And move we do – one hour, fifteen minutes later (Taylor has a clock somewhere) we reach what was probably our best bet out; a second floor window facing outwards and we could barely see another rooftop.

"Um, not to ruin the ideas here," Tony interrupts. "But that's a big gap and none of have wings. Right?"

Taylor glances out the window, and I can almost see the gears turning in her head as she completely ignores her dad. "That's about a forty five foot gap with a twenty foot drop to the ground and a three foot height difference between here and that roof. That would need…about fifty feet of rope to make it safely across."

"And do you have fifty feet of rope?" Steve asks dubiously.

Taylor just nods, opens a pouch on the belt, and shows us the four inch metal rod in her hand. "Grappling hook," she announces. "Sixty feet."

Steve looks surprised, but I just shake my head in amusement – I learned long, long ago to never underestimate a Stark. Not even having their own inventions try to kill them can stop their innovations.

"And how, pray tell, are you going to get that over there?" Tony asks bemusedly. "You can't swing across; that roof is lower than this one.'

"Which means I can zip line," Taylor counters, then gives all of us a calculating look. "Steve, I need your help."

"With?" he asks skeptically.

She presses a button on the rod, causing one end to open up and eject a few inches of a corded rope. She holds the rope and hands Steve the attached rod. "Throw this over there," she nods at the other roof, "and please, whatever you do, don't overshoot."

Steve looks hesitant, but Taylor gives him a little sterner look and presses the rod into his hands before he nods. "Fine."

Taylor steps to the side, still holding the rope, with a satisfied nod as Steve winds his arm back like a baseball pitcher and tosses the rod out, the metal quickly disappearing into the black night.

The youngest Avenger, however, just fiddles with something on the sunglasses she was still wearing for some reason and stares out into the night. "It's attached," she announces about forty seconds later.

"What?" she demands at all of our confused looks. "Night vision glasses, duh. Now, we just attach this here…" she walks over and sticks the rope to the wall behind us before grabbing it with both hands and pressing down, putting all of her 120 pounds on the rope as she lifted her feet out in front of her.

"What are you doing?" Thor asks curiously, finally breaking his silence.

"Testing my weight," she explains. "And it'll hold…me, at least. Now, who wants to be the first to venture into the unknown?"

We all look at her like she's finally crossed the line between genius and insanity before Clint breaks the silence with a sigh. "I'll go. "You're lucky I love you, and you owe me one."

Taylor nods, a smirk playing at her lips. "I'll pay you back later, don't worry."

…Somehow, I don't think they're talking about zip lines anymore, and I don't want to know.

"Hey, lovebirds, move it," Tony gripes, and they both glare at him before Clint wraps his arms and legs around the rope and Taylor gives him a slight push out the window and he disappears.

Taylor once again stares after him, nodding after about thirty seconds. "He's made it, and – whoa."

"What?" I ask, slightly worried, considering her rapidly darkening expression.

"Everything's gone green – I don't understand," Taylor breaths, rambling slightly, "where's the light?"

"What?" Steve looks so confused. "What light, it's pitch black out there!"

Tony and I start to explain, but she beats us to the punch. "Night vision technology works off the ambient light already in a place, Steve. No matter how dark it is, there's always light – except for out there, apparently, because all I can see is green, which means darkness." She breaks off with a few swear words, not even noticing her dad's reprimanding look. "Hawkeye's out there with no communications and now I've lost him."

"Hey!" Steve cuts her off with a firm hand on her shoulder, fingers falling into the grooves on her armor. "Sparrow. Iron Beta. We need your head in this, and we need you here. Focus."

Her hunched shoulders flatten out slightly and I can somehow tell she's closed her eyes behind the shades. "Understood, Captain. Alright, so here's-"

She's cut off again by a familiar voice. "Oh, Sparrow! Come out, come out wherever you are!"

Everyone – or at least everyone on this side of the gap – freezes.

Taylor's hands go white-knuckled on the bow. "Ansari," she hisses, and I can see some more selective words forming on her tongue, but she's halted by Tony's stern, parental glare; instead she just pushes a breath through clenched teeth and mutters in Russian under her breath – something about Ansari waking up drunk and in bed with a donkey.

"Ms. Stark!" the terrorist calls. "Oops, I mean Sparrow. Come on out!"

Taylor sighs. "What do you want, you psycho?"

"That is not very pleasant, Miss Stark. Do you want to try again?" he mocks.

Her grip goes even tighter on the bow and I can see her fingering the string in anticipation. I start to intervene, but she simply holds up a hand. "Why are you doing this? Why this last step?"

"What else to make you suffer?" Ansari asks, as if it were the simplest answer in the world and Taylor was born yesterday. "It was inevitable as soon as you entered my compound that I would take one of them to ensure that you suffered for your misdeeds, little one, and this one-" there's a scuffling sound, a grunt of pain, and Taylor twitches slightly, "-was practically delivered to my door."

Taylor's eyes widen slightly as she realizes something the rest of us don't and takes half a step back, grabs her dad's arm, and shoves him behind Steve without taking her eyes off the window. Then her face goes back to neutral and she taps something on the side of her glasses. "Why me, Ansari?"

"You ruined my plan!" the terrorist complains loudly, still unseen. "Everything was going to plan until you charged in!"

"You practically invited me," she reminds him. "I was having a perfectly normal Thursday night before you called."

"I only called because I wanted all…how do you say?...ah, the full set. You were not supposed to make it out alive."

"Too bad," she snaps. "You underestimated me."

"Yes well…what is the American saying? Fool me once, shame on you…fool my twice, shame on me. Or, more precisely, shame on the hawk." There's a grunt, a crunch I can hear forty five feet away, and a hiss that would've probably been a scream of pain under different circumstances. I tense and Taylor's eyes snap shut, one hand slowly reaching up to remove the glasses, folding them away into a pocket of her belt before she takes a deep breath and eases them open again.

Her gaze is murderous.

"Ansari!" she barks. "Let him go!"

Seeing as we were obviously past negotiation, the atmosphere between the six of us on this side darkens. Steve and I place our hands on our guns, Tony takes another step behind Steve, and Thor tenses from his position in front of Bruce. Taylor draws one arrow from the quiver and lays in across the string; not notching it, not pulling it, just letting it lay there.

Nothing happens for a second, then Taylor slowly lets go the arrow and moves a hand towards a pocket on her belt. She pulls out two objectd, both about the size of an egg, and somehow attaches them to the rope. I can barely hear her whisper of "I'm sorry, Clint," before she lets them go.

I don't have time to ask what she just did, because a second later the night is lit up with a blinding flash, a bang, echoes off the building, and a hiss can just be heard under all the noise.

Taylor quickly puts her glasses back on. "Yes! Ansari's gone, I have eyes on the hawk! Steve I need you to go check on Clint." She hands him a small flashlight. "Dad, stay here and watch Bruce. Thor, guard them. Stay here! Natasha, follow me!"

I jog after her as she takes off the way we came, quickly failing in step with her despite the ground-eating canter she was setting. "What was that?"

"A flash bang grenade and a smoke bomb," she explains. "A distraction."

"And you apologized to Clint because…?"

"I didn't know where he was, so I didn't know if the grenades would hit him," she admits. "Really hoping I didn't hurt him."

"Even if you did, he knows you wouldn't hurt him on purpose."

She doesn't answer, instead taking a sharp left and approaching another window. "Fire escape's out there."

I silently nod as I asses the window – four glass panes divided by a metal cross, about five feet off the ground. "What now?"

She waves a hand and makes me back up about two feet before taking a step forward and settling into one of the many positions I taught her for martial arts; I raise an eyebrow in confusion but don't speak.

And her intentions are clear as she snaps a leg out and around in a high spinning kick, kicking out the lower left window pain and jarring the frame, cracking all the others. She then reproaches the window, retrieving one of her bigger knives and using the butt of the handle to smash out the other three panes before flipping the blade and using it as a wedge to free the frame from its holdings.

"You know," I comment casually, as if we weren't chasing a terrorist responsible for kidnapping our entire team, "I've done that move once. In…Guatemala, I think, just before all of…this."

Her tone matches my own as she replies from her spot outside the window, on the rickety landing of the fire escape. "Don't think I've heard that one, you'll have to tell me sometime – you know, later."

I give a small nod as I slide up to her side, on the railing of the landing but not really putting much weight on it since it looks capable of giving out at any moment. The night in front of us, however, is still pitch black, lit with only the stars above us. "Where is he?"

Taylor frowns slightly as she configures her glasses again, slowly turning her head to scan our surroundings and suddenly freezing with her head tilted slightly down and to the left. "Down and to our left."

I peek over her shoulder, blinking into the dark. "You're the only one that can see him, Taylor."

She blinks, looks at me, and back at where I presume Ansari to be. "Oh, right…ah!" She snaps her fingers quietly as that look – the 'this-is-a-crazy-idea-but-it-will-work,-I-swear,' look. "Cover me."

"I don't know what you're doing," I grumble as I draw my gun, "but do it fast."

"Will do," she breathes from her new position, kneeling behind me.

I purse my lips as I go on full alert, staring out into the dark. After about five minutes of silence, I hear the landing creak behind me in a way that can only signify a shifting of weight and a single word in Russian: "сделано." It is done.

I nod and lower my gun slightly, motioning with my free hand for her to come up next to me, which she does, with an arrow in one hand and the bow in another.

"'Let there be light,'" she quotes by way of explanation at my curious look. When I narrow my eyes at her, she just rolls her eyes and notches the arrow. "Trust me, I'm a genius."

"And so modest, too," I deadpan as she draws the bow back and aims at some unseen point in the dark, letting the arrow fly a hit it's target about five seconds later with a barely audible thwonk.

And then it starts to glow – a white glow, starkly contrasting against the night. "Taylor-" I gasp.

"Go! Aim four inches above the light and one to the right."

"Are-"

"Widow!" she snaps, her tone booking no room for argument. "Go! Now!"

I nod as I take off down the creaky stairs, taking off after the light, which – I assumed – was somehow attached to the lead terrorist. I lose track of the twists and turns as my feet pound the ground, only breathing slightly deeper, even after an extended chase.

And then he and I round a final corner that has high brick and mud walls on three sides and a swinging, bare, flickering streetlight on one side.

"Give up, Ansari," I command, my voice distinct and steady. "You've lost."

"No!" the terrorist spins around to face me, a demented snarl on his face. "I do not lose! The Blood Moon will survive!"

I'm about to refute that when something catches me eye – or rather my ear. The click of a tiny pebble bouncing just behind my left shoe.

Then more.

Click. Click. Click. Click…click. Click. Click…click…click. Click. Click…click.

It only takes me a second to recognize the clicks for what they were: Morse code, which Steve had us all learn as soon as our first mission debrief; not that I didn't know it beforehand.

S-N-P-R. Sniper. Someone had aim on Ansari and I, and I could only hope it was Taylor. Then more code – T-R-U-S-T.

There's not a doubt in my mind now that Taylor – or, more aptly, Sparrow at the moment – has sighted us and is somewhere ready to take the single shot that ends this.

"It's over, Ansari," I tell him. "It's too late."

"It is never too late!" he screams desperately. "Never! Never! Never-" he's cut off, suddenly, his eyes rolling back in his head as he hits the ground like a sack of potatoes. I unholster my gun as I cautiously creep over to the body and look it over. I quickly find the cause of death – a single, thin, arrow to the neck; entering directly into the jugular vein and plugging it's own hole from the outside so he bled out inside his own body.

"Didn't anyone ever tell him 'never say never'?" a voice asks innocently, and I will forever deny jumping as I turned to see Taylor standing less than a foot away, leaning nonchalantly against one of the walls with the bow leaning against her leg.

I glare at her. "Lose the boots, alright? Only I get to do that on a regular basis."

"Clint has the ability to do it," she points out smugly.

"Yeah," I agree, "but he usually doesn't unless he's on a mission."

"Speaking of missions," she shoves off the wall, "let's get this wrapped up. I want to go home."

I give her a mock salute and jog after her as we head back to wherever the rendezvous point was. "Home?"

"Home."

Reviews make me happy, people! And happy Halloween, to all who celebrate it.