Hiya! This is a OC-insert 'sequel' to Avengers Assemble I wrote long ago. It was my first fic, and I am publishing it for sentimental satisfaction. Truthfully, I don't think it's that bad for my first time. Not complete, although I have the entire synopsis written out. Will post that pending interest. Possibly up for adoption.
Rated for light swearing and canon typical violence.
Disclaimer: I do not claim any creative credit for Marvel's genius.
Chapter 1: Ordinary Girl
"Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."
-Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
"And what's this?" Jenna Wright called from the bathroom. She was wrapped in a towel, pointing at her backside.
Di sighed, sorely tempted, but the angel on her shoulder won out. "Gluteus maximus." Before her mom could move on to the next muscle, Di went on: "Mom, we're on vacation; I don't need to study."
"Then why'd you fail the test the first time? Anatomy's a pretty easy class, Diane."
Di shrugged, unwilling to reveal that she had fallen asleep in the middle of the test. That would just provoke even more complicated questions. She returned to slurping her cereal and turned the TV on. CNN announced briefly that the Avengers' appearance in Central Park would be covered live in an hour before moving on to the Middle Eastern oil crisis. Diane drew a quick breath—the hotel wasn't far from the park. "Mom! Can I go see the Avengers?"
Her mother's face never turned away from the mirror as she applied her makeup. "Who?"
"The Avengers, Mom. You know, the people who saved the world six months ago? They're going to be in Central Park today."
"I know who the Avengers are, darling. I thought you and I were going to the spa. Girl time, right?"
Diane suppressed the urge to whine. She was not interested in girl time. "Can't you go alone?"
Her mother moved from makeup to hair with infuriating disinterest. "Then who would take you to the park? Who would watch you?"
"Central Park is right outside our window. You'll be in the hotel spa; I'll be across the street. What could happen? Besides, if you let me go now and get a good spot I won't even be fifty feet away from the Avengers. The Avengers, Mom. All I'll have to do is scream and get rescued."
Her mother looked away from the mirror to Diane. "What's so important about seeing the Avengers? You've seen them on TV millions of times. It's impossible to watch anything else in our house."
"This is different. They'll be there, and I'll be there, and"
"—and you won't even get to talk to them. They'll just be faces, the same ones on TV."
It was no use reasoning with her mother. Di had never won an argument with her on her own merit. It was time to play dirty. "Pleeeeeaaaase, Mommy?"
Her mother frowned, and Di knew she'd made the right move. Her mother had always resented Di's choice to start calling her Mom instead in Mommy in seventh grade, and Di occasionally used it to her advantage now.
"You are a wicked child, Diane. Go have fun. But be careful! This is New York, after all…"
Diane squealed and gave her mother a hug. Barely remembering to grab her things, Diane sloshed the rest of her cereal down the mini sink and scooted out into the hall. Diane skipped down the hall, her toes barely touching the ground. It was all she could do not to jump right into the air. Diane had loved the Avengers even before they had been Avengers. She was constantly tuned into CNN, watching Ironman, Captain America and the others. They were so exciting—so amazing—and they always knew what to do. Then, a year ago, something happened to make Diane treasure the Avengers even more.
Di had always loved to go fast. She was unusually partial to racecars for a girl, and ran for the track team at every school she'd ever attended, although never coming in first. It was while trying to break her second-place streak in tenth grade that Di discovered she could fly. She had been practicing alone after school: running, straining forward with all of her might, her feet touching the ground less and less, when suddenly her direction changed from straight to slant and she was seven or eight feet in the air.
Ever since, Diane had been addicted to flying. At first, she crashed a lot, and it took many long nights of sneaking out to practice to get used to it. Soon enough, though, the hardest part was not flying, not letting on to her parents or friends that she had inexplicably obtained a superpower (and not falling asleep in class after a night's flying). There was no question that it had to be a secret. In a way Di relished the keeping of it; it made her feel special. Special like the Avengers. Before, Di had always watched them from afar in her living room; now she wanted to see them up close. The ceremony in Central Park would be just the right chance.
Di arrived at the park—across the street from the hotel—to find it already crowded with eager spectators. There were too many eyes for her original plan: "climb" a tree only fifty feet away from the platform where the governor of New York would publicly thank the Avengers—officially declaring the state's approval of the superhero team. The political issues didn't worry Di at the moment; she just wanted a seat. Favoring height over proximity, Di settled for sneaking onto the top of a merry-go-round about half a block from the platform. She hoped no one would see her and wonder how she got up there.
The hour until the Avengers showed passed slowly. The sun was out, frying the metal roof of the merry-go-round, and the crowds settled restlessly on benches and picnic blankets. Finally the governor began speaking, and the crowds hushed in anticipation. Di found that she was perched above the range of the many speakers scattered around, and couldn't hear a word. She wasn't interested in the governor's speech, but if the Avengers said anything when they arrived, she didn't want to miss it. Di was just considering a discreet move to a closer spot that she had noticed when the crowd began to cheer. Di scrambled over to the side everyone was looking, and practically hung off the edge of the roof, straining to see.
A convertible was purring down the avenue adjacent to Central Park. The Avengers were inside. Di forced down the squeal of excitement in her chest—she didn't want to look like the stupid fan-girls at her high school, screaming whenever Tony Stark was on the television. The car pulled down to the far end of the Park, where the governor awaited them, and the Avengers assembled on the platform. Despite the distance, Di could tell that they looked distinctly uncomfortable. After all, it had taken six months to track them all back down and get them to come to New York. Di supposed that even superheroes might have lives of their own.
In any event, they looked incredible: Captain America, looking most comfortable, handsome Thor, his famous hammer gripped loosely at his side, Bruce Banner, smiling thinly, with the potential to rip a skyscraper apart, the Black Widow, no doubt the object of half the male audiences' stares, and Hawkeye, the amazing marksman, fingering his bow nervously. Di frowned, and re-counted.
"Where's Ironman?" called someone from the crowd. Di saw Captain America take a mic and reply, catching something that sounded like "fashionably late." Whatever it was, it was amusing, because the crowd chuckled.
A moment later Di picked up a murmur from the crowd behind her. It spread like a wave, finally reaching the Avengers at the opposite end of the park. Captain America grinned. "There he is."
At first he was just a speck in the sky, zooming in from the direction of the newly rebuilt Stark Tower. The crowd erupted into a roar as Tony Stark sped overhead, hundreds of feet in the air. What an entrance, Di thought. Tony Stark was definitely a character. Di remembered Stark's trial a couple years ago, when the government had wanted to copy his suit design, and grinned. Ironman was cool, in a different, more familiar way than the rest of the Avengers. Captain America was a WWII hero, with WWII behaviors; Thor was a Norse god out of legends; Black Widow and Hawkeye were CIA or something, and as such had appeared out of nowhere; and Banner had too recently been a menace than an aid for many people to be comfortable with him. In short, the Avengers were strange, aloof—all except for Ironman. Tony Stark was a New Yorker, and he was practically invincible—at least he acted that way.
Suddenly, Ironman swerved and dipped. It was an action too rigid to be purposeful, and a moment later Di gasped—along with the rest of New York—as Tony Stark stopped flying altogether, and plummeted towards the ground.
When Di thought about it later, she realized what a stupid idea it had been. Even as her mind jumped to various conclusions—had he lost power?—Di had looked to the Avengers, and realized that they were at least a block away from Ironman, without any way to catch or break his fall. With or without super armor, falling five hundred feet onto solid concrete was fatal, and Tony Stark was about to become street pizza. With that thought, Di took off.
By the time she had had any second thoughts, she was in the air and it was too late. So Di sped towards Ironman, angling upwards and going as fast as she could. She hit him at about two hundred feet, wrapping her arms around the smooth metal torso of the suit, and the impact knocked all the momentum out of her. Instantly Di realized that there was no way she could lift Ironman; the suit must weigh close to a ton, and Di was barely a hundred fifty pounds. Even as she strained upwards with all her might, the two of them were descending at a dizzying rate.
If there was one sensation in the world that Di couldn't stand, it was falling. Di used her special abilities to make sure it didn't happen often, but at the moment she didn't have much of a choice. Letting Ironman fall now would be worse than if she hadn't moved in the first place. Di forced herself not to panic, not quite succeeding, and glanced around desperately for an idea. A second later she found one, and with barely a hundred feet to go, swerved with all of her strength into the side of the nearest building.
While Di had often wondered what the glass front of a skyscraper might look like shattering, she had never anticipated being the shattering agent. It wasn't pleasant. Luckily, she was partially sheltered by Ironman, who took most of the impact. Di wasn't even sure the window would've shattered without his bulk. In any event, the entire panel shrieked and exploded into tiny pieces. The shock ripped Di away from Ironman and sent her flying across the room and into the far wall. It wouldn't have mattered if Di had held onto him at that point: her plan had worked.
While learning the delicacies of flying, Di had discovered that if you had to crash, skidding was better than falling. She got hurt less often when she let her momentum peter out horizontally rather than stopping short on contact with the ground. The same theory had worked here—thankfully—although they had cut it awfully close: Di could see out the window that they were only on the fourth story.
Di remained where she was, panting heavily, and took stock of her injuries. Her arms were red and scraped where they'd hit the window, but as far as she could tell there wasn't any glass in them. Her back was going to be purple tomorrow, Di decided, after hitting the wall, and flying straight into an impenetrable metal suit probably hadn't done her any good either. She had a small cut on top of her head that was bleeding profusely down into her eyes, but she decided it couldn't be that serious, because it had already stopped. Di wiped the blood away with the back of her hand and only succeeded in smearing all over her face.
As soon as Di was satisfied she wasn't going to die or anything, the enormity of what she had just done hit her. She had flown in front of hundreds of people and television cameras. Di's heart pounded and she had urgent desire to go back in time and destroy the inventor of high definition film. What if someone recognized her? What if her mother recognized her? The thought signaled Di's stomach roll around inside her. Di had to get out of here.
She looked around wildly and felt a swell of relief as she realized that she had just demolished an apartment, more importantly, an apartment belonging to someone who was out. Di scrambled out from behind an upturned couch (she must have hit it crashing—Ouch) and headed towards the window. She could see the crowd from Central Park battling its way towards the street below. She was four stories up; it was probably safe to fly out the window, if she was fast. Di took a deep breath, hoping she didn't have a concussion—if driving with one was bad, imagine flying with one—and stepped towards the edge.
Ironman. The whole reason she was in this mess, and she didn't know if he was alright.
Di glanced uneasily out the window and decided she had a minute or two to spare. She turned back to the wrecked apartment, and winced when she saw that, while she had been lucky enough to hit the back wall, Ironman had gone right through it. Di opted against floating through the jagged hole and crumbling plaster and instead opened the door out into the hallway.
The red and gold Ironman armor was easy to pick out amidst the rubble and debris from the apartment. The suit was powered down, motionless. Di inched forward uncertainly. "Ironman?"
"Stark!"
The call had come from behind her. Di spun around, taking the weight off her toes as she turned to make her even faster. The door to the stairwell was about fifty feet down the hall, slightly ajar, and the sound of rushing footsteps was following the shout. Di froze as someone barreled through the door and into the hall, stopping short at the sight of her.
"Ohcrapdon'tshootme," Di gasped, managing to turn the sentence into a single panic-filled syllable. Her hands flew up instinctively to guard her face—not that it would do much good.
Standing at the end of the hallway, bow drawn and leveled at her, wearing a look of surprise that shifted immediately to deep suspicion, was the amazing Hawkeye. Di tried desperately not to move, afraid that a twitch would get her skewered. The concept of "wrong place, wrong time" had taken on a whole new meaning for Di. Hawkeye may have been an Avenger, but Di had no trouble understanding the threat she posed. People with strange abilities generally fell into two categories: Avengers and villains. Di wasn't an Avenger. Given time, she was sure everything could be sorted out, but she was keenly aware of the fact that an army of television cameras was currently surging towards her location. She had to move now, but if she moved Hawkeye might shoot her.
Di stared at the Avenger in front of her, trying to keep her heart from jumping right out her chest. Hawkeye returned the gaze, looking her up and down quizzically. Di realized how odd she must look: a skinny little teenager with crazy blonde hair and blood all over her face, standing in front of an unconscious (hopefully) Ironman. Di watched him closely. Had he lowered his bow just a little?
Just then, Ironman shifted in the debris behind her. A few soft metallic clicks, signaling who knew what, broke the silence. For the tiniest fraction of a second, Hawkeye's attention was split. Di threw herself through the hole in the wall and sped through the room out the window. Hawkeye followed, but for someone who couldn't fly the apartment was nearly un-navigable, and Di was a mere speck in the sky by the time he reached the edge of the window. Hawkeye calmly replaced his arrow in its quiver and drew out a different, smaller one. Taking aim at the retreating black dot, he fired. Confident he had hit his target, he climbed back through the apartment to the hall.
Stark was up out of the debris, shedding dust with every movement. He had thrown his helmet to the ground and was ripping the rest of his suit off as if it were full of ants. Once Stark was at last clear of his suit the arc reactor in his chest hummed to life. He leaned against the wall, and shook his head.
"It's the suit. How could the suit shut it down…?" He glanced at Hawkeye. "This falling out of the sky thing is happening way too often."
"It's only happened twice," Hawkeye replied dryly. Tony could joke all he wanted—Hawkeye was already thinking ahead, measuring consequences, organizing information. That girl…
"Believe me, that's two times too many. Did you see who that… Were they in a suit or… Who…?" Stark seemed unable to figure out which question to ask first.
Hawkeye hesitated, thinking of the tracker he just tagged the girl with. She was just a kid—he'd look into it himself. No use telling the whole world—which Stark would most certainly do. He shrugged. "Place was empty when I got here."
