AN: Here's the next chapter! I've been banging them out because I'm in a bad mental place right now and this seriously cheers me up. Especially when I see Me And Not You 1001 review - that always makes me happy! I'm so glad you guys are enjoying it and everything, I hope I'm doing the series justice. I'm trying to stay as canon as possible, but, you know. I really hope you're enjoying how I'm doing the prompt, Bookwyrm!

The only things in the room could've made him cry at the sight.

Cap's shield was leaning up against one wall, Hawkeye and Widow's various weapons piled next to it, and Thor's hammer trembling on the floor - the prince was clearly trying to summon it, but something was blocking him. In hindsight these baddies would probably realize it was stupid to leave the weapons all in the same room, but for now it told him one thing. The others were definitely here with him.

He rushed... actually, it was more like he limped as fast as he could, holding himself very stiffly, to the pile of Clint and Nat's weapons, kneeling and shuffling through them. He found himself shying away from the bigger blades and guns, for no reason he could consciously determine. He grabbed two smaller knives instead that would be easy for him to hold, making a note to thank the two spies later for being so prepared as he strapped the sheaths (why had the idiots left the sheaths on?) to his belt, which he hadn't gotten out of the habit of wearing thank God. One of the Widow Bites looked broken, and if he had the time he could probably fix it, but he didn't, so he shoved it in his pocket, sure he could salvage the parts for something if he needed to, and strapped the working on on his good... well, non-casted, wrist. There was a small pistol that Clint normally kept in his boot that he would probably be able to fire even without muscle memory, and he shoved that in his back pocket, making sure the safety was on. He definitely didn't want to shoot his ass off.

There was no way he could use Clint's bow, it was far to heavy for him. Even normally he probably wouldn't be able to draw back the string if he wasn't in the suit, and it was taller than him, so it wasn't worth carrying around. His arrows, meanwhile, could be useful. Tony would know, he had invented most of them.

Not the arrows themselves, actually, the arrow heads. He quickly dismantled the quiver to give him access, grabbing all the EMP heads he could and stuffing them in his other pocket (one was becoming quite full). He took one of the hacking heads (he was particularly proud of that piece of tech) and several exploding ones. He felt far more confident now that he had an arsenal at his fingertips.

There was no way he could lift Thor's hammer, he didn't even bother going near it, but Cap's shield would probably be useful. It was as big as he was, but if he could lift it, he would be better protected than most tanks... at least in the front.

The shield had never really seemed all that heavy, but now it felt like the vibranium weighed a ton. He could lift it for a bit, but if he wanted to walk it needed to rest on the ground, dragging. It wouldn't damage the shield - it was more likely to damage the ground - but it would make noise. He contemplated, and the benefits outweighed the disadvantages, so he strapped it to his casted arm.

Leaving was next. He had been rushing, but he had pretty fairly mapped out what he had seen through the ventilation. Assuming the vents ran alongside the hallways, he thought he knew where the control room was for the monitoring system. Getting that offline should be his next goal.

But there was no way he was getting back up into the vents. He was too battered, and they were too high in this room for him to reach anyway. That meant leaving right through the front door, which, he hoped he didn't have to mention, was immensely dangerous. Especially since the cameras were, as of yet, still working.

He had weapons, and he could probably use them, but he needed a way to take out the cameras while he looked for the control room. That's where his brilliant EMP arrows came in. He had developed them originally to take out single robots, since every evil scientist seemed to be coming out of the woodworks since Iron Man, so they weren't very strong. If directly touching electronics they could fry circuits, and in his testing they had made lights flicker lightly and TVs stripe momentarily, but couldn't permanently damage or disrupt anything from afar. Seeing as he had no way to get the arrowhead to the cameras, and only had a limited number of them, he was going to have to ramp up the energy output somehow.

Natasha was going to kill him.

He pulled the broken Widow Bite back out, working stiff fingers around delicate wiring, hissing at the intermittent shocks he received as he wired the weapons together. It took him far longer than it should have, and he wished he had better tools, but the makeshift machine would work for at least a few blasts. Adrenaline was fading and his wrist screamed at him as he worked at the lock on the door, slowly peeking out. This hallway was clear.

He was about to step out when he remembered that if he was going to get the others, they would need weapons too. He turned back, grabbed another pistol and another knife, and rushed into the hallway, eager to get this over with.

"What are you doing?"

Tony flinched and froze at the yell before spinning around, panicking as the glaring soldier stomped closer. Instinctively he held up the shield.

"U-Uhm-" His gears were turning to crank out a feasible lie. "I got l-lost, I was looking for Dad. He told me to s-stay put but the other soldiers told me to move and-"

"Where did you get that?" The guy's anger wasn't diminishing, but he didn't seem to suspect him either. "Don't you know we're in lockdown?"

"Uhm!" Fuck, when did lying get this hard? Damn his concussion. "I heard the alarms and I got scared, I stole some key and started looking for a place to hide and I found Captain America's shield, I thought it could protect me f-from Dad." He groaned internally. He was scared, but his irritation at his mission being interrupted and his plotting was doing a good job of distracting him.

But he panicked when the soldier leaned down. The most likely conclusion was that he wasn't doing anything malicious - taking the shield maybe, or picking him up - but it terrified Tony, and apparently his muscle memory was just fine because in an instant his little pistol was out of his back pocket and missing a bullet. Blood splattered over his face and chest and he froze, staring pale and wide-eyed at the man as he crumpled. The glazed eyes bore into him, and he felt his shoulders and hands start to shake.

He had killed before. This was different. It wasn't right. He was scared.

He knew the report had sent people running, and he took off, his mind racing faster than his body could as it mapped out his next steps. He was going into shock, he could feel it in his freezing hands and racing heart, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

He turned too hard, crashed into the door before managing to wrench the knob and shoulder it open, and opened fire on the two surprised guards seated in the room. He was efficient, though not as good as the spies, with two shots in each guard. The clock was ticking. He had five minutes at best.

Doing his best to ignore the rising nausea at the smell of blood and sight of bodies, he rushed over to security panel. He rammed the shield into a crack in the paneling and smashed his shoulder into it, ignoring his pain, prying it and the panel free with scrabbling hands. At the same time he was staring ravenously at the video screens, drinking in the information they gave him: the layout, the location of his friends, their conditions. Cap, Bruce, and Nat all looked unconscious. Nat and Clint were together, a stupid idea from the baddies, but Clint looked alright, banged up but clearly functional judging by the tightly controlled rage and glittering eyes. Cap seemed to be in a med bay, and Bruce was in a cell. Thor looked conscious but not all their, his eyes glazed over, growling and twitching periodically. He was hooked up to a machine. Tony couldn't determine its origin or function through the perfunctory look he got through the camera, but it was clear it was keeping the Asgardian incapacitated. No one seemed too badly hurt. Obviously Clint, Natasha, and himself were the worst off, considering they were all fully human, but it was obvious their superpowered compatriots had taken the brunt of the blast and already healed.

That meant little however, since it meant three unconscious Avengers, two incapacitated Avengers, and an unarmed, injured archer trying to escape from God-knows-who in a compound in the middle of God-knows-where.

Four minutes.

He tore at the wiring with his hands, using Cap's shield to ground him; the electricity still travelled through him, but wouldn't do permanent damage to his reactor or heart. Damn if it didn't hurt though. He ignored it, stripping the wires with his teeth as he wired the Frankenstein EMP into the control panel directly. It was rough, but he could make it work. Bruce was going to be pissed at the electrical burns on his fingers, but that didn't matter for now. Adrenaline was his new best friend.

Two minutes.

He was scared, fucking terrified. His heart was beating in his throat, forcing him to swallow reflexively just to keep the vomit and air down, alarms and his own mind screaming at him, panic throbbing through him as his medulla tried to overrule his cerebral cortex and force him into fight-or-flight. He couldn't run, not yet, he had to do this, he had to stay, it didn't matter how scared he was, this had to be done!

One minute.

He was going to be shot. He wasn't going to make it in time and they would come storming in here and he was going to be shot and he was terrified. He was going to die and he wouldn't even have saved his friends, God damn it all. He pressed the activator on the Widow Bite and watched the control panel spark, flicker, die, and set off a chain reaction.

Light bulbs exploded, some of the monitors burst out in an array of shattered glass and sparks, the wiring he had just stripped caught on fire as the rubber casing began to melt. He shrieked and backed away, hearing similar emasculating sounds echoing through the building. This wasn't what he intended, but okay, he had somehow wired the pulse up so well to the power supply that he had shot the entire electrical system at once.

Maybe he needed to go review some electrical manuals when he got home.

Unintended, but certainly welcome.

He could hear the roar of backup generators, but it seemed he had fried about half of the wiring with his EMP blast, since (he noticed as he tore through the hallways) only about half the lights came back on. Some were flickering. It was very ominous.

This would make a great movie. Of course, it would make a better movie if the protagonist wasn't a five year old. He might market it.

He skidded around a corner, saw the barrel of an automatic, and immediately curled up behind the shield. Vibranium may never break and absorb vibration, but it couldn't stop him from flying backward and slamming into the wall, earning a few more bruises and what he thought was a cracked rib, his arm jostling in the cast and almost drawing a scream as gray and red and white spots danced in front of his face. Maybe that was just the paint job on the shield though.

He pulled his own gun and managed to hit the guy right between the eyes, but, by his count, that meant he was out of bullets. Wow, that was stupid, not bringing more ammo. He honestly hadn't expected to use it.

He skittered onward, dashing around a corner before hastily backtracking and ducking into an adjacent room, locking the door, giving himself time to think.

If the map from the control room was correct, that heavily guarded (fifteen guards was overkill, wasn't it? Maybe not, since it was the Avengers) room was where Clint and Natasha were locked up. And, if his assumptions were correct, he found out why no one had come running to stop him from devastating their entire electrical grid - they were probably all watching the Avengers.

He needed to find a way in. There had to be a way. If he could get to Clint, Clint would know what to do.

This room was, supposedly, directly adjacent to Clint's. Maybe, if he could find another ventilation shaft...

And he didn't even need to climb anything to get to this one.

The grate was at ground level, and with the epinephrine still pouring through his capillaries he made quick work of the screws. He didn't want to leave Cap's shield behind, but it only fit diagonally in the opening. Then again, he also didn't want to be snuck up on and shot from behind while stuck in a hole. He ended up wedged into half the shaft with Cap's shield covering most of his back and wedged pretty tightly as well. It made it hard to move quietly, but since Clint was screaming something from the other side of the wall, he didn't think anyone would hear. It was a good thing he had always been a small child, or this definitely would not have worked. It certainly wasn't comfortable.

The vents branched off, up and to the sides, but he squirmed forward. He couldn't hear Clint shouting anymore, so he tried his best to keep the shield from scraping along the sides too much or banging into the metal around him. It only took about ten minutes - it would've taken less if he had been able to make noise. But it felt like an eternity. Everything hurt and he was scared. He wanted to go home already.

Finally he could see the vent, and considering these baddies had managed to capture all of the Avengers they clearly had poor design, since the vent seemed to lead right out into Clint and Nat's cell, judging by what he could see of Nat's limp body and Clint's knee. The archer seemed to be sitting along the wall right next to the vent - clearly he planned to use it in an escape. Tony could see the assassin's fingers tapping on his knee, and it gave him an idea. With much difficulty and a bit of squirming he managed to pull the thumb tack from his little closet out of his pocket.

It had been a while ago, but one day he and Clint, chained to the infirmary and high on the good stuff, had decided that there were some operations in which silence and anonymity was absolutely key. Which is where their half-drunk language came in. It was something like Morris Code, but not really.

Dear God, he just hoped his luck kept running and Clint wasn't too high to remember.

He stayed just in the shadows of the vent so the soldiers in the room couldn't see his movement, prayed Clint would hear him, trusted that the now-older man's training would allow him to keep a straight face and not react, and took a chance.

Clint, he tapped out. He watched Clint's fingers continuing to drum on his knee, then saw the subtle change and concentrated, watching carefully.

Tony.