by Alex Irvine
“I wouldn’t stress about it,” she said. Then, lightning-quick, she hit him where it hurt the most. He doubled over and shrank, holding on to her forearm and twisting her down to the ground. She fired a stinger, which blew him across the tarmac into a parked plane. He hit it hard enough to leave a dent—and a lot of bruises.
Bucky saw Spider-Man crawling fast along the outside of the terminal window. “What was that?”
“Everyone’s got a gimmick now,” Falcon said. A split second later, Spider-Man crashed through the window and leveled him with a flying kick. He got up just as Bucky was taking a swing with his cybernetic arm. Spider-Man caught it in his palm. Bucky’s eyes widened. That took a lot more strength than he would have expected from this kid, who sounded like he was about fourteen.
“You have a metal arm?” Spider-Man was amazed. “That is awesome, dude!”
He didn’t have a chance to say more because Falcon hit him hard from the side and, with spread wings, flew up toward the terminal roof. “You have the right to remain silent!” Spider-Man yelled over the noise.
Outside, Iron Man cornered Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch. He hovered hear the parking garage, keeping them out in the open with one palm repulsor aimed and powered up. “Wanda, I think you hurt Vision’s feelings,” he said.
“You locked me in my room.”
“Okay. First, that’s an exaggeration. Second, I did it to protect you.” Tony could tell from her expression that was the wrong thing to say. He glanced over at Hawkeye. “Hey, Clint.”
“Hey, man.”
“Clearly, retirement doesn’t suit you. Get tired of shooting golf?”
“Well,” Clint said, “I played eighteen, I shot eighteen. Just can’t seem to miss.” He fired an arrow. Iron Man dodged and blew it out of the air.
Feeling pretty satisfied with himself, he smirked inside the helmet. “First time for everything.”
Hawkeye smirked right back. “Made you look.”
Uh-oh, Iron Man thought. He looked back at the parking structure just as Scarlet Witch pulled dozens of parked cars out of it. They fell like a landslide on him, burying him under a hundred tons of broken steel.
“Multiple contusions detected,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. said when the cars had stopped falling.
“Yeah,” Iron Man grunted. “I detected that, too.”
CHAPTER 21
Spider-Man and Falcon fought an aerial battle throughout the open terminal. Bucky threw a heavy piece of steel at Spider-Man, who caught it and called out, “Hey, buddy, I think you lost this!” When the Winter Soldier peeked out from cover, the steel sheet buried itself in the pillar next to his head.
Falcon came back after him, but Spider-Man webbed up his wings and he crashed through a kiosk. As Falcon tried to get up, Spider-Man quickly webbed both of his hands to the railing behind him. Then he couldn’t help himself. He was too curious. “Are those wings carbon fiber?”
Sam, astonished, had questions of his own. He looked at the webbing. “Is this stuff coming out of you?”
Spider-Man was still talking, a full nerd rush. “That would explain the rigidity-flexibility ratio, which, gotta say, that’s awesome, man.”
“I don’t know if you’ve been in a fight before, but there’s usually not this much talking,” Falcon said.
“All right, sorry, my bad.” Spider-Man saw Bucky coming out of cover to help. He plowed into both of them, knocking them down to the baggage-claim level. Quickly, he webbed Bucky’s metal arm to the floor and stuck Falcon’s arms to his sides.
“Guys, look,” he said. “I’d love to keep this up, but I’ve only got one job here today, and I gotta impress Mr. Stark, so I’m really sorry.”
Whatever else he was going to do, Spider-Man never got the chance. Redwing shot into view and caught Spider-Man, dragging him by his own webs through the window and out into the open air. “Aaaahhhh!” he shouted as he disappeared.
Lying on the floor, Bucky said, “You couldn’t have done that earlier?”
Falcon paused. “I hate you.”
Outside, Captain America was facing not just Black Panther, but War Machine and Black Widow as well. Ant-Man ran up next to him, all excited with a new idea. “Captain, heads up!” He showed Steve a tiny model-size tanker truck. “Throw it at this,” he said, holding a blue glowing disk in his other hand.
Ant-Man threw the disk. “Now!”
Cap threw the toy truck. When it pinged off the blue disk, there was a whoosh of displaced air and it was suddenly full-size… and bearing right down on War Machine.
“Oh, come on!” he said, just as the truck hit in front of him and plowed over him. It burst into a huge fireball, knocking Black Panther and Black Widow sprawling.
“Oh man,” Ant-Man said from the other side of the tarmac. “I thought it was a water truck. Uh… sorry.”
He and Cap took off running.
Battered and singed, War Machine stood up and glared.
“Is this part of the plan?” Natasha asked as Iron Man helped her to her feet.
“Well, my plan was to go easy on them,” he answered. “You want to switch it up?”
Cap, Falcon, and Bucky came together with Hawkeye, Ant-Man, and Scarlet Witch, running in a group toward Hangar Five. “There’s our ride,” Hawkeye said.
Cap waved. “Come on!”
A searing yellow beam from above carved a trench around them. They froze and looked up to see Vision, floating perhaps ten feet in the air between them and the Quinjet they were hoping to fly out of there. “Captain Rogers, I know you believe what you’re doing is right.” Vision, as always, kept his tone level and polite. “But for the collective good, you must surrender now.”
The rest of the pro-accords team gathered near him: Black Panther, Iron Man, Black Widow, Spider-Man, and War Machine.
It was a standoff.
“What do we do, Cap?” Falcon asked.
Cap kept his eyes forward. “We fight.” He started walking forward, and the rogue heroes moved with him.
On the other side, Iron Man’s team matched their steady advance. “This isn’t going to end well,” Black Widow said.
“They’re not stopping,” Spider-Man said nervously.
Iron Man kept the pace. “Neither are we.”
The teams crashed together in a free-for-all, separating into smaller groups and one-on-one fights that swirled back together. The only exception was Black Panther, who had a single goal: going after Bucky Barnes.
Nearby, Hawkeye and Black Widow grappled. When Hawkeye got the upper hand, he had to pause, his bow across her neck. “We’re still friends, right?” she said.
He considered this. “Depends on how hard you hit me.”
She sucker-punched him. Pivoting into a kick, she would have knocked him out cold—if Scarlet Witch hadn’t frozen the kick in place with a flare of scarlet energy. She flicked her wrist, and Black Widow flew away to crash down on the other side of the tarmac.
As Hawkeye stood, Scarlet Witch glared at him. “You’re pulling your punches.”
Locked in a wrestler’s grip face-to-face, Black Panther and Bucky tested each other’s strength. “I didn’t kill your father,” Bucky said.
Black Panther had only one question. “Then why did you run?”
There was no answer to that. Bucky knew he wouldn’t understand. He kept fighting, but he was trying not to hurt Black Panther, even though Black Panther was definitely trying to hurt him. His claws slashed across Bucky’s metal arm, leaving gouges.
Scarlet Witch came to the rescue again, stopping Black Panther just short of a killing blow and using her telekinesis to throw Black Panther through a jet bridge and into the terminal.
Spider-Man was swinging above the fray, waiting for the right time to jump in and make a difference, when Captain America’s shield severed his web. He tumbled up a cargo ramp as the shield came back to Cap. “That thing does not obey the laws of physics at all,” Spider-Man said.
“Look, kid,” Captain America sa
id. “There’s a lot going on here that you don’t understand.” He didn’t want the kid to get hurt for the wrong reasons.
“Mr. Stark said you’d say that. He also said to go for your legs.” Spider-Man snapped out a web and hauled Cap’s legs out from under him. He hit the ground hard, got up, and found both of his hands suddenly caught in webs. The kid was fast—and good—but he wasn’t a pro yet. Captain America flexed and suddenly pulled the kid off his feet, using his own webs to toss him away.
But he was better than Steve had expected. He hit a wall, bounced off, and swung himself up onto the roof of a jet bridge.
“Did Stark tell you anything else?” Cap asked.
“That you’re wrong. You think you’re right. And that makes you dangerous.” Now the kid was serious.
“I guess he had a point,” Cap said.
Spider-Man came after him again, but Cap knew his moves now. He saw the swinging kick coming, and he belted the kid back with his shield, smashing him into the jet bridge’s wheel assembly. The kid rolled under the jet bridge and Steve threw the shield to break off the assembly the rest of the way. The jet bridge fell down on the kid, who got both hands under it and held it in place. Barely.
“You got heart, kid. Where’re you from?”
“Queens.” Spider-Man’s voice strained with the effort of holding up the jet bridge.
Cap nodded with a grin. “Brooklyn,” he said, and ran to rejoin the fight.
Falcon was having trouble getting away from Iron Man. “Clint, can you get him off me?”
Sighting down the shaft of an arrow a few hundred yards away, Clint said, “Buckled in?”
He was talking to the now-tiny Ant-Man, who rode on the arrowhead. “Yeah. I’m good, Arrow-Guy,” Lang said.
Clint shot the arrow, and it split into several homing warheads. Iron Man paused in midair to blast them apart, but that gave Ant-Man enough time to land on his armor without his noticing. He scampered over the metal-clad shoulder, looking for a seam.
A moment later, as Iron Man was lining up his repulsors on Clint, they flickered and went out. “F.R.I.D.A.Y.?” What is going on?
“We have some weapons systems offline,” she said.
“We what?” How?
Inside the Iron Man armor, Ant-Man was busy ripping out every wire he could get his hands on. “Oh, you’re gonna have to take this into the shop,” he said.
As different systems shorted out and the suit struggled to stay airborne, Iron Man said, “Who’s speaking?”
“It’s your conscience. We don’t talk a lot these days.”
“F.R.I.D.A.Y.?” He had an idea, but she got there before he did.
“Deploying fire suppression systems,” she said.
Tony heard the miniature invader—must have been Ant-Man, who else?—say, “Uh-oh. Oh boy.”
A second later, the fire-control gas jetted out of gaps in the Iron Man armor—and so did Ant-Man, falling toward the ground.
CHAPTER 22
Captain America and Bucky came together near the Quinjet. “We got to go,” Bucky said urgently. “That guy’s probably in Siberia by now.”
Cap looked up. “We got to draw out the fliers. I’ll take Vision. You get to the jet.”
“No, you get to the jet!” Falcon shouted. “Both of you! The rest of us aren’t getting out of here.” Captain America paused.
“As much as I hate to admit it,” Hawkeye added, “if we’re gonna win this one, some of us might have to lose it. This isn’t the real fight, Steve.”
Cap hated it, but he knew Falcon was right. “All right, Sam, what’s the plan?”
“We need a diversion. Something big.”
Ant-Man piped up. “I got something kind of big, but I can’t hold it very long. On my signal, run. And if I tear myself in half, don’t come back for me.”
Bucky looked confused. “He’s going to tear himself in half? You’re sure about this guy?”
Half an inch tall, Ant-Man ran along the cargo ramp where he’d landed after falling out of Iron Man’s suit. “I do it all the time. I mean once… in a lab. And I passed out.”
He leaped off the ramp and landed on the passing War Machine. With the wind roaring around him, Ant-Man touched the blue stud on his forearm control screen. Just like Hank Pym had shown him with the original disks, blue meant large and red meant small. Essentially, he had figured out how to grow as well as shrink. Except it didn’t always work. But now was the time to give it a try, right?
Absolutely.
He touched the panel and couldn’t help but start yelling as his body expanded from its normal just-shy-of-six feet to something closer to maybe fifty feet tall. He couldn’t get much bigger without starting to lose control of his limbs, and even at this size, he was slow. But it sure did make an impression. He reached out and caught War Machine in his left hand.
“Okay, tiny dude is big now. He’s big now,” said War Machine. Spider-Man stood gawking in amazement below.
“I guess that’s the signal,” Cap said. He and Bucky made their break for the Quinjet as Falcon shouted, “Way to go, Tic Tac!”
“Give me back my Rhodey,” Iron Man growled. Falcon hit him from the side, and they spun away into the air fighting.
Ant-Man, now more like Giant-Man, tossed War Machine away across the airport. “I got him!” Spider-Man shouted. He caught War Machine with a web and slowed him down enough that he could get his balance. Giant-Man stomped through the airport, kicking a bus at Vision and Black Panther, tearing a wing off a jet, and narrowly missing Iron Man with it.
“Okay. Anybody on our side hiding any shocking and fantastic abilities they’d like to disclose, I’m open to suggestion,” Iron Man said.
Giant-Man cut Black Panther off before he could get to the Quinjet hangar. “You want to get to them? You got to go through me.”
Explosions blossomed around his head and shoulders as War Machine came in firing. Spider-Man tried to wrap up one of his arms and keep him occupied. Below, Hawkeye fired arrow after arrow at Black Panther, holding him off until a final explosive arrow went off in T’Challa’s face without even fazing him.
“We haven’t met yet,” Hawkeye said. “I’m Clint.”
“I don’t care,” T’Challa said. Hawkeye flicked his wrist, and his bow straightened out into a fighting staff. So that’s how it was going to be.
Giant-Man kept rampaging through the airport, keeping Iron Man and War Machine busy… but then Vision phased through him, stopping him in his tracks. He twitched and shook himself. “Something just flew in me!”
Passing out the other side, Vision used the power of his gem to cut through the base of the air-traffic control tower. It fell toward the hangar entrance—but Scarlet Witch held it in place, just high enough so that Cap and Bucky might be able to get under it.
Then War Machine hit her with a sonic blast and made her lose her concentration. The tower fell, pelting Cap and Bucky with debris… but they were through!
And inside, waiting by the Quinjet, was Black Widow. “You’re not going to stop?”
“You know I can’t,” Captain America said.
She nodded. “I’m going to regret this.” She raised one hand and fired a stinger—past Cap, where it staggered Black Panther.
“Go,” she said. T’Challa kept coming, and she stung him again.
Outside, Giant-Man was still swiping at Spider-Man, who was too quick for him. “Hey, guys,” Spider-Man shouted as he ran along the top of a parked jet. “You ever see that really old movie? Empire Strikes Back?”
“Tony, how old is this guy?” War Machine asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t carbon-date him. He’s on the young side.”
Spider-Man kept going with his idea as he shot a long loop of web around Giant-Man’s shoulders. “You know that part when they’re on the snow planet? With the walking thingies?”
Of course they did. Everyone knew that scene.
“Maybe the kid’s onto something,” Iron Man said.
Spider-Man was swinging in tight loops around Giant-Man, now all the way down to his knees.
“I know. Tony, go high!” War Machine said. The two of them drove into Giant-Man’s wall-size chin, knocking him off balance. With his legs tangled, all he could do was fall flat on his back with a crash that shook nearby buildings.
“Yes!” Spider-Man shouted. “That was awesome!”
Just as he said it, a flailing swipe from Giant-Man’s giant hand smashed into him. He tumbled head over heels, crashing through a stack of shipping crates and lying still.
Giant-Man lay on his back. He touched the thumb stud to return himself to normal size and he wanted to get up, but he couldn’t quite make his limbs work. “Does anyone have any orange slices?” he groaned.
Iron Man landed next to Spider-Man and tapped his shoulder. “Kid, you all right?”
Spider-Man flailed. “Hey! Get off me!” Then he saw who it was. “Oh. Hey, man. Yeah. That was scary.”
“Yeah,” Iron Man said. “You’re done. All right?”
“What? No, I’m good. I’m fine.”
“Stay down,” Iron Man ordered.
“No, it’s good. I gotta get him back!”
They didn’t have time for this. “You’re going home or I’ll call Aunt May! You’re done!” Then he took off to rejoin the battle, leaving Spider-Man trying to get up off the concrete.
“Wait. Mr. Stark, wait! I’m not done, I’m not…” Peter had almost gotten himself to his feet, but now he stopped. He was starting to realize he was going to be very, very sore in the morning. “Okay, I’m done,” he said.
In Hangar Five, Black Widow had bought Cap and Bucky just enough time to power up the Quinjet and take off. Still rattled from Black Widow’s stingers, T’Challa made a last desperate leap for the Quinjet. His claws caught in one of the tires, but he couldn’t hold on as the landing gear retracted. The Quinjet sped up into the sky… with War Machine on its trail.