There's a hideous silence that falls over the usually active open plan office and it prompts Darcy to poke her head up over the partition for a quick spot of reconnaissance. She had released a devastating volley of Nerf darts in a wide arc, aiming for Barton's last known position. It's a tactical error that she won't make twice. How could she have forgotten to factor in the air conditioning vent?! It's an error that could end up costing her both her pride and her reputation... If it doesn't end up costing her her life.

The darts have overshot (which, pleasingly, means the BB pellets she's added to the darts are working) and run roughly twenty degrees off course, sending them smack into the thoroughfare between partitions. The three darts she managed to squeeze off are being held aloft, crushed in the unforgiving grip of a gleaming, mechanised silver hand. Darcy isn't catholic, but she feels the near-overwhelming need to cross herself.

Mr Tall, Dark and Pant-Wettingly Scary scans her segment of the office through dark kohl-smudged eyes. It seems like the perfect moment to stop, drop and leopard crawl her way to safety.

The first time it happened had been an accident. The second time is fact-checking, because Darcy fails to see (eye witnesses be damned) how one man (superhuman or not) can catch three custom darts fired from her modded-as-all-fuck Maverick Nerf Gun. But he can. He does. And Darcy is pretty sure that it's Barton who rats her out after the fourth failed attempt.

"Darcy, kiddo," Tony approaches her with caution as he sets a cup of coffee and a hard-case Stark Industries box down onto her work station. "Have you slept?"

Sleep is for people secure in the knowledge that they reign supreme as the Nerf Overlord of all who dwell in their kingdom. Sleep is a luxury Darcy can't afford. Not with an enemy like Bucky.

Bucky. Such an innocuous, friendly name. You had beers with guys named Bucky. You compared gas-mileage with guys named Bucky.

But not Darcy Lewis. She wants to wage war with Bucky, because Darcy Lewis always gets her man.

Darcy looks up from from the lengthened barrel of her Nerf gun and blinks. She reaches past the coffee for the box. "Is this it?" She inspects the now purple darts and peers down the central void, now filled with a narrow electrical cartridge.

"Peak voltage of 60,000 volts, enough to put me on my arse for a few minutes."

She grunts and Tony takes it as thanks.

"Let me know how you go, R&D are looking to fence them as non-lethal crowd control." There's a pause, he pets her hand, "I mean, if you live to talk about it."

Bucky grabs Steve by the scruff of the neck and hauls him around just in time to deflect a short burst of bullets. Real ones.

"I used to be good with women, Punk," Bucky mutters as they both crouch behind the shield and awkwardly crab-walk backwards until they reach cover.

"I'm not the guy to ask for advice," Steve reminds him as they squat behind a clapped-out Jeep.

Bucky stands and hurls a flash grenade into the distance, then drops back down with a huff while they wait for it to do its work. "I'm used to 'em being all curves and lipstick. Y'know, sweet stuff."

"Lewis is all curves," Steve says without thinking.

Teeth and the promise of imminent pain flash across Bucky's black-smudged features.

"Ask her out?"

"She keeps shooting me with that thing."

"It's a toy!"

"Last time she had thumbtacks glued to the end."

Even Steve has to pause for a second there, Lewis is an odd duck, but he's grateful that there's at least one other person that isn't treating his friend like a leper. Against all contrary advice and common sense, she has zero reservations about stepping on Bucky's toes.

They both duck a little lower and clench their eyes shut as a brilliant white light blasts through the parking garage. In the confusion that follows they both draw up to their full height and prepare to charge, Steve stops Bucky for a second with a hand on his shoulder. "Have you considered returning fire?"

Barton won't play anymore. He cites her 'rampant instability' and 'flagrant disregard for personal safety' as the reasons. Darcy mutters something about 'thumbs' and being under them.

His loss.

She's moved onto bigger game anyway, but it would have been handy to have a low-rung player to field test her new rounds on.

Hill has taken to leaving flyers on her desk. Well, just one flyer. It's about company policy regarding workplace bullying and physical violence, but she does leave it several times. Sometimes it's even highlighted.

"It's like he's not even human," Darcy gripes as she shoves Jane's work out of the way and starts to strip down her gun.

"That's not abnormal here," Jane notes as she ambles by and plucks an unspent round from the chamber."Glitter?"

"I was trying it out. It worked. Sort of. Even when he caught them the glitter got him. It was like a fabulous buckshot."

Jane ruffles Darcy's hair and glitter rains down on the desk.

"Fabulous and messy. It jammed the gun."

Darcy grabs her taser rounds from the bottom drawer. It's time to kick things up a notch.

"There are easier ways to get men, Darce."

Like hitting them with a car? Still, she doesn't dignify that with a response because she is far too grown up to stoop to infantile barbs.

She blows deposits of glitter out of the barrel of the gun.

A lot of planning goes into pinpointing the perfect moment to take Barnes down. Tony suggests the locker room. Certain parts of Darcy are so on board with that suggestion that it's just plain embarrassing. Barton suggests the debriefing room, but Darcy has more honour than to strike a man while he's fatigued.

Not that she can really say she's ever seen Bucky looked fatigued, just slightly less lethal than usual.

She even dresses for the occasion, a black knit sweater that hits her mid-thigh, black tights and a pair of black Chucks... for sneaking. She stuffs her hair into a dark maroon knitted cap (alas, no black caps in her wardrobe) and then absconds with and modifies the webbing from one of Natasha's old outfits. The look is slightly less bad-arse when she adds the retina-searing orange and yellow gun, but overall, she thinks she can almost channel Natasha, Hill if she downgrades it.

In the end, she goes for the scene of her first (inadvertent) strike. Up until that point she had tested her wily opponent over a range of varying terrains, never the same one twice. It only makes sense to try and get him off his guard, but she considers the environmental factors (that goddamn aircon) and the skill of her opponent and opts to strike from above.

There are multiple air conditioning ducts that feed into the office, one feeds in from high on the wall, just above the main point of ingress to the office. It's damn perfect. True, she ends up having to get there at five in the morning to avoid detection, and then she rings Barton to help her get up there because... well, this is a Nerf war, not the fucking gymnastics division of the Olympics.

By eight she's seriously reconsidering her plan. It's a working aircon duct and she's freezing, she's needed to pee for over an hour, her back is not loving her prone sniper's position and Barton (the douche) keeps passing under her vent with cups of coffee and still-warm muffins. She almost shoots him, but she's waited too long to give up the element of surprise now.

Around her, the vent creaks and her heart kicks up a bit. Barton swore that the vent had held his weight on multiple occasions, but then he has seen the inside of a gym since Miley Cyrus wigged out. Darcy, however, has not. She shivers, even though the aircon seems to be dropping off, and drops her head once more to check that the sight of her gun is lined up to the main wal-

Suddenly she's being hauled backward through the vent, feet first. She is moving with freaky speed and she can't shake the hard shackle that's closed around her ankle. First she tries to slow her capture by grabbing at the walls of the vent, but she scrambles and can't find anything to grip. She strikes out with her free foot, but only hits something solid and metal, it hurts like a bitch and does more damage to her than she does to it.

Realisation is coupled with a falling sensation as the passage opens up into a downward facing vent and suddenly she's in freefall. Darcy braces for pain, but it never comes. Instead, there's a soft, masculine 'Ooph!' as she lands in a pair large, warm arms.

It's funny that the first thing she notices is that his prosthetic arm isn't cold. It's scooped under her knees and every bit as warm as the hard, wide chest that she's hiding her face against. She briefly contemplates pleading ignorance, but then hears the clatter of her gun slipping free of the vent.

Shit.

Bucky has no problems with dumping her arse-first onto a desk in what appears to be a spare private office. The knit cap has slipped low during her 'journey' so she loses it altogether and tosses it aside. It occurs to her that she's never been this close to Bucky before (the optimal range for her Maverick was 70 feet, she'd tried outside once with Barton's Zombie Strike Crossbow at 170 feet - he'd been even better at catching those).

Close up, he's much better looking than he is in the distance (and she's a pretty big fan of how he looks then too). The black of his uniform is smudged with dust, her outfit probably is too, and his hair is sticking up in odd places (ditto). He's forgone the boot polish about the eyes and he looks...

He crosses his arms over his chest (sweet Jesus, the bulging), his dark sweater shifts to reveal a sliver of prime abdominals and Darcy notices the neon of a Nerf N-Strike Elite Rampage hanging by a strap and swinging between his shoulders, there's an Elite Rough Cut 2X4 holstered at his hip and she doesn't think she's ever been more turned on in her life.

"Barton is a dirty rat," she mutters.

"Not Barton," he sounds almost insulted, "Your perfume has been blowing in from the vents all morning, Doll. S'been driving me insane." He growls the last word and she swears she can feel heat rolling off him.

"Do I at least get a head start?" Darcy asks with a hopeful grin.

"Thirty seconds. Loser buys dinner," he says with a slow grin as he swings the long-barrelled Rampage around and grips it with with a terrifyingly casual ease.

"A minute," she pleads.

"Fifteen seconds."

Darcy doesn't bother arguing any further, she just dives for the door.

Darcy doesn't get to use her taser darts until three months later, when Bucky reveals himself to be a blanket hog.

She takes the shot at point-blank range while he sleeps and doesn't hesitate or feel even the slightest niggle of guilt... because Darcy Lewis always gets her man.