She landed silently across the street from the bank. From what she could see, it was definitely a hostage situation. There looked to be about three men and one hostage.

"What's the plan?" She asked Eleanor softly as she moved across the street, making sure to stay in the shadows.

"It looks like a team of three, each armed. One hostage: a woman. There is an entrance on the west side of the building that would give you the element of surprise. I would advise caution. You are outnumbered three to one." Evan nodded, spotted the entrance, and made her way toward it. She slipped in through the door and could hear two of the men talking. She could also see the hostage in the other room. She looked to be alone at the moment, which was enough for Evan. The hostage was her main priority right now.

The woman was shaking violently and sporting a black eye and bloody nose. It looked to Evan like she hadn't gone down without a fight. Her wrists and ankles were bound and she had a gag over her mouth. When she saw Evan, her eyes widened in fear and her face went pale. Evan had seen this look a thousand times from countless civilians she encountered during a patrol and knew what was coming next. Before the woman could say anything Evan explained herself.

"I'm here to help you. If I remove your gag, you need to promise me you won't make a sound. If you do, you could kill us both. Nod to show me you understand what I am saying to you." The woman nodded slowly and Evan removed her gag. Once it was clear the woman was staying true to her word, Evan quickly sliced through the woman's binds with a small knife and was trying to think of an extraction plan when a shiver ran down her spine. Danger. Something was wrong. She turned just fast enough that the bullet heading for the back of her skull, nicked her ear instead.

"Stay behind me," Evan whispered to the woman and with a small shriek, the woman cowered behind her, tears slipping down her cheeks. Evan ducked and dodged more bullets as she made her way toward the masked man. Thanks to the heightened senses she had developed, she managed to get in front of him without a bullet in her body. Once she was close enough to hit, the two of them danced around each other, throwing punches and kicks, landing some and missing others. It was almost like a ballet watching the two of them. Normally when Evan dealt with these kinds of thieves, they were almost always armed but their normal fighting style was boxing mixed with street fighting. This guy was clearly trained in something more formal. He wasn't just throwing his force around recklessly and using his fists, he was using his whole body. Who was this guy?

Finally, Evan managed to get a solid blow in and knocked the man to his knees. She softly double-tapped her fingers to her palm, firing up the small tasers attached to the wrist of her suit, and wrapped her other arm around the man's neck. She stepped on the man's legs to make sure that he couldn't shake himself loose and lifted the small taser in her suit to the man's neck. She was about to fire when shuffling from behind her broke her attention. She turned just in time to see the woman who she had believed was a hostage pointing a gun at her, any of the fear Evan had once seen in her eyes replaced by cold confidence. Panic flooded her body as she tried to process the situation. She wasn't a hostage? Why would they have someone pretend to be a hostage? Was it a backup plan? Or had they been waiting for her or someone like her to come along?

"Let him go." The voice coming from the woman behind her held no trace of the fear that once lived there. It was the voice of a woman who had done this many times and was not scared of failing. Evan's eyes darted over her shoulder, for a second, still skeptical of taking her eyes off of the man she had trapped in her arms. She felt her muscles loosen a bit, but still couldn't let him go.

"I said let him go, or I will not hesitate to shoot. I know who you are and I don't care." Evan detected a slight accent in her voice that she hadn't heard in the voice of the man. Southern maybe? She knew she was out of options. Behind her mask, Eleanor was tracing escape routes and making plans for her, but none were guaranteeing her safety. None were even close.

"Your best option is to create a distraction and run. There are still other men in the building and in your position you would be unable to take them all on. I am detecting more guns and weapons that I am unable to identify." Evan's eyebrows came together in confusion.

Unidentifiable weapons? Could this be connected to the weapons trade that Peter had discovered earlier this year? She knew Mr. Stark had been working to flush them out of New York but as powerful as he was, Evan knew there were some organizations that even he couldn't infiltrate. Evan gathered her courage and put on the cocky mentality she had adopted behind the mask. She turned around to face the woman with the man still locked between her arms.

"I know robbing banks probably pays well but have you ever considered becoming an actress?" Evan's voice was calm and unbothered despite her eyes darting around the room looking for a way out.

"You're cute. I'm not here to play games with you, I said, put the man down." Evan ignored her and continued on, desperate to buy herself some more time.

"I mean damn. You could have fooled me. You know if you take my advice, I expect a mention in your Oscar speech." Evan lightly double-tapped her wrist again, once more firing up the small hidden tasers. The woman across from her cocked the pistol and made a show of firmly placing her finger on the trigger.

"What are you going to do? Shoot me and him?" Evan had effectively maneuvered herself so that the man she was holding was almost completely covering her. If this woman wanted to shoot her, she would have to shoot him as well.

"I honestly don't give a shit whether that man lives or dies. To be honest, it's you I'm after. I was hoping one of you would show up. I must admit I'm more of a spider-man fan myself, but you're good enough." The woman smiled with her teeth and Evan felt a shiver go down her spine. Danger, again. She could not be in this building with this woman any longer. She needed to get out, now. This was larger than she had realized and although she knew she needed to figure out what was going on, she was surrounded. Eleanor had already captured the woman's face and was filtering it through any database she had access to, looking for a match. She had enough information to go after her again. If only she could grab one of those weapons Eleanor had mentioned earlier. Then she could take it apart and try to figure out exactly where they were coming from. She could attack the problem at its source.

"I'm done waiting." The woman's voice cut through her thoughts and her senses went off as the woman tightened her finger on the trigger. She was going to shoot. Without thinking, she slammed her taser into the man's neck and fired, sending electrical currents through the man's body. As the man was seizing from the currents pulsing through him, Evan used her super-strength to launch the man's body towards the woman with the gun, throwing her off her guard. Evan turned and ran, not to the exit, but towards the main area, where the weapons were. Evan's heightened senses knew the woman's gun had been fired before she even heard the sound of the bullet leaving the muzzle. There were only a few seconds of reprieve before Evan felt a burning sensation in her side and a stinging warmth that spread through her body. She didn't let that break her stride, though, and continued into the man area of the bank.

When she entered the main lobby of the bank, the other men had already started loading up their cash into duffel bags frantically, alerted by the gunshot. Their rifles and other unidentifiable weapons sat untouched at their sides. Evan froze as she entered the room and in a second both groups were moving; Evan towards the closest alien weapon she could find and the men toward their weapons and put an end to The Wasp.

Despite the fact that Evan could feel herself becoming sluggish from the hole in her side, she still moved faster than the men around her as she jumped, tucked, and utilized her wings to help her dodge the spray of bullets and fists coming toward her. She quickly grabbed a small pistol outfitted with what looked like Chitauri tech and looked around for any way to make a quick escape. Eleanor, already knowing what she needed before Evan even knew, had already mapped out an escape plan and was talking Evan through getting out of this building. Eleanor had also already alerted authorities of the situation and Evan could see the red and blue lights of cop cars outside of the building.

Following Eleanor's instructions, Evan jumped, dodged, and ran through the halls of the building until she found a door leading to the back of the building. She frantically pushed through it, suddenly aware that the bullet wound in her side may be worse than she thought. Still, she had a job to do and she wasn't about to let these people get away with all the alien tech they had in their possession. She ran around to the front of the building where the cops had positioned themselves. Her energy was fading and she knew that she needed to move quickly if she was going to get out of this thing alive. She walked up to Kelly Sharrod, one of the officers she recognized from other outings. She trusted her, not because of her time as The Wasp, but because of an altercation with her father.

Her father had been dragging her through their apartment complex by her hair, screaming obscenities at her all the way to their door. He had been drinking, that much was obvious, and he had found her smoking a pack of cigarettes behind the building. One of her neighbors must have called the cops because a few minutes later, Officer Sharrod showed up at her door. She did all the right things, she isolated Evan from her father, she didn't ask her any questions that would cause her further pain when she left, and she charged her father immediately. Despite all of this, Evan couldn't find it in herself to press charges, knowing that would place her into foster care and she argued that her father had done nothing to her; she had just fallen down the stairs. Even after she pleaded to let her father go, Officer Sharrod still stayed in touch with her, still trying to find a way to help her.

"Officer Sharrod… there's a back door, you need to make sure they don't leave," Evan spoke quickly, her words interrupted by sharp, shaky breaths. The first thing that Kelly noticed was the blood on The Wasp's suit and the way she was hunched over, her hand pressed firmly into her side.

"You… you're hurt… you need help… medic!" Kelly yelled for a medic, unsure of what to do when a vigilante was hurt. Evan waved her request away, despite clearly being in pain.

"Listen, there's no time for that, I'm fine. There are three men in there, one of them should be unconscious, and a woman posing as a hostage. She's part of the crew though, that's how they got me. They're using alien tech that I'm assuming they gathered after the invasion to rob the bank. They are incredibly dangerous. I have no idea what that tech could do. You need to create a perimeter around this building, get back up, and don't let any of them escape, especially the woman." Evan was gripping Kelly's arm, hard, and Kelly could hear the desperation in her voice.

"I need to go, I'm sorry, but you can't let them get away… you can't." Normally Evan would have returned to the building and would have brought the men out herself, but the edges of her vision were starting to turn black and the left side of her body was becoming cold. She needed medical help soon or she wasn't sure she was going to walk away from this.

Kelly nodded and began barking orders into her walkie-talkie. Evan stumbled a few feet away and flexed her shoulders causing her wings to unfold behind her. She took one last look at the building and the weapon in her hand and took off into the night.

She hadn't been in the air long before she started to lose consciousness. Her suit was hot and sticky with her blood and her vision was blurry and slow. She wasn't sure where she was going, she didn't have any sort of plan, she just knew that if she was moving, she wasn't dead. Tears were rolling down her face from pain and exhaustion and she was struggling to think clearly. Despite the wings not being a part of her body, they still took strength to maneuver and before long, she was unable to stay in the sky. Her vision went dark and her body started to slump. She felt the wind on her face and although alarms were going off in her head, she was too tired and too cold to respond to them. She slammed into the top of a building, jolting awake from the pain firing through her body. She groaned and managed to roll onto her back. She knew this was the end. There was no way out of this. The only chance she had was Peter or Mr. Stark and she doubted either of them was going to be able to swoop in at the last minute. Plus she despised the idea of calling either of them, especially Mr. Stark. But she wasn't an idiot. She wasn't going to waste her only chance at survival because she was stubborn. She could deal with her wounded pride after she survived this. Still, she was going to save Mr. Stark as a last resort.

"El, call Peter." She barely recognized her own voice. It sounded scratchy and hoarse and disconnected from her body. It was as though she was hearing herself speak underwater. She listened to the sound of the phone ringing in her mask and stared up at the cloudy sky of New York. She had been trying to keep her panic at bay but the longer that phone rang and the bigger the sky felt, the more she felt she had no way out of this situation. This was going to be the place she died. Alone, looking up at the sky, waiting for someone to come and rescue her.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up…" She felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes and before she knew it, she was crying. The phone stopped ringing and she was alone again. No one was coming to get her. She heard Eleanor speaking but it seemed to fade into the background. All she heard were her own muffled sobs, all she saw was the dark expansive sky above her, and all she felt was the thick, sticky blood under her hands.