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Greenwich and Rector Street, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York September 11, 2010

Four minutes and eight seconds after Tony arrives on the 88th Floor of Stark Tower…

Author's Notes: 30 days. 12 Chapters. 55,000 words (yes, I beat NANOWRIMO) while leading you by the hand into a scary thing in what I like to call Organic Technology, I am finally pulling the 'fuck-it' cord and bringing it to you loud and proud.

This is an Iron Man story; several someones are about to get the shit kicked out of them. There will also be some indications of 'battlefield interrogation techniques' not approved of publicly (ie, ask questions, cause pain, get answers).

Knuckle up, shavetails, it's-a clobberin' time!

Anthony Edward 'Tony' Stark was about fifteen seconds away from the intersection of Greenwich and Rector Street, assembled and flying his Iron Man Mk. IV Suit at an altitude of less than a hundred feet above street level as his crimson-and-gold armor suit streaked above traffic and stop lights as his Heads-Up Display fed him both real-time audio/visual feeds, targeting information, several separate views of note-worthy items, and the audio track of AC/DC's Thunderstruck going at full volume. There was still no answer from Virginia 'Pepper' Potts' cell phone, and JARVIS had detailed to him that the New York Police Department hadn't been called yet due to a disruption-of-service to the local area surrounding the intersection at a one-hundred meter radius.

Tony highly suspected a Warlock Duke Signal Interference Device; a US Navy device meant to prevent Remote Control Improvised Explosive Devices from detonating on combat patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan, 'snowing' the local area with high-gain static noise to disrupt frequencies in the cellular range. It would also prevent cell phones from working, incoming or outgoing. Just another piece of military technology these fuckers had at their disposal. That wasn't equipment one could just get passed off on them whenever the fuck they wanted; those things were several hundred thousand dollars each, had a specific program to disrupt most signals while allowing others for internal communications, and was considered a sensitive item for the military, meaning that it was checked upon on a monthly basis. The Navy didn't just let one fall off the back of a damn truck.

[Sir, y…u ar- curr…tly e-tering th- de…d zo—], JARVIS spoke through heavy static before being cut off as Tony flew right towards the intersectionwhere a mess of traffic was stalled from what looked to be an accident right in the heart of the intersection of Greenwich and Proctor where a black Cadillac Coupe de Ville was t-boned by what appeared to be a blacked-out Cadillac Expedition with two more blocking both access of the intersection while surrounding the Coupe de Ville. Already several electronic markers showed Tony that a dozen men were out in the intersection, all dressed in black suits and wielding heavy-caliber battle rifles in their hands while one was operating… what the fuck, the Jaws of Life? He was seconds from making an introduction of a painful kind when a pop-up showed him that the car had been shot at multiple times for assassination or access, but had failed to pierce the doors or the windows. Someone had generously thought to bring a power tool meant to pry doors open as ten of the men were aiming their weapons at the other motorists and pedestrians of the intersection in a near-side cordon to keep the civilians, the curious, and the anonymous hero at bay.

Fuck that shit, Tony thought to himself as he landed Superman-style right in the heart of the fracas, the suit landing with a loud CLANG! as he hit the pavement in a crouch, one knee to the asphalt with the knuckles of his armored hands poised on the gray surface, his head bowed down for just a moment to have the assholes look at his crouched form before he jerked his head straight up to show them that their day had just taken a decisive turn for the worse.

Tony slowly got this his feet as he saw ten members of the little goon squad all point their FN Herstal SCAR-H's at him, their faces tight with determination… and knowledge that they were about to find out what a bad case of iron poisoning was going to feel like.

"Keep him busy while we retrieve the package!" One of the goons by the Cadillac said, standing next to the operator of the Jaws of Life, the spreading device already wedged into the crack between the door and the car frame and the power tool, revving loudly. Gunfire erupted from ten battle rifles as 7.62x51mm rounds struck his chest and helmet with damn good accuracy and groupings, each weapon set for three-round burst and each firer squeezing the trigger twice a second. Three hundred rounds struck him in less than ten seconds as the ten assholes dumped the entirety of their magazines onto his still-standing form as ricochets and metal-on-metal could be heard while Brian Johnson led up to the chorus of the song that was blaring inside his suit speakers. Tony watched the men just look at them as he stood there, an internal diagnostic reporting the damage done by the rounds as negligible.

"My turn."

Tony charged both of his palm-oriented flight stabilizers and raised his hands up and forward, targeting two of the goon squad and gave them a taste of his repulsor blast, set at near-lethal levels. The familiar sound of VWRREE-BADOOM! came to his audio receptors as two of them men were knocked back hard by the blast, the eight remaining targets quickly pulling out spare magazines to reload their rifles as the moved for cover via the various vehicles surrounding them as Tony charged up his right hand stabilizer and fired at one of the suited men, the man diving behind the cover of a pick-up truck and avoiding being hit as Stark pivoted while charging up his left hand stabilizer and firing at one man behind a sedan, hitting the car instead and knocking him back a few feet when the car jerked with the impact. Round were hitting him once more as he charged up both stabilizers in his hands and hit another car that was being used as a shield, knocking it sideways a few feet and striking the two men behind it down.

"Doors' open!" The man with the Jaws of Life announced with the accompanying sound of metal snapping, the device prying the door open as Tony turned to see the two men on the opposite side of the Cadillac readying themselves. "Get ready for extrac-"

The rear passenger side door exploded open, battering the suited man who had the Jaws of Life in his hand away, flinging him hard into a nearby car ten feet away, slamming him into the rear quarter panel as he bounced off and fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. The other man was reaching for the SCAR-H that dangled at his chest courtesy of a two-point sling as something bolted out of the car, hands grasping his shoulders as a figure smaller than he grabbed him, twisted him around and pivoted as the man was sent flying with a throw.

He landed in a bistro with a crash. Through a plate glass window. Across two lanes of traffic and a sidewalk.

Standing there beside the pried-open door of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville… was a young redheaded woman who looked to be thirteen or fourteen years of age with green eyes blazing with anger as she stood with her fists clenched and her face dark with fury. Stark and the rest of the men were momentarily distracted by the new arrival as the forty-year old man looked at Athena as she stood there dressed only in jeans and a blouse, out in the open and unprotected.

"Athena! Run!" Tony called out as he was struck hard, the dull thump of an explosion impacting against him, staggering backwards a couple of feet as a threat window popped up front-and-center of his line-of-sight to show him that the man with the Heckler and Koch XM25 Counter-Defilade Target Engagement System had fired upon him. Another pop-up showed a warning concerning his suits' integrity, having dropped several percentages as an alert came up explaining why.

HEAT Round. Someone was loaded up with high-explosive, anti-tank grenades.

"Grab the little bitch!" The XM25-armed man shouted as he fired again, the grenade impacting against Tony's armored chest, sending him reeling back another few clanking feet as he charged up the flight stabilizer in his right palm as he was struck again, the targeting system losing acquisition as he careened into some vehicle behind him. A pop-up window showed two of the suited goons heading right towards Athena, standing alone and unprotected.

"NO!" Tony shouted as he was struck for the fourth time, the integrity warning getting rather insistent as the Mk. IV's integrity dropped to 58% while the others fired upon him with their SCAR-H's battle rifles. He was slammed against the car again with the fourth grenade, almost losing his balance as he righted himself only to see the grenadier taking aim to ready fire at him again.

Except the shot never came to pass.

From the left, there was a body gracefully leaping in mid-air that twirled like a top towards the man loaded with heavy munitions that landed a vicious spinning side-kick that had the man slam into a nearby SUV so hard that the vehicle actually tilted on its side a little, two of its wheels off the ground for a slight moment before landing back on the ground, its rear passenger side door horrifically crumpled by the man's impacting body. The man himself laid in a bloody heap on the pavement. Where the man once stood was now Athena, Tony able to get back on his proverbial feet to see that the two men who had come after her were, well…

One was decorating the crumpled hood of a nearby car, half-impaled in its windshield, and the other was practically a bloody smear on the pavement about twenty or so feet away.

"That's six!" Tony shouted as the remaining men raised their rifles towards him, obviously having orders to capture Athena alive. Unfortunately for them, not only was Athena not willing to be recaptured, she seemed rather capable of making sure that couldn't happen either. Tony charged up one of his stabilizers as he fired at one man who was firing at him with his battle rifle, knocking the man down as Athena absolutely rushed another in a blur of speed, backhanding the man and sending him soaring through the air like a pinwheeling rag doll only to land past the nearest vehicles around them with a thump. Tony charged another shot with his repulsor blast, hitting a man in the stomach fifteen feet away as the young woman pounced another armed goon, doing a small leap and executing a beautiful Spartan kick right to the man's chest. That guy hit the hood of a car and went over the roof with a tumble to land past the struck vehicle. The the next man available pulled something off his belt, something yellow and pistol-like as he fired it not at Tony but at Athena, a pair of barbs connected to tethering wires striking her in the chest. Taser gun, the billionaire recognized the Taser Corporations' X26C Stun Gun as the young woman grunted at the barbs that struck her.

Much to Tony's surprise, she didn't fall to the ground or start seizing with 50,000 volts of electricity as the young woman reached up and ripped the barbs that struck the right side of her chest.

"Stupid piece of shit didn't work." The man tossed the yellow-colored pistol-like stun gun to the ground in disgust.

"Oh, it did." Athena said with a smile and a quick nod that didn't promise joy. "It just wasn't big enough." Tony couldn't believe his ears as he barked out a laugh and raised a charged stabilizer to blast the man silly as he went for his dangling rifle, but the young woman beat him to the punch… literally. Before he could fire at the suited goon, Athena rushed him and delivered a blindingly-fast uppercut that had the man airborne for a couple of seconds before he landed with a bone-shattering thump upon the pavement. Twenty feet away. He wouldn't be walking that one off… ever.

"'It just wasn't big enough?'" Tony had to ask as he turned his helmeted head to look at the young redheaded woman, who looked back at him as she walked over to his side.

"It didn't do what it was suppose to do, supposedly. It wasn't big enough. Why?" The young woman asked, her tone curious.

"I'll tell you when you're older." Tony replied dryly, trying not to chuckle at the rather emasculating comment Athena had so innocently made. Thank God he wasn't going to have to have that discussion right now. Wait… does she even know anything about sex education? That thought sent a shudder through him, trying to imagine that conversation. Like… never.

"That's… only eleven." Athena announced, looking around. "There were twelve men." Shit, she was right. Tony was impressed that even in the middle of battle, Athena had kept track of such things, even at a in-the-moment level when adrenaline could ruin or tunnel-vision one's focus. He had his advanced sensor suite and highly-evolved alert programs for just that very thing, helping him become more adaptable and effective even in the worst of situations, tracking targets when being fired upon and situational awareness beyond what a normal man, even a trained one, could do. Athena was likely doing something like that to some significant degree without the aid of electronics. Well, Captain America had done the same in World War II, right? Strategic genius, tactical thinker… increased perception and situational awareness, that would certainly explain some of that particular legend.

There was the sound of a car door being slammed closed behind them as Tony turned to see that one of the blacked-out Cadillac SUV's had gained an occupant in the driver seat.

"He's getting away." Tony warned as he shot himself forward not by running but with a quick burst from his stabilizers on his feet and hands for a extreme low-altitude juke that had him landing right behind the back bumper of the Escalade as the engine roared to life, no doubt the accelerator mashed to the floor as he heard the transmission being put into gear. Tony leaned down and grabbed the back end of the SUV and lifted, trying to keep the rear wheels of the Cadillac from contacting the street for traction and acceleration; to prevent the man from running away like a bitch. An alert popped up in the front of his field-of-view indicating that the vehicle's weight just barely exceeded his lifting capacity as Tony's armored fingers dug into the SUV's frame for purchase as the spinning tires bounced up and down from the pavement as he put himself in a position to keep the last goon still vertical from fleeing, but also preventing himself from being able to detain the suited gorilla. Stark took to a knee to get better leverage and a superior lifting position as the Mk. IV suit strained to lift the vehicle, servos squealing in high-pitch with the strain as Tony tried to add his own physical muscle to pick up the over-maximum-rated lifting weight of his suit to hoist the Cadillac.

And then, much to his surprise, a pair of hands accompanied next to his own, causing him to look to his right to see that Athena was kneeling next to him, her own hands clutching the bumper of the Escalade as she began to lift it up right next to him, the vehicle beginning to tip forward as they lifted the back end together, the tires clearing a couple of feet of airspace as they spun uselessly.

"On the count of three, squat, push, and heave!" Tony told the young woman helping him pick up a fucking Sports Utility Vehicle as the redhead nodded. Tony lowered his hands to his shoulders as the young woman next to him bent her knees and her arms. "Onetwothree!"

The car was tossed upward, pivoting on its front bumper as it stood vertically for a moment before finally tipping forward and landing on its roof like a upended turtle with a loud crunch of metal and sound of shattering glass.

"Let's introduce ourselves." Stark said as he moved to the driver-side front door, slamming his armored fist through the splintered tempered glass, grabbing the door frame, and ripping the driver-side door right off its hinges. Athena was already at his side as she bent down, reached into the upside down vehicle, and ripped the man inside of it outward, laying in a heap on the underside of the roof, conscious and groaning. She shocked Tony by not only pulling a full-grown man out of the car, but also lifting him over her head single-handedly, her hand clutching at his dress shirt and black sports blazer at the center of his chest and hoisting him above her head. Athena lifted the man straight up above her head, his chest horizontal as his arms and legs dangled downward, the man gripping her wrist and struggling as he came to a realized the situation he was in.

"Who sent you and why!" The young woman asked forcefully at the man she held above her head, her tone brooking nothing less than total seriousness.

"Please, kid. I'm made of sterner stuff than that." The lifted man quipped, his voice a little distorted from his dangling face-down position as Athena's face went ugly for a moment as she thrusted him into the Cadillac, his back slamming into the metal chassis, making him cough and gasp for breath.

"Who! Why!" The redhead asked again, Tony content to watch as she pressed a man against an up-ended car with his feet still dangling in the air, just a few inches from the ground. She didn't even look tired hoisting him up.

"Don't look at me, pal." Tony offered in a cheerful tone that belied what he truly felt. "It's that time of month, and it's you that's going to be doing the bleeding." The man gulped a little as Athena looked at him with a frown, obviously not getting that reference.

Instead, he decided to swing at the young Super Soldier holding him up in the air and against a car, his fast cracking against her jaw, just behind the chin.

Much to Tony's amazement, not only did the punch not follow through, it landed dully against the side of the young woman's face as if hitting a two-by-four. Her head barely turned with the force of the punch, perhaps jerking an inch, the knuckles that struck her still planted against the side of her jaw as her head turned back to its original position, pushing the man's fist back as she did so. The goon's face said it all; he had fucked up hard, and he knew it. The young hand against his chest flexed a little and pushed, sending the man gurgling out a yelping cry of pain that sent him into full-panic mode. Tony could practically hear the man's ribs creak and strain as the suited asshole grabbed Athena's wrist and struggled against it to no avail. On her face there was no pity, no sympathy, and certainly no mercy.

"Might want to come up with an answer before your ribs become a part of your lungs." Tony offered helpfully, the man's face both pain and red at the same time as spittle flecked from his lips and his feet kicked out like mad, too high up to touch the ground.

"The Director! He sent us!" The man gurgled in a scream of desperation, trying to free himself as Athena didn't budge one gram or centimeter from her interesting questioning technique. "I don't know his name or where he works from on a daily basis! Major Tanner is the one who gets contacted by him! I've only seen him twice on a monitor!" He gurgled again, more spittle flew from his lips as his struggles grew more frantic. "Some older guy! Mid-sixties! Former Army, talked about the war! I remember him saying her served in some Airborne unit! The 107th Airborne Regiment!" That sparked something in Tony's memory, but he couldn't recall what.

"Not much of a who." Athena leveled, and the man let off a small cry of pain. "How about why." Again, it wasn't strictly a question question. It was a statement, and she was going to get what she wanted. Tony wasn't going to bother stopping her unless she went too far.

"We're all volunteers for the Program!" The man sputtered, his face a mask of pain, gasping for breath as Athena pressed her hand against his chest. "They had some shit that would improve a man! Make him great, without equal!" Bones creaked more as the man howled in near-agony. "It fucking worked! They would give us some damn blood injection that they said was a gene mod and the next thing I knew was that I could run twice as fast and as far in an hour or so! Could bench more, squat more, jump higher… the works! Hardly got tired, wasn't fatigued for long, became incredible." The man was looking at the young woman who was clearly a foot shorter than he that was hoisting him in the air and holding him against a car without him being able to free himself. "You're… the fucking source, aren't you? It's your blood that we've been testing." The man chuckled weakly as he looked at her with a pale, sweaty face, his hands still gripping her wrists. "The fuck kind of freak are you?"

"The one you helped create." Athena replied, her tone as hard as steel. "Tell me where the lab is, and you get to walk away."

"I've only heard of the lab, never been there. But I know where the clinic is at." The man gurgled a little more, grimacing. "It's where… they keep the blood for injections. They have something else there, too! Something that requires more than needles but makes the injections look like child's play! They strapped a guy to some table… hand like ten pads with needles in them planted on his body… chest, arms, legs, abs, back. They juiced him up and he was like a fucking God or some shit! Never seen a man move that fast, be that strong, practically danced around bullets! He was like… the perfect soldier for a few days! Practically Captain Ameri…" The man stopped talking as he looked at the young woman holding him up, his eyes going wide. "Oh… oh fuck."

"The location of the clinic." The young woman spat out. It was accompanied by a small gasp of pain from the man.

"It's in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn! Off of Nostrand Avenue and Bergen Street! It looks like a plain-ass medical clinic, like some walk-in Doctor's Office! You'd pass it without looking twice! It's called Brooklyn Health Clinic, and lists Doctor Carmichael right on the door, though I have no idea who that is!" The man blubbered quickly. Athena looked at the man for a moment before he was lowered down, his feet hitting pavement.

"I promised that if you told me a location, I'd let you walk away." The young woman then dropped to one knee in a blur and smashed her right fist right into the outside of the thug's left knee, snapping it half with an audible crunch. The man shrieked in pain as he fell to the ground clutching at his left leg, the lower portion of it now at a ninety degree angle to the left. "Feel free to walk away at any time."

And just like that, she turned around and walked away.

"A little heavy-handed, but nicely done." Tony commented as he walked beside the young woman, her face as hard as stone. "They got a device somewhere here that's interrupting cell phones, called a Warlock DUKE. It's a signal-intercept device that the military uses to prevent remote-controlled improvised explosive devices from detonating on convoys, but it also snows radio signals and cell phones. We find it and turn it off, we can get an ambulance for Pepper and Happy. And then I can get the serial number and find out how the US Navy lost a sensitive item or get a receipt with someone's name on it." The device would be in one of the vehicles, needing a rather substantial power source to run it. He went to one of the Escalades that was still upright, yanking the back hatch open with a squeal of metal to find a large beige brown metal contraption bolted to the cargo area of the SUV, with a flat top, finned sides for radiating heat away, and the front side hoisting several buttons and toggles as well as data transfer ports that weren't common with the public.

Bingo.

"Do you know how to turn it off?" Athena asked from beside him, Tony grinning inside his suit as he looked at the device in question, grabbing an image capture of the devices' serial number.

"Sure do." He replied by charging his left palm stabilizer and releasing a repulsor blast at the center of the device, blasting a small hole into it.

[…onnectivity restored. Good afternoon, Mister Stark], JARVIS' voice came to the Iron Man Mk. IV's audio receiver, playing the cool, British-accented robotic voice in his helmet. [I am now able to access all wireless and cellular devices within your current location. CCTV's and Traffic cams are also now accessible]

"Good work, JARVIS. Load up any hard data we can use of what happened her if anything recorded it and uploaded it." While his suit recorded everything he say or the sensor suite picked up, Tony had learned that multiple angles (both literal and figurative) sometimes painted a better or more comprehensive picture. "Contact the NYPD and call for several ambulances and…", he tilted his head to one side to turn his vocalizer off, "… and several body bags." He didn't doubt that most of the men that Athena had retaliated against were likely smears, in pieces, or splattered. Tony's victims would survive (if heavily-injured), but he couldn't see a man taking a kick that would send him careening twenty feet into a car hard enough to crumple the door slightly. He tilted his head again to re-activate the external vocalizer. "Let emergency services know that we have two vehicular accident victims, and twelve perpetrators armed with illegal weaponry in various states of severe trauma." Some of them would never hit the Emergency Room; Tony didn't need his suits' sensor suite to notify him of that. Stark turned his head to look at the young woman standing next to him, her eyes looking at his helmeted head. "How are you doing, sweetheart?"

"I…" She looked back, not at the gunmen, but at the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. "This was my fault, Mister Tony. They were after me, and Miss Pepper and Mister Happy got hurt because of me."

"No, that's not true at all." This was a lesson he learned a couple of years back thanks to Obadiah Stane. "These guys knew they were after a kid. They decided to ram a car with people inside. They brought highly-lethal weapons into the middle of a city and began firing them without a thought or consideration for bystanders or the innocent. All on them." Her turned to face the redhead as he took a knee in front of her, his faceplate lifting up so she could see him so that way she knew he was telling the truth. "What I am is proud of you, Athena. You family was in danger, and you protected them. Pretty awesomely, at that." There was a wane smile on her face as her green eyes flickered towards one of the men she had battered away. "Hey! He made his choices, he gets the consequences. If you feel bad for them, that's a reminder that you are human, and not some monster. Okay?"

"Okay." The young woman took a deep, shivering breath as she took a step forward and gave him an embrace. "Thank you for coming for us. That landing was awesome."

"Not as awesome as that mid-air ballerina twirl where you kicked a man so hard into a car that it almost went sideways." Tony replied with a grin, pulling back from the hug with a smile. "And there's a guy still sticking halfway out of a windshield. Pretty jealous, actually." Athena beamed for a moment before her face went serious.

"I want to be there when you go to that clinic."

Tony's throat went dry. This was certainly not what he had in mind.

"They'll be there." Stark reasoned with the young woman.

"I know."

"You'll be walking into a place that could have people like you, ready to capture you."

"I know."

"Still want to do it?" Tony asked. Athena wasn't deluding herself thinking it was safe, at least.

"You heard what that man said." She gestured towards the gorilla she had nearly tortured by pressing her hand against his chest. "They have enough of my blood and marrow to do tests and get results from some common individual." Damn, that was a pretty damn mature response from a tweenager. "I don't know how much they have or what's left. But that clinic might be that place. He said it was in Brooklyn, and that's where you said I had originally appeared when I escaped. It might be the same place, or have information about it. I… I need to be there." Tony could see it in her eyes; it wasn't the need of a child she was talking about, but the fear that lived within her. She needed to face that fear, to conquer it.

"If you're going to demand to be there, then I'm going to bring a friend for a just-in-case." Tony replied. He wasn't thrilled with the idea (at all) but Athena was right about something; that clinic had her blood and marrow, and she needed to be there to see that it was destroyed. "I'm going to call Rhodey. And then the three of us are going to hit that place like the fist of God once Pepper and Happy are admitted into the hospital."

"Ice cream afterwards?" Athena asked with a hopeful tone, showing that despite her seemingly advanced maturity and intelligence, there was still something child-like about her. God bless her for that.

"Definitely ice cream."

Author's Notes: I know that the Mk. V is technically more 'advanced' than the Mk. IV, but the Mk. V was specifically a 'portable' Iron Man/Suitcase Armor suit for emergencies as oppose to the Mk. IV, which was used in the Iron Man 2 movie that featured all the bells and whistles. The Mk. VI from The Avengers hasn't been invented yet. It's a WIP.

The Curb-Weight of a 2011 Cadillac Escalade is rated at 5488 lbs; two-and-a-half tons empty. The Iron Man suits are supposedly rated to pick up 3 tons despite canon discrepancies; only able to hold four people falling through air in Iron Man 3 but able to do it with twelve, Rhodey's story of picking up a tank in Age of Ultron, sending a piece of towering debris into Thanos in Infinity War, and then Tony hoisting a family sedan in Iron Man where he eventually gets run over. Of these examples, I am going with the original Iron Man where picking up a car is a possibility depending on the size, but still a struggle.

Tempered Glass - The glass of passenger-side windows. External compression and internal tension is added to glass to make it shatter into small chunks instead of plate (annealed) glass' larger splinters and shards. The front windshield/windscreen, on the other hand, is known as laminated glass, which has plastic coating on it to prevent true shattering, giving it the 'spiderweb' appearance when broken.

I don't know the official name of the vehicular entry device known as the Jaws of Life, but it is a gas-operated spreading device meant to snap the metal lock off a car door when too much damage has been done to physically open it.

I wanted the fight with Iron Man to be like a fight with Iron Man. He doesn't dodge much (not much need), and he needs to charge his repulsors for a second or two before firing. I also included an 'energy' level that shows that he can hit with force instead of lethality. I almost used the 'dart system' from the first and second movie (the shoulder-mounted darts that struck like six guys at once) but I wanted to include a second fighter into the scene.

I wanted Athena to be 'like' Captain America, but a little less trained and assured. She might have the strength, but she doesn't necessarily have the moves or the finesse. So less back flips and whatnot, and more jumping right towards someone with a crippling/killing blow. Remember, she's untested; she doesn't know how to pull her punches. I added the 'Pierrot' spinning side-kick (which you see in some of the high-flying martial arts movies) where she belts the guy with the grenade rifle for fun. But nearly every blow Athena lands is lethal. Which is what I'd expect from Captain America if he cut loose.

I hint at 'The Villain'. But the talking good is one of the guys from the first chapter who chased Athena during her escape; an ex-Marine Special Forces warrior. I wanted him to talk without resulting into overt torture, so Athena merely 'presses' her hand into his chest while pinned against a car, slowly crushing and suffocating him.

Did anyone catch the Unit? A hint for you.

I know I probably harp about the plot of this story; Athena's blood being the blood of a Super Soldier, and that blood being used to make temporary Super Soldiers. There's a reason I'm hammering this; not only is it the plot, but you'll be seeing an idea that I had that might make you take a step back and go 'damn, maybe that's true'.

Ice cream after battle is always appropriate.