Tony's lab was incredible. It was as vast as the other rooms in the tower, but with this posh glass interior instead of the typical laboratory solid whites. It was extremely cool.
Ashley was lying on a black leather bench with a large, slightly intimidating piece of equipment hovering over her - like a hi tech MRI machine. Tony had put on some music to keep her relaxed, whilst he and Bruce watched from behind protective glass with their own holographic screens being fed live data. "Alright Red, if you just wanna break down your powers again one by one? We should be able to decode it with the blood work we took - you know, once Bruce actually finishes it," Tony explained via the talkback system.
"Tony, these things take time and I've never dealt with DNA strands like these before," Bruce frowned irritably from where he sat beside him, peering into a microscope. "I've read on the X-Gene but I've never come this close to it."
"No time like the present!" Tony muttered. "Okay, let's take it element by element. The 'wind' part, what does it do?"
"Um…well, I blast air directly from my palms, if I concentrate hard enough I can create these mini tornados but I've never needed to use them," Ashley answered him slowly.
"Can you blow excessive amounts of air out of your mouth?" Bruce piped up as Tony scanned the information into the system. "You know, to make you lift off?"
"I've never tried, but I can shoot it out of my feet to hover for a while," Ashley frowned back in consideration.
"Oh, so you're basically everything Tony wishes he was without the suit?" Bruce blinked innocently, aware that his best friend was glaring at him. Ashley clamped her lips together so that she didn't laugh, craning her neck just in time to see Tony crumple up a piece of paper and fling it at Bruce's head. "Ouch?!"
"Anyways. Next we got water…we know you secrete boiling water when you go into freak mode…" Tony trailed off.
"Yeah well I've never tried it consciously, so I couldn't tell you why or how that happens," Ashley muttered quietly.
"Well it's essentially fire and water, right? I don't think it's insane that you put two elements together to create a new one. In fact, can you also release ice pellets or anything?" Tony questioned her intriguingly.
"Why would she?" Bruce frowned. "Which withstanding element makes things cold?"
"Wind?" Tony muttered back obviously. "Red? Can you?"
"I…I don't know?" Ashley murmured with a pout. "I haven't really…guys, I'm not very good at this. I'm almost twenty five but still have no idea what I'm doing." Tony rolled his eyes and didn't respond, unwilling to feed into her self doubt.
"Okay, and can you do anything with water that's already there?" he decided to test her instead.
"Not to my knowledge…?"
"Really? Because earlier on you turned that water I gave you into a block of ice," Bruce informed her, glancing up from the microscope with a smirk.
"So…?" Ashley blinked.
"So it means you can control the pre existing elements?" Tony spelt it out as if it was obvious. Ashley closed her mouth and fell quiet in shock. "Alright next we have…fireballs! What's happening there?"
"Fireballs shoot out of my fingertips. I can make them float around if I concentrate hard enough - or, if I feel overly threatened, they tend to float close to whoever the enemy is. They can also come out of my feet to propel me…again, very Stark like," Ashley recited, squinting eyes the harder she concentrated.
"Do the fireballs increase in size depending on stress levels?" Tony quizzed.
"Sometimes," Ashley confirmed with a sigh.
"Gotcha. I'm guessing the rocks are the same?"
"Correct. Hot rocks is something I'm guessing I can do as well, now I think about it," Ashley chewed the inside of her cheek, only now realising how much of her mutation was undiscovered. Tony nodded at her words and wriggled in his seat, excited for the next one.
"Okaaaay," he drawled, his beady eyes dancing with excitement, "now let's talk about the blood!" Ashley rolled her eyes.
"What about it, Tony?"
"First of all - can you only do it when there's visible blood under the skin? A bruise or a cut-"
"Yeah, that's what she told us when she joined," Bruce reminded him.
"Actually, no," Ashley blinked in sudden remembrance, making Bruce's thick eyebrows shoot up. "I thought I did, but on that last mission I stopped a guy from turning round without seeing his bare skin at all. So…"
"What happened the first time you ever did it?" Tony blinked as Bruce made notes on his tablet.
"I…I was about seventeen. There was a creep making advances on me at some party," Ashley began shakily, feeling her heart plummet at the memory. Both Bruce and Tony glanced up from their devices with matching frowns. "He just wouldn't listen. I just wanted him to stop touching me - so I imagined him being unable to move and that's exactly what happened. He couldn't get it out his pants and I ran."
The men said nothing.
"Uh, guys? That's it…"
"Huh?" Tony finally blinked, turning to Bruce for answers. "Buddy, help me out here. I get the premise but…" Bruce slipped off his glasses and carefully folded them in thought.
"Uh…Ashley, are you saying you didn't physically feel anything when you did that?" he clarified slowly.
"I mean… it did feel intrusive. My palms usually get hot and the vision of what I want the… 'victim'…to do has to be really vivid. I have to practically imagine being inside of them," Ashley tried to explain. "I hate the feeling and I didn't realise what it even was until I spoke to my dad about it a few years later."
"But is it the actual blood she can manipulate or is it water within the plasma?" Tony murmured across to Bruce, still perplexed.
"Well even if it is the water, it means she can definitely control other liquids outside of the body, she just needs to figure out the right method," Bruce muttered back, unfolding his specs and sliding them back onto his face. "It sounds as if she uses the mutation best when she's under threat…controlling fireballs in the air when she's being attacked, freezing water in a glass when she feels she's being attacked…literally controlling blood when she's being attacked. Makes sense."
"But then, by previous logic, if she heated the water from her own body to excrete it boiling hot, and she held the glass of water till it was frozen - can you imagine what she'd be able to do with blood if she manages to get her hands on someone?" Tony hissed, his deep brown eyes wide with excitement. Bruce's suddenly eyes shot up to his, finally understanding what he was getting at.
It then became increasingly clear to them both as to why Ashley was such a 'threat'. It was because if she was on the 'bad side' - the damage she'd be capable of would be limitless.
Ashley carefully pushed the machine away from her so that she could sit herself up.
"Guys? What's the conclusion?" she yawned, ruffling out her loose curls and squinting at the two men sitting behind the glass.
"The conclusion is that we're gonna train you up to be the most badass Avatar Aang that this world has ever seen," Tony smirked down the mic, crossing his arms confidently. Ashley gave an expressive eye roll at his reference, having heard it all before, whilst Bruce crinkled his nose and released a confused,
"Who?"
…
Tony and Bruce claimed they only needed a day to set up Ashley's training. She was still dubious over the entire ordeal - she wasn't convinced that any of this would help, based on the fact that many had tried before and many had failed. A new teacher attempted to do this every few months whilst she was still in the school and it never worked.
So the next day, Ashley stirred herself awake, her pretty eyes fluttering open. But instead of seeing the familiar scorch marked ceiling above her (she and Tony had decided not repaint anything until her nightmares stopped), she saw complete darkness instead. Her heart started beating as she anxiously felt around for her phone, but she didn't even recognise the bed she was in. In fact, she wasn't in a bed, but on a cold floor. Now the panic was really settling in - but just before she freaked, a sudden harsh white industrial-like light illuminated her surroundings. She quickly noticed that she was in the same lab as before, but without all the machines. The once steel walls were padded this time, and there were sprinklers fixed on the ceiling. The glass wall still remained, and behind it sat Tony, Director Fury and Bruce, all drinking cups of coffee and looking mightily relaxed in the midst of her worry. "Morning, sunshine!" came Tony's bright voice through the intercom as he grinned and waved through the glass. Ashley squinted at him and her head fell back.
"Thank God I decided to wear pants to bed, huh?" she raised an unimpressed eyebrow.
"Oh we're equally as thankful, Agent A," Fury hummed back. Ashley rolled her eyes and gave another yawn before realising something.
"Um…why am I here?" she finally blinked around her.
"We decided to throw you straight into your training-" Fury started.
"Wait! One second," Ashley murmured, holding up a finger. She reached into the pocket of her pyjama shorts and pulled out one of those nifty finger toothbrushes. Tony burst out laughing as she brushed away shamelessly.
"How is she so damn different to her sister?" Fury blinked amusedly.
"What are you talking about? Christie's a clean freak, too. She'd get blood on her hands and then squirm at the sight of it once she's out of her creepy kill mode," Tony reminded him, watching Ashley finish rinsing by squirting jets of water into her mouth from her fingertips.
Once she'd finished, she cleared her throat and hopped to her feet.
"Ready!" she finally announced with a thumbs up. "Hit me!"
"Your time, JARVIS," Tony hummed casually. Before Ashley could ask what he meant, she was rudely interrupted by fist sized rocks flying her way from wall shoots. They slammed into her arms, her back and her thighs - relentlessly.
"OUCH! What the f*ck?!" Ashley yelled, jutting her hands out in defence.
"How ya gonna stop 'em, Red?" Tony shouted amusedly.
"Stop WHO, Tony?" Ashley snapped back as she shot him a glare. "An angry group of school kids?!"
"Hey, if you're struggling with rocks, I dread to think what you'll do for bullets," Tony drawled with a roll of his eyes.
"I don't know what I'm meant to dooooo!" Ashley wailed like a frustrated toddler. "How many bloody rocks do you have stocked up in there?!"
"Ha! 'Bah-luddy' - she's so British," Tony chuckled quietly.
"We don't have a teacher for you, Ashley. This mutation is as fresh to you as it is to us - so we're winging it too," Fury reminded Ashley helpfully. She let out a heavy groan, knowing full well that he had a point, and started aimlessly shooting out fireballs galore from her palms to counteract the rocks.
And the ones that didn't miss collided with the rocks and successfully obliterated them into dust.
"Ah see nowww she's getting it," Bruce nodded proudly.
"Element switch!" Tony let out an abrupt yelp, slamming another button on the panel in front of him. Suddenly, the rocks stopped and were replaced with something far worse - rounded fireballs, catapulting out at such unnatural speed. Ashley had no time to think - she simply started pelting out water jets instead, which was a lot easier. But Tony chewed the inside of his cheek and decided to amp it up, increasing the number of fireballs. Ashley let out a squeal and, without thinking, created a tornado of wind around her to send the fireballs spiralling across the room so they fizzled out. Tony stopped the program before turning to the already grinning Fury and Bruce, whilst Ashley landed back on the floor again, panting heavily and clutching her chest.
"So that's her immediate deflective combat," Bruce hummed, leaning back with his hands behind his head as Tony clicked on the talkback system.
"You see what you did there, Red? That's what we call: initiative!" he practically sang.
"I've…never…created a tornado…that big before," Ashley panted back weakly.
"Do you remember how you did it?" Bruce questioned her eagerly.
"I don't think there was a process - it was more like a reflex," she murmured. Her eyes went wide as she slowly realised something else. "In fact, now that I think about it, when I was on the last mission and I snuck up on that HYDRA agent…controlling his blood so that he couldn't turn around was a reflex action too," Ashley admitted with flushed cheeks, still not proud of it. "I know it's bad-"
"No, that's not bad - it's badass," Tony corrected her quickly, Bruce and Fury nodding ferociously behind him. "The quicker you realise that nobody can touch you, Red - the better." Ashley gulped at his words and shrugged. "Anyway, let's go again! ELEMENT CHANGE!" Tony yelped out just before the rocks burst through the shoots again.
…
"Alright," Tony cleared his throat once Ashley had finished that segment. "Onto the next one!"
"Ah. You're gonna love this one, Agent," Fury smirked, folding his arms. Ashley frowned as the door opened and in walked Steve, dressed in a black scuba suit with a matt black motorcycle helmet on. Realistically, he looked like a muscular blue eyed seal in a helmet and all Ashley could do was burst out laughing.
"What the h-h-hell?" she spluttered through the giggles. Steve bit back a smile and ducked his head in embarrassment.
"Try not to laugh," he sighed jovially, glancing back up at her with flushed cheeks, "I only agreed to this for you."
"Put it this way - it was either him or Clint," Bruce interjected.
"And you went for Steve because….?" Ashley trailed off slightly, without taking her eyes off Steve's bulging physique.
"To be honest we were concerned that if you had the opportunity to kill Clint - you'd actually take it," Tony explained with a chuckle. Ashley gave a fair nod and dragged her eyes from Steve.
"So you want me to try and kill Cap?" she gasped sorrowfully as her bottle green eyes widened playfully.
"You're not gonna kill him! I designed a suit made to withstand your powers, that's why he's in the leotard. Now, obviously this was a rushed prototype so Cap, if you feel pain - well, you're not meant to. So…well, scream," Tony hummed, giving Steve an overly enthusiastic thumbs up. "You ready, Red?" Ashley gave one last fleeting look to Steve.
"You got this," he murmured encouragingly, fixing the helmet. Ashley smirked slightly and turned back to Stark.
"Ready."
"Steve is a murderer-agent-bad-guy-dude - GO!" Tony shouted, starting the timer. Steve immediately grabbed Ashley around the waist and lifted her off the floor. But she couldn't help but let out a girly gasp of surprise.
She didn't even want to fight back.
"Oh dear god, stop!" Tony shouted out, abruptly pausing the timer. Steve gracefully placed Ashley back on the floor and turned to glare at Tony in annoyance.
"What?" he grunted irritably.
"Oh, nothing - aside from the fact that Ashley looks like she'd gladly stay in your arms forever and that is not what we're trying to achieve?" Tony drawled back, his hands flailing about everywhere sassily. Ashley felt the flush crawl onto her cheeks and she diverted her gaze to the floor whilst Steve's head jerked back.
"She didn't even do anything-"
"Exactly?" Tony, Bruce and Fury all groaned simultaneously. Steve turned back to Ashley again.
"Ashley, don't let them get to you," he murmured apologetically, looking dead into her eyes. "All these little side comments will probably never stop, you know that, right?" Ashley nodded at him, running her tongue over her bottom lip as she studied his wonderfully sculpted face. Was he really that oblivious? Anyone would half a brain would be able to see that she clearly got softer and gigglier around him, but only Steve appeared to think that it was nothing more than some playground teasing.
She shook herself out of it and cleared her throat.
"Okay, let's go again!" she signalled through the glass. Tony let out a small sigh before agreeing.
"Alright. STEVE'S THE BAD GUY, GO!" he hollered with his hands cupped over his mouth. Steve grabbed Ashley one more time, but this time she blasted air straight out of her palms, forcing herself from his grip and hovering into the air instead.
"Damn, and you need a whole ass suit to do that?" Fury murmured to Tony with a risen brow.
"Ya know, I keep asking myself why we keep inviting you to these things," he grumbled back as Bruce tried his best not to laugh. "Alright Red, I see you enjoy the whole wind thing?!"
"Easiest thing to do," Ashley panted back as she lowered herself back down.
"And if you're fighting somewhere with low ceilings?" Bruce frowned.
"I probably would fireblast the enemy… but I don't wanna do that to Steve, he's way too pretty," Ashley admitted, jutting out her bottom lip and lightly stroking Steve's firm chest as he smirked down at her shyly. Fury pulled a face and Tony slumped his head onto his cool glass desk, holding up his hands in defeat.
"Alright, I've had just about enough of this. JARVIS, bring in Barton!" he groaned out with a muffled voice.
…
Ashley had pretty much beat Clint black and blue by the end of the session. Tony had thoroughly enjoyed every second of it too, perfectly aware that Ashley had abused her privileges with that suit. She'd tackled Clint from the back with 'hot hands' (hands engulfed with flames); kicked her way out of his chokehold before delivering a massive rock straight into his chest; flung him around the room like a rag doll with air blasts - it was ridiculous.
So much so that eventually, Clint tapped out, completely fed up. "Wow. Thanks again, Birdie," Tony sniffed, swiping tears of laughter from beneath his crinkled eyes as Ashley and Clint finally stepped into the observation room.
"Tony - never ask me to do that again. The answer is and always will be no," Clint hissed, peeling off the suit to revealed his bruised torso.
"I'm so sorry, Clint," Ashley groaned with gritted teeth, shaking her head. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
"No, you didn't mean to hurt Steve," Bruce corrected her with a smirk, leaning back in his swivel chair with a steaming pot of chilli chicken noodles. Steve bit back a smile as he tucked into a nice large chicken salad wrap, trying not to react.
"Whatever. I'm going to have a bath. But seriously, Ashley - never again." Clint gave them a final miserable salute before hobbling back down the hallway. Ashley waited until he was out of earshot before letting out a giggle, which just made the others laugh harder.
"He is gonna hate you forever, Red," Tony sited with wickedly cheeky eyes. Ashley gave a shrug, returning a similar look of amusement.
"He's been winding me up since I got here," she yawned, perching herself on the arm of Steve's chair. "It was bound to happen."
"Fair enough," Tony hummed as he placed a metal tray on the glass desk in front of him. "Okay. This is the last test for now."
"Cool," Ashley smiled tiredly.
"Banner? All yours, buddy," Tony handed it over. Bruce slurped up his last mouthful of noodles before speaking.
"Alright, Ashley. Here is a tray of all five elements that you have the ability to produce," he began slowly. Sat on the tray was a rock, a plastic cup of water, a mini electric fan, a lit candle and a small petri dish of blood.
"The fan is a great touch," Steve smirked quietly.
"Thanks," Bruce beamed. Ashley hopped off the arm of the chair, already guessing what she'd have to do. "I'm just trying to figure out why you find it hard to control pre-existing elements." Ashley raised an eyebrow and took a deep breath in, trying to answer. "I have a theory!" Banner suddenly continued on, making her stop in her tracks.
"He does have a theory - and it actually makes sense," Tony piped up from across the desk.
"Go for it," Ashley nodded.
"Alright, I think your speech about envisioning what you want the person to do was interesting," Bruce began, waving his pen in the direction of the tray. "Why is it one rule for one and not the other?"
"I-I don't know?" Ashley shrugged helplessly.
"Dear lord," Tony grumbled with a mouthful of cheesy pasta. "He's not actually asking you, Red. Rhetorical questions are a thing, you know." Ashley blushed in embarrassment and clamped her hands over her face, hearing Steve chuckle behind her.
"Sorry - I am so tired!" she groaned. She pulled herself together, trying so hard to regain her focus. "Right, so! W-what do you want me to do?"
"Envision yourself doing something with the rock, for example. See it lift into the air," Bruce suggested, nudging his head towards the tray. Ashley took a deep breath in and stared at the rugged stone, envisioning it floating a few centimetres from the table. The room went silent.
She was staring so hard that she was starting to get a headache.
"You done it yet?" Tony hissed, interrupting the silence. Ashley's shoulders dropped and she flung her head back exasperatedly as Steve sighed. "Alright, I'll take that as a no!" Tony winced. Ashley picked up one the rock and flicked it straight at him, hitting him square in the forehead.
"I'm tired - and you, sir, are not helping," she huffed, folding her arms in defiance.
"I mean we did literally kidnap you out of bed," Tony contemplated in semi-understanding.
"You did what?!" Steve groaned.
"Yes, Steve, they did! And it wasn't even necessary - I would've come down voluntarily," Ashley reminded Tony with a scowl.
"Alright fine, that's it for today then," Bruce agreed with a smile. "You did well - I hope you've at least felt a little more confident."
"I do. Thank you, all of you," Ashley beamed at them sincerely, slightly bowing her head. Steve shot her a proud smile, making her heart flutter slightly. "I do need to practice though. I don't only want to rely on my powers when I'm scared or threatened."
"Oh, a little bit of practice everyday will see you straight through, don't you worry," Bruce smiled, tapping her shoulder in comfort.
"Everyday?" Ashley repeated hollowly.
"Yes, Ashley," Tony blinked as if it were obvious, "superheroes aren't just born - they're made."
Ashley squinted her eyes over at him and scrunched up her nose.
"Tony, I was literally born with this-"
"You get the idea!" Tony smirked before she could finish. "Same time tomorrow, Red!"
...
tell you what, i've written *a lot* of stories in my time - this one is easily my favourite thus far.
