Running up sand dunes, it turned out, was harder than Isaac had thought, and after about a minute he had slowed to a trudging walk. Best to save his energy for when he actually needed it. He had also started to give more thought as to how exactly he was going to do things. At first the idea had been simple: run up, melt through some pipes, and light some oil on fire. But now he was carrying this bomb because his “partner” couldn’t be bothered to do anything and he couldn’t exactly be holding on to it while burning things.

So he needed to stash it somewhere. Of course, the box it had come in had been conveniently far away from where it was supposed to be used, so he couldn’t exactly use that. He couldn’t risk it getting caught in the general destruction, either. Which meant it needed to be dumped into the pipeline first.

Isaac veered slightly from his course and started skirting the oil well to reach the pipeline on the other side. This took him longer, but the desert wasn’t freezing him to death, so whatever. As he got closer, he began to get an idea of just how large the pipeline was. Not just in terms of stretching across the entire landscape, but in sheer, towering bulk. You could probably drive a semi through it.

He was a few hundred yards off from it when he suddenly heard the faint noise of angry shouting over the desert wind. Turning around, he saw several figures on the near side of the oil well moving toward some large trucks. Great. Perhaps he had cut too close to the well. Whatever. Stealth was never really his thing.

Sprinting again, Isaac made it to the pipeline just as dust started to rise from the vehicles. He looked up at the metal structure. If he wanted to get the bomb inside the pipe, he’d have to do so from the top. He looked back at the trucks which were starting to grow larger. No time. He stashed the bomb next to one of the pipeline’s larger supports and started scrambling over the sand to where the pipeline met the well. He wouldn’t be able to reach the main facility by the time the trucks got to him, but he’d seen what looked like some kind of smaller station that was partway there. He didn’t want to damage the pipeline itself before the bomb was in place, but a peripheral structure was fair game. He just needed to get there before the men did, and then it was time to make some noise.

The winged mutant’s expression shifted as she realized that the girl did not have any idea who she was. That was just plain rude. After all she had done to spread her name? After all the news articles she had been in?

She would be lying if she didn’t admit that it made her feel a little bit small to not be recognized by such a tiny being. Even if she was a mass murder herself. It didn’t help that her grammar was everything that Astrid had longed for her own to be, even though she had assume that her English would be horrible too, given her background.

Astrid fluffed her wings indignantly, rolling out her shoulders to stand up to her full height. She had recently had a growth spurt, and was looking forward to rubbing that in the face of the little girl. Show her that she wasn’t the only one in the world that had something going for them at such a young age.

She had opened her mouth to sass her, but then found herself snicker and nod. He was a pervert. In every way. She still felt bad for herself for having to suffer through an entire plane ride with him.

Her lips pursed as she thought back to the emails she had received from the Ragnarok correspondent. She had actually forgotten to go to that picnic, but she had read the date. “October… 17th,” Astrid answered after thinking back for a second.

It was a odd question to ask, but she figured that the girl was vetting her. So what. Let her, Astrid figured. She would find that Astrid was not lying, and that she had done a great many things for the organization. If Renegade wanted to look her up, she would find not shortage of information on her.

F***, it was hard to run across sand! But there was no time, now. The men in the trucks were closing fast and Isaac still had another hundred yards before he reached the small station jutting off from the pipeline. Hateful breath hissed though his clenched teeth. Of course security had been heavier than he was told it would be. Of course his partner, the one in charge of taking care of personnel threats, had done nothing. Of course he had to do everything. He let the heat of the anger fill him, spurring him on as the sand started to fuse into glass.

He reached the station just as the first bullets started to dance at his feet. One struck his thigh- God, that hurt his heated skin- then there was more yelling as the first truck skid to a stop beside the mess of pipes and gauges. Isaac grinned as his blazing red hand punched into one of the largest pipes. Too late.

Steel became butter, and waves of highly pressurized and highly flammable crude oil leapt into the air and Isaac’s fiery hand.

The concussive force of the oil and the explosion knocked Isaac ten feet back onto the sand. More yelling, frantic now, but he couldn’t see anything. Thick, black smoke filled his vision. The sand, the station, and every inch of his body was covered in burning oil.

Warmth.

Isaac pushed himself to his feet, nearly slipping on the oil-soaked ground, and took a few steps into the wind to clear his sight. It was a good sight. Some of the men had jumped from the truck before the explosion, and now they were trying to scurry back to the truck. Other trucks were arriving, with men running to help the others or try to control the flames. But then they saw Isaac, a dark figure wreathed in flame striding from the wreckage, and their faces went white.

The confused recovery effort turned into panicked retreat, punctuated by repeated cries of a word that Isaac hoped meant “devil.” Men leaped into trucks that sped out from under them, their occupants firing blindly in his general direction. Isaac let them. Those left behind stumbled and crawled away from the fire. Isaac let them. He’d made his point, but there was still a job to do.

He looked back at the burning station and the tower of smoke clawing its way into the sky.

Good start.

!!

There was an explosion off in the distance.

The little girl no longer seemed all that interesting in the scheme of things. What exactly had she been sent there to do, exactly? She remembered that it had something to do with explosions and killing people. It had sounded like a good time in the email. A better time than being disrespected by someone half her height, anyway.

"I am being go to there. If want help killing people for the Ragnarok, coming also."

Astrid turned on her heel and faced her new target. There were men shooting at her supposed partner, attempting to remove the threat. It was her job to deal with the people going after him so he could go blow more things up.

Valkyrie cracked her knuckles.

Perhaps it would be a good trip after all.

The girl shifted her wings, plucked a few crystals to hold, and then shifted back. She wasn't even going to bother trying to walk across the sand in her heels. She took off and flew as fast as she could in the direction of the shooting.

The men with guns turned their fire around and began to aim at the new humanoid approaching them from above. The winged teen dodged as best she could, all the while trying to hit them back with the few crystals she had in her hand. She hit one, but the rest missed, and she was out of ammo in a matter of minutes.

It would be no use trying to dodge bullets in the air when she couldn’t shoot back, so Astrid was forced to land. Luckily, most of the people that hadn’t been affected by the explosion were either going off to get reinforcements or were pursuing her partner by that point, so she was able to land without too much trouble.

The teen shifted her wings again and gritted her teeth as she thrust them forward, sending the bottommost row flying in the direction of some of the armed me. Two were hit, one fatally, and he fell face-first into the sand. Yes, it would definitely be a good trip after all.

Astrid had cleared a bit of a path for herself, so she was able to glance around at the scene in an attempt to spot Surtr.

About f***ing time. Isaac glared up at the winged form of the girl as she flew toward him over the dunes. Not that she’d likely be of any help, but at least she was pretending to be involved.

Isaac’s face burned white hot, evaporating oil in a billow of black smoke that left his vision cleared after it passed. No need to remove the rest of the oil though; if he was supposed to draw attention and be intimidating then being on fire couldn’t hurt. Besides, it was warmer.

Well, at the very least, his vulture partner could draw the enemy’s fire. Isaac started up the nearest wave of sand between him and the girl and suddenly felt a stabbing pain in his leg. He looked down; covered in oil. Obviously. He traced a finger over the suspect area and grimaced at the pain. The skin was definitely broken. And on his finger, that looked like…. yes. Blood mixed with the oil. ****, must have been that gunshot before the explosion. What he got for using his power recklessly. Isaac gritted his teeth and felt the wound again. Just a graze. Could be worse. He’d just have to tough it out.

Trudging up the dune with a slight limp, Isaac cast another glance over at his “partner.” Huh. Guess she could actually use those wings for something. Still hardly an asset, though; he’d had to do all the real work.

Doing his best to hide his injury, he strode up to the girl and stopped next to the body of her victim, still-burning oil dripping onto the sand beneath him.

“Glad to see you finally finished with your tea party and decided to get to work,” Isaac sneered at the girl. “Come on. I'll get their attention, then you can stab them in the back.” He cast a disinterested look at body on the ground beside him before turning to well. He didn’t wait for a response before starting toward it; not like anything she said would matter anyway.

Astrid matched her ‘partner’s’ sneer. He was acting all high and mighty, like he had been the only one doing anything. Oh, so he was all great now because he had blown something up? She had blown things up, too, she stopped herself from snapping back. Any idiot with a little bit of C4 could blow something up.

Besides, they still didn’t know what Renegade was there for. If she hadn’t gone to talk to her, then who knew? Perhaps she would have taken down the entire mission. Perhaps she still would, but no, instead of looking into that, she had to make sure that this asshole didn’t get himself even more injured that he already was.

Surtr had already started to walk away, not waiting for her to respond. The teen dug her nails into the palms of her hands and ground her teeth bitterly. She hated not being listened to, and she hated being talked down to. Those two things seemed to be favourite pastimes of her partner.

She followed after him begrudgingly, stumbling every few steps as she tried to walk through the sand in her absurd heels. She was going to stab people, nothing else, and she wasn’t going to stick her neck out for Surtr after the treatment she’d been receiving. She just wished he would hurry up and get on with his distraction.

A tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the main facility. The gate on the side closest to Isaac and Valkyrie was locked and chained shut with a massive padlock.

Was.

After Isaac passed through, the latch to the gate was twisted beyond recognition and the lock was a puddle on the sand. Pitiful. Isaac looked around for a target that would afford some more satisfactory destruction. His gaze fell on a nearby conglomeration of pipes, large and very top-heavy, held some fifty feet above the ground by a square scaffold of steel girders. Perfect.

As Isaac approached the structure, he noticed several signs posted around the facility. He couldn’t read them, but the bright red flame and explosion symbols in bold outlines gave him a decent idea of what they meant. He smiled against the pain in his leg. Perhaps this would make the men here more hesitant to shoot out of fear of explosive damage to property and life. Isaac, on the other hand…

A white-hot hand clawed its way through the beam supporting the first corner of the structure. It lurched with the sudden release of reinforcement, creaked, and came to an uneasy rest on the three remaining support beams. Heh. If the whole complex was this unstable, complete destruction would be a piece of cake.

Isaac moved to the next corner and cooled his hand until it glowed a softer, but still piercing red. He placed against the support and held it there, letting the heat and glow seep into the steel. Once the full thickness of the metal blazed red he gave it a firm push. The girder gave way like cooked pasta, the structure above buckling and groaning under its own weight. Isaac followed through on his action, stepping forward and out of the path of the tower’s collapse. The mass of pipes fell with the ponderous, unstoppable motion of great weight. They built up speed as they fell, streaming toward the earth in an arc that brought them crashing into a line of pipe next to them.

The sound of the collision was fantastic. Rivets burst from their sockets as support beams were wrenched from one another in terrible violence. Gang wires snapped under the strain and whipped screaming through the air. Pressurized mental cylinders ruptured in sprays of oil and other unnamed chemicals. The wreckage finally came to rest with the tower resting at a crooked angle against the remains of neighboring structure, rivers of oil spraying from numerous breaches and streaming onto the sand below.

Isaac strode over to one such black waterfall, looked down at his blazing arm, and plunged it into the oil. Fire raced up the stream, leaping into the broken pipes with gleeful blooms of flame. The chain of explosions shook the wrecked structures, first from the hemorrhaging pipes then spreading to nearby tanks until now undamaged by the collapse. Fire and twisted metal rained from the sky. Somewhere, an alarm started blaring.

Isaac looked around at the scene of industrial carnage, nodded once, and turned to the heart of the complex to wreak more havoc.

Astrid continued to trail a little ways behind Surtr, having switched to flying so as not to break her ankles in the stupid sand that covered the entire area. Whose idea was that, anyway? Sending her to a desert. She could already feel her skin starting to peel, even with the layers of sunscreen she’d slathered on before going out.

A chainlink fence stopped her partner for a moment, while she was able to clear it by gaining a bit more altitude. It hadn’t stopped him for long, though. He melted the lock and latch on the door with ease, leaving them distorted and unrecognizable in his wake. She could’ve sworn that she was even starting to see some of the sand beneath him turn to glass. It was kind of cool, actually, but she kept her face in a sneer. It would have been cooler if he’d bothered to put on some clothes.

The carnage. That was even better to watch. It seemed that Surtr was actually capable of doing useful things. That was a development. The way that the structure toppled and was destroyed even got her a little bit giddy.

She stayed high above the ground while the structure came crashing down, resulting in spilled oil and partially melted metals covering the vast majority of the land within the compound. There wasn’t really anywhere left for Astrid to land.

As cool as the display had been, it left her at a bit of a loss as to what to do. The sneer returned to her face, and she glanced around, getting a little tired of hovering under the horrible sun. What was she supposed to be doing, exactly, anyway?

Oh. Right.

Her eyes landed on Surtr, who was making his way to the centre of the compound, about to be greeted by some angry workers who were clearly not happy with what had just happened to the compound.

That was her task. She flew forward at top speed to get ahead of Surtr and landed in the middle of the mass of people. She was greeted instantly with a pipe to her left wing, which hurt like hell. That would teach her not to land in the middle of a mob without protection.

She growled and shifted her wings, expanding them so that the ends went straight into the soft skin of the people closest to her. It was going to be fun to tear them all down.

Isaac strode through the jungle of pipes. Passing a large metal tank, he heated his arm and idly thrust it into the steel. Oil spewed from the rift in a gout of flame, spilling onto the sand in a river of fire that spread out beneath him. He had to admit, he was almost having fun.

Turning a corner, Isaac lifted his eyebrows in surprise. His partner was actually being useful. A group of armed men no doubt coming to stop his path of destruction were now instead preoccupied with getting stabbed by the little girl. Of course, she had placed herself right in the middle of them rather than attacking from behind like he had told her to, but at least it was a start. Maybe getting a few bruises would teach her to pay more attention.

In the meantime, her presence freed him up to light some more fires. He turned in the opposite direction. The destruction caused to the cluster of pipes on the way in was a good start, but they were only a peripheral installation. The true heart of the complex lay at the center; a hulking mass of towers, pipes, and storage tanks that dwarfed anything encountered so far. It is what needed to be destroyed.

Isaac made his way to the target, slicing into several more pipelines on his way and cutting some support lines to send an alarm tower warbling to the ground. Hopefully it hit some people. He grinned at the irony of the thought.

Suddenly, there was a bark of shouting from his right. Isaac turned his head instinctively toward the sound and saw a group of bearded men in tan fatigues emerge from the tangle of infrastructure. The shout was answered by another group on his left, then from behind, then from in front. At least thirty men closed in on him from all sides, with more constantly adding to their number. Some carried guns, but most were armed with pipes or large knives.

Isaac turned in a slow circle, surveying the advancing mob and cooling himself against the impending attack.

Alright, little miss sunshine. Good time for an entrance.

It seemed to be that no matter how many men she stabbed, there were always more waiting to pin her down. It became a bit of a game for her; expand her wings, then retract them, covered in blood. The bodies began to pile up, but still more came.

Frustrated with her situation, Astrid shifted her wings in a huff. It seemed to be a bad decision, though, since as soon as she did, she was met with a knife to the thigh, and had nothing to stop it with. She yelled out and flew up in the air, wanting to get as far away from the mob as she possibly could. 

She landed a little ways off and spotted her partner. He clearly had some sort of desired target, but he was at a bit of a standstill with the people surrounding him. The mob that she had just made her way out of redirected their anger toward him, and were circled around him.

Astrid groaned and limped forward, making a pitiful noise with each step. She had thought that the mission was gross before, but now it was just plain horrible. She did not want to be there anymore, boiling underneath the desert sun. Even if she was getting to murder random dudes with beards, it just wasn't worth the pain.

Nevertheless, she was there, and she wasn't exactly sure how to leave, so she decided to bail out her partner instead, since he clearly wasn't as capable as he believed himself to be. She shifted her wings back, teetering underneath the weight of them slightly. Normally, she would be alright to just stand still with them, but she couldn't put an equal amount of weight on both of her legs, and the sand was making things tricky. So, she was a bit off centre.

Despite her struggle to stay upright, she decided to shoot for the men surrounding Surtr. She was able to shoot off the bottom row of crystals before she fell over. She face-planted in the sand, feeling the course substance make its way into all the crevices on her body. It was a disgusting substance, really. She made a whimpering noise and swore in French a few times before looking up to see if the crystals had done anything to help.

There was a whistling sound off to the side. Isaac turned in time to see four men gasp and fall to the ground with large, white crystals in their backs. Another man cried out as one embedded itself in his arm. More crystals struck the sand in a random spray and one even glanced off Isaac’s torso leaving a line of red on his cooled skin.

He also saw Valkyrie fall face-first onto the sand.

No surprise there.

Still, she might not be dead. And while he didn’t have to, Loki had said that helping her would be rewarded. The crowd of men started shifting their gaze to the girl lying on the sand. Isaac shrugged to himself. He wasn’t exactly in deadly peril; it wouldn’t hurt too much to take the attention off her. And if she was able to pick off a few more guys as a result, all the better.

Time to make himself the primary threat, then. Glancing around, he located the nearest guard armed with an automatic rifle and dove at him. The guard was momentarily distracted by the source of the deadly crystals and went down like a bag of rice. Isaac punched him twice in the face then pressed the man’s neck to the ground with one hand while he wrestled the gun away with the other. Flesh began to sizzle and the man screamed as his skin burned under Isaac’s grip.

Isaac’s eyes went wide. NO.

He tore the gun from the man’s flailing hand and emptied several rounds into the wailing face before he realized what he was doing.

No burning. No screaming. This would be done without heat.

Tearing his hand away from the dead man’s throat, Isaac rose and swung the gun in a wide arc at the men opposite his partner. The bullets sprayed wildly until the clip was emptied. Some hit, some didn’t, but the main point was that all attention was back on him. Shouts erupted from the men as they charged him. Isaac tackled the first man and wrenched the pipe from his hand as bullets rained down on him.

Undeterred, Isaac leapt up and swung the pipe and the closest head he could find. The pipe impacted its target with a meaty squelch and the man fell to the ground. Several more swings saw two more men fall while similar blows began strike at his head, arms, and stomach, though to much less effect. Against his cooled flesh, the pipes and steel bars may as well have been foam noodles.

Isaac swung his pipe again, but it was knocked to the side by a blow to his forearm. The blows on his body weren’t a threat to his immediate health, but as more and more men crowded around him they choked his movement. Releasing the pipe, Isaac dropped to a crouch then launched himself into the crowd of attackers, punching blindly as the mob closed around him.

Astrid peeled herself off of the ground at the sound of gunfire. From the screams and swears in a language that she didn't know, she garnered that it was coming from her partner. She turned away from it, annoyed by the sun that shone directly in her eyes. 

She brushed off the sand that had managed to cover the entire front of her dress, and then turned around to join the fight, only to be greeted by a flying bullet. It grazed her arm, but only just. It made a straight cut across her bicep and then continued on its path. It wasn't a deep cut, but it hurt. She let out a high pitched noise of pain, but covered her mouth quickly so as not to draw any more attention to herself. That, combined with her bruised, slightly bent wing and the sunburns that covered most of her flesh made her an unhappy camper.

Astrid huffed angrily, grabbed one of the few large crystals that remained on her wings, and strutted forward into the crowd. It was mostly crowded around her partner, but a few of the men on the outside of the circle made a move to meet her as she approached. She raised her left wing to act as a shield, and then greeted the men as they moved forward with her raised crystal.

She plowed through them fairly easily, spurred on by the pain in different parts of her body and the desire to finish the job. Whatever that was by then.

It definitely helped that there was someone working through the mod on the other side of it. The men that Surtr hadn't taken down with the machine gun were then greeted with a lead pipe. It was far less efficient than the machine gun, but by then, Astrid assumed that he had some sort of plan. 

The blows can fast and from every direction. Isaac struggled to get his bearings as the mob engulfed him, but it was chaos. They shoved him to the ground, and any attempts to chase after a fist with his own was met by another from the side. Some of the men had pulled out knives and were trying in vain to but at him amongst the punches. Isaac tried to grab one for himself, but they always disappeared back into the mass of arms and elbows before he could reach them.

At first, several of the men tried to grapple Isaac to a standstill, but even those with gloves found it difficult to keep their grip on his abnormally hot skin for long. It wasn’t long before they stopped their attempts and returned to the barrage of punches and kicks against which Isaac’s own fists and legs struck out in blind, futile spasms. There was nothing above him but violence and nothing beneath him but sand.

Sand!

Isaac dug his hands into the loosely-packed grains and flung them up into his attacker’s eyes. Some of the sand struck home, resulting in startled cries and several of the men dropping back, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Isaac reached into the sand again and… felt something sharp. He quickly pulled it close to his chest and rolled over to protect his new find from the mob at his back. It was one of Valkyrie’s strange crystals. Must have been one that missed and hit the ground earlier. It was strangely translucent, but far from fragile. One end was amazingly sharp – even to Isaac’s touch, and the other was blunt and fashioned such that it could be easily gripped.

He had a weapon.

Isaac spun, slicing the crystal blade and whatever was above him. It cut through leather and flesh like a razor, leaving sprays of blood in its wake. Isaac didn’t hesitate. He rose into the mob with all the violence denied his heat. He couldn’t bring himself to kill with fire, but a blade was different. He cut through anything that came near; arms, legs, throats. Blood soaked the sand as Isaac beat the assailants into a retreat, his lack of skill offset by the fierceness of his attacks and the fact that his victims could do nothing to harm him in return.

Soon, the crowd of men was broken, fleeing to find better weapons. Isaac didn’t pursue them. He remained crouched, wild-eyed with battle rage, and caked in sand and blood.

Once they had found their groove, it didn’t take long for the two of them to make their way through the crowd of men. The ones that they didn’t manage to kill or maim quickly took themselves out of the equation. It was a smart move, and one that Astrid was glad that they were making.

By that point in the journey, she was bruised, bleeding, low on ammunition, and worst of all, sweaty. The heat and intense sun did not make for a good situation to be a having a fight in.

Astrid stood up and watched the rest of the men run. She knew that they were probably finding new weapons or more people, but she didn’t bother to go after them. She needed a break. Maybe some water or something.

With her free moment, she took a good look at how she had fared during the fight. She was alive, sure, but she was not happy to be there by any stretch of the imagination. Plus, she’d used so many of her crystals during the fight that she didn’t have enough feathers left over to fly anywhere. She was going to have to stick to walking. Wonderful, just wonderful.

She glanced Surtr with an annoyed expression as she dug around for sunscreen in her bag. She had a moment to reapply, and she was going to take full advantage of it. No more burning than necessary.

Her partner was just as caked in dirt and blood as she was, if not more. Probably the strangest thing about his appearance was the fact that he was holding a bloody crystal that couldn’t have come from anywhere but her wings. He must’ve picked it up during the fight, she figured.

”What now?” Astrid asked him, not even attempting to hide the annoyance in her voice. She was hot, injured, and uncomfortable, and she just wanted the mission to be over with.