Alright everybody! Here is CHAPTER FOUR! I legitimately did not think that I would have enough time to write a new chapter this week, but I have, so here it is! Thanks go to 19irene96 and Assassins-of-Illusion for leaving reviews! I do appreciate it, as it lets me know what people think of my writing :).
~O~O~O~O~
Erin stepped onto the street and took a deep breath. In the space of an hour, she had changed her life dramatically, walking away from everything she'd ever know. Honestly, it scared her a lot.
Steve noticed her looking off into the distance, her mind miles away. She held her arms against her chest as if it were cold. He wrapped an arm around her, thinking she was cold, but her skin was warm to the touch. Which, in the cold rain and wind, was totally abnormal.
"Is something wrong?" he inquired, looking at her in concern, the droplets from the light rain beginning to travel down her face.
She rubbed her arm gently.
"Are we walking?" Erin asked, peering around the grown men standing beside her, expecting a mode of transport to appear instantaneously. It was Tony freaking Stark, for goodness sakes! The man came back from the dead- transport shouldn't be that hard to achieve.
"No," Hawkeye said, grinning cheerfully. "Walking is for the peasants. We are superheroes. We don't do something as common as walking."
Steve sent him a glare, Erin chuckling at their childish act.
Even though they had saved the world, the two still bickered, although most of it was good natured bickering. Just last week, Steve had been introduced to the concept of 'Your Mother' jokes. It took him a solid two days to stop stammering and apologising to Natasha- who, by being the only female in the tower, instantly took the female role of whatever they were doing. The only other alternative to this was Hawkeye or Dr Banner, and they were terrible. Needless to say, the bickering had remained rather clean.
"Then how do we get to the Avengers Tower?" Erin asked curiously.
"Working with Tony Stark has its perks. Hover bikes are one of the perks," Hawkeye told her. "Even if having to see Tony Stark almost every day isn't a perk to our jobs at all."
He pressed a button on his quiver, calling up three hover bikes. Erin was too busy examining the material that Steve's uniform was made of to notice that transport was on its way, and Hawkeye smiled as the shy super soldier blushed a lot at the female touch. However, the captain seemed to be holding up the other end of the conversation, and Erin was chatting away, ignorant of the look on Steve's face.
The hover bikes sped round the corner- almost killing several people loitering on the sidewalks directly in the path of the hover bikes. Tony had built them specifically to get from Point A to Point B as quickly and efficiently as possible. He wasn't particularly concerned about road rules and speed limits. The hover bikes whined and stopped in front of the trio with a small whir.
"I don't know how to use one of these." Erin looked cautiously at the bike, pacing around it and inspecting it thoroughly.
Steve looked at her in amazement. He rode manual- which meant that he knew exactly how it worked. Something that he was sure not even Stark knew, due to the fact that JARVIS had created the actual hover bike- Stark had just drawn up the plans and supplied the resources needed to make them.
"I do! I ride manually. I don't really trust the autopilot," he said excitedly. Erin smiled warmly at him. "You're welcome to ride with me."
"Ah, yeah, no Steve. Tony is yea close to throwing you off the Tower. I wouldn't push him by showing up with his adopted 'daughter'," Hawkeye stated, and waved his card in front of the GPS navigator on Erin's bike.
"You don't trust anything twenty first century anyway," he added.
The coordinates for the tower were displayed on the screen in a bright neon that frightened Erin immensely. There were no real controls on the hover bike. She would have to hope that it got her there in one piece.
"It'll take you right there," Hawkeye said, as though he could read her mind. "Press the green button to go, red button to stop. If you have any problems, Steve here will be there to help. The emergency button is the blue one down there; press it only when you're in lots of trouble," Hawkeye told her, gesturing to the buttons as he informed her of what they could do.
Erin hesitantly sat on the bike. She could feel the humming of the engine beneath her as the bike rose into the air. She could hear the whine of the engine as it started up after she pressed the green button. Steve and Hawkeye moved alongside her. It was a little unnerving.
She looked around for something. She checked behind her seat, over her shoulder and in the small compartment at the front of the bike. While she found a small tin of breath mints, she couldn't find what it was she was looking for and asked instead.
"Where are the seatbelts?" she asked Hawkeye, pointing at the controls. He gave a short, sharp laugh.
"What seatbelts?"
~O~O~O~O~
After a pretty terrifying ride to the Avengers Tower and the hover bikes had been stored away for a later usage, Erin was finally able to calm her heart down. She know fully understood what Dr Banner must constantly feel like.
"Never, ever, doing that again," she announced definitively as she was led up to the communications room by Steve and Hawkeye. Dr Banner and the Black Widow joined them moments later, Dr Banner blushing whilst Black Widow was giggling like a school girl.
"Nice to see you guys made it in one piece," Tony commented as they sat down around a glass table that was surrounded by more technology and wiring than all the devices of New York City.
"One of us almost didn't," Erin muttered absently as she stared out the window before glaring at Steve.
Her hover bike had tried to take the most direct route- thanks to Tony's programming- which was right through an office block. If it hadn't been for her reflexes, she would most likely be un-healable. Her power did not extend as far as putting ribbons back together. That was the reason Steve was riding them manually.
"Sorry. I probably should have warned you about that," Steve said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck as he blushed.
"So, Erin. We have a list of possible names for your superhero persona to have; you need to choose one before we make you a suit."
Tony passed her a sheet of paper with about ten names printed onto it. She scanned through them quickly.
"No… maybe… definitely not … I would rather die… no… no… no… that could work… no… yes! I like that one."
"Which one?" Black Widow probed.
"Pixie."
"It suits you. You have… well… ears, and you are small," Hawkeye snickered. Erin slugged his arm.
"And feisty," he added, rubbing his arm and wincing. "That'll bruise."
"Grow up!" Dr Banner said, glaring at the pair of them, but he was smiling under the serious façade.
Hawkeye punched Erin in the arm, hitting the direct point that had been throbbing all day. She cried out in pain.
"Oh, come on, you big baby! It doesn't hurt that much!" Hawkeye protested.
"No, you hit something!" Erin groaned. She rolled up her sleeve to inspect the source of pain.
Her arm was strawberry red and there seemed to be a lump in the middle of the red. Sparks fizzled around the lump, trying to heal it.
It didn't have any effect. Erin poked it hesitantly, screaming as pain radiated up her arm and into her shoulder. Her nerves protested against her even brushing her fingertips over it. It made her feel dizzy, and she could feel her knees begin to give way beneath her. She took a deep breath and leant against a wall, trying to keep conscious. Steve was instantly beside her
"Catch me if I pass out, please?" Erin asked Thor. He nodded, arms out in preparation for her seemingly inevitable fall.
Tony stood in front of her and did a quick body scan with his suit.
"I didn't even notice it there. It's almost like it's diffusing my powers," Erin moaned.
"It is. You need it removed before it does any more damage," Tony told her, snapping the scanner shut and looking over at Steve. "Call an ambulance. Much as I hate to admit it, we don't have the adequate facilities here at the tower, and we really need to get this out."
"The ambulance won't get here in time," Thor said, as Erin collapsed into his arms, her legs no longer able to support her weight as her hand went to her head, in an attempt to rid herself of the blinding pain.
"The damage is already done," Erin said in a voice that was hers, but at the same time was not hers. There were subtle mannerisms in her speech that indicated it wasn't her speaking, and her hands lost most of their animation. It was a little like she had been possessed. Sadly, this was a very possible reality.
~O~O~O~O~
"I own the girl now," Erin said. Clue number two that perhaps it wasn't Erin speaking. "In minutes, my soldiers will be in your house, and then with no Avengers to save it, Earth will be mine."
The evil voice paused. "Also, whoever invented the Barbie movie franchise will be taken and tortured until they are begging for the sweet relief death will bring to them. She is a doll, not the star of some movie."
Erin broke out of the trance, to see Tony smirking at her while Steve just looked extremely confused.
'Run!' she yelled. 'The Skrulls are coming! Leave me here and run!"
"We are not leaving you behind for the Skrulls to get you," Steve said sternly.
"Leave the girl behind!" the Skrull voice ordered through Erin, but they were ignored.
"You can go and die," Tony said. "Go jump into the Sun."
"Leave the girl behind, or the all of you die along with her."
"No," Steve growled unwaveringly in his Captain America voice, the one that scared the living daylights out of the enemy.
He scooped Erin up, cradling her to his chest and taking extra care to position her comfortably so her legs were draped over his arms and her head was resting on his shoulder. He ran with her out of the tower, down the streets to the strange stares of the civilians.
Steve ran all the way to the hospital.
~O~O~O~O~
And that there is how Erin got her name.
I am aware of the fact that her superhero name is now Pixie (which kinda clashes with Flight, I know, but I wrote this one first and never EVER thought I would publish it, so I am justified), but as Hawkeye pointed out, it does suit her.
The Skrulls are also a big part of this story... which gives me a little bit of artistic license and a way to create awesome new characters.
Let me know what you think by leaving a review!