Alrighty, one last chapter before I leave for camp. I'M SORRY! :*( See? Look! I'm gonna miss you guys so much I'm crying…

AAAAAANYWHO…. Thanks for your comments. They make me all warm and fuzzy inside! ;P

Special thanks to mercuryfire, Annie, and Nelle07. Oh, and mercury's last comment is the only reason I posted this…so THANK HER! I didn't have a chance to read over this in between packing and cleaning my pit of a house…so yeah…any and all spelling and grammar mistakes are just that. Mistakes. Thank you for being tolerant of my god-awful spelin!

-E.H.

"Jarvis, what the hell was that?" Tony was running faster than he could ever remember running. It was almost morning and he had been up all night, following a faint heartbeat that he had hoped was Barton's. Only one thing wasn't adding up…

He had put on his visor as it laid out a holographic map of the city, each living thing shown as a small fluctuating dot. The dot he suspected to be Barton (it matched his probable physical state according to Jarvis) was accompanied by another dot. At first it didn't register as human, the heart rate was too fast, but soon it became apparent that it was a person. It wasn't likely Clint had picked up a stray dog, anyways.

At about nine o'clock the two dots had stopped moving and Clint's heart rate dipped alarmingly low for several seconds before coming back up. A few minutes later both dropped to the point where they were obviously asleep and Stark had moved double-time to reach them before they started moving again.

When he was about a block away he had heard the gunshot. It was followed by a second but Tony was running too fast and too hard to bother checking what was happening with his visor. Someone was shooting and an injured Clint was close by, and knowing the archer's luck he was probably at the receiving end of the barrel.

Stark flew around a corner, trying to follow the sound of the third and fourth shots. He darted into an alley from the main road and was face to face with a fairly alarming scene.

Clint was there, on the ground and holding his side with a rather peeved expression on his face. Beside him was a young woman who looked to be about twenty, pinning a darkly dressed man against a wall, struggling with him for control of a handgun. It wasn't the fact that they were struggling that was odd, it was the fact that the woman was stuck to the wall, her feet and fingertips keeping her tethered in place, preventing the man from escaping.

Tony hand barley taken in the whole scene before Clint spotted him.

"Tony?" He gasped. Stark saw blood dripping through his fingers.

"Clint? What the…?"

"Don't look at me, look there!" Clint shouted, waving his hand at the man and woman fighting beside him. Stark shook himself enough to run in their direction, uselessly shouting for them to "Stop! Break it up!"

The woman was now holding back the man's gun-hand with one hand and was reaching into her pant pocket with the other, still stuck to the wall like a gecko by her bare feet, pinning the man in place against the brick wall. Stark hesitated to intervene. That gun could go off at any moment if she didn't continue to hold the guy back. As he watched, vaguely aware of Clint yelling for him to "do something", he saw the woman pull out a thin wooden tube from her pocket. She held one end to her mouth and pressed the other to the man's neck. There was a sound like someone blowing through a straw, and less than five seconds later the man went limp. The woman waited a beat before dropping lightly to the ground, letting him fall to the dirt with a dull thud. She was breathing heavily in an almost animalistic fashion, her weapon held at her side. Tony looked from her to the man. He was dead, that much was obvious. His eyes stared blankly into the still darkened sky, lifeless as the grave.

"What the…?" Stark repeated. The young woman spun on her heals, weapon raised, and Tony shot up his hands in surrender.

"Kyla! He's good. He's a friend!" Shouted Clint from his place of the ground. Immediately the woman's manner changed. She lowered what Stark now recognized as a blowgun and frowned at him.

"Oh." She said. She then walked around Tony to Clint, kneeling in front of him and completely ignoring Tony. He didn't like being ignored…

"Hey, Lady…" He said, stepping toward them, thoroughly confused. Her bright green eyes shot back around at him warningly. He froze. "Hey Clint, you wanna tell your guard dog here to back off?"

"Tony, meet Kyla. Kyla, this is…" Clint began, but Kyla finished for him.

"Tony Stark, right?" She said. Stark frowned at her, and so did Clint. "What? He's famous." She added. She turned back to Clint, scooting to the side to give Tony room to join her on the ground. He smiled to himself, despite the situation, and crouched down beside her.

"Hey bud. What'd you do to yourself this time?" He said, slapping Clint on the shoulder. Barton gave a sharp intake of breath as Tony hit his injured shoulder.

"I didn't do anything, Tony…" He hissed through clenched teeth. Stark frowned, obviously noticing the severity of his injuries.

"Hey, you get shot?" He asked, nodding to Clint's stomach where he was still holding a bloody hand.

"No… I just spilled ketchup all over myself." Barton said, glaring at him. Kyla snickered and he shot her a look.

"No need to get snippy. Hold still." Stark ordered. He reached into his bag and pulled out a small metal frame. He clicked a button on the top and a holographic screen appeared with the words "Hello Mr. Stark" in white type.

"Hey Jarvis, you with me?" Tony said into the device.

"As always Sir." Answered the AI, its voice now coming from the device in Stark's hand.

"Okay, I need you to do a scan of Agent Barton here. How does he look?"

There was a pause as a red laser-pointer type light turned on and shone over Clint who blinked at it in annoyance. Kyla eyed the device distrustfully, but she had heard of Tony Stark before. His company occasionally did charity work for the church she grew up in.

The device beeped and the light turned off. Jarvis's voice returned.

"Scan complete Sir. It appears Agent Barton is suffering from a number of injuries, the most severe being a leg broken in three places, knife wound to the left side, a dislocated shoulder, head trauma, gunshot wound causing internal bleeding, two broken ribs, severe blood loss…"

"Okay Jarvis, we get the idea." Stark interrupted. Kyla looked incredulously at Clint, who shrugged.

"Frankly sir," Jarvis added with a slight hesitation in his computerized voice "…Agent Barton should be dead."

Stark smiled at Clint. "We're lucky you're so damn stubborn." He chuckled. He stood up and swiped his finger across the holographic screen of the device. He pressed several buttons and held it to his ear.

"What are you doing?" Kyla asked, standing up and walking over to him. Tony smiled as he heard the familiar voice of Nick Fury over the phone.

"I'm calling mom." He grinned.