Avengers vs Teamtech Innovations

Author's Notes – Complete crack. Warnings for tongue in cheek black humour, I suppose, ponies get eaten and terminally ill kids don't get their last wish fulfilled.

Disclaimer – I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended. Idea for carnage at a teambuilding day is pretty strongly inspired by Good Omens (and my own wishful thinking at such events).

Since the formation of the new Avengers team, it had become perfectly normal to have at least three or four near-death experiences every day. Sometimes, these were justified, like the Tuesday that Deadpool had successfully infiltrated the building by baking himself into a giant cake, only to get nowhere near Norman Osborn. Unfortunately, it had turned out that a) it was Venom's birthday, and he had mistaken Deadpool's infiltration for a thoughtful gesture from one of his teammates, and b) Venom was pretty keen on cake, when the still-struggling bodies of his victims were not a menu option.

But most of the run-ins were petty matters. The time that Norman Osborn had beaten Ares at Risk six times in a row. The time that Noh-Varr had caught Bullseye stamping on several of his distant relatives in the kitchen. And Moonstone had instructed Daken that so help him, if he ever went near her very expensive conditioner again, she would psychoanalyse all the daddy issues straight out of him, and he would be happily throwing a ball around with Wolverine by next Tuesday.

Currently, Karla was in Norman Osborn's office, discussing potential solutions to this problem.

'It's not that Venom doesn't like his teammates,' she coaxed, ignoring the look of sheer terror on Noh's face as he fled across one of the CCTV screens mounted on Norman's wall. "He adores them. Mac's just hungry.'

Norman gestured to the screen. Noh had made it to safety and was clinging desperately to a light fixture, but Venom was now triumphantly waving Daken around. There was fortunately no sound to catch the sort of snapping, squelching crunch as most of their Wolverine escaped, but quite a large portion didn't.

'They're just playing,' Karla said blithely. 'It's like puppies.'

'I know Mr Akhiro will be fine, but do you want to perform the Heimlich manouverue when Mac chokes on the claws?' Norman asked.

Karla considered it for a moment. Venom's bloodstained grin suddenly loomed up on one of the CCTV screens as though the symbiote could see them watching. A second later, the image fizzed out as he ate the monitor. Downstairs, there was a crash as the Sentry burst out through the side of the building and into the atmosphere.

'And now I'm going to have to spend eighty million dollars retrieving the Sentry,' Norman said, with an elaborate shrug. He picked up his phone, and pressed a button. 'Victoria? Can we charter a rocket to the moon with takeout? Bob's in space again.'

Karla tossed her shiny sheet of blonde hair over her shoulder and tried not to attract Norman's attention while he finished his call. He put the phone down.

'I will not tolerate disobedience within this team,' Norman said distantly, silhouetted dramatically against the city skyline framed in his full-length window. A Persian cat meowed. Tropical fish bubbled ominously in the wall-length tanks that Moonstone had never noticed before. 'I promise you, Karla, the measures I will go to will make the Thunderbolts look like a holiday. Take a look on my desk.'

Expecting a file full of incriminating photographs or papers for all of the Avengers' arrests and execution, Moonstone cautiously moved aside a World's Best Superhero mug, a USB mug warmer, and a printout of that very funny email forward of Spider-Man getting caught with the ass ripped out of his costume last week. There, she found a brochure, brought to Norman by an extremely bold salesman who had managed to get all the way to his office before expiring from injuries brought on by the tower's spiked pits, rolling boulders, and unfriendly inhabitants.

She involuntarily closed her hand, crushing the Teamtech Innovations leaflet. Truly, there was nothing that Norman would not do in his madness.

Teamtech Innovations held their teambuilding sessions in what had once been a beautiful stately home in the UK. Now, shell-shocked, pink and green spattered peacocks wandered through the paintballing range, while the statue of Sir Frederick von Heffleberg brandished his sword defiantly at hordes of invading office workers, and the pallid ghost of Lady Victoriana Kerrington wandered between buffet tables, wringing her anguished hands at plates of crisps, bits of cheese on sticks, and bruschetta (Catering Plan A only)

A chirpy young man by name of Colin greeted the Avengers, and took them to one of the training rooms where they sat uncomfortably around a table with plastic cups of coffee and plates of biscuits covered in squiggles of luminous icing. Venom sampled one, spat it out, and hoped that that Victoria had made him a packed lunch. He had a feeling that may be why Shirley, the Avengers receptionist, had come along.

'Welcome to Teamtech Innovations!' Colin greeted the group, not in the least perturbed that he was addressing a god, an intradimensional space cockroach, some vaguely humanoid cannibalistic goo, and several established supervillains. 'Teamtech Innovations in an exciting and innovative new programme that leads to more efficient and mutually gratifying teamwork. To do this, we use a series of exciting activities to establish mutual goals, to identify the blockages which inhibit us in achieving these goals, and then to promote healthy and therapeutic interpersonal relationships. We teach skills such as dynamic mindmapping, multi-level feedback generation...'

Bullseye opened his mouth, glancing sideways at the Sentry. Norman gave him a sideways look, and he shut it again. No one gets thrown into the sun had been one of the rules for the day, along with 'No conquering the world in the glorious name of the United Kree Empire' and 'No devouring innocent bystanders'.

The hypnotic burble of jargon soon lulled the Avengers into a light doze that could have been potentially lethal if Colin had been a superhero in disguise, but luckily for them, he was not a superhero and was also not entirely sure who they were, but had narrowed it down to a pro-wrestler tour, a troupe of clowns, or a convention of flamboyant gymnasts.

By the time they woke up, Colin was handing out pieces of paper and drawing a diagram on the whiteboard. 'Now, to establish healthy team relationships, we must start by identifying interpersonal difficulties!' he enthused. 'On your pieces of paper, please write down one positive and one negative thought about each of your teammates.'

A minute later, he handed out more paper. By the time the five minutes were up, several of the responses were approaching novella length. Colin stopped them, and collected the paper. He read in silence for a moment.

'Okay!' he said, drawing a big yellow blob on the white board. 'We've established several core issues. Bob, your colleagues feel that you are an extremely strong component of the team, that they would 'hit that', and that you probably taste delicious. However, we've also had concerns that you are 'a fucking psycho', could possibly end the universe as we know it, and look as though you might be too crunchy.'

Bob looked unhappy. Colin turned back to the board, and drew a green blob.

'Noh-Varr!' he said. 'Your colleagues feel that you are relatively unlikely to kill them all in their sleep, would 'definitely hit that', and feel that you probably taste very unusual. However, they also feel concerned that you may attempt to seize control of the world, wish you would find a less expensive way to register your negative feedback than by writing it in giant explosions, and also feel that you may taste rather bitter.'

'Daken, your co-workers appreciate that you make very good cannon fodder, can keep Venom occupied for hours, and would definitely hi- oh sorry, Daken, you don't need to provide feedback for yourself. On the negative feedback-' Colin glanced at the dozen pages that Bullseye had returned and gave up. 'You- uh, need to work on your timekeeping skills.'

By the time he had finished, the board was covered in black lines indicating unhealthy working relationships. Colin seemed unconcerned as he took them on to the next event.

'Gladiatorial jousting!' he explained, picking up a soft, padded foam pole. 'In pairs, you will attempt to knock each other from the podium and onto the crash mat, therefore symbolically resolving any interpersonal conflicts and clearing the air before we move on to rebuild the team. Okay, Bob, why don't you and Norman give it a go?'

Bob looked deeply unhappy as he climbed up onto the podium, holding his foam pole at arm's length as though it might bite him. Norman loosened his tie, handed his jacket to Victoria, and climbed up nonchalantly.

'Come on, Bob,' he said. 'It's just a game. I trust you.'

The Sentry quivered, unable to risk lifting the pole for fear of the Void taking over and smashing the planet entirely in half. Minutes ticked by. Mac and Bullseye quietly took bets on the odds of Norman ending up decapitated by a wobbly foam pole. Daken disappeared for five minutes with a systems administrator called Gary. Eventually, Norman raised his pole and very cautiously, prodded Bob in the ankle. Bob gratefully leapt from his podium and landed with a crash on the mat. No one died. Everyone exhaled in relief.

(Unknown to anyone, Bob had landed very precisely on a natural fault line that contained a seam of a rare form of vibranium. The impact of his landing began to spread, growing in magnitude as it travelled across the world to the newly built twelve storey Happy Biffers Gym in Birmingham, UK, which was packed with clients for the opening day. Not only were all three hundred clients instantly swallowed up into the earth, but their grieving relatives had to endure years of fat jokes after it emerged the gym had been holding trampolining, skipping, and Jazzercise classes at the time it had suddenly crashed through eighty feet of solid rock).

'Ares and Karla, how about you?' Colin suggested. Karla looked apprehensive. 'Don't worry,' he reassured her. 'It's impossible to hurt your partner with one of these!'

'Have at thee!' Ares boomed, swinging his pole through the air and burying it two feet deep into the floor with a splintery crunch. He hefted it, satisfied. Ares had fought in the Punic Wars armed only with a large ladle and a moody donkey named Binkius. He'd have stormed Troy Vlla single-handedly with one of these.

Somehow, everyone survived the jousting, mostly thanks to a combination of intangibility, healing factors, and treble-jointedness, and went outside for the next stage, where they found themselves standing in front of a grid marked on the ground.

'The next exercise is about trust. We need to trust the people we work with to watch our backs and help us out when we have deadlines to meet. We're going to represent this symbolically, by crossing this imaginary minefield. One partner will be blindfolded, relying on their colleague's directions. The colleague will have a map, marking the position of imaginary mines, and it will be their job to safely guide their co-worker to the other side without stepping on any mines.'

It didn't start off so badly. Well used to directing troops, Ares guided the Sentry across in two minutes, while Moonstone and Noh-Varr managed a reasonable three and a half minutes. And then it was Bullseye and Daken.

'Three steps ahead. Ninety degrees left. Jump forward two feet. Forty five degrees right. Straight on for three metres-'

'Oh, Hawkeye! Be careful, you're going to send your partner right across those imaginary landmi-'

There was an enormous boom, and everyone ducked as most of the field disappeared in a small explosion. Over at the climbing wall, Shirley From Personnel was hospitalised with a fractured elbow after Daken's spinal cord knocked her straight back down after her team leader Darren had just unhooked her harness. Chris From Accounting's quad bike spun hopelessly out of control after a sizeable piece of Daken's scapula became lodged in his bike's engine, sending it straight into the lake. Over at catering, however, everyone was listening to team manager Dave's speech and failed to notice the gentle plopping sound as bits of Daken rained upon the tables.

Bullseye beamed. Everyone else settled for skirting around the remains of the field while Colin retrieved Daken from around the Teamtech Innovations grounds.

There were no fatalities from the team so far. Bob was happy. It was turning out to be a very good day so far. While they waited for Daken to respawn from the jumble of carnage on the floor, Bob wandered around the grounds, enjoying the beautiful gardens and the merry sounds of office workers larking around with paintball guns. His mood was very nearly saddened when he found a bird with a broken wing, but Bob picked it up tenderly, and concentrated for a moment, focusing his power upon healing the damage. The bird opened its eyes, cheeped gratefully, and flew off into the blue skies, singing as it disappeared.

(In the bushes, Corky the cat watched mournfully. He had been so close to catching the bird, the first square meal he would have had in weeks since he had gone missing from his family home. Too weak to go on and find his way back, Corky lay down and awaited the inevitable. Back at his home, his cancer-stricken young owner Timmy wept mournfully, no matter how many toys the local businesses donated or how many minor celebrities crashed into his bedroom to serenade him, for all he really wanted was to be reunited with his beloved pet Corky one last time before he died).

The next stage kept everyone in the same pairs, but swapping the blindfolds. Bullseye blanched as Colin wheeled out the quad bikes that they would have to guide through a series of flags to complete the course.

It did not go much better than before. Thanks to Norman's effective management skills (blackmail, bribes, and outright cheating), he and Venom were the only ones to complete the course. Bob mistakenly guided the quad right over a friendly bunny that hopped into their path, and had to be talked down from orbit, while Moonstone quietly guided a helpless and blindfolded Noh off the path and into a secluded corner, where they parked up and were not seen for some time.

Bullseye and Daken was eventually retrieved from a fiery explosion on the other side of the estate after Daken had carefully guided the quad off course, the pair of them suffering minor crush injuries after passing through a group of call centre staff wrestling in giant inflatable sumo suits, nearly getting decapitated after heading straight through an IT team's tug of war, and finishing up by crashing straight through a stampeding pony trek.

(It was very fortunate for the pony trekkers that Bob was on the scene soon afterwards and managed to contain the situation, stopping Wobbles the pony seconds before he would have carried himself and his terrified rider, Katie the Customer Service Assistant straight into heavy traffic. Little did Bob know that Wobbles was the first known pony to contract rabies, and that weeks later, he would savage an entire pony club full of small girls before special forces managed to subdue him. For her part, Katie was secretly using her job to fleece hundreds of baffled elderly customers out of their savings. With no one to stop her, she became extremely wealthy and eventually fled with her fortune to a small tropical country where she would rise to prominence as one of the most fearsome warlords of the twenty first century)

Colin called a break for lunch after this, where they found they had been signed up for Catering Plan D, which mostly consisted of triangular sandwiches topped with various types of paste, bowls full of crisps, and more lurid squiggly biscuits. Venom considered a stick with some bits of cheese and pineapple on it, and decided to save his appetite for the pony trekking. Noh-Varr was happy enough, but that was only because he ate the tablecloth instead.

The team rapidly fell apart through the rest of the afternoon. Norman narrowly avoided sinking in the raft building contest by the simple process of bludgeoning Bullseye unconscious to use him as ballast after their less than seaworthy vessel began to fall apart half way across. Venom quietly ate his way through Sparky, Flossy, and Bunty the ponies before Colin had finished instructing the team on the correct way to feed their mount a carrot. And then Colin announced the final event, which happened to be paintballing, and it all went a bit wrong.

Noh-Varr raced across the grounds at nearly ninety miles an hour and ran straight up the climbing wall, where he stopped and surveyed the area. Satisfied it was a good place to make a stand, he then knelt down to examine a map of the grounds.

Mildred, second in command of the Glorious United Kree-Cockroach Army, crawled out of Noh's pocket and made her way up to his shoulder where she surveyed the map sagely. 'This is the battlefield, sir?'

Noh nodded. Mildred flagged down a passing bee and performed a sort of wriggly complicated dance. The bee nearly fell out of the air, flabbergasted that the prophesied invertebrate Messiah had come to Teamtech Innovations. After a moment, he recovered, and frantically signalled back that every insect on the grounds would be ready for war.

While Private Bertie flew off to rally the troops, Noh and Mildred hastily cobbled together an intelligent mobile defence unit from the paintball rifle and a few old things that Noh had found in his pockets. By the time they had finished, it was capable of taking a small country single-handedly, as long as all the citizens just agreed to play dead if they were covered in paint. Private Bertie returned some minutes later, and breathlessly filled Noh in on the position of all the players currently on the grounds, while Mildred trundled back and forward across the map, muttering to herself as she considered strategies.

Suddenly, Mildred glanced up, ran to the edge of the climbing wall, and peered over, barely managing to dodge a paint pellet. 'Enemy at six o'clock, Lord Noh!'

Noh swore. He was currently holding off Bullseye at the other side of the climbing wall.

'Allow me, sir!' Private Bertie signalled recklessly.

'No!' Noh shouted, and 'Get back, you damn fool!' Mildred ordered, but it was too late. With a small salute, Private Bertie shot over the side of the climbing wall and disappeared. Some minutes later, there was a horrified scream as Bertie flew straight up Ahmed From Complaints' nose, and a loud thud as Ahmed hit the ground nearly twenty feet below. Mildred crawled over the edge of the wall, and reappeared some minutes later.

'I'm sorry, Lord Noh,' she shook her head sadly. 'He used his stinger.'

Noh-Varr's nanomachines searched his downloaded Earth knowledge for the correct response to such a situation. He moved to the edge of the platform, silhouetted dramatically against the sky, and waved his fist. 'Damn you, Ahmed From Complaints! He was too young!'

'Sir, get down!' Mildred squeaked.

'TOO YOUNG, DA-'

Splurrrrrt. Mildred watched in horror as the saviour of the invertebrate world slowly collapsed to his knees and fell over in a spreading puddle of neon orange paint.

Karla was in a very bad mood.

Quickly separated from the group, she had wandered through the grounds, trying to find somewhere she could get away from the ridiculous activities. Then, out of nowhere, she heard the war cry 'ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!' and had been knocked over in a flurry of orange and pink paint.

It was a group of IT staff who had got the better of her, and Karla only felt slightly better when firstly, she saw the looks of horror on their faces when they realised they had just attacked Ms. Marvel, who every one of them probably had set as their desktop wallpaper, and secondly, the looks of nothing in particular on their charred skulls after she had incinerated the lot in a blast of pure energy.

Now, she was flying above the grounds to avoid any further assault. Up there, it was almost possible to forget that her hair was clumped with paint, and she had dozens of bruises blossoming from the pellets. It was beautiful and quiet and sunny. Two pretty butterflies frolicked about her as she flew.

It was unfortunate for Karla that she could not communicate with insects, and thus did not hear the conversation between them.

'Is it her? The temptress who tried to win Lord Noh-Varr over to her evil ways? She does look like a hussy.'

'Yes! Quickly, we must alert the bee platoon!'

Some minutes later, an enormous swarm of bees boiled up from the forest, and Karla disappeared from sight.

Fiona was beginning to despair.

She was the head of an IT department, and her neckbeardy brethren had rapidly proved useless in combat. It was as hard to get them into a simple defensive formation as it was to persuade them to stop spending company time building life-size Transformers out of cardboard boxes. They were all out of breath after a simple life-or-death sprint across the grounds ahead of a cannibalistic alien symbiote, something that Fiona had managed in three inch heels and a pencil skirt. And the one ambush she had managed to successfully pull off had gone wrong after, instead of shooting the enemy until she stopped moving, the geeks had all stopped to ask her for her autograph and ended up incinerated.

Things went from bad to worse as Fiona heard a war cry, and turned to see they were under attack. Her staff began to panic and run around in circles, dropping their weapons and making for the cover of the trees. 'Stand your ground, soldier!' she snarled, slapping a systems administrator across the face. He promptly burst into tears, and joined the rest of them in running for their lives.

Ares charged towards the group at thirty miles an hour. He had stolen one of the remaining ponies, the pre-rabid Wobbles, who was already showing signs of extreme aggression. Brandishing two paint machine-guns, he galloped his new warhorse straight towards the group of terrified geeks.

They all began to scatter, with the exception of one. She turned to face Ares, and coolly retrieved a paintgun rifle from the ground. She raised it to her shoulder.

There was a splatter of green paint, and Ares, who had thrown away the protective goggles, was instantly blinded. Then there was a rattle of paintball fire as Fiona fired thirty pellets in quick succession, directly beneath Wobbles' hooves. With a whinny of fear, the pony skidded hopelessly out of control, straight into the trees.

Ares landed on his back, hard enough to actually stun himself. Groping for his weapon with one hand, he wiped the paint from his eyes with the other. When he opened them, Fiona was standing above him, paintball rifle resting directly just above his forehead.

The God of War surrendered.

Brian From Finance was living his childhood dream.

He had watched a lot of war films, and as he vaguely sounded as though he knew what he was talking about, had become the unofficial leader for his office, directing them into war. There were three teams on the grounds that Brian had identified. The first, the clowns in costume, he had dismissed. They would be formidable opponents if they would stop attacking each other and work together, but fortunately, they didn't seem to have learned anything from Teamtech Innovations. The second team were the IT staff. Initially not a threat, they had become extremely dangerous after the lunatic on horseback joined the group and became co-leader along with Fiona. Thanks to their leadership and the geeks' decent knowledge of strategy games, they had become a pretty passable small army.

The third group was his own, and by far the largest and most dangerous. Brian was satisfied they would come out victorious. He was even entertaining hopes that he might score with Sadia. Previously, he had dismissed this as a Love That Could Not Be. Sadia was an extremely pretty temp, just a year out of university, and she would leave when Sharon came back from maternity leave. But then she had turned out to be pretty good at this war business, and they had bonded over discussing strategies until he had named her his second-in-command.

'Oh, hi Brian,' Gary From IT said, interrupting Brian and Sadia as they considered a map. Brian turned around and nodded in acknowledgement. Then he frowned. He did not recognise the stranger with Gary.

'Who the hell is that?' he demanded. They could not risk spies.

'What's wrong with you, Brian?' Gary looked puzzled. 'It's Mark, from Advertising.'

Mark From Advertising! Brian felt like a complete tool. Sure, he didn't have any actual memories of the guy, but everyone knew Mark From Advertising. He was charismatic like that, the kind of guy that you knew was going somewhere, and not just because he was sleeping with his boss, the regional manager, and the entire board of directors.

'Sorry, Mark,' he said, and gave Sadia a rueful smile. She was not looking at him.

'Don't worry about it,' Mark gave him a thin smile, and turned away with Gary. 'So, if we could send a dozen in from the side of the lake, while the secretaries close in from...'

Sadia gave Brian an apologetic smile, and slipped away. Brian watched in disbelief as his entire army slowly disappeared, one by one, to listen to Mark's ideas.

Why did anyone like that berk anyway? He was a complete bastard! He stole everyone's girlfriends! And really, who the hell still had a mohawk two years after they had left university?

An hour into battle, and Noh was white-running around the grounds at ninety miles per hour. He had returned to life after realising that no one else was staying dead after they were shot, and that if he continued to play by the rules, there was a very good chance he would actually end up dead.

'Sir,' Clinging grimly onto his shoulder, Mildred sounded a little breathless, thanks to the air rushing into her spiracles at nearly a hundred miles per hour. 'Are you absolutely sure that you have no more appendages that you can detach and detonate?'

'I ran out ten minutes ago,' Noh answered distractedly, taking a sharp turn before nearly running straight into a horde of rogue IT staff. 'Is there anything else we can do?'

'We're going to have to deploy the bees,' Mildred said.

'Not the suicide squad!'

'It's the only way, sir.'

Bullseye was feeling quite content, for his part. Armed with a paintball gun, he had managed to take out no fewer than sixty assorted administrators, finance officers, and HR staff, scattered all around the Teamtech Innovations.

From his view point, he watched as Fiona, ahead of her IT army, slowly emerged from the cover. He took aim, and smiled, slowly, as he lined up for a headshot.

There was a soft spluttttt. Bullseye's expression slowly changed to disbelief, and the rifle slid from his hands as he keeled over to the ground. Behind him, Shirley, the Avengers receptionist, shouldered her paintball rifle triumphantly.

The battle reached a bloody climax in late afternoon when Daken's team mounted an ambush on the IT staff. The geeks were hopelessly outnumbered, but between the leadership of Ares and Fiona, and a combined IQ of over 2,000, managed to overcome the invaders. And then the scattered Avengers showed up, and it wasn't really clear what was happening any more. A furious Colin tried to tell Norman that his damage deposit would most certainly not be refundable, and was later found crucified on the climbing wall.

Everything worked out in the end. The official explanation was that Teamtech Innovations had been a hotbed of villainy, run by that terrorist Tony Stark. The IT staff ended up recruited for H.A.M.M.E.R as part of a secret black ops team. And the next day, Sadia from Finance, Fiona from IT, and Shirley from Reception became part of the official Avengers lineup.