Ava crouched in the terminal with Sam and Bucky, who were trying to find the Quinjet using Redwing. They listened to the comms as Tony and Steve yelled at each other. Steve had put Ava with Sam and Bucky because apparently they were going to "see less combat". So she would be "out of danger". So annoying.
As Sam worked, the Winter Soldier turned and whispered to Ava, "Du sprichst Deutsch?" [You speak German?]
Ava nodded. "И русский." [And Russian.]
He had the decency to look impressed. "Also, was ist Ihre Geschichte?" [So, what's your story?]
"HYDRA," she replied simply. At his alarmed look, she amended, "Sie haben mich als Kind genommen, an mir experimentiert, jetzt bin ich ein Mutant. Ich lebe seit fast zwei Jahren bei den Avengers." [They took me as a child, experimented on me, now I'm a mutant. I've been living with the Avengers for almost two years.]
The Winter Soldier stared at her, eyes wide. "Are there more of you?" he asked, switching to English.
She raised an eyebrow. "If by 'more of you' you mean more kids like me, yes. There are two more, different powers, both younger. They're back in New York."
"Huh. I'm Bucky, by the way."
"Ava."
They resumed listening in time to hear Tony say, "And you've been a complete idiot. Dragging in Clint. 'Rescuing' Wanda from a place she doesn't even want to leave, a safe place. Even bringing Ava. I'm trying to keep . . . I'm trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart."
Steve shook his head. "You did that when you signed."
Ava could tell Tony was irritated just by the tone of his voice. And the situation. "Alright, we're done. You're gonna turn Barnes over, you're gonna come with us. NOW! Because it's us! Or a squad of J-SOC guys . . . with no compunction about being impolite. Come on."
"Got it," Sam whispered in victory. Ava and the Winter Soldier - Bucky? - glanced at him as he spoke into the comms. "We found it. Their Quinjet's in hangar five, north runway."
Ava heard an arrow whistle over the comms. Cue Ant-Man, Scott something-or-other. Very faintly, she heard, "Hey guys, something…" and then a metallic clang, from the new guy, Spider-Dude or something.
Then Rhodey. "Whoa. What-what the hell was that?"
"Alright, we should probably get moving," Bucky said. They took off running down the terminal, the sounds of the fight faintly reaching them over the comms.
Just before she saw it, she heard something approaching from outside the terminal. "Something's coming," she warned, just before something red and blue scrambled over the glass side of the building.
Ava did a double take. "Whoah, what was that?" Bucky asked, echoing her sentiments exactly.
Sam sighed. "Everyone's got a gimmick now."
The figure crashed through the glass, revealing itself to be Spider-Man, and kicking Sam backwards. Ava jumped back, prepping her wings to be unfurled at the slightest notice.
Bucky threw a punch at Spider-Man, who caught it, unfazed. Bucky looked visibly shocked, as the guy just stared at it and said, "You have a metal arm? That is awesome, dude!"
Ava took a running jump at him, using her wings to propel her a bit, and grabbed Spider-Man, throwing him to Sam, who caught him as they both flew into the air. It felt nice to be flying, even if it was cramped, indoors, and in the middle of a fight.
Spider-Man struggled against Sam, yelling, "You have the right to remain silent!" before escaping and shooting a web of some sort at Sam to hang on. Boy, this guy certainly had never been in a fight before.
Ava, who was following close behind, slammed into him feet first, causing him to let go of the web. "Woahhh!" he yelled, as he fell towards the floor, catching himself with more webs. Ava tucked her wings in tightly as she flew past him through the rafters, before spinning around to face him in the air. Once Spider-Man caught his bearing, he did a double-take at Ava's wings. "Are those part of your body? That's amazing!"
He whipped his head back around when Bucky threw a huge chunk of metal at him, and Ava took the opportunity to drop down to the floor. Flying in such a tight space was near impossible. "Oh god," she heard Spider-Man say, before catching the debris and throwing it back, yelling, "Hey, buddy, I think you lost this!"
Bucky ducked behind a pillar as the metal smashed into it, just barely getting under cover in time.
Sam flew up behind him and knocked him off the beam, but the guy just swung away using his webs. He fired one right at the central control for Sam's wings, causing him to go crashing to the ground. Ava saw this, and dove down to intercept Spider-Man.
He fired webs at her wings, trying to knock her out of the air, but she evaded them well, weaving in and out of the shots and pulling her wings in when she had to. One shot misfired and stuck Sam's wrist to the railing, and another snagged Ava's ankle, yanking her off balance.
"Woahhh!" Ava couldn't stop herself from crying out, softly, as she was pulled around and wobbled uncontrollably in the air, banging into a wall and falling on the floor. "Oww…" she whispered. She was definitely going to have bruises tomorrow.
"Are those wings carbon fiber?" she heard Spider-Man ask Sam.
Sam ignored him, looking at the webs, then back at him. "Is this stuff coming out of you?"
Spider-Man then ignored Sam, continuing to talk about the wings, "That would explain the rigidity-flexibility ratio, which, gotta say, that's awesome, man."
"I don't know if you've been in a fight before but there's usually not this much talking." Ava had to suppress a laugh as she dashed out and approached Spider-Man.
"Alright, sorry, my bad," Spider-Man said, responding to Sam. He shot a few webs at her, but the close contact made it hard for him to actually hit her, and she swung a few punches at him, which he dodged. She flipped her leg hard at his chest, pushing him back. When he regained his balance, he shot a web at her ankle, knocking her off balance, and as she slid past him shot a web which attached her to the floor.
He swung down past Sam but Bucky jumped in the way, knocking him and Sam down to the lower level, where Ava heard several webs stick them to the floor. The unfortunate spot she was stuck in made it hard to see.
"Guys, look. I'd love to keep this up but I've only got one job here today and I gotta impress Mr. Stark, so, l'm really sorry."
As he was about to swing away, Redwing latched onto his wrist and pulled him out the window yelling. Ava worked at the web on her left arm, which fortunately was the only one. It was impressively sticky, but she finally got it off and went to follow Spider-Man through the hole in the window. Bucky and Sam could handle themselves.
Ava flew in circles over the airport, but couldn't find a good spot to jump in. Then she saw the team regrouping to make a run for the jet, so she flew over above them, but came to an abrupt stop when Vision used the mind stone to draw a line in the cement with a laser.
She dropped down to the ground with the rest of the team as Vision said, "Captain Rogers. I know you believe what you're doing is right. But for the collective good you must surrender now."
The rest of Iron Man's group landed across from them.
"What do we do, Cap?" Sam said quietly. This whole stand-off had not been part of the plan.
Steve just stared at Tony stony faced. "We fight."
Chaos ensued. Now Ava felt really inexperienced. She flew haphazardly around the fight scene, trying to help but not really sure how to. She got in a few punches on Spider-Man, as he tried to evade the cars Wanda was throwing at him, and tried to help Sam pin down Rhodey.
Since Spider-Man seemed to be the closest to her league though, and the most inexperienced, she focused her efforts on him. At the moment, he was in a stand-off with Cap.
"That thing does not obey the laws of physics at all!" she heard him say, presumably regarding Cap's shield.
"Look kid. There's a lot going on here that you don't understand." Cap said as Ava landed by him.
"Mr. Stark said you'd say that. Wow." He fired a web towards Steve, but Ava lept in front of him and grabbed it, pulling on it to throw Spider-Man off balance. He fell forwards a bit, but quickly recovered and shot two webs, one towards Ava's feet and one towards Cap's.
Spider-Man laughed as his webs successfully unbalanced the two of them and swung them into a storage container, leaving two dents. "He also said to go for your legs."
Steve ran to grab his shield, but Spider-Man shot webs at his arms. Ava was faster, though, and grabbed the shield, throwing it perfectly so that it sliced through the webs and ended up somewhat near Steve. She grinned. She'd always wanted to try that.
Spider-Man yelped as the sudden release of force caused him to fall over. Ava flew in and delivered a kick to the chest that knocked him over, but in the process he somehow managed to web her ankles together again, causing her to stumble on the landing. She groaned, and tried to free her legs, though it took a bit of effort on her part. As she did so, Spider-Man and Cap continued fighting.
Somehow, Cap managed to get Spider-Man under a gangway, and destabilized it enough so that he was stuck.
"You got heart, kid. Where're you from?"
Spider-Man grunted. "Queens."
Cap nodded. "Brooklyn." Then he took off.
Ava finally got the webs off, but paused when she heard Bucky over the comms. "We gotta go. That guy's probably in Siberia by now."
"We gotta draw out the flyers. I'll take Vision. You get to the jet," Steve replied.
"No," Sam interjected, "you get to the jet! Both of you! The rest of us aren't getting out of here."
Clint joined too. "As much as I hate to admit it, if we're gonna win this one, some of us might have to lose it."
Ava decided to chime in. "This isn't the real fight. You need to get to Siberia."
Steve hesitated, then agreed. "Alright Sam, what's the play?"
"We need a diversion, something big."
Scott piped in. "I got something kind of big, but I can't hold it very long. On my signal, run like hell. And if I tear myself in half . . . don't come back for me." Ummm…what? This guy sure had some strange sayings. Ava was skeptical.
Steve seemed to share the sentiment. "You sure about this, Scott?"
"I do it all the time. I mean once…in a lab. Then I passed out." If Scott wasn't concerned, maybe it was fine? She heard him giving himself a pep talk, though it probably wasn't supposed to be for anyone else's ears. "I'm the boss. I'm the boss. I'm the boss. I'm the boss. I'm the BOSS!"
Suddenly, instead of a tiny, nearly invisible, Ant-Man/Scott, he was like 60 feet tall and absolutely enormous!
"I guess that's the signal."
"O-kay then," Ava said, raising her eyebrows.
"Way to go, Tic-Tac!" Ava wasn't the only one who was surprised.
She only allowed herself a moment of shock, however, before she sprang into action, helping distract Iron Man and War Machine from Sam. She knew that both of them would be hesitant to fire at her, especially considering that she had very little armor or protection, so she threw them off her game.
When she saw Spider-Man trying to web up Scott's legs, almost like the big walkers in Empire Strikes Back, she changed course and tried to intercept that. She didn't get there in time, however, before Ant-Man was falling over, backwards, into a plane.
She tried to evade the sudden mass of an enormous, falling person, but it was kinda difficult. She saw Spider-Man get whacked and flung away. Eventually, Ant-Man landed and shrunk back down to normal size.
Ava landed by him. "Are you okay?" she asked, as he took off his mask.
He groaned. "Yeah, I'm fine. Go do your thing. Don't worry about me."
"Okay," she replied hesitantly, but took off again into the air. She was exhausted from all the flying. Which was probably why Spider-Man was able to latch a web onto her ankle as she pulled away from the airport, following the rest of the flying Avengers.
"Ahhhhhh!" Spider-Man yelped, as they gained a bit of height and he whipped around in the wind.
Ava turned her head at him, continuing her flying. "What were you even thinking?" she yelled back, kicking her leg to try and knock him off.
"I have no idea!" he yelled back. Ava sighed, and resolved to fly slightly lower to the ground than normal in case he fell off. It would be hard to recover from a fall like that.
Before she saw it, she heard a laser from Vision's mind stone blast over her head towards Sam. Sam tucked and rolled mid-air, avoiding the blast, but it only continued past him, glancing off the center of Rhodey's suit.
Ava's mouth fell open as he entered a free fall. She heard his panicked yells to Tony through the suit. "Tony, I'm flying dead stick!"
Ava sped through the air, trying to catch up to Rhodey. "Oh-my-gosh! Why are we going faster?" Spider-Man yelled.
She ignored his panicked shouts, concentrating on speed. C'mon, c'mon.
"Spider-guy!" she yelled once they were close, trying to get his attention. "You need to catch him!" Maybe her tag-along could be of some use.
He seemed to understand, and shot a few webs towards Rhodey's falling body. At least one latched on.
"GO!" he yelled.
Ava began to try to pull up as fast and hard as possible. She felt a sharp tug when the slack on the webs tightened, and suddenly she was supporting two people in addition to herself. Despite her best efforts, she found herself coming into more of a slow descent than ascent. Tony and Sam, coming down from a steep dive, saw her, and tried to change directions quickly to support her.
The rest happened in just a few seconds. She felt a soft impact from below her, and glanced down. Rhodey was on the ground. So she stopped pulling up, and made her way to the ground.
She felt Spider-Man touch down first, then she fell the rest of the way. She landed harder than she'd intended, but sat up and blinked a few times to make sure everyone was okay. Every muscle in her body ached, like it'd been pushed to its limit and then some.
"RHODES!" Tony yelled as he came to a stop a few feet away. His faceplate pulled back as he ran to Rhodey.
He pulled off Rhodey's faceplate, revealing him passed out, nose bleeding slightly. "FRIDAY, read vitals."
"Heartbeat detected. Emergency medical is on its way."
Tony closed his eyes with a sigh of relief, but Ava could still hear the anger in his heartbeat.
When Sam landed a few seconds later with a soft, "I'm sorry," Tony's anger pushed through and he shot Sam in the chest with a (non-lethal) blast from his gauntlet.
What had they done?