A/N: I'm so so happy to finally be bringing the stories of Emerald, Valencia and Pandora live and in action again, this time with a revamp and better plots all around. I hope you all enjoy the first chapter of the first story of many to come. This is the Avengers like you've never seen them before. This is There Was An Idea.

There Was An Idea

EMERALD

Being an adult is hard.

Being a 24-year-old adult working in a restaurant in New York City is even harder.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my life, but sometimes it just felt like there was something missing. Something that I was missing out on. Something that I wasn't seeing. At the least, I was feeling a little down.

When my two oldest friends offered to come up and visit me for the summer, I definitely wasn't going to say no. Since we all went our separate ways throughout the years, it had been a long time since we were reunited. This summer, I was determined to turn everything around and make up for lost time.

It was only two days into our vacation that I learned just how much everything would change this summer.

I heard the pop of a champagne bottle before I even opened my eyes, slowly blinking in a desperate attempt to see.

"Emerald Maitland!" came the piercing scream from a room over.

I shook my head as I pulled myself together before I headed out into the kitchen to find the source of the problem.

"What the hell is going on?" I answered curtly before my eyes landed on Valencia Flint and Pandora Whitman, my two supposed best friends, who had just spilled champagne all over my kitchen floor. "Are you kidding me right now?"

Pandora gave me a sheepish grin. "We wanted to thank you for your hospitality so we bought you some champagne!" she announced.

"You're not even 21 yet," I said before I let a chuckle explode from my lips. I couldn't be mad at them, not when we hadn't been together like this in years.

Val brushed her blonde hair away from her eyes as she cleaned up the mess leaking on the tiles. "Trust me, I almost got kicked out of the liquor store just by having her with me," she complained. "Who knew they were so strict on the East Coast?"

"I would have warned you if I knew what the hell you were doing," I retorted.

We sat there in silence for a long time, drinking our mimosas. I couldn't help but keep a smile on my face as I just stared into the eyes of my friends.

"So," I broke the silence, clanging my glass on the countertop. "What's on the schedule for today?"

Pandora and Val exchanged brief glances, and I knew that I was probably going to regret asking that question.

"What."

I repeated my question in case I had said something wrong, raising an eyebrow to accompany my inquiry.

"I thought we could go to the movies," Val started to say, a flush creeping up on her cheeks.

I narrowed my eyes as Pandora threw me a knowing glance, daring me to guess what Val had in mind. I was already suspicious enough as it was.

There was another moment of brief silence before Pandora blurted out, "She wants to see her boyfriend again."

I burst out laughing immediately, realizing I should have guessed. Since The Avengers movie came out in May, all Val could talk about was Loki. Every single text I received was about his hair, his eyes, how he was misunderstood – the list continued forever.

"Alright alright fine," I conceded. "It's only the best movie ever."

The three of us had bonded over Marvel since we were young, amongst other things. We had all seen the movie separately when it first came out earlier this year, but seeing it together, I knew it was a good choice to start our three-month long vacation.

When we got to the movie theater, I immediately noticed how quiet it was. Agreed, it was one of the hottest summers on record and no one wanted to sit inside a movie theater all day, but it still seemed off to me. I turned to my friends to voice my opinion but immediately had cash thrown in my face to go buy popcorn with.

Even as I waited in line to buy food and drinks for myself and my friends, I couldn't hear kids whining or parents complaining. It was quiet.

"Did you get popcorn?" Pandora's voice screeched through the air first as my other two friends headed back from buying our tickets.

"I told her to get candy instead," Val instantly responded, shoving Pandora playfully to one side.

Pandora stopped in her tracks. "No popcorn for a movie?" she questioned. "Oh no, you don't get to make the decisions around here."

"Guys!" I practically had to shout at them. "No fighting today. I'll just get both."

It wasn't until we sat in our seats that I felt a breeze stir the hairs on the back of my arms. I shivered slightly, turning to my friends to see if they felt it too. It didn't bother me for a few moments until I realized what had just occurred. I jumped to my feet, my hair rising once more for a different reason. There were no windows in here, so there shouldn't have been any breeze.

Val and Pandora looked over at me like I had gone insane, and honestly, I thought I had.

"There's no one in here," I stammered. "Why is no one in here?"

"Because we are the only geeks who would see this movie ten times," Val said, grabbing a box of candy out from Pandora's hands.

I sauntered towards the front of the theater, despite my friend's protests, and felt a bad feeling creep up in the bottom of my stomach. The breeze grew stronger as I approached. As I glanced over my shoulder to call out to my friends, my words died in my throat.

The two of them were arguing over the snacks that were sitting in between them, but I tuned them out. I didn't have time for this right now.

"Can you two please cut it out?" I shouted.

They didn't.

I was standing right underneath the movie screen when the movie started to play on the screen. I refrained from swearing out loud, but my colorful mind was going a mile a minute. I tried to get the attention of my arguing friends once more, but I was caught in the middle.

My suspicions started to add up, and I think Pandora and Val finally noticed my uncertainly for I felt their presence behind me. However, as I reached out to touch the screen, I felt the breeze again. I knew I should yank my hand away, but my brain compelled me to stay put.

"Uh, guys."

That was the last thing I said before my hand touched the screen and everything went black.

Or at least, I convinced myself that my hand touched the screen because there was no way that my hand actually passed through the screen like it did.

I woke up on unfamiliar ground, disoriented from the passage of time, before the events of earlier came swarming back into my brain. This was just great. We were all passed out on the sticky movie theater ground with people probably staring at us and on top of it all, we probably weren't even going to get a refund.

I finally opened my eyes and realized that I wasn't in the movie theater anymore. After this realization, I frowned and struggled to sit up. My attempt to move failed, and I plopped back down on my back. If I wasn't in the theater anymore... where was I? And where exactly were Pandora and Val?

An annoying yet oddly familiar beeping sound overwhelmed my ears, and I groaned, turning my head to the side to see what it was. I expected to see an alarm clock or a phone. What I saw, however, was neither of these, nor anything else I could have possibly come up with. What I saw, lying next to me, was a Hammerdrone ready to self-destruct. I basically accepted this as the odd nightmare of a Marvel fanatic, and I closed my eyes again, ready to die in my dreams so I could wake up again in reality.

I never got that far.

A flash of red caught the edge of my eye, and I felt myself being swept upwards and into the air, almost like I was flying. My thoughts froze me to the core as I glanced upwards, nearly dying of shock immediately. I pinched myself quickly and felt a pain stabbing my arm, which could mean only one thing.

This was no dream.

I was being saved by Iron Man.