“Can you hit it again?” she asks through clenched teeth.

Clint takes umbrage.

“Of course I can hit it again, even with you driving. The fucking thing is the size of statue of Liberty, now with floodlights.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. Of all the times to be obtuse …

“The arrow, you idiot, not the T … Hold on!”

This time the front wheel clips the tail of one of those pterodactyls, the car bounces and slides a little and … oh. Eww. So that’s where the horse went. Or parts of it, anyway. (Tonight’s dinner will definitely be vegetarian, no matter how much her carnivorous partner will whine.)

“Drive the arrow deeper into the skull, with another one.”

Clint doesn’t say anything, which usually means that he agrees with something she suggested but can’t quite bring himself to admit it out loud. Or maybe he’s just stunned into silence by her implicit confidence in his marksmanship. No matter; they are both momentarily distracted by the sight of the Hulk smashing together the skulls of two velociraptors, then shaking them until their spine breaks.

Good thing Banner is on their side.

“Got the angle ….”

Clint lets fly just as Natasha hits another … whatever. Best not to ask; the shot is wasted regardless.

A pterodactyl falls from the sky in front of them, narrowly missing the hood. Just how many of these things did von Doom breed? And how come no one noticed, until the zebras started disappearing from the zoo this morning?

“Growth serum,” Stark declares over the comm, and Natasha realizes that she said that last bit out loud. “From DNA strand to … unff …. adulthood in under twelve hours. JARVIS has been downloading von Doom’s files.”

No wonder the guy is having containment issues.

But a far more immediate problem is the fact that Clint is almost out of arrows, the T Rex behind them is showing no sign of slowing down, and Hulk is now disappearing in the rearview, busily chasing a group of things headed for … Harlem, of all places.

“Aren’t dinosaurs supposed to have another brain in their butt?” Clint wants to know. He has to shout to make himself heard as Natasha picks up speed and the wind tears the words out of his mouth. “Maybe if we could get behind him, get him to go after the choppers – that tail is sticking straight up when it attacks …”

Stark crackles back on over the comm.

“Sounds deliciously kinky, Legolas, but JARVIS says that theory was debunked decades ago. The only butt brain around here is von Doom.”

Natasha is flooring the pedal at this point, trying to gain on the T Rex so she can stop and give Clint the shot he needs.

“Can you give us a hand, Stark?” she asks as she hangs a sharp right into Terrace Drive. This seems like a good time for repulsor energy.

“Still busy up here,” Ironman hisses. “This moron must have watched The Birds a few too many times. But … unff …at least I’ll get the prize for most kills of the day.”

Fine. Time to make a stand then.

“You ready for a full frontal?” Natasha asks Clint. Eighty meters should do it.

“No time like the now,” he presses out around the spare arrow he’s stuck in his mouth. “Go.”

Natasha slams on the brakes, hard, turning the car a hundred and eighty degrees on a dime and coming to a full stop. Clint lines up the shot as the T Rex charges towards them. (Next time she’ll take a red car from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fleet, not one that looks like dinosaur food).


Edited 2014-01-01 08:49 pm (UTC)