Spidey One-Shots

Avengers, Escape!

"...and that's all the information I have for you!" the employee finished with a smile. She looked around the room and asked, "Any questions?"

Thor raised his hand. "We could just leave the room, could we not? You said yourself that you do not actually lock it. So why would we bother with any of this?" he asked, gesturing around the themed room.

"Because that's where all the fun comes in!" Peter answered. "The point of an escape room is to find clues and put them together to, well, escape."

"I still see no logic in this, but if son of Tony thinks it will be fun, then I will stay."

"For the last time, Thor, he's not- y'know what, never mind. Let's just get on with this," Tony said as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Alright, I'll leave you to it, then," the employee exclaimed. "You have an hour to escape, starting... now!" With that, she stepped out of the room and closed the door.

Clint immediately dashed to the trash can placed in a corner of the room and turned it upside down, dumping several crumpled up sheets of paper on the floor. He rummaged through them and quickly located one with ink on it. "Found something!" he yelled, holding the paper up victoriously. Everyone gathered around to look at the paper, which had a series of numbers on it. There were two rows of paired up numbers, with either one or two lines an inch or so below each pair. 

"It looks like they need to be combined somehow," Peter suggested.

"Yes, and we'll find something later that explains how to use the combination," Natasha said.

Tony plucked the paper from Clint's hands. "Don't worry, everyone. We've got this," he said as he set his hand on Bruce's shoulder.

Bruce responded with a hesitant thumbs up before following Tony to the whiteboard.

"Let's spread out and look for more clues, then," Steve said to the group still standing around Clint.

They did just that, and in the next twenty minutes found another paper clue under the rug, three locked boxes - one with a number code and two with key slots, and a key to one of the locked boxes taped to the underside of a chair. Inside that box they found a decoder ring, among other items.

"Looks like this one decodes numbers into letters. That must be what the number combination is," Natasha said. She faced the whiteboard, which was filled with equations and combinations. "Are you nerds almost done?"

Tony ran a hand through his already frazzled hair. "It makes no sense! We've tried every complex equation, and nothing matches the number of lines on the paper."

"You weren't kidding when you said this escape room would be a good challenge, Peter," Bruce said. He sighed as he looked over the numbers scribbled haphazardly on the whiteboard another time.

Peter frowned. He knew the people who made these escape rooms didn't intend to make clues difficult enough to stump mathematical geniuses. Tony handed him the paper. Peter examined it carefully and did a few quick equations in his head. Then he let out a chuckle. "Mr. Stark... did you try simple division?"

"You can't be serious," Tony muttered, taking the paper back. 

He looked it over, then handed it to Bruce, who read through the numbers again and said only, "Oh."

"Would you look at that. The great Iron Man undone by a little division problem," Natasha drawled.

"Hush, Romanoff," Tony said with an eye roll. He joined Bruce at the whiteboard, where they each took half of the equations and did the math. When they finished, Tony let the marker he was holding drop to the floor and turned back to Natasha. "There. Have your dumb little coded combination."

Natasha picked the marker up from the floor and said, "This won't take long." Within a minute, she had the code translated; FALSE BOTTOM GEMS

This led the team to search every drawer in the room. They finally located one with a false bottom, underneath which was a container with a four-letter lock. Inside was a sliding puzzle. When it was put together in the correct order, four numbers were clearly readable in the design. They used this on the locked box with the number code. 

"We're still missing a key," Steve said as he picked up the final box and looked it over.

Everyone fanned out across the room, looking in any crevice or corner they could find. Eventually, Thor located the key in the bottom of a flower pot that had been holding fake plants. The team gathered around the final box, eager to see it opened.

"Wait. Where'd Barton go?" Tony asked, looking around the room.

Natasha joined him in scanning the small space. Her gaze eventually turned to the ceiling. She covered her face for a moment and let out a deep sigh before calling out, "Clint! Please don't tell me you're actually in there..."

Clint popped his head out of the ceiling vent. "You said to do a thorough search for the key. I wanted to make sure we didn't miss anything!"

"They wouldn't hide the key in the ceiling! Just get down from there."

Clint obliged, and now that everyone was finally gathered around the final box, Steve shoved the key into the lock and turned it, popping the lid open. Inside was one final challenge that would give them the combination for the lock on the door. It was a list of What Am I? riddles, where all the answers started with U, D, L, or R.

Bruce realized first that the order of the answers provided the combination for the lock, which had a directional combo system. They had to push the button in the middle of the padlock either up, down, left, or right.

Peter got to the padlock first and began rapidly entering the code. When it clicked open, the entire team let out a cheer. Everyone burst through the door together, their momentum nearly causing the ones leading the pack to stumble to the floor.

The team escaped successfully, with two minutes and thirty seconds remaining on the clock.

This is very much just a goofy little slice-of-life piece. I hope you enjoy!

Side Note: Aren't escape rooms so fun?? :D