Okay, so I've realised that Twilight wasn't set in Maine (sorry, wasn't a big fan of the books and as such didn't pay much attention), but if I try to fix it now it will ruin the dialogue so I will fix it later and I'm sorry if I offended anyone!
Chapter Three
"Punch me."
The recruit looked at Tony gloomily. "Surely we've done this enough times, sir? Can't we try something else?"
Tony rolled up his sleeves and widened his stance, waving the recruit over. "Come at me, kid. I'm ready for you this time."
The new recruit, a broad-shoulder young man named Julian, sighed wearily. Then, in a blur of motion, he feinted to the right, ducked under Tony's answering blow, and jabbed him in the stomach. Tony swore and put a hand to his ribs. He wasn't quite fast enough to stop Julian from flipping him onto his back. He lay there for a moment, dazed.
"Okay," he said eventually. "Miss Potts, can you book me in for a training session with Natasha?"
Pepper, who was enjoying her day off by watching her employer get his ass handed to him by a kid, managed to keep a straight face as she pulled out her electronic organiser.
On the other side of the training compound Thor was doing only marginally better. He'd surrendered his armour and hammer at the door and was finding that brute strength wasn't the best weapon to use against five of SHIELD's most agile recruits. They were much too fast for him to hit with a direct attack, and as the minutes passed he was getting more and more irritated.
Only Clint was in his element. Bored out of his mind, but in his element nonetheless. Fury had put him to good use over at the firing range, supervising and giving pointers to the newest agents. For the most part they were obedient, obliging students. Not very interesting. Clint decided to make his own fun.
"Alright, kiddies, you're getting pretty good," he announced, dropping down from his perch on the railing. "How about something more challenging?"
"What were you thinking?" one of the recruits, Louisa, asked. She looked dubious.
"First one to hit the bullseye blindfolded gets a round of drinks on me."
"Done," said the man next to her, reloading his pistol. His name was Jeff, and Clint didn't like him much. He got the impression that Jeff thought a great deal of Jeff, and expected everyone else to think a great deal of Jeff as well. The archer knew of only one person who could have an ego that large and still be tolerable, and they currently weren't on speaking terms. Maybe not the best example, then. Tony Stark wasn't comparable to anyone anyway.
The group lined up along the range, using their SHIELD regulation belts as make-shift blindfolds. There had been a unanimous decision to exclude Clint from the competition, which he thought was a bit unfair, really. He leant against the railing, pulling up his earmuffs.
It didn't take long for someone to hit inside the inner ring. Declan was the first, firing a little up and to the left. The others followed in quick succession.
"Too easy," Clint said. "I want dead-centre."
That took longer. Declan felt cheated and refused to participate. A couple of the others decided to give up and watch instead. Most of them were hitting within the inner ring now, but it was only after a good five minutes that Jeff eventually clipped the bullseye.
His roar of success made Clint's upper lip curl. "Took you long enough," he said, folding his arms. He really didn't want to buy the guy a round of drinks.
Jeff looked at him incredulously. "Are you serious? That shot's, like, almost impossible."
"Mm." His fingers were itching to teach the moron a lesson, but Marcus, another of the recruits, stepped in first.
"Shut up, Jeff," he said, hitting him on the shoulder. "Don't be stupid."
But Jeff's face had taken on that look that Clint had been just waiting for. "Now, hang on a second," he said, twirling his pistol around his finger like an idiot. "I don't think it's fair that Agent Barton here gets to issue all the challenges."
"That's true," Clint said, nodding agreeably.
"He's the World's Greatest Marksman, isn't he? No target he can't hit?"
Clint grinned his predator's grin. "Now you're just making me blush."
Jeff turned to him, failing to notice the gleam in the archer's eyes. "How about this, sir. That round of drinks you owe me says you can't put a bullet through the bullet hole I made. Directly through the bullet hole."
"Aw, come on," Louisa began, "that's ridi–"
"Challenge accepted."
Clint pushed himself away from the fence and threw down his earmuffs, pulling his own pistol from its holster. The recruits stood in a clump to one side, re-buckling their belts, as he took up position behind the barricade. Half of them didn't seem to believe he'd said yes. The other half were watching carefully. He raised the gun, eyes narrowed.
The first shot went clean through the hole, splintering the edges.
The recruits erupted into disbelieving cheers. Clint smiled again at that. He didn't make a habit of showing off, but when he did, he did it in style. "Well, I guess we're even then, buddy," he said to Jeff, whose expression had gone sour. "Buy everybody a round next time you get a free hour, would you?"
"Agent Barton. Working hard, I see."
Clint grimaced. Fury had appeared silently beside the range, wearing his usual black long-coat. Investigating the Director's room was high on Clint's to-do list. He fully expected to find row upon row of the same coat hanging neatly inside the wardrobe. "I try my best."
"Playtime's over. Team meeting in the War Room." With that Fury turned on his heel and stalked away.
"What? Why?" Clint jogged after him, calling over his shoulder for the recruits to keep drilling. "Sir?"
"Not here, Barton."
"That bad, huh?"
The Director didn't reply.
Clint grabbed his bow and pack as they passed the benches, slinging the latter over his shoulder. Then they were out of the training compound, striding along the wide, white corridors of the SHIELD building, heading for the elevators. Thor squeezed through the doors just as they were sliding closed. The demi-god appeared to have forgotten his irritation and had a huge grin plastered across his face.
"Director Fury, your recruits are indeed most talented. I have not been beaten so thoroughly in many years!"
"Congratulations," Fury said dryly. "Where's Stark?"
"Miss Potts is assisting him in putting on his jacket. Methinks the man of iron will be feeling the bruises of his training session on the morrow."
The elevator slowed to a stop and the doors slid open, admitting them into a short passageway that ended in enormous steel doors engraved with the SHIELD logo. Two security guards (the dumb but impressive type, Clint noted, hired for their remarkable resemblance to small immovable mountains) flanked them. As Fury appeared they snapped to attention and turned to the doors, which opened silently and spilled blue light into the hall.
Clint liked the War Room. It brought out the dramatic in him. The curved, glowing holographic screens looked like something straight out of a Mission Impossible movie, the rounded conference table a throwback to the spy movies he'd loved as a kid. Spy movies. He chuckled softly to himself.
As they entered the room a separate screen winked into existence above the table. Steve, Bruce and Natasha appeared, all seated on the lounge back in Stark Tower.
"What's happened, Fury?" Steve asked, his super serious ready-to-defend-my-country face on.
"Yeah, Fury, I was on a roll there." Tony walked gingerly into the War Room. "Those kids didn't know what hit them. Sent them crying home to their mamas."
Fury ignored him automatically and braced both hands on the table. "Alright, team. We've received word of a new threat in Maine–"
Tony snorted. "Maine? Nothing ever happens in Maine."
"Twilight happened in Maine," Clint pointed out. "Let me guess, Hairy McClary and Sparklebot are fighting again, and we've been called to intervene before somebody gets hurt."
"Nah, they sorted that out ages ago. Jacob imprinted on Bella's kid."
"No way. That's fucking disgusting."
"Guys, focus," said Steve, looking a little lost. "What kind of threat are we talking about?"
Fury shrugged. "The usual. A rogue AIM agent was experimenting with some kind of radiation. You can imagine how that turned out for him." He looked up at the screen. "We could use your help with this, actually, Banner."
Bruce nodded, a flicker of relief crossing his face. Clint knew how much the scientist appreciated any opportunity to be useful without involving the other guy.
"What powers does the enemy possess?" Thor asked. "Is he very dangerous?"
"Extremely, from what we can tell. There's footage. He's a teleporter."
"Fan-fucking-tastic," said Tony. "Anything else?"
Fury gestured to one of the nearby holographs, navigating quickly through a pop-up menu with a wave of his hands till the screen displayed a square of grainy black-and-white security feed. Clint picked out the date from the top right-hand corner; today, not one hour earlier. SHIELD was nothing if not in the loop.
The footage had been enlarged in an effort to make it clearer, but it was still difficult to make out what was happening. As far as Clint could tell he was looking at the interior of a coffee shop of some kind, watching as the customers went about their usual business. Then in the corner of the screen a figure appeared from nowhere and pulled something from his coat. A gun, Clint thought, until it started glowing. Fury froze the image.
Clint frowned. "Jesus, what is that?"
"Well, it was a pistol at some point. We assume it was affected by the radiation on a molecular level, same as he was. Doesn't shoot bullets anymore, that's for sure."
The tape resumed and the team watched as the figure raised the gun. There were three flashes of white light, and three people dropped to the ground. The remaining occupants of the coffee shop fled out the door, mouths open in silent screams. Two more flashes, two more bodies. Then the figure disappeared.
"Some kind of electric impulse?" Tony guessed. "There's a slight residual glow where the shots hit."
Fury nodded. "The charge is temperamental, though. Sometimes it's lethal, sometimes not."
"How many casualties?" asked Natasha.
"Three in the coffee shop, five more on the street. He went off the grid after that, but we traced his energy signature to a nearby shipping yard."
"Does he have an agenda?"
"Not that we know of."
Clint grinned. No agenda meant no pulled punches. "You have no idea how happy that makes me."
Even through the screen he could see Tasha roll her eyes.