Civil War – A Personal Turn
Pym Industries
January 20, 2015 – 8:36 PM
=Tango IV, do you have eyes on the target?=
An operative hiding on the roof of a building across the street from the Pym Industries headquarters held a pair of infrared binoculars up to his face and scanned through the walls of what they had determined to be the location of Hank Pym's main lab. It displayed the heat signatures of two adult males. One, obviously, was Hank Pym. The other, they hoped, was Scott Lang.
He was unregistered, and they planned on taking him in, hopefully without any trouble.
The operative switched the lenses to a special DNA recognition that was connected to the Apprehension satellites. It was a match to Lang. "That's an affirmative for Lang, Control."
=Roger that. Remember, you're just there for backup. Director Trent wants our involvement kept to a minimum.=
"Roger that. Over and out." The squad leader stood from his kneeling position and turned to the only Gifted in the group. "Proceed when ready, ma'am."
Civil war, despite its name, was anything but civil. It had taken a violent turn just a few days ago with the slaying of Bantam. In the days that followed, the number of hero on hero battles increased substantially. Depending on how powerful the combatants were, property damage ranged from a few broken windows and dented cars, to entire buildings being wrecked and streets being torn up. If not for SHIELD running crowd control, there would have been many more casualties than there actually were.
Civil war was a personal thing. It divided households and ruined friendships. People who saw each other as family just weeks ago were now bitter enemies. Charging Gifted's with the lion's share of the apprehension work turned the war from a battle of ideologies to a battle for survival. When desperation and survival instincts kicked in, there was no tactic that was too dishonorable. Even tricks not used against supervillains were on the table. Nothing was out of the question.
In war, anyone could have been a victim. Anyone was liable to become a statistic. Men. Women. Children
Children like the Young Avengers. Patriot, Hawkeye, Wiccan, Speed, Iron Lad, Stature. A group of young heroes ranging from twelve to seventeen years of age, fighting the good fight and living up to the example set by their biggest heroes, the Avengers. They loved them so much that they took on their motifs and likenesses. But, none of them embodied this more than Stature.
Stature's real name was Cassandra Lang. She was the youngest by far, only being twelve. She had the ability to grow to brobdingnagian sizes and shrink to a microscopic level, both at will. She chose this power set because she adored both Ant-Man and Wasp.
She was also the daughter of Ant-Man, aka Scott Lang.
Scott didn't know that Cassie was a superhero, though he did know that she was friends with Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, who tutored her in math. He didn't find out that Cassie was a hero until he saw her on the news this evening. She was in handcuffs and being led inside a SHIELD transport.
He felt sicker than he ever had in his entire life.
His daughter, his little girl, was in prison in another dimension. It went far and beyond every parent's worst nightmare, because he knew that there was a chance he wouldn't see her again. After everything he had done and sacrificed during his captivity at Hydra, he couldn't stomach the thought of her being locked up for life by the very people who saved them.
Distraught and at his wit's end, he went to Hank for some kind of sage advice. Hank, to his dismay, had none. What could he say? Attempting to break into the 42 prison was a suicide mission, one that was not only going to get Scott killed, but Cassie, as well.
"What do I do, Hank?" he pleaded, almost to the brink of tears. His eyes glistened with woebegoneness, making Hank turn away.
Hank opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out. He saw Cassie as much as a daughter as he saw Scott was a son. "Talk to Ms. Walters. Cassie's still a minor, so maybe there's something we can do. Maybe convince SHIELD to release her into your custody, some kind of house arrest."
"How? She's unregistered. They arrest her before they try to listen." He sunk down into one of the stools by Hank's workstation, shoulders slumped and face weary. "Face it, the only way Cassie is getting out is if they can badger her into registering."
"I don't know what else to suggest," Hank admitted glumly. "Outside of breaking her out, or hoping Captain America does…" It was possible. A long shot, but possible. There was the real possibility that SHIELD neutralized her powers somehow prior to locking her up. "I wish I could say more."
"I know." The silence that fell upon the lab was permeable. Even the rattling of test tubes and soft skittering of insects in their containers seemed muted. "I have to call her mother."
"My phone's over here if you need it."
Any reply Scott had was cut off by the elevator dinging. "Company?"
Hank shrugged and stood to greet whoever it was. The doors slid open silently and Janet walked inside, flanked by six Apprehension agents wielding large black assault rifles. Janet was missing her bubbly, easy going demeanor. Her expression was steely, bordering on cold.
"Scott Lang, you're in violation of the Gifted Human Registration Act," she stated in a clipped professional tone. "Surrender yourself to SHIELD custody or we'll take you in by force."
Hank and Scott shared the same utterly horrified expression. "Janet?" Hank approached her and tried to touch her shoulder, but had a rifle barrel pointed in his face for his effort. "Hey! Janet, what the hell is this?!"
She ignored him and never took her eyes off of Scott. The agents moved further into the lab, five encircling him and blocking all exits, while one took old of Hank and kept him pinned in a corner. "You're under arrest, Scott. Give up now. No one wants a fight."
The smart thing would have been to just give himself up. He was outnumbered, outgunned and had Hank's safety to worry about. With this on top of what happened to his daughter just an hour ago, Scott was on edge already and wasn't open for doing the sensible thing. "Not a chance." He stood and stared her down, jaw set with anger and determination.
Her arm lifted. "Last chance, Scott." Her hand was then surrounded by a golden yellow glow, and the low him of her Wasp's Sting charging filled in the tense silence.
He froze in place. He didn't know what had happened to her, or that she had even registered, but this was wrong. He had to escape. His eyes shot around the room, looking for even the smallest crack he could slip out of. There was only a barely open window just behind on of the agents.
Around the room, containers of insects were on display. Not just ants, which were Hank's calling card, but also spiders, wasps, cockroaches beetles, praying mantises and yellow jackets. There was a mason jar full of giant cockroaches from Brazil right within reach. "I'll take that chance," he said before suddenly picking up and hurling the jar of roaches at Janet.
"NO!" Hank screamed as she fired a sting and blew the jar up. Roaches went flying in every direction, some landing on the floor, and others landing on the agents. They jumped around and furiously tried to knock the insects loose.
The distraction worked like a charm, and Scott managed to grab his helmet and shrink down. He hopped on a roach and flew out of an open window.
"He's getting away, you idiots!" Janet shrunk down and sped after him.
It was a poor choice of transportation, but it was the only one he had. The roach was both slower than she was, and was only able to fly a short distance before it had to land. Scott directed it toward a manhole cover and leaped into the sewer. He grew back to normal size and sprinted deeper into the underground maze.
This wasn't the same Janet. Normally, she would have been reluctant to go anywhere near the sewer, but now, he could hear the buzzing of her wings growing louder.
Golden bio-electric blasts erupted from her hands and struck him in across his back and legs. He screamed out and fell in a heap. "Jan, please!" he pleaded.
She grew to normal size and landed in front of him. Nothing was right about the way she was looking at him. Even though her yellow goggles were covering her eyes, he could envision the cold stare she was giving him.
=We're en route to your location, Wasp,= reported one of the SHIELD agents. In the distance, boots were splashing through the sewer water.
She turned her head for a brief moment in that direction, allowing Scott a chance to get some distance. He kicked her hard in the knee, and then again in the midsection. She keeled over, giving him time to climb to his feet and grab onto her. "I'm sorry, but you're not taking him in." He picked her up off her feet and threw her face first into the wall. She grunted on impact and slumped to the floor.
As he sprinted away, he felt a sick feeling settling down in his stomach. Janet was one of his best friends, and he just threw her into a wall like she was a supervillianess. This was insane. It was all insane.
"This way!" he heard from further down corridor.
Crap! They're heading right for me! He ducked down an adjacent corridor and shrunk down. Five gargantuan agents stampeded by, splashing up light green sewer water with their heavy footsteps.
He allowed himself a relieved sigh and sunk to his knees. He was safe for right then, but he still felt sick. "Why is this happening?" he asked himself. Just a few days ago, Janet was waffling between registering or not. Today, she's hunting him down like he was a wanted murderer.
This was just one of many battles where friends were hinting friends like criminals. Scott hadn't committed a crime. Neither had Cassie. He hadn't stolen anything, raped anyone or committed a murder. He only wanted to do what he had admittedly grown to love, that was fight crime. It was his way to atone for the mistakes he made during his time with the Masters of Evil, as well as for his role in the Avengers' deaths.
Now, he couldn't do that – not without a license. It was one thing to want to legitimize their work. They were volunteers, as were firefighters. However, firefighters were trained and held accountable. He understood that the same needed to apply to superheroes. At the same time, criminalizing them and initiating manhunts for those that refused was too much. There was too much to lose.
"I found him!" one shouted. "This way!"
"Crap!" Scott ran as fast as he could along an inch wide ledge deeper into the sewer. Up ahead, he could hear water falling into a large reservoir.
The water drowned out the buzzing from Janet's wings, so he didn't know she was catching up to him until she rammed into him at full speed. He fell face first and slid to a painful stop just a few short inches from the lip of the reservoir.
She was up quickly and unleashed an unrelenting barrage of Wasp's Stings that struck every part of his body that was visible. His costume was in tatters and his helmet was destroyed. Blood poured from open cuts on his face and pooled under his head.
Her boots scuffed against the cement floor as she stalked toward him.
"All… all I wanted to do," he struggled to choke out, "was help people."
"You want to help?" she replied. Her arm raised toward him and became aglow with another Wasp Sting. "Stay down."
His body screamed for him to just stay down and let them take him. But, he couldn't. Not while Cassie would want him to keep fighting. "I… I can't." Slowly, he staggered to a knee. "Cassie! Cassie's in there and I gotta get her out." His teeth gritted with determination and he rose to his feet, albeit shakily. "Your people took her in, you know that, Jan? Your new friends arrested a twelve year old girl!"
"I know," she replied calmly, casually. "I was the one who cuffed her."
He froze. His eyes grew saucers, his expression glazed with sheer disbelief. "You … you what?" He felt his blood boil. "My little girl is –!"
"Cut the crap, Scott. This is the way the world works now. Either evolve with it or get left behind with the rest of the weak." She grew to normal size and stepped toward him. At that size, a single blast would vaporize him.
He quickly regrew and tackled her to the floor. "Wake up, Janet!" he roared as they wrestled on the ground. "Think about what you did! You arrested my daughter, for God's sake! Doesn't that matter?!"
She kicked him off of her and kicked to her feet. "It's the law, Scott."
He lunged at her before she could shrink and kept her off balance with a barrage of punches and kicks that were in no way accurate, or even good. Luckily, Janet wasn't anything close to a competent fighter.
Scott managed to keep her at bay, and even tagged her a few times. With every hit, he hated himself more. With every hit, he was burying himself deeper in the muck the entire situation had become. Civil war was about friend vs friend. It drew a line in the sand that only desperation led men to cross it.
Every fiber of Scott's being was screaming for him to stop and try and talk this out. But, this wasn't Janet he was fighting. He didn't know who she was, really, but it wasn't the woman he met through Hank. It wasn't the woman he spent months with in Hydra captivity. It wasn't the woman he saved the world with.
"This way!" Reinforcements were coming. His time was almost up, and his body was about to give out. "Hands up, Lang!" The five agents rushed into the corridor, rifles trained on him. "It's over, Lang."
In war, there were two kinds of men. Those that believed in their cause so strongly that they died for it, and those smart enough to when it was time to give up. Scott was among the latter. He knew he was going to prison either way. At least this way, he was going to walk in under his own, albeit shattered, dignity.
His arms rose as his head sunk. "I give up."
Janet moved behind him and cuffed his hands together. "Scott Lang, you're under arrest for violating the Gifted Human Registration Act. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the a court of –"
Suddenly, the five agents were bombarded with gunfire. They fell almost simultaneously in one bloody heap. Before he could say a word, two more gunshots rang out and struck Janet in each eye.
"NO! Janet!" Scott tried to shrink out of the cuffs, but they shrunk along with him. He dropped to his knees to see if he was still alive.
"Relax. Her goggles are bulletproof."
After seeing that she was still breathing, Scott looked up and found Bucky and a blonde woman making their way toward him. The cuffs were broken with ease. "Uh, not to sound ungrateful," Scott started, "but why are you here? I thought you were in Washington. And why are you here? I thought you were a SHIELD agent." Bucky grimaced and watched Janet rise to her feet and ripped her goggles off to reveal, not her normal chocolate brown eyes, but a pair of eerie, glowing blue eyes. "Wha-what the hell?"
"You're under arre-AAAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!" The woman accompanying Bucky had somehow managed to slip past both of them and electrocuted Janet into unconsciousness with what looked like bracelets.
"Тихий, немного ошибка," she said with a smug little smirk.
{Quiet, little bug.}
It made Scott feel sicker. Her eyes were unnatural, chilling. He hadn't seen anything like it before. "What did they do to you, Janet?"
"Knowing SHIELD, nothing good." Bucky unzipped her costume and started to feel around.
Scott caught a glimpse of her tight, sweat drenched body, and her white bra, and started blushing. "Wait, what do you think you're doing?!"
"She has a tracker in her suit. All SHIELD agents do," he explained. He felt around the underside of her gold chest-plate and produced a small circular tracer. "We need to get you two somewhere safe. Can't do that if SHIELD can follow her." He tossed the tracer into the reservoir, where it was flushed down into an underground pipe.
"I have seen those eyes before, James," Yelena said. Scott and Bucky turned to her with raised eyebrows. "Sitwell."
"Christ." Bucky picked Janet's head up and smacked it against the hard cement. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to knock her out cold. "Cognitive recalibration." He opened her eyelid to reveal that the eerie blue glow from Loki's scepter control was fading and giving way to her natural hazel hue.
"What? She was under mind control?" Yelena nodded. Scott knew who she was, but was going to give Bucky's judgment of character the benefit of the doubt right now. Besides, he was far to hurt and tired to try and fight it out with her.
He would lose anyway.
"Why?"
Bucky shrugged and zipped Janet back up before lifting her into his arms. "Don't know. I don't know as of yet what SHIELD's reasons and intentions are. I do know that if Van Dyne was under control, there are probably quite a few other registered heroes being forced to hunt down other heroes."
Scott took his helmet off and tucked the mangled piece of metal and plastic under his arm. Perplexity was etched on his features. "Why? What would they, whoever did this, have to gain?"
"Guess we'll find out soon, won't we?" He cocked his head toward the main sewer corridor, gesturing for Scott to follow him.
There were three parties in war. Those who fought the war, those who suffered from war, and those who profited from war. The heroes were the soldiers; they were on the front lines, fighting against each other with unnatural ferocity over a difference in ideology and opinion. The civilians were those that suffered from this war. Their homes, cars, lives were destroyed with each battle. Sometimes, their lives came to an end. It was only natural.
The government and SHIELD were those behind the scene who profited from war. The US government gained a Gifted army that could crush any who dared oppose the United States and its interests. SHIELD, well, no one but a chosen few knew how they benefited from this war. But soon, everyone would know.
Bucky led Scott to a long abandoned part of the sewer system that had belonged to the villain known as the Mole Man. What he found was amazing.
It was a secret base, filled with unregistered heroes. It was the headquarters of the resistance, led by Captain America.
"See why I didn't want SHIELD to be able to follow?"
Scott nodded and watched him place her on an empty bed.
"Can we get some medical attention?!" he shouted to the assembled group of heroes. A pair of female doctors hurried over and began to tend to Scott and Janet's wounds. "Listen, Lang, SHIELD is up to something and I'm heading up to Canada to find out what exactly. When you get a chance, call Agent Morse on this number," he handed him a number hastily scrawled on a folded up piece of paper, "and tell her that I said to get out of SHIELD as soon as she can."
Scott nodded and took the number. "I will."
"Once SHIELD finds out you two got away, you're on their hit list. Watch out for each other." With one final nod, Bucky and Yelena vanished back into the sewers, as quietly as they arrived.
Scott felt his sickness dissipate, then it returned full force. Janet wasn't the government stooge that he feared she had become, but SHIELD was every bit as shady and malicious as he feared they were.
Originally, the victims of this war were the civilians stuck in the middle of two impossibly powerful forces deadset on destroying one another. Now, the dynamic had changed. There was a new victim class – the soldiers.
In war, the only winners were those behind the scenes. When they manipulated war for their own gain, every death that resulted was tantamount to murder. SHIELD was controlling the strings, and the Gifted's and the government were their puppets. No one knew they were being manipulated; Scott feared that they wouldn't believe him anyway. Trent had made sure to keep SHIELD's involvement as of late to a minimum.
Scott didn't think the fact that this move was in perfect correlation with the beginning of the war was a coincidence. He was starting to believe that nothing that was happening was a coincidence anymore.
His eyes cast over the sleeping Janet. So beautiful, even with the one bruise that was developing from when he threw her into the wall. I'm sorry, Jan.
His mind briefly drifted back to Hank's lab. There were only five of those SHIELD agents in the sewer, which meant that there was one still with Hank. Hopefully he'll leave soon.
"Hey! Does anyone have a phone I can borrow?"
