HERO
The price of freedom is high, and it's a price I'm willing to pay.
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Post by Steven Rogers on Apr 23, 2014 0:16:35 GMT -5
Steve nodded his approval as Kate worked diligently on getting all the systems up and running. “You take as much time as you need. We won’t get much of anything done without the emergency lines operating so I would rather they are working at one hundred percent.”
A few more minutes go by and Steve turns back to get the coffee. “I’ll be back in a second.” As he enters the other room and begins pouring the drinks, Steve can’t help but be amused at the current predicament. Not the whole city being dimension locked by Thanos the Mad Titan; that part was the most serious thing to happen in Steve’s life. But the fact that here he was, America’s Super Soldier, and the best help he could offer at this moment was fetching a cup of coffee for a computer hacker, the person who was actually useful right now.
Steve didn’t want to call it being prideful; this was just an unfamiliar territory for Captain America. Normally Steve was the go to guy for any crisis, but right now he had to just sit back and watch an expert work. And that’s exactly what he was going to do.
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Stepping back into the room, a coffee cup in each hand, Steve came up to Kate and handed her a cup filled with light brown wake up water. “Milk, sugar, caffeine. What else could you want?” he said in an obvious attempt at terrible small talk. Looking down at his own cup, which was much darker due to being actual java and not weakened and sweetened with additives, Steve asked a question. “Not that I’ll understand any of it, but I don’t suppose you’d mind walking me through some of what you’re doing here, would you?” His voice belayed genuine interest in learning a new skill. “In case something happens and you or Spider-Man aren’t available to do all the tech work, I’d like to be able to at least make a guess at what I can do to keep things running.”
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HERO
21
Years Old
Female
71 Posts
Hawkeye
Straight
Single
we are young volcanos
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Post by Kate Bishop on Apr 23, 2014 15:15:59 GMT -5
Oh when I get there it wont be far enough I'm a renegade its in my blood. If ever I get there it wont be fast enough, I'm a renegade I always was.
This might have been the most strange situation Kate had ever been in. Of course she had worked with Cap before, that wasn't new, in fact sometimes she hated it because she was always wondering if he hated her being around. If she was just another kid he thought would get in the way regardless of how much she had managed to prove herself. The constant doubt he brought with him wasn't good for her self confidence but at least this time she was more than too busy to worry about it.
He was being nicer than usual...but Kate wondered of that was because he actually needed her right now rather than tolerated. There was a massive difference. He reappeared with coffee which couldn't have come too soon... “Thanks....” Kate said with a bright smile before she paused for a moment to take a few sips of coffee and went back to work...well almost but he wanted to know what was going on...she was kinda surprised it took him that long.
Captain America was for the most part a massive control freak but she guessed that was the way he had always been. Maybe he had just got so used to being in charge? She remembered how he had rolled up and started giving out orders to the Young Avengers. The way Kate and Eli had looked at each other before looking at Cap and silently they had made the same choice; do exactly the opposite of what he told them to. Cap said put down the weapons...they'd picked them up again the second he had turned his back. He took away their costumes, hell she remembered exactly what he had said; 'You kids go home, don't you ever put on those costumes again or I'll tell your parents At the start nobody had known what to make of them. Seven kids that came together because the Avengers had fallen apart, who knew years down the line they would be where they were.
She looked far away for a moment, the price had been high; Nate, Vision...Cassie...Eli were gone. Two had run away and two were dead. It felt like a great success rate for her team, they were blows that Kate had taken maybe harder than she should have but...she was like Cap. Regardless of what happened and the memories that danced in her head she got on with the next job. She got on with making a choice between right and wrong and stuck to it.
His voice jolted her out of her little thought bubble, she smiled, an attempt to cover up the sadness for a second before she nodded towards the holographic displays. “I shut down all the crap Tony has running though this thing....and now I'm just hacking into Bishop Publishing. Then I'm going to link the systems, with that what I can do is use Avengers town to route the call volume and divide it, we send half the calls to Bishop Publishing and use there to route them back out to the correct services, the other half will be dealt with by Avengers Tower and they'll do the same. Basically we're a giant telephone exchange, also taking some of the pressure of the civilian system will make it easier to get up and running...and if we're routing all the calls...we'll be able to hear them all.”
Some people forgot she was a genius. Literally.
“We can then monitor the incoming calls for any trouble, that way we've got the system up and running, people are getting the help they need and we know what's going on down there. If things start to get hairy we'll know about it fast.”
Keep running, running. I'll keep running, I'll keep running again.
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HERO
The price of freedom is high, and it's a price I'm willing to pay.
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Post by Steven Rogers on Apr 26, 2014 0:30:00 GMT -5
Steve Rogers is a smart man. But due to his upbringing in the 1930’s and ‘man out of time’ status, when it comes to computers he can sometimes come off as lacking. This was one of those times. As Kate explained what she was doing he had to admit to himself that while he got what she was trying to do, he really didn’t know what he was seeing exactly as she did it. But he definitely understood the important parts, which were that they would now be able to filter every emergency call through the two systems.
Steve had an idea, but it would depend on him understanding how this was working proper. “So if I’m getting this right, we can filter the calls and get them to the right services, kind of like 911?” He hoped it could be simplified that much for the idea he had. “Because if so, are you able to filter what goes to emergency services and what goes to us? By that I mean setting it so things that would require multiple units or stations would route through to the Avengers so we can be there to assist.”
His plan, were is feasible, had a double purpose. The first was that heroes tended to find other modes of travel than surface streets so they could arrive at the scenes much quicker than your average emergency vehicle just because they didn’t have to worry about traffic. The other goal of his idea was to put a positive face on the crisis. Once panic at being trapped took hold, seeing Captain America, Spider-Man, Hawkeye, and any other hero they could find contributing to the effort had a great shot at putting a lot of minds at ease as possible.
It wasn’t much of a plan in the grand scheme, but this was where they needed to start. They wouldn’t be able to focus on getting out of here if the entire town was caving in around them.
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HERO
21
Years Old
Female
71 Posts
Hawkeye
Straight
Single
we are young volcanos
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Post by Kate Bishop on Apr 26, 2014 10:15:44 GMT -5
Oh when I get there it wont be far enough I'm a renegade its in my blood.If ever I get there it wont be fast enough, I'm a renegade I always was.
She nodded her head, “pretty much, what we're going is filtering out the 911 calls from all the ones made in the city, they will be able to pass though the tower so to speak and then from here connected through to the emergency call control room...” She couldn't find a better way to explain it...she paused for a moment taking a drink of coffee and then the word she was looking for hit her. “Think of us like a toll bridge.” That was the best way to think about it, what Cap said had her thinking though.
Taking another drink of coffee she let that thoughtful look take over her face, “We'll be able to hear all the calls going though to 911 word for work, all the traffic would come back and through here so we can intercept the audio...I know that's slightly Orwellian but it's more a side effect...” She didn't like the idea of everyone spying on phone calls, it made her hackles stand up a little but there was a fine line between keeping an eye on something and spying on everyone. A very fine line.
“We can set up whatever filters, so words that are alarm bells...Avenger names...certain phrases. If they pick them up in the 911 calls the computer can alert us and we know if something has happened say...Doom bots showing up in the middle of Brooklyn.” It would be good, it meant that they could take care of anything with some warning and frankly they needed that right now. The Avengers was understaffed, they were stretched thin and Kate was pulling out every trick she knew to try and make it just a little easier.
Being a Young Avenger had done her good, leading the Young Avengers even better. There was a certain amount of resourcefulness you needed to survive in a satellite team. You didn't have the Tower at your fingertips. You didn't have the big guns to call in and when the shit really hit the fan you had to survive on your own. Kate had leaned a lot more than she even realised but it was shining through. “It takes the pressure off though until we get more bodies...because now we're just distracted by damage control.” It wasn't the first time someone had used that to get the Avengers out of the way. “It means we can try and assemble everyone we can find to tackle the actual issue instead of just....throwing bandaids over the city and if someone needs our attention we will know. Whoever this is...that did this....is going to be counting on us being too busy trying to contain this to notice what is actually going on.”
“And there is always something else going on.”
Keep running, running. I'll keep running, I'll keep running again.
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HERO
The price of freedom is high, and it's a price I'm willing to pay.
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Post by Steven Rogers on May 1, 2014 0:58:09 GMT -5
As she spoke, Steve thought that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. The last thing he wanted was a Big Brother situation that would lead to the public losing trust in the Avengers; trust was going to be their most important tool in this entire crisis and they could not afford to break that. He’d be made to feel a little better about it at the mention of filters that could be set so that only calls with those wordings would appear. That was good; Captain America had spent years fighting against the kind of things that it was looking like the Avengers were about to start doing. But even with them only scanning for keywords, would people really be okay with the team having that kind of power? He was brought out of his imaginations by an extremely good point made by Kate. How had he not thought of it before? Thanos could’ve set this whole thing up just so he had heroes out of the way. But what would his endgame be if that were the case? He threw innocent people in here as well, and for all they knew he could’ve thrown the criminal element in as well. But was this really just to keep everyone busy? “What could Thanos be playing at?” Steve spoke after a few moments. “He’s got us all trapped in here, but for what? He can’t be just tossing us aside.”He pulled himself back from that train of thought with a shake of his head. “For now, we don’t have a choice but to go along with things. As much as I’d love to get everyone out of here safely, we need to make them safe first and foremost. We’ll get ourselves out of here all right, but not at the expense of the public.” This made Steve think of something he’d seen on the monitors when he was with Spider-Man; the video of the man disappearing at the edge of the barrier. They needed to do something about that immediately. “I have a big favor to ask of you once we can get these systems set up properly. I need us to send a message to the NYPD. Send them this footage of what happens when people approach the barrier and tell them we need to evacuate people along the edge and cordon off the streets closest to this barrier. We don’t know what happens, but we can’t risk people’s lives by having them so close to the barrier." |
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HERO
21
Years Old
Female
71 Posts
Hawkeye
Straight
Single
we are young volcanos
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Post by Kate Bishop on May 1, 2014 19:29:48 GMT -5
Oh when I get there it wont be far enough I'm a renegade its in my blood.If ever I get there it wont be fast enough, I'm a renegade I always was.
“You remember that night....” Kate asked as she hit buttons and started getting back to work. “That night we broke in to the mansion...that night with Kang” She was referring the night they had become the Young Avengers. Kate was wearing her bridesmaids dress all hitched up around Black Widows belt, Clint's bow in her hand and Mockingbirds mask on. She had stood in the center of the green space and stared down Lang The Conqueror. A man that the Avengers as a team struggled to take down and with one perfectly timed accurate shot she had stripped away every advantage and power he had. She remembered the look on the Young Avengers faces just as much as the Avengers. It had been a mixture of shock and awe and utter disbelief. Not that she had given then any time, she'd been thrown straight into a sword battle seconds later and almost died in it but still. That night was where all of this had started...this reminded her of it.
“Kang showed us the future that night. He showed us our family dead, the Avengers were dead, there was chaos, the city was crumbling right there...and you know why he did it. For the hell of it. To mess with us....that was what we thought but he was getting at Nate. He put Nate on the path he wanted. His end game to make Nate become him....” Kate sounded angry about it, she was and for good reason. She still blamed Kang for putting Nate onto the path he was on. She was angry at him for taking away the kid she had been friends with. It was sad when you fell out with people but when they became strangers was worse. Nate was a stranger now. “We're being manipulated.” Everything was a game. As aloof as that sounded it was true and all you could really do was play the cards you were given.
“Right now he's gonna be betting that we're do busy doing mass damage control to notice what it is he's actually doing.” This was the distraction. While they were busy doing one thing look behind you and he was putting something bigger into play. “If he wanted the City gone then he could have just destroyed it, but he hasn't he needs this city and everyone in it alive for something, so right now we have that on our side to buy us time.” Time before they weren't needed and he destroyed them all. “We can't get sidetracked by public order issues, if we let ourselves get caught up on it we'll miss his play and then we're all really in trouble.”
Nodding the agreed, they needed to make the city safe and if this was how they had to do it....it was how they had to do it. They didn't have any plays left in their books. This was it. Then there was the footage... “Okay, I'll make sure that's done.” Truth be told Captain America was the only one she took orders from, hell even Clint wouldn't order her around. He just exasperatedly asked her to do things. “In the interests of time...wanna sum up what's on it?” She didn't have time to watch it right now, she was working. Though the fact she could multi-task so well was a testament to her eidetic memory.
Keep running, running. I'll keep running, I'll keep running again.
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HERO
The price of freedom is high, and it's a price I'm willing to pay.
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Post by Steven Rogers on May 9, 2014 20:56:32 GMT -5
Steve examined the last bit of his coffee before take that one final sip. What happened to the man at the barrier wasn’t hard to watch or tough to describe because he really wasn’t sure what exactly happened, but for some reason he found himself unable to say it immediately. The words found him after a few more seconds. “Well one of our cameras throughout the city caught a man trying to escape our predicament. He approached the edge of the city and tentatively approached. He put a hand out and as soon as his hand touches whatever this barrier we’re dealing with is he completely vanishes. I don’t know if he got out or if he got thrown across space and time or what, but until we can get Intel on that, we need to start cordon off the areas near the barrier.”
As he spoke his next thoughts, Steve’s face hardened. Kate had made some comments that showed her inexperience and if he was going to rely on her as much as he was thinking, she’d need to know some things first. “Kate, there are two things you need to make yourself aware of if you’re going to be part of the solution. The first is that Kang and Thanos are nowhere near each other on the threat radar for us. Kang’s motives are simple; he wants to ensure his future, the one where he controls the Earth, happens no matter what. Thanos may have tried to do the same thing a time or two, but ultimately he wants to end the universe. So you have good observation in realizing that we need to focus our efforts on figuring out what he’s planning. But that is the second thing you need to commit to memory; we’re Avengers. We stop the bad guy from destroying the Earth, even the universe in some cases. But we never ignore the needs to the innocent to do so. Right now, police and fire rescue can barely get themselves organized so people will need to see faces or masks they can trust.
“Without Banner, Tony, Hank, or Reed there’s really not much we can do to test this barrier and figure our way out so we have to put as much of our attention as possible on protecting the people and trying to keep order. Do you get what I’m saying?” He liked where her head was at for the most part; she was focused and determined to stop Thanos and get out of this mess. But she wasn’t in WWII. She didn’t fight in France, deciding whether killing a Nazi officer was more important than saving a mother from being killed when she tried to shield her children. She wanted to save the forest, but sometimes that meant starting with saving a single tree.
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HERO
21
Years Old
Female
71 Posts
Hawkeye
Straight
Single
we are young volcanos
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Post by Kate Bishop on May 13, 2014 16:01:59 GMT -5
Oh when I get there it wont be far enough I'm a renegade its in my blood.If ever I get there it wont be fast enough, I'm a renegade I always was.
Kate turned, raised an eyebrow and looked at Cap perplexed for a moment before taking in a sharp intake of breath between her teeth. “Well that sounds....lovely.” She sounded so unamused and understated about the whole thing but that was just Kate's somewhat terrible deadpan sense of humour.
Truth was Cap was starting to annoy her, Kate wondered if she really actually wanted to be a full bonified Avenger if she was going to have to put up with this. He had missed her point entirely. Kate just sighed a little and took the lecture and busied herself with getting on and setting up the systems. Truth was she tuned half of it out as eyes snapped from one spot to another on the holographic displays. “What I meant was the fact that he could have killed us all....we're still alive, that's very un Thanos.” It worried her. There was a much bigger game afoot here and in truth Kate was wondering why they were still here at all. Thanos could snap the world in half with his thumbs, he could have killed them all by now so why the hell were they alive at all? “There's something else going on I will bet everything I own he's counting on us being too busy to actually deal with it.”
Of course Kate understood where he was coming from, she knew who her first priorities were and she did not need a lecture on it. Kate wasn't going to start an argument about it though, she just got her head down and got back to work. What she wanted to say was that she knew her job and that she knew what she was doing and frankly she found the whole conversation rather patronising but she was going to let it go.
Ha! Are we kidding of course she wasn't going to let it go. She's a Hawkeye.
“You know what, actually no. I'm not going to let it go. I know my job. My loyalties arn't to the Avengers it's to the people of this city , they come first and I will always fight for their best interests. It's more important to me than being an Avenger any day of the week.
All I'm saying is we can not loose the bigger picture or it's over.” She stopped herself there. Talking back to Captain America was her superpower and maybe she had just reminded him why they had managed to keep the Young Avengers at arms length. They were full of cheek. Kids these days.
There was a loud “Aha!” From Kate, a smile as the whole screen burst into life, numbers scrolling past, read outs here and there and everywhere. “Whatcha know. It worked!” She sounded almost surprised at herself before she straightened up and smirked, “not that there was ever a doubt...”
Keep running, running. I'll keep running, I'll keep running again.
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HERO
The price of freedom is high, and it's a price I'm willing to pay.
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Post by Steven Rogers on May 29, 2014 2:08:45 GMT -5
Steve opened his mouth to speak, but immediately closed it. Kate was a determined and stubborn person – much like ANOTHER purple archer – and if he pressed they would just continue going in circles. And she was right anyway; no matter what they couldn’t lose sight of the big picture here. And that was finding out what Thanos was up to and putting a stop to him.
Before he could begin the theories on what could be his endgame, the screens Kate was messing with sprang up. Kate had worked her magic and they now had complete control of the city’s emergency service systems. This was fantastic. A smile formed on Steve’s face, knowing that now they would be able to us it to direct and reroute calls and ensure that police, EMTs, and fire and rescue would now be able to receive the correct calls and panicked people could communicate with them and get the help they needed.
“Well done,” he added. “Not that I should be surprised. You’ve always managed to be impressive despite yourself.” Steve didn’t mean for that to sound like a barb, he was genuinely impressed with what she had done with the computers. He merely intended for it to come out as her being completely capable for the situation at hand and showing a strong work ethic even though she had Clint for a mentor. However Steve decided not to clarify, lest he start something far worse by mentioning the original Hawkeye.
“So now that we have the systems going through properly, is there a way to set it up to look for key words that are Avengers level incidents? That way we could get heroes dispatched to those locations to help in any way they can.”
Steve was anxious to get to work. It felt like he’d been out of the game for weeks, even though he hadn’t even been here an entire day yet. And standing around here watching someone be productive while the best he could manage was inquisitive sidekick was an unfamiliar enough territory that he was starting to feel useless.
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HERO
21
Years Old
Female
71 Posts
Hawkeye
Straight
Single
we are young volcanos
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Post by Kate Bishop on Jun 3, 2014 18:35:49 GMT -5
Oh when I get there it wont be far enough I'm a renegade its in my blood.If ever I get there it wont be fast enough, I'm a renegade I always was.
Kate was not sure if that was an insult or not...she was going for not mostly because he would have been well aware that Kate would open a can of whoop ass on him. Wasn't like it would be the first time. Kate hated that phrase though. Despite yourself. People always brought it up. Like it was a miracle that she was where she was because she had no powers, because she had no connection to the Avengers. She wasn't like Cassie or Eli...their parents had been Avengers and Supersoliders. She wasn't the long lost twins of Scarlet Witch, she wasn't anything. Yet here she was. Like she'd fought against a disadvantage...and she hadn't. Kate was possibly one of the most advantaged people in the city.
In a very unlike Kate move she let it go.
She was ahead of him, she gave him a small nod though, started working again as she explained what she was doing without looking up from the screen. “I'm on it, I'm gonna set up a bank of keywords and phrases, any of them get said on calls and we will be notified...” At least that way they would be able to deal with it before it became a disaster, it was a simple plan but it was something that was going to help them in the long run. Kate felt a little better considering they had something set up that meant they had some kind of early warning. They weren't flying blind any more and that was always a plus side. Right?
Standing upright she ran a hand through her hair, looked at the empty coffee and sighed a little. "I can't link it to either of our phones or cards, not yet...but I can stay and watch and wait if anything comes up...at least for a while and you can go do...what ever it is you're itching to get away and do."
Keep running, running. I'll keep running, I'll keep running again. |
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HERO
The price of freedom is high, and it's a price I'm willing to pay.
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Post by Steven Rogers on Jun 18, 2014 16:34:17 GMT -5
Steve considered Kate’s words carefully. He was glad to have the system up and running. Now the city’s calls could be differentiated from calls for Avengers to handle. It was unfortunate that they couldn’t get the calls directly transmitted to their cards, but no sense in being greedy at a time like this. Plus, Kate was offering to work as an operator to direct every hero to where they needed to be. It wasn’t a bad idea, but Steve had one problem with it.
“It’s a kind offer, Kate. But with your skill set, you’re far too valuable in the field for me to hamstring us by sticking you behind that computer full time. I’m sure we can find someone else to run that. If not another hero, maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. has had an agent or two find their way here that we can ‘borrow’ for the assignment.”
Ideas had already begun to formulate in the super soldier’s head for the best ways to go about responding to the calls. The first idea he had was to have the available heroes spread out throughout the city in sections. Certain boroughs would be assigned to certain heroes and all calls coming from those areas would be their responsibility, with heroes not busy with their section could be called on as backup for busier areas.
Another idea was to use the Tower as a deployment base, having heroes spend most of their time here and then when a situation arose the heroes based equipped that was here would head out, with all heroes taking periodic patrols through the city.
Steve always respected the opinions of qualified leaders, so he figured that the best thing he could do was get an outside opinion from another team leader. “So Kate, in your honest opinion what is the best course of action from here?”
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HERO
21
Years Old
Female
71 Posts
Hawkeye
Straight
Single
we are young volcanos
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Post by Kate Bishop on Jul 3, 2014 16:29:55 GMT -5
Oh when I get there it wont be far enough I'm a renegade its in my blood.If ever I get there it wont be fast enough, I'm a renegade I always was.
Wait. This was exactly the kinda thing Cap would have asked her to do. Stay behind, stay back, don't get involved and don't screw around. This time he wanted to threw her straight into the deep end, he's only every done that once before. The war. It was hard not to feel like an afterthought sometimes. They were only ever interested when they wanted something, when she had been in danger, when her life had been on the line none of them had been there...not even Clint. She'd been stranded alone in a strange city with nothing and there had been no one...part of her wondered if any of them had realised that she was gone?
She doubted it.
However now wasn't the time for her insecurities and issues, he was asking her opinion and for the first time in her life...one of the Avengers was talking to her like an equal rather than some child that should be sent home. Kate wouldn't lie it was nice. There was a sigh from her as she considered his question. What would she have done? If the Young Avengers were here she knew exactly what she would do, she would take it from every angle. She would have someone running damage control on the issue and calming the public, maintain a high profile so people know you are there. They wanted reassurance. In the mean time they had to balance that with finding out what the hell was going on. It was a tricky one.
"You need to go public as soon as possible. People need to see you out there, they need to know the Avengers are dealing with this or we will have panic and chaos on our hands. Yes we need to figure out how to stop this but we have a duty to public safety first and foremost so that needs to be dealt with asap. Then we need to find someone who is magic. Billy isn't around...otherwise I would have got him to try...After all, you now just as well as I do there is more than one plane, are we just physically cut off or are we...cut off cut off..." because no matter how bad it seemed right now there were worse options. They could be completely and utterly segregated from the rest of the world and if they were...no amount of magic that Billy or Doctor Strange had was going to save their asses.
"It would give us an idea of exactly how bad the bad is right now...knowing what we're up against is the best weapon we could have right now." Sure, she was everything Clint Barton raved about her being, hell...he'd even joked about her being able to lead the main Avengers roster one day...except he wasn't joking.
Keep running, running. I'll keep running, I'll keep running again. |
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