"Thor?" Hazel reminded Andy impatiently.
"Oh, right. Now, Demi, I'm not sure how much you know about yourself since you just got here – sorry for the horrible welcome, by the way – so I'm just going to tell you the basics of what I know about you. You are, as I'm sure you know, the daughter of Thor. Your mother is astrophysicist, Dr. Jane Foster. She currently resides in Greenwich, England. When you were an infant, she beamed you up to Asgard, I guess to be put in your father's care… but the rest of that is history, right?
"Which brings us to the twins, Hayne and Hazel, again, Dr. Banner didn't know until today that he was a father, let alone to a pair of twins." Andy heard Hayne mutter something about Dr. Banner being no father either way, but he continued unphased. "Your mom is Dr. Betty Ross. She and Banner broke up not so amicably when the Hulk kind of wrecked their wedding, and when she figured out that you two shared Banner's abilities, she freaked out. Fury appeared a few months later, she gave you up to him pretty much without question, and the rest is, again, history.
And last but not least is Blaine and Scarlet. As I said before, until today, Barton had no idea that he had children." Andy turned to Dakota, a thought coming to mind. "When Maria admitted that each of the Avengers had kids here, did she happen to mention that Black Widow and Hawkeye had the same children?"
"No."
"So he's still oblivious to that part then… because," Andy turned back to the holograms, pulling up a file on the Black Widow. "Both times that she was expecting, she was conveniently given assignments in Oman until she gave birth, and then brought the baby – Blaine and Scarlet both – directly to S.H.I.E.L.D., and they were brought directly here to JID.
"And now that we know our back stories, what are we going to do about our friends outside?"
"We can't leave them out there all day," Ryan pointed out the obvious.
"Why not?" Blaine muttered.
"Because Maria will eventually say screw Sid and they'll break in – into the house and into the training level, if this is where we still are," Andy answered. "Look, they've got us backed into a corner right now. We've got to do something about it."
"It'd be eight against eight if we went at them," Blaine all but snarled.
"No," Ryan said flatly. "We're good, but we're not that good."
"He's right," Andy seconded.
Hazel argued, "But Pepper doesn't even know how to do anything! And you've got two 'other guys' to their one!"
"And our two together are still only equal to half of what Dr. Banner can do," Ryan reminded, arms crossed over his chest as he stared at the holograms.
"You know we could just try talking to them," Dakota spoke up softly.
Scarlet snorted. "This from the girl who was curled up under a desk with my gun behind locked doors?"
"Because you guys weren't here!" Dakota snapped at her.
Ryan intervened with, "Think about it, guys. If Maria told the Avengers anything about what's been going on here – some of those things that have happened to us? Look at the Starks. They're a mess, and Black Widow's on edge, and Dr. Banner hasn't stopped wringing his hands – I'd best since they pulled up, right, Dakota? They're all wrecked right now."
"So are we," Hayne said, looking around at the battle-weary group.
"But even wrecked, we're together; we're a team," Ryan persisted. "If Banner looses it, if the Starks – particularly Mrs. Stark – find out that Mr. Stark has an illegitimate son, if Hawkeye finds out that the Widow's been hiding his own children's existence from him, they're going to fall apart as a team. Maria's first priority has to be keeping the current Avengers together before taking care of the upstart ones, right? So if she is put in a position to be distracted with the adults, she leaves us alone."
"A house divided against itself…" Scarlet murmured.
Eif, who had been standing silently without saying a word, got a confused look on her already thoughtful face and asked, "This Maria is worried about you living here? Why?"
"Fury," Andy started, and then seemed to come to a loss of words for once.
"He's a bit of a loose cannon where we're concerned," Hayne said.
Hazel further added, "No adults are really consistently around here, so he tends to… get a little out of control with how he handles us sometimes."
"He hurts you?" Eif asked, cocking her head to the side.
The others all slowly nodded.
Eif bit her lip, asking, "Would Maria introduce you to the Avengers if she thought they would hurt you?"
"I don't think so," Ryan answered after a pause.
Eif turned to him then, and he suddenly realized exactly what she was thinking as she asked him, "Then isn't it like what you told me back on Asgard? If you stay here in your seclusion, you all know that Fury will continue to hurt you, but if you let the Avengers get involved, it seems that would add a layer of protection to your existence, doesn't it? At least 'a chance to be safe'? If they care at all about their children, after finding out what the director's done in the past, they'd keep an eye on him in the future, right?"
"Maybe," Hayne admitted.
"So maybe you all get what you want; Fury is kept better in check and we stay here still by ourselves. Couldn't that be how it works?"
Ryan repeated Hayne's earlier, wary statement, "Maybe."
"So don't you have to take that chance then?" Eif asked.
Hazel was the first to speak, saying with a sigh, "She's right. We do have to; if not for ourselves then for each other. After this 'mark' thing with Blaine and Dakota, there's no telling how bad he could get if still left alone with us."
"But we are obviously capable of fighting back," Andy argued.
Hazel looked him evenly in the eye, saying, "But we'd be even safer if we had the Avengers on our side. Right now, Fury's the one with access to them, not us, and that's not going to change unless we meet them. We have to at least do that much, Andy. They're here for a reason, and if that reason is to help us, then we'd be stupid to pass that up; all of us can admit that, right?"
Casting her gaze around the group, Hazel saw them all nod reluctantly, slowly coming to a group decision.
"Fine," Andy said sourly, the last one to give in. "But if we're going to do this, we need to find a way to have one up on them."