Disclaimer: Avengers, Hunger Games, and all other elements belong to their relevant owners; I merely borrow them to write this story
Feedback: Always a pleasure to receive.
AN: This is a sequel to my story 'A Man Like No Other', which I recommend you read before this one. For this story, I'll be incorporating a third crossover element that you may recognise, but you'll find out what that is in the next couple of chapters; I hope you find the results interesting
Falling Hope, Rising Threat
It had been a few months since the death of President Snow, and I still wasn't sure if I would ever get used to the thrill of acting as an Avenger.
It wasn't that I enjoyed hurting people, but I appreciated the satisfaction of knowing that my actions ensured that nobody would have to endure the fear of a Reaping or the trauma of the Games ever again. I still had to kill sometimes, but at least when I was fighting as an Avenger I knew that I was killing people who wanted to bring back the old world, rather than children who were just as trapped by the system as I was. I even enjoyed having allies that I knew wouldn't have to stab me in the back later on if I didn't get them first, as all of the Avengers went into action knowing that we could trust each other.
Of course, the best part of my role was the relative freedom I enjoyed; after our victory over the Maestro, few people had questioned that the Avengers had earned their title of 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' all over again, which made the select few who might have resented our authority very uncomfortable with trying to take it away from us. While Alma Coin had never been entirely satisfied with our overall approach, and Thor's erratic role in the team had earned him her particular attention given her lack of knowledge about where he came from and the fact that he often had to leave to deal with matters on Asgard, her thoughts on the matter were no longer our concern. Ever since the first elections of the new Panem had resulted in Commander Paylor of District 8 being elected president of the new Panem rather than Coin, she didn't have any real power over us, and her attempts to argue that we were a potential threat had only jeopardised her position further, and she was current fuming in isolation in District Thirteen.
After the command structure of the new Panem government had been set up, it hadn't taken long for Steve to help us establish our new role. Once it had been decided that we would be subject to certain limitations when it came to government work so long as we had complete freedom to take action when dealing with confirmed threats, the new rulers had agreed that we would only be called upon in cases where there was a clear and present danger that conventional Peacekeeper forces would be unable to handle, or situations where we had a clear target with minimal risk of innocent life; Steve had made it clear that the Avengers were not to be used to fight standard wars between other countries.
The most obvious priority of the team had been the need to take out any of Snow's remaining followers who might have tried to grab power for themselves, but even without anyone on our team with power similar to the Hulk, and with Thor only an intermittent ally due to his own duties on Asgard, we'd quickly worked out how best to make an impact when we had to go into action.
Despite our lack of power, what I liked to think of as the four 'core' members of my Avengers team were making a fair impression even when going into action without Thor. With the original Avengers having helped us destroy most of Panem's major military assets, all that was left were some isolated pockets of resistance favouring the restoration of the old Capitol that were becoming even harder to track down as time went on, which we all hoped meant that anyone still in favour of that idea was either dead or resigned to giving up the whole idea.
Aside from our developing combat experience, we were also working on improving our other areas of expertise. While I still deferred to Steve's experience when he had a point to make, in general I was acknowledged as the field leader of the Avengers when we went into action, with Steve simply serving as a tactical advisor and administrator to ensure that we maintained our relationship with Panem's government. I still felt somewhat strange about having even Thor defer to my orders in a fight, but he had accepted my authority in Earth-related matters and otherwise left the issue alone.
Of the other three Avengers, Peeta in particular had developed his mechanical skills so that he could carry out any repairs that the Iron Man armour might require without needing aid from Beete, and Johanna and Finnick had become experts in the use of their new weapons and Johanna's new arm, adapting to compensate for their new assets while also using their existing talents. Peeta still wasn't comfortable making any serious changes to the Iron Man armour in case he damaged it in some way, but he was fairly sure that he could put it back together if anything happened in the field. In keeping with his title of 'the Mariner', Finnick had modified his costume to include an aquatic mask in case he ever needed to go swimming or enter a potentially toxic environment, and he, Johanna and I had upgraded our original costumes to increase their ability to absorb attacks, even if I'd kept my armour comparatively lighter due to the additional protection offered by my shield.
As far as team development went, the only thing that I wasn't comfortable about was a decision that Steve had made without consulting me. After a couple of close calls where Finnick had needed urgent medical attention after a raid, Steve had nominated that Prim join the team as our new field medic, reasoning that we could all trust her and she had received enough training from our mother to treat most injuries long enough to keep any injured alive long enough to get them to more equipped facilities. She was under instructions to remain in the hovercraft unless I gave her an explicit order to come and assist us, but she'd been given full stealth training by Gale and similar experts in that field.
I would have been uncertain about the idea of Prim joining the team on principle, but the fact that Steve had given her the codename of 'Black Widow' just made me more uncomfortable. Steve had assured me that he wasn't interested in teaching her how to fight in favour of focusing on improving her stealth skills and any other field training he could offer, but as much as I'd admired Natasha when we'd worked together, the thought of Prim becoming like her…
Right now, however, all had been quiet for the last couple of weeks, and despite the fact that I was technically unemployed until the next crisis arose, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I'd spent so much time feeling comparatively useless after I'd won the Seventy-Fourth Games and found myself no longer needing to do anything to survive, but even if there was nothing that actively demanded my attention as an Avenger right now, I could still spend time training with the others and on my own and feel like I was genuinely accomplishing something rather than just going through old motions.
It helped that my new house felt far more like something I would choose, as opposed to the overly decorated style of my family home in the Victor's Village. Since Finnick, Johanna and I were all well-known as Avengers, my mother and Annie had been relocated to a secure facility some distance outside most of the Districts, the area giving us freedom to train and plan for anything that might come up while also allowing our families to do their own work. Annie had taken to transcribing some of the stories Steve had kept in his archives from before the first major war so that they could be shared with the other Districts now that we'd abandoned the old Capitol propaganda, while my mother was using some of his old records to study more advanced medical techniques so that she could act as a doctor rather than just a healer.
At the moment, with Peeta visiting some old friends back in the rebuilt District Twelve- since Iron Man had a full-body suit, it was easier for Peeta to hide his identity- and Johanna and Finnick attending a briefing at the Council to help Steve report on our latest developments while Prim had lessons with my mother, I was enjoying the rare opportunity for a decent rest in my room, with no need to worry about training or missions for the next couple of days…
The sudden ring of my video phone interrupted my thoughts. For a moment, as I got up from my couch, I was tempted to ignore it in favour of my hard-earned peace, but when I saw the familiar 'A' logo on the screen, I swiftly realised that I couldn't do that; only one person called with that as their icon, and he wouldn't call me on a hard-earned day off for no reason.
"Steve?" I said, looking at the vid-screen in surprise as I turned it on and saw my mentor; it took a great deal to unnerve the man who had once been known as Captain America, but he was clearly at least somewhat uncomfortable about something. "What's up?"
"I've just been alerted by Stark's automated stellar scanning network that something is falling from the sky," Steve explained grimly.
"Something?" I repeated, looking at him uncertainly once I remembered that he was referring to a system of satellites that Tony Stark had once created to warn Earth about potential attacks after the Battle of New York; something striking Earth from space sounded like a problem, to be sure, but I didn't see how it was a problem that merited a call like this. "Like… a meteor?"
"Not exactly," Steve replied. "Whatever this is… well, my access to the tracking systems have been very erratic ever since the Maestro began to set up Panem, so I can't be certain what it is, but I can confirm that we're talking about something very big that doesn't quite seem to be a natural phenomenon…"
"Not natural?" I repeated uncertainly.
"All I can say for sure is that we've had a few similar impacts in the past couple of months," Steve explained. "The first couple were fairly small and contained on the east coast, so I never saw the need to bring them up, and the third one fragmented significantly even before it hit the ground, but in this case… well, I'm not an expert on anything relating to space, but even I know that you don't get this many large meteors on this kind of short notice. They're coming in at a rate that can't be controlled, so I don't think we're dealing with a new Chitauri assault or anything like that, but I can be sure that whatever's happening up there, it's not a natural meteor shower that we just missed seeing earlier."
"Right…" I said, nodding thoughtfully as I shrugged on my jacket and grabbed my assembled weaponry. From what I recalled of the map Steve had once shown me of Panem, most of the country was concentrated in the centre and the west coast of what had been America in Steve's time, so anything hitting the east coast wouldn't have immediately raised any red flags as there wasn't meant to be anything in that area. "So what do you think?"
"I think that anything unusual from space merits the attention of the Avengers," Steve said grimly. "Like I said, there seem to be several fragments coming down, so I've tracked one of them to an apparent destination close to District Three; based on projections, it seems to be the most likely to come down in one piece close to our area. At least one other will land fairly safely on the east coast, and nothing's going to touch down in a manner that could endanger innocent lives, but I think it's best we focus on the nearest target before we take action on a larger scale. I've sent a message to Thor and Peeta with the appropriate coordinates, and Johanna and Finnick will be coming by to pick you up before you all head out there yourselves."
"Do we go in to talk, or go in firing?" I asked, already mentally counting my available arrows.
"Talk, but be ready to fire, which is why I think you and Peeta should go first; you're the ones best-qualified to defend yourselves without hurting the other side if it's just a misunderstanding," Steve explained. "Be careful, Katniss; things falling from the sky can be… problematic."
I nodded in understanding before I terminated the video-phone and ran to collect Prim; if this 'object' that had inspired such concern from Steve wasn't a natural phenomenon, having a trained medic available couldn't hurt.
I just hoped that he was right and this wasn't going to turn out to be some kind of alien invasion or whatever the term was; we might be finding our way as a team, but we weren't ready for something that big yet…