Hell Hero and Spider Girl do not belong to me, they are characters of RivalsAreAllies

"Hey, Captain Evans." My head jerked up from my paperwork at the familiar voice. The first thing I saw was a boy that definitely did not match the person I had recalled having that voice. He wasn't a short little squirt anymore. He was now nearly six feet tall with broad shoulders and a cut figure. No more would he be called scrawny, not with a filled out figure like that. He wasn't exactly built, but he had just enough muscle to look less like a boy, and more like a man.

It was so weird to use that word to describe him, because if I recall, he's only recently turned twelve.

"Clyde?" I asked, standing up and walking around my desk to face him full on.

He smiled at me, and that took me off guard as well. His face was no longer a childish rounded feature. It had filled out into a sharper jaw line and narrow cheek bones.

"Are you sure you've only been gone half a year?" I asked.

He laughed, "Asguardians go through a crazy growth spurt, Brantley. Puberty might not come early, but it goes by fast."

"Remind me to never pick on a shrimpy little Asguardian kid ever again." I mumbled, looking him up and down. "I'm a bit worried for you man."

He frowned, "Why?"

"With how you look now, thots are gonna go crazy for you." I explained, breaking into a grin.

Clyde laughed, "It's good to see you again Brantley."

I wrapped my arms around him in a tight hug, pissed off only slightly that he was taller than me now. "Good to have you back Clyde."

He pulled away, raising an eyebrow, "Hey, who's the weird chic outside cosplaying as Spiderman?"

Suddenly, a web shot from the open door, nailing Clyde in the face. Clyde reeled, trying to pull it off his face as Jenny shouted, "My name is Spider Girl, biatch!"

"Spidergirl, stand down." I laughed, opening the door wider so that Clyde could see her better. He had managed to pull most of the webbing off his face. "This is Clyde; he's an original member of the team."

"So, just not me and Hell Hero?" She asked in that sarcastic voice she always seemed to prattle on in.

"Yeah, sure." I brushed her off, and then looked to Clyde. "Whenever you get a chance, me and you need to go a few rounds in the ring."

He grinned, "I've been waiting to take you on for awhile."

"Think you can beat me?" I asked, crossing my arms and sizing him up.

"I've been trained for three months straight in nothing but hand to hand combat, by Captain America. Ya know, that guy who's on par with Electra? I'm sure you learned a lot from, ya know, street rats, but-"

"Oh, someone's cocky." I laughed.

He smirked. "Still think I've got you beat at arm wrestling."

"Probably." I said, grabbing a case file off my desk. "I hate to do this to you on your first day back, but we've got a situation in California. In about five hours, you and Spidergirl need to head out and take care of this. I don't have time to brief you, I take it you can handle it?"

He nodded, thumbing through the first two pages of the file, and them smiling to Spidergirl. "Looks like we're partners."

"Great, I get to run around with… wait, who are you?" She asked.

"Real name is Clyde, alias is Bucky. I'm the Captain's sidekick." He said, sticking out his hand for her to shake.

"Nice intro, sounds really rehearsed, but we'll work on that, Lieutenant America." She said, grabbing his shoulder and dragging him out of my office.

I raised an eyebrow as they disappeared from sight. "I have a feeling I've just made a terrible mistake."

"Probably."

I looked over to the computer on my desk, seeing Jason on the screen, looking into the camera on his desk, hands on his microscope. As soon as he saw I was looking at him, he turned his attention back to his slide. I think that's what it was called. They might have been teaching me some forensic terminology and simple deduction skills in it, but basic terms escaped me sometimes.

"What's up Jason?"

He didn't take his eyes away from the microscope. "Nothing."

"Really? I doubt that." I said, settling down into my chair.

"No reason for you to doubt it." He countered.

"The only time you ever get into contact with me is when you've discovered something that's odd in your lab, and you want to brag about it to me." I reached under my desk, pulling out my bow and quiver. About three times a day I would go through the quiver, doing a little maintenance on the arrows. Just making sure the wires and triggers on them were up to par. I should probably check my bow string to, make sure it's no loose. If it came undone in the field, I was royally fucked.

"I do not. Sometimes I honestly just want to talk." He mumbled.

"So there's not some weird thing in your lab that you want to talk about with me?" I asked, taking the side off of one of the exploding arrows, looking in at the components. Nothing seemed off about it, but just to be safe I reached into my desk drawer, taking out the kit I used to keep up with them. I pulled out a pair of tweezers, and used them to push a few wires around, trying to get a better look at the metal box inside.

"Uh… well, you know, I've always got cool stuff down here, but there's this one thing in particular that you might like."

I turned the arrow to the side slightly, trying to see if there was any rusting on the edges. No brown spots, Jason's antirust coating that he had given me worked well. Still… no problem with just making sure…

"I knew it." I took out the rag, dipping an edge of it into a solution that prevented rust, and dabbing it along the edges of the explosive box. Then I gently scrubbed at it, getting rid of any rust I might not be able to see.

"Okay, fine. I wanna brag about it to you. You know the assassination of that Russian Ambassador and his nephew?"

"Yeah, Black Widow didn't wanna get into it, and it got passed along to me." I said, making little circles on the surface of the metal. "I just sent Clyde and Spider girl to go take care of it."

"What!?"

When I heard Jason's panic, my head shot up to stare at the screen. "What's wrong with that?"

Jason taped a few keys on his computer, and then sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Brant… let me refresh your memory of what happened six months ago. I'm sure you remember, wizard with long black hair, magic staff thing, alien invasion-"

"I get it, what's this have to do with this case?" I snapped. God, Jason could prattle on.

"We both remember your little friend who saved you when your dear daddy had you pinned beneath him, about to kill you, correct?"

A face flashed through my mind. A bald head, target tattoo, eyes that reflected all things wrong with a mind so twisted that even I couldn't begin to figure out what was wrong with it, a mouth that grinned to show impossible childlike happiness on a face that reflected pure evil.

"I remember." He had held my life in his hands, twice. Both times he had given it back to me. But not out of human decency or moral qualms. Simply because he knew I would owe him later.

"In the case of the Russian ambassador's murder, no murder weapon was identified."

"So I sent Spidergirl and Bucky to check it out. I thought it would be a good test for them."

He shook his head, "Cam and I wrote the report. We lied, Brant. We found the murder weapon."

He reached under the desk, and pulled up a long, thin box. He popped it open, and pulled out an object wrapped in plastic.

An arrow.

"You can't let anyone but me, Cam, and Clint come into contact with him. Anyone else, he only needs to hint at it, and let them live. Then your career here is over."

I reassembled the arrow I had been tinkering with, and shoved it back into my quiver. My hand went to my earpiece, "Spidergirl?"

"What's up Cap?"

"I'm canceling your mission. Bring the file and everything in it back to my office. I'll reassign you both to something else."

I turned it off when she started cursing at me.

Before Clyde came back with the file, I was already suited up, boot laces tied and the ends tucked in, my short sleeved uniform showing all my tattoos. The big LS on my inner elbow that had long ago taken the place of the HU that Tyson had burned off, and the six little diagonal squares on my shoulder, each one with a color pattern of someone on the team.

I frowned a little at the six diagonal squares, remembering that now, there were eight people on my team. A thought of expanding the tattoo came to mind, but I brushed it off. I didn't want Hell Hero or Spider girl on my team, much less on my arm.

Clyde slapped the file on my desk, "I guess something came up? From what Jade told me, you don't get out much anymore."

I grabbed my bow, and slung my quiver over my shoulder. "Perfect time to start. You and Spidergirl have a new assignment."

Clyde crossed his arms as I dug through the small stack of folders on the left corner of my desk. "Time for a debrief?"

"Intelligence thinks that a mad scientist is using some kind of science stuff to replicate the Hulk. Normally, that would be handed by the local authorities, but they're powerless, because his lab is a ship in international waters." I handed Clyde the file. "If Spidergirl doesn't cool off in an hour, take Tyson with you, and leave her here. If you have to leave her here, sick Jade on her. Girl needs to get out some energy without using her tongue."

Clyde nodded to my shoulder, "You didn't have those last time I saw you."

I nodded, and pointed to one in the center, a blue one with a small white star in the middle. "This one is you."

He grinned. "I might get a tattoo…"

"We'll talk about that later."

Before he could ask any more questions, I was out the door, heading towards the hangar. I hadn't even gotten halfway before Clint was walking next to me.

"Brantley-"

I cut him off. "Going in alone."

"Absolutely not." He said firmly. "This isn't up for debate."

"I made a mistake, I'll pay for it."

"You never would have met Lester if we hadn't gotten mind-fucked by Loki." He said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "I'm pulling the mentor card with this one. You aren't ready for such responsibility."

I slumped my shoulders, admitting defeat, and we loaded onto a helicopter together.