Nope, I don't wanna author's note. But you can have a chapter if you like. (And I assume that you do...)

Not Marvel. Please forgive me, and do go check out the work of my beta Nova, you won't regret it!

TapTap

It was supposed to just be a nice, relaxing day out. Pepper, Claire, Bruce Banner and the baby, along with any superhero who had enough time, were planning on taking a walk and getting some coffee in Central Park. Just a nice, relaxing day.

Then Pepper had to go in for work as an inferior competitor had an emergency recall and thus offered themselves up on a silver platter.

Clint, Natasha, Steve and Bucky were doing training exercises with the organisation that had replaced Shield sometime back in that mess with Loki when some sort of only-maybe-alien, involving golden glitters and red fabric and something ancient, had taken on a definitely alien and apparently saved the universe or something. Nobody thought much about it - it gave everybody a headache - and Claire hadn't even met them until much later, so she didn't even pretend to understand any of it.

Tony, meanwhile, simply hadn't gotten the memo and was spending the day with Rhodey and his new buddy Sam. He was taking a break, and not even partying during it, so nobody had the heart to critique him.

This meant that Bruce and Claire went out on their own with the baby. And as it turned out, they would have been so much better off just placing her in one of her swinging chairs and vegging out in front of Tony's massive widescreen tv.

So much for good intentions.

"Bruce. Bruce!" Claire was clutching baby Natalia between her ziplocked hands, hissing the words to the scientist she was bound to, back to back.

"I'm here. I'm awake," he sounded like he'd taken a blow to the head, but she had already seen as much anyway.

"What happens now?" She sounded scared, he heard that, but she was holding it together as well as it could possibly be hoped.

"Now they set up a hostage situation or come with demands," he spoke softly, talking her through her first kidnapping in a low, calm voice. "Probably the latter. Unless they missed the existence of Hulk, anyway. Maybe I have too much self-control recently..." He probably did, as he'd taken enough of a blow to the head to briefly pass out, but hadn't transformed. Yet.

She tried to smile, but didn't quite make it, as several armed men stepped in through a door in the corrugated iron of the warehouse. There was bright sunlight on the other side, but it was cut off abruptly as the door locked, with an electronic beep that was loud in the silence. The space was large enough to eco vaguely, as well.

The room itself was mostly nondescript, though the engineer had noted a single window with some horizontal bars underneath it, easily climbable. The men coming threateningly towards them were in black tactical gear, very unimaginative.

"Well look what we have here," the apparent leader spoke in just the kind of voice Claire would have imagined a slightly bad crime boss would use. Maybe they had overlooked the Hulk after all. They were awfully predictable.

"The most vulnerable Avenger, and Tony Stark's secretary sugar baby. And let's not forget, his actual daughter. How sweet," the man cooed sarcastically and his men laughed. "You'd think he'd have you better protected. Now whose fingers do we send as proof we've got you? All of you? I think we're gonna have to use a whole hand in one case, someone's a bit small!" Claire knew, she did, how not to be an idiot. But she still growled menacingly as he drew a knife looking at the baby in her arms. Of course, the men found that even funnier than their leader's mocking.

They were not similarly amused much longer. Only a moment passed, then he took another step and made his first mistake. He wouldn't be able to afford many.

When Claire got a hand over her mouth and was pulled into the back of a dark car with Natalia, Bruce knocked over the head and dragged in after them, two things happened very quickly.

Firstly, as she was no idiot and banged her wrist on the doors as she got tossed inside, in what merely looked like a really pathetic - and half-arsed at that - escape attempt, the bangle Ironman had initially designed for his suits and had modified as a security device for his favourite apprentice sent a distress signal straight to Jarvis, giving the Avengers both an emergency summons and exact coordinates. Very neat, very clever.

Not many seconds later, as Claire's normal movement pattern had changed drastically, the good luck charm consisting of a large natural pearl and a gorgeous locket Bruce Wayne had gifted her and she'd promised to wear sent its own distress call to its own master.

Ironman would have never told anybody if, when he was preparing to rescue his daughters, he'd been sent encrypted files by Batman with "a helping hand".

As it was, he did receive a file, but it was sent urgently by a frantic Bruce Wayne. He had his suspicions with all that tech anyway, of course he had, but he if anybody knew why he shouldn't do anything with that hunch, other than hide it in the back of his mind. And he did.

He was suddenly very busy, anyway.

Tony Stark had enemies to show exactly how much of a mistake they'd just made. Unfortunately for him, there was just one fault with that plan.

Aww, I haven't done an Evil Cliffhanger is Evil in forever. How delightfully nostalgic...