AN: Back from the Doctors! Blood were clean so I definitely don't have the Zombie Virus. I've been set a "bedtime"...It's fair to say that I'm sick of being treated like a 4 year old.

LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE! Arena Time! How will Laura do against Tony's invention!?

Enjoy :)

Chapter 8 - Art of War

"Do we all really need to be here?" Clint questioned from his perch on one of the counters.

All present Avengers had been called to the Training Arena after breakfast and now all stood in the control station which over looked the arena. Tony whizzed around the consoles, getting his invention ready while Laura stretched down in the large arena. He paused to check that the control station microphone was muted before answering the archer, "Yes".

"Why?" Steve asked aspirated by the billionaire. First, he bets with Laura to get her into the experimental arena and now he expected them to watch his little game.

The genius made one last check that the machine was ready before turning towards them with a sigh. He knew they'd want an explanation, not for the call to assemble, but for why he was so interested in the girl. He figured that if he just explained everything they'd understand why he'd called them. He leaned against the console before turning toward Barnes. "Last night, when I came outside I managed to catch the end of something". Barnes was a little shocked that Stark was talking to him directly. "Something about 'Acosta'".

Everyone's eyes went to Bucky, waiting for an answer. "My memory. After we were introduced, we were sent on a mission. Acosta was the name of the target" Bucky explained wondering why this was any concern to Stark.

"That's what I thought and how old was 'X' in this memory?" Tony questioned turning back around and bringing up the files he had open last night.

"I don't know" Bucky was becoming a bit defensive, not understanding why Tony felt the need to interrogate him now.

"Guesstimate" Tony forced a smile on his face to try and make the man more willing to give him the information.

Bucky sighed feeling like he was being put on the spot. "Young, between 16 and 18"

"Okay, well, you see, I did some digging." Tony punctuated his point by tapping a button on the console, causing all the files he'd been looking at in the early hours of the morning fly onto the screen. There had to be thousands of them. "I figured that 'Acosta' had been one of your…victims." Stark struggled over the word but continued before Steve could look disappointed at him. "So I started to look back to find this guy, figured it would've been recent seeing as little miss mystery looks barely old enough to drink. But I kept going back further and further, and no one matched your MO until…"

Tony pressed another button and all the files disappeared except for one. "Fernando Acosta, died aged 52, he was a gang leader or something. Police record longer than most and a few trips to jail for possession and assault". Bucky looked at the man's jail photo, a spark of recognition and guilt ran through him. He might have been a bad person but still… "However, what makes him important is that he was killed in Belem… back in 2000."

"That doesn't add up" Natasha said stepping forward to get a closer look at the profile. The other woman clearly didn't look much older than 22. Even when Nat had lent her some workout clothes for this training session, she'd noted that the girl filled out her clothes like a teen would fill out woman's clothes.

"She'd be in her late 20's". Bruce pointed out becoming interested.

"At least!" Tony exclaimed. He'd spent a good 2 hours trying to find a reasonable explanation before Pep forced him to go to bed.

There was a pause as everyone proceeded the information. "Couldn't she have been put in cryo?" Clint questioned. Steve and Barnes were meant to be in their 90's but their still looked mid-twenties so why couldn't she have been given the same treatment.

"That's one of my theories, one of the more boring ones" Tony sighed looking down at the stretching girl. She was a puzzle to him, one he wanted to crack. He was so lost in his thoughts that it actually took him a second to realise that she wasn't stretching anymore.

In fact she was staring directly at the control station. "I'm waiting, Stark" Laura could hear them talking up in their little box, she couldn't make out what they were talking about but she could hear their muffed voices. The box must've been partly sound-proofed.

The Avengers jumped slightly when her voice filtered through the speakers. "Let's get this show on the road, shall we?" Tony posed the question to his teammates, finger hovering over the microphone button.

The genius's eyes travelled from person to person, silently asking them if they had any more to say. Everyone remained silent and in thought until he glanced at Bucky. "What's the point of this?" Bucky didn't have an answer for the new question Stark had come up with but he did now know where Tony stood on his friend. If the inventor was going to use Laura as some weird experiment then he and Buck were going to have another problem.

Tony just shrugged at the tense question. "Curiosity mostly but it might test out some of those theories". He didn't give the ex-assassin any time to counter his words as he held down the microphone button. "Okay, 'X', I'm gonna start off nice and easy."

Laura smirked before shrugging it off. Confidence had no place on the battlefield. "Whatever". It unnerved her slightly to be in the large metal room, reminded her a tad too much of her training sessions at the Facility. But she reasoned with herself that this wasn't going to be like those times, she couldn't hurt anything but herself here.

A whirling sound started to come from the metal plated floor around her and Laura watched in a daze as different panel's rose from the ground, shifting into place as they came up to become walls. Within seconds she was looking down a newly constructed corridor. She had to admit, it was impressive.

"This is one of Dory's easier levels, very simple, just clean the place out." It took Laura a second to connect the nickname with the person but when she did, she hoped for Tony sake that Barnes hadn't seen that movie yet. "It focuses on stealth more than brute strength, think you can handle that, sweetie?"

She would have snorted at the mere thought of not being able to handle a simple stealth mission but she was already easing herself into the X23 mind-set. And that meant that this was not a game. It was a test and failure wasn't an option.

Tony just managed to catch the small nod she gave and took it as confirmation. "Okay, Start". He stated projecting the arena feeds onto the windows for the others to watch.

Laura stalked forward, carefully at first until she got her bearings. She quickly realised that her enhanced sense of smell wasn't going to be any use to her. These robots mustn't have had any scent because all she could smell was cold metal.

Despite this hiccup she kept advancing, only stopping when she reached the end of the corridor. She didn't have to look to know that something was around the corner. The junction only went in one direction and she could hear the movement at what must have been the next junction. She could make out footsteps but on top of that she could hear the hydraulics inside them working away.

There was two from what she could hear so she decided to stand and wait for a second to try and figure out what they were doing. She tracked their movements in her head, memorising the repetitive path. They were patrolling and their corridor was short. 'Ponder and deliberate before you make a move'.

Their path probably started at the ends to cover any adjoining corridors before meeting in the middle to check the corridor she was about to enter.

She'd need to take them by surprise. If she attack when they were in the middle she could take two out at once but they'd spot her coming. If she waiting for them to reach the ends they'd be separated but she'd get caught between them. She'd have to time this well.

She listened for when they meet in the middle and then counted down the seconds. She got to five before they started to move again and her body turned the corner before breaking into a sprint. She reached the end of the corridor within seconds, only having milliseconds to analyse her opponents.

She chose to deal with one on the left first, taking a step up behind it. Her hands reached out to gain a firm grasp on the inventions head before using all her strength to snap its neck to the side. She had to admit that she wasn't expecting it to break off into her hands, thinking it would be sturdier than human neck.

She didn't have time to worry about it though as her ears picked up on the whirling of hydraulics behind her. She spun around quickly, hurling the dismembered head of its comrade at it as a distraction. It worked, hitting the robot in the face before it could fire off the shot it had been lining up.

She took the opportunity, grabbing a hold of the pistol, unleashing her claws effortlessly and bring the blades down onto the creations arm. It cut clean through, the forearm and gun clattering to the ground. Laura held onto the other remaining hand, using it as leverage to kick it in the face.

Impressively, the machine reacted to the hit bringing its dismembered arm up to try and protect itself. It gave Laura a clear opening to flip it onto its back before sending her claws through its chest. The whirling sound died out, leaving Laura in silence as she knelt beside the fallen robot, barely even out of breath.

The Avengers sat in silence as well but not the same kind. The silence waited for someone to break it but nobody did when they watched Laura snap a robots head off or when they saw her produce knives from her fist. "What?" Clint was the first to get his mind clear enough to form a sentence. "How?" Even if that sentence wasn't very complex.

"J, bring up her scans and give me the scans from a second ago". Tony came back to life, tapping buttons on the console and pulling full body scans onto the window screen.

"Certainly, sir" new scans appeared on the screen and Bruce stepped forward to get a closer look.

"You have body scans of her?" Steve asked not approving of Stark's nosiness but reluctantly having to admit that it was coming in handy.

"I had J scan her when she entered the building, he picked up on these abnormalities in her limbs. I figured it would be a bolt from a broken arm or something but then I saw this." He spread his hands across the window holograph, zooming in on part of the scan.

A light blue 3D outline of Laura's forearm stood out against the clear glass window, two long thin navy blue objects could be seen within the outline. "J, cross reference these, show me what's happening, buddy"

"It appears that by flexing the Extensor digitorum and carpi muscles, Miss Kinney can push the foot long blades from her forearm and into her hand". The diagram began to animate, showing what Jarvis was describing and everyone watched, feeling somewhere between amazed and queasy. Except for Buck. While he was, of course, amazed by Laura's abilities, he also felt an odd concoction of anger, nostalgia and pride.

"Well, that's new…" Tony supplied. He had thought that maybe the blades had been implanted into her, to be removed and used as last-resort, emergency weapons. But even then the blades were pretty deep in her flesh.

"That's not possible, those blades would have to cut through muscles, ligaments, even bone to come out like that." Bruce explained, pinching the bridge of his nose. He could feel the Hulk stirring and it was starting to worry him.

He had a good hold on his alter ego and he had enough faith in himself to know that he wouldn't make a surprise appearance but he wasn't normally this active. Bruce was beginning to become worried about the cause of the other guy's mood swing.

"Sorry to interrupt but training bot 197 is approaching Miss Kinney's position" Jarvis pointed out, causing Tony to minimise the scan, revealing that Laura was launching herself into another fight.

Laura had giving herself a few seconds to recover and gather information. She looked down at the robot carcase at her feet, removing her claws from its torso. She didn't know much about robotics but these things sure did look impressive.

They were constructed mostly from a reasonable light but durable metal. Laura couldn't name it but it sure wasn't strong enough to withstand Adamantium. The machines also didn't have features, instead their faces were a smooth clear plastic or glass that she'd managed to crack when she'd kicked it.

She snapped out of her analysis as the sound of more footsteps echo down the left corridor. Laura scolded herself, realising that she'd let the first bot fall over after she'd beheaded it. The clatter must have alerted more.

She crept over to the left corridor, having to step over the headless robot slightly to get herself flat against the wall.

This next one was advancing down the corridor quickly, probably reacting to seeing the downed comrade at the end. Laura took a steadying breath as she waited for him to be in position.

'Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected'. So she waited until he was only feet away from his fallen comrade before acting.

She used the dead bot's body as a springboard, bouncing off it and round the corner. She gave herself enough speed and lift to wrap an arm around the new opponent's neck, her feet connecting with the wall to push herself over the robot's shoulder. She wrapped her legs around its waist and sent her claws through its neck. The whirling of hydraulics died out and she had to jump down quickly to avoid crashing to the floor with it. Laura winced at the noise it made, cursing herself for forgetting not to let him drop. She was never really good at stealth.

She jumped as a loud whirling sound reached her ears, getting into a defensive position but relaxed as she realised that the walls were descending. She flipped backward as the ground she was standing on began to tilt and watched as the robot bodies tumbled into a gap into the floor. She waited until the noise had stopped before looking up at the control station expectantly. "Impressive" she begrudgingly admitted.

Tony smirked before tapping the microphone button. "I agree, you are pretty good at this". Tony was more than a bit impressed with what she'd displayed so far and he wondered what other hidden talents she had. "You ready for more?"

She allowed herself to smirk, feeling energised. She didn't often get to practice like this, she could never truly push herself with normal sparring but with this she didn't have to hold back. "Born ready"

"Okay, I was going to ease you into this but it looks like you've got the hang of it. So let's skip to the main event" Laura's attention snapped away from the control station as the whirling started again but this time it didn't last as long. Laura span round as a number of enemies rose out of the ground in a circle around her. She was literally surrounded. "Start"

"Tony, that's one of your harder levels" Natasha said almost too calmly as they watched Laura dodge multiple attacks from all angles.

"And?" Tony snorted, knowing exactly what Nat was concerned about but he had his reasons.

The widow hadn't used the arena much, preferring to spar with a human being instead but she had looked over the different levels and knew them pretty well. "It's waves of enemies and they have guns". Natasha's anger spiked as she realised that Tony was actually putting 'X's life in danger just to win a bet.

"She can handle it" However Tony knew his reassurance was going to do nothing. Yes, he realised that this was dangerous but he wasn't an idiot. He was a genius! And this was simply another test.

Unfortunately his reassurance fell on deaf ears as they watched Laura skewer a bot and use its body as a shield while 4 bots started to shower her with bullets. Sparks flew as the bullets ricocheted off its armour, a few lucky shots hitting weak points in bot's structure and causing serious damage. By the time their clips were empty, the robot carcase was falling to pieces causing Laura to dispose of it.

"Tony…" Steve warned. He didn't know what had gotten into the billionaire but he needed to stop the program.

"She's fine" Tony had to admit even he was getting a bit edgy now. His levels didn't seem as intense when he was in his suits. He just prayed that his theory was correct.

The tension in the room was thick, focus switching between the screens and Tony, wondering who would break first Tony or Laura. "She needs to take out the guns" Bucky stated with a gut feeling that Laura knew that fact. Her eyes locked on the robots as they reloaded, but she didn't even get two steps before more troops descended upon her, forcing her to deal with them.

Natasha winced as the dark haired girl got cut off by the newcomers. Tony's training bots were intelligent, they didn't fire when allies were engaging and they attacked when reloading. They were expert level units and that made them really quite dangerous. However, Laura was actually faring well considering.

The dark haired woman took chunks out of the machines, defeating the ones she engaged within seconds. She made light work of them, flipping away when she was done with that wave and unfortunately landed right into the attack range of a particularly large one. She received a metal boot to the chest, causing everyone to tense as it pushed her back some way. They watched with baited breath as she rose steadily, breathing hard. "J?" Tony asked knowing the AI would know what he wanted.

"Miss Kinney's collarbone has been fractured, sir"

"Tony." Steve had enough of this madness, ready to order Tony to stop the program and get Laura some help. But the words died in his throat as movement brought his attention back to the screen.

Eyebrows rockets as Laura let out a yell of anger before rushing the brute. The large bot got into a defensive pose but she had clearly predicted that. She leapt at the last possible second, one foot jumping onto its bent knee, the other unsheathing its claw and using the momentum, cut all the way up the robot's torso. She back flipped away, landing perfectly just as the bot began to crumble.

The Avengers gaped, all dazed by what had just occurred, except for Tony. "J, cross reference that. That explains the blades in her feet." The genius pulled his scans back up, watching amazed as Jarvis animated what had just happened. "How's she doing that?" Tony had to admit that Bruce was right, those blades had to be going through her foot and wrist bones.

"Using her Dorsai Interossei and Extensor Hallucis Brevis muscles. But Sir, there is something I've…" Jarvis's urgent tone was cut short by an even more urgent shout.

"Tony!" Clint alerted, shooting up from his seat. He'd been watching the feeds and keeping an eye on the gunbots. They'd reloaded and were ready to fire.

The other's got to their feet in horror but it was Steve who rushed forward to the "genius's" side. "Tony, shut it down!"

Laura seemed to realise her predicament about the same time they did, turning to see the 4 robots with their guns aimed at her and only seconds away from firing. Bucky watched on as she brought her claws up to shield her head and chest, confused as to why he wasn't panicking more. The situation almost seemed too surreal to react to but there was something inside Bucky's mind that was at complete ease about it.

Tony panicked, searching the console for the emergency stop but knowing he wouldn't find it in time. His head snapped up as the shots sounded. Steve didn't waste a single second, running out the door, closely followed by Natasha and Clint.

The three remaining Avengers stayed in the room. Two continued to watch the feed, while Bruce turned away, not wanting to witness this. And one paled at the thought that he'd just killed someone. Just to prove a wild theory and win a bet.

"Look" Tony's head snapped to his left to see Barnes standing next to him. The man stared blankly at the feed and Stark chanced a look. He expected to see a limp, lifeless Laura lying dead*, but he didn't.

The rain of bullets continued but Laura still stood, arms raised, claws out, protecting her head and chest. The guns finally ran out of ammo and the arena went deathly silent as Laura lowered her arms to her sides.

Blood ran down the blades in rivers before trickling away to an occasional drip and the tense silence was broken by the fall and clatter of metal bullets. The training bots backed up, trying to put distance between themselves and the opponent.

"Nice try" The taunt came through gritted teeth seconds before Laura launched herself at the 4 remaining bot.

Her knees slammed into the chest of one of them, send it falling backwards, only getting a second to rest before having two claws rammed through its temple.

A robotic hand clamped down onto her arm but the arm was quickly removed and Laura continued to cut as she stood. First taking off its forearm, then its shoulder and finishing with its head.

She didn't give the beheaded body time to fall, instead shoving it backwards a number of feet and into its comrade. Laura stalked forward, kicking her footclaw through the prone robot's skull.

Her eyes snapped up to the last one to see that it had managed to reload. She closed the gap quickly but not before it could let off a round. Her arm lashed out on instinct, claws slicing and ricocheting the bullets away from her.

Once she was in range she cleaved the gun in half before placing her fist just underneath it's jaw and sending her claws through it's face. She dodged to the side, letting it fall before doubling over to catch her breath.

The control station remained silent as they tried to process what they'd just seen. They watched Laura as she panted, taking in large amounts of oxygen. But she was still breathing.

A banging on the large door of the arena wrenched them all away from their tranquillity. "Sir, Captain Rogers is asking for access to the arena while the program is still running". Jarvis reported, voice quiet and laced with traces of concern, probably trying to knock them out of the shock.

"Patch me through to them…" Tony uttered, still many shades paler than he should be.

"Stark, open the goddamn door!" Clint's voice held a lot of anger but at the same time contained a certain amount of disbelief and confusion.

"You're not gonna believe this" Tony's dazed tone must have stunned them into silence because nobody countered him. "J".

The large door opened and the three Avengers began to run in only for it to shift into a jog and then to stop completely. They blinked at the girl who stood smirking at them while panting softly. For a second it crossed their minds that maybe she'd managed to evade being shot but then they took in her clothes or to be correct, Natasha's clothes.

They were riddled with bullet holes and drenched in crimson but no wounds could be seen on the woman who followed their gaze and looked down at herself. "I owe you a set of workout gear" She said looking almost apologetic towards Nat.

"How?" Clint exclaimed arms flailing between Laura and the broken bots.

The dark haired enigma looked at him amused but their conversation was interrupted before she could speak. "Holy mother of all that is holy, you scared the shit out of me!" Tony sentence came out in a single exhale of breath before it dissolved into a small laughing fit. "Oh god, my heart…Jesus Christ…" Tony massaged his chest realising that the shock had made his heart skip many beats.

"Don't keel over yet, old man. You owe me 100 bucks" Laura's smirk increased, enjoying the reactions she was witnessing. She had hoped not to be forced to reveal her healing to them but it was worth it just to see their faces.

Tony groaned in a light-hearted way, sore about losing the bet but pleased that his theory had been correct. "Fine, you win. But you better use it to buy me a drink or something, my nerves are shot."

* = My alliteration game is strong tonight. B)

AN: So How cool was that?! The team have witnessed some big things in this chapter.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please Fav, Follow and Review!

Feedback will help me deal with my doctor appointed "bedtimes", I'll read them before I take my blankey and to bed :P

See you next week!