GH9

And here it is, the beginning of age of Ultron!

/./

Connor shifted back once she had successfully entered the HYDRA base, raising one hand to secure her earpiece and using the other to pull out her dad's old gun. She raised it as she let her eyes shine to improve her eyesight in the darkness of the building.

She could faintly hear her team approaching the building through the receiver.

"Shit!" Tony yelled and Connor could hear his metal suit bouncing off of something.

"Language," Connor scoffed, moving into the shadows as s group of soldiers ran past her with their guns out and ready to take on her team. "Jarvis, what's the view from upstairs?" Steve continued, ignoring the girl's scoff.

"The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield. Strucker's technology is well beyond any other HYDRA base we've taken," Jarvis informed the team before Thor voiced everyone else's thoughts.

"Loki's sceptre must be here! Strucker couldn't mount his defence without it!" Connor still hadn't realised that her team hadn't realised she was actually inside the building and past the defences.

"That long last is lasting a little long boys," Natasha snarked and Connor was sure she could hear a bone break.

"Yeah, think we lost the element of surprise," Clint quirked back and everyone could hear Tony's disbelief.

"Wait a second; is no one else going to deal with the fact that cap just said 'language'?"

Connor interrupted Steve's reply as she heard more HYDRA agents approaching her spot.

"Guys, you do realise I'm in the base, right?" She checked, but the exclamations of surprise did not provide the wolf with any comfort whatsoever.

"How?" Tony complained, not understanding why she could get in.

Connor shrugged as she replied, before she remembered they couldn't see it, "I dug a hole and crawled through." There was a moment of silence before Tony started muttering to himself.

"Oh, of course you did!"

Clint joined in, "Leave a dog alone for one minute-".

Connor reached up to her receiver and started taking it off.

"You're making too much noise," she moaned before crushing it with the heel of her boot. She still had her pulse tracker on which was connected to Tony's suit so he could still keep an eye on her vitals and would know if she was in danger.

She moved forward slowly, her glowing blue eyes causing the dark hallway to become easier for her to see. Having not been able to access any of the base blueprints before they came, Connor wasn't in the least bit sure where she was actually going. As she edged forward, her gun clutched in both hands, she closed her eyes for a second while she focused on her hearing.

A few corridors away she could hear muttering between what she could only guess as being two people, a male and a female, who didn't sound to be much older than her. She held her gun tighter, feeling her heart rate increase ever so slightly, the way it always did when she started a new trail. Almost like how a wolf hunts its prey. There was something rare and alluring about the voices, feeling a predatoriness urge revealing itself from inside of her chest.

Connor reached the door of the small room where she could hear the mutterings from, wrapping her hand tighter around the gun until her knuckles were now starting to turn white before she lifted her leg and slamming it into the door. The door flew open, and it was then Connor caught sight of the twins standing in the centre. It was certainly not what Connor had been expecting, and they clearly hadn't been expecting her either.

They spun around to face her, but the second their eyes met Connor's, something strange happened to them all. Connor lowered the gun, feeling a sudden wave over her that just made her think she had known these twins before. There was something so familiar about them but she knew she had never seen them in her life, or at least, not that she could remember.

There was something in the way they studied her so carefully, something in the way they held themselves but more importantly, she had realised where she knew them from. A small photograph album her father had made over the years, with photos of the people him and Connor's mother had saved when they were old aid helpers in countries at war, only a few years after she was born.

She didn't know who these twins were, but she was now connected to their story and she wasn't sure how. Her HYDRA parents had saved these twins when they were younger, and it was like she was reliving a memory.

Connor couldn't do anything to help her parents, but she could do something to help these twins from making the mistake the rest of her family had made when they paired up with the organisation that had almost made her lose everything she loved. Placing the gun in the holder around her thigh, she moved one hand closer towards the two.

They watched her carefully, not sure of what her intentions were. The twins knew who she was, and who she worked with. She wasn't to be trusted in their eyes, she was Tony Stark's lapdog. Literally.

There was a loud explosion, causing them all to turn their attention to the door as a few crumbles of dirt fell from the roof above them. Connor spun back round to face them, to make a plea to them but it was too late. She had lost her chance.

Before she could do anything, the boy had swiftly picked up his sister and took off, leaving a faint trail of blue and Connor standing alone in a dark room.

In the corner of her eye, a reflection of light caught her attention.

/./

Tony jumped to the side as a Leviathan charged past him, causing him to spin around to keep it in his eyesight. He wasn't expecting this.

Around him was his team. Natasha was sprawled out on her side, blood around her and Tony could see some puncture wounds on her catsuit - not taking in to account the shape of the slashes. Bruce was behind her, still hulked out and with multiple arrows sticking through his body; Tony took a deep breath as the green man slowly stopped moving. Clint was almost sitting upright, his own arrows stuck into his body and if Tony hadn't realised they were all dead, he would have thought the man was just praying or something. Along from the archer, Thor was sprawled out facing upwards. There was no rise of his chest either.

The last was the captain, lying beside his shield. Or, what was left of it. The classic vibranium shield was cracked into two pieces, something that should be physically impossible to have happened. The man himself was lying on his back, almost looking like he was sleeping.

Tony darted forward, pressing his fingers to the Captain's neck to search for a pulse. There was a moment's pause before Steve's hand lurched upwards and grabbed tightly on to Tony's wrist. The man watched on in panic as the soldier's voice came out in breaths.

"You...could...have...saved...us..." he choked out before his hand fell to the ground limp and his eyes faded into a dull shade of death.

Even though the man's lips did not move, Tony could hear him asking why he didn't do more to help them. He stared around at his friends, tears in his eyes as he took in the scene. He ran a hand through his hair as his eyes darted around them all.

And it was in that moment, he noticed there was no sign of Connor.

As he scanned the area one more, he coughed as a stabbing pain seared through his back, causing him to fall to his knees, blood pouring from his mouth.

She circled him, her eyes shining a dark red, like they had when she was kidnapped by HYDRA. Connor laughed as she lightly placed her claws against his neck. He could see in the fair light that her white shirt was coated in blood, and there was a look of hunger across her face as she smirked down at the dying man.

"There's a reason why the Tsilhqot'in people fear wolves," she spat before her hand sped towards his neck.

/./

Tony's eyes snapped open, and he let out a shaky breath as he noticed he was back with the sceptre and the Leviathan was still hanging behind him.

He took a breath before holding out his hand, calling his suit and eying up the sceptre. He swung his metal hand towards Loki's stick and picked it up, holding the powerful object tightly in his grasp.

As he grabbed it, the rest of his suit formed around his body. He noticed the teams positions before pressing the high frequency whistle on the side of his suit. Connor would hear it if she was listening out.

/../

They all got in to the jet, Natasha and Bruce stabilising Clint while they waited on Connor to appear. There was no reason as to why she shouldn't have appeared yet, the team not knowing about Connor's interaction with the enhanced twins that left her so shocked.

Clint had been the first to encounter the twins and the whole team had been informed there was enhanced on the field. It was the only HYDRA base that had even had any sign of enhanced individuals, so naturally they were slightly confused as to what had happened.

As the team was starting to get worried, Connor slunked on to the plane with her four paws treading carefully across the ground, like nails had been scattered and she was trying to avoid getting one in her paw.

The team didn't ask why she wasn't shifted back. It was an undisclosed rule: if Connor was shifted, don't talk about it. She brushed past Bruce and the scientist almost stubbled at the force she was storming to the small hidden compartment at the side of the jet.

The compartment was originally meant for storing items like medical kits or boxes, and wasn't big enough for a human to fit in. However, in her wolf state, Connor could fit in quite comfortably and if she angled her body correctly, she could tuck her head into her fur and not have to even face the rest of the team.

When she did this, the team knew she had been affected by something she had seen back at the compound. Natasha decided she would ask later, as they all knew Connor probably wouldn't open up to anyone else.

It was going to be a long plane ride.

/../

Clint was rushed into Dr Cho's care as soon as the plane landed, with Natasha following closely. Bruce headed for the lab with Thor holding the sceptre, while Tony and Steve stayed in the jet to finish parking it up.

As Connor paced out of the jet, Maria smiled at the wolf. "Afternoon Connor," the woman chirped but was shocked when the wolf let out a short snarl and flashed her eyes blue in annoyance before stalking away and presumably up to her floor to cool off.

/./

"The enhanced?" Steve asked Maria as he took of his gloves and headed towards the lifts.

Maria handed him a tablet before answering his question. "Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Twins." Steve watched the clip of the two teenagers screaming along with the rest of the civillians.

"Orphaned at ten when a shell collapsed their apartment building," she paused before looking over at the man, "they're the same age as Connor, a few months older."

Steve looked up at her again. "Their abilities?"

"He's got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis. Her thing is neural electric interfacing, telekinesis, mental manipulation." She explained before noticing the confused look on his face.

"He's fast and she's weird," she summed up.

Steve shook his head before thinking about how messed up Connor seemed after entering that facility. He had put pieces together and was just presuming she had an encounter with the twins while she was searching the facility for them.

"I think Connor ran into them, she's been off since we lost contact with her during the takedown," Steve explained, making sure Maria knew it wasn't just her Connor was ratty with. The woman nodded before he continued talking.

"Well, they're going to show up again."

"Agreed. File says they volunteered for Strucker's experiments, it's nuts."

Steve stepped into the lift, turning around and giving Maria a blank look as he pressed the buttons. "Right. What kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?"

Maria sighed. "We're not at war Captain."

"They are," he finished before the lift doors shut and Maria was left in silence, thinking about it.

/./

Connor sat on the top floor balcony, looking down into the main floor where she could see all the guests partying with the rest of her team. She picked up the small book she had dug out from her last remaining possessions that her parents had owned. She ran a light hand along the leather cover, thinking about how everything was starting to always link her back to HYDRA.

She looked over at her tattoo before opening the book, being greeted with a photo of her and her family. She hadn't looked at this book since they had died, and it was almost straight away she was seeing the HYDRA indications. Her father had the symbol on his jacket for crying out loud!

Flicking through the book quickly and trying to get the image out of her head, she found the photo she had been looking for. It was the Maximoff twins standing with her mother, and her mother was handing them what resembled a small business card. Connor didn't wait to assume it was one of the HYDRA recruiting cards she had seen when undercover there. It wasn't so obvious that it said HYDRA on it, but it described HYDRA in a light view and had a number with a fake company name.

Her parents had told the twins to go to HYDRA. It was her family's fault (of course, it wasn't Connor's family that made the twins volunteer - but Connor didn't know that, so she did what she did best: blame herself).

She watched as the party started to dim down, making sure she picked up her old metal cuffs that restricted her powers before moving to head downstairs. As she reached the lift, she snapped the bands on to her wrists, not wanting to be able to feel the emotions radiating from her friends. She wasn't in the mood for feeling anything after having to think about the things her family had done.

Once she walked in to the room, she was greeted by the whole team and a few friends all talking about Thor's hammer. Natasha nudged Clint slightly as Connor entered the room, her eyes briefly snapping on to the bands around Connor's wrists.

It was then Natasha knew something really severe was affecting the girl. She had never tried to block out everything after something had went wrong on a mission, sure she had curled up and ignored them on the jet - but this, this wasn't right.

Natasha excused herself, settling the conversation slightly as the team noticed Connor's metal cuffs.

As the teenager passed through the room and away into the kitchen area, Natasha followed her and shut the door of the kitchen so Connor couldn't avoid her.

The teenager knew the woman had followed her, so she spun around, her arms crossed. "What do you want Natasha?" She said with so much anger, Natasha almost felt intimidated by the shapeshifter.

"What happened Connor, you're eating yourself up here."

The teenage girl sighed before moving out of her defensive posture. "They're what I could have been if my family wasn't dead."

Natasha didn't say anything; there was nothing she could do apart from embrace the girl, letting her know she was not alone.

As the red head hugged the teenager, she could feel something in the atmosphere changing and she just knew that this was going to be a rough few weeks for the teenager and the team, but she just wasn't sure why.