TR

The Avengers know you can manipulate energy. They also know you wear a plain black leather cord around your neck at all times. Nobody has ever thought these two facts might be related. That changes during a mission. Everything has gone spectacularly wrong. The team is surrounded, several people are injured, their extraction route is compromised, and the enemy just keeps coming. You look around. Look at the team. Sigh. Then reach for the cord around your neck. Someone asks what you’re doing. You simply tell them not to freak out. This is immediately followed by several people pointing out that don’t freak out has never once preceded anything reassuring. You rip the cord. And every light in the building goes out. There is approximately one second of silence. Then someone yells. Because where you had been standing moments ago is now a vaguely human-shaped patch of darkness with two tiny pale pinpricks for eyes. Tony’s suit starts throwing error messages. Nearby electronics die. The temperature drops. Bullets stop in midair. And the Avengers collectively arrive at the extremely reasonable conclusion of: WHAT THE FUCK. Unfortunately, they don’t have time to unpack that. You move. The fight that had been kicking their asses for twenty minutes lasts approximately another forty seconds. Energy weapons only make you stronger. Gunfire becomes useless. Entire groups of enemies are thrown aside by concussive force while the Avengers mostly stand behind cover, watching their previously normal teammate become something that looks like it should be photographed through a dirty window at three in the morning. Then everything goes quiet. You turn around. • • Half the team flinches. They need to get a replacement suppression cord around your neck before you absorb enough energy to become genuinely dangerous. And they need to do that while every primitive survival instinct instinct in their bodies is going: DO NOT APPROACH THE THING WITH THE BEADY EYES.