Tony slammed his fist down onto the table, hard enough to make it throb, and everyone stopped talking to look at him. They had been discussing the mysterious girl for several hours now, hunkered down in the basement—or "lair," as Daisy liked to call it—despite Tony explaining to her multiple times that "lairs" were for villains. While they talked, Tony had been watching the snowfall on the security cameras, which filled up most of one wall in the room, until the knot in his stomach tightened to the point of snapping, and he had had enough.
"We've talked long enough. If we don't act now, the girl is going to freeze to death!" he said, pointing at the several feet of snow visible on the cameras. Daisy winced when she looked at the screen and showed what Tony thought was the appropriate amount of concern, while the others just stared at him.
"Dude, calm down. We don't even know this girl," the voice was calm, bored even, and came from a man so thin and pale he almost looked translucent. He was tall—freakishly so—and he had the tidy appearance of a well-paid accountant. His name was Blaze, and Tony had been the one to find him and bring him in several years before. They had been good friends ever since, but right now it took everything Tony had to calm himself down and reply without showing his fury.
"You've all read what Daisy saw in the woman's head," he said, looking around at them all. "You know she's not just another girl, and if we've spotted her, then sooner or later our enemies will too—if she survives the night." He added this last part, looking directly into Maverick's eyes this time.
Maverick was middle-aged, with dark black hair that was graying just a little at the edges, and he had striking blue eyes that contrasted an ugly, ragged scar running down his left cheek. The most noticeable thing about him, however, wasn't his beautiful eyes but his left hand, which had been replaced by a mechanical smart hand styled in a steampunk-inspired aesthetic and filled with tech so advanced it looked out of place in the dingy basement.
"Daisy, are you absolutely sure this is what you saw?" he asked her, tapping a napkin on the table that was covered in Daisy's distinctive scribbles.
"Absolutely," Daisy replied without hesitation, and then added, "Tony is right. She was bleeding pretty badly when we saw her last. Who knows where she is now? Plus, it's been snowing for hours." Maverick nodded thoughtfully and scratched his thick beard with his mechanical hand, a habit that Tony had always found unnerving.
"Alright, let's find her, but keep your numbers small. Let's do this without drawing attention to ourselves. Tony, you and Daisy can take Bali to help you find the girl. If she does have as much power as you think, she is already a liability." He paused before asking, "Will three be enough?"
Daisy raised an eyebrow at Tony, and he glanced at Bali briefly and then looked away, wishing Maverick had chosen anyone else, but he kept his thoughts to himself and shrugged. "It's just one girl. How hard could it be?" And then to Maverick, he added, "Three should be enough."
"Good. Dress warm. Contact home base if you run into trouble."
"Will do, boss man," Daisy replied, giving him a mock salute, which Maverick indulgently saluted back.
Tony felt a little of the weight lift that had been tightening his chest for the last three hours. He couldn't explain where the feeling of urgency had come from, but it had gripped him all the same, and not acting felt like the wrong thing to do. As if he sensed Tony's internal state, Maverick gripped Tony's shoulder with his mechanical hand and said, "Don't take any unnecessary risks tonight."
The group dispersed, leaving Daisy and Tony alone with Bali, who was standing near the doorway in a posture that made it clear she was not happy about the assignment. She hadn't said a word to Tony when they had arrived—unless you counted the occasional angry dagger she threw his way—and now she looked away from him with an icy silence that was palpable. Even when she was mad, Bali looked beautiful, and her slender, long limbs posed themselves with a stillness like a cold statue, unmoving. Her golden straight hair, the color of summer, hung like a silky curtain down her shoulders, and her signature tattoos, which were scattered across her body, gave her appearance a slight edge.
Daisy cleared her throat awkwardly to break the silence.
"Well... this should be fun!"
Bali let the slightest sound of annoyance slip out but said nothing else, and Tony pursed his lips together. They continued to stand in awkward silence until Daisy could stand it no longer.
"Alright, you two are going to have to deal here, or this isn't going to work! Every second we waste could mean we don't find the girl," Daisy said, crossing her arms.
"Oh, please!" Bali finally spoke, rolling her eyes dramatically as she did so, and leaving her spot near the door to saunter towards them. "There is no one I cannot find, and you know it. Even if she is on death's door and on another continent, I could find her." She picked up the napkin from the table confidently, looking sidelong at Tony with murder in her eyes, before bringing the napkin to her lips and blowing on it.
Tony shrugged, though his real instinct had been to shudder. The ice in this woman's veins made him wonder at the wisdom in getting on her bad side, which he knew he had done. However, Bali's actions had thrown off some of the tension that had been building, and Tony watched Bali's magic work, unable to hide the fact that it still impressed him. The air that she had breathed on the napkin had turned to blue ice, coating the napkin, freezing it until it looked like solid ice. Movement on Bali's neck caught Tony's eye, and he watched as an azure butterfly tattoo, which had been sprawled gracefully across Bali's neck, came to life and pulled itself from her skin as though it were just waking up from a nap. It flew through the air and landed on the icy napkin, making the napkin burst into a cloud of cold blue dust that coated the butterfly's wings.
Bali smiled at her creation as it fluttered in front of her with a glowing and chilly blue light.
"There," she said with a self-satisfied smile. "All we have to do is follow her. She already knows where to go."
"Like that won't draw attention to us?" Tony struggled to keep the sarcasm from his tone. He was glad Bali was helping—finding things and people was one of the only things he knew he could rely on her for—but did she have to be so smug about it? Tony hated how easily Bali drew out his less mature side.
"It's like, what, three in the morning? Anyone that sees us is going to think they are sleepwalking or something," Bali replied testily, staring daggers at Tony, daring him to argue.
"Well, it's not going to be night for much longer. We only have a few hours to find the girl, if she's still alive," Daisy said.
"She is," Bali replied matter-of-factly, nodding at the butterfly as it hovered happily in front of her.
Tony took a breath to let go of the snarky words Bali seemed all too capable of drawing from him and said, "Let's go."
The "lair" was well equipped for any kind of mission, and they each found warm winter gear to wear, including thermal hats and gloves, which Daisy put on faster than the others so she could run upstairs to the lavish baker's kitchen and fill a thermos with steaming coffee and shove a bag of warm breakfast cookies into her deepest pocket. They were probably meant for Maverick, freshly baked by Blaze, but it had become a well-established fact that if baked goods were left out, Daisy would eat them, so she didn't think twice about taking them.
Bali had been right; no one was awake as they all made their way outside to the snowy roads. The streets were deserted, the quiet almost unnerving, and they made their way to the subway without meeting another soul.
Tony watched the strikingly blue butterfly gliding ahead of them with ease, and he wondered how it knew which subway to take. Bali kept her magic to herself, and even when he had asked—back when she was friendly towards him—she wouldn't tell him how it worked. Now was not the time to ask anyway, and Tony looked sidelong at Bali, noting the sour look on her face as they followed along.
They exited the subway and ran up to street level, all three of them staying close to the shadows because the butterfly did. They ran for several blocks through empty streets before coming near the edge of a forested park that looked very familiar to Tony and Daisy.
"There isn't a faster way for your tattoo to take us?" Daisy asked as she recognized the place and was unhappy at the trek ahead of them.
"What? You want 'as the crow flies'? My magic follows the most current path first. It sticks to the strongest traces of the person I'm seeking, which would be wherever you two crossed paths with the runaway. Once that goes cold, she will follow the lesser, more convenient trails," Bali flipped her hair as she spoke.
"It's fine," Tony said placatingly, giving Daisy a look that clearly said, "Let it go."
"What?" she replied. "It's cold, and this is taking forever."
"Hardly," Bali said.
They continued in silence for a while, following the shimmering butterfly past the bridge and the creek where they had seen the girl last and into the dark forest beyond. They traveled only a short distance into the forest before the butterfly stopped at a tree and hovered for a while in mid-air without moving on.
"What is it?" Tony asked.
"The girl must have stopped here for a while. She thinks her job is done," Bali said.
"Her job is not done!" Tony spoke more harshly than he had intended to, but the cold was already getting a grip on him, and he was well bundled for it. The thought of the small woman wandering in the cold, without snow gear, made his heart race.
Bali gave him a withering look, and without saying a word, she drew closer to the butterfly and gently breathed on it with her blue, icy breath again. The butterfly shimmered brighter, swooped down almost as though inspecting the ground, and then took off into the forest again, this time at a faster pace.
They raced after it, trudging through knee-deep snow and ducking under snow-laden branches as they made their way through the dense forest. Finally, they stepped out of the gloomy woods and onto what looked to Tony like a path lined with streetlights. There were no footprints to follow because of the deep snow, but they had the butterfly's instincts to guide them, and they kept pace with the winged creature until they emerged onto an icy street.
Tony put his hand out to stop the others and hissed at Bali to stop her butterfly. Bali quickly snapped her fingers, and the butterfly exploded into a tiny puff of glitter, then fell harmlessly to the ground. They had barely stopped in time and had almost walked into a scene that made Tony grow cold.
The street was full of cars, flashing lights, and people shouting. He could just make out paramedics kneeling down next to someone lying in the street. One of the paramedics moved to the side, and Tony caught a glimpse of who they were working on. It was the girl; she was lying flat on her back, unconscious.
"Shit," Bali said next to him.
"Yeah, shit," Tony said angrily. "I told you we shouldn't have waited so long."
"Is she dead?" Daisy asked meekly.
They watched as the paramedics added splints to the girl's head, neck, and arms before carefully lifting her onto the stretcher and wheeling her towards the ambulance. They could just make out a voice over the noise saying, "We had to dose her; she was in shock and wouldn't let us examine her."
"She's alive," Tony said with a sigh of relief.
"Yeah, but she doesn't look good," Daisy said. "How are we going to get to her now? We can't exactly steal her from the hospital."
"Yeah, no thanks," Bali agreed with Daisy.
Tony watched as the ambulance, loaded with the girl, drove past their hiding spot. The side of it said, "Ray County Hospital." That was only a mile from where they were. They could follow just to find out how she was and what room she was in, and then they could...
"Look!" Daisy hissed, pointing across the street.
Tony looked where she pointed and cursed under his breath. Not far from where the ambulance had been was a black car with tinted windows that looked ominous and familiar and was clearly following the ambulance from a distance.
"Looks like we are not the only ones after your girl," Bali said, ignoring the look of anguish on Tony's face. "I guess we can go home now."
"We can't go home!" Daisy said incredulously.
"Well, we can't follow the girl now that the shadows are after her, so unless you want to go to IHOP and get a stack of pancakes, home is exactly where we are going. Right, Tony?" Bali asked, looking at Tony.
Tony was clenching and unclenching his fists as he watched the ambulance and its new tail drive away. This was not good. He knew the shadows were more than they had prepared for that night. It was easily a five-person mission now, and there were only three of them.
"We can't just leave her to the shadows, Tony," Daisy said; it was a question and a statement rolled into one.
"Yes, we can!" Bali growled.
"No," Tony spoke decisively and turned to Daisy. "We can't just leave her."
"I am NOT facing shadows tonight, Tony! I did not agree to that!" Bali said as the heat from her breath came out in cloudy puffs of icy air.
"I know," he replied, finally turning and looking Bali in the eyes for the first time that night. "You don't have to come. Go back and inform Maverick of the situation. Daisy and I will continue without you." He said this in a rather kinder voice than Bali expected, which made her feel even angrier. She stared at him, incredulous.
"Fine!" she practically yelled in his face. "I'm coming, but you better believe Maverick is going to get an earful, Tony."