A/N: Hi readers! I'm so sorry that I haven't updated in ages! I tried to the other day, but it didn't work! I typed the whole chapter up and everything, started a spell check, then the webpage expired! Oh my gosh! I was soooo mad! Oh well, here's the next chapter!
Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers.
Chapter 4: Circus Acts
She could see Iron Man flying in the distance, crashing into the Bodhi look-alike, and then they disappeared into the trees.
Anastasia felt free as she fell, the wind blowing roughly through her hair and whipping at her ivory skin, her fiery red ponytail coming partly undone. Unlike normal people, she felt at ease when she was dropping lower and lower to the ground.
As she got closer, she could see Bodhi and Stark fighting in the forest. So she flipped her body over and over until she was ten feet from the ground, then she put her hands out so they were parallel to the earth, and she stopped midair by using the power of the flames licking at her hands to stay still.
"Oi!" Anastasia yelled, getting Tin Man and Bodhi's attention. They both turned to look at her, equally surprised that she was floating in the air, begin held up by fire.
"Hey, Miss Romanoff, we're busy here," Stark called out. She ignored him.
Bodhi was looking at Anastasia strangely. "Have we met before, Miss?" he asked.
Anastasia pretended to think for a minute, putting a finger on her chin. "Hmmmm. Nope, don't think so. Why?" she asked, suspicious that he might be stalling.
"I beg your pardon, Miss. I mean no one any harm. You merely seem familiar to me," he assured.
"I'm of Helheim descent." He nodded in understanding. "Anyway, back to business," Anastasia said, gesturing to Iron Man to ask the questions and point fingers.
"You aren't allowed to take my stuff. SHIELD needs information, and they're gonna get it, whether you like it or not," Tony said after lifting his faceplate.
"You have no idea what you are dealing with," Blondie warned.
Stark looked around at the forest. "Uh... Shakespeare in the park?" Anastasia burst out laughing. "Doth mother know you wealth her drapes?" he said, teasing the big dude.
"This is beyond you, metal man and vampire. Loki will face Asgardian justice," Mr. Asgard insisted.
"He gives up the cube and he's all yours," Stark told the Asgardian. "Until then, stay out of the way." He turned and started walking away. "Tourists," he muttered.
Anastasia was watching Mr. Asgard, and when she saw him start moving so as to throw his hammer, she flew up into one of the nearby trees so she wasn't in the way.
"Stark!" she cried as the hammer was thrown in his direction. HE was knocked into a tree, which snapped at the trunk and fell over behind him. He quickly got up, ready to attack, but the Asgardian lifted his weapon, a hammer, and somehow summoned lightning.
Anastasia suddenly knew who he was: Thor. Brother of Loki and the other son of Odin All-Father. When she heard the name Loki, she was familiar with it from reading books in the orphanage when Natasha was gone.
She was pulled out of her thoughts when Iron Man was struck by the lightning coming from Thor's hammer.
"No! Stop!" she screamed, dropping to the ground and sprinting over to Thor, slamming into him and knocking him over, successfully cutting off the stream of lightning that was shocking Tony. She then used all of her strength to pin Thor to the ground and stop him from moving.
When Anastasia was sure that he wasn't going anywhere, she turned her head to see if Tony was okay, still holding Thor still. She could see him pushing himself up off the ground, so she knew that he was okay, but to what degree, she wasn't sure.
She turned back to face Thor, looking him in the eyes. He wasn't struggling with her, he was just staring back at her in wonder and amazement. Anastasia furrowed her brow in confusion.
"Not many can overpower me, but you seem do do so with such ease," he stated.
Anastasia smiled at him. "If I let you go, you won't attack anyone, okay?"
Thor nodded in agreement after a second. Anastasia stood up, letting him up as well. He towered over her as he stood next to her, both of them looking at Iron Man, who was not standing, holding his hands out.
"Don't Stark. We can talk this out. No more fighting," Anastasia told him sternly. Tony, of course, didn't just nod his head like Thor had. He always had to comment.
"Fine. Don't want the vampire to drink my blood," Tony exclaimed, pretending to be scared.
Anastasia growled at him in return, losing her temper with Tony. That made him really scared, and he wasn't pretending anymore. They were moving in a circle, neither breaking eye contact with the other. Anastasia snarled like the vampire she was, and Tony was strutting around in his shiny metal suit like he was walking down a runway. Thor didn't feel like getting involved in the fight, so he rust sat back and watched, keeping his promise.
Anastasia waited for him to attack, stepping to the side as he ran towards her, and stepping back to where she was standing as soon as he'd passed. He froze for a second, noticing that she seemed to have disappeared, before remembering that she had inhuman speed. He spun around to see Anastasia grinning at him menacingly. Tony ran at her again, Anastasia swiftly dodging him a second time. She jumped ten feet in the air as he spun around, agilely landing on her hands and standing on Tony's shoulders. Tony tried to grab her arms and throw her off, but she pushed off his shoulders with her hands and landed back down like an acrobat, teasing him that he wasn't fast enough.
Anastasia kept jumping off Tony's shoulders, and Tony kept trying to throw her off his shoulders for the next five minutes. Thor was sure tab tTony was not going to give up, and Tony obviously thought that she would tire out and give up, but Anastasia showed no sign of stopping anytime soon.
The three of them were so focused on the fight that no one noticed Captain America falling from the sky with a parachute. Steve saw Iron Man standing on the forest floor with Anastasia doing jumping handstands on his shoulders and teasing him like she was from the circus. He landed on the ground not far away from where they were, took the parachute off and ran towards the ongoing circus act.
Cap found the strange acrobatic torment still going, with Thor standing beside a tree, watching them. Without a second thought, he tossed his shield towards the two. Anastasia had just jumped off Iron Man's shoulders again, and expected to land back where she was like every other time so far, but before her hands passed Tony's head, she hit some other metal that she instantly recognised as Captain America's shield. She didn't push off the shield, but her hands were pushed to the side, so she flipped herself around and landed on the ground next to Iron Man, her hands on her hips.
"That's enough!" Cap called, catching his child after it bounced off a tree. "No more circus acts."
He then looked to Thor, who hadn't moved since the start of the fight. "Now, I don't know what you plan on doing here-" Thor cut him off.
"I've come here to put an end to Loki's schemes!" he declared loudly.
"Then prove it. Put that hammer down," Steve replied.
Tony decided to pipe up at the wrong time again. "Uh... Yep! No! Bad call! He loves his hammer!"
The result of the comment was Thor smacking him backwards with his hammer, knocking him out.
"You want me to put the hammer down?" Thor yelled, obviously feeling threatened, annoyed, or somewhere between the two. He lifted his hammer to strike Cap, who held up his shield of protection.
Anastasia sprinted over and stood between Thor and Steve, facing Thor. "Hey! You promised no more fighting! We're not threatening! We need you to know if you really are here to stop Loki, or if you came here to free him or kill him," she said, trying to calm Thor down. As soon as he lowered his hammer, Anastasia stepped back to stand next to Steve. In the distance, she could hear the jet landing. She could also see out of the corner of her eye, Tony starting to move around again after being knocked out.
Steve and Anastasia watched as Thor dropped his hammer to the ground, proving that he was, in fact, telling the truth about coming to stop Loki. Anastasia nodded her head.
"Go and get Loki. We need to take him back to the Helicarrier," Steve told Thor, who then disappeared through the trees to find Loki. Anastasia turned to Steve.
"What in the heavens is a Helicarrier, Cap? Does it carry helicopters?"
"Sort of," Steve answered after a moment. "It has jets and helicopters on it."
"Why would you take Loki there?"
Steve didn't answer her question, noticing he didn't explain it right. "What are you going to do now?"
His question caught her off guard. Although she had expected to be asked that particular question, she didn't yet know the exact answer. "I don't know," Anastasia whispered, looking down at her feet.
Steve felt quite awkward after that answer. He had never been good at talking to women, and the only thing that being frozen in ice had changed was the year, technology, and evolution. "Ah, well, I guess, you could be able to, uh, come back with us," Steve told Anastasia, looking away, blushing, and thanking the gods that she wasn't looking at him.
"I mean, you don't have to stay, but at least you would ave somewhere to stay while you thought about it," he continued, neither of them daring to look at the other.
There was an awkward silence for a minute, but it felt like forever to the both of them. "I guess I could stay for a while," Anastasia finally answered.
Steve looked up to see her looking at him, and they stared into each other's eyes for a while, time slipping away from them completely. "Okay," Steve said when he was broken out of the trance by the sound of Iron Man restarting after Tony had passed out a second time.
Thor decided to arrive then, holding Loki by the collar of his clothes, dragging him along roughly. No one said anything, the four of them just stood there as Tony, who had finally been able to lift himself off the ground, stumbled over to them.
"Time to go, I think," Tony announced when he made it to the group. All of them, apart from Loki, just nodded and started towards the jet.
The group had silently been walking for about five minutes when Tony announced that he noticed that the silence was awkward and wondered aloud if anyone else thought so, too. Everyone use grumbled in reply.
When they finally made it to the jet, Anastasia walked up to Natasha and whispered to her: "Do you have a pen? Coz if Stark passes out again, I'm gonna be the first one to draw on his face." Natasha giggled quietly and took out a pen from a bag hanging from her shoulder and passed it to Anastasia.
YAY! I finally uploaded the chapter! Hooray! Please update soon and tell me what you think! Also, I'm sorry if there are any spelling mistakes - it took so long to write this chapter and I didn't have any time to do a spellcheck. If you could please just tell me if there are any mistakes so I can fix them up, I promise I'll write two chapters next time I update!