Broken in Half - Avengers

Chapter 12 - The Changing

Steve carried Elytra back to her room, careful not to let her head hit the wall. He nudged her door open with his foot, and placed her on the loft beside Mavi, who had been sleeping quite a lot lately, almost fourteen hours a day. Mavi had started to develop symptoms of what the Avengers had decided to call Frost Fever, and slept through most of the day. Elytra was the only one who could coax Mavi to eat anything, although she hardly ate herself.
Mavi immediately snuggled up next to Elytra as Steve put her on the mattress, pulling a blanket over them both. Tony peeked his head through the door, smirking, "Hey Cap, we may have found an antidote."
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"So, I already had samples of El's blood from the first time she was hospitalized, and since her blood levels are the same now, I used those. On the other hand, I had to take the smaller one's in her sleep," Steve gave Tony quite a threatening glare as they rode the elevator down to the labs, "Hey, she'll thank me later!"
As they entered the labs, Tony took a vial holding a violet liquid in it and brought it over to the main table. Its surface was covered with an assortment of brightly colored chemicals and powders, and two Petri dishes of blood sat in the middle. "So you just inject them with this," Steve gestured to the vial in his hands, "and they're cured?"
"Maybe. Thor told me about most of the medicine on Asgard used to treat similar illnesses, but he's never seen Frost Fever before." Tony put the Petri dish labeled Elytra in a glass box, and quickly put a drop of the antidote on it with a dropper. He frantically closed the lid, in case anything went wrong, which was a smart idea, considering the blood exploded, splattering against all four sides and the top. "Well," Tony sighed, "back to the drawing board."
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A deafening ringing echoed within Mavi's ears. Her eyes flew open, causing Elytra to stir beside her, groaning. "What's wrong, Mave?"
Her ears twitched. "Do you hear that?"
Elytra looked around, but only heard the familiar buzz of the camera in the corner. "Is it ringing?"
"Yeah."
Elytra sat up, alert and slightly panicked, jumping down from the loft. "We have five minutes. Come with me."
Mavi jumped down, landing on her feet beside El. The ringing became louder.
"Did the Three tell you anything about the changing?" El asked, as they stepped into the elevator. Mavi shook her head. "Is that what's happening?"
"Yeah. Sometimes it happens on its own, other times it's triggered. Mine was triggered, but it seems like yours isn't. We have three minutes, so I'm going to take you somewhere safe, okay?"
Mavi nodded, clinging onto her arm as the doors slid open, and Elytra escorted her over the mats, into the obsidian room. "Now, I'm not going to lie to you, it's going to hurt. A lot. But you're a tough girl, and you can do this, okay? All you need to do is remember one word, punch." Mavi winced as the ringing became so deafening she could barely hear her sister's voice. "Stand in the middle, okay? It'll be okay, Mave." Elytra backed into the corner of the room, as she ran into the center, sinking to her knees as ice spiraled up from the floor in a swirl of blue, and enveloped her in silence.
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Elytra held her breath as the egg formed around Mavi, making the concrete of the compound tremble. There were shouts and screams, but it was faint beside the ringing in her ears. Looking over at the ice, the frost too thick for her to make out individual shapes, El shrieked as a firm hand touched her shoulder. Thor.
He was in his Asgardian armor and cape, Mjolnir gripped tightly in one hand. "This is what the mortals called the shift?" Elytra nodded, glancing over one last time, before Thor escorted her out of the door, shutting the iron door behind them.
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"Mr. Stark would like to rewrap the bindings on your arms, and I believe he has a potential antidote." Thor pushed open the door to the lab, where Tony was mixing different liquids together, and Steve and Wanda were sitting in chairs on the other side of the table. "That was Frosty, I assume?" Tony didn't look up, walking over to a cabinet and taking bandage wraps out. Elytra sat in one of the chairs next to the assortment of chemicals, looking at the compound he was attempting to make. "Shouldn't that one be doubled?" She asked, pointing to the chemical that he hadn't balanced with the others. Tony stared at the blueprint for a second, before patting her on the back. "You may just have solved my problem, kid."
"I'm not a kid, Tony." She groaned, as he unwrapped the current bindings and threw them in a trash can. "You're fourteen, El." Elytra winced as he tapped the red burns that lined her scarred skin. He grabbed a white substance from the table, and before she could object, poured it on her arms.
She bit down on a scream. The pain more than tripled, the chemicals seeping through her skin and into her bloodstream. Tony quickly rewrapped her arms in gauze, and she iced them over, making it numb.
"That should stop the burns, we just have to figure out the rest." He tapped a pencil on the steel of the table, biting his lip. Elytra stood. "You find a cure, Mavi and everyone else gets it first, got it? You will not waste a drop on me until they are all cured. Every. Last. One."
And with that, she left.
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The kitchen was filled with the scent of chicken and fresh pasta. The counter was covered with flour, and pots cooked on the stovetop. "Something smells delicious, El." Wanda walked into the room, standing with an arm against the fridge. "Need any help?"
She nodded, gesturing to the oven. Wanda grabbed an oven mitt, opening the oven and taking out a pan of rainbow-colored cookies. "Macaroons." El said, pouring a creamy sauce into the large pot, which held a large amount of pasta. She stirred it with a spoon, and red waves of energy held plates as she scooped the meal onto each one, putting a piece of buttery chicken on the side. Wanda set them on the dining table, and Elytra brought a bowl full of icing over to the bar. "You put the icing on one, and put another cookie on top." She demonstrated, and Wanda copied her actions. They had iced almost all of the macaroons when Steve, Sam, Rhodie, and Natasha came out of the elevator. "Holy cow, how long did it take you to do this El?" Sam snatched a cookie off of a tray before the girl's could stop him. "About three hours." She shrugged, putting a plate of cookies on the edge of the bar so the others could take one. "Why?" Steve asked, popping the macaroon into his mouth.
She put a plate for herself on the table. "I was bored. What was I supposed to do?"
Word count: 1218
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