Disclaimer: Avengers, Hunger Games, and all other elements belong to their relevant owners; I merely borrow them to write this story
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Falling Hope, Rising Threat
"Damn…" Johanna said, voicing the thoughts of everyone in the hovercraft as we drew closer to our destination. "That is big."
She might be the most direct of us, but this was one case where Johanna had certainly come up with the perfect description of the situation facing us. My fellow surviving Victors had been all too willing to participate in the investigation into the crash once Steve had called them, and even Prim had been keen to come along once I asked for her assistance, even if I couldn't guarantee that she'd have anything to do when we got there.
According to available maps, the object had crashed down near an old factory in District Three, but as we drew in closer to our destination I realised that the maps hadn't measured the distance quite correctly; the falling object had actually landed on the factory, instead of just landing near it. Fortunately, it was one of the facilities that had been closed down during the initial rebellion and hadn't been re-opened yet, so at least we didn't have to worry about the risk of civilian casualties, but searching the object itself would still left us with a lot of work.
Looking at the object as it came into clearer view, I wasn't sure if I should be impressed or disappointed. Far from the meteor or alien ship I'd been partly expecting and partly dreading I might find, it seemed to consist four large thick circles around a thinner interior rod with a small pod on one end, metal decayed and blackened in a manner that went far beyond what I'd expect from something entering Earth's atmosphere. Large chunks of metal were lying scattered around it beyond what had been spread out from the destruction of the factory, and the circles themselves seemed to have various holes in them as though they'd been cracked by the impact, but in general Earth's new 'visitor' seemed to have arrived reasonably intact.
Looking at the shattered construct that could have only been a ship of some kind, I suddenly found myself regretting Thor's current absence; I knew that he had responsibilities as king of Asgard, and this didn't look like anything in it would be a serious threat, but when I'd only ever faced human adversaries so far, it was only natural for me to wish that the team's powerhouse was available for something this unusual…
"Anything?" I asked, glancing over at Peeta from his position beside the pilot's seat. The hovercraft's sensors were fairly good at just detecting life-signs if we wanted to know if there was anyone alive in the area, but the Iron Man suit's sensors were better-equipped to give us a more detailed reading once we got up-close to our targets.
"A few human life-signs…" Peeta noted as he stared over the shattered shape in front of us, before he looked grimly at me. "And… a few fading heat-signatures."
"People are dying?" Prim asked, looking anxiously at Peeta.
"People are dead," Johanna corrected grimly as she adjusted her grip on her axe. "Any sign any of the others are in that kinda state?"
"No," Peeta said after a moment's pause as he raised one hand to the side of his helmet; there weren't any actual physical controls there, but it seemed to make Peeta feel better if his hands were doing something when his helmet gave him information. "As far as the suit can tell, everyone still alive in there is battered, but they'll recover."
"And everything's human?" Finnick asked. "None of those… Chitake things Captain Rogers told us about?"
"They were called the Chitauri," I corrected the self-titled Mariner.
"And they're not here," Peeta confirmed. "No sign of anything in there that wasn't human, and the suit isn't alerting me to any trace of alien technology; whatever this thing is, it was made on Earth."
"OK," I said, nodding in thought for a moment before voicing my decision. "Peeta, once we land, you're with me; we need to find the survivors and get them out as fast as possible. Johanna, see what you can do about clearing away this debris; we might be able to use it for something in the future. Finnick, help Prim set up an emergency triage centre here; we're probably going to be dealing with serious injuries if we do find any survivors, so we need to be able to treat the worst of the injuries here."
It was a credit to how we'd developed as a team that nobody questioned my division of labour. On the surface, it might have made more sense to have Peeta and Johanna switch roles, given the physical strength of the Iron Man armour, but the armour's sensors would be better equipped at finding survivors inside the debris, while Johanna's axe and metal arm would make it easier for her to clear things up from outside.
"Coming in for landing," Finnick said as he manoeuvred the hovercraft into position near the crash-site, setting it down on the ground as he quickly checked the ship's sensors. "OK, environmental checks confirm no radiation in the area or anything toxic in the atmosphere. It looks like the ship came down cleanly enough, no sign of any hostile activity in the area… shall we see what's going on here?"
"Agreed," I said, standing up to look over at Peeta. "Let's go."
Nodding in agreement, Peeta reached over to take hold of the shield strapped to my back and flew out of the opening hovercraft door, quickly moving into position above the crashed object.
"Where to?" Peeta asked, glancing down at me as I dangled from his left hand.
"There," I said at last, indicating a particularly large hole on the end of a circle. Peeta dived forward for a few moments before landing inside the circle, revealing that we were on the edge of a circular corridor that extended further into the structure.
"Right," I said, checking that my bow and arrows were still secure on my back before I indicated the corridor ahead of us. "Let's go."
As we started walking- Peeta moving at a slower pace due to the weight of the armour and the need to avoid putting too much strain on the damaged ship- I appreciated the casual camaraderie that had developed between Peeta and I by this time. He had confirmed that he still had feelings for me more than once, but he had also accepted my own decision that this wasn't the best time to pursue any kind of relationship on top of our current responsibilities as Avengers.
I was coming to recognise the value of Peeta's optimism and compassion as opposed to Gale's earlier desires to just kill anyone working for the Capitol, but I still wasn't ready to fully explore what I could have with him when I was still trying to adjust to my role as leader of the new Avengers. For the moment, my priorities were to make sure that the nation we had rebuilt didn't fall back into old habits simply because it was convenient, and I just didn't have the time for anything else…
After a few minutes of walking through the shattered satellite, navigating carefully up ladders and walking along corridors leading further into the satellite, while trying not to think too much about some of the bleeding piles of debris I saw down some of the corridors, the two of us finally found a survivor down a side corridor. She was an Asian-looking woman with shoulder-length dark hair dressed in a dark leather outfit that reminded me slightly of what I wore in the Seventy-Fourth Games, one leg trapped under a metal bar that had fallen from the roof but otherwise in fairly good condition.
"There," Peeta said, indicating the woman at the same time as I saw her. "She's-"
"I see her," I said, hurrying over to the woman as Peeta followed behind me at a more gradual pace.
"It's OK; we'll get you out of here," I said, crouching down beside the woman to look reassuringly at her. "I'm Mockingjay, and this is my colleague, Ir-"
"I… Iron Man?" the woman interrupted, looking at Peeta in shock as he walked up behind me.
"You've heard of th- me?" Peeta corrected himself, as he lifted the bar off her leg and tossed it to the side.
"I… well, we read all about the Avengers in our histories of Earth…" the woman said, wincing as she tried to move her leg before I reached down to pick her up. "But… I mean, they all died… the Avengers failed…"
"The Avengers fell," I corrected, looking firmly at the other woman; I might have only known them for a brief time, but I was satisfied that the Avengers had done everything they could to save Earth before Bruce went insane. "As far as I'm concerned, the only reason they didn't save the world before is because they were weakened while they were alone; as a team, they couldn't be stopped."
"Believe me, you do not want to insult the Avengers in her presence," Peeta said, sounding like he was grinning under the mask as he stared around before he nodded back at me. "Nobody else in this section; I'll check out some of the other areas while you get her out of here."
Nodding in agreement, I began to lead our new patient back down the ladders that would take us out of the crashed ship, leaving Peeta to proceed further into the structure.
"Why was this area so empty?" I asked, looking curiously at our new patient once we'd reached the bottom of the ladders.
"I was… hiding," the woman explained, looking slightly sheepish as she looked at me. "There was some… political tension back on the Ark; I thought it was best if I stayed… underground… for a while… and I ended up here."
"Ah," I said, nodding in understanding even as I privately rolled my eyes at this news; evidently, even people from space couldn't escape political strife. "So, what's your name?"
"I'm… Callie Cartwig," the woman said, before she looked at me with new curiosity. "How did you… I mean, Iron Man… I mean, it's been centuries…"
"Which is why we felt it was time to get back into action," I said, smiling warmly at the other woman. "How we found that armour is a long and complicated story; we can worry about that later."
"Of… of course," Callie said, looking uncertain for a moment before her face softened in understanding. "Right… that's just someone else in Tony Stark's armour, right?"
"Some of us took the original Avengers as our inspiration, and others just worked with what they already had to come up with new ideas," I explained, reminding myself to keep smiling as we walked; considering what had happened to her, showing this woman a friendly face had to help.
"Like you?" Callie asked.
"Like me," I confirmed. "Like I said, I'm Mockingjay; I'm the leader of the Avengers… and right now I have some questions for you."
"Such as?" Callie asked, looking at me with new curiosity.
"What actually happened here?" I asked, indicating the shattered construction around us. "I mean, this was obviously some kind of satellite, but you're the third major planetfall incident we've experienced in the last few months; where did you all come from?"
"We had to… fragment the Ark," Callie explained, leaning on my shoulder as we continued towards the daylight; judging by the way she was wincing as we walked, she'd sustained some damage to her leg from that bar. "Only way… to get down…"
"The Ark?" I repeated curiously. "You mentioned that before; what's that?"
"It… was a space station," Callie explained, smiling slightly as I looked at her in confusion. "Almost a century ago, when the wars became serious… twelve space stations came together with thousands of satellites… and put themselves together to create the Ark."
"Really?" I said, impressed despite my limited knowledge of space travel. Even since I'd become an Avenger, I'd spent too much time focusing on Panem's problems and my own training to think about what might be up in space, but the scenario that Callie described was fairly impressive…
"So… the Ark crashed?" I asked, indicating the debris around us as we approached the hole that Peeta and I had used to enter the building originally. "What happened?"
"Our life support systems were running out," Callie explained, her expression grim. "We had to find out if Earth was survivable…"
"You should probably leave it at that," I said, as we finally reached the hole and I drew my bow once again. "Considering what I've heard so far, I think it would be easier if you told this story to my whole team once we've picked up the rest of the survivors."
"Of… of course," Callie said, as I fired a grappling arrow at a protruding chunk of metal above us, leaving a long cable dangling from below it that we could use to return to the ground.
"Come on," I said, indicating the cable to Callie with a smile before I pointed out the hovercraft a short walk away. "Once you reach the ground, just head over there and you'll meet more of my team; Black Widow will give you a check-over and Mariner can fill you in on some of the essentials of events down here before the rest of us get back."
Callie seemed a bit surprised at these instructions, but she nodded in acceptance as she began to climb down the cable, leaving me to turn back into the remnants of the Ark to search for whatever other survivors might be left.
From what Callie had told me, it didn't sound like the Ark was going to be a threat, but I had a feeling that its arrival was going to make things a bit more complicated for us than they had been so far…
AN: For those who don't recognise it, Callie, the Ark, and all related characters come from the series 'The 100', set in a post-apocalyptic world where a nuclear holocaust decimated Earth, forcing a large group of survivors to band together by combining twelve satellite bases into a single station known as 'the Ark'. The full history of the series so far will be disclosed to the Avengers in the next chapter- at which point I will change this story's secondary crossover to '100' as opposed to 'Avengers'- but for the moment, if you want to do some research, for the purposes of this story, all of Season One of 'The 100' happened as it did in the show, and things will start to diverge from early in Season Two onwards.
AN 2: On a geographical note, as previously mentioned, all prior impacts to Earth occurred on the east coast of America, which is in keeping with the events of 'The 100', where the original dropship landed around Mount Weather; one episode even featured a glimpse of the statue of Abraham Lincoln. As the Maestro ignored the east coast after he destroyed New York and Washington, he never knew that there had been any survivors in that area and so they've been allowed to develop at their own pace outside of the influence of Panem.