Disclaimer: I own nothing marvel related except to admire and sometimes use their marvelous work.
"Watch your back!" Iron Man roared in my ear, as a blue-white light flew over my head and collided with the head of the great furry beast. Sadly, like the other times he'd tried this, it merely left a burn mark where it had landed and a feral snarl in his direction.
"Only if you watch yours," I return as I expertly shot another arrow into the throat of a gray wolf the size of a bear at Stark's unwatched behind. The explosion had the same effect as Iron Man's repulsors, leaving a lot of skin where fur had been, but leaving me an open target with a normal arrow to finish it off.
I then had to do a back flip and launched another quiver into the exact same spot that had recently been burned off of the brown beast at my back.
This was hardly the weirdest thing we'd ever fought, yet these giant bear like wolfs were certainly giving us a good work out. There were seven of them, all in varying shades and colorings, but since one of our own was currently not on this planet, that left us outnumbered.
Captain America and Black Widow were back to back, Nat's bullets hardly making a dent in the odd metallic fur while the Captain's shield harmlessly bounced off their muzzles and stomachs, even there underbelly's. The only vulnerable places were the eyes and the inside of the mouth, both extremely hard targets to make when the object wouldn't stop snapping at you.
Hulk wasn't having much luck either, his super strength had managed to kill two alone, both by managing to get on their backs, grabbing a jaw in each hand, and ripping until one came off. The sight was grotesque, but effective if he could stay on long enough without getting his back and arms ripped to shreds in the process. We needed an angle, and I cast my eyes skywards for a better one.
I found the perfect spot, the railing at the top of this warehouse had a perfect nook almost made for me, but first I needed a lift. "Iron Man, get your metal ass back here, give me a lift." Before I could fully finish the sentence, I was being lifted into the air more than thirty feet at speeds that left my stomach back on the ground.
Stark was a bit too bulky to maneuver easily in the tight spaces up here, so he kind of half threw me up there, and I thanked my acrobat skills that I made it up there without so much as a slip. Repositioning myself, I made quick work of two more wolf-bear things on the ground after making a perfect bull's eye of their pupils. Now that Black Widow, Cap, and Hulk each had their own opponents, the odds seemed much better. Until Hulk threw his black one across the room and it landed inches away from Natasha's unprotected back, and lunged right for her instead.
I had no time to scream out her name before its heavy paw thudded into her hip, bringing her to the ground as one of my arrow's pinged harmlessly off its metal coating. The Hulk was back in a blur of green, throwing the beast away again, but was then forced to do combat with the tan one that Natasha had previously been dealing with. Leaving the black one a chance to make it towards the back of the building.
"Hey Cockeye, bets off if I get to it first." Tony yelled, repositioning his boots inset for pursuit. I wasn't having that, so I did something that should be labeled as suicide, I lunged from the rafters and made a perfect landing on Iron Man's unprotected and unexpected back, making him do a sort of twist in midair as he flailed to get the unknown off.
"Didn't I tell you to watch your back," I reminded with an impish grin that he couldn't see as he assessed my presence, but at least stopped trying to throw me off.
We made it into the adjacent room, which was clearly the unloading/ loading part of this odd place, there were boxes and crates stacked everywhere and a huge metal staircase leading up to the rafters where even more stuff was crammed in. God only knew what was in those, but the wolf thing seemed rather interested in them as it headed towards the back of the building in pursuit.
I was taken off guard when Tony did grab both my arms and swing me off of him, only for me to land half way up the stairs. "Hey," I yelped, glaring up at him.
"Do I look like a carrier pigeon to you?" he snapped.
"No, you look more like a giant metal piece of shit." I retorted.
"Haha, very funny." I assumed he rolled his eyes, but he still had his face plate down so I couldn't see him even though he was facing me. It was for those five seconds that we hadn't been watching our target that it struck, mouth open wide to slam down onto Tony's unprotected back while he was facing away. I panicked, and grabbed one of my last exploding arrows, and aimed right for the pink inside of the gums, the teeth of which were inches away from his back when the body no longer had anything to respond to. My arrow had slight right through the gums and up into the brain, leaving the wolf machine thing to collapse to the ground, still twitching slightly. The force of the explosion left the support beams of the stairs I was on wobbling, and I quickly hit the ground and rolled away from the structure before it could collapse with me still on it, while Stark flew for the ceiling to avoid the same thing.
We waited in those positions for a few seconds until we both realized that there was utter silence throughout the place. I quickly pressed my comlink down and demanded, "Widow, Cap, anybody responding? Our targets down, how's yours?"
Steve's voice was quick to reply, "Targets neutralized as well, Widow down. She's coming around though, you two get your butts back here quickly."
"Right, great job team. By the way, now you still oh me that twenty." Tony reminded me as he set himself gently on the ground. He then proceeded to remove his helmet and tilt his head so that I could see Tony was now talking directly to me.
"What!" I snapped as I threw my bow over my back, a scowl now adorned to my face. "I just saved your Iron Ass and you still think I owe you? I killed it!"
"But I got to it first, since it was closer to me. Never bet against a genius," Tony grinned wickedly, repeating his earlier statement when he'd started this thing.
I scowled, then dug around in my wallet stating, "fine, anything to make you shut up at this point." I grabbed the bill out of my wallet and put it right in the center of Tony's stabilizer while continuing, "besides that, aren't you always going on about your billions? Why the hell do you need twenty extra dollars?"
"Its the principle of-" but was cut off by a faint groaning noise from under our feet. We both looked down in concern, as something shot up from the concrete ground, to collide right with Iron Man. I hadn't even managed to get a good look at the thing before I was forced to do several back flips away from the monstrous creature.
It kept coming for me as well, so that I was forced to sprint back towards the stairwell, knowing that my best bet for getting rid of this thing was from above. There was screaming everywhere, the room I was in, made by the man still caught. My ear, where the other teammates were trying to figure out what the noise was. My very own head, as I yelled at myself to move faster.
I made it to the stairs just as the thing behind me crashed into them, and was forced to dive to the side again, but a little too late this time. I was now pinned to the ground with the heavy metal stairs upon me, and could only twist my head to the right without my body screaming in pain. The only good part of this was that now I could get a good look at what was holding up Iron Man.
It was a worm, but like the wolfs hardly something you saw every day.
It was so long that even filling up half the space in this room, its body still wasn't all the way out of the earth. What one would have thought was normally pink skin was deep blood red, and the shiny quality to it seemed to reflect back at me, leaving no doubt that it would take more than an arrow to get through to its insides. The most disturbing thing however, was when it turned to face me.
There were no identifiable eyes, just the end of the body forming into a gaping hole filled with razor sharp teeth that were clearly strong enough to burrow through concrete, and were now attempting to swallow titanium alloy. I'd seen his suite withstand bullets, alien bullets, and a solid punch from the Hulk himself and still be able to stand on its feet. I was now watching in horror as it sawed through that stuff like butter, blood oozing from the red suite, leaving the gold parts less attractive looking. Tony was trying his best to free himself, using his feet to try and kick at the sides of its mouth as well as trying to burn it when he managed to turn the boots on, yet this seem to have no effect whats so ever. He was continuing to shoot out repulsor blasts from his hands, but it had no more good then beating on it with his Iron fists. His helmet having been blown somewhere when he'd been grabbed, I could sadly see every bit of pain on his face as he was slowly being crushed by the jaws of the killer worm.
I redoubled my efforts in getting out of here, but my body had not magically removed the debris from above me in the fifteen seconds it had taken me to gather my teammates position. My bow was still stuck to my back along with all of my arrows, so I could do nothing but lay there and watch. Starting to feel a bit panicky, I screamed for help. It wasn't something I do very often, and a small part of my mind acknowledged that if the others could help they would have been here back when the screaming started, but I was running low on options at this point.
A new idea sparked to mind when one of the blue-white lights went wild and shattered a section of stairs off of my back. It was an insane idea, might make this situation worse for me, but it was all I had, and not enough time to look for another option. "Tony!" I screamed as loud as I could, hoping that he would be able to hear me over his own howls of pain.
He gave no acknowledgment that he heard me, but I continued anyway, "Shoot your guns at me."
There was no given response, and no renewed effort to try and get this shit off of me. In fact, Stark seemed to be weakening, and even as I watched his arm went slack, his body seemed to be slumping inwards. The body of that vile creature seemed to be contracting, and releasing, like it was swallowing- "Tony!" I cried out so loud that I might have ripped my own throat out.
One second Iron Man was sinking into the throat of this mutant worm thing, the next a huge green blur had slammed near the head of it and was now squeezing so hard I thought it might come right off the rest of the body. Something blurred past so fast I couldn't even get a reading on it, but the metallic clang it made against the red armor of the thing had me realizing that it was lucky I was out of the way. Captain Americas shield lay at the base of the worm, for all the world looking like a spray painted trash can lid for all the good it did. Confirming my earlier fears that this thing had some sort of armor other than normal worm skin.
The owner of said shield was already in the room, attempting to climb up the sections hand over hand to reach the mouth and hopefully extract a now unconscious, yet hopefully still alive, Tony. I realized that there was still someone missing from this, but that issue was quickly resolved when Natasha came limping into the room, right towards where I was still stuck. "Clint?" she called out, and I was more horrified of the tone of her voice then the blood leaking from the firm grip on her leg.
"In here," I hurriedly called back, feeling a little ashamed at how muffled and strained my voice sounded. She was at the edge in an instant, pulling weakly at the pile in hopes to try and recover me. However, just pulling on the one pipe at the bottom was already shaking the precarious structure, so I quickly screamed, "No, you'll make it collapse inwards. Go help the others, I'll be fine."
What little I could make of her face set, and she was quick to make her way over to the others. Hulk had released his hold, and still managed to beat the Cap to the top. Fearlessly shoving his arm into the gaping teeth and maw of the thing, his whole arm tensed and with a humongous roar heard out in San Francisco, he pulled up the red and gold boot of Iron Man.
Thankfully, the rest of him followed as well. Sadly, the Hulk let Stark fall to the ground without looking back at him, and continued to beat his green fists into the now open and vulnerable part of it. Tony fell towards the ground and might have possibly landed head first, a deadly feat for his helmet was still discarded somewhere around here, if Cap hadn't abandoned his attempts at penetration and managed to catch the falling suite. Steve then lugged the whole thing closer to where I was, and the close-up look wasn't any better than the far away kind.
Tony's face was pale, but thankfully sustained no permanent injury from being tossed around like a rag doll, probably thanks to still being in the suite might have stopped his neck from snapping. The real issue was that there were over a dozen puncture wounds on each side of his chest, all dripping with crimson blood that was quickly getting everywhere. Who knew how deep the teeth had gone? Had they managed to get past the rib cage and lungs? Was I watching one of my teammates make his last breaths?
All Steve had assessed was that Stark was still breathing before turning to my general direction and calling out, "Clint? Barton you okay in there?"
"Peachy," I hissed in frustration as I had again tried to move forward, and was again pinned down by the solid and rather heavy surface above me.
"Are you injured?" he demanded, ignoring my response altogether. Huh, I hadn't actually given much thought to that, I'd mostly been focused on the giant man-eating worm trying to get way to much iron in its blood. Now that I really tried to assess myself, I realized I might even be bleeding myself. My head seemed to have been saved from being squished to death by a huge pole being bent at a horrible angle and stopping some more stuff from falling in on me. My legs hadn't been so lucky, which is why I couldn't move. They were both pinned to the ground by god knows what, and the numbing feeling spreading throughout them made me fear that something had gotten past my skin.
"Unknown," I finally responded to his question
"Hulk, duck," came from back at the battle, and I had to do a double-take on hearing that. A, when the hell did Natasha ever scream at the Hulk to do anything? B, why on Earth would the Hulk have to duck anything?
Both answers came when the explosion went off, and I looked on in amazement that Nat had managed to lob a grenade past the roaring green monster and right into the worm's mouth. That was a shot that would have given me pause to consider.
At least the inside of the thing wasn't as hard to break as the outside, as bits and pieces of the now blown up worm came sprinkling down from the ceiling. No one had taken into account that what was falling was the pieces that we once couldn't break open, and were now scrambling to avoid. Steve quickly scooped up his shield and used it to cover his and Tony's position, I was already so covered that it wasn't funny, and in a surprise to all of us the Hulk lunged forward and actually wrapped himself around the Black Widow, ensuring they were both saved from being squished as well.
It was only when the horrible sounds of slightly metallic flesh stopped slamming back to the ground did the other two join our little party. Steve then proceeded to try and take apart Tony's armor to get a better look at the inside and Natasha only went to help after she'd turned to the Hulk, pointed at the huge pile of metal on me and stated calmly, "Hulk, Hawkeye is down there. Get him out."
The big guy was all to pleased to have something new to do after only having a bit of fun with his worm pal, and then proceeded to tear away my restraints like a child playing in the grass. My view of the other two was now nonexistent, and my fear of being crushed alive grew again as the Hulk seemed to take no care in what he was pulling up. I'd just opened my mouth to call out to the others and bring them up to speed on what might be a squished bird here soon, until there was a sense of relief when my body was no longer pinned down, and pain shot through my whole being as feeling rushed back into my legs.
I blacked out before the huge green face could peer into the new hole.
AAA
Waking up was weird. I had a routine, I lived by it and sometimes it's what kept me alive. So waking up in a hospital bed, not a common part of my routine, was not taken lightly. The only thing that stopped me from using the chair at the side of my bed to get out of here was the person sitting on it.
"What's a matter Nat, your own room get cold?" I teased, my eyes still mostly closed from the piercing bright lights above me.
Probably sensing this, I could tell that the room had dimmed not moments later, and she then took her seat by my bed again. I just laid there for a while, taking stock of my own body. It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would, probably pain meds, so I had to go by what felt wrong instead of painful. Breathing was just slightly strenuous, broken or cracked rib. Upper right leg was numb, probably stitches. My back in general felt tense, though I have no idea what to make of that. I kind of remembered how I'd gotten here, hadn't something fallen on me?
It was as my mind switched back and forth between half-forgotten memories and the odd sensation of dulled pain that I gasped and sat jack up right to demand, "Tony!"
"Was wondering when I'd come to mind." A cocky voice came from somewhere to my right. Man, I must have been drugged out of my mind to miss that second presence in the room, no matter how quiet he was being. Which in its self was odd.
Tony didn't look to good himself, he was extremely pale with the peek of white bandages all around his torso visible, even through the glowing blue light of his reactor. He also had some breathing tubes sticking out from his nose and a scowl under that.
"What happened to you, blow yourself up again?" I grinned as his scowl depend. "No, bird brain, a giant worm tried to eat me."
"Ooo, worms. Wow and you got out alive!" I started laughing then, but was quickly forced to stop and reach for my chest to try and get breathing normally again. Natasha was by my side in an instant, running her fingers through my hair and alternately whispering in my ear to relax and shooting death glares at Tony like it was all his fault I couldn't breath from laughing too hard. Which actually it was.
"You really don't remember what happened!" Tony demanded.
I mulled that over for a few moments before deciding, "I remember making that stupid bet with you, and then fighting those giant ass wolves. Natasha, something happened-"
I paused and turned to her with a worried eye and she smiled down at me gently before stating, "One of them caught the side of my leg, a dozen or so stitches and a little muscle healing. I'll be fine."
I nodded once at this, before continuing with my haphazard memory, "One of them broke off and you went after it, then I went after you. Um, I shot it in the mouth, saving your shiny butt." I frowned, it seemed to be getting harder and harder to pull this stuff back to me, "you landed, I think. Pulled off your helmet and said, something. Not much else though, so why are we here?"
"He's got a concussion," Nat hissed at Tony to stop whatever scathing remark he was about to make, "No making fun."
"You've been throwing insults at me since I woke up, and I've got a punctured lung!" Stark grumbled, moving to cross his arms over his chest but quickly stopping and settled for a glare. The movement jostled the blanket that had been wrapped around his torso, and now slipped down to his waist revealing that his whole chest was indeed secured in the white bandages.
Natasha ignored him and then quickly explained what had happened afterwards, the giant worm, me under some metal stairs, the Hulk trying to dig me out and more shit getting dropped on me, leading to the following concussion, two broken ribs, and a nice gash in my leg that yep, took fifteen stitches to close.
She also went on to explain that the worm's teeth had managed to saw through most of Tony's chest plate, and cut threw three of his lower ribs, and had just managed to clip his lung before he'd been rescued. Tony was not happy about this at all, and seemed to have been whining since he woke up about the repair jobs he was going to have to do later.
Thankfully, none of the damage was irreparable, and one remaining wolf plus the remnants of the worm had been carted off to SHIELD'S personal zoo to be studied and contained. So, since I had nothing better to do but sleep off these stupid drugs, I closed my eyes and was planning on settling into sleep once more until Stark's voice cut across my thoughts, "Oh and, you still owe me that twenty bucks."
This was a random one-shot that came to mind from the odd image I got by watching Men in Black 2, and seeing Jeffery the worm crawling through New York Subway tunnels. I then modified that a bit in thinking of Iron Man fighting this, and making the skin harder to penetrate for compensation of Iron Man fighting this, and the worm trying to eat Iron Man, you get where this is going? The bet they made, I have no idea what it is either. Just something to keep the banter rolling between those two. Sorry it's so long, but the last bit is so short it would be stupid to make into a second chapter. So nice long one shot, hope you enjoyed.