Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Hi, y'all! Hope you guys are well. I had a lot of fun with today's chapter :)

Quick note, as I forgot to add it in last chapter's A/N: it was brought to my attention that I had Penny's age wrong. Originally, I thought I had it corrected, but the age I thought she was...was wrong lol. In my defense 1) I am bad at math, and 2) in the earliest iterations of this fic, I had Penny as being born in 1991, not 1990. But Penny was born in 1990, turned 22 in August 2012, and as such is 23 right now since we're in January 2014. She and Harry got together in December 2006 and were married in September of 2007, so they were married for 4 years but together for 5. Hope that clears some things up. :)

Chapter title comes from Another One Bites the Dust by Queen, btw.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~somebody to love~

~chapter 33: another one bites the dust~

Three days.

"You're not going."

"And I already told you, that's not your decision to make," Penny said sweetly.

All four of her soulmates were glowering at her. Bruce was studiously ignoring them as he was looking through the files containing the information she'd already given, compiled by JARVIS. His leg was bouncing as he read, though, letting her know that he wasn't as impartial to the argument as he wanted to act like he was. She had no idea whose side he was on.

It probably didn't matter.

She leaned back into her seat at the conference table, crossing her arms as she prepared herself to go through this argument for the umpteenth time. "It's one day before your suppressants are 'supposed' to wear off," Tony said, making the air quotations and all. "You're enhanced, which means there's no guarantee they'll wear off a day early."

"And we don't know how long it'll take for you to go into heat after that," Natasha added. "It could be a couple of days or the day after, but it could be a couple of hours."

Tony pointed at Natasha. "See, she's agreeing with me!"

His fellow alpha made a face. "You're kind of making me wish I wasn't."

Before they could bicker further, Penny interjected, saying the same things she had earlier, "If that's the case, if all of you get injured you're not going to be able to help me through it."

"And how likely do you think that's going to happen?" Clint protested.

Steve, as he had during the other arguments, remained silent. She knew he agreed with the rest of them in that he didn't want her to be fighting at the Grand Central Terminal, but she also thought he understood where she was coming from.

It wasn't like he would've had the time to say anything this time even if he'd wanted to, anyways.

"Stranger things have happened," Fury drawled as he walked into the room. He regarded them all with his one eye, an eyebrow raised. "What, exactly, are we talking about?"

"They don't want me fighting because the effects of my suppressants are supposed to wear off the day after this fight," Penny stated bluntly.

As she'd expected, the director was not surprised in the slightest by what she'd said. "Ah, so you've all figured that shit out. Good," he grunted. His tone made Bruce smile, which he quickly covered up with his hand, continuing to feign innocence. Fury stepped over to the board where the files that they had were displayed electronically. "For the record, if Parker thinks – "

"It's Osborn."

He blinked. "What?"

"The real name's Osborn, Penny Osborn," she repeated.

He scowled. "Thank you for that. As I was saying, if Osborn thinks she'll be able to fight, I see no reason why she can't. She knows her body's limits better than the rest of you do."

"Gee, thanks for the support, Fury," Tony quipped sarcastically.

"I'm not here to support you in your private life. If what this kid said is true, we're going to need all hands on deck," Fury snapped back. He nodded towards the singular, grainy picture of Iron Lad in the files. It had been taken from a security camera and showcased the red-and-silver coloring of his suit. "What do we know about him?"

Hill, who had been much better at ignoring Penny's conversation with her alphas than Bruce, spoke up. "Not much. Apparently, last night was his first night on the job, at least in his suit."

"Do we know what it's made out of?"

Hill glanced over the file she was holding at Tony.

Tony shrugged. "Looks like it's some sort of titanium alloy, like mine. What I'm more interested in – " he picked up the laser pointer resting on the table and pointed it at the arc reactor on the screen " – is how the hell he made that. It looks like it's made out of the same element that powers my reactors now, but that doesn't make sense. How the hell was a kid able to make adamantium in his garage, or wherever else he made it?"

"I'm sure you'll figure it out."

Penny cleared her throat. "Did you guys figure out when this guy hacked into SHIELD?"

"About four days before the gala," Hill answered her. That kind of matched up with what Iron Lad had told her. Penny propped her cheek on her hand. "We're still not exactly sure how he managed to do it without the systems alerting anyone. He was in and out pretty quick. The only files he looked at were yours, the other Avengers', Advanced Idea Mechanics', and Project Rebirth's, and he only spent a minute or so on each – presumably only long enough to get pictures. But there wasn't much from the last two that he was able to access with the level of clearance he hacked into the system with."

Tony's expression darkened. "He was looking at the files for AIM and the super soldier serum?"

Hill nodded.

Bruce was similarly displeased. "...I'm not sure if I like this guy."

"Did he at least seem credible?" Fury asked.

All eyes turned to her.

Penny bit her lip as she brought her hand back down to the table. "He literally refused to give a straight answer about anything. But...yeah, I think so," she began. "He knows a lot more than what he told me, but I don't think it's about what's happening on Tuesday. I think he's just as clueless as the rest of us about what kind of attack is supposed to take place."

"Which is just great," Clint put in his two cents' worth with a sigh. "We don't know if this attack is going to be a bomb, chemical, biological, or what."

Steve's right eye twitched. "Clint."

Clint raised his hands in surrender. "What? I'm just saying!"

Bruce made a noise. "I think we can rule out chemical and biological. Look at the second page of code Iron Lad decrypted," he said, referring to the pages that she and Jarvis had gotten off Iron Lad's flash drive. "If it was chemical or biological, you'd expect some sort of mention of 'packages' being involved. But there's not. The only stuff there's mention of is – "

"Equipment," Natasha finished.

"Yeah."

"Why do I have the feeling that it's not going to be a bomb, either?" Tony complained, massaging one of his temples. "Knowing our luck, it's probably going to be killer robots."

Clint groaned. "I wish you wouldn't have said that, because knowing you, you're probably right. Weren't the Chitauri bad enough?"

"Focus on what we know!" Fury ordered. "All of you are giving me a headache."

They spent the rest of the meeting doing what he said. When it was over, Fury marched out of the conference room without so much as a farewell. Penny had expected it, and she appreciated it. Fury doing anything more than remarking on the fact she and her alphas had come to an agreement, it only having been implied before that she was an omega or not, was in-character for him. Anything else would've been...touching, she guessed. But also concerning. Way too concerning when her godfather was starting to get up there in years.

Hill followed after Fury, and so did Bruce. "I'll see you guys upstairs," he murmured. She didn't blame him for fleeing.

"Seriously," Penny said after the three of them had left. "This is going to be fine."

...In retrospect, not the best argument of hers to make.

"You say that now," Natasha told her.

"Yes," Penny agreed. She decided to take a different route. "Look, I'm not and never going to be a stereotypical omega who waits at home while her alphas go fight in all the big battles. I know, I know, you don't want me to be that kind of omega – " this part, she said as they all looked primed to argue with her, even Steve " – but it's worth mentioning. Because this is my decision. I told Iron Lad that we all would be there, and I intend to keep my promise. It's my responsibility. And even if you don't like it, if this is going to work, I need you to respect it."

Another muscle in Steve's face jerked, this one connected to his mouth. "She has a point, guys."

Her other three alphas all gave their various words of agreement, as reluctant as they were to.

"We just want you to be safe, Omega," Tony spoke.

Joy made her heart flutter at him calling her that. She didn't think she'd ever get used to any of them calling her that.

Penny grinned. "Well, there's more than one way you can do that."

They all went upstairs to her floor and to her bedroom. She changed into one of her pairs of pajamas and they did the same with their own sets, since they'd already gotten to the point of having at least one each in her closet. They turned on something to watch and cuddled, them all being content with it.

Soon, she knew, they were going to be doing a lot more than just that. In this bed. The thought made her flush lightly down to her chest and her heart began to race, which caused Steve to glance at her out of the corner of his eye and Tony to blatantly raise an eyebrow at her.

She pushed the thought away.

Soon, but not today.

It would be coming quick enough.

One day.

Tony was right.

The weapons of choice for the attack were, in fact, killer robots.

Penny didn't know whether she was going to curse him or kiss him as thanks for figuring it out later. Logically, she knew in the case of the former that his prediction had played no part in HYDRA using robots, that the choice had well already been made by the time he'd put forth his hypothesis.

But it was kind of hard for her to think logically in the heat of the moment, when she was having to swing out of the way of a laser beam before it blew a hole into her stomach.

"Shit!" she breathed, watching as the laser incinerated a hole into the lamppost she'd been standing in front of the size of her fist. The lamppost groaned ominously. "That was close!"

"Spider-Woman, are you alright?" Steve asked over the comms.

"Just – fine!" she managed, hopping out of the way again. This time, the impacted object was a car. Only the window, the seat, and the bottom of the car were hit, nothing critical. Good thing. An exploding car wasn't another thing she needed to be dealing with right now. "Where the hell is Iron Lad?"

"Nowhere in sight," Tony reported. "I'm not seeing him, at least."

"Me, either," said Clint.

Great. Just great.

Come on, Iron Lad, she thought as she shot a web at the building behind the robot she was dealing with, using the line to swing around it. Where the hell are you? I told everybody we could rely on you!

The attack had started just after three o'clock, an hour into Grand Central Terminal's busiest four-hour time period. SHIELD agents had been placed inside the station, since they'd all thought that the attack would have been coming from the inside.

They'd been wrong.

Thankfully, while Clint and Natasha had been inside the station as well, she, Tony, and Steve had not, and so they'd been pretty well prepared until Clint and Natasha had been able to get their way out of the building, past the throngs of screaming people.

There were a dozen robots in total. They reminded her a bit of the ones from The Incredibles movie. They had spherical bodies with a head that had the device the laser beams shot out of. But while The Incredibles robots had four arms, these had eight, and they were about 20 feet tall instead of several stories.

That didn't make them any less dangerous, however – or deadly.

Penny made her move as the head of the robot swiveled to focus on her, just like the one from The Incredibles. "Points for originality, these people," she muttered, although she doubted that a bunch of Nazis had ever seen that movie. Kicking off of the building she'd pulled herself to, she sailed through the air, barely dodging spikes of lasers. Then she landed on top of the robot's head, seized it in her hands while she moved her feet to its body, and twisted.

Whoever had built these robots had not accounted for her strength, or maybe they'd just underestimated it – although, now that she was thinking about it, that didn't make sense, because if she could pop off the head, what did that mean for the Hulk? Or Thor?

Regardless, though it took her a little bit of effort (a terrifying realization, that), she was able to twist off the head of the robot. Without its head, it fell to the ground, defeated. She jumped away from the corpse (if one could call a dismembered robot body by the term), tapping at her comms.

"I just took down one of them," she said to the others. "How many more do we have to go?"

"Nine," Tony said.

"'Nine?'"

She thought it would've been more than that!

"The robots are made with some kind of metal that's resistant to my repulsers." He was practically snarling with disgust. "I have no idea what it is. All I know is that, instead of blasting through 'em, it's heating 'em up first. Took me like ten shots to bring the one I got down. Steve got his through brute force."

"Barely," Steve grunted.

"Nat and I," Clint panted. "Are also not having – much luck."

Terror shot through Penny. "Do you need me to help?"

She wasn't as close to Grand Central Terminal anymore as she should've been. The robots had not just been attacking the station, but the area around the station, and the one she'd just defeated had led her a bit astray.

"No, we've got it," Natasha responded. "Same goes for you, Bruce. We need you more right now than the Green Guy."

"Got it," Bruce said. He was currently acting as their Guy in the Chair™, basically. "Spider-Woman, there's another straggler about four blocks away from you."

"On it!"

Penny swung and ran as fast as she could. The robot was just about to fire at a little boy in the streets when she came upon it. That made her angry.

"Hey, little man, watch out!" she shouted, picking up the boy in her arms. He didn't look to be any older than five. He barely protested as she landed with him about ten feet away from the laser's fire. She knew the signs of shellshocked when she saw them. She pushed him towards one of the buildings, a cafe that she could tell had other people inside. "Come on, go in there where it's safe, okay? The people in there will take care of you."

Her words seemed to loosen his common sense some. "But Mommy – "

Penny turned her head towards where the boy had been. She saw a woman laying on the sidewalk with the same curly black hair as him.

She wasn't moving.

Her throat almost closed up, until she tempered off the physical reaction. She opened up the door to the cafe for the boy and shoved him inside. "Stay here," she ordered. "Someone will come get you when it's safe, okay?"

A Good Samaritan rose from behind the counter, making eye contact with her. He nodded.

Relieved, she slammed the door shut and turned around. The robot was focused on her now, a good thing and a bad thing.

"Come on!" she goaded, waving her arms in the air crazily. She ran towards the other side of the street. "You just gonna let me run away?"

The robot's eye began to glow with another laser.

Then –

A repulser firing to the back of the robot's body made its head swivel around and look up.

"Yeah, how do you like that?" Iron Lad cheered. He flew out of the way as the robot fired at him. "You're gonna have to try harder than that if you want to hit me!"

Penny almost couldn't believe it.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed?" she demanded of him as she launched herself forwards at the robot. She dismantled it the same way she had its kin.

...Okay, maybe she was anthropomorphizing the robots a little too much.

"If I was, do you think I would've asked for your help?" he asked.

That made her irritated. "Considering how late you've shown up, I would say it's more of the other way around," she snarked. "Where have you been?"

"Not all of us live in fancy Towers and have all the free time in the world, princess."

She stumbled back as if he'd slapped her. "'Princess?'"

"You heard what I said. Now, are you going to give me shit for it, or are you going to tell the rest of the Avengers I'm here?"

Penny thought about how much of a hassle it would be to punch him.

Alas, they were in the middle of a battle, so that would have to wait until later. "Guys, Iron Lad's on the scene," she said into her comms. "And for the record, Tony, he's just as annoying as you are."

Iron Lad barked out a laugh.

"Gee, thanks," Tony commented dryly.

"Does he have anything else we need to know?" Natasha asked. It sounded like she and Clint were in a better situation than they had been earlier.

Penny jerked her head towards Iron Lad. "Is there anything else you want to share with the class right now?"

"Hm..." he hummed. "No, not really."

She repeated his words verbatim, along with the fact that they'd defeated another of the robots.

"That brings us down to seven now," said Tony.

"Six," corrected Steve.

"Oh, goodie, we've reached fifty-percent off."

"Yes, but don't get ahead of yourselves," Bruce warned. "Four of the six remaining are moving away from the Terminal, heading in three different directions. Two of them are near you, Spider-Woman."

"Good. We'll take those. What about the other two?"

"We've got them," Clint said.

She didn't question that. If he and Natasha had figured out a way to take down the robots on their own, all the more power to them.

"Iron Lad, follow me!"

The guy didn't even question it. They took off together towards where the two robots she'd signed them up to handle with were. The little kid she'd saved had been the exception, as pretty much everyone had cleared the streets already. The Invasion and Morbius had taught them well.

Unfortunately, while the robots were easy enough to deal with when it was only one of them at a time, two was more than double the trouble. Especially when lasers were involved.

"Shit!" she heard Iron Lad exclaim as one of them instantly fired at him.

Penny didn't have any time to say anything to him or help him, as she had her own laser to dodge. She separated from him, heading for a rooftop to perch herself on.

Naturally, she wasn't able to stay there for long. There was no time to think as she thwipped away, seeing Iron Lad having the same problems Tony had described. The one time he was able to fire at the robot, its black metal heated up, refusing to blow apart into pieces.

He was new to this, brand-spanking new. No reports of him showing up anywhere until now. While she wouldn't have doubted him to handle the robot on his own if he was Tony, he wasn't.

She had to make a decision.

Did she let him fight the robot on his own, or did she try to tag-team both with him?

The problem was, if she did that, one of the robots could slip away. Cause more damage than it was worth than if she didn't let him deal with his robot on his own.

He'd signed up for this, hadn't he? It wasn't like she'd had this amount of help when she'd fought the Lizard way back when. Besides the construction workers and the police, led by Captain Stacy (God rest his soul), she hadn't had any help at all.

All of this occurred to her within the span of a few seconds. As it always did when her spider sense activated, time seemed to have slowed down.

Ah, fuck it.

Iron Lad was a big boy (because she was hoping to the higher power that she didn't really believe in that he wasn't a teenager). He could handle himself.

Penny focused on her own robot. She danced around it, trying to find the easiest way past the laser beams. She knew better than to think she'd get away with the same maneuver twice.

At last, she saw her opening. Thwipping a web at the robot's head just after it had fired a laser, making the head spin around wildly as it prepared to shoot another laser to get most of it off, she descended on it like a predator would its prey. She and the robot fell to the ground together, its hands clawing at her. Grunting, she was able to damage the one that was trying to pin down her left arm enough that she rendered it useless. The arms weren't made out of the same metal as the body, like the neck, which was a good thing for her. The metal of the body seemed to be damn near unbreakable.

How had Steve managed to break two of them on his own?

Thought for later.

She got another arm down, narrowly avoiding a laser in the process. The pavement next to her sizzled. With the loss of two of its legs, the robot's primary objective seemed to change. It tried to pedal itself back in order to escape from her.

Penny didn't let it. Stepping forwards, nearly panting from the amount of energy she'd put into their fight, she grabbed the robot's head just as its eye began to glow.

SNAP!

Disgusted by the entire situation, she threw the head down onto the ground.

Then she turned around.

The other robot was destroyed, a hole in its body showing that Iron Lad had finally managed to sear through its armor, reaching its most critical parts. She was kind of impressed he hadn't managed to explode the entire thing, but the more parts SHIELD had to work with to see how HYDRA had made these things, the better.

As for the guy himself –

Shit.

So much for him being a big boy.

She raced over to where he was spread out on the ground, unmoving. His arc reactor was still glowing, so she took that as a good sign...even if he didn't need it to prevent himself from dying like Tony had.

"Iron Lad!" she said, falling to the ground next to him. "Iron Lad!"

He'd taken a laser to his right shoulder. Not enough to go through him, but it was clear he was going to be dealing with some horrific burns. Cursing their luck, she shook his other shoulder, saying his name again.

Nothing.

She focused on his heartbeat next. It was there, but it was slow, and it was weak.

Penny needed to act fast.

She reached for his face plate. As weird as it was, looking more like an actual face than it did Iron Man's face plate, getting it off was pretty much the same. He was probably going to hate her later for seeing his face, because she knew she would've, had she been in his shoes.

If it meant that he wouldn't thank her for saving his life, though, it would be worth it.

Not to her surprise, Iron Lad looked to be the same age as her, if not a few years younger. He had fair, but tanned skin, some freckles. The dark blonde hair of his hairline was slicked back from the rest of his helmet.

Penny readied herself to give him CPR.

All of the sudden, Iron Lad's very blue eyes snapped open. He gasped as he pushed himself back. Seeing his face plate resting on her lap, he raised a hand up to his face. "No – you didn't," he breathed. Then his eyes widened. His pupils dilated. "Wait – holy shit, you're an omega?"

Wha – ? she thought, confused, up until she caught a whiff of her own scent. For the first time in over two years.

Fuck.

She was definitely going to get murdered later.

But for right now, she had bigger matters to deal with. Pressing her comms to activate them, she said, "Guys, I need a medical team here ASAP, Iron Lad's down for the count. Also...we have a situation."

Word Count: 4,184

Next Chapter Title: more than a woman