This is a Rewritten and Updated version of the 2012 film, The Avengers. It's been years, I know, but I've been busy catching up with life at work, home, family, and other things amongst the growing numbers. I can only say that I hope you can forgive for the long-ass wait and be pleased with this new sucker I've got posted here. So please, enjoy this chapter to the fullest, and pray for a next update that's just about as long as this one. Thanks, and remember to leave a review. I HAVE RETURNED!
xX 2oo4 Xx
"What is that...?"
"That looks interesting..."
"Was this hand drawn?"
"No way! I bet it was photoshop'd."
"This looks like something out of a sci-fi movie."
"What a geek!"
"No kidding. Probably watched way too many Transformer movies."
"This is so stupid, lets go."
I stood a bit away from the small group, listening with a tight chest as they mocked my work displayed on the bulletin board I set up on the table.
I had only left the table to get myself a small cup of fruit punch for my parched throat (nerves did that for you), so color me surprised when I saw people looking at my project. For a moment, I felt a rush of excitement and happiness when the group scrutinized and read my bullet points that I pinned next to my blue prints; the good feelings, however, were short-lived when they opened their mouths.
I had been preparing for this mock EXPO. I spent an entire month researching, sketching, and preparing a thesis argument for what good my project could benefit, if given the chance, for the future. But, like all the times before, and not for the time, I was left in disappointment.
The ridicule, the mocking, and the dismissal were things that I was frighteningly becoming accustomed to. It still stung when I had to go through the process every. Single. Time.
It didn't help that I was all alone, either. Dad had been rostered in taking the night shift of the mall as the security guard, completely missing out on this event. Though, I thought after blankly watching another group scoff at my blue prints, it was mostly likely better he hadn't shown up for this. I never wanted dad to see this, his own kid being once again beaten down by a bunch of bullies that took pleasure in making a young girl feel terrible than she already was.
After all, people of all ages felt threatened by a then-ten-year-old girl attending high school.
The hazing, the ostracizing, the harassment from my older peers from both the hallways and the ones standing before the classroom was a total nightmare that no little girl should ever experience in their first week.
School, what I used to believe, was a place where young minds grew older and wiser with the subjects that let students grasp the idea and let it expand from there on. After my experience, school was a place where it only encouraged minds to be kept in line and be silent, not for us to deviate and let us form new ideas, philosophies, discoveries, and so much more.
Ever since middle school, my brain and I always ended up being a thorn on people's sides. A teacher got after me for writing my name in cursive. A teacher complained to my father that my reading was far too advanced than my fellow students ( two, three years older than me). A teacher sent me to detention because my power point presentation was about white privileged people who treated people of color as second-class citizens. Another teacher failed me because my math work was unlike the one that was taught in class, despite the answers being the same.
Whatever I did, teachers sneered down at me with as much as condescension they conveyed behind their snarling mouths, and it literally made me sick to my stomach to show up at their classes. It was a horrifying aspect to know that these teachers held my grades like paper over the fire, dangling it with the threat to destroy me if I did not fall back to the steps the school system wanted me to.
At one point, I nearly dropped out of school. A young girl should never have to feel threatened when alone in the bathroom stalls where older girls spat venomous words right in your face, and they shouldn't have to feel lonely when sitting at the very corner of a cafeteria where some idiot would occasionally throw food at the back of your head.
Dad, dear old dad of mine, pushed me back. He was a tired man, working endlessly to put food on the table or paying the due rent of our crammed apartment home. Quitting school meant getting beaten, and getting beaten meant letting my dad's hard work to have me stay in school go down the drain. In order for me to get my grades up to earn me a scholarship to a great college, I had to do something about the teachers; and in order for the teachers to give me good grades, they either had to like me... or they had go.
Matilda, I had to say, was a great role model and inspiration.
Four months later, evidence on both paper and tape recorder, I had half the school staff, including the principal, fired by the school district for their abuse of authority, their verbal assault on mine and few other students, and for the lack of discipline when students were in need of intervention against bullies. It was very satisfying to see the last of those vultures go, all of them fighting fruitlessly against the hard evidence procured against them. I had made those teachers lose their jobs, and I simply waved goodbye as they were shoved out the door with a smile plastered on my face.
The issue with my fellow students harassing me was no longer an issue. A boy that had been slipping vulgar letters in my locker ended up being expelled from school for holding "stolen" panties in his own locker when all the girls had changed for gym period. A typical preppy girl, with equally air-headed followers, had always been nasty to me, so I photoshop'd a picture of her head onto the body of a stripper and sent it all over the school hallways; she ended up having to switch schools when her so-called friends threw her to the wolves to save themselves from social suicide.
It was an awful way to do things, but it was the only language people in the school seemed to know. With the new teachers being more open-minded, and the students learning to back the hell off if they wanted to keep their reputation and sanity in tact, my high school year went on unhindered.
But even with the change, some things remained the same...
This was just an extra-credit assignment left by the science teacher. He challenged his students to come up with an invention that could be the next big thing. Seeing as this was a Seniors-only kind of assignment, I wanted not only a good grade to put a good mark on my record, but a way to show what I really wanted to do in order to help people. Science and Engineering were two majors I wanted to pursue, and I was going to bring the both of them together with the project I spun up from my head.
Now, though, as I stood in front of the blue prints and stared at the designs of what I made, I had doubts.
"Jesus Christ," I muttered darkly before slamming the cup harshly on the table, uncaring if it spilled or not. I pulled at the pins holding the blue prints up. "What the hell were you thinking, Miles?"
Screw the wait for the judges, screw the extra-credits, and screw everyone else. I was going home.
"Now that," I heard someone say from behind me. "Is really something."
I paused at completely pulling the pin out of the board before slowly turning my head over my shoulder.
There, not far away from me in the suddenly empty section of the gym that held the mock EXPO, stood a man dressed in a neat black suit and tie. He looked to be around dad's age, his hair almost receding from the fore-front of his head, and his steel-blue eyes taking in every detail of the picture with genuine interest. For a moment, I stood there awkwardly between him and the blue prints, unsure of what to say or what to do next.
"Uh..." I inwardly winced from my response.
"Phil Coulson," the man introduced himself.
He outstretched his hand for a formal hand-shake. With some reluctance, my experience with people not being the best considering my history, we shook hands. I watched silently from the side when he moved closer to the board, taking it in more thoroughly now that I wasn't in his way, reading some of the paragraphs on the bullet points before pulling away.
"You're pretty well informed with how these engines, propellers, and isolation chambers work, Ms...?"
"Connor. Miles Connor."
"Ms. Connor. While some of the materials are accurate, I see a few mistakes here and there..." he said as he pointed to the area of errors I made on the drawings.
Usually, when someone wanted to tell me I was wrong, they made it feel like they were rubbing salt on an open wound. The gentleman, meanwhile, made it sound like a simple tip and suggestion for me to learn from.
The tight feeling that hung over me while eyeing the older man warily soon disappeared. For the first time in quite awhile, someone, outside my dad, finally treated me and my work with respect. It was like someone had opened the curtains of a dark, dusty room to let the light in my lonesome world. Trying not to melt into an excited chatterbox, now that I had someone looking over my work, I turned to my board to examine the few places he pointed out with consideration.
"I have very limited resources, Mr. Coulson. Public libraries can only hold some information regarding how vehicles and aircrafts of all kind work."
Unlike most, my family couldn't afford anything beside a crappy cellphone (to call dad for a pick-up). Computers and additional internet services were completely out of the question when my dad could barely keep up with the rent. The cellphones alone had almost got us kicked out when dad had been a few weeks behind. It didn't help that the landlord was an utter tool.
Having a computer of my own would have saved me a lot of hurt. I wouldn't have to have traveled two bus routes to the local library and double-check the accuracy of projects I had been assigned to. Getting anything wrong would result in tears before an entire class when a teacher rubbed it in my face after pointing out the flaws of my work by pulling up a more sophisticated website for their own computer. Like before, public libraries only had so much information on the internet while the rest was blocked due to possible abuse on the search engines.
"Yes," Coulson agreed as he looked back to the blue prints. "Which is interesting since your previous projects have given quite a few of our people some inspiration with your unique ideas."
The mention of my middle school years made me freeze. Coulson made it sound like that he had been watching my work for a few short years. I had been too caught up with my troubles dealing with the menace that was school that I didn't notice someone actually reading into my projects. The cautious feeling returned, more higher than ever, and the older man seemed to have sensed that.
Next thing I knew, a pristine white card was held openly in front of my face. My eyes squinted at the letters whilst reading them aloud.
"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division." I took the card from his fingers. "That's, um, that's a mouthful."
"We're working on it." there was a hint of humor in his voice, like this hadn't been the first time someone told him such.
"Okay," I slowly began as I took another glance at the card. "Considering this is some sort of organization I've never heard of, and the fact that you had been tracking my projects since middle school..."
I deliberately paused for the information to sink in, for both myself and Coulson to understand what I was interpreting from this conversation. If there was any need to clarify what was implied, Coulson had none.
"You want something from me."
There was no question. The statement was out, and it was open, and it was time for some answers from the older man.
He did not disappoint me.
"Your IQ is quite remarkable for someone that is a shy of becoming thirteen," he explained as he, out of his neat suit, pulled out a manilla folder. He opened it to skim through whatever papers he was reading. "From our estimation, you would have been done with high school by the time you had turned eleven, but due to the incompetence of the instructors..."
He didn't have to finish that sentence, my face was enough to tell him to skip past this dreadful part.
"While I know some that want to poke your brain, it's your projects that really interest for us, Ms. Connor."
I furrowed my brows at him. "Is... Is this for real?"
I may be young, but I could still remember reading stories about silver-tongued people. Rumpelstiltskin promising a poor girl luxury for the price of her firstborn child, Grima Wormtongue poisoning the King of Rohan until he fell into sickness, and almost his kingdom along with him, and Loki, God of Mischief and Lies... need I go on? The point of this inner monologue: never trust things that sound way too good to be true. For all I knew, this could be a scam and Coulson was kissing up to me to make me sign whatever he wanted to get me in some sort of debt.
"What you've created, both previous and the one right now, are something to considered very seriously." Coulson continued. "Your projects have the same theme: to help mankind move forward."
Slowly, I turned my head to look at the picture still pinned. The cons beginning to lessen and the pros gradually rising the more I thought and the more he talked. Was I truly accepting something because of a few pretty words, or was that my desperation for acknowledgment bubbling up to the surface?
"What's it called?"
I turned back to him, confused for a moment before realizing what he meant when he gestured to the blue prints.
The chalk outlined an image of an aircraft carrier with four lift fans, two stationed on each side to even out the bulk of the carrier and two different runways for small jets to land or take lift off from. The interior was still a work in progress, but a large main station was drawn in for the most part for communications that could reach out in a global scale for incoming emergency responses and whatnot.
"I call it... the Helicarrier."
Whether it had been a moment of weakness, or a pride that overshadowed my entire being, I found myself talking more and more with the mysterious Phil Coulson who appeared in my lonesome corner of the school gym.
xX 2o11 Xx
"This isn't the way to go, sir."
"Oh? And I believe you got a better idea?"
"Well, it's not actually good, but it's better than what you've got! S-sir!"
There was a nervous pause.
"... fine. This introduction is all yours."
"Sir?" came simultaneously confused voices.
"Your heard me, agent. If I so much as see a hint of this going downhill, I will hold you responsible to all the paperwork piling up in the lower offices for you to deal with."
"W-what?!"
...
Everything smelled... clean?
Eyes fluttered open and took a moment to adjust from the blurry vision. A tiled ceiling was what met his line of vision, and trailing his eyes further south, he saw a room.
A room that looked like something out a science-fiction horror film he had seen when he had been younger—Wait! His eyes blinked rapidly, shaking his head as if it would help him clear the vague and unhelpful thoughts in his head to settle on one fact.
'I'm... still alive...?'
The thought alone made a rush of chills run up and down his spine and prickle up beneath his skin. His head lifted from the too-soft pillow to get a better view of the rest of his body, or what might have remained. To his astonishment, his lower half, two legs, and all ten toes seemed to be perfectly functional and attached to his person.
He was breathing, and he was living... and his arms were tangled in wires that dug into his skin while his forefinger was encased by some bulky block. And the constant beeping noise from the machines that he had never seen before, the colorful lines rising and falling like childish drawings of mountains, where the in hell was he? The noise was getting a bit on his nerves that he was tempted to smash it, if only to shut it up, but it looked like expensive equipment that somebody paid a lot of bucks for...
Someone that could be currently holding him hostage.
A little alarmed, he looked around the room for any signs of threat. He immediately found what he was searching for when he had only looked to the right side of the somewhat small room to see a man looking at him from behind a closed door. He stilled, muscles tight and heavy, his eyes focused on the man dressed in a dark suit watching him with caution. He looked around his forties or early fifties, his dark blond hair becoming overtaken by the silver settling at the front of his hairline.
The man simply stared at him before turning his attention to the side, his mouth, while unheard, easily readable for him to understand.
The stranger was calling for a nurse.
'Not an enemy,' he thought with relief, his muscles sinking from the suspension of danger that potentially loomed ahead.
Not too long, a young woman appeared, her face friendly and pretty while it was framed by... blue hair? His mother, God rest her soul, had ingrained her lessons into him that followed him to this day, but he could not stop staring at the lady's obnoxious blue hair that almost hurt his eyes just by looking at it. What's more, he noticed when he was able to pull away his eyes from the blue, blue hair, was while she was looking him over, asking him questions of the state of his health, she didn't appear as a... proper nurse.
Since when did nurses dress in baggy slacks and shirts nearly too wide for them? Where was the uniform that they usually went in?
"Can you pull your shirt up, sir? I need to check your respiratory." she motioned him to roll up his shirt as she pulled up her stethoscope to her ears. "Now, deep breath..."
Inhale...
Doctors, he remembered, usually did this part. He knew from experience with multiple doctors that they were the ones that usually checked this part and a few others this nurse did, so watching the blue-haired woman was something to marvel, really (along with her hair).
"Very good. Breathe out."
… Exhale.
"And we're done!" she chirped.
"Um..." he stopped himself, unsure as how to proceed with his steadily growing questions.
A knock on the door alerted him and the nurse of a new party. Looking past the uniquely-haired woman, he caught the sight of—
Wide and frightened eyes staring straight at him while the end of a barrel barely brushed against his nose. He swallowed thickly, wondering with morbid humor if this was going to be something of a laugh if his boys ever heard how he got shot in the face by a doe-eyed, half-hysterical woman on the verge of pulling a trigger from that mean-looking rifle of hers.
A champagne bottle exploding in foam while a bright light flashed across his vision. His face hurt from all the grinning, and his sides ached a little from the bellowing laughter filtering out of his mouth. One hand holding a glass full of wine while the other was holding smaller, delicate fingers. Her laughter was the loudest he heard from everyone else, and it was music to his ears.
His hands, his damn huge hands that looked like they could crush a football with a simple squeeze, were utterly empty. He failed. This helpless feeling that he thought he had gotten rid of had returned with vengeance, and he could only succumb to the overwhelmingly heavy guilt that paraded his chest. Those small, pretty hands grabbed his own, and those sad, beautiful eyes of hers told him that he wasn't the only one who felt like they were sinking down. At least, she was going down with him.
Things were bad. If he were any other man, he would have jumped ship to save his own life... and go back to the person waiting for him. But he wasn't any other man. For everyone's sake, he had to do this. As he descended, all he could think about was her dark hair that fell in cascades and shined brightly when in sunlight. Her nature fierce and spoke that she would remain untamed, just like the beautiful creature she was upon their first meeting. Her eyes, her soulful eyes that burned into him since the moment he saw her... All he had to do was close his eyes, see her face, and say her name—
"Steve Rogers?"
He blinked out of his stupor, looking at the person standing at the doorway.
She looked... young.
And...
"Excuse me," the blue-haired nurse spoke up, nearly startling him from his scrutinizing of the lady dressed in a suit that reminded him of the swanky fellows that walked the streets of his city. Her clothes, however, had a feminine look to them, with it being tight around the waist, the wide slacks that nearly covered her high-heeled shoes, and the open collar that exposed her smooth neck. The door closed behind the dark suited lady, leaving Steve alone with her.
Strange machines, a nurse who acted more like a doctor (and had blue hair!), and a young woman who... who was strange by default (in his opinion, anyway).
"Where am I?" he finally asked after a long period of silence.
"You're in a hospital." she supplied easily, answering the question yet being vague all the same. She seated herself to a nearby chair, a place conveniently away from him and closer to the door if she felt threatened by him. "What do you remember, Captain?"
He eyed her a bit, still unsure as he took in her features. She waited patiently, not seeming to be in a hurry if this took awhile.
"I was crashing into the ocean."
She nodded. "You succeeded in taking out the Valkyrie and saved many lives in the process."
While her words spoke of victory, there was something about the way her tone went on about how his success had costed him something of dire consequences in his plan to bury the plane into open waters. He stared at her, waiting for her to say something regarding what happened in the aftermath when everything went lights out for him. The constant beeping of the machine beside his bed was beginning to grate on his nerves as the silence continued.
Thankfully, she caught onto Steve's conveying stare.
"When we found you..." she paused, trying to find appropriate words before continuing. "My superiors wanted to break this to you slowly. Gently."
Deep inside him, dread began to sprout like a little seedling that was growing as fast as Jack's magic beanstalk.
"I couldn't, in good conscious, allow that. You... you deserved better than that." she said, her face trying not to show the distress her voice held, but Steve could hear it anyway. "It's not right to beat around the bush."
The beanstalk grew higher and higher and higher...
"What happened?" he croaked.
She looked like she wanted to stop talking, get up, and run out of the room. Had she followed through with that, Steve would have ripped the needles and whatever stuff sticking to him, chased her down, and demanded answers.
"You crashed the Valkyrie in March 4th of 1945, just off the coast of Greenland... and you've been in animated suspension ever since."
He could feel the beanstalk climbing up his throat.
"What it means is... the, the ice, it freezes things to the point of death, but because of Dr. Erskine's serum, it merely... hibernated your body until we found you just, uh, a few weeks ago..." she was stammering over her words, looking like she was shrinking under his boring gaze.
He wanted to ask her something, but he was too afraid of what he was going to hear.
"Captain Rogers," her lips opened slightly to breathe with her mouth than her nose. "... It's been sixty-six years since you last saw this world—"
Without warning, the beanstalk came out in slimy chunks from his mouth and onto the white, shiny floor of the room.
In a daze, he felt tiny hands push him up from nearly falling to the floor into his own vomit, and it wasn't long when those hands disappeared to be replaced by multiple, bigger ones. Steve's eyes, blurry from the oddly-dressed people in pale blue slacks and wide shirts surrounding him, fell onto the only dark figure being removed from the strange room. Before he could think of projecting more vomit, someone thankfully pushed a bucket into his empty hands in time when he ducked his head down to spill more. He looked up in time to see those wide doe eyes disappear out the door and into the hall.