Date: January 12th, 2024, 23:31
Location: New York City, Earth-1
POV: Y/N Stark,
Fresh air from outside rushes through my car window as I'm driving through the quiet streets on the outskirts of New York City. The rhythmic sound of the car's blinker goes off as I turn onto a small parking lot belonging to a large run-down warehouse, deserted and covered in runes, hidden for the eyes of mundanes. I park my car in the makeshift garage of the building and step out, immediately making my way inside. As I walk into the main hall, I lay my hand on one of the runes that are next to a closed door. The rune lights up red and the illusion of the barren warehouse dissipates and turns into a beautiful Gothic-style hall. I open up the door and walk inside.
I greet some of my friends who are working behind their workstations and walk further into the building. Past the ops center, I see Bucky waiting for me at the entrance of the meeting room. "Hey Bucket!", I dart inside and notice I'm to first to return from the mission. "How did you manage to get back first? You had 4 police cars behind you at some point". I shrug, "No need to be so surprised, I can be stealthy if I want to be...". My standard spot in the back of the room is still empty, so I rush there and take a seat, making sure to save a seat for my debrief-snack supplier.
While waiting, I glance around the room, trying to find anything to keep my mind from over-thinking about what happened on the mission. The building we are in right now is supplied by The Clave, the political body made up of all active Shadowhunters. Basically, Shadowhunters are humans born with angel blood. Downworlders are said to be the demonic counterpart of Shadowhunters and are part human and part demon. They include werewolves, vampires, warlocks, and faeries. Shadowhunters and Downworlders are on the brink of war, ever since the faerie queen has betrayed the alliance. The Seelie Queen accuses the Clave of kidnapping downworlders and making them disappear. Which to be fair, I wouldn't even be surprised of by now. The Clave has been shady ever since their grab of power over the Shadow-World.
On my right is Bruce, who is diligently working on the after-action report of the mission, preparing it for Bucky to present it to the rest of the group when they get back. After a couple of minutes of waiting, the meeting room begins to fill up with team members who took part in the mission.
The first three to arrive are Steve, Carol, and Sam, who are in a heated conversation with each other about the botched mission. Only seconds after them, Clint and Alec come in. At last, Thor sneaks inside with a box of Pop-Tarts. He glances around the room and makes eye contact with me. "Lady Y/N, as requested", he says, rushing to his seat, handing me our favorite snack. "Thank you, Thor, you're a life safer"
Bucky and Alec take their place in front of the monitor and start the debriefing now that the team is complete. Both of them have been team leaders for a while now. However, Alec rarely joins us for missions and remains at the Institute.
We all looked at the two men nervously, knowing they were probably going to scold us for screwing up a simple mission. The only job we had was not to draw any attention and guess what we did. We 'kidnapped' a woman in the middle of the street and the police were called. Yeah, I think that falls under "drawing attention".
"I hope all of you here realize that all of you have royally fucked up," Bucky started, "Not only have you alerted the local authorities, but the incident also ended up in the news. Thanks to Alec and Isabelle, we have been able to prevent any further images from the attack to leak, however, this can never happen again."
"We have to keep the Downworld a secret from the mundane world and these kinds of incidents with a lot of witnesses are hard to explain to the public. So far it looks like the police are blaming it on a local gang, thanks to some persuasion from the vampire coven," Alec followed up.
The team was originally set up by Alec in collaboration with the Clave. Our job? Help in situations where The Clave had no authority due to laws set up in place. This mostly included crimes committed in the Shadow or mundane world or when the two worlds collide. Lately, however, we have been getting more cases since the Clave is too occupied with the disappearance of Downworlders.
The latest mission given to us was supposed to be relatively simple. A member of a local vampire coven went rogue and turned a young woman. The coven themselves were unable to find their rogue, so they requested the Clave's help. The vampire in question was arrested by the Clave, and we were tasked with finding the confused and blood-hungry woman.
At first, everything went according to plan. We found the woman at the Pandemonium Club, a nightclub in the city where Downworlders and mundanes mingled. Unfortunately, she noticed us and tried to run away. However, she had little to no control over her blood-lust yet, and she attacked a mundane on the street. We were too late to interfere, and people on the street noticed the attack. They panicked and called the police. As a result, we had to flee from the scene after kidnapping the woman. Well, technically arresting, although I don't know if we have the authority to call it that. We decided to split up, scatter and meet up at the hideout later. Yeah, well, everything kinda went off-track after this. On a positive note, I heard the victim survived.
"Y/N... Y/N! You good?" a loud voice erupted through the room. I glance up and see the team has already left the meeting room, and Bucky is the only one left standing at the other end of the table. He looks at me, concern written over his face. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, just thinking about what happened. Nothing to worry about". He nods and walks out of the room. I pull out a small bottle, taking a sip of the red liquid in the flask, sighing contently from the taste.
Suddenly, a pair of arms embrace me as Wanda hugs me from behind. "The rest of the team is going to watch a movie. Do you want to join?" my gorgeous girlfriend whispers in my ear. I tilt my neck backward, my head now in the crook of her neck while I whisper in her ear, "Only if I can get some hot chocolate milk"
"Sure", she kisses me on my forehead and then releases her hold on me, helping me up from my awkward cross-legged sitting position on the uncomfortable chairs in the meeting room. She grabs me by my hand and drags me to the kitchen, where she gets two mugs and gets prepares some hot chocolate for both of us while I go to make some popcorn.
Afterward, we both walk to the living room. "There you guys are. Took you long enough!", Sam yells out from his position on the couch. I place the 2 large bowls with popcorn on the table for grabs and let myself collapse onto the couch, my arms open for Wanda to snuggle into me.
The movie starts, but after about 1 hour, I slowly lose focus again and I think about the team. We have Steve, Bucky, Carol, Sam, and Clint, all 5 of whom are mundane. The first three with superpowers of some sort. Steve runs around with a shield, Bucky has a metal arm, and Carol blasts people with energy beams. Next, we have Sam, who has mechanical wings that he goes around and fights people with, and Clint is just stupidly accurate with a bow.
We also have Alec and his sister, Isabelle. Both are Shadowhunters, who are exceptionally well trained in hand-to-hand combat and several different martial weapons. Most of the time, they don't join us for missions, but they are our main line of communication with the New York Institute and the Clave.
We also have Bruce, who is a literal walking science experiment, although he remains skeptical of his abilities and therefore remains at the warehouse. And then we have Thor, Son of Odin, God of Thunder bla, bla, bla, something like that. However, he is one of my closest friends, so I usually let it slide.
Last, we have my girlfriend, who is the actual Scarlet Witch and uses chaos magic to control people's minds and alter reality. I know it's really freaking cool. And then we have me, Y/N Stark, a vampire taken in by the team after my father, Tony, was killed by an assassin.
Suddenly, R.I.V.A.'s voice calls out, "Mr. Barnes. Mr. Lightwood requests your presence at the New York Institute. Something about a new mission. He says it's quite urgent."