[Author's Note: To 3A07 – Not entirely sure what you were asking in the comments, but I can stretch out the Defenders' cameo to last through Christmas, if that's what you wanted.]

The standing SHIELD agents and Avengers were waiting in the garage to receive the blindfolded prisoner as he was hustled out of a dark green catering van that purported to be from the A-Train Diner. The man moving him along was dressed like Captain America, and an Asian woman in civvies followed close behind, rapidly typing into a StarkPad. "We're here," the StarkPad said in Steve Rogers's voice as the woman held it close to fake-Cap's head. "These agents will take you to interrogation, and someone will be with you shortly."

The blindfolded man balked, and the woman typed another short sentence for the StarkPad to read off. "Move, soldier." Fake-Cap emphasized the order with a little shove in the direction of Agents May and Ward, who took charge and marched the sullen man from the room.

"That… that sounded just like me," the real Steve marveled as his imposter and the woman with him both let out a long sigh of relief. "I didn't know technology could do that."

"Me neither!" fake-Cap enthused, tugging back his cowl to reveal a youthful blonde head. "But Colleen found this app that does celebrity voices, and yours was in there. Oh, I found some other cool ones in there, too. Before we picked this guy up, I had Patrick Warburton reading lines from Star Wars." He beamed proudly at his accomplishment.

"That's, uh, that's great. Who are you, exactly?"

"I'm you! Well, for today I am. When I'm not being him." The stranger pointed at Clint. "Actually, that one seems to work better. Even though your costume has a mask, Cap, more people can recognize you. My hair is a little too light for Hawkeye, but I shaved my beard for this, so…" The Asian woman, who he'd referred to as Colleen, slapped him in the arm with the back of her hand.

"Danny," she hissed.

"What? Oh, sorry. My real name is Danny. Rand. You can call me Danny. This is Colleen Wing, and driving the truck is Claire Temple." Another woman leaned out of the open window to wave with a thin smile. "But I'm having fun fighting crime dressed as you. Matt got to be you at first, but he broke the shield hitting a guy in the face with it. It was plastic. We got these costumes at a party store. But he also broke the guy's nose, so… Oh, hey, do you guys have a good way to impersonate the Hulk?"

He was met with a lot of blank stares and blinking, but since Danny was talking to Steve, Rogers clearly felt that the burden was on him to speak, so he ventured, "…I don't think so?"

Danny's whole body sagged forward as he sighed in resignation. "Yeah, I figured, but we really wanted the whole set, you know? I asked Luke if we could paint him green, but he didn't think that was a great idea, so he's just been hanging around as himself. One person thought he was Colonel Rhodes, so was good for us even if it annoyed Luke. I don't really see a resemblance myself. Although, I saw a younger picture of Colonel Rhodes, and he does look pretty different now. Did he lose weight or something?"

"I believe he did."

"That's cool that…"

Colleen smacked him in the arm again and then tugged him back toward the van. "Sorry about him. He's kind of new to… normal people." Danny didn't look remotely offended by her assessment. He even nodded comfortably as she added, "Come on, Danny. We should get back to the others."

"Right," he agreed as they disappeared back into the bulky vehicle. "It was very nice meeting you all, but my team needs me."

xXx

"Danny's wrapping up at Stark Tower already," Matt Murdock told his teammates, prompting a disgusted huff from Jessica Jones. "We'd better wrap this one up if we want to get in another assignment before he gets back."

"Already? How? Also, can you really hear all the way to Stark Tower from here?"

"Maybe, but in this case, Claire called to warn me."

"Uugh." Jess stripped off her Black Widow wig, gauntlets, and other accessories and threw them to the ground so that she could tug her plastic Iron Man armor pieces over the Widow bodysuit. "If I hear one more K'un-Lun proverb about inner peace, I'm going to start punching everything in sight, whether it's a bad guy or not."

As Luke tossed Jessica's discarded wardrobe bits into a duffle bag for her next change-over, Matt adjusted the long blonde wig he was wearing as Thor and made sure his helmet was secure. Since he had his Daredevil armor on under the rest of the costume (sans mask and gloves) to offer protection and bulk up his lithe form, that part was staying in place. He checked it anyway. "You and me both," Matt agreed. "Punching everything I can sense, anyway."

Luke rolled his eyes and tried to diffuse their mounting tension. "He's not that bad, you guys, once you get to know him."

"He really is," Jessica countered. "Every time he talks, I need a drink. I'm not sure if it's how much he talks, or if it's the confident naivete, but I'm starting to wish we'd split up into pairs after all."

The reason they hadn't was so that Matt could sense the people and cameras around them so that they could stage their Avengers shots just right. Jessica knew this perfectly well, so Matt only shot her a crooked half-smile before saying, "Let's just get this done. Sounds like our boy is at his desk on the twenty-first floor. Heart rate's up. I can smell his adrenaline. He must be working on his little project right now, so, Jess, we should probably avoid smashing his computer before you find whatever dirt's on there. And we should fly up there fast just in case he knows we're onto him and decides to delete anything useful."

"We?" Her cheap plastic parts crackled against each other as she craned her neck to take in her target. "Can your cable stretch that far?" She continued slipping on piece after fragile piece of her costume as she spoke, letting black elastic bands snap them into place.

Previously, Matt had been "flying" by swinging between buildings on the cable attached to his billy clubs. It essentially acted as a grappling hook, as it often did for him. The one difference was that he also held a plastic copy of Thor's hammer in the same hand and stayed far enough away from people that they couldn't see the cable. "Nope, but you can toss me before you jump."

"Sweet." She grinned at the prospect. "So, you're going through the window first?"

"Yeah, my clubs should break it fine. If you try to punch it, you'll probably just break your armor."

"So, you learned your lesson from the shield incident?" Luke asked.

"Hey, there was a bad guy, and I was holding a shield. What did you expect me to do?"

He shrugged his sizeable shoulders and admitted, "Actually, I would expect that you would do just that, but that's not what you should have done with a shield, even if it was a real shield. What you and Captain America both don't realize is that shields aren't for throwing at people or hitting them with."

"Luke, everything is for throwing at people or hitting them with."

"Again, I guess I should expect this attitude from you, but Captain…"

"Hey, look! Jess is ready!"

"Yup," she affirmed, cheerily preparing to hurl her teammate through a window. "Let's go, Wing-Head."

And with that, they were off flying for the cameras, determined to do their jobs and show up the Avengers as much as possible that day.

xXx

"I feel pathetic right now," Hawkeye whined to Natasha as he sat in a corner of the elevator that was taking them to the interrogation room, nursing his fever.

"You've been feeling pathetic ever since you broke your hand," she snapped back, "so what's new?"

"Right. Shouldn't talk to you when you're sick. My mistake."

They were alone in the elevator (except for Jarvis's ever-watchful digital presence), so Natasha was able to relax a little and look almost apologetic as she took the corner across from him and blew her nose. "You still have to do this. Either that or resign yourself to watching a 3-hour special on the Russian ballet."

"I know I do, I just… don't feel like I have a lot to work with right now."

"You have the flu. You could always try sneezing on him."

"Ha, ha. Seriously, Tasha, you're the best interrogator I know, and I need some advice. Usually, I go into these things all confident and stuff, but I'm not feeling it right now. I can't even fake it. I just feel dead to the world."

The elevator stopped but didn't open its doors as it usually did. Clearly, Jarvis had detected that they were having a moment and responded accordingly. "Okay, so find a way to use that. The key to any good interrogation is adaptation. Listen to your subject and figure out what resonates with him. Work with that. If you feel yourself slipping too much, step outside. You can always go back in later, and it may build some anticipation if you're lucky."

"Or he may be laughing at me."

Natasha smiled and shook her head. "Jarvis, what do we know about our prisoner?"

The computer launched into a brief summary based on whatever it could pull from the Internet. Clint was sure that most if not all of the information would be obtained illegally, but he wasn't a stickler about that sort of thing. "Adam Steiner," Jarvis reported. "31-year-old Caucasian male. He's worked as a telemarketer with Tele-Global for the past four years and held a series of short-term jobs before that. He holds an associate degree in art history, which he does not appear to have used so far in his career. He was never married and has no immediate family living. He has a poor credit history and has accumulated a debt of $7,820 through various online gambling sites. His only known community affiliation is with the Friends of Humanity, an anti-Mutant organization that has been steadily growing throughout the country and has recently opened branches in twelve other countries worldwide."

With a hearty yawn, Clint said, "Friends of Humanity. Never heard of them. Guess they're not very good friends."

His real friend threw her tissue pack at his head and then reconsidered the maneuver. "Actually, I'm going to need that back."

He waved his loot in the air as he staggered up and toward the elevator door. "Jarvis, I'm gonna need an escape route." The doors whooshed open, and Clint jogged as well as possible down the hallway to the interrogation room.

It was only two doors down, and Clint only swerved into a wall once on his way there. Natasha, practically nipping at his heels, didn't crash at all. At least, he didn't hear her crash, and she got to her destination one door before he did, since she only had to go as far as the observation room.

As they reached their respective destinations, Clint heard his partner say quietly, "Go get him, Clint."

He grinned before diving into the dimly lit room and immediately feeling his head spin. He saw his target, a dark-haired young man that fear and oily skin made even younger, and he also saw his own empty chair across the desk from Adam Steiner. Clint was good at seeing things, hence his name. Hawkeye. Not Hawkwalk. Walking wasn't a strength at the moment.

Walk there he did, but he tripped over the last few steps and banged his knee into the metal frame of the chair. He steadied himself on the back of that same chair, but to do so, he had to drop the tissues that he'd stolen from Natasha and the wet washcloth that was dampening his cast with repeated use. "Ow ow ow. Jarvis, bring the lights up. That's better, thanks." Clint settled into the seat with a sigh and addressed the man who was regarding him with vacant eyes. "Okay, hi there, fellow human. I assume you know what you're in for."

When the man finally decided it was safe to talk, he ventured, "It's all a big misunderstanding."

Clint cocked his head. "Actually, I don't know what you're in for. Jarvis?"

"Mr. Steiner was heard having a telephone conversation with another gentlemen regarding their plans to assault a suspected mutant family in their home tonight. Black Widow and Captain America apprehended Mr. Steiner, leaving certain other Avengers to trace his associate."

"Any progress with that?"

"Indeed. Thor recently reported that he found the security company where Steiner's associate works. He hopes to find weaknesses in his victims' security network, or to create those weaknesses. Luckily, it appears that the Avengers have just arrived on the scene."

Although he knew that Jarvis was using the real Avengers' names for the sake of the ruse, it threw Clint for a moment how smart and adaptable the AI was. He made a mental note to be really nice to Jarvis, who would no doubt be the king of all artificial life once robots took over the world. Maybe a Christmas gift? Like a shiny new computer server or something? "Thanks. Any footage?"

"Indeed, sir. Shall I display it on Screens 1 and 2?"

"Sounds good."

As it turned out, there was a screen built into the wall behind both the interrogator and the interrogatee. The walls slid open to reveal identical flat-screens showing news footage of Thor flying up the side of a building, followed by Iron Man. Thor crashed through the window, and Iron Man took advantage of the open hole. In under a minute, a skinny guy was hurled head-first out the window but jerked to a sudden stop. He dangled by one leg, which seemed to be tied up by some kind of thin rope or cable. It kept him suspended there, twenty-one stories above the ground, flailing wildly and screeching out incoherent noises.

Then he was screaming what sounded like words that the microphones on the ground couldn't quite pick up, and soon he was hauled back up through the window, his back scraping along the jagged edges of the broken glass. "I… I'm not quite sure what we're seeing," a blonde reporter told her audience. "It appears that Iron Man and Thor are…" She visibly struggled to make sense of the image. "…trying to scare that man. We weren't sure why Tony Stark sent us all a message saying he'd be here today, but this seems to be part of what we were meant to see. Jim?"

A half-screen of a bald man appeared, and the new man pushed a pair of square glasses further up the bridge of his nose. "It certainly appears that way, although this is a departure from the usual…"

He was cut off by alarmed screams from the security tower half of the screen. "One moment, Jim. Something else is happening. It appears that… that the same man from before was just thrown out of the window again. He's still tied to that rope, but…"

"We've seen enough," Clint informed Jarvis, who switched off the screens. "So, who was your boy, Adam? The one who was wriggling like a worm on a fishing line? I'm going to find out one way or…"

Adam didn't even blink before blurting out a name. "Richard Shirley. And, yeah, he and I are both members of the Friends of Humanity. We hate mutants, but we'd never do anything illegal. We just try to get lawmakers to… to pass laws."

"Sure."

Adam tried to raise his hands, which were chained to the desk. "I'm innocent. Do you have any proof that I did anything? Any recordings?"

"Dunno. Don't really care, either. My teammates say you were plotting; that's good enough for me."

"I want a lawyer."

That thought made Clint chuckle. After all, a lawyer was part of the team that brought Steiner in in the first place. He was also probably one of those fake Avengers who weren't exactly acting like the real team at the moment. "Not likely." Clint's head spun, so he dropped it onto the table, nestling it into his arms – soft hoodie on one side and rough cast on the other. "So, what's your deal, buddy? You want more humans in the world or something?"

"We want to preserve humanity, to keep it pure." Clint yawned but motioned for Adam to keep going, so the other man did. "We, um, we want the government to control the threat of the mutant menace, and… and… are you alright?"

"Don't mind me. Keep going."

"And Inhumans and stuff," Adam finished lamely. "That was all I was going to say."

"Do you smell monkeys in here, or is it just me?" He didn't think it was his cast or the hoodie. It smelled like the room.

"Monkeys? I don't think so."

"Weird. Right. So you want the government to protect you from the big, scary mutants." He sniffed at the phantom smell, dismissed it as part of his fever, and tried to focus on his assignment. "Let me ask you something, then. With all the mutants 'and stuff' gone, who's protecting humanity from the bigger, scarier Alans? I mean aliens. Not the government, that's for sure. Aliens invade New York, the first thing the government wants to do is blow the place up." He mimed a mushroom cloud with his hands. "Pshooooh."

This threw Adam for a loop momentarily, but he did his best to stick to his guns. "Well, there are people like you. You're human, and you're amazing."

"That I am, no doubt. Very amazing," Clint said, tilting his head toward the one-way mirror that Natasha and possibly others were watching through, "and very human. This," he bent down to scoop up the discarded tissue pack and wave it in Adam's face, "is what humanity looks like. And this." He brandished his soggy cast decorated with uneven scrawls and doodles. "Sometimes humanity takes a sick day."

"Sure, but the mutants could kill us," Adam squeaked out, drawing back from the show-and-tell with wide eyes.

"The aliens will definitely kill us."

"Really?"

"Yup." Clint dropped the tissues again and leaned forward. "Don't tell anyone this, but there are at least three separate alien races planning to invade Earth right now."

Also leaning forward in spite of himself, Adam repeated, "Really?"

Needless to say, Clint didn't know of even one at the moment. "Now, we have some people who are prepared to deal with the threats. A combination of human and superhuman assets are working together like they should. Like most of them want to. When people like you start attacking them, though, suddenly those superhumans care a lot less about working with us. Why bother? They can just defect to another planet and let us burn next time there's a threat. Think about it. You breaking into someone's house could mean the difference between Earth's salvation or destruction. Or, ya know, they could kill you with their mutant powers. You can't keep targeting these guys and hoping they don't fight back. That's stupid. Really stupid. The ones that don't hurt you are the ones you shouldn't have targeted in the first place, and the ones that do fight back, well, like I said – you stand absolutely zero chance."

Per Natasha's advice, Clint needed to find something that resonated with the subject. Right now, Clint was feeling pathetic, as he'd mentioned a few times recently. He hoped that's how Adam felt. Anyone with that biography had to have at least a little self-doubt.

Something in this rambling did appear to be getting through, because Adam was weakening, slouching in on himself as much as he could while seated and handcuffed to a desk. It was easy, because these were designed to accommodate slouching. Slouching was encouraged in interrogations, because it symbolized defeat and a loss of self-worth, and it was a good sign for Clint's strategy (such as it was). Adam did still make one last weak effort. "But there should be laws."

"Fine. I don't care. Write to your Congressmen. Call them. Whatever. Just don't do whatever you and your bros have been planning."

"I haven't…"

"Yes, you have. Shut up. On second thought," Clint said, recalling the purpose of their little get-together, "start talking. Tell me what your FoH pals have been planning. FoH? Is that right? It sounds like 'foe.' See? Didn't it sound like I said the same word just now? Trust me, they were spelled different in my head. Anyway, you need to start talking. Tell me everything that you know about them so we can stop them from stopping the people who might save the world later." Nailed it.

Adam shifted in his chair and flinched at the sound of the chain links running against the desk ring. "What did you want to know, exactly?"

Take that, everyone! Guess we're finishing up Dog Cops tonight!

"Who are you talking to?" Adam asked. "Are there people watching us? And what's Dog Cops?"

"Only the greatest show ever. Duh, there are people watching. And I didn't realize that I said that out loud. I thought that was in my head, but forget that. I want to know everything." He said this last sentence in his best Sergeant Whiskers voice (while stroking imaginary whiskers). When he and his team re-watched this interrogation much later, it was widely agreed that this was a bad idea, and that the poor cat impression should not have paid off.

Nevertheless, Adam Steiner began to talk.