Running Out » Quicksilver

chapter ten

10 x rescue

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Bruce's phone ringing sort of shocked me, and evidently shocked him as well.

"What're you making that face for?" Tony asked, face mask lifting. "It's not like the cell towers are down. Just the Tower."

"I'd answer it," I volunteered, sliding my hands down over the back of my dress before sighing quietly. As Bruce said "Hello?" I took a backwards step toward the door, about to pivot on my heel when Tony stopped me.

"Where do you think you're going, short stack?"

"What do you mean, you're trapped in the training room?" Bruce asked, turning somewhat to give me a confused look that matched Tony's question. He glanced at Tony; "Can you unlock the training room?"

"Not with the power like this," Tony disagreed.

I sighed, and spent the better part of thirty seconds staring at the ceiling. I had been about to head out, to just go try and find anyone I could, but now . . . Avengers stuck in a training room. "Apparently," I said, "I'm going to get people out of the training room. Except I'm going to need some assistance."

"I can't use tech to walk you through this," Tony pointed out.

I rolled my eyes. "Technology isn't the answer to everything, Stark. I just need to know how many floors I need to drop down."

"No, Natasha, he really can't- this isn't a joke. No, he doesn't know. He has a theory," Bruce was saying.

"What do you mean, 'drop down'?" Tony stared at me incredulously.

"I just need a number, Tony," I insisted. "Stop making this difficult. You have Avengers stuck in your training room, and unless you want a busted door, I'm your best bet at getting them out."

"Megan says she's coming," Bruce declared then. When I looked to him, he offered me a small, pleading smile, to which I merely nodded. "She'll be there soon. Don't do anything brash." Then he hung up, and looked to Tony. "What are you over complicating?"

Tony groaned, but didn't answer Bruce, or try to further argue with me. "Fourteen floors."

A devious smirk lilted my lips, and I offered Bruce a mock salute. "Time to play hero," I declared, before I flipped my whole body to intangible and literally fell through the floor.

It was the counting that was the hard part. If I wanted to do it right, I had to pause every fifteen feet or so to make sure I was counting correctly. Not that fourteen's a big number, or anything, but when you're free-falling through a building, everything kind of blurs together.

Still, I moved as fast as I could.

I got the feeling though, if Pietro was stuck in that training room, it probably wasn't fast enough.

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[ Third Person POV ]

Natasha hung up and immediately looked over at her teammates she had just been practicing with. "Apparently, Megan says she's coming," she relayed.

It surprised her when the speedster came to a complete halt. He had been running circles around the room ever since the black out occurred, his agitation obvious. When he stopped at mention of Megan, she knew.

Then again, he wasn't exactly that hard to read. Not when he was moving at a normal pace, anyway.

"She is coming to get us out?" he asked, bouncing up and down a little beside Bucky, bright eyes pale in the red light.