Warning you now: I'm not good at writing action scenes. Which is kind of ironic, given that I tend to write superheroes. Hopefully, what little action there is in this fic (so far) will tide you over until I manage to find my warrior muse. At any rate, enjoy! - Darthkvzn
-"You're very short." -was all the masked figure said. He made no move, not even reaching for a weapon or a radio.
Scott crossed his arms. "Thank you. I guess."
-"It wasn't a compliment." -he replied, still eerily unmoving.
Ant-Man shrugged. "Not with that attitude, it isn't. What's your name, Reaper? Maybe Death? You look kind of...murdery."
The man cocked his head slightly. "The Taskmaster will do. I assume you've got one, hero?" -he asked sarcastically, his hand finally moving to rest on the pommel of his sword.
Scott blinked under his helmet. "Really? Taskmaster...I thought...with the hood, and the mask…weird. Anyway. I'm Ant-Man." -he said, striking the arms crossed, standing sideways pose he'd been developing ever since that debacle with Falcon.
It was hard to tell with the mask, but Scott thought the Taskmaster seemed unimpressed. "I didn't choose the name, ok? It's...kind of a hand-me-down."
-"Oh, it's not that. I can respect an heirloom title, I suppose. I was just wondering why the hell bug names are so popular these days." -the man said, shrugging.
If Scott had been expecting a big, narcissistic monologue, he was sorely disappointed. Aside from the generally menacing appearance, the Taskmaster appeared no more willing to fight than he was.
-"So, uh, nice place you guys got here." -he said, idly.
-"You're very new at this, aren't you?" -the masked man asked amusedly.
Scott shrugged. "A month, tops. What, am I doing something wrong?" -he asked, bracing himself for surprise attacks.
-"Not wrong, per se. Unusual, more like. Most so-called heroes try to punch the villain first, ask questions maybe. What, is your girl the violent one?" -he asked jokingly.
For a split second, Scott's stomach dropped, thinking Cassie was in danger. Then he remembered he wasn't alone in this mission, and nodded. "Kind of, yeah. I'm the sneaky type. Not pulling it off very well right now, clearly."
The Taskmaster shrugged again. "Don't beat yourself up. No one's ever gotten past me and lived to tell the tale." -he said casually.
Scott pursed his lips. Relaxed demeanor or not, this guy clearly meant business. "So, are we going to be the first, or is this going downhill as fast as I think it is?" -he asked coolly.
-"Depends."
-"On what?" -asked Scott, somewhat shakily.
-"How big the pockets on that suit of yours are, obviously." -answered the man.
Scott groaned.
Wasp groaned. Her first time in the suit, and already she was going through a dilemma.
The yellow vial she pocketed quickly; the brand new Yellowjacket suit shouldn't be too hard to transport either, once she got Scott to shrink it, and Ant-tony to ferry it. It was the drone that was making things complicated.
She, like most of the world, had been horrified by the destruction of Sokovia. She'd followed the action, seen every shaky cam footage the natives had been able to take, because she was the daughter of not one, but two superheroes, and she knew better than most the odds they'd been facing. And those odds had been terrible. That they'd gotten off with only relatively minor injuries and two new rookies to boot, well, those chances seemed astronomically low. And that was even before Stark had issued the statement to the press on what Ultron had been capable of.
It was hard to believe, really. A little less so in the presence of even one of his simple drones, but Ultron had been, for a week, the most dangerous 'being' on the planet. The robot before her sort of resembled a human skeleton - a thick, metallic rib cage, relatively thin extremities, and a head much like a skull, with two antennae, which protruded from either side of its head, and an open maw and dull, empty 'eyes' - creepy enough to unnerve her. Other than the Avengers, few people had met the AI, but it was very clear this robot, produced en masse, was intended to exterminate.
-"Hey, Hope? You're pretty rich, right?" -asked Scott over the comms, bringing her out of her musing.
Hope frowned. "What does that have to do with anything? Get in here, we have a situation."
-"Yeah, no. Busy at the moment. Please tell me you can spare, like, 100K. I'll pay them back. Somehow. Someday." -he said, a little frantic.
Her eyes almost bugged out. "A hundred thousand dollars!? What the hell do you need that much for? Besides, Dad's the really rich one, not me." -she said, shaking her head in confusion.
-"Ohhh...alright, I'll let you know in a few how the deal goes." -he said. "What deal!? What are you talking about?" -she asked, but the man didn't answer.
Hope resisted the urge to punch something out of frustration, then calmed down. She was still in enemy territory, so it really wasn't the best time to gripe about terrible partners.
-"Hey! Good news, we have a new ally. Sort of." -said Scott. Hope could feel her forehead starting to throb. "New ally. Of course. We are in a covert mission! Why are you making friends? Aren't you supposed to be a frickin' master thief!?" -she shouted into her comm.
Just then, the door to the vault room started to open, and she cursed, turning small again. Half a dozen HYDRA troops poured in, led by a very attractive woman (barring the fact that she was as pale as a corpse), wearing a skin-tight leotard-like green outfit, which complimented her dark, green-tinted waist length hair.
Diving for cover, she stood in the crook of the Ultron drone's neck, atop between some of the wiring. My God, she thought, I'm hiding inside a murderbot.
-"The formula is gone! Search every inch of this building, find the intruders, and bring them to me! No one toys with Madame Hydra and lives." -she boasted.
Hope smirked, despite her situation. Villains, it seemed, had one thing in common: a massive ego she might just use against this particular one.
-"Transfer's gone through. You are a very lucky Ant-Man." -said the Taskmaster, easing his vaguely threatening stance.
Scott shrugged. "So I've heard. What's the next step?" -he asked.
The mercenary cocked his head. "You tell me, you're the one who just paid for my services."
Resisting the urge to facepalm (helmetpalm?), he nodded. "Right. Well, we're here to steal the particles HYDRA managed to get from Cross Technologies a couple of weeks ago. I think my partner's already got those..." -he trailed off, beginning to wonder if telling the man whose allegiance he'd just bought the plan was the best idea.
-"Did she disable the silent alarm? Let me answer that for you. No, she did not, because I just received the notification. Your girl's about to run into some unexpected company." -he said casually.
Scott gulped. "Damn it. Right, we're going to help her, then. You sure you're ok fighting against the people you were chummy with earlier?" -he asked the masked man.
-"Of course. So long as you don't expect me to kill them, that is." -he said, shrugging.
-"Aww, does someone have a heart under all that creepy get-up?." -Scott teased, mounting up on Ant-tony.
The Taskmaster actually chuckled. "Please. You just didn't pay the necessary rates."
Scott made a point to keep the chatter at minimum, after that. Maybe Hope did have a point in calling him out on making friends with psychopaths on a stealth mission. Who knew?
Hiding in the murderbot turned out to be a great idea. Apparently, the thing unnerved the HYDRA goons just as much as it did her. Well, except for the Viper, who remained frosty even as she inspected the thing closely. Which is, of course, how she was forced into her first fight in the costume. Against a person, and not an arachnid, that is.
Before the HYDRA leader could see her, Wasp flew up, making a fist and punching her square in the jaw, with as much force as she could put behind it. Being an enhanced human, Hope figured she could take the bullet-force punch, and she was right; the Viper flew about ten feet backward, slamming into one of the three henchmen left guarding the vault room.
The remaining two goons left standing instantly brandished their weapons, searching for their invisible assailant. Hope didn't give them a chance to use them though, firing her Stingers at one of the gun's triggers, then the other, rendering them useless as anything but a club. She then turned regular size again, slamming both troop's head together, taking them out.
-"You." -said a female voice behind her, making Hope grimace. She really ought to have checked that the Viper had stayed down.
-"Sure, let's play the pronoun game. Me. Your turn." -she said, turning and pointing her Stingers menacingly.
Madame Hydra narrowed her eyes slightly, staring down at Hope from behind the barrel of a modified pistol. "You're the Wasp. And yet you're not. Inherited the title, did you?" -she said, removing the safety.
-"You look way too young to know who I am, so I'm assuming you're older than you look. Hopefully not as slutty as your outfit suggests." Hope answered, ignoring the Viper's question.
The green haired woman grit her teeth. "Dead it is, then. Say good-bye, Kleine. A Wasp's sting is nothing compared to a Viper's bite." -she said, then she fired.
Hope, who'd predicted this, shrank down, feeling the bullet, which was somehow green, pass a mere inch from her reduced form. Recovering from the turbulence, she flew to the woman's abdomen, where she delivered a quick one-two combo. The Viper grunted in pain, but recovered quickly enough to retrieve an item she'd hooked at the back of her belt.
The Wasp managed a small 'What the-' before the Viper snapped at her general position with a whip of all things. Now, a whip might've been an unwieldy weapon, but Madame Hydra was a master with it; add to that that the attacks were unpredictable enough, and you had a lethal combination. On top of even that, the whip produced a sonic boom, which could, and did, do some damage. Hope flew, slamming against a wall with a grunt and leaving a small, pebble-sized crater in it.
-"You are not so talented a fighter as your predecessor, Fräulein. Perhaps, it would have been best that the mantle of Wasp remain...shelved, nicht wahr?" -the woman asked haughtily.
Wasting no time in rhetoric, Hope flew upwards, shifting back to normal size and delivering the mother of all uppercuts to the Viper's chin, who in turn flew backwards a couple of feet. The Wasp then unleashed her Stingers on the woman's neck and the right side of her face - not lethal, but stinging as hell.
The Viper shrieked in pain, clutching at her now burnt face. Only one of her green eyes remained visible, but the one was enough for Hope to know that, if Madame Hydra hadn't intended to kill her before, she certainly wanted to now. Still, the villain's callous disregard of her own abilities in comparison to her mother's had incensed Hope to a point she didn't much care about that.
-"First of all, quit it with the accent. It's as fake as your damn hair color. Second, I earned the hell out of this suit and my title. And third...snake bites might kill you faster, but wasp stings hurt a hell of a lot more, bitch." -she said, then kicked the woman straight in the face, knocking her out instantly.
-"Wow. That's, like, unhealthily sexy." -said Scott, walking into the room with the hooded stranger in tow.
Hope rolled her eyes. "I'm telling you now. Don't go there. Who's your friend?" -she asked, warily.
-"Oh, Taskmaster, meet the Wasp. Wasp, meet my easily bought friend, Taskmaster." -he said.
The man with the skull mask merely nodded. Hope sighed. "Right. Well, no offense, but I don't know that we can actually trust you, so I'll keep my Stingers trained on you." -she said. Taskmaster shrugged. "None taken."
-"See? He's cool. We're cool. Is that Ultron?" -he asked meekly.
Hope nodded. "An Ultron drone. And a spare Yellowjacket suit. We're gonna have to take these back with us, we can't just leave them here." -she said, then turned to the mercenary. "You're seriously ok with this?" -she asked skeptically.
-"HYDRA paid me peanuts for this detail. Your boyfriend here came up with actual cash, somehow, so I'm good." -he said, casually.
She crossed her arms. "Fine. Scott, get Ant-tony to carry the shrunken Yellowjacket, I'll sever the Ultron drone for you to shrink as well. Taskmaster, uh, stand guard, I suppose." -she said uncertainly.
-"All hostiles have been accounted for. I'll restrain the Viper and guard our exit." -he said, then walked off, dragging the unconscious villainess with him.
Hope turned to Scott. "We are having a long talk about this, Lang. Now, let's get done with the mission. I am in desperate need of a bubble bath." -she said sternly, even as she knew the thief was most likely smirking cheekily beneath the helmet.
Damn the day she'd fallen for that idiot. And damn herself for not being able to stop.
Like I said, suck at writing violence. Still, I'd like to think I can manage some banter here and there. What did you think? Did I waste two cool villains? I think their usage in this chapter kind of sounds like what would happen in the Ant-Man section of the MCU. They're not major bad guys, in the grand scheme of things. This isn't the last we'll see of Hope's new enemy or Scott's new...ally, at any rate, so there's room for change if you guys truly need it. Tell me what you think about it! Until next time. - Darthkvzn