Chapter Text
*** Kate’s Perspective ***
Sirens roared as the police arrived at the Museum of Natural History; Someone had triggered the silent alarm. Officer Watanabe stepped inside the building, gun drawn. She scoped the museum out looking for anything out of the ordinary. Everything seemed normal until she walked into the Battle of New York exhibit. There were empty broken display cases and paintings commemorating the Avengers missing.
Suddenly she heard a loud blast coming from the back of the room. Watanabe rushed to the source of the noise, only to be met with New York's most annoying criminal, Shocker.
Shocker became active in 2017 when he worked alongside the Vulture but ever since Vulture got arrested he’s been doing low level crime throughout the city. Almost none of his crimes have casualties, only ever attacking someone if they go after him first; but his explosive gauntlets always leave large messes to clean up.
“Freeze Shocker!” Officer Watanabe shouted, pointing her gun at him.
Shocker turned around, he was wearing two large gauntlets along with a brown and yellow suit covering his full body. He also had two large duffle bags by his sides, “You’re kidding me.” He said, sounding annoyed that someone was trying to stop him.
Watanabe aimed at his gauntlets and started to fire her gun, hoping to break them. As she fired, Shocker ran out of the way and put his arms up before firing powerful shockwaves towards her. Watanabe braced for impact, expected to be blasted back into the wall. Before the shockwaves hit her, however, she felt something latch onto her back and she was pulled out of the way of the blast.
She slid along the ground before slowing down below someone’s feet. She looked up to see Kate Bishop, the second Hawkeye standing above her.
“Hey officer.” Kate said casually as she unhooked the cable-arrow from the officer's jacket.
Kate readied her bow and started walking around slowly, she hadn’t seen where Shocker went after his initial blast but his bags were still sitting on the ground so he likely hadn’t left yet.
“Come out Shocker.” She said, searching around every art display. “You don’t want to forget your bags right?”
Suddenly Shocker popped out and took a shot at Kate. She quickly dodged out of the way and fired an electro-arrow at him. The arrow hit his left gauntlet and caused it to start sparking. Shocker ripped the arrow off his arm and rebooted his left gauntlet to fix the error. While he was distracted, Kate took another shot at him, this time using a putty-arrow to trap his feet to the floor.
Kate pointed her bow at Shocker with an explosive-arrow ready to fire, before saying, “For your own sake, stand down man.”
“Yeah. That’s probably a good idea..” He said, putting his hands in the air. “I don’t think the boss would like it though.” He added before firing up, creating a large hole in the ceiling for him.
Shocker immediately fired at his feet and broke free of the putty, before taking a second shot at the ground, launching himself into the air.
By the time Kate was able to react and fire her shot, Shocker was already in the air. The explosive-arrow hit an empty display case and it exploded.
“Shit,” Kate said under her breath before firing a cable-arrow at the ceiling to follow Shocker outside. As she got on the roof she saw Shocker launching himself from building to building faster than Kate would ever be able to keep up with. Kate tried to follow but eventually conceded and went back to the museum.
When she got back there were already more police officers in the building, analyzing the crime scene. Kate decided against going down to talk to them. Some cops she knew were nice, like Officer Watanabe, but others didn’t like it when superheroes got involved and frankly, Kate didn’t want to check which type of cops these were.
Kate has fought Shocker lots of times, sometimes she would win and he would be arrested.. Before inevitably breaking out before being sentenced, sometimes he would win and would escape with whatever he was stealing, and sometimes he would escape without stealing anything like today. The last few times he’s popped up, he’s had better gear and clothes. It’s been harder for Kate to stop him recently. Whoever he worked for was making her job more difficult.
There wasn’t much going on in the city the next few hours. Kate stopped a grand theft auto, and a couple muggings but eventually she decided to call it a night and head home. It was pizza night with her dog Lucky so she grabbed a large pepperoni on her way. They had made it a weekly habit to enjoy pizza and watch movies together.
When she got into her apartment, Lucky immediately ran over, smelling the pizza.
“Hey boy! Are you hungry?” Kate said, petting him.
Kate sat down on her couch, Lucky running behind her. As she opened the box, she watched her room fill with a wave of darkness.
“Mommy what’s happening?”
Kate looked around. This was her parents' penthouse. But how was she here? She heard loud bangs and screaming when she noticed the young girl panicking. But it wasn’t just any girl.. It was her. She remembers this day. May 4th 2012. She was back at the Battle of New York.
She watched as her younger self ran out of her room and down the stairs. The sounds of explosions and Chitauri screams were overwhelming. Kate grabbed her young self, desperate to protect her. She didn’t know what was happening but she needed to do something. She dragged her into the stairwell, it was the most secure part of the building and tried to comfort her, “It’s going to be okay Kate.”
As she talked to her, everything stopped. Young Kate disappeared, the sounds had stopped, everything was eerily quiet. Kate walked back into the apartment and suddenly the explosions started again. She watched as her younger self, once again ran down the stairs, shouting for her mommy and daddy.
Kate started to hyperventilate. This couldn’t be real. She ran to the window and looked out. It was the battle out there but something was different. Just past the block she could see there was.. Nothing.. A void. Eventually she saw everything disappear. The buildings were repaired and there was no army falling from the sky. But once again, it all started over. She watched as her young self ran down the stairs. She watched as her mom found her and they both left. All before it started again. That terror, that horrible day, continued to loop, over and over and over again until Kate gave up trying to figure out how to stop it.
Kate sat in the stairwell with her eyes closed and her ears plugged. Nothing she did made any difference. Whatever was happening she couldn’t do anything. Every now and then she would hear her mom find her young self and she’d have a minute of calm as the loop restarted.
After what felt like an eternity, the explosions and screaming stopped, without restarting. She opened her eyes and saw her apartment. Lucky was hiding between her legs whimpering. Kate felt her face soaked in tears and her throat dry from hyperventilating.
“Lucky-” She tried to speak but her throat was too sore to get anything else out.
Lucky climbed onto the couch and laid on Kate’s lap, still whimpering, his tail down low, not moving.
The two stayed like that for a while, the only movement being from Kate petting Lucky. Once she had calmed down, Kate offered Lucky some pizza which he gladly ate. He seemed to calm down quicker than she did.