Chapter 2: Back in the Game
AN: Here's the next chapter! Hope you enjoy! Italics are flashbacks.
Skye stood in the training room of Avenger Tower, repeatedly shooting the targets. She shot them all in the head or chest, once they were shot three or four times it would flip down and another would come up. Skye shot the last one before it went down.
"Shots fired 24. Time: 4:56" The female voice said. Skye sighs and puts her gun in the holster. Walking toward the elevator, she runs into Danny. He moves out of the way, going to the shooting range.
"What was your time?" He says looking back at her. Skye shrugs.
"Like 5 minutes." He nods.
"The record remains." He says under his breath. Skye hears him; nodding. Alex had held to record time, no one had beaten it yet. Skye sighs before heading for the door to the elevator. "And by the way, there's a new guy here. He's going to live here with us. He's upstairs." Danny says as he walks away. Skye nods to him as the door closes. New guy? Skye thought. She waits a few more seconds before the door opens and she walks out to the main lobby area. A boy with short wavy hair and blue eyes was standing with a duffle bag, surrounded by the other teens. Skye walks up and he sees her. Holding out is hand he smiles.
"Johnathan Knight, but you can just call me Johnny." Skye shakes his hand.
"Skye Sanford, so you're the newbee?" He nods. Skye looks him up and down; he was dressed in dark jeans and a black t-shit with chucks. "What's your weapon of choice?" She asks him. Johnathan nods, putting his bag down he searches through it.
He pulls out several daggers and throwing knives. She nods, a bit impressed.
"I also like doing hand to hand combat as well." He says. "I heard that Alex Barton lives here?" He begins. There smiles fade. Skye speaks up.
"She didn't make it on the last mission, that was about two months ago." She says quietly. He lowers his head quickly, and then avoids eye contact with any of them.
"I- I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"Skye shakes her head.
"Don't worry about it, its fine." She says with a reassuring smile, but gives him a curious look; seeing him lose confidence around them. Kate walks up.
"Did someone assign you hear?" She asks him. He nods.
"Agent Hill, she said I would fit in hear." He grins. They all laugh.
"Well she was right about that." Arthur says. Nathan walks up.
"Hear let's drop this off at your room and we can go out and show you around."
AVENGERS
Natasha sat on the ground besides Storm's stall. Sense Alex could no longer take care of him; she took on the responsibility along with Skye who would ride him….or try to. Alex was the only one who could really understand him. Skye was nowhere near experienced to fully exercise him. They even tried bringing in a professional trainer to show how to handle Storm. But after the trainer was in the saddle for more than ten seconds he started bucking and galloping out of control. As of right now, the only person who could ride him was Skye. But because of her lack of experience, the only reason she could stay in the saddle was because she was the only one who knew Storm anymore.
Natasha stood up and puts her hand through the bars. Storm lifts his head, poking his muzzle out; Natasha could feel his warm breath on her hand as she stroked his face, then walks toward the doors.
She said her goodbyes to Agent Woods and got into the jeep, before driving off.
AVENGERS
Natasha arrives at Avenger Tower a few hours later. Walking up to the door; she opens it and heads for the elevator.
After about a minute, the doors open and Natasha is greeted by the site of the teens standing with a guy throwing knives at a target; eyes closed. Natasha walks in; arms crossed. They were all laughing and having a good time. Then Kate looks over seeing her standing there. Her smile disappears quickly. She shoulders Liz who turns and sees her too. She gets the others attention.
"So is this the new guy?" Natasha says. They push Johnny out in front of them, he shakes her hand.
"Johnny Knight." She shakes it, before giving the others a nod, and then walks to the counter.
"Seems like your fitting in here." She says. Johnny nods, seeming a bit intimidated by her.
"Yes ma'am. It's really nice here, I'll earn my keep too if you need me to." Johnny makes himself clear. Natasha smiles; she turns and throws him an apple.
"As long as you don't burn down the building I think you'll do just fine." Johnny smiles before giving her a nod; he's then dragged off by the other teens. They all go over to the couches and sit down.
"Looks like you passed!" Liz says. Johnny smiles.
"What's that supposed to mean?" He asks. Skye steps in.
"Well, ever sense Alex-. Sense it happened; she has been a closed door. That's the first time I've seen her smile in a while actually." Skye realizes. Johnny nods.
"Would you mind telling me about her?" Johnny says hesitantly. Skye hesitates too before turning to the others, they nod.
"I don't see why not, your part of the family now! The crazy-avenging, weird family!" Liz says. Skye decides to speak.
"She had wavy brown hair and blue eyes, and she was an absolute horse freak!" Skye says with a smile, remembering the good old days. "She took up archery when she was seven and soon started mounted archery- well, her own style of mounted archery." Skye says. Johnny nods.
"She meant a lot to you." He could tell. Skye slowly nods.
"She was my best friend." Liz gives a reassuring smile; rubbing Skye's back.
"She was a fighter!" Liz says, it grows silent for a minute. Nathan stands up.
"Come on man; let's go somewhere, there are a lot of cool places around here." The guys stand, then Johnny does. They head for the elevator and are soon gone. They girls are left sitting there.
"So…..what now?" Astrid says. They all shrug, except Liz.
"Ooooo! There's a new season of Vampire Dairies on Netflix!" Liz smiles. Kate bounces up and down.
"Oh my god! I love that show!" Kate says with a squeal. Liz smiles before grabbing the remote and turning on the TV.
AVENGERS
Natasha had left Avenger tower and was on her way to the Helicarrier. Everyone was there to talk about something; which she didn't know about at the moment.
The quinjet lands and the ramp came down, allowing her to walk down it and toward the door. Once inside she made her way to the bridge, seeing Clint and Coulson talking and Steve, Tony, Thor, and Bruce sitting at the table, talking among each other. Natasha came in and stood beside Clint. Fury finishes talking to Agent Hill, then walks over.
"We have a new problem on our hands." He begins then pauses; they all just stare at him. Tony speaks up.
"So…. You were going to tell us?" He says. Fury shoots him a glare, Agent Hill walks over and hands Fury a file. He takes it and pulls out some pictures; spreading them across the table.
"This is what happened to a factory about two days ago." They look at the pictures. There was a factory in flames and remains of a crashed helicopter. Bruce furrows his eyebrows.
"So what happened?" He asks. Fury let out a breath.
"As of right now we still don't know who did it, but we do know what." They all look up from the photos.
"What did it?" Steve asks.
"It was a group called the Renegade. They've caused trouble with SHIELD in the past, but we haven't seen any sign of them in the last two months or so. This is the first we've seen of them in a while." Fury explains. Natasha speaks.
"Well what is there usual target?" Fury turns his gaze to her.
"Usually they target Drug Lords, black marketers, murderers, any organizations that rise to power. They take them out. But they also have intervened in SHIELD business. Even killed a few agents." She nods.
"Besides SHIELD, what do they do wrong?" Clint asks.
"It's not necessarily what they do wrong. It's who they do it with." Fury says. They all look at him in confusion. "Over the last couple of months we've traced Hydra back through the Renegade business." Right after Fury said Hydra, Steve got up and walks out of the room. They all turn seeing him leave. "Will you brief him on this later?" They all nod. "Alright, so we have seen them do business with them. They've bought out all sorts of Serums, weapons and other things we are yet to discover." Fury says. They all nod again.
"So how are we going to approach it?" Bruce asks.
"We'll send some agents over to the site and see if we can turn up anything, then work on tracking them down." Fury confirms. Natasha nods along with Clint.
"Who are you sending?" Clint asks.
"I'll be sending you and Agent Romanoff along with Sitwell, Rogers, and Coulson. We don't want to attract and unwanted attention right now." He glances at Tony. Tony just gives him a sarcastic smile while Thor speaks up.
"What shall we do in the mean time?" He says.
"We wait til they make a move. If we can, we need to find out who did this to the factory, it's the first I've seen." Bruce looks at him confused.
"What do you mean by that?" He asks.
"Before the factory, the Renegade would eliminate targets, and then get out without harming anything and usually left their surroundings alone. Whoever they sent in this time did a reckless job." Bruce nods. He turns to Clint and Natasha.
"As for those who are going I would get ready. You're leaving in twenty minutes."
AVENGERS
Coulson steps out of the quinjet as he takes in the site of the factory remains. The fires were mostly out and smoke filled the sky; covering it in a sheet of black. Sitwell steps out beside him.
"Well this otta be good." He says. Coulson looks at his surroundings, then nods.
"Let's just hope there's some evidence left." He says as he follows the others.
They walk into the remains of the building. It looked like several bombs had gone off in it and then to top it off, someone nuked the place. Natasha steps over the rubble, while Clint was looking under the ruble.
"Ok, let's split up. I'll take this way with Sitwell while Barton, you go down the east side. Romanoff you take west, and Rogers, you'll take the north." Everyone nods, then split up.
Clint walks into a room after knocking the door down and sees some bodies. He walks over; inspecting them. It looked as if they couldn't get out of the room, or they couldn't find a way out. He continues through a different room and sees two double doors. He pushes them open. Before him was a ginormous room, about the size of a warehouse. It was full of machines and crates. Deciding to have a look, he begins to snoop around the area.
Natasha walks down a hallway and sees some stairs leading to a room. She walks up the unsteady stairs and into what looked like an office. By the looks of the room, a grenade went off. The burn marks proved it. She walks up to a wall and rubs her hand down it, it was smooth. Natasha then looks over and sees a desk and a broken chair on the floor. She walks up, and then sees a chair sticking out from behind the desk; she walks around it and gasps. Seeing a man with a knife in his chest, he was dead. Natasha starts to approach him when she hears a small explosion coming from the room next to her. Her head shoots up as she jogs out of the office, down the stairs and makes a right, going into a room. It was filled with smoke; she walks forward and trips over something.
"Ow." Natasha moves to the side, catching herself and sees Clint on the floor. She puts her hands on her hips.
"What have you gotten yourself into this time?" She says amused. She helps him up.
"Well I was walking around the room when it just randomly exploded." He says. She rolls her eyes. Then the smoke clears and they see the room they are in. It was an empty room pretty much, nothing on the walls. Just a blank, metal cell. Just then, they see a small light out of the corner of their eyes. They turn and see a little flame following a path. Clint was about to go over and put it out when Natasha stopped him. It was like someone knew they would be here. They follow the flame with their eyes as it begins to outline a shape. Their eyes wide as it finishes. In the flame was a strange symbol. Natasha pulls out her phone and takes several pictures from different angles. Clint waited as she took the last picture.
Once finished, they walk out of the room as they make their way into a big room. Clint takes a few looks before turning around.
"Where are you going?" She asks. He shrugs.
"Looked here already." Natasha walks over and grabs his arm and drags him back into the room. "Hey! Ow." He says in an annoyed voice.
"We can look again." They begin to look around the room.
Natasha comes across a big mound with a tarp over it. She walks over and looks under, all she could see was boxes. Curious; she pulls it off. Once off she sees what is in front of her. Natasha's eyes widen when she sees hundreds and hundreds of explosives, and there was a timer. She looks at it and sees it's on. It had two minutes til it blew. Natasha runs away from it and runs into Clint.
"Whoa, where are you going now?" He says. She doesn't answer his question as she practically drags him out of the room and down the hall. "Um, excuse me what was that?" He says.
"Bomb, or should I saw bombs….many bombs." She clarifies for him. His face gets serious as they run down the hallway.
They look in a room and see Steve looking around. He turns and gives them a confused look.
"No time to explain, we have to get out now." She says. He nods and follows them as they go find Coulson and Sitwell.
The three of them were almost to the edge of the hallway when they see Coulson and Sitwell walk out of a room. They run over.
"There's a bomb going off any second now, we need to get out now!" She says. Coulson nods and follows them, along with Sitwell. But just as they were about to run toward the exit about three hundred yards away, the building shakes violently, they turn around slowly and see the hall begin the glow as the explosion came at them.
"Run!" Steve yells. They take off into sprints as they see the exit doors in front of them. It was like in those dreams when you're running but not moving, as the explosion was catching up to them. Putting in a few extra big strides, Natasha was almost to the door, Steve got there first. He pushes on it. It was locked. They all come to a stop. They quickly investigate the door for any sign of weakness. Clint sighs.
"Well this is great." He says. Then Steve backs up, they watch him as he stops about ten yards back. He jesters for them to come over. They come over and stop.
"OK, if we can push it hard enough, it's bound to do something." They all nod, getting in line. "OK, on three. One, two, three!" They take off with whatever strength they had left and collided with the door, it groaned for a minute and began to move. They heat of the explosion was catching on and burning their backs. They gave one last push and the door gave way as the tumbled out and into the grass a few feet down. The explosion follows them and out into the air above them. They cover their heads, as the flame dies down. Natasha was the first to lift her head, as she slowly sits up. The others sit up too, breathing heavy; they look at each other for a minute. Clint smiles as he lets himself fall back into the grass.
"Few! Well that was close." He says. They all nod and have a good laugh before standing up. Coulson brushes some sot off his clothes before walking toward the quinjet.
"This will be interesting to explain." He says. They all nod as they follow him toward the quinjet.