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Chaos ensues, leaving everyone too hectic to spare Celeste's struggling figure a glance. She pants heavily, desperately trying to move the countertop off of her legs. Smoke and debris billow around her, causing her to have to squint in order to even see anything, and panicked cries drown out everything else.
"Screw it," Celeste mutters, releasing the heavy granite and closing her eyes. In a matter of seconds, the intense pressure on her stomach is gone and she finds herself standing a little ways down the hallway from it. "Much better."
Pulling her long hair into a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes, the woman takes long strides towards the bridge area, pushing through frazzled personnel and focused agents.
Inside the bridge area is no better, with the agents panicking as they press buttons on their computer systems faster than she can comprehend.
"What caused that explosion?" Celeste demands, walking up to the nearest screen.
"My guess would be the jet next to us," the woman retorts, not glancing away from her work.
"Sorry I asked," she mutters with a roll of her eyes.
Closing them briefly, she wills all doubts away as she focuses. The hectic scrambling of all of the agents disappears as she opens her eyes again, replaced with near silence as a familiar voice barks orders.
Standing in the cargo area of the jet that took down one of the helicarrier's engines, she braces herself for what would surely be a third fight between her and the skilled archer. Unfortunately, she doesn't have too long to prepare because mere seconds later, several men clad in black enter the room.
Upon spotting her, they quickly grow defensive and point their advanced guns at her chest.
"Well, that's no way to treat a guest," Celeste says as she unclasps the fascine knife from her belt. It immediately grows several feet on both sides, looking more like a double-sided sword than a knife. "But luckily for you, my mother didn't raise me to be polite either."
Breathing deeply, she recalls some of the more frowned upon acts she had been taught during her time at the circus and lunges forward, her knife easily piercing the closest man's chest. She drops to the floor as the others fire, their bullets ricocheting around the room.
Grabbing an ankle, another falls and sends more to the floor with him. Celeste pushes herself back up, hurriedly pulling her bloody weapon out of the dead body and quickly taking out three more, both sides now dripping in blood.
"You wouldn't happen to have anything I can clean this up with, would you?" She questions, turning towards the last two that are steadying their guns for a clear shot. "I don't want this to stain. I quite like it."
"Don't take your anger out on my men," Clint barks, coming into view after setting the jet on autopilot. He gestures for the other two to go to the cockpit, casually stepping over the dead bodies as he levels his bow and arrow. "At least, not right now. I need them for a few more hours."
Celeste scoffs, wiping the blood on her knife off on one of the bodies' pant leg before straightening back up.
"What's the difference between now and a few hours?" She questions, putting a much distance between them as the small jet would allow.
"In a few hours, the Avengers will no longer be a threat." His aim moves past her and to the other side of the area, confusing her as she watches him release it. It hits a button, causing the ramp to open and revealing an endless stretch of sky and the ground hundreds of feet below. "Because none of you will be alive to stop us."
"I really don't think you've thought this plan through," Celeste counters, yelling to be heard over the wind whipping through the room.
"And why's that?"
"Because, technically speaking, you're an Avenger too. And I'm sure your new pal, Loki, won't take too kindly to you when you eventually break free of his little mind control game."
Clint glares, his resolve hardening after her remark. She ducks as he fires an explosive arrow, but the explosion still throws her backwards, sending her body over the edge of the ramp.
The oxygen is ripped from her lungs as she falls with her back facing the ground, fear paralyzing her as the jet rapidly grows further away. She doesn't bother to twist her body to look below, knowing the softest thing for miles is a thin layer of grass.
"Focus, damnit!"
Celeste struggles to clear her mind enough to telaport, too caught up with the fact that she's falling at an unsurvivable speed. And she can't help but to he distracted by a large blast coming from the helicarrier's engines, causing it to tilt even further. Logically, she knows everyone on board is too distracted to notice he falling figure, but she marvels at how odd it would be to see a mess of bright red and white limbs tumbling through the sky.
She gasps as something solid hits her back and wraps around the back of her legs, instinctively kicking at it.
"Hey, it's okay!" An unfamiliar voice shouts, causing her to grow still. "I got you!"
Celeste glances around, realizing her body was no longer falling and instead being held as she and her unknown savior hover above the ground. The man in question is wearing red goggles and bird-like wings strapped to his back, though she can't find the will to care enough about his weird costume to ask, too busy tightly latching her arms around his neck and taking deep, gulping breaths as he slowly flies to the ground.
Placing her on her feet, he keeps a hand on her elbow until she's steady enough to hold herself up. Celeste immediately doubles over, puking up her smoothies from earlier.
"You're lucky I happened to be in the neighborhood," the man remarks, discreetly taking a step back.
"I can handle myself just fine, thank you very much," she huffs, dismissing his confidence with a wave of her red-gloved hand.
"Is that why you were falling out of a jet?"
"I had it under control!"
"Sure you did," he laughs. "I'm Sam, by the way."
"Celeste," she answers, straightening up to shake his hand but jerks back as she remembers something. "That bitch!"
"What?" Sam asks, growing more bewildered by the second.
"He made me lose my knife!"
"You just nearly died, and that's what you're worried about? A knife?"
"It's a fas-"
"We got Clint," Steve's voice flows through the earpiece that somehow didn't disappear during Celeste's spontaneous skydiving session, preventing her from having a sarcastic comment towards Sam. "Where are you?"
"As much as I'd love to stay and prove how right I am, my presence is required elsewhere," she says to Sam, immediately closing her eyes.
"Do you-" She disappears before he can finish asking his question. "I guess she doesn't need a ride."
