The Alien Overlord's Guide to Earth

[jairissa]

Title: The Alien Overlord's Guide to Earth
Chapter: Two
Author: jairissa
Pairings: Bruce/Darcy, Jane/Thor, Steve/Tony, Coulson/Pepper
Rating: R
Word Count: ~13000
Summary: When an alien race subjugate earth Darcy is content to stay in New Mexico and hide until it's over. When her boss' not-boyfriend and his super-powered boy band blaze into town expecting sanctuary and assistance, all her plans are shot to hell.

Instead Darcy finds herself fighting aliens, making new and terrifying friends and adding a whole lot more embarrassing moments to the list of things that will be trotted out in toasts at her wedding or funeral (whichever comes first).

She also appears to be the only one not getting laid, which proves that whatever Gods are out there, they hate her.
Warnings: None.
Author's Notes: Art by adrian_chan



[Action Plan 1.84.0045: Insurgency]

Reports have been emerging regarding a small group of human insurgents. They have, previously, gone by the name The Avengers (see supplementary material). Intelligence suggests that the human approval rating for these terrorists is currently low so public arrest and - if required laws broken - execution should not cause insurmountable problems.

It is possible that trackers for these individuals have been disabled, which will make tracking impossible. Please keep supplementary materials with you at all times and refer to them if suspicious regarding the identity of criminals you encounter.
Required equipment: Supplementary material knowledge crystal, advanced defence kit (inc. human sedation stick).
Expected timeline: Must be complete within 30 earth-solar cycles.
Projected resistance: Great. Care is required.

Phase Two: Rebellion

Darcy lost her belief in a higher power when she was eleven and Bark Simpson had gone to the great fire hydrant city in the sky. She regains it when she is twenty three, and forced to live in Tony Stark's Malibu mansion with his new frenemy/love interest (childhood crush Captain America), his ex-girlfriend (the most terrifyingly competent woman Darcy has ever met, and possibly the second platonic love of her life), and the ex-girlfriend's new flirtation/filing partner (a scary government agent who is entirely unable to die).

She only regains this belief because she is now of the firm opinion that said higher power hates her guts and is punishing her for sins that she knowingly committed. If it counts, Darcy is now very sorry.

"I think god hates me," she says aloud, because this is the sort of thing that everyone needs to know. Everyone translates, in this case, to JARVIS, who's not actually spying on her in the bath. Well he is, but not in a way that's creepy beyond the general holy crap, you have an AI watching you all the time? Even when you have sex?

Yes, Pepper had assured her. Even when he had sex.

"I don't imagine God would have the energy to hate anyone," JARVIS says, his soft British voice hitting every foreign accent kink Darcy has. "He has so very much to do."

"He has to hate me," Darcy says, stroking her bubble beard in the universally accepted way of mad scientists. It proves that she should have been assigned to Jane's team: without a mad scientist to take care of, her psyche goes a little nuts and tries to make her fill in the gap that's clearly missing in the world. "Do you see where I ended up?"

"A large mansion on the beach doesn't sound like much of a punishment," JARVIS says. Darcy snorts.

"Did you see the 'incident' at dinner?" Darcy asks, making the quote signs with her fingers. "I'm pretty sure Tony's due a concussion, or brain damage or something."

"I see everything, Ms. Lewis," JARVIS says. Darcy giggles a little. The lecture on feminism and which title to call her is the only victory she's won since she got here. She'd meant it when she'd said she wanted to hide out in New Mexico until this invasion was over.

A kidnapping that involves a private plane, a luxury canopy bed and the full run of Tony Stark's accessory closet is still a kidnapping, and Darcy is suggestible. She's far more at risk of Stockholm Syndrome than any of the other people Tony's inevitably kidnapped over the years.

"I still say Steve missed on purpose," Darcy mutters. The water is starting to cool. When she holds her hands up they're so pruney they're starting to hurt. She reaches for the gigantic soft towel, picked from a huge linen closet that held towels in more colours than she can differ between. This one is pale lavender, the colour Darcy's superhero outfit will be if she's ever allowed one.

Tony hasn't been seen since the argument that started with a snarky comment from Steve on wasting food and ended with a debate on whether Steve was built with that stick up his arse, or whether it was an unfortunate serum side effect that had somehow been left out of the literature. JARVIS assures her that he's safely in his lab tinkering with some thing or other, although all attempts to verify this have been met with a security system that Jane would kill to set up around her equipment to keep nosy S.H.I.E.L.D agents the hell away from her special frankentronics.

She curls up in the small arm chair by her bed, flicking the television on out of habit. The broadcast is the flat, plain image the Bysrah display whenever they're not showing an official message or censored rerun: a frilly cut-out circle on a Steve worthy red, white and blue background, with the supposedly comforting words 'Stay tuned for further instructions'.

Summoning up the energy to get dressed takes more energy than Darcy anticipated. One of Tony's towels covers more of her than most of her summer outfits, so she decides to say fuck it and lays her head on the arm of the chair, tugs the towel down to cover her knees and keeps her eyes closed until she falls asleep.

She's so used to waking up to see natural disasters repeating on TV that a power plant pulsing with electricity is only surprising when she realises that means there's actually something broadcasting.

"TV!" She shrieks gleefully at the top of her lungs. She has to hold the towel tightly to her chest, but she's able to run easily enough. She knocks on all the doors on her floor until she gets an answer at one of them. Coulson doesn't look particularly happy to be woken up, but Darcy takes his hand and drags him to her room anyway, pointing at the screen. "TV!"

"Oh thank God," he whispers, which is more emotion than Darcy's ever seen from him. He hits the intercom button on her wall, cleverly hidden behind Darcy's bedhead. Darcy's going to have some loud words to say to Tony when she's not so busy being happy. "Stark! Up here now."

Now, with Tony, can mean a lot of things. This time it means within five minutes. Darcy is so pleased that she hugs him. She even forgives him for sneaking a peek when her towel drops a little, exposing the top of her breasts.

"Seen my latest masterpiece?" Tony smirks. Darcy ducks back into the bathroom so she can exchange her towel for a bathrobe to avoid showing everything when she dances around her bedroom, crowing wildly and spilling a lot more about her reality TV watching habits than she'd originally intended to.

"How did you do it?" Pepper asks. Darcy finally gets it, when she sees the awe on Pepper's face and the way Tony's face softens when he sees her smile: how they'd worked at all, even if it was one of the shortest romances in tabloid history.

"C'mon Pep, you know me," Tony says. They share a secret smile that makes Darcy's heart ache a little with loneliness she wasn't aware she was feeling. She brushes it off, choosing to focus on the first truly happy thing she's seen in weeks, twirling around in the only thing she remembers from her childhood ballet classes.

"That's why I'm asking," Pepper deadpans. There's no meanness behind it.

"How long will it last?" Coulson asks, which is a bit of a buzzkill.

"No idea," Tony says. He doesn't seem all that upset by it. "It's a general bypass right now, but when I see what they use to try and take it down I'll get a better idea of how to counteract their anti-Stark tech."

"Anti-Stark tech?" Coulson says with a small wrinkle of his nose. "Is this a thing now?"

"It's always been a thing, Phil," Tony tries to leer; Darcy sees the familiar twist of his lips, but there's something missing behind it and she can't tell what it is. "Just a different set of people trying to undo me."

"Is that Thor?" Pepper cries, and they're all so distracted by that that only Darcy notices when Steve wanders in, looking more than a little lost. Darcy holds her hand out to him. She waits until he notices her attire and looks away, swallowing hard, then grabs a hold of his fingers when he comes close enough.

All that huge, super-soldier strength is a wonder when she needs something to hold on to. It is Thor, at a power station Tony identifies as a hub somewhere in the Midwest, one that has the potential to take down more than a few neighbouring states if it's properly destroyed. 'Destroyed' seems to be Thor's goal, and the camera flickers repeatedly as stray bolts of electricity ricochet off Mjolnir and into the metal surroundings.

"Thor!" Someone shrieks. Considering the people with her, Darcy has to assume it's her. She's not sure where they came from, but a team of Bysrah are dropping, one by one from the sky, and moving into formation around the utility pole Thor's attached himself to. The lightning, accompanied by thunder that sounds louder on camera than it does in person, lights them up garishly.

"He'll be okay," Steve whispers in her ear, his hand squeezing hers tightly. "He'll be fine."

It sounds like a prayer, more fervent than all the ones Darcy's been practicing with. On the television Thor grins, staring right at the camera as the lightning brightens and blanks out the screen entirely. When an image reappears she sees that he's gone, a tiny speck in the sky. The power station seems to be on fire.

"Wow," Tony whistles. Darcy works to catch her breath, her free hand covering her mouth to stifle further embarrassing noises.

"He can't do stuff like that," Darcy whispers. She has no illusions about the immortality of Norse Gods; she's seen Thor die, and yes he came back to life, but that sounds to her like the sort of thing that should only happen once. This is why cat-gods are far superior, and would be her deity of choice if she ever started a cult: nine lives mean eight different chances to be a god-like fuckup before you're stuck behaving yourself.

"Damn right," Tony says. He's pulled his tablet out of somewhere, jabbing at it with greasy fingers. "At least not until we can work out something just as good. Pep, you up to hit headquarters tomorrow and see if we can get some misinformation started?"

"On it," Pepper says, determined. Darcy whimpers as she looks longingly at her bed. "You can stay if you want, Darcy, it's fine."

"No it isn't," Tony says. His face is hard when he looks at her. She remembers what he said to her on the plane, when she'd grabbed the first backpack that looked like it could contain a parachute and threatened to jump out.

"It's all on us, Darce. I know you don't feel like you can do this, I get that. But we don't really have a choice here. You can be as scared as you want, you can sit there saying you're useless, but we both know that's not true. You can't build the weapons, or punch out the bad guys, but you're smarter than you think, we both know you're brilliant at planning things, at getting things organised, and remembering all those little details that we tend to forget when we're trying to focus on the big picture.

"And answer me this: would you be able to forgive yourself if the world doesn't get saved? If you never know whether that one thing you remembered might be able to make a difference?

She'd never pegged Tony as the sensitive type, and it might not have been the most comforting speech ever, but it's enough to force Darcy to pull herself together. To stop whining and to do the same thing she had when Donny Collins had made giving her an orgasm his summer project: fake it 'till she makes it.

"No, it isn't," Darcy agrees. She gives up thoughts of alcohol, of weird alien medications and of the idea that she might ever be able to get out of this. "So. D'you need a new assistant? 'Cause I can totally assist. It's my thing. I kept Jane alive for over a year."

"I think I could do with a bit of help," Pepper smiles. It doesn't quite make Darcy feel better, but it's a start. Darcy can work with that.

***

Pepper's office has a better view than Tony's mansion. Darcy's never been the biggest fan of the beach. She can't swim well and sand always seems to end up in places she doesn't want it to, scratching against her washcloth in the shower when she tries to scrub it out. The cityscape under the window she has nosed pressed to is much nicer: elegant and remote, and not at all likely to be a party to giving her the bad kind of crabs.

"The last assistant I had ended up being part of S.H.I.E.L.D," Pepper sighs, typing rapidly into a document that Darcy's been informed will be distributed to all eligible Stark Industries employees after lunch.

"Don't need to worry about that with me," Darcy says, parking herself on the side of Pepper's desk and leaning over to read the words over Pepper's shoulder. It's all written in business-ese, a language she's never bothered to familiarise herself with that ends up saying a whole lot of stuff like synergy, actionable and proceduralize, which contain a lot of syllables and mean absolutely nothing. "I wouldn't join S.H.I.E.L.D if they paid me Tony's salary."

"I think you've already joined them," Pepper points out, which Darcy thinks is entirely unfair. If anything she's joined The Avengers, which is a subsidiary of S.H.I.E.L.D, and...yep, it's only been two hours, but she's officially spent too much time in the corporate world.

"So what does that mean?" Darcy asks rather than try to untangle exactly what her affiliations are now.

"That we're stopping production on everything but the programs Tony's designing now," Pepper says, saving the document with a resolute click. "And if anyone feels like they can't be a part of Stark Industries new direction should take a few weeks off, with pay, until we can settle further employment options."

"Do you think they'll get it?" Darcy tugs her too short skirt down to her knees, ignoring the strange hover-ship that sails slowly past the window. "I'd probably just take the money and run, I'll be honest here."

"I'm fairly sure people have been expecting something exactly like this from Tony since…" she cuts herself off, shaking her head. Darcy nods in sympathy.

"We need a word for it. Not D-Day, because I think that would probably upset Steve, but something new, you know? Like F-Day or something," Darcy muses.

"F-Day?"

"Fuck off and die Day," Darcy says. She doesn't think it's that funny, but Pepper doubles over laughing, her cheek typing random letters on the keyboard, giggling until she gasps for breath. The computer dings; Darcy watches an e-mail pop up on the screen, full of short hand and misspellings that make it look like a totally foreign language.

"Tony wants you in the lab," Pepper says immediately. Darcy stares at her in wonder.

"That's what you got from that?" Darcy says, but she follows Pepper's instructions, placing her palm, fingertips and eyeballs in all the relevant places until she finds herself in a lab that looks like an engineering clone of Jane's basement of doom.

"Darce! Hold this," Tony says. Steve is already there, holding on to a pipe with a patient look on his face. Darcy grabs for the cluster of wires obediently and rolls her eyes at Steve. She needs to start lifting weights; her arms start to ache in a pathetically short amount of time. She's rescued by Steve who takes her burden off her with a cocky smile. Darcy uses the pause to reconsider exercise in favour of super soldier serum.

"What are we playing with?" Darcy asks, free to wonder. She knows enough not to go too far. If this place is anything like Jane's she's as likely to trip over a pile of loose wires as she is to get tangled in some newfangled robot that Jane's programmed to scream exterminate at the top of its lungs while administering a rib-crushing hug.

Halloween prank Darcy's nicely padded ass.

"Some sort of untraceable communications system," Steve supplies when Tony's grumbles fail to make sense. "He's been trying to explain it to me, but…"

"Yeah, I get that," Darcy says, running her fingers through the layers of dust settled over the cluttered workspaces. "Scientists and the people who love them."

"Yeah," Steve says. His laugh is half-fake. Darcy watches him out from under her lashes.

"You can always move to New Mexico," Darcy offers. "Scary dark-haired genius with a penchant for making her own stuff? You'd feel right at home."

"Hush and stop trying to steal my robot arms," Tony says. Steve doesn't move, but he has that sad look on his face again, so Darcy slaps Tony's arm for him. Tony doesn't budge. Darcy would give anything for that sort of attention span during finals.

"D'you want to talk about it?" Darcy hedges, curling up to Steve's side and resting her head against his bicep.

"His father was the same," Steve says. Darcy wonders if she's gotten the wrong end of the stick here, whether it's someone else Steve's pining over. "Always concentrating on work, and I would be standing there laughing with his assistants, and sometimes…"

He trails off, his eyes glinting in the bright artificial light. Darcy wraps her arms around his waist. She keeps forgetting that this is Captain America, a superhero. Here she was trying to comfort him with a stupid little hug and all of this had come from answering one stupid ad in her college newspaper asking for a science intern.

Surreal doesn't quite cover it.

"Sometimes?" Darcy prompts.

"Sometimes Peggy would come in, or Bucky, and Howard wouldn't notice. He was so absorbed in what he was doing he didn't know we were there."

"So you miss her," Darcy flounders, wishing it was as easy to fix him as it had been Jane. "Or, uh…him, or…"

"I miss all of them," Steve says. He refuses to look at her. She feels more than a bit ridiculous hanging off him like some sort of groupie. He follows her when she tries to pull away, so Darcy stays and hopes that hugs can be as comforting to everyone else as they are to her. "I miss knowing what was happening when I saw Howard working, and Peggy's smile, and Bucky not letting me get away with anything."

Darcy pats him awkwardly, her hand disturbingly small against his huge arm. Steve smiles at her, but it's small and fragile. Darcy hates thinking about it, about losing her entire world and all the hope of it. She doesn't have the strength Steve has, the ability survive it this well.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. Darcy wants to kick everyone who's spoken to him over the past months, who's ignored the pain that's so much a part of him Darcy can feel it when she touches his skin. "I shouldn't…"

"Sure you should," Darcy says uselessly. She hangs on more tightly, trying to show him that she's not going anywhere, and knowing that there's no way she could promise that. "If not me, then someone, you know? You shouldn't hold on to it by yourself."

"It's better this way," Steve says. Darcy doesn't know what to say to refute that.

"Well, this'll be the most depressing first broadcast ever," Tony says. He's holding on to a weird piece of metal that lacks all the sleek grace of a new piece of Stark technology, but makes up for it by containing more buttons than Darcy can count.

"Sorry," Steve says, his eyes clearly saying see?, but Darcy doesn't and she never will. "I can do a great Green Hornet. He's still around right?"

"Remind me never to show you that movie," Tony says. He's relaxed a little, losing some of the tension from his shoulders.

"Is it done?" Darcy asks. She's had enough of awkward silences. She wants to jump into this one before it has a chance to become one of those moments that stay so uncomfortable that they'll have a hard time speaking to each other again, and will eventually end in either permanent estrangement or a horrible drunken hook-up on a boring New Years Eve.

Not that Darcy has any experience with anything like that.

"Done," Tony confirms. "One for everyone. Don't ask me to explain how it works. I'm a builder, not a teacher. But it should work long enough for us to make up for the TV networks they're no doubt trying to seize back from us. Also means we might have a chance at that other government thing Clint was talking about."

Clint! Now that Darcy remembers that she can stop calling him Archer Dude. Even in the privacy of her own head it seems a little disrespectful.

"How are we getting it to everyone?" Steve asks. He sounds so captain-like that Darcy wants to salute him.

"Coulson's liaising with Hill and Fury," Tony says, looking at his device rather than meeting Steve's eyes. "He'll hand over a few of the prototypes then."

"How quickly can you get them built?" Steve presses, letting go of Darcy's waist. She shivers a little, more for Coulson, Maria and Fury than for herself.

"You'll have to ask production," Tony says, attention already wavering, refocusing on all the gadgetry that's cluttering his desk. "Pepper should have that ready by now."

When the prototype goes to production, Darcy follows it. She's the one most familiar with wanting to chicken out of heroism, so she figures that if she hangs around the people doing the grunt work she might be able to catch someone who's about to screw it up for all of them before they do. It's a detail thing, and Tony's right. She's great at that.

She's also the first person to test the long-distance capabilities of the device Tony's christened the highly original STFUAlienComm. She uses it to bitch him out for not giving her a tracker removal device while she digs her newest one out with a pair of tweezers, a plastic dinner knife and the helpful beak of a highly curious magpie.

***

"Oh hell no," Jane's voice comes through the STFUAlienComm tinny but audible. Darcy's been avoiding the TV since Thor's last starring role. She'd have a hard enough time hearing that one of her friends have been killed, she doesn't particularly want to have to see it. "No, no, no, no. No."

"What is it?" Darcy says, frantically rummaging around her unmade bed for wherever it's hidden the remote. She feels something hard under the fabric and pulls it out laughing. The vibrator is a disturbing shade of green, and is exactly the reason why one should never confess to Tony Stark how long it's been since they've last gotten laid. "Who died?"

"Our sanity," Jane says. Darcy gives up on the modern technology thing and does it the old fashioned way, bouncing across the bedroom to turn the TV on with her actual finger. She sees what Jane means immediately. It's hard to miss the gigantic announcement prohibiting most types of legal drugs, cigarettes and, Darcy notes with dismay, all forms of alcohol.

"No way!" She protests, groaning. "Liver damage? Kidneys? Who cares about that? I need booze!"

"How's Tony?" Natasha asks. Darcy winces at the thought of going down to Tony's lab after hearing that. "He won't be taking it well."

"I'm going to have to go look, aren't I?" Darcy asks rhetorically, then grins, addressing the ceiling. "JARVIS? How's Tony?"

"I believe Mr. Stark is remodelling the basement to support a rum distillery," JARVIS says. Darcy is surprised that it's a surprise at all he's gotten to it so quickly.

"That can't end well," Natasha growls.

"I'll keep him from tasting too much of the product," Darcy promises. The silence isn't encouraging. She blows a raspberry at both the Judgey McJudgersons who can't even see her. What right do they have to critique what she's doing? "I won't taste too much of the product. And I'll get Steve to check in on Tony."

"Good choice," Natasha says. Darcy's already pulled out her notebook, doodling elaborate plans for the label on Lewis' Luscious Rum, the company she'll own when the country is so used to Tony's rum that they won't want to drink anything else. Tony's got enough to worry about. Taking the alcohol company off his hands will be a favour.

Especially considering all the work he makes her do in distributing the damn stuff.

***

As much as Darcy's always wanted a shifty overcoat of her very own, wearing it out in public was never part of the fantasy. It's made worse by the soft clinking she can't quite stifle, of rum, gin and their newest product, a hard apple cider that Darcy insisted on for the people - and she is only one example of this, shut up, Tony - who can't drink large amounts of hard liquor without humiliating themselves horribly.

A middle-aged woman skulks up beside her, face plastered with the overly-fake innocent look amateurs always use when they're trying to sneak around for the first time. Darcy should give lessons on it; how to really look innocent: a learner's guide. She's got a wad of bills fisted in her hand. Darcy gives her most winning smile.

"Girl Weasley, Jack Sparrow or John Dorian?" Darcy asks. They're not the best of references, but the colour-challenged annoyances haven't cottoned on yet, and it still gives Darcy an illicit thrill to know she's getting away with it right in front of them.

"Uh…Weasley?" The woman asks. Darcy slides her hand in her pocket. If anyone were watching they would think she was flashing someone. This whole experience is just freshman orientation week all over again.

"All yours," Darcy says cheerfully. She separates a few bills from the wad the woman has shoved at her, a couple of small ones that she keeps on hand more as souvenirs as anything else. Currency as Darcy has known it is slowly being phased out. While the hard, thick crystal coins are great at not being ripped and don't quite carry the same worry of drugs or faeces, they're not really money. "Here, go ahead. First billion customers special, sponsored by Tony ‘the T-Man’ Stark."

The woman sends her one of the side-eye looks that imply that Darcy's a bit of a nutter. Darcy doesn't blame her. She'd tried to talk Tony out of coming up with a gangster name; Natasha, Bruce, Coulson and Pepper had tried to talk Tony out of coming up with a gangster name. Darcy's overwhelmingly glad that he wasn't allowed to pick his superhero name.

"Fine," Darcy mutters. "See if I invite you to stay for the show."

Darcy's spot has been chosen with the amount of care that the former president would have envied. It's got a brilliant view, perfect for her new camera glasses to catch the display and broadcast it to Tony's makeshift TV tower. It's enhanced with little to no likelihood of getting smashed to pieces in the process.

"You in place, Darcy?" Steve asks through her new earpiece, a stunningly designed pair of earrings that Darcy is never taking off, accidental bathroom transmissions be damned.

"Aye aye, Cap," Darcy says cheerfully. She fingers her glasses, turning the loose screw on the side that adjusts the zoom. She's keeping these things when she goes back to school. The idea of being able to sleep through Professor McBoringpants lectures is more tempting than it should be, now that she's promising herself she'll be the best student in the history of academia. "Any idea what Tony's got planned?"

"None," Steve says, longsuffering as always.

"Well, I've got the drinks," Darcy says, wedging herself into the corner between buildings. "You bringing the popcorn?"

"I prefer milk duds," Steve says. Of course he does. Darcy wants to pinch his cheeks and tell him how adorable he is; if he gets them out of whatever Tony's getting them into without them all being arrested Darcy might even restrict herself to his face.

"Have you been to many movies?" Darcy asks, tightening her coat around her to block out some of the sudden chill. "Because you'll probably have been disappointed wi-. OH MY GOD."

"Darcy?" Steve demands, his voice painfully loud in her ear. "What's happening? Are you all right?"

"OH MY GOD," Darcy repeats, jumping so high that she dislodges her glasses. She fumbles the catch, has to scramble to get them back in place and recording again. "He's insane. Steve, he's officially insane, oh my god, it's a DINOSAUR."

"A WHAT?" Steve shrieks, mixing hysteria with fury in a way that makes Darcy fairly sure that, at some point in the past year, he's seen Jurassic Park.

It's a dinosaur. A large, awkwardly moving, hauntingly realistic t-rex. It's stomping down the street, alternating between roaring and Darth Vader style breathing. The Bysrah aren't screaming, not how Darcy would classify it, but they're running and scattering, all high pitched chitters and waving arms. Darcy fights the urge to run as it comes closer, turns until it sees Darcy and pauses, lowering its gigantic head until it's staring her in the eye.

Up this close Darcy can see the metal, the dully glinting scales. She can hear the faint creak of joints as they shift, and the seamless functionality that could only come from Tony. She also sees all her childhood nightmares come to life, and she doesn't know whether she should be laughing or screaming.

The enormous mouth opens, a rumble coming from its cavernous belly. Darcy whimpers, scrunches her eyes closed. She is raising her hands to shield her head when it burps at her, and she's struck with hard, stinging projectiles. She catches one instinctively. She opens her eyes to see a Hershey's kiss, perfectly wrapped on her palm.

"Tony, you idiot!" Darcy hoots with laughter. The t-rex snorts, hot air and candy raining down on Darcy, then turns to the growing crowd of humans that have stopped screaming, and Bysrah, who haven't. "You absolute and complete shit-head!"

The crowd is surprisingly restrained as they line up for handfuls of free candy. In between she sees glints of metal. Darcy suspects that Tony has disregarded everyone's orders and included free samples of his communication device. All the better to sow rebellion with, Darcy agrees with him now; she's officially on his side for everything.

It's like a tastier Mardi Gras, with dancing and boobs flashing everywhere to try and earn more than their fair share of chocolate. Darcy picks a few people she can be sure are over twenty-one, because she still has standards, and slips random bottles of moonshine into their outstretched hands.

"Stop! You must stop!" One of the Bysrah (Darcy can't tell if it's exceptionally brave or just remembering that it's in charge) steps in front of the dinosaur with both hands raised.

"Oi, quit it!" One of the men Darcy supplied yells. Darcy detects the faintest trace of an accent, a gorgeous Australian one.

She bounces excitedly at it. "What, are you taking our holidays now?"

"Holidays?" The alien asks. That spot on its arm looks like a deformed penis. Darcy sniggers.

"Yeah!" Someone else pipes up, slightly muffled from a mouth full of chocolate. "It's…Extinction Day."

"Extinction Day?" Darcy is utterly enamoured by the confusion on its face; she points her glasses at it carefully, and mentally designs the poster she's going to put everywhere she can find. She's totally winning meme of the year award for this one.

"Yeah," the Australian says, crossing his arms angrily over his chest. "Where we remember all the species that are extinct, and they bring presents. My favourite day of the year."

"You get presents from large imaginary animals," the Bysrah says, and the doubt is not so fun.

"You haven't heard of Christmas?" The Australian guy asks.

"Or Easter?" Someone else pipes up.

"Halloween?" Darcy adds.

"Valentine's Day?"

"Mother's and Father's Day?"

"Wow, we really like presents," a young kid, out way past his bedtime, realises.

"Presents are awesome," his friend says, and Darcy adds that photo to her collection. In twenty years she'll be able to say she was here, in this moment, when Tony Stark invented Extinction Day and the world found a new reason to bitch about how materialistic a formerly altruistic holiday had become.

Darcy loves pessimism so much.

"Shit!" Darcy says, pressing on her earrings. "Tony, Tony a whole bunch of them are coming, and they're holding something."

The dinosaur throws its head back and roars, candy falling like streamers into the eagerly cheering crowd. Its steps are carefully destructive: avoiding living creatures, but causing huge amounts of damage to Bysrah support systems and the pre-fab buildings they seem to favour for storage and crowd control.

Its path leads towards the beach, far enough away from Tony's mansion that Darcy tells herself it won't be immediately obvious who's responsible. As though there are so many other people who have the capability to design and build something like this. She waves goodbye to its quickly whipping tail as it disappears from view, and is rewarded with a long, deep bellow and the faint smell of smoke.

"I don't know what to say," Steve says, dropping down from the building behind Darcy. He's frowning, the few bits of hair that poke out from under his cowl slick with sweat. Darcy offers him a tiny pack of milk duds she'd fished out of the debris.

"Just say it's awesome," Darcy advises him. "You got to see a dinosaur, and you won't want to kill him."

"It's awesome," Steve says obligingly. He nibbles on a piece of candy, but he's distracted and when the Bysrah start looking and pointing in his direction Darcy's stomach sinks.

"Steve, what are you…no, Steve," Darcy says. He smiles. She wants to be reassured, but these moments always hit her like a punch to the gut, a reminder that nothing is as fun as she wants it to be.

"I'm the distraction. It's all right," he says. Darcy hugs him; she doesn't want it to be goodbye, but she wraps her arms around him and squeezes tight just in case it is, and she can't find the words to say it. "I know what I'm doing."

Darcy salutes him quietly, looking away as he starts to run. Across the street from her the crowd falls silent. One by one people raise their hands to their foreheads: a sea of salutes as Captain America darts between them, twists around and vanishes behind a building. Darcy's not the first person to let her hand drop to her side, but she's not the last, either. The Australian dude, whose name turns out to be Greg, offers her a swig of her own rum and she accepts it gratefully.

"Think he'll be okay?" Greg asks her, soft enough that the kids that are still there, chattering excitedly, don't hear.

"He's survived worse," Darcy says, making a face as she takes a swig of substandard booze and lets it burn a path down to her stomach.

In the morning, while Tony's poking at the television and glaring at Steve, Steve's eating cereal and glaring at Tony and Darcy's gobbling chocolate and randomly hugging them both, there's an announcement that all future Extinction Days will be celebrated without live-action props. A special thank you is given to Stark Industries for the entertainment, and for not harming anyone in the demonstration of their new technologies.

The joy Darcy feels is extinguished when Captain America is named public enemy number one and a short clip is shown of a man - formerly serving life in prison and released on his own recognisance following the Clean Slate amendment - is executed for murdering a young mother of three.

She's out of rum, but the gin tastes just as bad and the new supply of it is ready.

***

It's strange, watching Pepper wander around agitated. She doesn't do it the same way normal people do, with sharp movements, harsh words or loud complaints. Instead Pepper organises. Everything in Tony's mansion is now colour coded and labelled, including Darcy. She's fond of her new, purple label; she's got it plastered across her forehead, half-hidden under her bangs.

The doorbell chimes with a sharp ding. Darcy's not the only one who jumps, and the sheepish smile they all share is close enough to a bonding experience that Darcy feels a little warm inside. Coulson strides in before the door fully opens, suit perfectly pressed and a large cut slashed across the place Darcy's label sits.

"Phil!" Pepper calls out. Her freakishly long legs make short work of the living room/command centre Tony has set up. Darcy sees nothing platonic about the way her hands cup his chin. There's definitely nothing platonic about the kiss they share. Darcy blanches when she sees tongue involved.

"Tony," Steve says, soft and quiet. Tony's gone white, a paleness emphasized by his dark hair. He looks sick enough that Darcy grabs his hand so that he'll have something to grab on to if he falls down.

"So that's happening," he says when Pepper breaks away, flushed. "That's a thing now, is it? Right. Okay."

"Tony," Pepper whispers. She doesn't let go of Coulson, but Darcy can see that it's a struggle. She's shaking a little. Darcy can't tell if it's desire or fear, or whether there's a lot of both happening at once. "I'm s-"

"Don't," Tony says, his hand slashing through the air in the international sign for shut the hell up now, please. "I don't want to hear it, you don't want to say it."

"Stark," Coulson says, angling his body to shield Pepper from view. Darcy tucks herself into a corner as tightly as possible. She feels hideously uncomfortable being witness to this, but she can't leave without being more of a disruption.

"Phil," Tony says, his adam's apple jumping as he swallows. "It's fine, don't worry about it."

Steve places a hand on his back, barely touching. Tony jumps, pushing him away and turning his back on all of them. It's been a while since Darcy's cried for anyone, but she'll admit right now that Tony's bringing tears to her eyes. She wipes them away with her sleeve, the garish iron man hoodie that she'd thought was so funny a few minutes ago.

"Jesus, people, calm down," he says, and when he turns back his face is back in the Stark Mask that Darcy recognises from all the Pinterest pictures she's now deleted. "It's fine, I'm fine, we're all fine, aren't we? Just peachy."

He pauses, as if he's considering saying more. Instead he whirls, striding out of the room with a brief pause at the bar. His supply of good alcohol is going down more quickly than Darcy is comfortable with. It has to make her the world's biggest hypocrite. She holds a brief argument with Steve, told through narrowing eyes and soft sighs. She wins by refusing to leave her corner, and Steve trails after Tony reluctantly, grabbing a large bottle of water on his way.

"Not how I planned the reunion," Coulson says dryly, but his eyes are soft and crinkly, and Pepper is pressed tightly against his side. "I didn't quite expect…"

"No," Pepper agrees, more gently than Darcy's seen from her. Darcy grinds her teeth when they kiss. She gives up when she sees tongue again, making a loud sound of protest.

"Right, well if you guys'll be fine here by yourself," she says, inching towards the door. She ducks past the couch quickly, guessing that's the first place they'll head for if they get really freaky and she doesn't want to be stuck under them if they get there before she can get away. "I'll just. Uh. JARVIS? You busy tonight? We should date, or uh…"

"Sorry, sorry," Coulson mutters, straightening the tie that Pepper's messed up. "I would prefer it if you stay."

Darcy's horror must show on her face, which prompts a new round of apologies that make Darcy feel distinctly uncomfortable.

"Actually, I had a message for everyone," he says, separating from Pepper regretfully. "One out of three is better than none, I suppose."

He flicks on the TV. Darcy's developing a bit of a phobia about the whole concept. When she gets back to Real Life she might give up the whole electronics age and go back to books. It served countless generations well, who's she to buck tradition, anyway?

"What are we watching?" Pepper asks. She's curling herself on the armchair opposite Darcy, which is a relief in more ways than one. The biggest being, of course, that there's no room for a man in black to squeeze in beside her.

"A Loki Special Production," Coulson says. Pepper and Darcy exchange looks, the one specifically reserved for members of the Sisterhood who are about to be screwed over by the Evil Outsiders and know there's nothing at all they can do to stop it.

"If he blows up New York again," Pepper says cheerfully, pouring herself a glass of wine from the bottle she'd placed on the coffee table at dinner. "I will hunt him down and stab him with the remains of the next season stilettos I haven't had a chance to buy yet."

"What she said," Darcy agrees, cuddling her own glass to her chest and sloshing half of it over her shirt. "With less stilettos and more priceless museum wreckage."

She's still pissed that her membership to the Museum of Natural History, a graduation present from Annie that she knows her cousin couldn't afford, was made unusable when the entire museum ended up in a gigantic pile of rubble underneath a flaming space-snake. If that god-like twat destroys another thing Darcy loves, she's shoving a shard of dinosaur bone right up his supernatural ass.

The screen flickers, then changes to show Clint and Natasha looking beautiful and extremely well-armed. In the background is a group of nervous looking mothers, holding babies, pushing strollers and generally looking far too fragile and breakable for Darcy's comfort. Around the edges, mostly out of the camera's view, Bysrah occasionally pass by in brightly coloured flashes.

Behind them, looming from the building like a large, green King Kong is the Hulk, a wide smile on his face.

"Oh no," Pepper whispers.

"This can't go well," Darcy says, dropping her glass of wine on her lap so she doesn't crack it with her tight grip. It looks like she's peed grape juice. That's probably preferable to the pain and blood.

"They assure me they have it under control," Coulson says grimly. Darcy's not sure what control passes for in S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters, but brain damage must be a large part of it if he can watch what's unfolding without wanting to scream.

On screen Natasha lets out a sudden whoop, firing her gun so wildly afar from the Hulk that Darcy can't believe anyone would think she was ever aiming for him. The aliens' coordination is fantastic, Darcy has to give them that. They pick Natasha and Clint out of the crowd instantly and start swarming, moving to entrap them in a circle of flailing purple and orange.

In unison, a movement so perfect that is has to have been rehearsed, the mothers start screaming and clutching their children to their chests. The babies react with crying, the high pitched sort of shriek that she's previously only heard in movie theatres and crowded airplanes.

It's almost beautiful, the complicated dance that Natasha and Clint do around the Bysrah and the screeching mothers. It's only a matter of time before someone gets too excited, gets careless, and she's not at all surprised when it's one of the Bysrah who accidentally backhands a young woman clutching tightly to a toddler.

She falls to the ground, shielding her baby's body with her own. Behind them the Hulk roars. The screen is filled with flailing green muscles, ever so lightly picking the woman and the baby up and jumping to safety, laying them on the ground outside the fight zone.

There's no room on Pepper's chair, but Darcy clambers on to it anyway, half on the arm and half on Pepper's lap. Pepper's grip is painfully strong. Darcy is grateful for how grounded it helps keep her.

One by one the Hulk removes all the people who aren't aliens or spies from the fight, blocking blows from alien weapons that Natasha and Clint can barely dodge with his body. Darcy keeps her eye on all of them, counts the children obsessively to make sure that each of them is moved, and then hidden. He's on the last one, a tiny baby whose arms are moving, flailing in terror, before he gets corralled by Bysrah.

When he trips, the baby is underneath him.

Pepper and Darcy cry out in unison. Hulk gets up quickly, bellowing in the face of the alien who stopped him. Where the child was lays a china doll, face still intact while its limbs are shattered into tiny peach coloured pieces. The camera flashes away abruptly. Darcy barely gets a chance to see, to reassure herself, before the picture vanishes.

"What the fuck," Darcy whispers.

"Loki," Pepper says, and she laughs. It takes Darcy a moment to get it, then she remembers Thor's stories of Loki changing shapes, of vanishing and creating a hundred copies of himself. She joins in Pepper's laughter because she's so relieved, but it weighs heavily in her stomach and she's glad there's no more than a sip of wine in her belly, because it's at risk of coming straight back up.

"He's there," Coulson points to one of the Bysrah, one Darcy had barely noticed because it's wedged behind a hot dog seller and barely moving. The hot dog vendor is a gigantic man, so big he must eat most of his wares. She almost kicks herself when she realises duh, you idiot, that's Thor.

With the last baby out of the way, and the screaming mothers finally silent, Natasha looks to the sky. Darcy's not sure where it's come from, or how it got there without anyone noticing, but the plane she's christened Avenger's Airway is flying over the top of them, a ladder dangling down. Natasha and Clint grab a hold of it, and each other, while Thor grabs a hold of Loki and raises Mjolnir.

The resulting rain obscures most of what Darcy's trying to see. All that's visible is Hulk hollering and jumping off in a bounce that would make Superman jealous. The Bysrah are more competent than the ones Darcy's seen before; they break off into groups, summoning their own flying machines, and give chase. Darcy has no way of seeing where any of them go, but she keeps her fingers crossed for all of them and forbids making terrified calls that will just be a distraction.

"I can't handle this," Pepper says. Darcy recognises the hopelessness, knows she's barely two days out of it herself. She doesn't have the talent for grand speeches, so she gets up and makes room for Coulson to squeeze in beside his new whatever the hell they are instead.

"You'll be fine," Coulson reassures her, his thumb stroking the base of her neck. Darcy pretends to find the view out the window interesting, the waves nearly invisible in the dim moonlight.

"Our turn now," Tony says from the intercom.

"It's not a competition, Tony," Steve answers. Darcy's a bit apprehensive about the two of them being left alone there right now.

"Sure it is, Cap. Us against them, except right now them is chasing a bunch of my friends, and one gigantic assclown, across New York City. So I'm going to find a way to distract them. You can sit there and radiate goodness if you want, or you can help. It doesn't bother me." Tony signs off before Steve can reply.

Pepper and Coulson are still distracted, curled together on the too-small arm chair. Darcy wants to go down to the lab, to help wherever she can, but her feet lead her back to her bedroom where JARVIS helpfully turns the TV on for her.

She curls up on top of the covers, cuddling tight to one of the expensive memory foam pillows she's always wanted, and watches the news until she falls asleep. In her dreams she sees bulletins of all the ways the Avengers were captured, and all the public executions that follow.

***

On the upside, Steve's no longer the top of Alien's Most Wanted. The sucky part is that Natasha, Clint and Bruce are, which doesn't do much for Darcy's morning mood. Combine this with the leaders of three other failed rebellions being hit with some sort of death ray and the incoming news of thirty eight riots, rebellions and other demonstrations of civic disobedience currently in progress, and Darcy's hands shake as she forcibly restrains herself from adding moonshine to her coffee.

"Are you all right?" Steve asks. Darcy jumps, spilling some of the hot liquid over her hand. She tears up, wiping it off with the dish towel before it can burn her. "Wait, let me…"

"I've got it," Darcy sniffs, rubbing it against the soft fabric of the nightshirt Pepper found for her. Steve's got a large, red bruise right at the base of his neck. Darcy's eyebrows shoot up when she sees it. "I could ask you the same thing."

"Yeah, Tony just…" He flushes a little. Darcy hands him her coffee wordlessly. He takes a large gulp of it while she starts to brew another mug for herself. "He was upset, and he wanted…"

"Rebound sex?" Darcy asks gently. She means it to be gently, anyway, but Steve averts his eyes. Darcy has never wanted to debauch someone as much in her life. It sucks that it's Steve; sweet, unhappy, brave and reckless Steve who'd make the best brother in history, and would cause severely uncomfortable feelings if Darcy ever saw his penis.

"Is that what they call it these days?" Steve says gamely. The coffee maker beeps at her, reminding her that one of the ridiculously complicated settings she needs to factor in has been pressed wrong. Darcy shakes her head at it, trying to convince herself that juice is just as good at waking her up. Steve, clearly a member of her psychic community, hands her mug back. Darcy's so happy at having even half a cup of delicious caffeine that she cries a little.

"How do you feel about it?" Darcy asks, reaching for all the training she'd gathered from half a semester of Psychology 101. Nearly failing it probably doesn't help her cause much, but Darcy's nothing if not nosy.

"I don't feel much like talking about it."

"I get that," Darcy says, patting his coffee mug-warmed hand. "I do, it's fine. Just…if there's a problem, you'll tell someone, right? It doesn't have to be me. Hell, it can be Mr. Muggles for all I care, just…someone?"

"I will, Darcy, thank you," Steve says. They should bottle super soldier kisses, because the one he drops on her cheek is freaking magical. "It's…"

"Complicated?" She suggests.

"Yes, that," Steve deadpans.

"You should put that on Facebook," Darcy muses, still amused by the friend request she'd gotten from both the Official Captain America account and the quiet, nearly empty Steve Rogers one. It was almost as comical as finding out Tony played the unofficial Avengers Assemble game, and was dangerously close to catching up to her agent level.

It's not the real Facebook; Tony's got a remarkable amount of important stuff back online, but Facebook isn't one of those things. He has a backup of it stored on a local server. Darcy's hounded him about it since she found out, and he still hasn't cracked and told her why. Darcy's beginning to think she really doesn't want to know.

"Captain America and Iron Man are It's Complicated?" Steve says, and he's laughing a little now. "How do you think that'll end?"

"Spectacularly," Darcy predicts, chortling a little at the idea. "It'd be the best thing ever, you have no idea."

"This isn't just another Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy thing, is it?" Steve asks her, his lips twitching.

"WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT?" Darcy shrieks, grabbing for the collar of Steve's shirt. Of course this is when Tony walks in, and now she'll never find out who's been spreading terrible lies about her, because Tony has that determined look on his face that means they're all about to get in all sorts of brilliantly dangerous trouble.

Brilliantly dangerous, in this case, refers to a new gadget thingy that is so complicated it would make Jane proud, and large canisters of things that Tony won't tell anyone about, preferring them all to have plausible deniability.

It also involves a midday trip to downtown Los Angeles. The aliens are getting better at the whole tracking thing; when her new tracker is put in, there are stern instructions given to make sure it doesn't get wet, stabbed or otherwise hit. The next person to get caught is told the same thing, though, so maybe Darcy's excuses are just becoming legendary.

This one doesn't get stabbed. Burning, on the other hand, is magnificently entertaining when it's happening to something that's already out of her skin.

Darcy's job, she discovers, involves exactly that. She's directed to a small, non-descript building that's surrounded by yet more glowing crystals. Darcy's not entirely sure what all this new-age shit is, but when she gets home she's throwing out that souvenir amethyst she'd half-believed might work and smashing every other piece of hippy paraphernalia she has to bits.

"Now what?" Darcy whispers to her earrings, Betty Boop ones that look just a little bit too much like Darcy for it to be a coincidence.

"How's your tracker?" Tony asks. Darcy can hear the smug grin from the bastard, but she gets the hint. It's not easy to wander around an obviously secure building while looking nondescript, but she waves her arm around absently and pretends to be looking for a lost contact. It makes little sense in retrospect, what with her still wearing her camera glasses. This is why Darcy likes to have scripts delivered in advance.

Eventually a grumpy looking Bysrah wanders out and sticks another one of the damned things in her arm, commenting about how badly scarred the area was, and that she should seek medical attention. Darcy has a bit of a panic attack before she realises the thing really does just want her arm to get fixed up. She pointedly doesn't look at Iron Man quietly sneaking into the building behind them.

"Come, come, in here now," the alien says. Medical attention isn't hospitals anymore, Darcy finds, it's just purple and orange aliens with garish yellow bracelets who act a hell of a lot nicer than the unadorned ones who keep sticking her with things.

"I hurt myself," Darcy tells one of them grumpily, holding out her arm. In truth she's getting more than a little sick of continually digging the crystals out and having the same gnawing pain, but some days it's about the only really rebellious thing she thinks she can do.

"Poor thing," it murmurs blankly, the first idiom she's heard one of them utter. It sounds mechanical, like its reciting a script. Watching the way these things are interacting with everyone around her, Darcy realises that's probably not far from the truth. "There, all done."

Darcy had only been distracted for a few seconds, but when she looks down she sees that yes, again, her arm is perfectly healed.

"Shame you can't cure cancer that easily," Darcy tells the Bysrah a little bitterly. It flicks the tool it's holding around its fingers until it glows green. It doesn’t smile, but its ears do twitch a little and Darcy thinks the orange spots might look a bit brighter.

"Yes, yes, we are close on this," it says. It's ridiculous, and all kinda of unfair, that some crappy alien jerk can say that when they haven't spent the past hundreds of years dying from it and doing everything they can to prevent it. "We can fix some already. Some are harder, it will be fixed soon. Do you have it?"

"What? No," Darcy says. She knows that kicking it would be the dumbest thing she can do, but she wants to so badly that her body vibrates with it. "I was just curious."

"You are interested in medicine?" It asks, and the ears twitch again. "That is good. You come, talk to us here, and you will be a medical practitioner."

"Dr. Darcy," Darcy says, choking on her anger. "My mother'd be thrilled. And I'll do that. I will. But I have to go now."

Her part of the task gone, Darcy doesn't have anywhere to go. She's never been to LA before. It's always been a dream of hers, and wandering the streets should be far more exciting than it is. Everyone looks…quiet. Like all the life has been drained out of them and replaced with a vacant sort of fear that makes their eyes glassy and strained.

She makes her way to Mann's Chinese Theatre, unenthusiastically placing her palms in all her favourite's celebrities' prints. She fits better on some of the people she doesn't like, which is a metaphor for Darcy's life.

"Darcy? Where are you?" Captain America asks. Darcy's a little sad to realise that there is such a big difference between Cap and Steve.

"Hollywood Boulevard," Darcy says. It makes her wonder how many of the crazy people she used to see on street corners were just talking in code to some sort of microphone Darcy couldn't see. She can't decide whether that thought makes her feel better or worse about life right now. "My hands are the same size as Roseanne's, should I worry?"

"I wouldn't," Steve says. "Don't move, we'll plan around you."

"What if I want to see?" Darcy asks, pouting. She has no idea how much she's being monitored, but on the off chance Tony's watching her she's been told that her pout should be weaponized.

"You'll see. You'll just be out of danger while you do," Cap says, and Darcy lets her pout drop. "While you're at it, see if you can encourage people to stay off the street."

"Does it matter how I do it?" Darcy asks, fingering her phone in her pocket.

"Not to me," Steve says and signs off. Darcy grins. All those photos she shouldn't have taken are about to come in really handy.

"Who wants to see Thor naked?" Darcy yells, holding the phone up. The man was buff, and surprisingly modest for someone who looked so damned good naked. He'd whipped a towel in front of the best bits as soon as he caught her watching, but it wasn't quick enough to prevent her getting in a couple of pictures that were going on the front of Jane's Christmas cards this year.

"Yeah right, lady," someone mutters as he walks past. Darcy flashes the phone at him and he gapes at her. "Holy shit!"

"I've also got Tony Stark!" Darcy shouts. "Tony Stark naked, ladies and gentlemen, only seen by millions of people around the globe!"

If things get hairy, she figures, she can pull out the pictures of shirtless Steve, though that seems a little disrespectful when he's all complicated and confused. There might be one of Natasha in there somewhere, but that's being saved for either a really drunken wedding toast or a failsafe method of committing suicide.

If there's one thing people can be counted on for, it's wanting to see naked pictures of celebrities. If there's a second, it's assuming that a crowd means good or free things for them and gathering around, even when they have absolutely no idea what they're crowding for.

"Oh, ew!" Someone on the outside of the crowd yells. Darcy tries to stand on tiptoes to see what Tony's got happening, and everyone in front of her steals the idea and does the same thing. Darcy's elbows are well-trained weapons, particularly good at pushing her way through crowds, bar bathroom lines and parade spectators, but hell if she doesn't practically step onto the goo before she sees it.

It's green, of course. All good goo has to be green, movies and comics are very particular on this. It smells like a combination of wet dog and grass, sticky to the touch. Darcy jumps to avoid getting it all over her shoes, an idea that never occurs to the Bysrah, who are darting in and out of it without forethought.

Darcy shepherds as many people away from it as she can, muttering things about police, Iron Man, free chocolate and, in one special case, flashing her boobs to a particularly stubborn business man.

"Nice view," Tony says cheerfully. She looks up to see Iron Man flying over the top of them in lackadaisical loops, firing his repulsors at seemingly random intervals. "One for the history books."

"That's going to be my legacy, isn't it?" Darcy sighs over the frantic beating of her heart. "You lot will save the world, and I'll be that chick who showed her breasts that time."

"Best kind of legacy," Tony says. Darcy forgives him for looking, as she somehow seems to forgive Tony for everything, and pulls the last spectator out of the way of the slowly spreading goo. "Ready?"

"For what?" Darcy asks rhetorically. Some kind of spray erupts from his boots, a sickly sweet mist. When it comes in contact with the goo it hardens, trapping all the Bysrah in a close formation that, Darcy sees with a sinking heart - if what she remembers from military history is right - would have been the perfect anti-air attack to knock Tony right out of the air.

"For this," Tony says. Something happens that Darcy can't quite catch. She blinks her eyes tightly closed; when she opens them, she's being lifted into the air by Iron Man. The mask looks like its smiling and she smacks at it, taking long, deep gulps of breath.

"Don't you dare drop me, Stark," she shrieks over the whistling air. "I swear to Thor, I will haunt your penis and scare away everyone you ever have sex with!"

Tony laughs, the asshole. She's telling Pepper when she gets home, and she'll make sure Pepper closes his lab, or sells his company, or whatever it is Tony finds as terrifying as flying through the air without a parachute or a reinforced metal frame to keep her alive.

"I hate you," she says when they land. "I hate you so much right now, you know that right?"

"Join the club," Tony says, his armour breaking away around him. "There's actually a club. It has cards, hats, a secret handshake. I think they meet on Wednesdays."

"I'm so in," Darcy mutters to herself.

"I hate Wednesdays," Tony finishes, clapping his hands together. "So, shall we see what my brilliance has wrought this time?"

"I'm certainly interested," Steve says. Darcy was a little in awe of his ability to show up at exactly the right time, before he'd told her it was just a case of lurking around corners and on top of buildings until he was needed. Captain Creeper doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

"Come in, then," Tony says. They have to use the big screen TV for it, and none of the half-hysterical news reports make a bit of sense to her. Tony watches her face for understanding. When it doesn't come he gives her the level of disappointed look she hasn't seen since she told him she wasn't the biggest fan of whiskey. "Their communications are down."

"What, all of them?" Darcy asks stupidly.

"The ones here, and in the surrounding states, yes. Most of the US if everyone managed their parts right. Ditto Britain, Russia, parts of China and one of those places on the bottom we don't talk about."

"Holy crap."

"Are you ready for the grand finale?" Tony asks. Darcy is nodding along in defiance of her confusion.

"What do you have planned, oh great Master?" Steve has his head buried in his hands, which Darcy's not sure is appropriate in the hallways of what really has to be the Church of Stark.

"Not me. Prancer's got the next bit," Tony shows more teeth than smile, but it's something. Darcy joins Steve, hiding her head behind a pillow, and waves goodbye to the Church before it ever really got a chance to live.

***

"I still think you've got the wrong person for this," Darcy says, stubbornly crossing her arms over her chest.

"All you have to do is run," Pepper says fretfully.

"That's the problem," Darcy argues. She points to her cleavage, impressive even when it's got a too-tight sports bra and an equally clingy sweater on top. "These don't do running. I don't do running, either, but the girls are the most immediate objection."

"That…they cause problems?" Steve isn't looking at her. Darcy had never thought she'd see the day where a wall, one not covered in porn at that, was more interesting than the twins.

"You try running with a couple of sandbags attached to your chest and see how you do," she points out sternly.

"Right," Steve says blankly. "All right, so…"

"So I'll do it," Darcy says. "I just can't guarantee I'll do it quickly enough."

"You'll be fine, Darce," Tony pats her back. Darcy considers it a sign of personal growth that he keeps his hands a respectful distance away from her bra strap.

"Yeah, right," Darcy mutters. "Let's just get this done, huh? Oh, hey, Loki?"

"Yes?" Loki asks, already in his guise of scary Bysrah agent, surrounded by awesome wacky clones that Darcy can't tell from the real thing. She closes her eyes, puts her hands up to her chest and prays for a happy ending to this, the ability to get out of it alive and that someone will buy her the adorable puppy she saw being walked by a perplexed looking alien on the way here.

He jumps, and Darcy grins.

"Gotcha!"

Having someone chasing you makes running a whole lot easier. For Thor's brother, the guy sure has a hell of a temper on him.

"Would you stay still?" Loki yells as Darcy weaves through terrified crowds of humans and confused groups of aliens. "I intend to kill you either way, it would be much easier for me if you weren't moving!"

"You're just saying that for the crowd, right Loki?" Coulson's voice comes coolly through Darcy's earring phone.

"Mustn't talk now. Running," Loki says. Darcy's going to kill whoever introduced him to sarcasm, even if she has to invent a time machine and go back to murder his grandparents or whatever it is frost giants have. Darcy hopes they come from eggs; a gigantic omelette would be awesome after all this sprinting.

"I still have that gun," Coulson says.

"I would never hurt any citizen of this wonderful planet," Loki says. Darcy's beginning to think her sense of humour needs a makeover. Dry quips are all well and good, but if she sounds at all like Loki when she makes them, she's turning herself into Pollyanna and being thankful for the warning.

"Good. Now shut up and stick to the plan."

Darcy's not sure what the plan is, exactly. She was briefed on it this time, the first mission since the rebellion started that she'd been trusted with the details of. It was also far too much like her freshman history lectures, and Fury had been halfway through explaining before Darcy realised she'd spent the whole time doodling pictures of the Avengers in little space suits and had no idea what had been said.

"Almost there, Darcy," Pepper says. To Darcy's immense relief she sees she's right. She reaches the lobby of Stark Industries in record time.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Darcy pants. She's led down a hidden hallway with Don, a man she'd met the other day who's grandchildren are the cutest ginger babies Darcy's ever seen. If anyone's going to eat her soul, she wants it to be those kids. "You okay there, Don?"

"Just fine, Ms. Lewis," Don says, because unlike the man who owns the building, he's a true gentleman. The click of Pepper's stilettos ahead of them is uplifting, in a all the people you care about aren't going to die today way. "You know what's happening here?"

"Sure," Darcy says when her voice comes back to her. "We go out the back way, and try not to cry when we see what happens to all of Tony's offices."

The back way leads them to Loki, again. While Darcy likes Don she isn't beyond using him as a human shield, just in case Blitzen wasn't joking about skinning her and using her skin to seduce all her ex-boyfriends. Don doesn't like the Bysrah any better than she does, and the faces he makes when trying not to react to one that's obviously friendly to them are hysterical.

"Those better be your clone troopers," Darcy says when more aliens start pouring around the building. Loki smiles smugly, his brow furrowing in concentration. There's a line of tape, disturbingly new and obvious, a block away from the building. Darcy wants to pray that all the people surrounding it have been evacuated as promised, but she's slightly anxious that if she does Loki will tear her head off and make her hair into a wig.

He's creative that way.

"You okay, Pepper?" Tony asks, hovering a few centimetres off the ground. "You don't have to look."

"I am looking," Pepper says. "And if the next building doesn't say Stark and Potts Industries on it, I'm having Darcy do something terrible to you."

"It's true," Darcy confirms. "I already have plans. Some of them involve Jane."

"Stark and Potts," Tony says, firing his repulsors and putting more distance between himself and Pepper. "Got it."

"Then do it," Pepper says, like it’s permission Tony needed for something. Darcy offers a small, wrapped chocolate, the hideously expensive type that has always seemed like such a waste to a poor college student, but that she knows Pepper adores. Pepper unwraps it with trembling hands, pops it in her mouth and lets it sit there, melting on her tongue.

Darcy holds her hand up in a silent salute to the building that's seen so much action. Loki's clones, scarily identical and moving with the same savage grace of their creator, surround the building and hold up their weapons. Darcy focuses on the windows, tries to look at all the AI-less metal creations Tony's stuck in there. She's not thinking at all about any people who might have ignored the hundred memos, messages and fire alarms.

The clones open fire with what looks like rays of pure energy. One of them is close to her, and when she puts her hand near it she feels nothing. Emboldened, Darcy puts her hand through one of the beams. She still feels nothing. It's like putting your hand through a movie's projector beam. It interrupts the picture, but nothing else happens.

Tony's holding something in his hands. When Darcy looks closer she sees an actual black box, with a real big red button on it. Somewhere in that suit he must be cackling, because he presses it with all the drama and pomp that would suit the opening of his company headquarters, not the destruction of it.

Even from this distance, one calculated by Tony to be safe, Darcy can feel the force of the explosion on her face. No debris reaches them, of course Tony got that right, but the building buckles like it's been kicked by a titan. There's a sense of majesty to it, this solid pile of brick hovering for a second before it collapses to the ground.

"I've wanted to do that for thirty years," Tony says, sounding funny. When she talks about it to him later, Darcy promises she'll believe him if he tells her it was just the mask, and not something else clogging his throat and stopping his words.

Loki's clones go in for the kill. Loki himself is clearly fighting the strain of it. From the rubble Thor is pulled out, followed by Captain America. Darcy presses her hand to her heart, reminds herself that the real Thor and the real Captain America are perfectly safe, far away from here, but it's too close to so many of her nightmares to allow her to breathe easily.

"Please don't do this," Darcy says. She knows it's no more real than any crappy action movie, but she can't bear to watch it even in illusion. "Oh God, please…"

"Stop it," Loki hisses. It takes Darcy a minute to realise he's talking to her, that she's inadvertently been praying again. She can't stop it, she can't fight the tears when she sees Steve's bloody face, or when Thor's arm makes an audible crack and hangs uselessly at his side.

It was only a matter of time, she knows that, before the real aliens caught up with them, but even knowing they have a relatively fool proof escape plan isn't enough to comfort her. She grabs for Loki anyway, because that's what she's supposed to do, and Pepper makes a dive for Tony. The leader approaches Loki. Darcy doesn't understand why when Tony's got to be the one they know the best.

"You have made your point," the alien says. Loki raises an eyebrow. He does that better than Fury and Coulson combined, she's got to learn how, and remains silent. "We will talk."

"I don't much feel like dying for your pleasure today," Loki says smoothly. "But thank you for the generous invitation."

"No one will die," the alien says. Darcy thinks she might be beginning to get it, because she'd swear it registers as disappointment. "We will talk. Now."

There's no way this can be good.