Chapter 1
Sam couldn’t believe it, Captain America had asked for his help. Captain America had gone to Sam for refuge. Captain America was sitting at his kitchen table, with the Black Widow Natasha Romanoff. Captain America was…
Eating all of his food. Like, all of it, damn.
Little did Sam know in the moment that allowing the Captain to re-charge in his home would lead to Sam being dragged into the biggest battles in The World.
Currently, Sam is thinking back to that day, when Cap and Natasha Romanoff showed up at his door, and wishing he had slammed the door right in their perfect faces.
Cap finally leaned back up in the seat, the car roaring to life. Sam couldn’t help wondering, “Where the hell did Captain America learn to hotwire a car?”
The Captain laughed, so much his face turned red, “Man, I’m from Brooklyn.” He said as if that answered the question, it did.
The car, under the Captain’s control, sped through the half ruined city. Sam wasn’t quite sure where they were, but the army of robots meant he also didn’t care.
Ultron had started out as an Artificial Intelligence software program, that much Sam knew. What he didn’t quite understand is how that program took over one of Iron Man’s iconic suits and became a world-wide terrorist overnight. Those details, much like the name of the city, seemed much less important to Sam when compared to the army they were facing, so he didn’t ask.
“Captain,” Thor’s voice sounded over the communication device in Sam’s ear, “It seems we have problems additional to the robotic life forms,”
“What’s the situation, Sparky?” Iron Man asks from, Sam is sure, the sky above them.
“There’s a stone in one of these buildings.” Natasha Romanoff speeds past them on a motorbike as War Machine speaks on the coms.
“A stone?” Sam had honestly thought the Infinity Stones were a poorly thought out rumor.
There is a large boom from their left, HULK had slammed a rather large robot into the concrete, a dozen or so smaller robots surrounding him. Cap is already leaning out of the window, shooting a gun Sam didn’t know he had covering the HULK’s back as the giant green monster focuses a bit too much on stomping the bigger robot into the ground.
“The mind stone, I would guess, but that is not the problem I was referring to,” Thor, Sam thought, would really be much more useful out fighting the robots with the rest of their team, instead of inside whatever building he had found said stone in. “It seems someone has been exposed to the stones powers.”
“Human experiments,” Natasha Romanoff’s words are a breath of air, as if she hadn’t meant to say them aloud.
“Damnit!” “Language,”
“Thor, can you get them out?”
“There are two, a male and a female. The woman is unresponsive, I will attempt an extraction.” Thor explains.
War Machine offers, “Just get them above ground, Hawkeye and I will get them onto the jet from there. Hawkeye?” War Machine waits for and must receive visual conformation from Hawkeye. “Yeah, we got this.”
Sam, who had taken the wheel of the car, settles back into his seat when Cap returns through the window gun-less.
“That’s great,” Iron man starts, “but is no one else going to deal with the fact that Cap just said ‘language’?”
Cap sighs, twisting the steering wheel in a way that causes the vehicle to turn sideways but continue in the same direction, skidding to a stop where both Cap and Sam exit the car. “It just slipped out,” Cap defends.
“Whatever, grandpa.” Iron Man, “You and Falcon need to clear that building to your right so I can get into the reactor and rewrite the programs to these things.”
“You’re going to re-program the program? Isn’t that what started this mess to begin with?” Natasha Romanoff asks, except she knows the answer and that is very clear in her voice.
There is no answer as the whole team is preoccupied fighting off robots. This is so not the way that Sam had envisioned meeting the Avengers.
“We won,” Captain America says like it was a completely unexpected outcome. Which, maybe it was, but Cap was usually known for his optimism when faced with great challenges.
“Holy shit,” Back in the jet, War Machine’s voice is comes out in an excited rush, “I can’t believe we just did that.”
Sam had yet to be introduced to the rest of the team, besides Captain America and Natasha Romanoff. Cap had gotten the three of them to the fight without the help of Iron Man’s private planes. Still, Sam at least knew of most of the people around him, the Avengers were an iconic team after all.
Iron Man was the founder of the team, it was widely believed that he was some wealthy businessman but the facts were, of course, unknown. His suit was, as the name implied, completely made out of iron, painted in tones of red and gold, shined in a way that seemed impossible after the battle they’d just left.
Thor was a large man, long blond hair held back out of his face by an intricate headpiece that seemed to almost resemble a crown. His whole thing was lightening and thunder, storms controlled by the weapon he welded. It was classified as a hammer, Sam thought it looked like a mallet. Technicalities.
The HULK, when not large and green, took the form of a ‘regular-joe’ that the team referred to as “Doc”. He wore civilian clothes, short black hair in disarray after the fight. HULK, or Doc in his more human form, seemed perpetually tired.
Natasha Romanoff was a truly beautiful woman, though Sam would never say as much for fear of getting a bullet between his eyes. Intimidating as she was, she also seemed to have no super-human effects to her appearance, her clothing added nothing to her fighting ability or defense, except perhaps being stretchy enough to allow her agile body to move freely.
War Machine’s armor seemed much the same as Iron Man’s suit. Except that War Machine’s suit was bulkier and almost completely silver in color. Sam could probably think back to being told that War Machine’s armor was actually provided for him by Iron Man, but he couldn’t be sure.
Hawkeye was the strong and silent type. Bow and quiver of arrows slung over his back in the most natural way possible. His clothing, much like Natasha Romanoff’s, seemed to do nothing for him in battle, besides maybe hiding weapons in the multitude of pockets. His glasses, however, seemed very high tech, perhaps helping out in battle by working as a scope.
Captain America was in, of course, red white and blue. The suit seemed like a Halloween version of actual military garments. The top half of his face was covered by the blue helmet that he wore, which came down over the bridge of his nose and across his forehead and eyes, leaving his sharp jawline exposed. His shield, said to be practically indestructible was subject to the same patriotic theme, a large star printed in the middle.
The only person Sam had not hear of was the man piloting the plane. The man, just called Happy, was much like the HULK in his relatively normal appearance. Sam didn’t find out much about
Sam himself knew he was something of a sight at the moment, the suit, the wing pack, the goggles. He wasn’t sure how anyone could feel comfortable fighting in outfits that offered no kind of protection.
But anyways, on to the next problem, which would be the two unknown people currently on the jet. Thor had been successful in his attempt to get the two people out of the basement of an abandoned laboratory.
The man, Quicksilver, was in a blue suit, form fitting but lacking any armor. He was tall, sickly skinny like he hadn’t eaten in days, blonde hair was matted and stuck to his forehead with sweat. He was fast, according to War Machine, inhumanly fast. He sat with the unconscious woman, his sister, mostly in his lap. He shielded her face from the rest of the group with his own body, one arm slung across her as if to block as much of her small body as possible. From what Sam could see, she was a small redhead, her dress was dirty and torn. She seemed to be much worse off than her brother, if her unconscious state was anything to go off of.
The woman had been in the same state when Thor had discovered the pair, she had not woken once in the duration of the fight. Her brother claimed he did not know exactly when it had begun, as they were kept in separate rooms, able to speak but not to see each other.
“Ground in fifteen,” Happy called out to the crew.
The Avengers’ team took that as their cure to start gathering their items to carry off of the jet. Iron Man turns to the three newcomers who had never been inside of Avengers Compound, “I’ve had a room set up for little birdie here since Cap came home talking about him, you two though, We’ll have to figure something out for you. I’ll go with the assumption that you won’t be leaving her alone, right? Anyways, other than that, the rest of you are free to go. We’ll recharge and reconvene at the same time tomorrow. That means you too, Birdie, welcome to the team.”
Turns out ‘fifteen’ meant seconds and not minutes.
The room that Iron Man had set up for Sam in the compound was bigger than his own apartment, equipped with everything he could need and then some. It even had a kitchenette, though he was told to make himself at home in the communal Avengers kitchen on the second floor. Though he wanted to explore his new space a bit more, he was more concerned with recharging and getting some sleep in preparation for the coming days.
The discovery of the twins, who had been directly exposed to the mind stone for quite some time, had to mean something. Sam didn’t know what but he was sure it wasn’t good. What was good, for him at least, was his new alliance with the Avengers. The payout from this past mission alone will do wonders for his family.
With that thought, Sam lifts the wing pack off his back, placing it in a re-charge station that Iron Man had provided. His hands lift to his Falcon goggles and when he blinks his eyes open after removing them, he’s staring down at the Virtual Reality headset connected wirelessly to the motion detection suit he wore. The set up that connected him to The World, the game that just won him enough money to keep his childhood home. With any luck, Sam will be able to maintain his alliance with the other players in the Avengers’ group. More wins like the one today will ensure he is financially stable enough to keep both his home and his families boat, while keeping his sister and nephews fed.
Sam didn’t have time to worry about what challenge The World would send their way next time. He had to pick his nephews up from school and rush to work, in the real world.