#avenmsn wc4

[amazingsensationalspectacul-blog]

Some Lessons Are Harder Than Others [ Writing Challenge 4 ]

That first night Peter went out into the city, it wasn't fear he felt, but the opposite. He was overconfident, arrogant and most of all angry. Angry at the man who'd killed his uncle, but more angry at himself. Angry that he had the power to stop that man, yet didn't act upon it. Now...now he was determined to fix that.

He knew what to look for. God only knows how many times he'd looked at that wanted poster, studied that poster like it was a piece of homework. Peter felt his fist clench as he heard a scream as he passed by an alleyway. Stopping he stared into it and a flash from the night Ben died flashed through his mind. The man who had a woman pressed against the wall was dressed almost exactly like the one who'd killed his uncle.

"Hey!" He called out to the man who in turn completely ignored him. Peter felt his anger rise again and he called out to the man again. "Hey!" There. Now he had his attention. "You like beating on women? You like beating on old men?" The man said something to him as he was walking towards him but Peter didn't even hear it. He just didn't care. All he wanted to know was if this man was his uncle's killer or not. 

"When was the last time you were in Queen's?" When the man responded with nothing Peter shoved him back, hard. "I asked you a question, man." His spider-sense flared up and before he knew it the man was drawing a gun. Luckily for Peter he had heightened agility and reflexes. Before the man even got a shot off Peter already had control of his wrist with a vice like grip. 

"That the gun? You gonna kill me too?" All rhetorical questions of course. Squeezing harder Peter could feel the tension on the man's wrist and he could feel how easy it would be for him to break it. He didn't of course, but it was good to know how much stronger he was than the man and that only made him even more overconfident. Once the gun was free from the man's grip Peter punched him square in the face. Then once more for good measure and a final time because his anger had him certain that this was the man he was looking for.

Grabbing him by his shirt Peter flung him against a wall. He wasn't done with him yet. No. He wanted to make the man suffer for what he'd done. For all the pain he'd cause both him and his Aunt. What he hadn't counted on however, was there being others beside the woman. His guess was that they were waiting around the corner in case any trouble happened. Being nothing but trouble they were now beating on Peter. Grabbing one by the wrist he tossed him at another and spun around to see three others, one even with a baseball bat. That's when it really sunk in. He was in over his head, and he needed to get out of there right then and there.

It took seconds for Peter to get into a full sprint and effortlessly vaulted over a nearby fence. It was a quick and smart move, put an object that was easy for him to get over but not for them between them. If only he'd been that smart about how he approached the situation. As he was running he took in his surroundings. There were easily twenty different ways he could have done this other than the 'kicking down the front door' approach he'd decided on. Sure he had super powers, but he was still a human, from then on Peter promised himself that'd he'd play it on the smarter side. Aunt May had already lost her husband, the last thing she needed was losing him too.

Finally, the roof. Wiping away a slight trickle of blood from his mouth he took a small breather, or at least he would have if one of the thugs hadn't burst through a nearby door. Why didn't they just give up? Were they that embarrassed that a sixteen year old kid had managed to beat up their 'leader'? Actually it made sense when he thought about it like that. The scum of New York never did seem to be that bright. On the run again Peter bounced off a wall and clung to the one across from it. Backhanding one of the thugs Peter jumped over to the ext roof only to have his legs grabbed by another. Damnit. After cracking the man's nose with his heel Peter pulled himself up onto the roof and looked over to see the man from the very beginning. Once again he felt his anger flare up. Without even thinking about it he jumped over to the next building.

As soon as he landed he felt his Spider-Sense tingle in the back of his head. Ducking under the terribly thrown punch, Peter retaliated with a blow the back of the man's leg, causing him to lose his balance and fall from the roof. Realizing this Peter threw himself after him and managed to catch him by the wrists. Something dawned on him at that moment. The police officer had informed him that he had a star tattoo on his left wrist. Crap. Why hadn't he remembered this earlier? Was he really that blinded by his anger?

Reaching down his pulled down the man's sleeve. No tattoo. This was...bad. He'd almost gotten himself killed over nothing. Grabbing the other man's wrist he pulled him up just enough so that he could get a grip on the edge of the building. Peter let out a sigh as he stood up. He'd been so certain that it'd been the man that he wasn't sure what to feel right then. Thinking back he could have easily ended this at the beginning when he had a grip on the man's gun hand. 'Smarter Parker. You've got to play this smarter.' He told himself as he started walking away from the thugs.

The roof gave away then, and off all the things that could have happened that night, this was among the last of the things he'd expected to happen. Groaning Peter tried to get up but his body didn't want to listen to him. He couldn't really blame it, it had just belly flopped onto a hard surface from the roof of a building.

"I know what you like! You hear me!? I've seen your face!"

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could he have not thought about that? God, what if he was walking along with his aunt and the guy recognized him? What if he attacked them right then and there? What if it was worse. What if he followed him home, waited for his Aunt to be alone then.... 

Shaking his head Peter began to pick himself up off the floor. For the first time that night fear started to sink in. He couldn't believe how stupid he'd been. The worst thing that could happen would be for something to happen to someone he loved because of his own personal quest for revenge. 

If he wanted to keep this up, which he most certainly did, he needed to find some way to protect his face...and thanks to a poster on the wall, Peter was pretty sure he'd just found his solution.

[hawkuponthewatchtower]

[Drabble] Caged | Writing Challenge 4

He’d hit the glass boots first and tumbled through head over heel in an ungraceful act. Bow somewhere under him in the fall, quiver painfully smashing into an already sensitive back as glass rained about him. His quiver jammed into the carpet and brought him to a halt, Barton crying out painfully as his limbs went deadweight. Some time between wheezing a breath and trying to roll onto his side, the Hawk blacked out. 

When he came to, the cacophony of a burning Manhattan hit his ears, followed closely by the acrid stench of smoke and the hint of burning ozone from plasma blasts and lightning strikes. Slowly, but surely, he rolled onto his side, ignoring how the glass bit into his arm and finally took a deep breath. Ribs bruised, nothing broken, back incredibly tender and scorching hot. Head was in one piece at least, but that was all he had going for him. Clint’s body was literally running on empty because like fuck if he knew if he’d slept however long he’d been out of action with Loki. Blacking out hardly constituted as sleep. He was starving, he knew that much; stomach gnawing as he dry heaved, the pain really setting in. 

Okay, maybe one of those ribs were broken. 

Clint took stock of everything he had around him and where the hell he was as instinct took over, hands going through motions as he checked out anywhere else that hurt to assess just how damaged he was. Rib, thankfully, not broken just very tender and the skin swollen over it so he'd likely bruised the bone. He stripped off his vest, groaning in relief as the weight of his quiver was taken off of his back, and reached around to find out why his back hurt like it did. 

Oh. Glass. That was kind of a bitch and a half. 

Clint's luck just kept getting better as he went to press a finger against his ear and activate his coms only to find those were dead too. Great. So he was stranded in a dilapidated building, glass stuck in his back, a bruise in the shape of a quiver forming on his spine, a more or less busted rib, and all of his equipment basically useless. It wasn't the worst situation he'd been in, but it was getting up there. Especially when he managed to catch the sounds of scrabbling against the building over everything else which indicated he wasn't going to be alone for much longer. 

Shit.

He left his bow and quiver in favour for his boot knife, painfully pushing upright on wobbling legs to seek some form of cover in the office space he'd landed in -- Clint was in no condition to fight, not like this, and he'd been up close and personal with the aliens enough as it were. His heart was pounding hard and fast, a tick that made his throat jump and his lungs feel all too small, adrenaline fast flushing his system as fight or flight response kicked up into overdrive. Fatigue was turned into energy, muscles that were burning for the exertion ignored in favour of being able to bolt further back into the office space, sharp eyes assaying the space for some measure of cover. He found it in the form of an executive desk, the closed off back allowing him to slide under it and wedge himself up into the darkest corner he could. Knife in one hand, the other tightly pressed over his mouth, grimy fingers clawing into his jaw to will his breathing to calm down. 

This is not the time to panic, Barton. 

Except it was, because he could hear their feet crunching against the broken glass, their guttural growls and clipped language all too easily sending the blood in his veins ice cold. At least he'd stood a chance on the roof before they'd blown it up, relished the fight even as he channeled his anger through every shot and every whip of his bow against their skulls, but now he was being hunted. An intergalactic game of cat and mouse, with a severely handicapped mouse facing off against what sounded like five big nasty alien cats. 

Great. 

His father would've laughed if he could've seen him then, cowering under a desk and using a filing cabinet as cover while he wished for the aliens to go away. Would've reminded him just how much of a piece of shit he was, how useless he was. He'd failed to fight of Loki, and now he was failing to save his own skin, and it just made the guilt and the anger and despair sink in even harder. A darker part of him that stirred under the fear and the anxiety longed for it -- to have his nightmares put to rest and his body no longer used, but he'd never be that lucky. 

He never would be. 

[drbanner-and-theotherguy-blog]

Writing Challenge 4: In Life, the Monsters Win

He told himself it would be like getting x-rays at the dentist's: take a seat, stare straight ahead, relax, don't move. A few orbits of the mechanical arm dousing you with radiation, and bam! All done.

But these weren't x-rays he was about to bathe in. He'd dedicated his entire scientific career to date to the far-flung reaches of the electromagnetic spectrum, where the width of the rays' wavelengths was condensed to the width of an atom's nucleus and the frequency exceeded 1020 Hertz - an electromagnetic ray that produced one of the brightest, fiercest, hottest phenomenon in the known universe, a phenomenon signaling the birth of a black hole. Scientists could agree, virtually unanimously, that gamma radiation was the most dangerous on the spectrum, and there was a long list of things most people would rather do than willingly (or even unwillingly) expose themselves to it.

To say he was nervous, then, would have been an understatement. Despite his tireless research, he wasn't convinced the procedure had been properly tested before an attempt on a human subject was feasible. Unfortunately, the alternative to prematurely strapping himself to a suped-up dentist chair and taking a gamma bath had been losing his funding, and damn if the good General Thunderbolt would have Bruce by the balls with his damn checkbook. The compromise was simple: Bruce would test it on himself. Ross would get his human test, Bruce wouldn't have to put an innocent intern in harm's way, and if everything went well, Bruce would even be stronger, healthier, and happier for it. The gains, as far as Bruce could tell, far outweighed the losses. Yet, as the gamma rig began to hum and whir, Bruce still couldn't hear anything over the pounding of blood in his ears. He could lie to everyone but himself: he was scared.

And so was she. As the rig raised him so he was seated upright, he could see her behind the Plexiglass window where she watched. And waited. The arm of the machine continued its arc, and just before it passed between himself and her, he flashed her a quick wink. Then the white arm of the machine replaced her face, followed by a green light -

He couldn't tell if he was imagining the tingling just beneath his skin, but he decided it was the nerves and ignored it. He was past the point of no return, anyway: strapped in, dosed up, with Betty and her father both awaiting the success of their hard work and military funding (respectfully). Not to mention that Bruce's career, his reputation, even his life depended on this working out. Every day since he'd been on his own he'd dedicated to proving himself a valuable human being. Most days that had involved getting out of bed and contributing to the economy by buying a coffee and a bagel at Starbucks, but this... If he felt he couldn't afford to fail at anything before this, he knew he couldn't now. Nor could he ignore the tingling any longer as it blossomed into a full-on burn...

Shit. Something was wrong. He had miscalculated, overshot - and he was cooking alive. He didn't need to see his vital signs to know his heart rate was skyrocketing; he could feel it, his chest throbbing as though it were about to burst open, and he was halfway to opening his mouth to call the project off when a searing bolt of fire shot from between his eyes, down his spine to every fiber of every muscle, and Jesus Christ, this was it. He was dying, and it was taking an eternity. He couldn't tell if he was screaming or thrashing or pissing himself - he couldn't hear anything but the pounding, couldn't feel anything but the electric burn - until it started to fade into...something else, but Bruce wasn't sure he cared as long as the burning stopped, and as he slipped under the last conscious thought he could conjure was the fear that Betty would have to live with his greatest failure for the rest of her life while he got to run away.

The first one he had when he came to was that he'd killed her, and he would have to live with that for the rest of his life. It didn't take him long after that to learn that fear was going to be his only companion for quite some time, though the worst wasn't that Ross would catch him or that he'd eventually die from gamma poisoning: it was that his father was right, that he had always been a monster.

[thefuturistknows]

FEAR IS HOW I FALL | Writing Challenge

Based on the Dubai sequence (part 1 - before Gulmira - and part 2 - after Gulmira) that should have never been removed from the movie (ugh), plus some details from the Iron Man novelization.

THERE'S SOMETHING INSIDE ME THAT PULLS BENEATH THE SURFACE, CONSUMING, CONFUSING. THIS LACK OF SELF-CONTROL I FEAR IS NEVER ENDING, CONTROLLING, I CAN'T SEEM TO FIND MYSELF AGAIN, MY WALLS ARE CLOSING IN WITHOUT A SENSE OF CONFIDENCE. AND I'M CONVINCED THERE'S JUST TOO MUCH PRESSURE TO TAKE, I'VE FELT THIS WAY BEFORE, SO INSECURE. CRAWLING IN MY SKIN, THESE WOUNDS THEY WILL NOT HEAL. FEAR IS HOW I FALL, CONFUSING IS WHAT'S REAL

All right, Tony told himself as he dropped the helmet. It’s over. It’s all done. I’m done for the day.

Time to get high. Higher than a red-and-gold robotic suit could possibly take him.

It was all coming back to him now. Slowly. First, he just cursed his violently trembling hands because they were making it really hard for him to take those wrecked gauntlets off. It was probably some remnant adrenaline, he guessed – he was bound to have some of that after this kind of stunt. He was lucky none of that had hit him while he was destroying the weapons in Gulmira. No, back there he’d just been all adrenaline and rage and Metallica playing in the background, all tied up in an unbelievably stoic package, contained by a metal skin. He hadn’t been scared, Stark fully realized it now. He hadn’t been scared as it happened. Not even when those Raptors chased him through the open sky, he hadn’t been scared.

The first gauntlet finally dropped, staining the rich, thick carpet covering the floor of Tony’s mansion in Dubai. He didn’t care, he could already spot wine stains on it, probably remnants of last night’s party. Or maybe those were drops of his blood. He didn’t know for sure, his vision was starting to get blurry. His whole body was starting to malfunction, it seemed – he couldn’t even take off the other gauntlet, his fingers kept twitching too much. He wasn’t hurting, though, at all. Which was curious, because at the same time, he felt hyperaware. He could taste the blood in his mouth, he could feel his sweaty hair sticking to the nape of his neck, he could even feel the dents on the Mark III armor, and the places where the metal had torn up and was ripping his skin open.

Good God, that would hurt. As soon as he started actually feeling things again, that would really, really hurt. So yes, time was in the essence there. Time to drink something really strong, and smoke something even stronger.

The previous violent twitching gave way to but a light trembling as the chemicals settled in his system, a kind of black, dead lethargy sweeping over him as the smoke from his cigarette crept across the room, fogging his already dazed eyes. There was one thing that had bothered him back there, Tony realized as he let off a puff of smoke at the same time as he opened his lips to drink from his glass of scotch. “The suit is designed to withstand these maneuvers, Sir,” JARVIS had said as he tried to chase away the Raptors.

“You aren’t.”

Tony could feel it now. His humanity and all of its fragilities; he couldn’t even sit up straight. Actually, he was pretty sure his body would liquefy if the wreckage of the suit wasn’t holding it all together. Gosh, he was too human. He had a job to do, and he was too human to do it. Too fragile. That’s what bit him back there, he’d been worried that he would push himself to his extremes and it still wouldn’t be enough.  But even that wasn’t fear. Just disgust and contempt and self-mockery – yeah, of course he would screw up badly enough to make the possibility of fixing things practically unattainable to human standards. He’d always been an epic proportions kind of guy.

Fear was what came after, when Pepper walked inside the room, astonishment written all over her face as she took in the sight of her half-dead boss reclining on a chair donning tatters of a robotic suit of armor. He acknowledged her presence with an unintelligible greeting. Oh, yes. Real life exists, he reminded himself. And that was what he feared. He feared how he looked like right now under the suit. He feared that he wouldn’t be strong enough to fix everything. He feared coming back home and having to rave about how fantastic the Dubai party had been in order to keep up with his act. He feared what Christine Everhart would say. He feared what the news channels would say. He feared how quickly JARVIS would be able to track his double-dealt weapons. He feared he wouldn’t recover fast enough. He feared none of this would ever go away.

He coughed out a puff of smoke and took one last sip of his drink before putting the glass aside, looking at Pepper with half-dead apathy. “Get me out of here,” he said, no other explanations, as if this whole situation was very natural. And it was, in a way. It kind of felt like that time when he woke up in Monte Carlo and Pepper had to come over to give him his new passport because he’d drunkenly gambled his original one away, lost it to a South American drug dealer. He’d woken up that morning in a foreign country, wearing someone else’s tattered bloody shirt, a stolen motorcycle parked under his name. This right now didn’t feel much different than that. He knew he’d saved people, but he still felt very much like Tony Stark.

And that was what scared him the most. He had pushed himself past the point it was sane, and he still felt like Tony Stark. 

[dr-betty-ross]

The First Time

“So, when did you fist know that the Hu- Dr. Bruce Banner was a hero?”

Betty turned in confusion to see the collection of scientist that gathered around her. She replied without thinking, the first thought coming to mind.

“Well, it could have been the night he helped me get through my mother’s death anniversary, but that’s not what you are looking for, now is it?” A collective head shake gave her, her answer.

She leaned back in her seat and thought about it for a minute. When was the first time she realized Bruce was a true hero? Hell, when was the first time she realized Hulk was the hero? It was more just a collective group of thoughts before numbness.

“Well, the first time I realized that Bruce Banner was the hero was when he left after the accident.” She paused, letting the familiar pain in her chest have its moment before shutting it back down. “I realized it then because, he gave up everything he knew and loved. He gave up home just to protect everyone. He took the..” She paused and shook her head, jesus, it felt selfish to her. “unselfish way out. It was then I realized how much of a true hero he was. Giving up everything, just to protect everyone.”

She tapped her fingers on her arm. Now to think when she first thought Hulk was a hero. She probably thought they thought it would be the Harlem incident. It wasn’t, not really.

“I first realized Hulk was a hero when he protected me from my own damn father and then protected Bruce by bringing me along.” She felt a fond smile cross her lips. She truly did treasure that time in the cave. When all that she believed was right there in front of her.

“He knew, don’t ask me how, but he knew Bruce shouldn’t be alone anymore. He protected me from harm even though the damage being done to him was high and then he thought about Bruce. Even in the heat of the moment, he knew that Bruce would need someone afterward. That was truly the first time Hulk stood out as a hero in my books.”

Betty felt the tears well in her eyes and stood up abruptly, heading towards the doors. “Sorry ladies and gentlemen, I have science to do. You’ll have to excuse me.” She headed down the halls, head ducked with a small smile on her face. They both were truly amazing people and she was so lucky to have met them and see the hero they were.