Not my first fic, but my first one in a while. Takes place after The Avengers end credit scene where everybody's just sitting at the table, totally chill after saving the world. It made me laugh so hard. XD
Anyway, if you have no idea how Tony knows who this is, I'm going to post another story explaining all of it later.
AND, to those of you who don't like OCs, this one is barely going to be in this fic, just for he next 5 chapters, maybe, and I'm planning for this story to be pretty long, so that's not a whole lot...
Steve was drifting off, in between sleep and awareness.
Clint was close to the same thing.
Tony, Thor, and Bruce were the only ones actually attempting to eat. Tony just picking at things, really.
Natasha was leaning forward in the chair and picking at bits of food half-heartedly while Clint rested his legs on the seat space next to her.
The diner owner swept up the crumbly, dusty remains of the ceiling with a sad little broom quietly.
Nobody said anything.
"Hey, Tony!" the billionaire heard from somewhere in the distance. He put down his bit of shawarma and looked up quickly.
"Damn, this place is totally messed up," the voice said again before he heard rocks roll down a cracked cement slab. By now everybody was looking in the direction of the noise curiously.
It didn't take more than a few seconds for Tony to spot the familiar green eyes.
"Kazavi?" Tony mumbled in doubt and stood up, his chair leg catching on a rock and falling backwards as he did.
Thor's head popped up at the mention of her name.
The cleaning man squinted to see who was there for a few seconds before noticing Steve glowering at him. He didn't last long under the intimidating glare before he retreated into the destroyed kitchen.
Kazavi's ruined black high-tops landed on the other side of a crushed van as Tony spoke. "What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be in Florida visiting somebody?"
"They left to go to Greece, and I was too lazy to sneak onto a plane... Anyway, I was kicking ass when the Chitari thing just fell over. I'm assuming you redirected the missile into that portal thingy. Yeah, that was really smart, but then when I saw you falling and nearly shit myself. You totally fine now, right?"
Tony waved a hand. "Oh yeah, I'm feelin-"
"We thought he was dead," Steve interrupted.
"What?" Kazavi asked, finally reaching the table before freezing in place.
"Well, he wasn't breathing, so we thought..." Bruce trailed off.
Steve smiled. "Bruce got really pissed, though."
Kazavi smiled tensely, realizing what that roar she heard had been all about.
Tony moved closer to her, the smile returning to his face. "You got all screwed up," he said, eyeing her dirty, cut up face and the huge scorch mark on the right leg of her pants.
"No worse than you," she said before rubbing the bruise on the left side of his face and hugging him.
"You are so tense," she whispered in his ear.
She felt the warm breath on her ear come out in the pattern of a little laugh before she heard Natasha.
"Who are you?"
"This," Tony started, "is Kazavi, the daughter of Merlin and Bast."
The information floated right through everybody's head except for Bruce's, who had heard the names before. "Merlin and Bast are gods, aren't they?"
"Shyea," Tony replied, excited to share his find with his nerd friend.
Clint turned to get better look at her. "So she's a goddess?" he asked skeptically.
"Yeah," Tony said.
Steve rubbed his forehead tiredly as Bruce continued to piece things together. "But Bast and Merlin are from different cultures."
"And?" the blonde woman asked.
"That's weird," Natasha muttered.
"Why are you here? More like how are you here, since Asgard can't be accessed by Earth and vise-versa and everything," Clint prodded.
Kazavi rolled her head toward Tony. "I have to explain this so much... Zeus, yes, Zeus, got really pissed at me for hitting on the other gods and screwing around and shit so much that he finally just... 'grounded' me to earth I guess you could say, until I die nine times."
"Why nine?" the archer asked.
"My mom is the cat goddess, and I guess Zeus wanted to make it somewhat personal, so since cats have nine lives, he gave me nine lives on Earth before I could go back."
"Speaking of which, are you still on your seventh?" Tony asked before rolling his shoulders.
"No, actually, I might be on my last, but I doubt it. I don't think I lost two in a few months."
Tony's face darkened in concern. Even though she had told him time after time that she could come back after her ninth life was lost, anybody she met (and even her herself) felt like her ninth death would mean separation forever. "Smooth," he said quietly and picked his chair up.
"I'm so sore," she grumbled before she grabbed a nearby office chair and dropped it next to the table before sitting in it.
Suddenly, Steve looked up. "Wait, if you're a goddess, what is your power?"
Tony rolled his eyes. "Don't get her started..."
Kazavi jumped up from her seat, the soreness forgotten completely. "I can shift into any animal."
There was a bit of doubtful silence.
"Go for it," Natasha finally urged, curious to see what she would do.
"I'm just going to shift into what I am mostly when I'm not in human form – it's what my main form is... Never mind," she mumbled off before her hair shortened from its usual lower-back length all the way up to her head and her clothes seemed to start swallowing her. Within a few seconds, all that was left on the ground was a human torso-sized lump under some clothes.
Steve and Natasha got up to get a better look before frowning in disappointment. "Is there even something there?" Natasha began to ask, but Clint silenced her.
"You can see a bit of fur coming out of the collar," he said before tilting his head a little.
It took some wriggling before she finally could get out. But what came out was nothing the team actually expected.
"Woah, that's..." Steve trailed off in disbelief.
Tony was smiling at the expressions of the others faces as a large cat jumped out onto the table clumsily.
"I haven't fought like that in a while," she muttered and strained her legs in a stretch.
"That is sick," Clint complimented, honestly a little surprised and held his hand out to pet her.
The striped bengal stretched her neck out to reach his hand. She sniffed it a little before walking closer and arching her back, letting him treat her like he would any other cat.
"That's really weird," Bruce said as she left Clint and moved to the scientist. "Really. Weird."
Kazavi loved attention. Mostly positive, of course, but sometimes negative attention was good, too, but right now was the best kind. Mostly positive with a healthy dose of mild negative.
She trotted towards Bruce, almost stealing his fries and running away, she was so hungry. She noticed that his head was tipped to the side (like everybody else's, but she decided to go somewhere with this) and tipped hers so their eyes were staring straight back at the others. Bruce grinned before she moved on, bobbing her head past Tony as she went by him on her way to Thor.
"Haven't talked to you in a while," she said quietly to him and ran her tail across his face.
Annoyed, he swatted it away gently, shoving her on to Steve and smiling.
She twitched her whiskers sadly as she walked nearer, imagining his past and all of the things she had heard and seen about him in one big depressing pile before happiness kicked the sad thoughts off a cliff when his hand moved along her spine, making her fur stand on end with excitement.
The goddess flicked her tail at his hand playfully and went to Natasha, leaving him smiling despite his exhaustion.
Tony and Bruce were engaged in a conversation about atoms when she reached the redhead.
They both took in the others ridiculously green eyes, though Kazavis were brighter.
The cat seemed to be smiling as she glanced towards the sky, her eyes catching the sunlight and glowing brighter.
Natasha's eyebrows furrowed in warning previous to looking up where Kazavi had.
Her eyes caught the sun magnificently, but again, still not as bright as the goddess' herself.
Kazavi eyes narrowed as she looked at the redhead again. The cat noticed a few stray stands of hair sticking out from behind her ear. She licked her paw and flattened the red hair out, Natasha freezing as she did.
"Better," Kazavi said.
"Thanks," Natasha responded, realizing what she had done before feeling eyes on her. She looked up to find everybody looking at the two with a sly smile on their face.
"Awww, Natasha's got a BFF," Tony teased.
"Shuddup," she muttered, blushing slightly, eyes not following the cat as she jumped off of the table.
Not even a few seconds passed by before Clint jumped in his chair. "What the hell?" he asked.
Everybody looked under the table at Kazavi, who was rubbing up against Clint's leg contently.
"Doesn't that mean she likes me?" the marksman asked, not very familiar with felines.
Tony rubbed his neck gingerly, horribly aware of where it had been hit. "Of course she likes you, she's telling everybody else that you're hers when she does that. I like it."
"I feel left out," Bruce said jokingly.
"Oh, she'll do that to everybody," Tony said confidently.
And, of course, it wasn't long before everybody's pant legs smelled like a dead animal.