Avenging in July *Editing Before Continuing* [Avengers Fanfiction]

VI | A Very Heated Situation

"More information is always better than less. When people know the reason things are happening, even if it's bad news, they can adjust their expectations and react accordingly. Keeping people in the dark only serves to stir negative emotions." -Simon Sinek

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"This here, of course, is a digital map of the entire region of Manhattan. But if we measure the heat waves on the picture, we find abnormal ones," the blonde-haired agent, Agent 13 I suppose, tells us as she switches the regular map to one that shows Manhattan in a dark red color.

"That doesn't seem like it should be a big deal," says Clint.

"You're right. It shouldn't be," Nick says and steps toward the map, "The New Yorkers here don't think so, but some weathermen are starting to question the three-digit temperatures we've been having lately. Everyone thinks it's due to the green house effect on the atmosphere."

"Okay," Clint starts with a confused look, "then what's the catch?"

Nick turns "The to him and says, "The catch, Agent Barton, is that the excess heat is not coming from the Sun." Fury pauses, "The heat is coming from another planet outside our solar system."

"How is that even possible?" I ask and everyone looks to me. "I mean, sure I guess it can be possible from a different, larger star somewhere else-"

"But it's a planet," Coulson corrects me.

"Yeah I got that," I say frustrated. I sigh, "But... wait. How much of New York have you been looking at?"

"Just Manhattan," the blonde girl pipes in from her position at the monitor.

"Can you zoom out to the entire state?" I ask curiously.

"Uh," she hesitates looking to Fury for orders. He nods his head and she zooms out of Manhattan. I hear several gasps around the room and realize that there is a very high heat signature just over Manhattan and nowhere else in New York.

"Zoom out to the Northeast region." She does as I say and still only Manhattan is a dark red sliver.

"How about the lower 48?" Natasha asks. The map, again, shows a red dot of heat on Manhattan in the top right corner, and the rest of the country is normal, meaning that areas with typical high heat have typical high heat and areas that don't... well they don't.

"Weird," Clint exclaims.

"Very," Natasha concludes.

We stand in silence for a few seconds more, pondering about this strange phenomenon. I walk across the quiet room, my combat boots clacking on tile as I stride to the large screen before me.

"Zoom back into Manhattan, but give a little space around the edges," I tell Agent 13. As the screen zooms in, I catch an extremely dark red dot off of the coast of long island, but it quickly leaves the screen when all of Manhattan is in front of me. "Wait! What was that?"

"What was what?" Coulson asks.

"That dark red speck! Did any of you see that? How did we not see that the first time?" I point to the right off the screen, and everyone looks at me like I'm crazy. "Hold on," I mutter. I run to the monitor that Agent 13 is standing at. I frantically zoom the picture out about twenty-five percent and move it over to the right until the dark red dot is showing. "That dark red speck!" I exclaim.

"Okay, but what is it?" Coulson asks.

"Not sure. I was going to zoom in." I furrow my brow as nothing comes up at the dark red speck.

"Switch over to-"

"I was going to switch over to satellite. Hold on," I interrupt Coulson, extremely frustrated at the moment. I type a command on the keyboard and instantly nothing shows up. Just the Atlantic Ocean. There's no fault line. That's several hundred miles out. There's nothing but blue.