Scarlet rubbed her eyes after waking up from her light sleep. The hard blue seats creaked as she stretched. It wasn't very comfortable to sleep on an airplane. She looked out the window to see the approaching city. They were beginning their descent. It was night time so she couldn't really see anything. But off in the distance she could see the bright blue lights of Avengers tower, nee Stark.

Checking her watch she saw that it was close to ten pm.

It was too late to get anything done today. It would be better to find a place to stay the night and then find Stark the next day. The plane bumped as it made contact and Scarlet was jostled in her seat. A sudden question hit her and all of the previous self-motivation she managed to scrape up at that beach in Malibu drifted off like a dandelion in the wind.

How in the fuck was she supposed to even meet with Stark?

He has one of the best security details on him 24/7 his building is guarded and his personal bodyguard is Harold Hogan, an ex-marine. What was she supposed to do? Walk up to the front desk and tell the lady to call down Stark because he owes her family a favor?

Its laughable. She'll never be able to get close to Stark.

As the other passengers of the plane began to take their luggage down from the shelfs, Scarlet cradled her bag closer to her chest. Had she really come all this way for her to give up so easily?

What did she mean 'all this way'? She had barely begun. There was nothing to show for her efforts. She'd be damned if she would let a little technicality like the difficulty of reaching Stark keep her from making at least a little progress.

She would not give up until she had exhausted all of her options.

Her hope rekindled, she got up from her seat and exited the plane with the other passengers. A stewardess walked with her to the end of the terminal, they were required to as a part of the whole underaged flyer thing, and then left Scarlet to her own devices.

Even if I have this determination, it means nothing if I don't have a gameplan. I'll leave that for tomorrow, though. Right now I feel like I weigh a million pounds.

Exiting the terminal, she made sure to cover her face with a baseball cap and got a taxi.

The driver took her to the nearest hotel, a Comfort Inn and she felt a little bit of the weight on her lift until she was faced with another problem.

Scarlet was unsure of how she was going to get a room but it turned out to be easier than she expected. The receptionist working the counter could care less how old she was, just that she had the money to pay for the room. After Scarlet dolled out the cash, with a little extra for the working lady, the receptionist was far more welcoming and had given her a better room with a nice view.

From there she could see the skyline. Avengers tower was the tallest one out there and it shined the brightest too. Scarlet looked away from the window before her thoughts had a chance to rebel and make her rethink her entire plan once again.

The moment Scarlet laid down on the bed she gave out a large sigh. She fell asleep within minutes, not caring that she was sleeping in her day clothes.

In the morning she blinked and groaned. She had forgotten to close the blinds the night before and now the sun blared in her eyes. She sat up and stared out the window just as she had the night before. This time she could hear the planes roaring as they took off into the sky. She could see the people on the streets and the cluster on the city streets.

Scarlet got up and took a shower. She was content to just stand under the warm spray for a while and feel the past few day's grime falling off of her.

As she stood under the stream of water she thought about what her plan of action was. She couldn't really think of many options at the time. Then again she doesn't really know about anything in the area. Maybe she would go check out Avengers tower and then figure it out from there. It was a half-assed idea but that was all she had at the moment.

She used up the tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The sharp smell of citrus caught her attention and she was swept away once again by her wild thoughts.

She was stuck in an orange tree.

It wasn't her best moment.

Jane was on the ground laughing as the people around worked to try and get her daughter out of a tree. She held a woven bag that was stuffed with oranges and a floppy hat to protect her neck from the blistering Arizona sunshine.

Scarlet was really appreciating the concern.

At the moment she was only 9 she had thought to climb to the top of the tree in order to get all the good oranges that no one else could reach. She just hadn't factored in one tiny detail.

She was terrified of heights.

She hadn't remembered that tiny detail until she was at the top of the tree. She could hear her mother teasing her from the ground.

"You know that the tree is only 15 feet right?"

"That's over three times my hight, mom!"

"Ah, I'd say four times."

"Not. Helping!"

A worker at the farm nervously looked at Jane.

"Shouldn't you be trying to get her down?"

Jane gave the man a funny look before grinning at her daughter.

"She got herself up there. She can get herself down."

"Thank's, mom." Scarlet could sound less enthused about this plan of action. She looked around and tried to quell her rapid heart.

'How did I get up here?'

Slowly, Scarlet started to make her way down the tree. Before she could reach the bottom, though, she fell the last four feet.

She let out a squeal before she landed in a pile of limbs.

"Oh, by God child! You're heavy! Have you been sneaking midnight meals?"

Scarlet looked up and saw that she had landed on Jane. She slowly realized that her mother had tried to catch her. She started giggling.

"What happened to letting me get down by myself?" She asked cheekily.

"We'll call it, maternal instinct. Now come on. We have to get these oranges home and make Margaret some orange juice, before she gets cranky." Jane picked up Scarlet and set her on her feet.

The water had been running for a while then. Scarlet glanced at her pruned fingers. They reminded her of a little baby after sucking on thier thumb. Red and raw. She shook her head and turned off the water.

She put on a white crop top, black waist high jeans and a cream colored cardigan on top to cover her shoulders. She tied her hair up in a ponytail while it was still wet and slipped her backpack on before putting on a pair of sunglasses and her cap. She tied up her black lace up boots that she would never part with. They had a thick heel that made it easy to match with any outfit, plus it was more effective when stomping on someone's foot.

She went down to the lobby and while she was passing the welcoming desk she saw the receptionist from last night falling asleep at the counter and checked her watch. 11:30.

Scarlet laughed and walked onto the busy streets. It was time to get started.

Or at least try to get started. She stood on the street for about five minutes just trying to get a cab and she had almost lost it to a large man in business suit who was too busy talking on the phone to notice her.

She told the cabbie to head to Stark tower. It was best to scope the place out before trying anything.

Scarlet had never been in a city with a higher population than 10,000 people, other than Malibu, so she watched the people in the city rush by, not even seeming to notice the others on the street as they were all on there phones, talking with friends next to them, walking a pet or even just ignoring the people in general.

There was a lot of scaffolding set up on the blocks and Scarlet guessed it was reconstruction from the alien attack. She would understand how it was that most of the city still wasn't rebuilt. There was major funding and donations going into helping Manhattan get back up on their feet. They have had a month to get most of the buildings repaired. Scarlet would have thought that they would have been almost done by now. She had seen houses go up within a week in Arizona. But she could still see rubble on the streets and there were still buildings that were half destroyed.

The strangest thing she noticed, however was that, even with all the people walking on the sidewalk, there weren't as many as she would have pictured.

"Most people hitched it out of here after the attack." Scarlet was startled by the driver speaking. I must have been thinking aloud. "Some lost their jobs and had to get out before they were kicked out onto the streets, others left because they were scared, I guess they think that if it happened once it will happen again." The driver chuckled as he turned a corner.

Scarlet didn't respond. She didn't know much about aliens and for the longest time she thought it was insanity and absurd that people even believed in them. It was irrational and stupid, but then the attack came and Scarlet was sent for a whirl along with the rest of humanity. But even with all that evidence she refused to take a side on the matter. She wouldn't say whether she thought it could happen again or not.

It disturbed her in the least so avoiding the topic was best.

Fascination could be restrained in the presence of caution.

The cab dropped her at the foot of the building. Scarlet stared up at it for a moment before starting her trek up the steps of the building. There was something off. The building was obviously not supposed to be used for anything yet since it was still under repairs. You could see the cranes next to the building with workers bring up new beams and materials. You would think that there wouldn't be anyone doing anything in there other than repairs.

But as Scarlet got closer she saw people swarming through the building they were all dressed in dark blues and blacks. Each one had a small symbol on their sleeves. It was some kind of bird. Then it hit her.

It was SHIELD.

Scarlet's heart started pounding as she stopped her slow march to the doors.

If she walked through those doors and got caught now then all the lengths she had taken to avoid them would be for nothing. She back stepped. She needed to think this through.

Why would SHIELD be inside Stark's tower? Sure it was named Avengers tower but there was nothing on Stark signing the building over to the Avengers officially. The press would have had a field day and there would have been multiple fake scandals going around on how the Avengers managed to convince Stark to give up his brand new prototype.

SHIELD shouldn't even need to be in the tower. They have multiple bases around the country, around the world even, why they would need another one in the most ostentatious building in Manhattan is just plain confusing.

Scarlet was retreating into her own mind, trying to think of possible scenarios when she realized that she had been standing there, frozen for a while. She was beginning to attract the wrong kind of attention from some of the people in the building. She turned on her heel quickly and rushed back down the steps. She needed to think of a new plan. There was no way that she was going to get through SHIELD.

Scarlet of course realized that there was a chance that Stark wasn't even in Manhattan. Instead, He could have taken a vacation off on some remote island that he owned in the middle of the tropics. But Scarlet had a gut feeling and her mother taught her to trust in those and, well, it's worked out pretty well so far.

She thinks.

Right now her gut was telling her to get as far from that place as she could. It could have been her gut or it could have been fear. Scarlet liked to sum it up to a fight or flight response and her brain had chosen to fight another day.

Scarlet didn't know how many blocks she had ran or how many pedestrians yelled at her as she ran into them. She just ran. She ran until her lungs screamed at her to stop and her legs turned to jelly. But her panic hadn't calmed in the slightest. In fact her accelerated heartbeat from exertion only made it worse.

Scarlet found herself bent over with her hands on her knees, heaving in deep breaths through her mouth and forcing it out through her nose. Once again the panic from yesterday slammed back into her full force. This time it was worse though. Her subconscious had enough time to bring up more and more faults in her plan that would lead to failure and the frightening fate her mother had never fully explained.

Her imagination was running rampant. There was nothing tethering her to reality as he got lot in ridiculous scenarios where she would end up losing a leg or an eye. Though she dressed up as a pirate for Halloween when she was younger, she did not aspire to be one when she grew older and that fact still had not changed.

A sequel to her left dragged her out of her reverie. She looked towards the source of the sound, still panting slightly and saw a young girl jumping up and down in excitement. A plastic tiara was balanced precariously on top of her head while a stained pink tutu stuck out almost horizontally as she swiveled back and forth, beckoning someone to hurry up. Her shoes lit up as she got tired of waiting and ran over to a tall man. She grabbed his hand and pulled him forward faster.

"Come on, Uncle T! We're almost there!"

The man behind her chuckled and sped up.

The two passed from Scarlets view but she was curious as to what had the little kid so excited. She straightened a fast as she dare and look around the corner of the alley. She instantly spotted the bright pink child marching like a man on a mission.

Scarlet looked past them to see where they were going. She felt a spark of recognition as she saw tall archways made of brick and a giant clock. She faintly remembered something similar in an old Dreamworks movie she and Beaverly used to watch. What was it called? Anyways, she guessed it was the Central Park Zoo.

"Phhhhhhhhhhmmt"

A large gray trunk lifted itself into the air as the elephant attached walked slowly towards a large pile of dried out grass. The elephant, Tala as the zoo lady told her, gives one final stomp before promptly shoving a trunkful of grass into its mouth.

Scarlet sat on the ground by her mother's feet, completely unimpressed as she plucked a few weeds out of the cracks in the pavement. The tour lady was monotone as she explained how long Tala and her overweight companion, Carl, what an original name, had been there and what kind of elephants they were.

Her mother on the other hand was ecstatic. She was having a blast taking pictures with Scarlet and the animals. She absorbed everything the guide was saying and even asked some questions of her own. Scarlet had trudged along behind her the entire time and now they were almost done. After the elephants they only had the bears and Tigers and then the tour was over and Scarlet could ask to go home.

She hadn't said anything yet about her boredom because her mom was so excited to see the animals but Scarlet was under no illusions that her mother hadn't noticed her dramatic sighs and legendary eyerolls.

And who could really blame her? She had been at this zoo for over 2 hours now and wasn't allowed to stray from a group of elderly people with their screaming grandchildren and a small group from some Horizon Academy knock off that threw rocks and food at the animals while the zoo lady wasn't looking.

She wasn't really interested in any of it to be honest, but her mother was. She soaked up information like a sponge and Scarlet envied that about her. Why couldn't she be like her mother? Why did she have to get stuck with a mental disability?

It just made her whole mood worse.

And Scarlet felt terrible. She knew her mother took her to the zoo in an effort to get her mind off the new diagnosis that her doctor had given her. Attention Deficit Disorder.

Sure ADD didn't sound all that bad, but try sticking three caffeine patches on your arm and see how that affects your day. She couldn't retain anything the lady was saying if it was written on her arm in bright red ink.

She was put on some drug called Methylphen-blah-blah-blah. Scarlet really didn't care. All she was concerned about was the fact that someone thought there was something wrong with her. Something that needed to be remedied with a drug that started out sounding like Meth.

That was the one thing she enjoyed about this whole thing. She could raise her hand in the middle of class and tell , her third grade teacher that she needed to go to the nurse to get another dose of her daily Meth.

Her mom was not amused.

So the big fix it to get her mood back up, and to get her mom's mind off the growing amount of detention slips for disturbing the class with her foul remarks, was to take a tour at the rundown zoo.

But it was mostly because of the detention slips.

Hmmm.

Maybe the zoo isn't as bad as I remember it, Scarlet thought.

She wondered if the movie was accurate in its depiction of the zoo. She could waste an hour there, surely. And while she was there she could think of a new game plan. It couldn't hurt at least.

So that's how she ended up lost in the center of the zoo, an overactive seven year old and her meager knowledge of the iconic location that was based off a cartoon. She knew she should have grabbed a map on her way in. She cursed her stupid luck and spun on her heel once more as she found herself traveling deeper into unknown territory.

She cursed the God-awful person who designed this place and vowed that he would rue the day he was born. That is, if she could find her way out.

Luck was on her side, however, within ten minutes she saw the main gates. Scarlet ran through the exit and basked in the sunlight like a convict after 10 years in solitary. Nevermind that she was outside the whole time, that wasn't important now.

What was important however was the fact that she didn't even think an entire plan through like she promised herself, she was too distracted by the fact that she was lost in a crowded zoo. And really, who goes to the zoo on a Tuesday? Not like she's one to talk.

Scarlet sighed and sat down on a bench. She was suddenly reminded of why she had hated to zoo some much that time her mother had taken her. She felt like that all over again. She was unable to focus and got distracted by the smallest things. She digs through her bag again and finds her prescription bottle and glares at them. Sometimes it doesn't even seem like these things help at all. But her mother had always noticed a difference when she was taking them so Scarlet never complained.

Her mom already went through enough, she didn't need her daughter whining about her perscription on top of it.

Scarlet popped the top off the bottle and took two pills before putting it back. She looked around and watched the people walk past. It was amusing, people watching. This was the perfect city to do it in too. No one noticed the other really. Sure they were aware of others but they didn't give them the time of day. So what if someone was staring?

There was a woman in a gray power suit with a cell phone glued to her ear. She was frowning and listening to the person on the other end of the phone. Scarlet imagined another person in a smart suit was on the other end listing off a number of things going wrong and was telling the poor brunette to fix it.

Another man was wearing a ratty coat and bouncing his leg frantically. He look back and forth as if searching for someone. His arm straight posture made Scarlet think military which was confirmed by a small navy seal tattoo on his wrist. Scarlet thought he might be waiting for an ex-girlfriend that he was trying to get back on good terms with but when she looked closer she changed her observations. He was jumpy and skittish, withdrawal. He might have been waiting for a dealer.

Moments after she reaches this conclusion a man with a shaved head and squat nose sits next to the other. Scarlet made a decision to name him Baldie. They talk for a bit before Scarlet sees Baldie hand the man a case and walk away. Baldies piercing blue eyes catch hers for a moment before Scarlet abruptly looked away.

Scarlet turned her attention to the architecture around her. There were tall skyscrapers, sure, but mostly around her were three to four level building all squished together like an overstuffed suitcase. People milled about walking in and out of these building without giving it a second thought. The buildings were old, but there was something about them that made Scarlet think they were pretty cool.

Before Scarlet could continue to grow that particular branch of thought, an explosion sounded. Scarlet felt an intense heat and pain come from her side and was knocked to the ground. She turned just in time to see part of the building she was just admiring, come down on the streets and crush cars and bystanders.

It took her a moment to realize the reason why she had felt an intense heat. It was because she had been a moderate distance away from the explosion and then pain she had felt was a few stray flames licking at her back.

She laid on the ground for a few moments. Her eyes open and unable to move before her vision tunneled into black and she could only hear the distant screams of those around her.

OOOOOoOOOOOoOOOOOoOOOOOoOOOOOoOOOOOOoOOOOOOoOOOOOo

Can't wait for the next chapter! I think this is the last one I had updated. I will get the next one out to you as soon as I possibly can. Currently doing edits in the computer lab of my college and I feel like I'm dying a bit on the inside. That little orange picking scene was a last minute throw in that I thought was pretty cute. Please like it if you liked, if you'd like! Follow if you want to and please leave a comment. I'd love to hear what you guys thought!