Yuletide returns!
Title: Resistance
Fandom: Young Avengers
Rating: G
Thank you to sionnain for a fast and furious Ameri-picking beta!
Teddy and the Vision had kept the hacky sack in the air for almost ten minutes, despite Tommy's efforts at interference, before Eli finally snapped.
"What's the hold-up?" Eli bellowed into the girls' area of the lair, which was hidden behind a large, dusty curtain. "We've been ready forever!"
"Only because Vision and Teddy don't need costumes and Tommy's got superspeed!" Kate yelled back.
"But we've got Billy, and he never stops messing with that stupid cloak!"
Billy glanced over at Eli, amused, and flipped him off. "Seriously, Eli, I'm not messing, I'm draping. If you think Kate and Cassie are taking too long, just go in there and drag them out."
"I heard that!" Kate called, and sauntered out, slinging her bow over her shoulder. "Actually, it's Cassie. She's really upset about this registration crap. She doesn't want to go out tonight."
Eli sighed. "I thought we decided that since we were defying the Avengers before registration, we should just keep on going."
Kate raised her hands defensively. "It's not me that you need to persuade."
Eli walked over to the curtain hanging across a corner of Kate's father's empty warehouse. "Cassie? You decent?"
"Always!" she called back, but her voice was unsteady.
Pushing past the heavy drapery, Eli ducked into the girls' area, screwing up his face at the heavy artificial scent of floral deodorants hanging in the air. Cassie was sitting on a box, still in her civilian clothing, poking at a dust bunny with her toe.
"Hey, Cass. Kate said you didn't want to come out tonight?"
Cassie kept her gaze on the dust bunny. "Not just tonight. Every night, now that the Registration Act has gone live. I know we talked about it already, and everyone wants to go out and help people anyway, but tonight - tonight it's real. I don't want to go to jail."
The curtain flapped up in a blur of speed, which immediately resolved into Tommy, standing beside Eli, hands on hips.
"I've been to jail. It's not so bad. And there's no way we'd let you stay there, Cassie. We'd bust you out in no time, just like you guys did for me."
"Thanks a lot, Tommy," Eli muttered. "Really helpful."
"It's true! Anyway, the Registration Act passed last night, at midnight, and we were out until what, two? Three in the morning? And nobody came after us!"
"Yeah," Cassie muttered, "That's because they were all busy taking down Luke Cage."
Eli frowned. "He's an Avenger. He's a big name. I don't think they're going to be after us like that."
Tommy dashed over and pulled back the dividing curtain. "So, what, we've got to do this vote again? Let's do it!"
"Hey," Kate said, seeing that Cassie still hadn't got changed, "We could just go out in our civvies."
"No way!" Eli and Tommy chorused, then looked a little startled to have agreed with each other.
"They're right," Cassie sighed. "There's no point being heroes if you're not inspiring people. Anyway, my suit's the only thing I can wear if I want to use my powers and not end up totally naked."
Eli clapped a hand over Tommy's mouth before he got a word out, but Cassie hadn't noticed.
"And not wearing a costume didn't help Luke Cage, did it?" Cassie looked gloomier than ever.
By now, the hacky sack game had ended and all the Young Avengers had gravitated to the conversation.
"There's still just as many people who need our help," Billy offered.
"In fact, my calculations indicate that the Registration Act is serving as a drain on superhero resources. Our assistance is required even more than on a usual night." Vision spoke with his usual sincerity, and that, more than anything, seemed to convince Cassie.
"Okay, okay. We should keep helping people, at least until things settle down again and the superheroes are back doing what they should be doing."
The others cheered and Cassie pulled the curtain across the room again, to quickly change from her jeans and jacket to her costume and tie her long hair back.
"Hey," Teddy whispered to Billy, "You don't think she's right, do you? I mean, I don't want to be locked up."
"No way!" Billy put an arm around Teddy, "Even if they did, I'd have you out of there in a second. I mean, have you ever heard of a magic-proof prison?"
"Well, no. And what are we supposed to do anyway? Line up and register? List age, powers, religion, orientation? That's always worked out well, historically."
"Wow! Beware the geek side, young Jedi!" Billy laughed, but Eli glared at them.
"He's right, Wiccan. Do you want to throw heroes in jail for trying to help people? It's not registration, it's a draft. If I wanted to work for the government, I'd join the damn army - I wouldn't sign up for the secret police. Now stop fiddling with your damn cape and conjure up something so that we can fly out of here."
The Young Avengers stood on the glowing blue disk that Wiccan had created, floating just under rooftop level. At that height, they would be unlikely to be spotted by anyone who happened to look, or someone staring down from the SHIELD aircraft that occasionally flew overhead. They remained alert, scanning the unusually quiet city and waiting for a report from Vision, who had remained at their base, the better to interface with 911 and the police computers. Before anything came in, though, Patriot grabbed Wiccan's arm and pointed at a tall building about two blocks away.
"Get us down there - the alley on the north side of that building. I heard someone scream, but it was cut off." He shook his head slightly, still not used to his enhanced hearing.
Wiccan immediately lifted the disk and swooped from the roof, startling more than a few late-night pedestrians as they flew straight down into the alleyway. Patriot was right - two men were there, holding down a woman who was kicking at them with her stocking feet, having lost her high heels as they pulled her into the alley. The taller of the men was kneeling on the woman's arm and going through her handbag; the shorter had covered her mouth and was trying to pull a gold chain from her neck.
Without hesitation, Hulkling leapt from the floating disk and ran at full speed towards the muggers, cannoning into the one with the handbag and knocking him away from his victim. Kate neatly shot a blunt, weighted arrow at the other man's shoulder, knocking him backwards, and Speed threw him onto the ground while he was off balance. Patriot raced into the fight to help Hulkling, who was having problems holding on to his mugger. The man was freaking out at Hulkling's appearance and trying to escape, his desperate animal panic lending him extra strength. Meanwhile, Stature leaned forward and gently picked up the injured woman, moving her safely away from the brawl.
"Oh my god!" the woman shrieked, "Oh my god, put me down!"
"There you go." Stature carefully put her at the mouth of the alley way, where the woman wasn't too scared to put on her shoes and take her handbag from Speed before she staggered away into the night.
The combined efforts of Patriot and Hulkling had taken down the larger mugger by now, and both of the attackers lay moaning on the ground.
"Hey, Wiccan! Cast a binding spell," Hulkling called, but Kate rolled her eyes at him.
"Don't waste his energy. I've got plastic ties here that will hold them until they reach the station."
She tossed a pair of ties to Patriot, who deftly fastened them around the two men's wrists, as Speed patted them down and deprived them of two knives, an empty canister of pepper spray, a couple of credit cards in various names and a battered gun. Kate dropped the weapons in a garbage bag, and Hulkling and Patriot shoved the two men up onto Wiccan's flight disk.
"Hey, Vision!" Kate called into her phone as she jumped back onto the disk, "Where's the nearest police station?"
"One block to the west."
"Thanks! Got that, Wiccan?"
Wiccan and Kate sped off on the disk, muggers at their feet, to dump them on the steps of the station. Patriot had worked on their first day out that the criminals they caught weren't going to be prosecuted for the crime they were committing when the Young Avengers stopped them - they had no authority to make a legal arrest, and there was no way they could give evidence in court. He also discovered that law-abiding citizens didn't tend to be beating up helpless victims. Many of the people they caught had outstanding warrants, and even those who didn't tended to have long records that encouraged the superhero-friendly police to pay attention to their behaviour.
"Hey, Stature! Did that feel good?" Patriot called up, and Stature shrunk back to her regular size.
"Yes! I mean, she was freaked out when we showed up, but I don't think those guys were planning on letting her go. She really needed us."
The flying disk zoomed back around the corner, now carrying only Kate and Wiccan. Hulkling took a flying leap onto the disk, making it wobble alarmingly, and bear-hugged Wiccan. The three other team members followed Hulkling up, though more decorously.
"Vision's got something for us," Kate said, "Armed robbery in progress. Let's go!"
Wiccan took them up in the air again, and followed Kate's rapid-fire directions towards the robbery. Halfway there, though, Patriot called out to Wiccan.
"Stop! There's another mugging just down there!"
"What about the robbery?" Wiccan shouted back, over the rush of the wind.
"Just drop me down, then. Speed, you with me? We'll catch up with the rest of you in a minute."
Wiccan dropped the disk at a stomach-churning rate, and Speed leapt off. Patriot followed, yelling back, "Kate! You're in charge!"
"Like I wasn't anyway!" Kate bellowed back, but they were already moving again, speeding ahead of the sound of approaching sirens.
At the convenience store, the large plate-glass window let the Young Avengers see two teenage boys beating up the clerk with a baseball bat and an iron bar, while a third, who had a gun, grabbed bills from the register with his free hand and stuffed them in his pocket. There was only one door into the shop, which was, unfortunately, hung with little bells to alert the clerk when it opened. Wiccan hesitated in their flight, but Hulkling overcame the problem in the quickest possible way - he ran straight in, heading for the guy with the gun.
"IwanthimtodropitIwanthimtodropit," Wiccan chanted under his breath, and, indeed, as the young thug swung his gun up to aim at Hulkling, it flew right out of his hand and across the store. Hulkling vaulted the counter and landed on the teenager with the audible crack of ribs being broken.
Kate and Stature followed Hulkling in, now that the gun was out of play. Kate used one of her battle staves to flip the iron bar out of one boy's hand, while Stature swiftly increased her height until her head was touching the ceiling, then simply kicked the baseball bat wielder into the counter with one sweep of her enormous foot. Kate dodged her opponent's angry punch and whacked him in the stomach, knocking him down.
"Hey!" Wiccan yelled from the door, "Cops are coming! And I stopped concentrating on my disk and it vanished!"
"Wiccan!" Kate was not surprised, but she was still annoyed.
"Seriously, the cops are here! We've got to go!"
Stature shrunk back to her regular size and they dashed out of the damaged shop as fast as they could, leaving both the dazed robbers and clerk behind for the cops to find. Wiccan hadn't been kidding - police cars were pulling up right in front of the store, and the Young Avengers had to flee at top speed to avoid immediate arrest. The alley they ran into ended in a chain link fence, but Stature simply changed height and stepped over the barrier, lifting Kate after her; and Hulkling bounded upwards, his leathery wings giving him enough power to carry Wiccan with him. They dashed out of the alleyway on the other side, but slowed down as they realised that no-one was pursuing them.
"I think we -" Hulkling started to say, before Kate's phone beeped. She flipped it open and Patriot's voice rang out from the speaker, with an edge of panic set the listeners' hearts racing.
"Guys, we gotta get out of here! SHIELD just caught me breaking up a mugging, and now they're all over me! This is serious! These guys are not messing around!"
"Patriot! Where are you? Where's Speed?" Kate shouted into the phone, but her words were drowned by a massive explosion coming from an office building less than a block away. Glass and paper rained down into the street, and black helicopters swooped above the thick greenish smoke.
Speed screeched to a halt right in front of them. "Patriot led them away from me! With my record they'll lock me up for life!"
"Selfish much?" Kate snapped, but Stature put a restraining hand on her arm.
"He's right, Kate. Speed, get out of here. Tell Vision what's happened, if he doesn't know, and get him out of the warehouse before they come for him."
Speed nodded once, punched Wiccan on the arm in farewell, and vanished into the night.
"IwantustoflyIwantustofly." Now that he had a moment to focus, Wiccan's spell was a familiar one, and very fast. The flat disk shimmered and appeared in front of them.
"I'm warning Vision!" Kate stabbed the quickdial on her phone, but it emitted a flat beep instead. "Damn! Either they've got Vision or they're blocking me!"
"Get up here!" Wiccan and Stature grabbed Kate's arms and hauled her up onto Wiccan's platform. The moment she had her balance, they sped away under the cover of the billowing smoke, Hulkling following behind under his own steam. Wiccan was concentrating so hard that he was sweating, crouched low and very still. The two girls didn't want to disturb him, and instead scanned their surroundings for danger - the helicopters still sounded very close - so it was a total surprise to Kate and Stature when all of a sudden Wiccan was missing and they were falling ten stories.
"Billy!" Hulkling yelled and swooped into a rapid dive to catch his boyfriend.
"Oh, thanks!" Kate yelled after him, but just as she looked for something to grab, Stature had her feet on the ground and was neatly catching Kate in one giant hand.
"Gotcha!" Stature grinned, then her expression changed to slack shock. "Oh! They - "
She shrunk as she collapsed, fortunately close enough to the road that the SHIELD troops who were now swarming across the pavement could catch both her and Kate, locking heavy metal power-dampening gauntlets onto their arms and oversized collars around their necks. Hulkling stood over Wiccan's still form and was still fighting, even with a dozen tranquilliser darts protruding from his skin, but a dozen more darts had him on the ground.
"The kid in the cloak's the dangerous one!" a commander shouted, shoving past the captured girls. "Get those power suppressors on him right now! And cover his mouth!"
Wiccan was already beginning to stir, and Kate could see darts sticking out of his chest. They must have been flying right towards one of the choppers, and SHIELD had the sense and the background information to take out the most versatile team member first. She frowned - had Iron Man given them that intelligence? Kate started to feel her way around the inside of the electronic gauntlets, but before she could even smile at a soldier and tell him that restraints weren't really necessary for a non-powered girl like her, they were all hastily herded into a huge personnel carrier.
"It's a prison transport!" Kate was disgusted, but immediately distracted when she saw who was already inside. "Patriot! Are you okay?"
"No talking!" a guard bellowed. "Sit down on the benches and do not attempt to use your powers! The feedback loop may damage your brain!"
Kate dropped down on the bench directly across from Patriot and, although he looked terribly battered and bruised, his mask half off, he gave her a quick smile. Next to Kate, however, Stature was in tears.
"My mom will be so upset!" she sobbed, "Like I'm taking after my dad, in the exact way she doesn't want. I don't want to be a criminal. I just want to help people."
"Quiet!" The guard shouted one last time, and slammed the back of the carrier closed.
Patriot leaned forward, but almost fell off his seat as the truck lurched into motion. "Wiccan! Can you get us out of here?"
Only Wiccan's eyes were visible above the power suppressing mask he was wearing, and his head was held rigid, but his downcast gaze was a clear indication that he could do no such thing.
"We shouldn't have gone out, we shouldn't have broken the law," Stature's tears continued.
"Stature, it's a bad law! They're locking up the good people, the ones that do the right thing." Patriot seemed determined not to back down, even now.
"Maybe you're wrong!" she snapped back, an angry flush in her cheeks. "Just because we have powers or gifts doesn't mean we can go around deciding which laws to obey. Isn't that the whole point of living in a democracy? What we fight for?"
"Well, the people we were fighting had already given up on fairness." Kate couldn't let Stature crumble now. "They were using their ever-so-special powers of anarchy and violence and we were opposing them."
"Yeah," Patriot muttered, "You'd have a good idea about who's more equal than everyone else."
"You're attacking my family now?"
"You want me to wait until just one of us gets bail and it's you?"
Kate stood up from her seat, not quite sure of how she was going to kill Patriot with her arms behind her back, but determined nonetheless. Before she could reach him, though, the truck gave a huge lurch and sent them all tumbling into each other.
"What's going on?" Hulkling called, keeping his balance better than the others and trying to find a window so that he had a chance to see what was happening.
"Kid! Sit down!" The guard was still yelling, but now he had his helmet off, and he certainly didn't look like a SHIELD goon underneath it.
"You're not with SHIELD! You're the Falcon! You helped Luke Cage!" Hulkling shouted, and it was the great wave of relief, more than the order, that made him sit back down.
The Falcon strode over to Wiccan and ripped the mask from his face with a horrible crunching noise and a great flurry of sparks.
"Wiccan, I need you to rustle up one of your teleportation spells and I need it now, understand?"
"Y-yes, sir." Wiccan's reply was still dazed, but he closed his eyes in concentration and began to chant. "IwanttobesomewhereelseIwanttobesomewhereelse," trying to concentrate on moving everyone to safety. The Falcon yelled at him again, but Wiccan's focus was too strong to be disrupted, and he felt them move somewhere else in a single motion, as simple as breathing.
Staggering out of the damaged truck into the harsh lights of an underground complex, the Young Avengers stared around in shock. Captain America was there, climbing down from the cabin of the truck, plus Daredevil, Cable, Hercules and Cloak and at least a dozen others scattered around the computer banks, monitoring the situation in the city.
"Congratulations, children." Cable said, his voice dry. "You've just joined the resistance."
Patriot's delighted shout did not, quite, drown out Stature's horrified gasp.
Fandom: Young Avengers
Rating: G
Thank you to sionnain for a fast and furious Ameri-picking beta!
Teddy and the Vision had kept the hacky sack in the air for almost ten minutes, despite Tommy's efforts at interference, before Eli finally snapped.
"What's the hold-up?" Eli bellowed into the girls' area of the lair, which was hidden behind a large, dusty curtain. "We've been ready forever!"
"Only because Vision and Teddy don't need costumes and Tommy's got superspeed!" Kate yelled back.
"But we've got Billy, and he never stops messing with that stupid cloak!"
Billy glanced over at Eli, amused, and flipped him off. "Seriously, Eli, I'm not messing, I'm draping. If you think Kate and Cassie are taking too long, just go in there and drag them out."
"I heard that!" Kate called, and sauntered out, slinging her bow over her shoulder. "Actually, it's Cassie. She's really upset about this registration crap. She doesn't want to go out tonight."
Eli sighed. "I thought we decided that since we were defying the Avengers before registration, we should just keep on going."
Kate raised her hands defensively. "It's not me that you need to persuade."
Eli walked over to the curtain hanging across a corner of Kate's father's empty warehouse. "Cassie? You decent?"
"Always!" she called back, but her voice was unsteady.
Pushing past the heavy drapery, Eli ducked into the girls' area, screwing up his face at the heavy artificial scent of floral deodorants hanging in the air. Cassie was sitting on a box, still in her civilian clothing, poking at a dust bunny with her toe.
"Hey, Cass. Kate said you didn't want to come out tonight?"
Cassie kept her gaze on the dust bunny. "Not just tonight. Every night, now that the Registration Act has gone live. I know we talked about it already, and everyone wants to go out and help people anyway, but tonight - tonight it's real. I don't want to go to jail."
The curtain flapped up in a blur of speed, which immediately resolved into Tommy, standing beside Eli, hands on hips.
"I've been to jail. It's not so bad. And there's no way we'd let you stay there, Cassie. We'd bust you out in no time, just like you guys did for me."
"Thanks a lot, Tommy," Eli muttered. "Really helpful."
"It's true! Anyway, the Registration Act passed last night, at midnight, and we were out until what, two? Three in the morning? And nobody came after us!"
"Yeah," Cassie muttered, "That's because they were all busy taking down Luke Cage."
Eli frowned. "He's an Avenger. He's a big name. I don't think they're going to be after us like that."
Tommy dashed over and pulled back the dividing curtain. "So, what, we've got to do this vote again? Let's do it!"
"Hey," Kate said, seeing that Cassie still hadn't got changed, "We could just go out in our civvies."
"No way!" Eli and Tommy chorused, then looked a little startled to have agreed with each other.
"They're right," Cassie sighed. "There's no point being heroes if you're not inspiring people. Anyway, my suit's the only thing I can wear if I want to use my powers and not end up totally naked."
Eli clapped a hand over Tommy's mouth before he got a word out, but Cassie hadn't noticed.
"And not wearing a costume didn't help Luke Cage, did it?" Cassie looked gloomier than ever.
By now, the hacky sack game had ended and all the Young Avengers had gravitated to the conversation.
"There's still just as many people who need our help," Billy offered.
"In fact, my calculations indicate that the Registration Act is serving as a drain on superhero resources. Our assistance is required even more than on a usual night." Vision spoke with his usual sincerity, and that, more than anything, seemed to convince Cassie.
"Okay, okay. We should keep helping people, at least until things settle down again and the superheroes are back doing what they should be doing."
The others cheered and Cassie pulled the curtain across the room again, to quickly change from her jeans and jacket to her costume and tie her long hair back.
"Hey," Teddy whispered to Billy, "You don't think she's right, do you? I mean, I don't want to be locked up."
"No way!" Billy put an arm around Teddy, "Even if they did, I'd have you out of there in a second. I mean, have you ever heard of a magic-proof prison?"
"Well, no. And what are we supposed to do anyway? Line up and register? List age, powers, religion, orientation? That's always worked out well, historically."
"Wow! Beware the geek side, young Jedi!" Billy laughed, but Eli glared at them.
"He's right, Wiccan. Do you want to throw heroes in jail for trying to help people? It's not registration, it's a draft. If I wanted to work for the government, I'd join the damn army - I wouldn't sign up for the secret police. Now stop fiddling with your damn cape and conjure up something so that we can fly out of here."
The Young Avengers stood on the glowing blue disk that Wiccan had created, floating just under rooftop level. At that height, they would be unlikely to be spotted by anyone who happened to look, or someone staring down from the SHIELD aircraft that occasionally flew overhead. They remained alert, scanning the unusually quiet city and waiting for a report from Vision, who had remained at their base, the better to interface with 911 and the police computers. Before anything came in, though, Patriot grabbed Wiccan's arm and pointed at a tall building about two blocks away.
"Get us down there - the alley on the north side of that building. I heard someone scream, but it was cut off." He shook his head slightly, still not used to his enhanced hearing.
Wiccan immediately lifted the disk and swooped from the roof, startling more than a few late-night pedestrians as they flew straight down into the alleyway. Patriot was right - two men were there, holding down a woman who was kicking at them with her stocking feet, having lost her high heels as they pulled her into the alley. The taller of the men was kneeling on the woman's arm and going through her handbag; the shorter had covered her mouth and was trying to pull a gold chain from her neck.
Without hesitation, Hulkling leapt from the floating disk and ran at full speed towards the muggers, cannoning into the one with the handbag and knocking him away from his victim. Kate neatly shot a blunt, weighted arrow at the other man's shoulder, knocking him backwards, and Speed threw him onto the ground while he was off balance. Patriot raced into the fight to help Hulkling, who was having problems holding on to his mugger. The man was freaking out at Hulkling's appearance and trying to escape, his desperate animal panic lending him extra strength. Meanwhile, Stature leaned forward and gently picked up the injured woman, moving her safely away from the brawl.
"Oh my god!" the woman shrieked, "Oh my god, put me down!"
"There you go." Stature carefully put her at the mouth of the alley way, where the woman wasn't too scared to put on her shoes and take her handbag from Speed before she staggered away into the night.
The combined efforts of Patriot and Hulkling had taken down the larger mugger by now, and both of the attackers lay moaning on the ground.
"Hey, Wiccan! Cast a binding spell," Hulkling called, but Kate rolled her eyes at him.
"Don't waste his energy. I've got plastic ties here that will hold them until they reach the station."
She tossed a pair of ties to Patriot, who deftly fastened them around the two men's wrists, as Speed patted them down and deprived them of two knives, an empty canister of pepper spray, a couple of credit cards in various names and a battered gun. Kate dropped the weapons in a garbage bag, and Hulkling and Patriot shoved the two men up onto Wiccan's flight disk.
"Hey, Vision!" Kate called into her phone as she jumped back onto the disk, "Where's the nearest police station?"
"One block to the west."
"Thanks! Got that, Wiccan?"
Wiccan and Kate sped off on the disk, muggers at their feet, to dump them on the steps of the station. Patriot had worked on their first day out that the criminals they caught weren't going to be prosecuted for the crime they were committing when the Young Avengers stopped them - they had no authority to make a legal arrest, and there was no way they could give evidence in court. He also discovered that law-abiding citizens didn't tend to be beating up helpless victims. Many of the people they caught had outstanding warrants, and even those who didn't tended to have long records that encouraged the superhero-friendly police to pay attention to their behaviour.
"Hey, Stature! Did that feel good?" Patriot called up, and Stature shrunk back to her regular size.
"Yes! I mean, she was freaked out when we showed up, but I don't think those guys were planning on letting her go. She really needed us."
The flying disk zoomed back around the corner, now carrying only Kate and Wiccan. Hulkling took a flying leap onto the disk, making it wobble alarmingly, and bear-hugged Wiccan. The three other team members followed Hulkling up, though more decorously.
"Vision's got something for us," Kate said, "Armed robbery in progress. Let's go!"
Wiccan took them up in the air again, and followed Kate's rapid-fire directions towards the robbery. Halfway there, though, Patriot called out to Wiccan.
"Stop! There's another mugging just down there!"
"What about the robbery?" Wiccan shouted back, over the rush of the wind.
"Just drop me down, then. Speed, you with me? We'll catch up with the rest of you in a minute."
Wiccan dropped the disk at a stomach-churning rate, and Speed leapt off. Patriot followed, yelling back, "Kate! You're in charge!"
"Like I wasn't anyway!" Kate bellowed back, but they were already moving again, speeding ahead of the sound of approaching sirens.
At the convenience store, the large plate-glass window let the Young Avengers see two teenage boys beating up the clerk with a baseball bat and an iron bar, while a third, who had a gun, grabbed bills from the register with his free hand and stuffed them in his pocket. There was only one door into the shop, which was, unfortunately, hung with little bells to alert the clerk when it opened. Wiccan hesitated in their flight, but Hulkling overcame the problem in the quickest possible way - he ran straight in, heading for the guy with the gun.
"IwanthimtodropitIwanthimtodropit," Wiccan chanted under his breath, and, indeed, as the young thug swung his gun up to aim at Hulkling, it flew right out of his hand and across the store. Hulkling vaulted the counter and landed on the teenager with the audible crack of ribs being broken.
Kate and Stature followed Hulkling in, now that the gun was out of play. Kate used one of her battle staves to flip the iron bar out of one boy's hand, while Stature swiftly increased her height until her head was touching the ceiling, then simply kicked the baseball bat wielder into the counter with one sweep of her enormous foot. Kate dodged her opponent's angry punch and whacked him in the stomach, knocking him down.
"Hey!" Wiccan yelled from the door, "Cops are coming! And I stopped concentrating on my disk and it vanished!"
"Wiccan!" Kate was not surprised, but she was still annoyed.
"Seriously, the cops are here! We've got to go!"
Stature shrunk back to her regular size and they dashed out of the damaged shop as fast as they could, leaving both the dazed robbers and clerk behind for the cops to find. Wiccan hadn't been kidding - police cars were pulling up right in front of the store, and the Young Avengers had to flee at top speed to avoid immediate arrest. The alley they ran into ended in a chain link fence, but Stature simply changed height and stepped over the barrier, lifting Kate after her; and Hulkling bounded upwards, his leathery wings giving him enough power to carry Wiccan with him. They dashed out of the alleyway on the other side, but slowed down as they realised that no-one was pursuing them.
"I think we -" Hulkling started to say, before Kate's phone beeped. She flipped it open and Patriot's voice rang out from the speaker, with an edge of panic set the listeners' hearts racing.
"Guys, we gotta get out of here! SHIELD just caught me breaking up a mugging, and now they're all over me! This is serious! These guys are not messing around!"
"Patriot! Where are you? Where's Speed?" Kate shouted into the phone, but her words were drowned by a massive explosion coming from an office building less than a block away. Glass and paper rained down into the street, and black helicopters swooped above the thick greenish smoke.
Speed screeched to a halt right in front of them. "Patriot led them away from me! With my record they'll lock me up for life!"
"Selfish much?" Kate snapped, but Stature put a restraining hand on her arm.
"He's right, Kate. Speed, get out of here. Tell Vision what's happened, if he doesn't know, and get him out of the warehouse before they come for him."
Speed nodded once, punched Wiccan on the arm in farewell, and vanished into the night.
"IwantustoflyIwantustofly." Now that he had a moment to focus, Wiccan's spell was a familiar one, and very fast. The flat disk shimmered and appeared in front of them.
"I'm warning Vision!" Kate stabbed the quickdial on her phone, but it emitted a flat beep instead. "Damn! Either they've got Vision or they're blocking me!"
"Get up here!" Wiccan and Stature grabbed Kate's arms and hauled her up onto Wiccan's platform. The moment she had her balance, they sped away under the cover of the billowing smoke, Hulkling following behind under his own steam. Wiccan was concentrating so hard that he was sweating, crouched low and very still. The two girls didn't want to disturb him, and instead scanned their surroundings for danger - the helicopters still sounded very close - so it was a total surprise to Kate and Stature when all of a sudden Wiccan was missing and they were falling ten stories.
"Billy!" Hulkling yelled and swooped into a rapid dive to catch his boyfriend.
"Oh, thanks!" Kate yelled after him, but just as she looked for something to grab, Stature had her feet on the ground and was neatly catching Kate in one giant hand.
"Gotcha!" Stature grinned, then her expression changed to slack shock. "Oh! They - "
She shrunk as she collapsed, fortunately close enough to the road that the SHIELD troops who were now swarming across the pavement could catch both her and Kate, locking heavy metal power-dampening gauntlets onto their arms and oversized collars around their necks. Hulkling stood over Wiccan's still form and was still fighting, even with a dozen tranquilliser darts protruding from his skin, but a dozen more darts had him on the ground.
"The kid in the cloak's the dangerous one!" a commander shouted, shoving past the captured girls. "Get those power suppressors on him right now! And cover his mouth!"
Wiccan was already beginning to stir, and Kate could see darts sticking out of his chest. They must have been flying right towards one of the choppers, and SHIELD had the sense and the background information to take out the most versatile team member first. She frowned - had Iron Man given them that intelligence? Kate started to feel her way around the inside of the electronic gauntlets, but before she could even smile at a soldier and tell him that restraints weren't really necessary for a non-powered girl like her, they were all hastily herded into a huge personnel carrier.
"It's a prison transport!" Kate was disgusted, but immediately distracted when she saw who was already inside. "Patriot! Are you okay?"
"No talking!" a guard bellowed. "Sit down on the benches and do not attempt to use your powers! The feedback loop may damage your brain!"
Kate dropped down on the bench directly across from Patriot and, although he looked terribly battered and bruised, his mask half off, he gave her a quick smile. Next to Kate, however, Stature was in tears.
"My mom will be so upset!" she sobbed, "Like I'm taking after my dad, in the exact way she doesn't want. I don't want to be a criminal. I just want to help people."
"Quiet!" The guard shouted one last time, and slammed the back of the carrier closed.
Patriot leaned forward, but almost fell off his seat as the truck lurched into motion. "Wiccan! Can you get us out of here?"
Only Wiccan's eyes were visible above the power suppressing mask he was wearing, and his head was held rigid, but his downcast gaze was a clear indication that he could do no such thing.
"We shouldn't have gone out, we shouldn't have broken the law," Stature's tears continued.
"Stature, it's a bad law! They're locking up the good people, the ones that do the right thing." Patriot seemed determined not to back down, even now.
"Maybe you're wrong!" she snapped back, an angry flush in her cheeks. "Just because we have powers or gifts doesn't mean we can go around deciding which laws to obey. Isn't that the whole point of living in a democracy? What we fight for?"
"Well, the people we were fighting had already given up on fairness." Kate couldn't let Stature crumble now. "They were using their ever-so-special powers of anarchy and violence and we were opposing them."
"Yeah," Patriot muttered, "You'd have a good idea about who's more equal than everyone else."
"You're attacking my family now?"
"You want me to wait until just one of us gets bail and it's you?"
Kate stood up from her seat, not quite sure of how she was going to kill Patriot with her arms behind her back, but determined nonetheless. Before she could reach him, though, the truck gave a huge lurch and sent them all tumbling into each other.
"What's going on?" Hulkling called, keeping his balance better than the others and trying to find a window so that he had a chance to see what was happening.
"Kid! Sit down!" The guard was still yelling, but now he had his helmet off, and he certainly didn't look like a SHIELD goon underneath it.
"You're not with SHIELD! You're the Falcon! You helped Luke Cage!" Hulkling shouted, and it was the great wave of relief, more than the order, that made him sit back down.
The Falcon strode over to Wiccan and ripped the mask from his face with a horrible crunching noise and a great flurry of sparks.
"Wiccan, I need you to rustle up one of your teleportation spells and I need it now, understand?"
"Y-yes, sir." Wiccan's reply was still dazed, but he closed his eyes in concentration and began to chant. "IwanttobesomewhereelseIwanttobesomewhereelse," trying to concentrate on moving everyone to safety. The Falcon yelled at him again, but Wiccan's focus was too strong to be disrupted, and he felt them move somewhere else in a single motion, as simple as breathing.
Staggering out of the damaged truck into the harsh lights of an underground complex, the Young Avengers stared around in shock. Captain America was there, climbing down from the cabin of the truck, plus Daredevil, Cable, Hercules and Cloak and at least a dozen others scattered around the computer banks, monitoring the situation in the city.
"Congratulations, children." Cable said, his voice dry. "You've just joined the resistance."
Patriot's delighted shout did not, quite, drown out Stature's horrified gasp.