Archer’s Arrow [Codename: Hawkeye]

After being taken to the Vault and put in solitary, Hawkeye only had one single thought. ‘The Black Widow would pay.’Hawkeye ran a hand through her hair and plopped down on the cot in frustration. She figured out over the course of her imprisonment, that widow was barring agents from coming to her cell and mostly likely leaving her to rot as far as she could tell. Being a shield agent for several years had taught her that there were certain signs that things were going to go awry, and as she saw the cell lights above her start to flicker she could tell something big was going to start. Her gut turned out to be correct and the door to her cell opened. 

Tying up her hair and slipping her cowl over her head, Hawkeye stepped out to see all of the cells were open and the supervillains were beginning to break out. ‘Great.’ Thankfully she had an advantage over most of the prisoners in that she had the basic layout of the prison memorized. It took a while to get to the armory (crawling through air vents takes a bit longer than it looks in movies). As she lifted the grate, she saw a group of super-villains blowing in the entryway.

 ‘Well this just became needlessly complicated.’ Hawkeye thought. The villains walked inside, giving her an opportunity to get out of the vent. She slinked through the opening the villains made, spotting her quiver on one of the nearby shelves. While stringing the quiver onto her back, Hawkeye saw a villain going to grab some gear a few feet away from her. She quickly snuck over and punched the villain square in the jaw. “I don’t think so dirtbag.” Hawkeye then heard the sound of weapons charging around her. The rest of the supervillains who’d gotten their gear were now pointing their weapons at her. ‘Awesome.’ 

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Hawkeye’s attempt to incapacitate all the supervillains in the vault unsurprisingly wasn’t going very well.  Given that she was trying to conserve her arrows (as well as trying avoid getting any shield agents caught in the crossfire). The chase thankfully ended up moving to a more open (and unoccupied) part of the vault. Hawkeye climbed up onto one of the circular platforms nearby in order to get a higher vantage point. 

As she aimed at Whiplash, a crash from above her diverted her attention. ‘Oh no.’ Hawkeye thought, as the semi-obnoxious billionaire in super-armor known as Iron Man appeared. “Whiplash! Arrow Girl! Say goodnight!” “Hey, Wait! I’m-!” Hawkeye’s statement again went unheard as iron man fired repulsor beams at both her and Whiplash. 

Hawkeye narrowly avoided getting shot at, leaping and grabbing the edge of another platform, nearly falling in the process. ‘I can’t believe I nearly got killed by Tony Stark of all people!’ Hawkeye thought, lifting herself back up off the edge. If her hunch was correct, her sky cycle was probably being kept in the vehicle room somewhere down the corridor behind her. She looked down on the scene below to see Iron Man getting pummeled by several villains. 

Hawkeye reached up to grab an arrow before stopping. ‘Eh. He’ll live,’ She thought, opting instead to continue on towards the vehicles. ‘Besides he shot at me.’ After managing to find where the vehicles were stored, Hawkeye started up her sky cycle. As she started to take off, she noticed that the vault’s evacuation order had been given. As the sounds of the fighting became harder and harder to ignore, Hawkeye let out a sigh of frustration. ‘Figures.’ She then leapt off her sky cycle and ran back down the corridor. 

When she arrived back in the room, she saw that Iron Man was pinned down by the Crimson Dynamo and surrounded by various other villains. Hawkeye promptly shot two explosive arrows at Crimson Dynamo, triggering a massive explosion. When the smoke cleared, several of the villains were on the floor and Iron Man had slammed Crimson Dynamo into a wall. The super-armored man looked up at her, hopefully grateful under the mask. Hawkeye then turned around and headed quickly back to her sky cycle. 

Climbing on, she shot an arrow at the window, shattering it. Hawkeye revved up her sky cycle and flew out the window in apparently the nick of time. Almost right after a series of explosions went off. The vault’s self destruct sequence was probably activated in the chaos. She flew through the air, debris soaring overhead. Zooming away from the vault, Hawkeye sped through the mountains and blinding sunlight. 

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Hawkeye flew for what felt like hours before reaching a small town. After parking her sky cycle in an abandoned alleyway and picking the lock, Hawkeye slammed open the back door to a convenience store. Thankfully the person behind the counter was too busy staring slack-jawed at the TV to notice. She ducked between aisles, snatching assorted items and clothing as she went, and headed towards the break room. 

Heading into the break room, Hawkeye quickly stuffed the clothes and other things into a duffel bag she found under the break room table. Searching through her leg pouches before finding her switchblade. Standing in front of the break room mirror, Hawkeye’s hand shook slightly as she lifted up her ponytail. Feeling her eyes beginning to sting, she squeezed them shut, quickly cut through the hair-tie, and let the cut strands of her hair fall limp on the floor. 

Gazing numbly at her reflection, Hawkeye stuffed down her turbulent thoughts and got to work. Carrying the duffel bag over her shoulder, Hawkeye almost took a moment heading out of the break room to see what was on the tv that had the clerk so transfixed. Slipping through the back door and mounting her sky cycle, Hawkeye had one single thought, ‘The Black Widow would pay.’