Chapter 7
“What the Fuck?!!”
I slapped my hand over my mouth, unable to stop the words from falling out as I made eye contact with my grandparents.
Steve Rodgers, Captain Freakin America, had squeezed himself into our breakfast nook, and was sipping from one of our “nice” tea cups. He didn't have his costume on, thank god, but he was sitting right in the middle of my grandparents, beating them by a good 2 feet.
It was quite frankly the most bizarre thing I had seen in my entire life. It also meant that he knew who I was, and what I could do.
And I thought I had been sneaky.
“Language” Steve replied to my outburst, while my flushed grandma just crossed her arms and shook her head, my grandpa simultaneously letting out a soft chuckle. They seemed like old friends sitting there reminiscing, and after a few seconds of staring it hit me, While Captain America looked to be in his 30’s, he was probably a little more than 10 years older than them.
I turned my head and covered my mouth with my hand, letting out a giggle. My grandma probably had a crush on him, given she was a teenager when Captain America’s whole “show” thing happened. Most likely she was about my age.
I let out a loud snicker, No wonder gran was blushing!
Turning back to the three huddled in the corner, I realised that the first thing Captain America had seen was my face of utter shock, an expletive, and then me laughing in their faces. He probably thought I was nuts, and given the confused look on his face, I was probably right.
“Ummm” I mumbled out, my previous shock and humor gone. “Why are you here?”
I was honestly so good at this conversation thing.
“Jordan!” gran shouted taking he starry gaze from the hero, “Be polite! We have a guest!”
“Uh” I pointed right at the hero, “… that's Captain America though?”
My grandpa snorted, earning a death glare from my grandma.
I guestured my hands like I was showing off our condo, “And he is literally in our house. So I think you can understand why I am a little shocked.”
I turned to him and made direct eye contact, smirking, “Sorry about the swearing by the way, it must be too much for your old ears.”
My Grandpa slammed his hand on the table, tears of laughter in his eyes, while Cap had rubbed his hand over his ear subconsciously. My grandma-of course- looked furious.
“You’re like a young Tony” Cap mumbled under his breath
I took it as a compliment and grinned ear to ear. Cap seemed confused at my reaction, but my grandpa was quick to fill him in on my engineering skills,
“Because of Jordan’s…. Talents. She is quite good at making mechanical things-I honestly think she got it from her fath-”
I cut him off before he could finish. I had gotten my smarts and quite literally my powers from my father, but it wasn't something I really wanted to talk about with one of America’s greatest heroes.
“Speaking of my powers. I believe you are here because of what happened yesterday? With the police?”
My grandma paled- “The Police? Jordan, what did you not tell us? I swear to god if you go to jail-”
I waved my hands, “No! No! Nothing bad happened, I just helped out a little bit. Nothing illegal!” I gestured to Captain America, who had been mostly silent during this encounter. “Right?”
Steve brought his hand to his chin in thought, “well, technically vigilantism is not illegal in the United States….. however, property damage done can bring about nasty court fees”
I winced at the thought of going to court. My grandparents and I didn’t exactly have “court” money. We got nothing from my dad's passing because he never took out a life insurance policy-and both gran and grandpa were retired, mostly living on social security.
“I-I’m not getting Sued right?”
This brought a chuckle out of him,
“Of course not! And besides, no one noticed you. I wouldn’t have even been able to find you and confirm what I saw if it wasn’t from Tony’s technology. If it wasn’t for that police report on your-“
He faltered, looking over to my grandparents. It was pretty obvious what he was trying to dance around.
“The police report on my father? The one that says I was the main suspect?”
I crossed my arms and huffed, my grandpa did the same. “Utter bullshit” he murmured. For once my grandma didn’t admonish him for his language, as she nodded in agreement.
Dropping my crutches, I slowly made my way over to the table- Steve eyeing me as I did so. He was probably wondering if the police report was a lie, and if I had retaught myself to walk… which was actually semi-truthful. I had, in a way, relearned how to walk.
“Right…” Steve Said awkwardly, “on a different, but similar note, I want to learn more about the… effects that the incident had on you. Your grandparents told me a little, but they wanted to wait for you to get home and explain it yourself. They insisted on getting your consent to tell me.”
I couldn’t exactly say I was shocked to hear that. Despite still being fairly young, my grandparents always made sure to respect my boundaries. They would never share information about me if I’d asked them not to, even it was a hero.
“Well, I’m honestly not sure what to say” I confessed, “I thought explaining what I could do would just reveal my weakness?”
Steve nodded at that. “And that’s completely fair, it’s honestly the wise thing to do, but I can’t teach you if I don’t know what to fix”.
My jaw dropped as I stared at him.
“Teach…. YOU?!”
My gran lifted her hand over mine, “Jordan, you know how we said you couldn’t really start training until you were 16 without a mentor? Well, Steve here has offered to take you on as a mentee. He even says that you might get the chance to train with the other avengers if they agree.”
My grandpa rubbed my shoulder,
“It’s up to you sweetheart, but I know you are curious about being a hero. Let Steve teach you about the responsibilities and repercussions before you can’t turn back. Just because you got these superhero like abilities, doesn’t mean you have to use them. There’s no blame in not wanting to sacrifice your life and time for others, you’ve already lived through more trauma than most kids can handle”.
And he was right. I had never really thought about it, but just because I had powers, didn’t mean I had to use them for heroics. I could very well just use them to my advantage like I’d done so far.
But that wasn’t me. I was a superhero kid through and through, I’d realized it through my conversation with Katie, but if I didn’t take this opportunity- to learn with the OG super hero. I’d be doing myself a true disjustice. There was just one thing that was bothering me though,
“Why would you want me to train with you? This is obviously some sort of pre-avengers thing, and I’m literally just a kid. How could I possibly be of help to you guys when I can’t even….”
Steve interrupted me, sensing my train of thought, “I understand what you’re thinking, your parents explained to me what state the accident left you in- and I get how that could make you think we wouldn’t want you. But despite you not being as agile as someone like me or Natasha… er, I mean Black Widow, I saw what you can do. You took down more katari in seconds than any of those cops did.”
He looked me directly in the eye,
“I don’t care if you don’t have the ability to train and physically fight like the others. YOU are an asset, just like everyone else on my team. If there are more threats out there like what happened yesterday, it’s obvious my team would want someone like you on our side”.
I stood there in shock for a moment, still trying to cement the idea in my head that Captain America wanted someone like me on his team. Yeah, I knew what I could do was crazy, and I fully understood how much of a threat I’d be once I could use my powers freely- but at the moment, I could hardly take on the threats that they did.
Yeah, I knew I could do better than some cops , it wasn’t hard to, but the fact of the matter was that I’d still only be useful in one spot at a time. It was to much for me to use my abilities to walk AND take on threats.
I simply didn’t have that amount of control.
As I started to shake my head in response to him, I stopped.
Control.
Was that really the reason why I’d diminish myself? Was that really the reason I was about to say he was wrong?
No. It wasn’t
I was pitying myself.
For all my talk about having “no one needing to help me”, or that “just because I had a disability didn’t mean I needed their pity” I was doing the same damn thing as them. I was treating myself as less then, and making an assumption that I couldn’t be as good as the rest of the avengers.
It was bullshit.
They were fully grown people, most of them probably having 10 to 20 years more experience than me.
I would have my time.
Comparing my current self to them would be stupid. Who knows what mayhem I could create in 10 years? I was definitely joking about strapping metal to my body and flying around like Tony stark… but it’s honestly not to far fetched. Especially if I’d be training with the avengers themselves, in a most likely billion dollar facility bought buy stark himself!
“Walking” I said to him, finally responding.
He looked at me surprised, “what?”
I got up from the table to show him my movement without the crutches again, isolating the bits of metal sunken into my body like nerves and muscles.
“I’m telling you about the effects of the incident.” I paused, moving to the fridge to get a snack.
“I’m not sure if you got this from the police report, or if my grandparents told you- but the incident left me completely paralyzed from the waist down. My hands also had issues moving too.”
Expectedly, Steve gave me a look of wonder. “So how are you?”
Grabbing a bagel and putting it in the toaster, flipping down the lever without touching it- I turned to see him even more confused.
“This is also in that police report, but they found me with hundreds of tiny shards of metal in my body after the accident. That was the one reason why they couldn’t pin my dads murder on me, and is also the reason I can walk.”
Steve put his head in his hand, elbow on the table. “Metal? How is that why you could move things? I thought you were telepathic?”
While it was an easy mistake to make, my grandma raised her eyebrows in amusement and my grandpa snorted.
“Not quite” I smiled, “while bending metal spoons IS a telepathy thing, my powers rest more in the object then my mind”.
He widened his eyes in realization, “so the metal in your legs? You're using that to move?”
I nodded, “yup, that’s why it looks a little bit off if you are really focu-“
“So what else can you do? He interrupted. “It’s fascinating, I’d bet Banner would have a field day talking with you!”
I tensed at the name, remembering all the times that my dad had spent slandering him. Noticing this, my grandpa stepped in and explained.
“Her father was obsessed with banner, thought he could recreate his experiments better than him. It’s why…. The accident….”
Steve’s face dropped, but I waved my hand at it.
“It’s fine… I just… might need some time before I meet him. If I added him onto the whole shock of meeting you AND being offered to train with you, it’d be…. A lot.”
The toaster popped, bring everyone out of the heavy conversation. Using that moment, I grabbed some cream cheese for the bagel and sat down again.
“Besides” I said, face now full of bagel. “I haven’t told you specifically about what I can do so far.”
My grandma looked frustrated with my lack of manners, but Steve just went along with the conversation.
“So what can you tell me? Let’s just start with the basics and what you want to work on the most.”
I took a moment to answer as I was thinking it through, but mostly it was me trying to get over the fact that an avenger wanting to mentor me was actually happening.
Katie would have passed out. Despite working under Stark, Steve was her favorite. Similarly, Stark was MY favorite, but I would be mostly working with Steve.
“Well” I rubbed my chin in thought, “Mobility, for one. Like you saw the other day, I was sitting when I was using my powers. It’s hard for me to concentrate on moving when I am trying to handle so many intricate things at once”. I laughed, “I wish I had two consciences at once.”
Steve nodded, “understandable, but I don’t think that's necessary. It’s most likely just making it second nature. I’ve had over 20 years to learn how to use my body the way I can now, and based on the date of your accident, you’ve only had two at the most.”
That… made sense. I’d never thought of it that way.
“Besides that” he motioned to my crutches, “what else?”
A loaded question.
“In terms of what I can do now- sitting of course- I can shape and form metal at will. Nothing too intricate, but I can separate or combine metals easily enough. The max weight I can utilize is probably around 100lbs, but the caveat is that it can only be metals used from this earth… so far”
Steve raised his brows, “this earth? Why so specific?”
“Well….” I averted my eyes from my grandma, “I found that out after I tried using the weapons the aliens used yesterday. It felt just foreign enough that I new I couldn’t utilize it…. For now.”
I could feel the daggers that were my grandmas directed at me, but I chose to ignore them.
“It’s also not an exact sense, but if I purposely seek it out I can create a metal grid of sorts, kind of like a magnetic field, that helps me survey the area. If there’s any type of metal within a certain radius, about a mile or so- I can roughly Guess where things are. Not an exact science, but it gets more accurate the more I am familiar with that specific metal”.
This gave everyone in the room a shock, as it was a fairly new capability I had discovered a few weeks prior. I hadn’t yet told my grandparents about it yet, because I was still trying to figure out how exactly I could best utilize it.
Surprisingly, I had figured this out when I had left my phone in the next room over and I had somehow known exactly where it was.
“So can you feel my-“ steve started to say
“Your shield?” I questioned, feeling out for the smooth metal I felt before. “You didn’t bring it, probably didn’t want to be confrontational?”
My grandparents looked at him expectantly, and he smiled his 100 watt smile that he had been known for in his shows.
“You are correct.” He said, reaching out his hand to me in a handshake, “welcome to the team.”
If you had asked me what happened next, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. My mind blacked out as he explained the logistics to my grandparents.
I was going to be an avenger.