A/N:

Just to jog your memory (cause it's been a while, believe me, I know) the hunt that brought Sam and Dean to NY was for Richard and Barbara MacAllen and their teenage daughter Abigail.

FYI – There's a brief mention of verbal contracts that I've kinda just pulled out of the air to suit my whims. I don't know anything about laws and contracts, so sue me. (HA!)

Thank you once again to morrismsteph for beta-reading this chapter! Without her this chapter would be full of embarrassingly bad punctuation, logic holes, and unanswered questions. Any mistakes are obviously my own. :S

"I'm dead, aren't I?" Dean's voice was faint and breathy as he stared in awe at his surroundings, completely overwhelmed. "I've somehow died again and because I'm so friggin' awesome this is my new heaven."

Everywhere he looked his eyes were blessed by visions of polished chrome, glistening steel, and gleaming rubber. Dean had seen a lot of amazing shit in his day, but being in Tony Stark's state of the art garage surrounded by his mind-blowing car collection was a religious experience. If he hadn't already known about Chuck, the glorious beauty before him would've made him believe in a higher power.

Dean ignored Sam's 'Keep it in your pants' and slowly, reverently, ventured forth among the machines. A veritable sea of makes, models, and colours were all within stroking distance and each vehicle was absolute perfection. He had the insane urge to smash them up, just so he could experience the absolute pleasure and intimacy of putting them back together, piece by piece.

He didn't realized he had started whimpering until Sam said, "Alright, this is getting inappropriate."

Sam took Dean by the shoulders and steered him towards the Impala, which was parked at the back of the garage. "Let's get our gear and get out before you start molesting anymore of Mr. Stark's stuff."

"It's not molestation if they want it."

Sam watched as Dean ran a hand smoothly (Sam's brain refused the word sensually) over the hood of a black and white 69' Camaro and could swear he saw a full-bodied shiver run through his brother. "If we've died, then watching you get off on cars is my hell."

"Don't listen to him, sweetheart," Dean comforted a 1954 steel grey Mustang as they made their way closer to the Impala. "Samuel's a philistine." He looked at Sam pretentiously.

Sam shook his head, done with his ridiculous brother. He grabbed the keys from Dean and wretched open the Impala's trunk and secret compartment. "We've got the knife. What else do you want to bring to SHIELD?"

No response. He looked up at Dean's silence and saw his brother glaring murderously at the driver's side of the Impala.

"What's with the face?"

Dean's right eye twitched as he growled out, "Some dead man gouged my Baby."

Sam went to look and winced at the small dent (definitely not a gouge) on the door. Dean's face reddened and his breathing grew heavy as rage consumed him.

"Dean, relax, it's okay," Sam tried to quickly placate his melodramatic brother. "It'll be fine. I'm sure Mr. Stark will let you use his tools to fix her up when we get back. She'll be good as new by this time tomorrow."

Dean said nothing as he turned on his heel and stomped his way to the elevator.

Sam hurriedly grabbed some gear, locked the car, and followed his brother. "Dean, you're overreacting. Just be cool."

"Cool? I'm a goddamn cucumber, Sam." Dean glared at the elevator doors, fists clenched at his sides, and panted angrily the rest of the ride up to the communal floor.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, Dean yelled, "STARK! Your goddamn valet smashed up my baby!"

Tony looked up from his tablet confused, "Who what now?"

Dean, his forehead vein pulsing, stated slowly and dangerously, "Your. Goddamn. Asshole. Valet. Smashed. Up. My. Car."

"At best, it's a minor dent with vague smash-like aspirations, Dean," Sam corrected, trying to tone down his brother's reaction.

Tony shook his head. "No, Happy parked your car in my personal garage. The valet didn't touch it. There's no way Happy damaged your car. I let him drive my cars, and if he was a denter, I wouldn't let him near them." He shrugged and said dismissively, "You've must've dinged it on something beforehand."

Dean was maybe the most appalled and insulted Sam had ever seen him at the insinuation he drove around dinging his car all over the place.

"I do not ding my car on shit!"

"Sir, if I may?" The calming voice of Jarvis interrupted. "I have reviewed the garage's surveillance footage and it appears DUM-E is responsible for the damage to Mr. Winchester's vehicle."

Tony's shoulders dropped and he muttered, "Of course, he is. Why wouldn't he be? He's really living up to his name."

That brought Dean up short, "Who the hell is DUM-E?"

Looking at Dean, Tony explained, "DUM-E is a bot in my workshop. He was my first Artificial Intelligence. I wrote most of his code when I was 'under the weather', so he's got a chronic case of the derp. I have no idea what he would've been doing in the garage, though. Jarvis?"

In response, the TV in the lounge area flicked on and what was clearly surveillance footage of the garage began playing.

Sam and Dean heard the machine before they saw it. The whirring of gears accompanied the hiss of hydraulics as the bot made its way through the garage. Their eyes were glued to the screen in anticipation of another of Tony Stark's mind-blowing technological masterpieces.

Dean was expecting nothing less than a humanoid robo-cop/terminator. He was severely disappointed when the creature that rolled into the frame looked like a beefed up arcade claw.

"Jesus, man, how drunk, stoned, and /or tripping were you?"

"Yes." Tony's succinct reply pretty much summed it up.

They watched as DUM-E zoomed around the garage, ignoring all of the cars until he got to the Impala. He stopped and then slowly wheeled a little closer, emitting a curious little beep at the new addition to the garage.

Dean braced himself for the moment the science fair reject attacked his baby, only to be confused when the thing erupted with excited beeps and wheeled a few feet away to retrieve a fire extinguisher stationed in the corner. As soon as the precious was in its claw, the demented appliance began twirling like a shotput launcher.

"The hell is it doing?!"

"That's his happy dance. He's kind of obsessed with fire extinguishers. It's a problem. He was banned from touching any of the extinguishers in the lab. Apparently, he's found a loophole and fallen off the wagon."

Dean glared at the fond note in Tony's voice. "It looks like an arcade claw with rabies."

Clearly too euphoric to pay attention to collateral damage, DUM-E twirled his way towards the elevator, bashing the fire extinguisher into the side of the Impala with a horrible crunch, which had both Tony and Dean sympathy-flinching. Not noticing he'd hit the car, or more likely just not caring, DUM-E continued on until he twirled his way out of the frame. They could hear his happy beeps and then another ominous bang-smash as he exited the garage off camera.

Jarvis flicked off the TV.

Dean looked over at Sam, who had some of the biggest heart eyes he'd ever seen. Trust his gigantic marshmallow of a brother to fall in love with the stupidest robot that could.

Turning to Tony, Dean aggressively demanded, "Well?"

"Simple mind, simple pleasures?" Wincing with guilt that his DUM-E damaged such a beautiful Impala, Tony offered, "I can bang the dent out for you no problem. Maybe even make some upgrades." Seeing the affronted look on Dean's face at the mere suggestion, he huffed, "OR you can have access to my tools, and I won't touch your precious baby."

"Fine."

"Fine. Now, Happy is waiting downstairs to take you two to SHIELD."

"Wait, we're not all going together?" The slightly childish question slipped out of Sam.

"We were going to Brady Bunch it, but Steve and Bucky wanted to take their bikes (pretty sure Bucky just likes feeling the wind through his hair) and the assassination twins apparently couldn't wait any longer to return to the mothership. I've gotta go wrangle Bruce, so we'll meet you all there. You two can either have Happy drive you or you can risk driving your completely totaled Impala."

"How are you guys going to get there?" Dean asked, not liking the prospect of being chauffeured by Happy.

"The bus," Tony deadpanned, walking away to retrieve Bruce.

Never before had Happy hated the fact that his boss liked to drive himself around. Tony had opted to take his Maybach Exelero in the hopes that the drive would somehow cheer Dr. Banner up. Despite having had a 10 minute head start, Happy had been passed by Tony and Bruce 15 minutes ago.

"Alright, out. Both of you."

Happy's brusque voice came through the speakers. Not once during the drive from the tower to SHIELD did he lower the partition separating him from the delinquents in the back.

"Aww. Don't be like that, Stonehenge."

"Dean!" Sam hurried to apologize to Happy. "Ignore my brother, Mr. Hogan, he's a jerk-"

"-Bitch."

"-Thank you for the ride. We appreciate it."

"Just get out."

The millisecond they were out of the car, Happy made to peel away down the street with an impressive squealing of tires and burning of rubber. However, because New York city traffic was already jammed up at 8:00 a.m., he made it about 15 feet before he had to slam on the brakes or risk ploughing into neighbouring cars, all of which were taxis and honked at him for almost t-boning them. Sam and Dean could see Happy slump down in his seat trying to hide from the pissed off cabbies.

"That was satisfying."

"You're still an asshole….but, yeah," Sam had to agree.

Turning towards SHIELD's entrance, they were met with the blandest, most non-descript office building they'd ever seen.

"Is this the right place?" Sam looked for any identifying features.

"Yeah, look," Dean pointed to the SHIELD insignia engraved on the door handle. The logo was maybe the size of a quarter and was the only feature alluding to the purpose of the building. Paranoid bastards.

"May I help you?" A polite voice asked the brothers as they stepped into the building's lobby, which consisted solely of a receptionist, her desk, and a door.

"Yes, hello, we are here to see Agent Coulson. We're Sam and Dean Winchester. I think we might've been dropped off at the wrong door though," Sam explained.

While a valiant effort, the receptionist's attempt to mask her skepticism at that premise needed work. Sam stood a little straighter at her reaction, while Dean did not give a flying.

Maintaining her polite streak, she requested, "Just one moment, please," and picked up her phone to dial Coulson's assistant. "Hello, Ms. Lewis? It's Jacqueline from Reception. I have two men here stating they have a meeting with Agent Coulson - Sam and Dean Winchester. Are you able to confirm?"

"Yeah, Jackie, they're actually supposed to be in said meeting right now. What are they doing at reception?" Darcy shook her head, "Nevermind, doesn't matter. I'll come get them myself and take them up. Just a sec." Darcy hung up and quickly made her way to retrieve the two new mystery men.

As Coulson's assistant, Darcy had more inside scoops than she could've ever dreamed. Generally, whatever Coulson knew, Darcy knew too. Over the year and half she'd worked for him, the two of them had developed a flawless system and were a great team. Darcy was trusted with information and papers that surpassed the clearance of even the Avengers. It was rare that she was left out of the loop. Whether that was because Coulson needed her assistance or the fact that she almost always 'forgot' to turn the comm off connecting his phone to hers, enabling her to eavesdrop on his conversations, didn't matter. Darcy was always informed, is the point. Except this time. She had no idea what was going on. She'd seen the news, like any other person on the planet, and had seen yesterday's news footage of two guys fighting the whatever-it-was after the Avengers had barely made a dent. She was smart enough to connect the dots. The two men meeting with the Avengers, Coulson, and Fury were obviously the men from yesterday, but she didn't actually know who they were or what they had been fighting. Very frustrating. One thing she did know, was that they had to be the reason behind her boss' most recent and bizarre request. Before coming into work this morning, he had asked her to retrieve the best pie New York had to offer and strategically place a few of them all over the office. Very weird. She huffed and puffed as she quickly made her way down towards the lobby.

The receptionist hung up and gave them a polite smile. "Someone will be down in just a moment."

The few beats of awkward silence following that statement were interrupted by a woman barreling out of a hidden panel on the other side of the room. A panel which immediately sealed back up once she stepped through and became completely indistinguishable from the rest of the smooth wall.

Sam and Dean let out impressed noises.

"Sam and Dean Winchester? Sorry I'm late. My name's Darcy Lewis. I'm Agent Coulson's assistant." Darcy walked towards them with her arm outstretched. The brothers were quick to shake her hand, especially Dean because damn.

"No problem, Ms. Lewis," Dean assured her as he shook her hand.

Darcy smiled at Dean and then turned to his brother. Her eyes widened as she took in the sheer size of one Sam Winchester. Darcy's height of 5'2" was completely dwarfed by Sam's 6'4". She had to crane her neck if any sort of eye contact was to be achieved. If she was the sort to be intimidated, now would be the time; however, intimidation wasn't really her jam, so Sam's height was just impressive. "Whoa."

She cupped her hands on either side of her mouth and, as though shouting from a great distance, mock-yelled with an echo, "Hello? Can you hear me…me…me?" and then turned to Dean and asked, "Does he even get reception up there?"

Dean assessed his brother. "You know, sometimes I'll see the lights flicker on for a couple seconds, but it's mostly just a dead zone after mile marker 6'2"."

"Hey!" Sam punched Dean in the arm, disgruntled.

"Fun and pretty!" she stated. Dean winked at her (she winked back, to Dean's delight), and Sam went slightly pink. "I'll take you up now." She turned and led them through the door after scanning her badge and punching in an access code.

Sam was surprised at the lack of detection equipment. They were carrying weapons, after all. "No offense, but isn't it a little easy to get in here?"

Darcy smirked, "Looks it, doesn't it? The door we just walked through scanned the shit out of you. You're in the system now, Supersize. You've clearly got weapons on your person, but because I've got the special code, you're able to walk through without getting zapped like a bug."

Halfway down the hall, Darcy's phone started blowing up with texts. "Shoot. Sorry, fellas, but I've gotta go. The room you want is super simple to find. There's an elevator at the end of this hall. You want the 10th floor and it's room 1002. There's only two rooms on that floor, so unless Sam's lights flicker off, you shouldn't have any problems." With that, she backtracked to a door with a keypad, punched in a code, and was gone.

"Okie dokie then," Dean shook his head and continued forward.

If it weren't for the guns holstered to everyone's side, Sam and Dean could've easily mistaken SHIELD headquarters for the New York branch of Dunder-Mifflin, it was so innocuous. Clean and high-end, sure, but there were cubicles, ringing phones, fax machines, and water coolers. It was a completely different facet of SHIELD than what they had encountered yesterday. The mind-numbingly boring facet, apparently.

They meandered their way down the hall towards the elevator, passing a breakroom on their way.

It took Sam about five steps before realizing Dean was no longer by his side. Backtracking, he peered into the breakroom, only to huff impatiently when he found his brother mooning over an entire pie.

This pie was perfect. Dean was almost sure he'd never encountered a more picture-perfect apple pie in his life. It was still warm, and the scent of freshly baked cinnamon and apple wafted through the air and scratched some itch in Dean's hindbrain. Unable to stop himself, he freed the pie from the aluminum plate, and took a bite.

Sam watched in mild horror as his brother full on bit into a pie. No fork, no knife, no hands. Just teeth first into someone else's pie.

"DEAN! Oh my god, what is wrong with you?!" He went to yank the pie out of Dean's hands, but Dean jerked away. Not willing to devolve into an incident similar to the robe/remote debacle, Sam threw up his hands in surrender, "FINE!", and proceeded to ignore both Dean and the pie as they continued on to the meeting.

"Look who finally decided to show up," Tony complained for the sake of it from his spot beside Bruce. It was obvious that Tony didn't really care as he had a screwdriver and was fiddling with some contraption attached to his wrist.

"Yeah, well, this place is so damn boring I feel asleep on my way up here," Dean said through a mouthful of pie.

"Is that…are you eating a pie? You literally just ate." Bucky didn't want to food-shame, but he himself would be hard-pressed to fit in a pie after that breakfast.

"Why didn't you tell me this place had pie?" Dean accused the room in general. As if it was the responsibility of the Avengers to inform him when pie was imminent.

"Uh…cause it doesn't?" Clint trailed off, looking at Natasha and then Phil for confirmation. In all his years at SHIELD, not once had he encountered pie. Especially not one that looked as picturesque as the one Dean was currently demolishing. And he had made a point of going through all the breakrooms (and packed lunches - Shh!) on a bi-weekly basis.

Fury and Coulson exchanged discreet glances of shifty victory.

"Please, have a seat," Phil quickly moved the topic away from the suspicious appearance of desserts. "We were just discussing the likelihood of another attack similar to yesterday's events. As our resident consultants, what are your thoughts?"

"It's hard to say at this point," Sam fielded the question, seeing as Dean was pie-occupied. "We tried contacting an acquaintance last night who may be able to provide some insight; however, we were unable to reach him. Which is slightly ominous, in and of itself."

"Who is your acquaintance? If you think he could help, but is in danger, SHIELD could retrieve him," Coulson offered.

Dean laughed (and then choked because pie) while Sam said, "Uhh...no. Thanks, but no. Definitely not."

"Is it that Garth character?" Steve asked. "If he needs help, let SHIELD help him."

"No, it's not Garth. We wish it was Garth," Sam hedged.

"It's the King of Hell," Dean stated, blunt as ever.

Silence.

"Say again," Fury requested monotone.

Finished with his pie, Dean explained, "The King of Hell, a.k.a Crowley. We unloaded a lot of info yesterday, so long story short, he's the demonic frenemy who rules Hell and has helped save the world a couple of times."

"The one with the micro peen whose witch mom sold him for a goat or something," Clint snapped his fingers as he recalled.

"Gold star," Dean threw out a finger gun.

"Right. Anyway," Sam steered the conversation back on course, "we tried to reach out to him, but he didn't answer, which is surprisingly rare. Unfortunately, until another attack happens or we get in touch with Crowley, either by phone or by summoning, we're mostly left to hurry up and wait."

"Let me make myself perfectly clear: Summoning Satan 2.0 into SHIELD headquarters is NOT an option." Fury was not about to allow another unknown entity access to SHIELD.

"If Jarvis won't let us summon him in the tower-"

Tony sat straight up at that statement and let out a startled, "What?"

"-and you won't let us summon him here, then where the hell are we supposed to summon him?" Dean didn't mean to sound so petulant, but how the hell did they expect him and Sam to work under these conditions?

"Jarvis didn't say we couldn't, just that the tower would be put into lockdown. We can work with that, especially if we have no other option. We should call Cas before we resort to that plan, though," Sam reasoned.

"What?!" Tony's squawk went ignored.

Suddenly, Coulson held up his left hand for silence while his right hand went to the comm in his ear and he listened intently. He then ordered into the comm, "Dispatch Units 5 and 6 immediately; I'll dispatch Unit 1."

He turned to Fury, "Sir, there's a situation in Midtown. I'm afraid this meeting will need to be postponed."

Sam and Dean were unprepared for the flurry of motion that statement triggered. As soon as Steve stood up, it was like a switch was flicked, and he became Captain America. The others followed suit. No more slumping in seats, playing on phones, or dozing with his head on the table (Clint).

"Jarvis, talk to me." Like Coulson, Tony's finger went to a comm, which was a direct connect to Jarvis. With a flick of his phone, he launched a hologram video of the scene in question to hover over the table for everyone to watch.

Dean found it hard to believe that the guy who made this insanely impressive tech was also responsible for the 'roided out claw with a fetish for fire safety.

The room watched as a woman driving a crane with a wrecking ball proceeded to fuck shit up all over Midtown. She was laughing as she swung the ball, bashing it into anything and everything. There was something so perverted and warped about her smile that shivers raced down the spines of the room's occupants. The bulk of the crane easily pushed cars out of its path as she made her way slowly, seemingly aimless, down the street.

"I don't want to be 'that guy', but isn't this something the police should deal with? I mean, Earth's Mightiest Heroes can't be called every time a construction worker goes postal…huh…nevermind," Clint stopped talking as, with the wave of her hand, the woman sent people flying through the air. They watched as people were brutally smashed into buildings and storefronts whenever she waved her hand. It soon became clear that most of her projectiles were children. "Jesus Christ! She's targeted kids?! That psycho bitch!"

"That's a demon," Sam stated, the conclusion readily apparent to him and Dean. At this point in their extensive career, 8 times out of 10 they didn't even need to see black eyes to be able to identify a demon.

"Or it's a mutant with telekinetic abilities," Coulson calmly countered. "A scenario we've run into multiple times. We have no proof that this is a demon. Not to offend, but you and your brother are primed to see the supernatural. Potentially even where it is not."

The location and her route finally caught up to Tony and he instantly made for the door, cutting out the video as he took his phone with him. "If she's aiming for kids, then she's headed towards Midtown High and Peter!"

That name had all of the Avengers booking it out of the room.

Sam and Dean made to leave too, but were stopped by a 'hold on' motion from Fury. Coulson immediately dispatched another unit to the school.

"Peter?" Dean looked at Sam, who shrugged.

"None of your concern. They'll handle it." Fury stated.

"Uh, no, actually, they won't," Sam disputed. "That was a demon. Dean and I need to go. We have weapons that can actually kill her."

Coulson vetoed that idea. "I'm afraid we cannot dispatch you to an active crime scene without approving the both of you as field ready. As you are currently registered as non-combatant SHIELD consultants, it is against SHIELD's legal regulations to deploy you under your current status."

"Registered? We didn't sign anything; therefore, we're not yours to dispatch, so we're out of here." Dean stood up and looked to Sam to confirm this with his Stanford-educated brain. Unfortunately, the look on Sam's face was not heartening.

"Verbal contract," Coulson explained, "which you've acknowledged by stating, thus confirming, your status as our resident supernatural consultants."

Dean was enraged. "Are you kidding me? This is what we do on a daily fucking basis. Who the hell are you to tell us we can't do it now?"

Coulson, mild as ever, stated, "The people who currently have you surrounded 500 to 1. Approximately."

Dean blinked, taken aback by how many SHIELD agents were in the building, and felt supremely outgunned.

"Mr. Winchester, it is a simple issue to rectify. All that is required is the completion of a physical aptitude test conducted here in our facility. It typically takes an hour to complete."

"An hour?! We don't have an hour!" Sam stated as he stared at Coulson in disbelief at the suggestion.

Dean was over it. "CAS! We need the express train out of here, man! A demon is renovating Midtown."

The occupants of the room waited in silence. Fury and Coulson looked around with trepidation.

After 10 seconds without an answer, Dean's brows furrowed and tried again, "Castiel? Angel of the Chuck?" He waited another 5 seconds, "Cas?" He looked at Sam, worriedly, "You wanna try?"

"Castiel? If you can hear us, we really need your help."

No answer. Fury let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Smart. Would've been impressive even, if it had worked. Looks like you're back to square one."

As annoying and tedious up as all the red tape was, Fury wasn't about to sanction two untested civilians to fight alongside the Avengers. Especially not ones temporarily acting under SHIELD's jurisdiction. Yes, they had an impressive hunting background, but this was the big leagues and the world was watching. He needed proof that they were capable of going out there and not getting themselves or others blown up. He looked at his watch, looked at them, and then pointedly looked at the door. A wordless 'Hurry the fuck up' that had Sam and Dean following Coulson out the door as he requested, "Please follow me."

Mr. Harrington watched as his class filed in for homeroom. He kept an eye on new transfer student, Abigail MacAllen, who had started at Midtown High a few weeks ago. Her first week here, he thought he had another bright and promising student. With each passing day, however, she had grown more and more withdrawn, looking tired and depressed. He had reached out to her two days ago and she had stated she was having trouble sleeping. He planned to reach out to her parents by the end of the week if he didn't see any improvement. Seeing her enter his classroom laughing with her friends was a surprising, but welcome, change. He watched as she took a seat in the front row, which she hadn't done since her first week here. She smiled as she took out her books and readied herself for class.

He'd keep an eye on her, but for now decided to chock the whole thing up to hormones. He remembered feeling feelings…until his beloved Tabitha divorced him, ripping out his heart and leaving him a hollowed out husk.

The bell pulled him from his musings, quickly followed by the arrival of his last two students, who straggled in a second from tardy. He caught the tail end of their conversation about spiders and eggs and how many Peter could potentially lay. Teenagers were getting weirder and weirder every year. And he was supposedly surrounded by the "smart" ones.

"How nice of you to join us, Mr. Leeds, Mr. Parker."

He received a meek "Sorry, Sir" from each of them as they took their seats.

Part of Mr. Harrington's daily agenda was to expose his students to the current events within their community. An idea which usually translated into him eating breakfast while the local news was projected onto the screen up front for his students to watch (or ignore as they fiddled on their phones). Everyone settled as the news started, hoping for more information on the weird attack from the day prior.

"Sam and Dean?!" A startled Abigail MacAllen watched the two men race across the screen. She'd heard about what had happened, but she hadn't seen any footage. As soon as she had arrived home yesterday after school and found out that the ghost was gone for good, she immediately crashed and slept for what felt like the first time in years. Almost 14 hours straight. Waking up from the sun and not a psycho ghost boy clawing her arms up was a luxury she would not soon take for granted.

"You know them?" Her friend was skeptical as the class watched them shoot, stab, and then kill the crazy person who had been terrorizing everyone.

"Yeah, they…uh…they helped my parents with something," Abigail trailed off vaguely, realizing too late that she couldn't actually divulge the truth about Sam and Dean without sounding like a crazy person.

Her friend shrugged, "They're hella hot."

That, Abigail didn't have to lie about, "Tell me about it."

The footage was interrupted by 'Breaking News'. The students remained surprisingly calm at the announcement of a woman driving a crane around Midtown.

"She came in like a wrecking ball!" Flash sang as they watched the wrecking ball smash into buildings. There were a few twitters of laughter.

"FLASH! A month's detention!" Mr. Harrington addressed the class, furious at the lack of respect. "This is serious. The fact that you are laughing is a disgrace. People are dying." He pointed to the screen. "That mentally disturbed woman is killing people. If I hear another disrespectful, ignorant comment out of anyone, there'll be suspension."

Mr. Harrington's uncharacteristic anger was met with subdued silence, everyone feeling properly chastised, when suddenly a heavy drumbeat and a jarring slash of electric guitar cut through the air, startling the bejesus out of everyone. They all looked around for the source of the noise and zeroed in on Peter Parker fumbling with his phone as a distorted voice said, "I am Iron Man!"

"Sorry! I'm sorry! Oh my god, I'm sorry! Just one sec!" Peter was mortified. Mr. Stark had personalized his ringtone to Black Sabbath's Iron Man. A fact Peter usually thought was awesome and the most amazing thing to have ever happened to his phone. If only he had remembered to put it on vibrate before class. Ugh, his life.

Peter answered his phone, unable to look away from Mr. Harrington's disapproving frown, "Umm, Mr. Stark? Now's not really a good time."

Everyone knew that Peter interned directly under Tony Stark at Stark Industries. Nobody bothered to pretend they weren't listening as he spoke to the genius/billionaire/playboy/philanthropist/IRONMAN.

"Yeah, I'm in class. We're watching it on the news." His eyes shot to the screen, and he didn't even think to lower his voice as he let out a startled, "Here? She's coming to Midtown High?!" He looked over to Ned and then Mr. Harrington, who, at Peter's words, retrieved his phone from his desk and contacted the Principal.

"Okay, I'll let my teacher know. No, of course I won't do anything stupid. What could I possibly do? I'm just a high school student. Of course I'll stay here." Peter hammed up the innocent act with a shrug, as though he was lying straight to Mr. Stark's face instead of over the phone about staying put.

Considering the sheer amount of damage the woman and her crane had accomplished, it was almost anticlimactic that disabling the large vehicle was the work of 10 seconds with a couple blasts of Ironman's repulsors.

With an agonized groan, the crane came to a stop in the middle of ploughing over a lamp post. There were cheers from the idiots still on the street filming the woman's rampage on their phones.

Captain America stepped forward, "Keep your hands up and step out of the vehicle."

His order was met with coughing and wheezing from the woman in the crane's cockpit, which was quickly filling with smoke. She wretched open the door and immediately fell to the ground in an ungraceful heap of limbs. The dull thud of her landing garnered a few sympathy cringes from bystanders.

"Ma'am?" Steve took another step forward.

"Shit, that stings." The woman stood up groaning. There were shocked gasps at her injuries: her left leg was clearly broken, if the femur bone jutting out was any indication, her right arm hung limply at her side, and her neck was at a very unnatural angle.

"Ma'am! Just stay where you are and we'll call an ambulance." Rampaging maniac or not, the woman was injured and required medical attention, if only to ensure she lived long enough to suffer the consequences of her actions.

The woman scoffed, "You think this is bad?" She wretched her arm back into its socket and, with a horrible snap, twisted her neck back into place. "Wait until you see what I'm going to do to you." Her eyes flooded black as she took a step towards Steve, mindless of her injured leg, which gaped painfully with each step.

Still hovering over the scene, Tony fired a repulsor blast at her, giving Steve enough time to retreat to the rest of the team so they could face her as a unit. Even though they were clearly outgunned now that they realized she was a demon.

"Well, hello there." Her tone grew sultry as her gaze landed on Bruce, who had been hanging back, trying to hide behind Steve's considerable bulk. "Aren't you interesting." He shuddered as her eyes raked up and down his form. "Much more interesting than Hannah here." She gestured to the meatsuit she was currently wearing. "Curvy and kinda cute, but a little too plain and pasty for my tastes. I prefer something a little more colourful."

Suddenly, a huge funnel of black smoke poured out of her mouth and the girl dropped to the ground, motionless. In the blink of an eye, the blackness snaked its way to Bruce and forced its way down his throat.

"Bruce!" Tony screamed over the comms.

Bruce's shoulders drooped and his head fell to his chest. There was some indistinct mumbling and moaning as his head jerked back and forth, as though he was trying to escape nightmare.

After the longest 30 seconds of their lives, the jerking stopped and Bruce let out a deep breath. "I don't think I've ever had a meatsuit put up such a ruckus. Very admirable. Usually you all can't wait to be dominated."

Bruce's head jerked up revealing black eyes. The instinctual response of prey when faced with a predator had each Avenger taking several steps back at the sight.

"Rude! You shouldn't run away from your teammate," Bruce's voice chastised, "especially since he's already so self-conscious about his cranky friend in here. You know, the only reason he's on the team in the first place. Isn't that right, Brucie? The only thing that makes you interesting and worth keeping around."

"Really? That's your angle? You think Bruce is weak enough to believe any of that bullshit? He knows we're lucky to have him, whether he's green or not." Tony was quick to ridicule her attempt at mind-fucking Bruce (and quick to reassure Bruce in case he was in there listening).

"Ah. You must be Tony," Bruce's face smiled at him. "You're his favourite, you know. He likes that you aren't afraid of him. Oh! You're the green guy's favourite too. Well, it's a toss-up between you and the kid in the red and blue onesie. What a happy coincidence I'm already so close to his school." Bruce's hands clapped excitedly. "Excellent. I'll tear you two apart first!"

Transfixed with horror, the Avengers could only watch as the thing controlling Bruce's body forced his transformation into the Hulk. They'd been working alongside the Hulk for so long now they'd kind of stopped seeing his size. Because the Hulk was on their side, they also forgot just how terrifying he could be. They were quickly reminded as black eyes stared down at them from within all 13ft and 1400lbs of a demonically grinning Hulk.

"Shit," Steve breathed.

"Is that an order? Because I think I've already complied," Clint said faintly.

A/N:

The Hulk getting possessed was the initial idea that spawned this SPN/Avengers crossover. A scary scenario that I wanted to figure out how to 'organically' write.

I had no intention of writing Darcy as Coulson's PA, but there she be, apparently. For anyone that watches Brooklyn 99, I kind of view Darcy and Phil's relationship like Gina and Captain Holt's. She knows her stuff and is actually amazing at her job, but she's slightly 'insane in the membrane'.

Abigail MacAllen. I just thought it was interesting to explore how her life changed immediately for the better after Sam and Dean's help. Thus ends the MacAllen's participation in this fic. I hope.