"What's your name, Agent?" For someone in a committed relationship, Tony Stark was not shy to using a rather flirtatious tone of voice on the nearest available woman. The poor SHIELD agent, a short girl who couldn't be much older than twenty, was staring at him with an entirely blank look not unlike the ones Natasha gave him. He had a feeling it was part of SHIELD training.

There was a few moments of tense silence before she gave her reply in a flat tone, as if she had much better things to do than take Tony's shit today. "Morales. Agent Morales."

"So you're stuck on babysitting duty huh? Who'd you piss off, Hill or Fury?"

"Deputy Director Hill and I had a minor disagreement."

"And how long have you been with SHIELD?" Tony smirked at her, leaning up on the wall with one hand above her head and ignoring the disgusted looks he was receiving from both Steve and Bruce. Bruce was half considering walking up there and slapping Tony straight across the face. He respected Pepper too much to watch this absolutely pathetic attempt without saying something, but decided to leave it for a few more minutes and give Tony the benefit of the doubt. He hadn't really done anything yet.

"Agent Sitwell has informed me not to release personal information. Especially, he said, to you." Alisande Morales was a smart girl. It was obvious just by looking at her, from her keen gaze going over the room and expressionless face. She knew better than to speak to Stark, but he was a persistent bastard.

"Three weeks, then." He turned to Natasha, who was glaring at him rather angrily. "Three weeks?"

"Tony, leave her alone," She snapped, loading her gun and checking there was spare ammunition in the pouches across her hips. He'd been trying to flirt with Agent Morales ever since he'd laid eyes on her, but it was rather like flirting to a brick wall; she barely responded and the harder he tried the more pathetic it got. It was almost like the suave Tony Stark they all knew and hated had disappeared and been replaced by this ridiculous copy. Clint was wondering if he should tell Natasha that Tony's BAC probably wasn't down to a relatively normal level yet, before dismissing the idea; she could probably tell just by looking at him. It wasn't overly obvious, but there was definitely something off about him, from his semi-joking flirtatious voice and cocky grin.

"So, newbie, got your codename yet? We've got codenames. I'm Iron Man, and that's Captain America and the Hulk. I'm sure you heard plenty about Black Widow and Hawkeye in training."

"With all due respect, sir, it is not a codename if your civilian identity is public. It is an alias. And no," She added, "I have not yet done anything to require a codename."

Natasha decided she liked the rookie.

"How about Babysitter? Seems appropriate." Tony grinned at Agent Morales, who stared straight ahead, finally having had enough of him.

"What did your disagreement with Maria involve, anyway?" Now Tony was legitimately curious and slightly fascinated by the new agent, who was still determinedly ignoring him. When three minutes went without a reply, he started to get annoyed. As it approached six, he narrowed his eyes at her.

"I hear she hides the bodies of rookies that displease her underneath the floorboards of her office."

Still no reply.

"I could hide your body underneath the floorboards of my office. Except my office doesn't have floorboards. More like polished marble floors. But I could still hide your body under there."

"Tony, enough." Bruce was starting to get annoyed with his idiot of a best friend.

Agent Morales flicked her eyes to him with a disbelieving smile, one hand moving to her sidearm. Natasha decided she definitely liked the rookie. "I doubt that, Mr Stark."

Bruce dragged Tony back over to his seat and forced him to sit down, snapping at him quietly to cut it out. Tony glared at him but did as he was told, piecing together his armour the closer they got to the city. Bruce stripped down to his pants, leaving his shirt, socks, shoes and a spare pair of pants in a bag stashed behind the seat. Clint restrung his bow and stocked up his quiver as Steve pulled on his mask. Natasha was the only one already prepared, so she tasked herself with handing out earpieces to everybody but Stark, whose armour was already linked up with them, and Bruce, because once he hulked out he really wouldn't need one. Agent Morales was slightly surprised to be handed one, but nodded in understanding; if they required backup, she would be the one to make the call.

The engines whirred as they began their descent and Natasha stretched once more. She was ready for this. It wasn't hard - a gang war turned sour. Sure, it had turned sour to the point of all-out guerrilla warfare, but the point was it wouldn't take long to clean up. Take out a couple of snipers, disable a few bombs, they'd be home by dinner, or so she thought.

Nick Fury was not a bad man. An amoral man, perhaps, but not necessarily bad. If there was some information that was mostly irrelevant to a mission, he'd leave it out of official documentation and reports. If Tony Stark decided to hack into that documentation and refuse to be debriefed on a situation, whatever trouble he got into was entirely his fault.

Even so, Nick Fury probably should have mentioned the gang war was between two separate mutant militia groups.

"Son of a gun! There's a young lady down here who just walked straight through me!"

"That's a phaser, Cap, keep the hell away from her!"

Steve dodged the girl who walked through him as she took a swing at his head. Tattoos glowed violet across her body, marking patterns across her skin and giving her that same unique glow around the fist she was aiming at his face. He sidestepped it and took a swipe at her ankles with one foot, effectively knocking her off-balance. Hawkeye was still barking orders in his ear, completely aware that the good captain was not really experienced in fighting mutants - especially not when some of them weren't much older than sixteen.

"I'm sorry, miss." He offered his hand down to the girl sprawled on the pavement, whose tattoos had faded to a regular purple. She glanced at his hand for half a second before she began to glow again and threw herself at him, a flurry of fists and feet. He pulled up his shield to block the next punch, leaning backwards as her arm went through it, fingers outstretched as she snatched at his throat.

Before he could somehow throw her off, she screamed in pain and fell backwards, revealing the familiar red-and-gold armour of Iron Man. He didn't bother asking as Tony slapped a mechanical collar around the twitching girl's neck, just moving onto the next lot of fighting psychos. He didn't know how these people were able to do these unusual things, but he was certain it wasn't something impossible. Seventy years ago he wouldn't have believed they existed. It was hard to not believe in something when it was pitching a fireball at your face.

"Captain, cover Black Widow!"

Slamming his shield into fire-thrower's face and ignoring the crack that sounded, he jumped away from the next attacker and ran his way up a ladder to the roof. Widow had taken refuge in a nook cut into the edge of the building, but a couple of straggling roof-fighters were about to drop in on her.

Natasha was grateful for the cries of pain behind her. She fired off another shot to one of the monstrous attackers from below and turned to look at a scream of pain, a scream that sounded a lot like Steve when she 'accidentally' hit him in more delicate areas during sparring. There was a crackle that sounded a lot like an electrical surge somewhere to her right. She looked back just in time to be hit in the face by a crackling barb. The force of the blow knocked her straight off the edge the building and then she was falling.

Air whooshed past her and something snatched her hand, cold metal closing around her wrist. The force of the sudden stop tore her shoulder out of its socket and there was a muffled cry of inappropriate language before she was falling again.

SHIELD bodysuits were designed to offer as much protection to the human body as possible. But no matter the amount of armour integrated into her suit, or the approved alterations she'd allowed Stark to make on it, there wasn't a lot a sturdy piece of fabric could do against gravity and four inches of concrete.

"Babysitter, this is Iron Man. Black Widow is down."