Project Chimera has been launched, and the entirety of Earth is under siege from the greatest alliance of evil to have ever existed! Heroes have fallen and the world is on the precipice of disaster. And SHIELD Team Seven is forced to go on the run to avoid assassination and put an end to this nightmare.
To stop the madness and put an end to Chimera, Captain Maria Vincennes and Captain Mari Illustrious Makinami most join forces, along with a ragtag group of heroes, soldiers, and much more in order to defend the free world. And in the end, the two Captain Americas must overcome seemingly impossible odds and find a way to defeat the greatest alliance of evil to have ever existed in the Core Timeline.
But can they do so when battling their own inner demons and torments at the same time?
Coreline: Operation Endgame (link to first chapter on Deviant Art
), is part of the Coreline Shared Universe.
This story has the following Tropes:
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Almost every single hero base on the planet is taken and/or destroyed in a single operation, including the Extraordinary Avengers Mansion! The only base confirmed to survive and remain under the control of the heroes by the start of the third act is the Chicago Champions base, Stronghold.
- Apple of Discord: The heroes disrupt and dissolve the villainous alliance by tricking them into thinking that the other members are going to double-cross them.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Cap Maria of all people delivers one of these to Junior when he helps with a Big Damn Heroes. Turns out that he's her boyfriend.
- Cassandra Truth: When Maria and Maya rescue Superman Gamma, Martian Manhunter Hikari, and Submariner Nadia, they (especially Nadia) have trouble believing that their replacements, who were using a technique to replicate their forms, minds and powers to the point that they were indistinguishable from the original until the proper signal, lost to one Super-Soldier (Cap. Mari).
- Clones Are People, Too: One of the enhanced Kasumi clones has a Heel–Face Turn, and eventually joins the Champions. No one thinks worse of her for her origins once she's proven herself.
- The Constant: Mari believes that Nick Fury being a director of S.H.I.E.L.D. in every universe where there is a S.H.I.E.L.D. is an example of this (and disliking Fury, she has no desire to meet the Director even when asked). She's right—the local version of S.H.I.E.L.D. was run by Fury, but he'd stepped off some time earlier and Phil Coulson is running things now.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The Brotherhood of Evil gets taken down ridiculously easy, Maya tricking Madame Rouge into tying herself up in knots and knocking her out, Maria distracting Mallah by rebounding her shield and punching him out, while the Brain can't even fight back and gets caught trying to run away. Maria and Maya even argue which of their foes was easier.
- Deus ex Machina: Subverted: The Indianapolis Champions have access to a complete set of Dragonballs and are able to summon Shenron, but when they ask him if he can solve the problem at hand with CHIMERA (either take out all of the forces world-wide or rescue all of the kidnapped Champions and Avengers), Shenron says he can't because CHIMERA has access to resources capable of kicking his ass if he tries to. However, he is capable of transporting Ant-Man Sokka from where he's being held captive, and that is all the heroes need in order to create an effective counter-strike plan.
- Gondor Calls for Aid: Let's just say that a lot of favors are cashed in by various heroes to gain aid in stopping the worldwide attack, like Joker calling in the Grunt of his home universe to keep the alliance of evil from capturing the president or Fujiko asking for the help of Roger Smith (and The Big O).
- Grand Finale: Of SHIELD Team Seven's "CHIMERA" arc.
- Heel–Face Turn: Due to a combination of Maria both giving her a choice for the first time in her short life and sparing her after questioning her, one of the Kasumi clones defects to the heroes' side.
- Hold the Line: Team Seven's plan during the battle of Washington D.C. is to do this for as long as possible in order to allow the President to evacuate (and nearly get overwhelmed, even with hefty backup). Stingray Security Services fought a full-blown COBRA assault in order to buy time for the Champions to fight off the infiltrators in their midst and come support them (and succeeded).
- Hollywood Hacking: PROGENY is one of the bigger reasons why CHIMERA manages to perform such a crippling first strike. As it's discovered later on, not even the more brute-force (and thus accepted as best) measures to prevent hacking (such as keeping computers off any network) were able to stop it (it just figured out a way to covertly transmit hacking code through audio waves and made sure that the non-networked computers' integrated microphones would hear it).
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Cobra Commander's emergency escape jet is called the "Snake Escape", a name the heroes lampshade in its terribleness.
- Irony: After various stories involving Mari "Captain America" Makinami mentioning repeatedly that she has no love whatsoever for S.H.I.E.L.D. and a hell of a lot less for Nick Fury (she had some bad experiences back on her home 'verse, long story), she is finally invited to meet the Director of SHIELD by the man himself, and (much to her surprise) the Director of SHIELD turns out to be Philip J. Coulson himself. Fury did run SHIELD on The Line at one point, but had been removed some time ago. Mari decides to give an alliance with SHIELD a try under said circumstances.
- Also after many stories where Maria looked like being more Married to the Job than the actual Captain America; it turns out that she has a boyfriend. They are just forced to keep the relationship long-distance and are firm believers in taking it easy (Living Forever Is Awesome like that), so nobody at Team Seven (who Mari interviewed before Holiday Time Heroes Coreline) knew of this, so Mari got Maria sent over to the Mansion instead of spending time with Junior like they were planning.
- Iron Butt Monkey: Mari is one of the best combatants amongst the heroes, brings along a Chekhov's Gun that is important to bring down CHIMERA and does a Big Damn Heroes to save Maria when she's captured at the climax, however her mansion is destroyed and her whole team is captured at the very beginning of CHIMERA's full-blown assault (and then it turns out that all of the Avengers' bases are in similar peril if not worse, Mari's Mansion is just the only one we saw on-screen) and she's still reeling from suffering such a big loss for part of the story.
- It's All My Fault: Cap Mari feels a great deal of guilt over the destruction of her team's Avengers Mansion, as well as them being either captured or MIA.
- I Will Fight Some More Forever: It's mentioned in passing by the CHIMERA higher-ups on the final chapter that, even after wiping out all organizations that could pose a problem to their plan, civilian resistance is still going pretty strong (at the time they are talking about it).
- Jaw Drop: Cap Mari gets this trope when she sees Cap Maria passionately kissing Junior.
- Meaningful Name: When Maria learns that CHIMERA is a massive Villain Team-Up, she finds the meaning of the name (a monster formed from the parts of other beasts) so obvious in hindsight.
- The Mole: Maria realizes that there's some within SHIELD trying to stonewall her investigation, and SPECTRE managed to recruit some White Martians villains, who then used a technique to replace numerous heroes kidnapped by CHIMERA, even duplicating their powers.
- Myopic Architecture: A combination of an over-reliance on computerized security systems and Pym Particle constructions for space is why the Avengers Mansion in Chicago fell so fast. In the defense of the Mansion, PROGENY is mentioned to be an incredibly advanced computer, using hacking methods that nobody predicted (even Mari, who took measures to have some systems non-networked and still found them to have been hacked). A following story arc also demonstrates that PROGENY is so advanced it can force hardware it's uploaded in to behave in ways that it is not designed to work, all of which baffles the people working to eradicate it to no end.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
- The Kasumi clone being sent to try and stop the heroes from covering the president's evacuation means that her Heel–Face Turn puts her in a perfect position to aid them. Even better, she was only there because CC ordered all of them sent.
- The villains did their best to capture as many heroes as they could alive and imprison them in Human Popsicle form, so they could create an army of brainwashed heroes. This means that not only did almost no heroes die, but with every base the heroes capture, the rescued prisoners swell their ranks, making it easier to capture the next one.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Minor example: as a result of the operations needed to take out CHIMERA, people now know that there is an Alternate of Maria Vincennes with Captain America's powers out there. As far as Maria can see, this means that her capacity to operate in the shadows has been compromised.
- Out-of-Character Alert: Right before Mari is attacked by a White Martian disguised as Ax, he calls her by name without referring to her as "Princess". Which is all the warning Mari needed to avoid his subsequent attack.
- Shout-Out:
- Turns out that Secret Service Agent Mike Banning is part of President Rogers' security retinue. The titular Code Emergency (being still used In-Universe on Coreline) is used by him as he sees the White House being taken by HYDRA (although the President has been evacuated).
- The sequence where SHIELD Team Seven and Cap Mari arrive to the Chicago division of S.I (and Stronghold) and see the devastation that was the cost of the Security Services' Hold the Line action was meant to resemble similar post-battle sequences from films like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down.
- Washington D.C. Invasion: Team Seven and Cap Mari (and their allies) go to war with CHIMERA on the streets of Washington. With the CHIMERA forces too numerous even for them, all they can do is Hold the Line long enough for President Rogers to be safely evacuated, denying CHIMERA one of its biggest targets.
- The Worf Effect: The Extraordinary Avengers get hit with this trope and HARD!!!! Their Mansion is made to destroy itself and the entire team save for Mari Captain America is depowered and captured in less than twenty minutes. It is also mentioned in passing that many other superhero teams throughout the world and their respective headquarters went dark as well and presumed captured (the Chicago Champions is the only part of the whole division to still have all of its personnel roster standing and its headquarters' status known (as still under S.I. control, even if severely damaged—other divisions of the team and the company around the world didn't had the same luck) by the time SHIELD Team Seven arrives).
- Villain Team-Up: CHIMERA is composed of an alliance of dozens of villainous groups and individuals including HYDRA, COBRA, the Legion of Doom, the Red Ribbon Army, Team Rocket, the Decepticons, SPECTRE, the Foot Clan, the Brotherhood of Nod and many more.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Maria tells Mari this after she starts berating herself for letting her Avengers Mansion get destroyed and her team captured.
- You Are Too Late: Maria finds out the truth about CHIMERA after their initial attack had already been going on for twenty minutes.
- War Is Hell: The Chicago division of Stingray Industries held, and the President was evacuated during the assault on D.C., but these actions cost blood, and a lot of it. The narration makes it clear that both Maria and Mari (who have hefty memories of World War II, the former doubly so because she fought on the War) are having flashbacks of battles fought in it with the devastation that they see.
