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"This is not a good idea," Grim says, sharp and bitter.
"Which of us is in charge again?" her Father asks, cool, the threat implicit in his tone.
"I- you, sir, I know but- this isn't going to-"
"We are being well paid to take Thanos out. So make it happen. Or do I have to remind you what happens when you defy me?"
Grim ducks her head, breathes out carefully, doesn't let her reaction show beyond that. "No sir. I understand."
"Then get it done." He hangs up without saying anything else.
Grim sighs, staring at her objective - Thanos' command ship, in transit. It's not going to be easy, she's leery of suggesting she's done harder but-
But she doesn't have another option. So. She works about manoeuvring her small, unnoticeable, ship into position to get herself on board.
The command ship, Sanctuary II, looms there menacingly.
Obviously, it currently traverses the galaxy at very high speed, but to a vessel with matched velocity all seems eerily still in the vast black gulf between stars.
She's used to the eerie stillness. Has lived most of her life on one ship or another. Has practiced manoeuvres like this a thousand times before. (Because people thought they were safe in the blackness of space, let their guard down, gave her openings she'd never get otherwise.) It's tricky, and finicky, but she gets her craft anchored to the side of the Sanctuary II, pulls on her out-of-atmo gear, and goes to find an airlock to hack.
Behold! An airlock!
Various apertures and gribbles crisscross the command ship's outer hull. Her intel suggested that this vessel runs a veritable skeleton crew compared to its size, which raises a lot of questions about why it has so many access ports?
Anyway, once she gets her infiltration gear hooked up to it the airlock practically hacks itself.
WHOOSH!
...She hates when things are that easy. It always makes her suspicious. Well. She slides inside, drawing shadows around her and fading into them as she starts heading in the direction of where the command deck would be on a normal ship.
Within Sanctuary II's cavernous underbelly, she occasionally runs across various minions of the interstellar tyrant she's hunting.
Chitauri. Outriders. Even a Leviathan at one point.
She reaches the command level. Up front, in a large room lined with viewports, she sees no sign of her target: just densely packed minions and an ominous, decrepit figure who does not match Thanos' description.
Well. She never expected him to make this easy.
"Expecting me?" she asks from the shadows, and immediately shifts where she is, keeping the shadows tight around her form, keeping herself hidden.
"I can't say I was." The ominous figure turns around, toward the hallway that Grim spoke from.
The Chitauri attending to the figure rush excitedly in Grim's direction, but their apparent leader does not budge from his vantage point.
As this happens, Grim hears bulkheads slamming shut on either side of the hallway.
"Have you come here to receive Thanos' blessing?"
"Wasn't on my list of things to do," she admits, circling towards a vantage point. (And damn damn damn. She needed an escape.)
The view room has a pretty high ceiling, and the ornate walls wouldn't be hard to climb. Alternatively, she could retreat further back into the hallway and try to hack the blast doors.
Either way, she'd better move fast: the Chitauri are swarming the area and it's only a matter of time until one of them trips over her hiding place.
It only takes a moment to make a decision. She can figure out an escape route if she survives. She scrambles agilely up the walls, looking for somewhere she can wedge herself enough to take a shot if she needs to.
"Please stop flitting around."
The figure raises his hand and the wall Grim climbs upon begins to warp and shatter around her. Her adversary doesn't seem to have a clear idea of her exact position, but his powers can impact a wide enough area that a few stray shards of wall material are still likely to snag her.
On the bright side? There is now definitely an abundance of places on the wall to wedge herself into.
She ignores the shards that snag her and cut into her skin, and wedges herself into a tight spot. She trusts her aim, but firing gives away her position if he can deflect projectiles. She hefts a knife thoughtfully, curls her shadows around it, and sends it to another point.
Then she fires it at the creature, with all the speed of a bullet.
Bullets, as it turns out, are actually pretty fast. Faster than bolts of magic, repulsor blasts, missiles, or most other projectiles used in superhero fights.
Ebony Maw straight up *gets shot*.
The bullet easily over-penetrates, tearing straight through the alien's midsection and into the hull-plating behind him.
Grim surmised correctly about the shot giving away her position, though. As he staggers to his knees, the Maw flicks his fingers and Grim's rifle erupts into a jagged mess of twisted metal.
Her vantage point remains surrounded by Chitauri. Some of them have blasters and are training them in her general direction.
Well. Could've been worse. Could've been her. And she's got other guns. She's already moving again, even as she directs the shadows to move the knife closer and-
A strand of shadow whips around the creatures throat, and the knife plunges in towards it.
Pew, Pew!
Chitauri shooting at her.
Old guy with the spooky powers lying facedown in a pool of blood.
Woosh. Sound of a blast door back in the hallway opening?
Feels like a trap. But she still needs to find a way out. She drops the last few metres back to the floor, shoots a chitauri in the head, chokes another one with her shadows, appropriates their weapons to avoid losing any more of her own, fires a blast at spooky old guy to be sure, and flat out sprints for the door, taking shots at the chitauri as she goes.
Old Spooky guy is definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, dead now.
Grim turns the corner back into a hallway and...
...Damn. She pins herself against the wall, as deep into the shadows as she can go.
"Yes, father."
A lithe green figure stands in Thanos' shadow. Frowning, she advances to sweep the hallway while Grim's target proceeds into the main room adjoined to it.
Grim slips into Thanos' shadow, keeping a watchful eye on Gamora. She needs to wait for the opportune moment.
Gamora shoves a Chitauri warrior out of the way, ducks down and examines the floor paneling where Grim had more recently hidden. She touches two fingers to a small splatter of blood.
Her eyes then follow the trail: across the hall, right up into Thanos' shadow.
She pauses for a conspicuously long time after realizing Grim's current position, as though considering whether or not she really wants to alert the assassination target.
Thanos, meanwhile, is super distracted by the fact that Ebony Maw has been shot/strangled/stabbed/blasted into a lifeless heap.
Thanos does not look happy at all about this development.
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