A/N: WOW. HOLY COW. I haven't updated this story in nearly six months and I am so, SO sorry about that. What with finals, trips, and a major case of writer's block, it was tough. But I did it! :) Anyway, I hope you like this chapter, the next one should be out soon if I get around to it, and be sure to keep an eye out for the next chapters of Harry Potter and The Girl Who Lived and Daughter of the Wild! They should be up before long! Don't forget to fave, follow, and review! Happy reading!

P.S. This is obviously an AU of post-Endgame, so that's all I'm going to say about it.

...

You better get ready for war

Cause it's

It's here tonight

...

You would've thought the Avengers Compound was in the aftershock of an apocalypse.

Tony and Pepper's engagement party, which had occurred two nights ago, seemed to've been the last hurrah before everyone turned serious and grave. At least two Avengers were in the training room at a time, practicing their fighting techniques and/or supernatural powers.

Peter had gone to stay with his Aunt May the day after the party, which saved both of us the awkwardness and embarrassment of the. . . incident that had happened at said party.

I had slept in, which was nice, since I had stayed up till nearly four in the morning helping the others clean up after the momentous event. By the time I had dragged myself up the many flights of stairs, peeled off my formal attire and wormed into my pajamas, I crashed onto my bed and fell asleep immediately.

I expected to wake up this morning to another nearly-empty kitchen and a slow routine, but instead was surprised by Nat leaning against the kitchen's glossy granite counter dressed in workout clothes. Uh oh. . . that was never a good sign.

"You're up," she quipped, almost as a note to herself. She gestured to the fridge. "Eat a light breakfast then hurry up and change. We've got a lot of training to do today."

I groaned and lurched groggily over to the fridge, snatching an apple and taking a large bite. A crisp crunch echoed throughout the room. Nat smirked ever so slightly.

Finishing up my unusually healthy breakfast, I went back to my room and changed into an electric blue sports bra and black workout leggings, tying my hair up and opening my door only to find Peter walking past dressed in his own training clothes. I instantly regretted choosing the sports bra.

"Hey, Autumn—" Peter started weakly, then promptly blushed and averted his eyes to his sneakers.

I couldn't help blushing a bit either, and managed a small wave before speed-walking to the training room, Peter right behind me, making the awkward tension grow.

To make matters worse, we were also stuck in the elevator together.

"Um, Autumn," Peter said, breaking the uncomfortable silence save for the stereotypical elevator music.

"Yeah?" I asked, turning to face him.

Peter rubbed the back of his neck. "I-I'd just like to apologize for what happened at Mr. Stark's party a couple nights ago. I was being impulsive and wasn't thinking clearly."

I blinked, a bit taken aback. If anyone was at fault in this situation, it was Nat, for making us dance together in the first place.

"It's ok," I said lightly with a shrug.

"I. . . hope we can still be friends?" Peter said tentatively.

I smiled. "Sure."

We shook hands just as the elevator doors slid open.

We entered into the training room.
Nat was in there with Scott, who was punching a punching bag near the corner. Another man was there, one I vaguely recognized but didn't know on a first-name basis. It might've been because he wasn't around much, constantly coming and going from the Compound.

He had black hair that was slicked back and a goatee, with a thin face, high cheekbones, and piercing blue eyes. He was wearing a sort of necklace, with a golden three-dimensional eye pendant that was emitting a soft green glow from the center.

Nat clapped her hands, snapping me back to my surroundings.

"Autumn, Peter. Right on time." The ginger gestured for us to come over to her.

"What are we working on today?" I asked her, stretching my arms.

Nat's lips curved upwards in a small smile, perhaps at my enthusiasm. "Actually, Autumn, I won't be the one training you today. You're going to have a private tutor."

The man with the eye pendant necklace stepped forward and held out his hand. "I don't think we've officially met. I'm Doctor Stephen Strange."

I shook his hand. "Autumn Tahhvang. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," Stephen responded. He eyed me warily as if trying to analyze my powers. He pointed with his chin to the other end of the room. "Let's go over there. We'll have more room to practice and a wider space in case. . . anything goes wrong."

I frowned to myself, but followed Stephen over to the open area.

"Ok, I'll be teaching you how to perfect your elemental manipulation abilities," Stephen said, rolling up the sleeves on his long dark blue shirt—or tunic? I dunno. Superheroes can be strange (ha ha, get it? Bad pun, I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist!)

"I know how to bend the elements already," I protested.

Stephen sighed. "You're not paying attention, kid. I said perfect. As in teaching you how to control them in split second situations and use them as weapons."

Now I was interested. "Why didn't you say so?" I rubbed my hands together eagerly. "Let's get started!"

Stephen glanced over at Nat and Scott with an amused look as of to say This is the kid who's supposed to help us fight a highly elite North Korean death organization?

Nat and Scott simply smiled and shrugged back at him. Yep.

Stephen sighed again. "Ok, let's start first with fire bending. From the information about the Dragon's Blood serum, fire is a special exception compared to the other elements. You can breathe it, in or out of your dragon form, you're immune to it, and, in addition to controlling it, can create it." He stared me down for a second before saying in a grave voice, "That's a lot of destructive power for a sixteen year old to have."

I smirked. "With great power comes great responsibility?"

"Hey, don't you dare start on that!" Peter called from the other end of the training facility. His voice held an uncharacteristic edge to it.

Stephen glanced back at Peter before giving me one of those stereotypical-adult 'really?' looks. "Let's try to avoid the jokes while we're training today. Deal?"

"Deal."

"Ok, good. Now, Nat told me about that night when you woke up in your dragon form. She said you almost burnt your room down," Stephen said. "Do you remember how you summoned your fire?"

"I freaked out."

"Yeah, not going to work." Stephen looked up at the ceiling, whether in thought or prayer: Save me from this hyper teenager!

"Ok," he said finally, "just concentrate on calling on your fire; maybe searching for the feeling you had when you first summoned it."

As I closed my eyes to focus, I was vaguely aware of Scott readying a fire extinguisher out of my peripheral vision.

I pushed all other thoughts from my mind; the only picture remaining a blazing inferno.
I dug deep down, reaching for my supernatural abilities. I imagined myself as a dragon, blowtorching a battlefield of enemies.

The same warm heating pad sensation built in the bottom of my throat, slowly crawling its way to the surface. I parted my lips and exhaled lightly, a small plume of orange-hot fire exiting my mouth. The feeling was balmy and comfortable on my tongue, like the sensation you get when eating warm soup on a cold day. It didn't hurt at all. On the contrary, it felt perfectly natural.

The fire died out, and a smoky, salty taste was left in my mouth. I swallowed it down.
Scott immediately rushed over to the charred spot on the wall where my fire had hit, dousing it in flame retardant. Nat facepalmed.

Stephen simply ignored Scott and gave me an appraising look, a surprised smile gracing over his mouth. "Very good," he told me. "Very mellow and controlled. That's good when training, but not when we're going to war."

I crossed my arms. "Yeah, well, I haven't exactly breathed fire before. It's not like they taught classes on it in elementary school."

Stephen once again glanced at Nat, who gave him a small 'I told you so' smile.

"Alright," Stephen said eventually, "now let's practice on using your other elemental powers."

Like he had promised, Stephen instructed me on my fire bending first. It was pretty easy, since I could create it (Stephen said something about fire being a dragon's natural element was the reason why). I used Nat's rope-and-tree analogy to get myself in the mindset.

Air was a bit harder. It was like trying to grab something invisible and bend it to your will, which was exactly what I was supposed to do. I had to focus a lot longer, to the point where everyone in the training room had to be absolutely silent. Air bending was a lot like telekinesis, since it was everywhere and I could use it to levitate stuff.

Earth was almost as hard as air. We tested out my earth powers by setting a potted bamboo plant in front of me to see if I could manipulate it. After much concentration, I managed to make some swirly designs, which wouldn't help much in combat.

Rocks and dirt were easier, since they weren't living organisms. I might've gotten a little carried away and buried the adult instructors in a pile of soil.

Finally, we reviewed water. It was the easiest element next to fire, so easy in fact that I accidentally drenched the entire training room. Apparently I could not only control the amount of an element, but also increase the quantity, which explained how the contents in Peter's water bottle were able to soak us all to the bone.

After I used my powers to gather up the water and fling it out the open window onto an unsuspecting SHEILD agent, we practiced with weapons and hand-to-hand combat. I gazed up at the glorious display of deadly toys on the wall. After much deliberation, I decided on a pair of vibranium shurikens, reasoning that I would be better at operating a weapon from my main ancestral continent: Asia.

Grabbing my weapon of choice from their hooks on the wall, I walked back over to where Nat and Stephen were. Scott and Peter were in a different area of the training room doing their own thing, probably under orders from Nat to give us as much space as possible.

"I know how to use these already," I told my two instructors, holding up the shurikens to accentuate my point.

Nat nodded. "Good, that just saved us ten minutes of teaching you how to use your weapon. Now we can start on the fun stuff." She smirked.

I cracked my knuckles. "What're we waiting for, then?"

My training was more in depth today than it had been the past few weeks. Nat taught me how to fight with both my weapon and my body simultaneously and generally brushed up on my already decently-sculpted fighting skills.

Stephen walked me through how to use my elemental abilities as weapons, and to combine them with my shurikens. In just under five hours I could fling my fire-enhanced shurikens at one target (landing both dead center, mind you) while simultaneously kung-fu-ing the crap out of another, throw one shuriken behind me at a target (again, landing it dead center) while using the air to propel myself at the second target and solidly kicking it in the bullseye and catching my airborne shuriken at the same time, and generally a lot of other cool stuff that will be useful in combat.

We spent the last hour of training on polishing my shapeshifting. Coming in and out of my dragon form was much easier than manipulating any of the elements, even fire, since that was the subject Nat and I had worked on the most.

Today we brought it to a new level: Changing part of my body into my dragon one.

We practiced morphing my wings from my back, my talons from my hands, my fangs from my normal teeth, etc, etc.

I leaned against a dummy, sweat trickling down my forehead and neck. I willed my dragon wings to melt back into my body.

"Good, good," Nat said, her arms crossed. "I think you're starting to get the hang of it." Suddenly she produced a throwing knife, chucking it at me with a "Think fast!"

Instinctively I put my arms up to protect my face, but instead of feeling the knife slash through my flesh, it simply bounced off my forearms like a tennis ball. I looked down. Electric blue scales were reverting back to my normal skin, and somehow part of my dragon self came through without me telling it to.

Nat grinned. "Final test. See if dragon scales are in fact hard as diamonds. Check."

I gazed down at my hands, awestruck. "Awesome."

"Holy—!" Scott said, a hand at his head.

"You're practically invincible!" Peter exclaimed, a wild smile on his face.

"Now you actually might have a surviving chance," Stephen told me with a teasing smirk. I knew he was joking, but a cold feeling still settled in the pit of my stomach.

Once 3 pm hit, I had decently mastered the extent of my powers. It was the best feeling right next to getting a video game you've been waiting for.

"Nice work today, kiddo," Scott told me with a smile, ruffling my hair.

I instinctively smoothed my dark locks down again. "Thanks, Scott. I was more fun than I'd thought."

The adults chuckled at this.

"Hey, Autumn," Nat said, a proud smile on her face, "we have something for you."

I tilted my head but grinned nonetheless. I loved surprises. Except when I randomly got shot with an illegal reptilian mutant serum. I hated that.

The five of us piled into the elevator and headed back up to the main floor of the Compound.

As we exited, I saw the rest of the Avengers sitting on the couches around the coffee table, a box wrapped in silver gift paper on top of it.

Nat gestured for me to open it, and I walked towards the box a bit apprehensively, unsure of what was going on (it wasn't my birthday, I'll tell you that).

Natasha, Stephen, Peter, and Scott all took seats on the couches as well, staring at me expectantly.

Slowly, I removed the top of the box, to see a small handwritten note taped to whatever was inside. It said:

Welcome to the Avengers, Dragonet!

Love, the Avengers

I looked up at the assembled heroes, quirking an eyebrow. "Dragonet, huh? Not bad. Though I would've preferred 'Lóng'."

They just stared at me blankly.

I laughed. "It's Chinese for dragon. Though now that I think about it, nobody here in America will probably know that except for a few."

Setting the note down, pulled out what it had been taped to.

"Whoa!" I exclaimed, sounding like a kid who had just got something super cool for Christmas.

To put it simply, it was a superhero suit. My superhero suit.

"No way, guys! Wow, this is so cool!" I held the outfit up to myself, examining it from all different angles. I looked up at the Avengers and smiled, the first genuine, grateful smile since I arrived at the Compound. "Xièxiè!"

Again, more blank stares, but this time they were accompanied by politely clueless smiles.

I laughed again, more shrilly. "It's thank you in Chinese."

"No problem, kid," Bucky said with a smile that mirrored my own.

"We couldn't just let you fight in a T-shirt and yoga pants," said Clint with a smirk.
"I appreciate your thoughtfulness," I said sarcastically but with a teasing air.

By now I bet you're dying to know what the suit looked like.

It was a two-piece, the top being sleeveless and dark green and the pants being black leather. A silver flame designed was etched into the fabric on the shirt. A pair of black leather fingerless gloves textured and sewn to look like reptile scales were close-pinned to the right shoulder of the top. The neckline was high and styled like an ancient Chinese robe fold, one side crisscrossing over the other, the hems the same silver as the flame pattern. Close-pinned to the left shoulder of the shirt was a black ninja mask.

I peeked over the outfit to see that laying at the bottom of the box was a pair of black combat boots.

I raised my eyes from the box to look at the Avengers, who were staring at me with anticipating, hopeful expressions.

"This is awesome, guys! Thank you!"

Everyone smiled broadly, some in relief, as if glad I liked the suit. Who wouldn't?

"It is laced with vibranium as well," said T'Challa. "I had my sister specially manufacture it in Wakanda. With this being your first mission, we wanted to take extra precautions."

Normally, hearing an adult say something like that would annoy me. I'm sixteen, not a baby! But I nodded with grave understanding, knowing that the 'precautions' would probably be vital to my survival rate. It was my first fight, after all. You can never be too careful with stuff like that.

Suddenly the magnitude of the situation hit me like a truck. I might not survive. We were going up against a high-tech evil organization, one that had their own dragon-shifter as well, a dragon-shifter that was older and much more experienced than me. If we wanted to win this battle, we had to have a perfect strategy, or the whole operation would fall apart and we would lose. General Xang meant business, and he was out for blood.

But, as I looked over my new suit and the faces of people who had taken me in, were kind to me, and trained me to use my powers despite my previously sour and rebellious attitude, I knew that we had a chance. War might be coming, and the battle and after-effects may not be pretty, and we might be beat to the ground over and over again, but that wouldn't stop us. We will fight until The Dragon's Eye is destroyed, no matter what happens to us. We will do whatever it takes.

And I'm ready.