine as he traversed the short journey from the side of the stage to the transparent plastic podium where he would conduct his speech.

Tony's entrance to open the Expo was over-the-top, but Hammer's was severely lacklustre, and borderline comical. Mara had to hold back her giggles while even Natasha rolled her eyes in exasperation at what she was seeing.

Even though the duo were looking at the main stage for the weapon, or weapons, to be revealed, they were having a separate conversation that Natasha had started, "You know, it's things like that which make it difficult for me to take Hammer seriously. It also makes it easy to understand why he would take the risk of breaking Vanko out of prison."

Unable to contain her giggles, a little squeezed out as my host replied, "Hehe, yeah, I know what you mean. He's about to make a serious presentation to unveil his latest and greatest technology, and he's coming out with that goofy dance. It wouldn't surprise me if he didn't even plan to do the dance, and his excitement just got the better of him so he did it instinctually."

Seemingly finding logic in Mara's reasoning, Natasha lightly shook her head as she responded, "That's surprisingly believable. He does seem to be especially full of excitement today. I guess whatever Vanko has cooked up is pretty impressive for him to be behaving this way."

During the short talk between the ladies, Hammer had made his introductory speech and then indicated towards the stagehands that he was ready to move onto the main event.

With some slight applause from the crowd, helpers came onto the stage to remove the transparent podium.

Hammer took a step back from where he was previously stood as the S.H.I.E.L.D. duo focused their ears back on the event, rather than just their eyes, as they anticipated the big reveal was about to happen.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, today I present to you the new face of the United States military. The Hammer drone!"

Turning away from the crowd as he finished his announcement, Justin Hammer pointed at the stage floor behind him as panels opened and mechanical robots were raised up from underneath the stage. Said robots were eerily reminiscent of the Iron Man armour Tony wore but were bulkier and clearly not designed for humans to be encased within.

Just as Hammer had stated, from the word drone, the robots were unmanned, remote, weapons.

Walking around the stage, Hammer introduced the various types of robots for each branch of the military, each with their own gimmick, "Army! Navy! Air Force! Marines! Yeah! Wooo!"

As the visibly excited man continued his presentation, Natasha was already analysing the situation, "Shit, well that's not good. Any thoughts, Mara? El?"

Not needing to think for a long at all, my host replied, "They're kinda ugly looking. The rectangle head just looks weird, and the paint jobs might be a bit tacky. The gimmicks look interesting though."

Turning away from the stage, Natasha stared at my host with a narrow-eyed glare. Mara, spotting the stare in her peripheral vision, immediately recognised that she shouldn't tease the spy any further, "Haah, fine. I was only trying to lighten the mood. If they're anything like Tony's suit, that they've clearly pulled inspiration from, the arc reactors in their chest should be an instant kill. And although the gimmicks look interesting, it also restricts them from the looks of things. The Navy variant has big rockets, but the others don't. The Army variant has a tank nose cannon thingy, and the others don't. Not sure what the Marine gimmick is, other than just being painted green, and the Air Force ones look like they can fly, so I'm not sure if the others can, or if the Air Force variants can just fly better than the rest. Basically, adaptability won't be their strong suit, pun very much intended."

Un-narrowing her eyes now that my host had given a serious answer, Natasha piggy backed off Mara's musings, "So they're specialized in their specific expertise and lacking in any other area. Hammer called them Hammer drones, so they must be controlled from somewhere. Would it be locally, or back at Hammer Industries? El, what are your thoughts?"

Repeating the process I had performed numerous times before, I locked the agent form and created a head so that I could speak aloud, "I'm not sure how the drone technology works, but I doubt Hammer would risk bringing Vanko with him to the Expo. He is most likely still at Hammer Industries where he first made the call to Tony and he's either controlling them from there, or there is someone else here at the Expo controlling them."

Preventing us from discussing any further was the voice of Justin Hammer as he shouted a name all 3 of us recognised, "…Colonel James Rhodes!"

Raised from underneath the stage in an identical manner to the Hammer drones, Rhodey was wearing the Iron Man suit he took from Tony's birthday, but with some noticeable differences.

For starters, the suit was no longer its base chrome colour. It was, instead, primarily sable black with the secondary colour and accents being gunmetal grey. The arc reactor in the chest was the same colour as the Iron Man suit, a pure white, but the eyes had changed from Tony's pale blue glow to a light red.

The suit had also been bulked out with more armour and, presumably, with the various weapons that Hammer Industries manufactured. Rounding out the obvious visual changes, there were some white military identification markers pained on places around the suit. Neither I, nor Mara knew what they were, but they must have served a purpose in the United States military. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been sprayed on.

In essence, the suit had changed from an Iron Man to an Arsenal Man even with just the visible weapons attached. That wasn't even considering the weapons more than likely hidden in the panels of the stocky suit.

Once Rhodey had been raised to the maximum height, so he was the same level as the rest of the stage, he performed an American military salute that the Hammer drones behind him mimicked with a delay of about a second behind him.

Justin Hammer was about to resume his speech but was prevented from even starting due to the sound of a missile closing in on the main stage.

Knowing what exactly the sound was, or rather who it was, I brought the head back into my form to unlock the agent forms combat capabilities as my host informed Natasha, "Well that's Tony, always gotta make a dramatic entrance. What's the plan, Nat? Shit's gonna hit the fan in a few minutes, whether we have a plan or not, knowing that bag of bolts and his tendency to piss people off."

Not questioning Mara's logic at all, as she herself knew all too well what Tony was like, the Black Widow replied, "Agreed. I won't be able to effectively take down those drones so that'll be on you, Tony and Rhodey, who should be easily convinced to help. I'll go after Hammer and see if the drones are indeed controlled remotely, as well as if they can be shut down. If not, I'll proceed towards Hammer Industries and disable them from there, if your team hasn't already torn them all to shreds by then. If you do finish off the drones before I can shut them down, leave the clean-up and rescue of civilians to the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that will eventually arrive and follow after me towards Hammer Industries. If Vanko is still there, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume he could also have a suit like Tony and is able to house himself. If so, I don't want to be in a situation where I have to take him down alone with such a disadvantage. Understood agent?"

Nodding once, my host responded, "Understood. Good luck, Nat."

Natasha also nodded in return before she passed my host an earpiece, identical to the 1 we had used before, "This should link up to the communicator you've got. Just turn it on and tap it against the communicator. Remember, you can also switch communication channels between the ones you have active by double tapping the earpiece."

Not hanging around for tech support, the spy seemed to fuse with the shadows as she walked out of the light and into the darkness.

Doing exactly as the spy told her, Mara turned on the earpiece and tapped it against the communicator she had removed from the thigh pouch it was stored in. The communicator made a quiet beep noise which, she assumed to mean it had connected, as she then inserted it into her ear.

Just as Mara was about to test the pairing and switching between Natasha's and May's channels, the Iron Man called out to her from the stage, "Mara! I know you're around! Get down here!"

Not being able to join the scene by her own volition, my host jumped into the air and muttered to herself, "So much for a secret identity. What a gobshite - shouting my name out like that."

Landing next to the Iron Man and Rhodey, Mara first greeted Rhodey before scolding Tony, "Hey there Rhodey. Looks like you took my advice, nice paint job. And Tony, did you really have to shout my name out like that? The whole point of wearing a mask is that I don't want people to know who I am. Not everyone's a narcissist and wants attention on themselves 24/7."

Not feeling remorseful in the slightest, Tony retorted, "Relax, it's just a name. Besides, if J.A.R.V.I.S. couldn't find out anything about you, even after scanning your face, no-one's going to be able to dig up anything with just a name. Plus, I don't even know what else to call you, so really, it's your fault for not giving me an alternative."

Narrowing her eyes at the Iron Man, Mara's temper flared slightly at being blamed for something that wasn't her fault, "What did you say??"

Saving Tony from digging himself further into the shit was Rhodey, "Err guys, something- something's wrong."

With Mara and Tony both turning away from each other to look at the walking Hammer arsenal. The minigun on the back of the armour adjusted itself from its relaxed vertical position to sit in an armed horizontal position on his shoulder and it aimed at Tony.

Making sure Tony was fully aware that it was not him controlling the suit, Rhodey exclaimed, "That's not me Tony. I can't control it. Someone's taken control of the suit, the system's been compromised!"

Accompanying Rhodey's warnings were the Hammer drones behind him all raising their arms at Tony and Mara. Putting 2 and 2 together, it was obvious that the arms of the drones had guns in them and that they were preparing to fire at the duo just like the War Machine armour was.

Tony was the first to speak after witnessing the movement, "Well, shit. Mara protect the people; I'll take them for a ride."

Not hanging around for a reply, the Iron Man turned around and flew away from the main pavilion.

Following after him was the War Machine, as well as roughly half of the drones, while the rest stayed behind with their aim firmly locked on my host.

Tony flying off seemed to make the crowd realise how serious the situation was as they all began to panic and try to flee the area as fast as they could. The action of which caused my host to again mutter to herself, as much as it was to me, "So much for not creating a panic, I'm gonna kick his ass again after all this. Let's get to work, El."

Copying the drones opposite her, Mara raised her arm out in front of herself with a closed fist.

Vanko, almost certainly, in control of the drones decided that it would be the optimal time to shoot at my host with the arm guns on the drones.

At the exact same time as the first shot was fired, Mara opened her fist and I spread my form over her fingers to create a giant hand. Said hand covered the view of my host entirely and functioned as a shield for the bullets to impact against.

The strength of a bullet is determined by the small size of it and the speed in which it travels at. By dissipating the force of the impact, and thus the speed, the damage it causes becomes negligible just like when a bullet is shot at water. That effect was exactly what I imitated for each bullet that was fired by freely allowing my semi-liquid form to ripple like water would.

The giant hand shield wasn't necessary as I could perform the same impact dissipation all over my host's body, but it was done with the purpose of protecting any civilians behind Mara from any stray bullets that missed their mark. It also gave the shooter, in this case Vanko, the false implication that bullets could only be stopped through purposeful means, rather than passively.

Like Mara had always said, mind games are just as important as physical prowess in a fight. And I had naturally absorbed everything she said like a sponge.

For around 10 or so seconds the drones expunged their ammunition at my host, not making any progress or damaging either of us at all.

During the shooting, Mara looked around us as the panicked people trickled out of the exits of the main stage area. The civilians were still panicked, but some had looked back to see that someone was protecting them.

This resulted in the escape slowly getting more efficient as the people began to better organise how to leave without pushing each other out of the way to be the first to escape.

Once the sound of gunfire stopped I swiftly retracted the giant hand, dropping all of the bullets that got stuck in the shield and didn't immediately drop to the floor, onto the ground.

Mirroring each other, the drones as well as my host lowered their outstretched arms.

It wasn't clear if the drones had used up all their ammunition, or Vanko simply realised that pelting lead at my host didn't achieve anything. But what was evident, was that the fight was about to become a lot more intimate.

Rotating her head from left to right and stretching her limbs, Mara spoke to the drones under the assumption that Vanko could hear her, even if he couldn't communicate back, "Someone's been busy. Look at all these toys I get to play with. This is much better than the dinner I suggested you take me out to first, all the way back at Monaco."

Not receiving a response, my host continued her pointless stretching and taunting, "I am slightly disappointed though, no whips for these guys? Is it your kink to be the 1 whipping, rather than watch others do it for you? I'm not judging, just curious is all."

Finishing off her stretching show, Mara bounced on the pads of her feet, slightly off the ground, and closed out her little talking session, "Well thanks for letting me stretch and prepare. Since you haven't replied I'll assume you can't, so I won't drag this on. Now that everyone has evacuated, I can fight without worrying about May or Nat chewing me out later… Hmm, when I say it like that it sounds pretty inviting actually."

Since Mara previously realised that the civilians hadn't evacuated after the gunfire stopped, she had purposefully started a conversation of idle chatter to try and delay the brawl.

Needless to say, it worked a treat and all of the hinderances had escaped.

Rather than immediately get into a fighting stance however, my host took the opportunity to try out an ability she had never used before, but had always been wanting to.

Sadly, there had never been a suitable occasion to do so... until now that was.

Mara's intention came through our connection crystal clear to me, so I adjusted the agent form accordingly, "This is going to be good. I should thank you for making these drones rather than suits, cause now I get to try something I've been desperately wanting to."

As if to prove that Vanko was paying full attention to my host, the drones took that exact moment to charge forward towards my host and engage in close combat.

Unfortunately for the drones, I had finished creating the suit form mouth on our agent form.

Not rushing or panicking at all with the incoming assault robots, Mara bent her knees a little and leaned back to take a big breath.

When she had filled her lungs to the limit, Mara held the air for a fraction of a second before leaning forward and screaming out, "AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Amplifying the soundwaves to the maximum I could with the ability I had absorbed, it became clear to me why Mara always referred to the woman I ate as shriek.

The pitch of the sound was deafening and the destruction it wrought was devastating for the drones.

The amplified soundwaves distorted the air they travelled through making them clearly visible as they rapidly approached the automatons.

When the leading drones met with the shriek, the expected happened. They were shredded apart.

What was unexpected, was that the shrapnel that resulted from the shredding was carried along the continuing soundwaves. This transitioned the attack from just a destructive sound, into a pulsing swirl of vibrating metal fragmentation.

With the soundwaves losing their destructive power the longer they travelled, and the more they tore through, the vibrating shrapnel ended up extending the attack as it took away the brunt of the impact.

Essentially, the soundwaves were relegated to just carrying the metal, but that increased the longevity and the damage done to the remaining drones.

There was an upside to the shriek weakening over time, though. If it had continued at full strength, it would have torn through the gigantic monitor at the back of the pavilion and possibly impacted any escapees still leaving the Expo.

Although the screech and shrapnel combo took out a lot of drones, that was only in a straight line. Vanko was smart enough to have the foresight to not send the drones in single file, so Mara was going to quickly come into contact from the drones on her flanks.

Quickly reverting the mouth modification, I instead put more strength into Mara's knuckles, to create some spiked knuckle dusters. I also strengthened her hair, as my host adopted her boxing stance.

While Mara was in control of her body, I would be in control of her hair - exactly like we had in Monaco. Except this time my role wasn't to distract, but was to cover for my host should anything get dangerous for her as she wanted to use this experience as live combat training.

Ducking under the first drone that swung a fist at her - a Navy drone - Mara punched out at the Arc Reactor in the centre of its chest and tore through it with next to no resistance. Like punching through tinfoil.

Tearing her arm out the side of the chest cavity, she dodged to the side of the Navy drone she just decimated as one of the Marine drones tried to smash down at her with its hand raised above its head.

Since it missed her, the attack hit the stage and cracked the ground.

Pushing the Navy drone she initially destroyed out of her way and into some more oncoming drones, Mara jumped up and forward with her knee out. The knee impacted the attacking Marine drone's head and caused it to explode from the force.

Not hesitating for a second, my host reached down to grab a hold of the robot's shoulders in order to leap frog over it to avoid another drone's attack. The attack she avoided proceeded to smash the now decapitated drone's neck and force it to the ground.

From that short exchange however, it became clear that the drones functioned like humans as the decapitated drone still had its Arc Reactor intact, yet it stopped functioning.

It also highlighted the fact that the drones didn't care about collateral damage to each other and had the sole purpose of eliminating my host.

Landing back on the ground from her leap frog, Mara turned and grabbed the Army drone - that had attacked her - as she tossed it over her shoulder into more incoming combatants.

The strategy Mara was implementing was to limit the enemies she would face at a single time. Since the drones didn't care about the condition of each other, they were especially dangerous as they wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice each other to get to her.

When May had discussed the tactic to use during a group fight, like the 1 Mara was in, she had specified that getting up close to human opponents would prevent others from getting involved due to possible friendly fire.

But since the drones didn't have this limitation, using them as shields wouldn't work.

Therefore, adapting on the fly, Mara decided it would be easiest to stop them from even getting the chance to interfere.

By throwing the drones or scrap around, she could stagger the assault from a direction by a couple of seconds. Despite it only being a short amount of time, those seconds meant she could essentially go head-to-head with the drones in a single direction. With how easily they were dismantled with our strength, a second or 2 was all she needed.

Waiting until the last second for a possible reaction, I wrapped Mara's hair around a fist aimed at her lower back and directed it past her hip.

Feeling the pull of her hair, as well as my indication from our connection, Mara spun around and grabbed the outstretched arm of the Air Force drone.

Rather than throw the drone this time, she instead spun around while holding onto it and used its body as a weapon to push back the drones getting too close for comfort.

After only spinning around in 2 full rotations, the Air Force drone in her hands had lost both of its legs and the arm she was holding onto eventually ripped free from the torso due to the centrifugal force.

What remained of the battered Air Force club was sent flying into an approaching Marine drone's chest with significant force. The power behind the impact smashed the Arc Reactor in its chest as it flopped back, onto the floor. Another 1 down.

With a bit of space regained, Mara went on the offensive instead of reactively dodging and counterattacking. In her excitement, she practically squealed her intentions to me through our connection.

Although for most the battle would be life or death, it brought me no greater joy that Mara completely focussed on her enjoyment of the fight and trusted me completely to protect her should something go awry.

Needless to say, I complied with Mara's request and removed the knuckle dusters.

As she flexed her hands, I moved my form that made up the knuckle dusters onto each of her fingers, sharpening them while giving them a slight curve. The next weapon we tried out was an altered form of a natural one - cheetah's claws.

As Mara pounced towards a nearby Air Force drone, it punched out at her in anticipation of the contact. As an alternative to dodging the punch, Mara caught the fist with her left hand and dug the claws on her hand into the metal so that the drone couldn't pull it free… Not that she gave it long to do so, as not even half a second after she secured the limb, Mara brought her right clawed hand vertically upwards to slash through what would be the bicep of a human's arm.

Using the rotation of her shoulder in order to make the vertical slash, Mara follow her attack through with a 180-degree spin and pushed the arm in her hands under her left armpit into the Arc Reactor of the drone she had dismembered. Skewering it with its own arm.

Continuing on with her assault, Mara ran forward to her next target, another Navy drone. The drone she targeted opened its shoulder mounted guided missile launchers and shot them at my host 1 after the other in rapid succession.

Weaving in and out of the missile like they were travelling in slow motion, Mara narrowed in on her target. It also went without saying, but the missiles she dodged all impacted the drones behind her, subsequently turning them into scrap metal or damaging them to a point they wouldn't pose too much of a threat.

When Mara made it within striking distance of the Navy drone, she didn't slow down her approach and alternatively slid on her knees to go through its legs. Moments before she went through the legs, however, she raised both of her arms outstretched to either side of her.

As she slid through the Navy drone's legs, Mara swiped both of her arms inwards, dismembering the legs just above the knees.

Standing up from the slide, Mara spun 180-degress and performed a roundhouse kick. Thus, decapitating the crippled drone, finishing it off, and moving onto the next target… or at least that was what she intended to do.

As Mara stood up and performed her 180-degree turn, just before she was about to remove the head from the body, a massive bullet came barrelling towards her.

Taking emergency action Mara pulled in her outstretched leg - not forgetting to hook her foot around the Navy drone's head so she could rip it off as she brought her leg in - and lifted her arms in front of her chest in an X shape to protect from the imminent impact.

Luckily the drone aimed the tank round at the centre of Mara's torso, so the bullet lined-up perfectly with the overlap of my host's arms, in the centre of the X.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to disperse the complete force from the projectile, as I was watching Mara's immediate vicinity and reacted to the situation late. That blunder resulted in us getting launched backwards through the gigantic screen at the back of the stage and ended with us slightly lodged into the wall behind it. 

Concerned that my host was hurt, I worriedly asked, <Are you okay, Mar? Sorry, I was too focused on watching your immediate vicinity that didn't see it coming until had basically already hit us.>

Thankfully not harmed, Mara replied, [Fuck me, that's disorientating. It's not your fault El. I guess I should have seen that coming after the Navy variant used its missiles. Besides, if it weren't for you, that tank round would have blown me to pieces. So really, I should be thanking you since I don't feel any pain from that at all.]

As Mara pulled herself out of the wall, and she had assured me that she was completely fine, my anger started to build towards the scrap metal that dared to make me concerned about my host.

That was until I remembered Mara's philosophy and calmed my bubbling emotions. The walking bag of bolts didn't know any better. It was a mindless automaton.

No, the real enemy was the person controlling the drone. Vanko would be eaten. Of that I would make sure.

Dropping from the dent we had been lodged into, I removed the cheetah claws on my host's hands as she brought a hand to her right ear and tapped the earpiece twice to change the communication channel, "May, come in. All the civilians from the main pavilion are clear and I'm engaged with half of the drones, while Tony has the other half. Requesting cosmic horror permission, over."

Not waiting around for a reply, Mara jumped through the hole we had made in the gigantic screen - which it turned out was actually hundreds of smaller screens linked together - and headed straight back into the thick of it.

Neither of us spoke a word to each other externally, or internally, but my simmering anger and Mara's grudge fused through our connection. The concoction of emotions caused the both of us to focus on the Army drone that insulted us with its pea shooter.

Since the drones had moved around, and there was no specific indicator on which Army drone was which. We instinctively decided that the best option would just be to genocide all of the Army drones.

Strengthening the legs of the agent form, Mara rapidly advanced towards the closest Army drone, dodging and weaving to avoid the other pest's attacks.

Within a heartbeat we had our first target in range.

Mara didn't slow her pace towards the guilty by association drone, and, unlike the last time when she had slid between the legs of the drone, she jumped slightly as she kicked forward with both feet in a pedalling motion. Her left leg, that was lifted first, generated momentum for the right leg, that swiftly followed, as it extended fully to impact the Arc Reactor in the centre of its torso.

With the power behind the attack, Mara's foot would have penetrated the drone like a spear, and she would have been hindered for a second with the lump of metal attached to her leg.

Fortunately for my host, we were so in sync with our narrow-minded aggression that all wasted thoughts were cast aside and I could sense all the minute details that Mara was considering, but subconsciously didn't think they were worthy of transmitting.

As such, just before her boot impacted the Arc Reactor, I widened Mara's foot and thus increased the surface area. With a larger surface area, more metal was impacted and that slowed down the foot quicker, preventing my host's foot from penetrating all the way into the drone's torso.

Basically, the Arc Reactor, and the vast majority of the torso, was crushed and the drone was disabled without Mara getting her foot stuck into the hunk of metal that flew away at an impressive speed.

Mara was so confident in the speed and power of her attack that she didn't even watch the drone sail away and instead had already locked her sights on the next target.

By the time Mara had lowered the leg used to assault the drone, I had already melded the increased foot area back into the suit so she could move unhindered.

Changing her traversal strategy once again, Mara made a beeline to the next target as I strengthened her hair and sent it out ahead of her to push or cut any obstacles in my host's way.

Halfway to the next Army drone, however, we were pleasantly interrupted, "Mara, this is May. Request confirmed. Repeat, you have the greenlight. Give them hell."

Not needing to be told twice, I released the self-imposed restraints on our form to quickly bring us to our peak state.

As the rapid transition took place, Mara affirmed that she received the message, "Copy that May. Over and out."

Tapping twice on the communicator again, Mara switched over to the communication line for Natasha as I finished the transformation and power-up.

Pushing off from the ground once the suit form was activated, Mara practically teleported towards the Army drone with the strength she used, while anything in the way was demolished.

The surge in power caused Mara's excitement to overflow even more than it was previously - before she was hit with the tank shell.

Her excitement caused her heart to beat faster, to pump blood around her body faster, to supercharge her system with the miraculous and delicious substance known as Adrenaline.

The enhancements I gave to Mara were at their peak and her body responded in kind, bringing itself to her physical limits. The act of the strengthening caused a continual improvement feedback loop.

Any excess Adrenaline was expunged out of my host's body through her sweat. I absorbed the Adrenaline and since I was constantly being supplied with sustenance, I could increase the energy expenditure of the enhancements. As Mara felt herself becoming even stronger, she got even more excited, raising her heartbeat even further, resulting in her body producing more Adrenaline.

Not using any weapon or animal imitations this time, Mara simply grabbed a hold of the Arc Reactor of the Army drone she had arrived in front of and ripped it out. Then, as effortlessly as breathing, she turned to lock onto another Army drone and launched the Reactor in her hand at it.

Just like a bullet, the thrown Arc Reactor hit the head of the targeted drone and caused the headpiece to explode into shrapnel.

[Let's fuck 'em up, El.]

Switching tactics for the final time, we decided to try what Mara and May had coined: Indiscriminate Butchery. This was for when we wanted to exterminate a large number of hostiles in a short amount of time.

The only problems were that it took a lot of energy from myself, it left Mara defenceless for a short while, and that we needed to be in our suit form, as trying to limit our strength while also somewhat controlling the attack was impossible for me.

In the space she had created, Mara crossed both of her arms up to her chest, like she had to protect herself from the tank round, and also hunched over while bending her knees slightly to lower her centre of gravity.

As fast and efficiently as I could, I condensed my entire external form on Mara's torso and arms. This included the parts of me that were covering and strengthening the rest of her body, like her legs or head, which left her defenceless in those areas - other than the physical improvements from the bonding process.

Fortunately, the compression process only took a couple of seconds and just as the closest drone was partway through their attack on my host, the attack was ready.

Mara straightened her legs and back, as well as threw back her head while flinging open her arms, as tendrils exploded from every inch of the compressed mass that I accumulated on my host's torso and arms.

Front, back, left, right and anywhere in-between. There was no direction untouched by my expansive form.

Each of the tendrils had a tip as sharp as a scalpel and easily penetrated through the metallic shells that made up the drones.

Even with the precise control I had over my form it was difficult to guide every single tendril, but I attempted to aim for the Arc Reactors of the drones wherever possible.

Thankfully I didn't need to control the tendrils much as, due to the size of the drones, it was hard to miss them. Even if I didn't pierce the Arc Reactors, if enough of the drone was destroyed, it would cease to function in a short period of time regardless.

After I had enveloped the entire main stage with my tendrils, and my form was as extended as I could manage, I held the tendrils where they were for a second before reversing the direction to absorb them all back into my host's body at roughly half the speed of the expulsion.

When the last of the tendrils entered Mara's body, and the suit form was re-equipped, we looked around the stage area to see if any of the drones had survived.

There were a couple of drones still active, but since they were leaking whatever fluid they contained in order for them to function and were also missing most of their limbs, it was only a matter of time until they deactivated like the rest of them.

Since the fight was over, Mara's excitement died down which resulted in her body halting the production of Adrenaline. The lack of stimulant supply drained my host of her energy as she plopped down onto the stage floor, arse first, before following the momentum and lying spread eagle.

Taking deep breaths in and out as the workout had finally caught up with her, I removed the head part of the suit form so that Mara would feel less confined, "Haaah. Haaah. Well, El. Haaah. That was definitely something. Haah."

During the heavy breaths, the sound of gunfire and repulsors could be heard. Evidently Tony was still dealing with his portion of the drones - as well as potentially Rhodey.

After the battle she just went through, with very minimal training, Mara had earned herself some respite to catch her breath before contacting Natasha for an update on the plan.