A/N: Set post-Iron Man 3, pre-The Winter Soldier.
Day 9: Buried Alive (Part 1 of 2). On an Avengers' mission, a bank collapses on Steve and Tony.
Tony was woken in the middle of the night by his alarm—not just any alarm, the Avengers emergency alarm he'd specifically programmed JARVIS not to ignore.
Which meant this was serious.
He flipped over, his left hand pawing at the side table in search of his phone. Having been up most of the night for a business meeting, Tony had only fallen asleep a few hours ago. Less than two, he realized as he located his phone and squinted at the bright screen.
"Whazzit, J?" Tony mumbled as he swiped at his stinging eyes.
"There is a man holding five tellers hostage as First American Bank on 6th."
Tony squinted at his phone again, this time absorbing the numbers as a time of day instead of just a delta of how long he'd been sleeping. "It's 8 AM. How are they…"
"They have been open for an entire hour, sir."
Ugh. Morning people. Tony sat upright and twisted out his aching back, prepping himself for another flight in his suit. As he did so, a thought struck him.
"Why aren't the police handling this?"
"The energy signature of the weapon reveals it is alien in origin. They are on the scene but have asked for your assistance, via SHIELD."
Tony groaned. "Tell the Eyepatch I'm on it, but that he better start figuring out why Damage Control missed all these weapons."
"I am on it as well, sir."
Tony pushed himself off his bed and made his way to the closet to change into his undersuit, while simultaneously ordering DUM-E to create a protein shake for him to grab on the way out. "Who else is around?" he asked as he shucked his shirt over his head.
"Just Captain Rogers, sir. Agents Barton and Romanoff are still on assignment, Thor is off-world and Dr. Banner returned on India on Monday."
Right. Well that was okay. He and Cap could handle one deranged idiot with a Chitauri weapon.
"Would you like me to request additional back-up, sir?" JARVIS asked a beat later.
"No, J," Tony said as he emerged from his closet and made his way out of the room. "Captain Spangles and I have it. Tell Fury I'm on my way."
"What's the situation?" he asked twenty minutes later, coming to a stop by Steve, who was leaning into the mobile SHIELD command center. He was still dressed in that god-awful Battle of New York suit, which Tony really needed to redesign one of these days. His shield was slung across his back, shiny and unmarred as ever.
"He used the gun to blast the door off the vault," Steve reported. "It triggered its time lock, which alerted the security company and then the police."
"Do we have eyes on there?"
"Not yet."
"How's the hostage negotiator fairing?"
Steve looked at him in surprise, to which Tony had just smirked. Sure, he'd given Fury a ton of flack about making them read manuals and attend a variety of frontline seminars. Despite the fact he'd pretended to be bored in each, he'd actually absorbed quite a bit.
"Hasn't been able to make contact."
There was a large crack, then a bolt of blue flashed in the sky above the bank.
"Captain," Hill said, sticking her head out of the van. "They just shot through the ceiling."
"I guess that's our cue," Tony said, turning to Steve.
"You should be able to get in through the back," Hill continued. "The Iron Man suit should be able to cut through the lock." She disappeared for a moment, then came back with a black box. "Stick that to the security sensor, and it'll trick it into thinking the door is still closed."
"Thanks," Steve said, sliding it into one of the pockets of his utility belt. He then looked up at Tony. "Ready?"
Tony dropped his faceplate. "Call it, Cap."
Hill had been right. A combination of the black box and Tony's finger laser had let them into the building. Now the two Avengers crept to the front room, where they could hear a man shouting loudly over a series of stifled sobs.
In the back hallway, just before entering, Steve motioned for Tony to take a look and report back. Tony peered around the corner, allowing JARVIS to do a quick scan, then gestured to where people were to Steve, who nodded.
Making contact one more time, Steve then mouthed and a split second later, he pointed toward the farthest teller station, where the phone was now ringing.
"No one answer!" the man shouted. "Keep loading up the vault."
"Please just let us go," a woman cried, out of their line of sight.
They heard the hum of a Chitauri weapon and the woman began to sob.
"Cover me," Steve ordered before stepping out into the main area.
"I'm not going to let you hurt all these people," he said, hands lifted to his shoulders but still more than capable of reaching his shield if need be. "Let them go and deal with me instead."
"I warned you not to breach!" As the man was talking, he pulled the barrel of the gun away from the floor, and trained it on the hostages as blue pulses began to shoot down the barrel.
Tony was firing up a repulsor, but Steve was slightly faster. He threw his shield at the weapon, knocking the shot off-course. It blasted through the side wall, far away from any hostage.
Somehow the man managed to keep his grip on weapon and was bringing it back to try again. That's when Tony suspected the armed man had to be super. At the speed Steve had thrown that shield, there was no way a mere human could have kept his grip.
That was also when Tony realized the Chitauri weapon was doing far more damage than he'd suspected. Even though there was a well-defined hole through the wall, deep cracks were emanating away from the center, causing the wall to begin to crumble and revealing deep fissures in the support beams beneath it. With one shot in the ceiling, another in the vault and now this one, they had to get these hostages out before the whole building came down.
"I got him," Steve shouted to Tony, snatching his shield out of the air before going to engage the man. "You get the hostages out."
"No!" the man bellowed, firing again, but this time, Steve had slung his shield in front of him and braced himself behind it.
The shield took the blast at point-blank range, but absorbed enough of the energy that Steve was only sent sliding a few feet back. He recovered quickly, pulling the shield across his body and backhanding the side of the weapon. While Tony hurried out of the hallway and into the vault, he recognized that Steve was pushing the man back, putting as much space as possible between him and the hostages.
As soon as Tony stepped into the main area, he raised his armed repulsor, just in case the man had a partner who was supervising the operation. A quick scan revealed no one like that in sight, and all the tellers just braced themselves and stuck their hands high into the air.
"I'm going to get you out of here," Tony said in Iron Man's mechanical voice. Then, he took a look at the group of them, which would be too many for him to carry at once. "Grab hands," he ordered.
They stuttered together, biting back sobs, and the moment they were all connected, Tony grabbed as many limbs as he could and took off flying toward the main glass doors. Behind him, the tellers shrieked at the fast pace, but according to JARVIS, all seemed to be maintaining their grip.
"To your left, sir," JARVIS intoned.
Tony saw the incoming blast in the HUD and dove toward the ground. The shot sailed harmlessly overhead and tore a hole in the wall to the right. As the structure creaked ominously, the wailing behind Tony increased in such intensity that JARVIS lowered the volume on the speakers. He wanted to check on Steve, to see how he'd let the blast be fired, but for once, Tony understood his current mission was the far more important one and stuck with it.
"We're coming out!" he shouted both into the comms, which SHIELD would be tuned to on the other end, and the external speakers as they sailed through the lobby. "Don't shoot!"
"No!" the man bellowed from behind him.
Tony braced himself for another shot, but none came. In the comms, there was a sharp collision of metal followed by a series of grunts.
"Just a little longer, Steve, and I'm coming back for you," Tony muttered, mostly to himself.
He then lifted his right hand as much as he could and fired at the glass door, knocking out the glass and most of the frame. Aware of the edges, he turned himself as much as possible to get the tellers through without additional injury. A little careful finagling from JARVIS ensured this fact.
Once outside, Tony flew well past the police barrier and deposited the tellers, all five thankfully unarmed, before quickly turning around to fly back into the bank.
The exact second he did so, he heard Steve yelp, and something metal clatter to the ground. Tony was back in the air the very next instant. He burst through the previous opening to find Steve crumpled on his knees, the man pointing the Chitauri weapon at his head.
Tony fired his gauntlet in the man's direction, trusting JARVIS to make it count, as he went to cover Steve. The repulsor blast should have landed long before the man could have pulled the trigger, but yet, it somehow didn't. As the man was falling backward, the gun lit up and fired a blue bolt, which hit square in the center of the ceiling, where the joists intersected. Unlike the previous blasts, this one didn't stop when the man's hand fell away from the trigger, and tore a long vertical line down the side of the building as it fell to the floor.
The most awful groan tore through the air, and Tony spared a split second to look up to see the beams tilt in, and the entire ceiling begin to disintegrate.
Hoping Steve was healthy enough to move, Tony bundled him into his arms, shield included, and took off for the door.
He felt the suit jerk to the side as JARVIS avoided a large beam, and they were just drifting back to the original course when something crashed into his legs and knocked him to the ground.
Stunned by the harsh impact, Tony was just aware enough to realize Steve had disappeared from his arms.
"Ste—" he began, but was cut off by something else landing on top of him.
It took Tony only a second to realize it was a person dressed in a spangly outfit and not another beam. He fought hard, trying to flip himself out from under Steve, who now splayed over him and closing his fist to call his shield.
"I have a suit, you bast—"
That was the last syllable Tony was able to get out before the groaning reached fever pitch and the building collapsed around them.
To be continued on Day 13: Hiding Injury, which I think is pretty self-explanatory.
Up next: Day 10: "I'm Sorry. I Didn't Know". Not long after defecting to SHIELD, Natasha is triggered by an everyday object at the Barton farm.
Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!
