The Great Escape Ch3 bit – Talk

~ crossovercreativechaos

“Sekirei are powerful metahumans, but agents recently uncovered information that they have a way to amplify their powers.” Natasha nodded toward the passports. “They find a compatible human, the MBI term is Ashikabi, and ‘wing’ – take a biochemical imprint from the human. Once a Sekirei is winged, their powers are enhanced.” Green eyes were harder than normal. “Preliminary findings indicate some kind of mental influence. Ashikabi have been reported as taking insane risks for their Sekirei.”

Barton was even more still than usual. Not good.

“But once a Sekirei picks a human to bond with, looks like they can’t switch.” Fury eyed the hologram as if he could glare holes in it. “So Minaka keeps a hold on them by controlling access to their power boosters.” He looked over the Avengers present. “I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence by saying we’re doing this out of the goodness of my heart. They’re aliens, and we’ve got no reason to trust them. But so far they haven’t attacked anyone who didn’t come after them first. And here and now, they’re out of Minaka’s hands. If you can find them, if you can talk to them, I want to know whose side they’re on.” The one eye darkened. “And if you can’t talk to them – I want to know that, too.”

For a moment, Fury looked just an eyeblink less than completely certain. “The odds might be on our side. Reports are still fragmentary, but it appears that we have at least five separate reliable eyewitness accounts of ‘Japanese mutants’ attacking the Chitauri and rescuing civilians. They did a lot of property damage in the process, the 51st precinct put a call in for lumberjacks….” Fury glanced over them, amused. “Given the present company, I doubt we have room to complain.”

Barton finally breathed. “Can they pick anyone in New York?”

Natasha scrolled through a side file. “Our information says the last Sekirei was winged about a week ago. No one else should be at risk.”

“Outside the obvious, with dozens of super-powered Japanese tourists in town,” Tony quipped. “Any suggestions how we should find these people? Preferably without following the explosions.”

24 thoughts on “The Great Escape Ch3 bit – Talk”

  2. >Ashikabi talk>
    Whelp it would appear that Minato and co are going to have to correct just a few misconceptions. Though to be fair they aren’t precisely wrong about Sekirei and Ashikabi, they’ve just been forming said conclusions on limited data.

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      2. And to be fair, one might consider the emotion link that Ashikabi and Sekirei develop a form of mental manipulation/alteration.

        The biggest difference here is that the humans are ordering around the superpowered aliens instead of just being their battery/plaything. Even if said command structure is closer to somebody attempting to herd cats at times.

        Tony: “Least we’re not dealing with mind-controlling aliens this time. Once was too many times. So what does your ‘flock’ want anyway?”

        Minato: “Well Musubi wants a chance to fight the Hulk and/or Captain America. She thinks it would be lots of fun.”

        Banner: “……What?”

        Minato: ” Kuu likes to grow things and be part of a happy family. I don’t care how you people may see her, she’s a child.”

        Tony: “Yeah saw the jungle on the top of your building. Kid’s got a future in landscaping and/or reforestation. And firestarter?”

        Tony: “Kagari intends to set Minaka and large portions of MBI and the ‘Sekirei Plan’ on fire. I have absolutely no problem with this.”

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      1. The question is why it’s incomplete: Lack of observational data? HYDRA interference? MBI interference? I know which ones I’m thinking it is.

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      2. I think on of Shield’s largest issues is: for a “secret” organization they have a whole lot of outside groups that know they exist. Most of which have a vested interest in keeping Shield out of their business.

        And at this point in the MCU there aren’t that many “major” metas outside of the Avengers themselves. At least, not public metas. (Sure there are quite a few sorcerers, but we have know idea Shield even knows they exist, since a lot of their fights aren’t even in Earth’s dimension.) The Sekirei are pretty big hitters, and I’m willing to bet the “standard” protocols aren’t really ready for them.

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  4. Once they track them, I wonder if Clint and Natasha will see their pattern as amateurs attempting to go to ground.

    And on Trantos01 posting about burning things to the ground?

    “I’ll bring the gasoline.” All the Avengers turned to look at Steve with shock for saying that.

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    1. Capture them, try them, _then_ put them against the wall and execute them by firing squad.

      But yeah, if you can’t reasonably capture them and they’re at war with you…

      Steve is an officer and a gentleman. He’s not a pacifist.

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      1. An officer and a gentleman in the same Army as George Patton and Curtis LeMay. (Okay, he almost certainly wasn’t Navy, I recall hearing Army, and never Marines.)

        He might not be able to mix jellied from the modern retail product, but he would have been willing to use flamethrowers to clear bunkers if he had been assigned to the Pacific. I haven’t heard that he ever qualified as a military pilot, but he also would’ve dropped nuclear bombs if he could’ve and needed to.

        I’m opposed to the retcon that changed his history to fit him into the Avengers. However, in hindsight, that timeskip has a lot of interesting potential to explore his connections to the Army and the Air Force. I don’t think ever fully capitalized upon.

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      2. Yup, he’s essentially a Special Forces ranger. With superpowers. Superpowers meant that he normally could be a little more straightforward than the Howling Commandoes, but I’m sure he got all the training and read all the manuals.

        The traditional Marvel backstory did have him being a pretty good pilot, but I don’t know what planes he was qualified on.

        Of course, Cap’s original backstory also had him working with the android Human Torch (who came back as Vision, actually), and the world’s angriest Atlantean psycho prince, Namor. (Yes, WWII actually mellowed Namor. Stopped all the indiscriminate killing of sailors and navies.)

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      3. You know…

        OOC, the people who created Steve Rogers could not have realized that, in hindsight, the project that created Captain America isn’t really the most plausible fit for what we now know of US Military R&D and procurement during WWII. Could not have. Didn’t really have the background, and any patriot who did have the background might have kept their mouth shut when it comes to any widely disseminated publication.

        Objectively, that supersoldier program has more than a hint of wonderwaffe, and is perhaps not the US program that an informed mil sci fi/alternate history author would design if they had no background in comics.

        I have some more thoughts on this, how a more historically plausible program might have lots of interesting hooks to explore Steve Rogers with. (And to incorporate a lot of extreme pro-US pro-Military propaganda into Captain America stories.) But more legitimate and pressing activities call.

        Victory, out.

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      4. So, what kind of program would one of the American management executives approve? One man at the peak of human physical ability is bupkis. The Nazis were immensely wasteful of resources, and would’ve funded that. What ever else you might say about FDR and the American WWII military establishment, the American military development programs weren’t as screwed up as the Nazis’ were.

        Now, I have a weak grasp of these decision making techniques, and am not sure how much of what I’ve learned was developed during WWII, what before, and what since. Not one of my historical specialties.

        The nature of the engineering is that there would be technical experts who could assess feasibility who were not the technical visionary behind the program. Those outside technical experts would have seen part of the program in the initial stages that seemed viable (as in easy enough that people would be able to duplicate it after the war), and sufficiently beneficial to the war effort (as in likely to see mass production). Given period fiction, period ‘scientific’ superstitions (orgone, etc…), and the fact that this is comic book land, I think a program studying a range of serum and radiation therapies would be plausible. Thing that could easily justify the program’s funding and yet drop out of history as far as established backstory cares? A serum that could promise a 15% reduction in sick calls.

        Anyway, we have our serum program. Tests a wide range of therapies, and many of them see general use. Rogers is one of a dozen men that end up getting that treatment, but the others are less prominent in history because he is the only one really crazy enough to make effective aggressive use of it. And Rogers was the first on that therapy, which was unusually ambitious, because doctors mad enough to be doing Tuskogee STD crud because “lol, Black ‘people'” would have ruined the program. There also can’t have been too high a rate of ‘psycho serum’ effects, because otherwise the program would have gotten shut down. I imagine some range of minor ill effects, because I have some knowledge of medicinal research. Anyway, wide range of fellow test subjects, who mostly went on to mundane future success. Would’ve had a lot of contacts across a wide range from that, plus professional contacts from his Army career. So, yeah, Bucky, and the dude who was using the Cap identity to ferret out saboteurs in the US when he was punching Nazis overseas. But a wide wide range of people, to include future astronauts and aviation pioneers, senior officers, business executives, doctors, all sorts of people.

        So, he is defrosted in 1960, and some of his high end result serum friends are in the space program. I’m not certain if Studies and Observation had started, but some of the senior officers in that could have known and looked up to him. In hindsight, the ad hoc way the world was put together was a waste.

        Anyway, long term, the serum program provided a sustainable source of lesser serums, which meant that current Marvel US Army soldiers are a bit buffer than our US Army soldiers, but to a limited degree. Perhaps the differences between then and now diet, medicine, and advances in training sciences. (There’s been improvements in athletic achievement because of figuring out how to train and compete better.) Fury’s longevity being a rare result of physical fitness and a lot of army soldier serums.

        Okay, it wouldn’t have as much payback going with MCU’s defrosting in current day, but I’m unlikely to do MCU if I ever seriously play with this.

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  5. Well Minato and his flock are usually willing to talk. As long as the Avengers don’t get mistaken as working for MBI and that is doubtful . . . mostly because Matsu seems to be pretty on top of what’s going on in the superhero world and because this group does generally listen when someone says “I just want to talk.”

    Bruce and Tony had a good point on the How question. Because in these kind of set ups, if the superpowers beings have no reason to be loyal to Crazy Mastermind, especially if they are shown to actively desire to set said maniac on fire, you have to wonder why in the heck they haven’t already said “screw this” and left. Possibly while squishing said Crazy Mastermind like a bug.

    My guess for the early days is that Minaka looked and acted significantly less crazy than he does now and didn’t spring this Sekirei Plan on the Sekirei until somewhere around the last minute. Plus, it probably would have been hard to cheese it with 108 aliens of varying ages without running the risk of some or all of them getting captured by someone far worse than Minaka and MBI.

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