Notes: Yes, Gabby is hilarious and we like her. (Though, Logan's death? We didn't kill him, so not sure what you meant there. Typo?) And yep, too bad for the Kree. They were brought down by their own stupidity.

Chapter 6: Charlie's Angels

The would-be execution had been televised over every frequency and into any place with a monitor or sound system, really — so even after Tony had tucked the small group of little ones away into a bunker he had designed in one of his fits of paranoid productivity, they could all see every second of what had happened, right up until the feed blacked out.

When the broadcast had started, Tyler had his hands full with little Elin, who was upset the moment she heard and recognized her mom growling — which, of course, just had Chance and Charlie upset as well, not only for Elin's sake but for Aunt K and Uncle Noh and Mr. Hawkeye on the screen.

With one twin attached to either leg and Elin in his arms, Tyler was pretty well pinned to his seat despite Annie's attempts to help. Nate and Hope managed to convince Charlie to let go eventually, but Chance was far to concerned about the upset baby.

Starts. So. Young, Hope projected to Nate, who let out a little snerk despite the seriousness of the situation.

And Remy had a tight hold of a very upset Kate and a positively livid Jubilee, who was muttering the whole time about 'stupid Kree' and how this was 'just like when that big creep crashed the wedding.'

Both of Annie's sisters were there by then, as well as Jessica Drew and Jessica Jones with their little ones. Dani and Annie's nieces were old enough to truly understand what was happening on the screen, and at one point, every single one of the parents there considered turning it off…

But on the other hand, no one could quite bring themselves to make that decision, not when Jubilee was hanging on every moment like a lifeline, waiting for something to go right. Just one thing.

But the end of the broadcast had been, quite simply, abrupt. As soon as K struck out at Ronan, the quick fight to break free had only lasted a few moments before the feed cut out, and everyone in Tony's little bunker was left staring in open surprise at the now blank screen.

"Wha happen?" Charlie asked when the silence had stretched on for too long for her.

"I don't know, baby girl," Annie said soothingly, though her expression was still open surprise.

"All safe?" Chance asked, sounding just as concerned as his sister.

Again, all Annie could say was, "I don't know," though she quickly amended that when she saw the little lip quiver and the look of determination on his face to, "I think so. They'll be fine, honey."

"I'm sure Scott or Logan'll clue us in soon 'nuff," Remy said soothingly.

Kate still had a tight hold of Jubilee's arm as she nodded carefully. "They probably have way more intel than we do. For all we know, they're the ones that cut the feed to cut off communications before they stormed the place," she said, probably a bit over-optimistically.

"They got the bad guy," Leslie Ann agreed with a little smile. "Wham! Right in the face!"

Leslie Ann's mother looked up at Annie with a sigh. "Should I be concerned?" she asked lightly.

"Nope," Jessica Jones said before Annie could say anything, which had Jessica Drew smirking to herself — though her hands were full with Gerry fretting over his father on the screen.

"I think mebbe it's time to feed dis crew, non?" Remy put his hand out for Chance. "You want to help ol' Gambit fix up some supper?"

Chance regarded his hand for a second before he broke into a wide grin. "I help!" he agreed happily.

With that, Remy took the little ones with him to Tony's hidden kitchen in the bunker where he entertained them and gave them popsicles while they helped him cook while the adults got the chance to talk.

"Who was that ugly old blue windbag anyway?" Annie asked with disdain as soon as the twins were out of earshot.

"That would be Ronan the Accuser," Kate explained. "He sorta rules the Empire. Or ... he did."

"Well that's great, ain't it? I mean. If he's their leader ... then … we won, right?" Annie said with a hopeful look on her face.

"That… that's a good point," Kate said thoughtfully, looking over at Jubilee. "I mean… I don't think we won that easy? But… maybe?" She pushed out her lips as she thought it over. "I mean, there's still the stupid Supremor to consider, who's like, basically their god, but without an emperor to coordinate things… maybe?"

"Well … maybe we should send a care package to the Supremor," Jubilee suggested as she relaxed a little bit. The comedown from the terror of that broadcast was only just beginning, and she was certainly still worried about her idiot husband, but the execution hadn't happened. And that was something she could hold onto. "A nice bottle of wine and a pair of angry ferals. Seems to be a weak point in their planning."

"K could probably fit in the box too. The cheaper shipping kind," Kate teased lightly.

"Ooh, if we did it like that? And did it as a cake? And made her do the bikini jump out? I'm sure she'd be in a great mood by the time she got there."

"Yeah, the whole war would be over as soon as she jumped out of the cake. Five minutes later, no more Kree problems."

"Yeah," Jubilee said as she tipped her head back as far as it would go over the arm of the couch. "But then the whole Kree world would think our most elite fighters uniforms are two pieces?" She said with a smile. "And they'd be terrified to come to the beach."

"Well, more sand and sun for us then," Kate laughed.

"Excuse me? Why are you two jokin' around now?" Annie's sister, Rachel, asked.

"You haven't seen them right after rough missions," Tyler said with a little smirk. "This is mild compared to the usual decompressing."

"And you know... if the Kree were winning, we'd still be seeing footage," Kate pointed out. "That black screen means they don't want anyone to see them getting their butts kicked."

"And lord knows they have more than enough firepower up there to get their butts kicked. Those three?" Jubilee shook her head. "They asked for it picking them up."

"Seriously. Worst possible combination of stubborn and stupid and powerful and also stupid," Kate said, the smirk widening. "I mean. I'm clearly older than five, Clint. What is wrong with you."

"I could have sworn I heard Logan say you were about ready for Kindergarten," Jubilee agreed with a grin.

Kate gave her a dry look and gestured down at her growing stomach. "I think I'm a little bit past Kindergarten."

"Mentally," Jubilee said defensively. "Mentally. That's all. It's good to be younger in your mind, right? I mean … well. You have to be able to keep up with the kids, right?"

"True," Kate conceded. "Though my four-and-a-half-year-old self was pretty good with the bamfs, so I've got practice," she chuckled. She nudged Jubilee with her shoulder. "And you had practice with me. Maybe you'll get a little bitty, pigtails-wearing, black-haired, sparkly-shoes girl too."

"Well, with yours and K's, that'll make up the final member of the powerpuff girls," Jubilee said thoughtfully.

"I was gonna say Charlie's Angels," Kate said. "I mean. We have a Charlie and everything."

"That would totally work, and I am completely in favor," Jubilee said with a nod. But when the teasing trailed off from there, the smile slipped off of her face and she looked over to Kate with a look of growing concern. "Scott would tell us if something went wrong. I know he would." She frowned a bit deeper and took a breath and held it for a moment. "I hope nothing went wrong. I don't want to do this without Noh … and Logan can't."

Before Kate could reply to her on … well, anything, Tyler stepped into the room with a still very fussy Elin. "I can't get her to calm down," he said as he looked between the women who hadn't gone to help Remy with the small army of 'helpers'. "Please help."

Annie held out her arms for the little girl. "Let me try," she offered. "I've had a little experience — with two at a time sometimes," she added with a small smile.

He gratefully brought Elin to her and carefully handed her over, though the little girl was incredibly fussy and just plain mad. She didn't cry, though, and Annie did her best to settle her out. While she did fight Annie, a lot less than she had fought Tyler, she still wasn't her usual snuggly self, and it wasn't long before she was almost squeaking out these high pitched sounds of protest and scrunching up her little face.

And that was practically a cue for little Chance, who poked his head in from where he had escaped Remy in the kitchen. "Why sad?" he asked, eyes wide and curious.

"I think she just wants her mom and dad," Jubilee told him when he got close enough for her to ruffle his hair.

"Gone fightnin?" he asked, falling back on the phrase he and Charlie had started to use to describe X-Men missions.

"Yep," Jubilee replied with a little nod. "They had to beat up some bad aliens to keep everyone safe."

"All safe now?"

"We have to wait to see what your daddy says," Jubilee said softly.

"Otay." He gave her a little hug and patted her knee before he all but skipped over to where Elin was to try very hard to help his mom calm her down. He tried to pat her head like he usually did — with just one finger, very gently — and she reached over and pinched his nose with her very tiny hand. He giggled delightedly at that and booped her back in the nose.

All at once, Elin stopped fussing and blinked at him a bit before a crooked little smile popped onto her face and she raised one eyebrow as she reached out to pinch his nose again. She was rewarded with another round of giggles as Chance booped her right back. "Silly," he told her, still giggling.

She smiled at him for a little while before she squirmed a bit in Annie's arms again and finally let out a hitched sigh as she looked around the room.

"I'm not sure who's the worse flirt between them," Kate teased. "We're gonna have our hands full in about a dozen years."

"She's got a double dip of troublemaker," Jubilee pointed out. "I think you're giving her too much credit on time, too."

"What, you think she'll be a heartbreaker even sooner?" Kate laughed.

"I think she's working on it now," Jubilee replied.

"Please," Annie laughed. "My little boy's too young to have his heart broken."

"He'll be breaking hearts in twelve years," Kate teased. "And Charlie, too. Those brown eyes, Annie. Seriously. And the long lashes — watch out!"

"You're not wrong," Hope said with a little laugh from the door to the kitchen, crouching down to try to cajole Chance into joining the rest of the group. But she didn't exactly specify who it was that wasn't wrong, either.

Little Elin turned her head into Annie's shoulder and tried to snuggle into a tiny little ball, her hands tucked under her chin and her knees pulled almost all the way up to her chest.

"Ni-night, baby," Chance said, leaning over to give her a tiny kiss on top of her head before he skipped over to Hope and nearly threw himself into a hug so she could pick him up and carry her off.

With the main area much quieter, then, Kate let out a sigh and reached over to pull Jubilee into a hug. She didn't say anything, but she knew that her friend had to be just as worried as she was — moreso, really, because Noh was her husband.

"We both have two idiots in this trouble," Jubes said.

"And they're all so very good at getting in trouble and causing it," Kate agreed with a small nod. "But they excel at getting out of it again."

"No kidding. I was sure that 'the curse' was going strong for a minute there," Jubilee said with a shaky voice as she blew out a breath. "Kinda glad we weren't around Logan for that part."

"Yeah, I don't imagine he was a party to be around," Kate agreed. "Probably downright terrifying right now though. Bet everything I've got if he's not there, he's on his way there."

"Oh," Jubilee said with her face scrunched up as she nodded. "No doubt. I'm just wondering who, outside of Scott went with. You know he's not going to let him go in alone when someone's between Logan and his lady.."

"I doubt Natasha's going to stay out. Not the way Clint was looking," Kate said with a small frown. "She won't say it, but... "

"Yeah. Worst kept secret in the biz," Jubilee said. "I'd tell you to give Kurt a call, but I'm guessing Iron Man might have a stroke."

"Yeah, I think he's bucking for more protective than our usual suspects. I mean, he won't win, but he's sure trying."

"I'm sure if he saw the broadcast, he's afraid to screw up with us," she said with a little laugh.

"Yeah. Can you imagine him trying to explain how a couple pregnant ladies and their fellow babysitters beat up all the Kree while he was asleep on the protection job?"

"He'd never live it down — if he lived long enough to tell the tale."

Fury had wrangled a SWORD ship for the little rescue crew to head up and infiltrate Ronan's craft, where they knew the action had gone down. They were expecting some kind of fight — or, in the best case scenario, their three POWs resting in a cleared-out Kree ship — but neither was the case.

Once they docked and got inside … the number of dead Kree was impressive. But the silence in the ship was a bit foreboding. Logan only got a couple of feet inside before he had to cover his nose.

"Can't track 'em," he said, rubbing his nose hard. "Pepper in the air."

"That can't be an accident," Scott said with a frown.

"I doubt it," Logan agreed before they split off into pairs to search for their friends. Kurt and Logan headed toward the bridge, though they didn't know that's where they were headed. When they got there, they saw the area that had been used for the broadcast. There, in the center of the floor, lay Ronan — in an almost black puddle surrounded by dead Kree soldiers and Accusers.

Logan stood there glaring at the lot of them for a moment before Kurt drew his attention to the navigational systems. "We could probably figure out what their next moves are from here," Kurt suggested. "Once we find K and the boys."

"Yeah. Likely," Logan agreed. "I'm gonna … try to figure out how this went down." At that, he walked over to Ronan and tried to picture the order that the Kree had fallen — which wasn't really easy without his sense of smell on his side to let him track a path, but … he hoped if nothing else, the blood trail would make itself known, and he'd be able to slowly find where they'd gone.

Scott and Fury, meanwhile, found their way down to the brig, where aside from a handful of barely alive long-term prisoners, there were no witnesses to what had transpired there. Scott tried to question them, but naturally, they didn't speak a word of English, and he and Fury both grew tired of trying to figure out what the story was. So, they simply continued to search.

And Natasha and Peter were a bit disappointed to find that their path took them to what appeared to be the sleeping quarters.

"Nothing here but crusty jammies and warm milk gone cold," Peter remarked as he peered in one door. "What do you say, Mama Spider — time to look elsewhere?"

Natasha gave him the smallest of smirks. "That's not my call sign, and you know it."

"Yeah, but do you?" he shot back, the teasing grin obvious even behind his mask.

She quirked an eyebrow at him and had to shake her head at his antics. "I'll start wearing a name tag, since you're so very confused."

"Any luck?" Logan asked Natasha, his gaze still to the floor trying to figure out the paths taken via bloody footprints as he and Kurt stepped around the corner. "I'm not findin' any survivors."

She shook her head.

"Nothing to report except that some of the Kree are worse slobs than Clint," Peter piped up.

"I don't think they're here," Logan admitted. "Place doesn't have any sign that our three troublemakers stuck around."

"Peter, maybe you could take a look at the computers?" Kurt suggested. "We'll look for the escape pods. They have to be here somewhere."

"Not down that way," Scott called out as he and Fury joined the group. "Couple of alien prisoners in the brig. No English or anything even close to what I can make out."

"Then we'll take this way," Natasha said with a determined nod. "We'll probably find them trying to hotwire a pod to take them home."

"I'm sure Noh would have that figured out easy enough," Logan agreed. "So we should find 'em quick — or at least some kinda sign that they left." He looked to Natasha for a moment before he tipped his chin up to her. "My ikh naydem."

She nodded and nosed down the hallway. All was still quiet — except for the echo of her footsteps, even as quiet as she could walk, until she heard slightly heavier footfalls a bit behind her. Fury was coming too. She tipped her head toward the director for a second before she went back to her search, stepping around the fallen Kree as she did so.

When they finally did find the escape pods, though, she examined every single one of them, twice before she had to admit that not only were their friends not there but that none of the pods had been launched — and it didn't look like anyone had even tried. She let out all her breath at once and, in a rare moment, lost her calm composure and simply kicked the side of one of the pods. "Gde oni?" she muttered over and over again, running her hands through her hair for a moment before she felt one heavy hand on her arm and turned to see Fury giving her a look.

She took one deep, calming breath and nodded twice before she straightened up. "Right," she said shortly. "Let's see what Peter has for us."

Meanwhile, on the bridge, Peter was working furiously on the computers and slowly shaking his head before he found a pattern. "I have their code," he said softly. "I have no idea what the heck happened to K, Noh, and Clint ... but … I have their code. We can hit them before they pull themselves together."

Kurt was encouraging him to keep going as Logan shook his head slowly, staring again at the fallen Kree. "It doesn't make any sense," Logan said quietly.

"There has to be a party we're not accounting for," Scott said thoughtfully. "If they didn't leave the ship in a pod, and they're not here — they had to have left somehow."

"Yeah, but who the hell's stupid enough to take 'em on after a show like this?" Logan asked. "The bodies all have signs that one of our three killed them. All of them. Claws or the energy guns. Occasional broken neck — a few collapsed sternums — gotta hand those to Noh. But nothin' earthly outside of the claw marks." He paused and let out a sigh. "And the pepper spray."

"Could be someone else besides Hawkeye was using the energy guns," Scott suggested.

"The body count's still pretty even though," Logan reasoned. "I doubt those two let her just go nuts on her own."

"Then maybe our third party arrived after the show was over," Scott offered. "There had to be one — I doubt any of the three of our friends carried the pepper spray around the moon prison."

He had to tip his head at that. "No telling what kind of shape they were in after the Kree were done with them either." He looked up at Scott with a frown. "Check the prison? Maybe another ship came up and took 'em back."

"It's a good place to start," Scott agreed. He glanced around the bridge and the carnage their friends had left behind and frowned. "Hard to tell the details from just the broadcast, but it didn't look like they started out in good shape — and then after this?" He let out a breath. "Whoever beat us here — our three might not have had much fight left by the time our mystery party got here," he admitted.

Logan ran one hand through his hair and nodded as Natasha and Fury stepped onto the bridge. He looked up at her, half holding his breath only to let it out in a disappointed sigh when she shook her head no.

"All the escape pods are still docked," she said. "There's no sign of any of them. Not even a frustrated shot in the door controls."

"Then our next stop is the moon base," Scott decided. "Peter, if you've got those codes, maybe we can speed things along once we get there — if we can't fight our way in, that is. I'd rather keep those in reserve if we can."

"Are we taking the shiny 'big man in charge' ship or …." Peter asked as he tapped into the system to copy what he could.

"That would certainly open doors for us," Natasha said with a smirk.

"Open them because of the prestige or the firepower? Because this thing … has got some serious firepower," Peter said as he shook his head to himself.

"Either will work," Kurt suggested. "If you can figure out how to work it."

"Scott can fly it," Logan said from the far side of the bridge, arms crossed and looking far too deep in thought.

"And with your codes — hopefully, they'll let us in." Kurt let out a sigh. "Though I doubt they'll let us back out again without a fight once we find our friends."

"I can live with that," Fury replied, already following Natasha out the door — since she'd had enough otf talking and simply decided to move.

….

Translations from Russian:

"My ikh naydem" - We will find them

"Gde oni?" - Where are they?