The New Avengers | An MCU Fanfic (Sequel)

5 - The Symbol

- AUTHORS NOTE -
Right guys, so can I just say thankyou so SO much! The prequel to this fanfic just reached over 5k views like WTF 😱. Thankyou to everyone who has read any of my books on here, you hold a special place in my heart 💛.

In honour of this, here's a new chapter! I know I haven't updated in a while, but I've got other cool things in the works too, I promise 😝
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Liberty's P.O.V

After school, we all headed our separate ways, knowing that we'd be seeing each other in a few short hours at the Avengers Training Facility for the start of our regular after-school training sessions. Becky told me that she had extra classes after school, which was sort of a relief, it meant that I didn't have to worry about her finding out about everything, following us and whatever.

Everyone headed home, apart from Peter and Ned, they came to mine, as they usually did anyway so that we could get ready for training together and hopefully get in some Biology studying since we had only been back at school for a day and we'd already got tests to study for. Great.

Ned had been absolutely over the moon when Tony, the Tony Stark, had asked him to join us as part of the team behind the scenes, the man in the chair (as Ned calls it) who has the control panels and headset like they do in the movies. He'd jumped at the chance, which I suppose brought us together even more as a team, we were all the best of friends. But this also did cause some arguments between us all, having been together the majority of the time. We'd had stupid petty arguments almost every day during the past summer off from school, the smallest of things causing fights that almost got physical. I guess that's the price you pay for spending more or less every waking minute with a group of people.

Once we arrived at the training facility, we were briefed on everything that we needed to improve in relation to the past 3 missions we had been given and completed; what went well and what we could improve and act on.  Director Fury sat us all down and read from his clipboard as to what we needed to do.

"Mr Banner, we need more speed on your inventions, they need to get on site faster," He started, picking each of us out and giving us each criticism on our abilities. It wasn't a bad thing, we did need it, otherwise we'd never get better, plus we were very much used to it by now. We knew that Fury meant no offence, he had a soft centre under that harsh black trenchcoat facade.

"Miss Stark, more power on the blasters, I'm sure your father can help you with that one," Penny nodded, she'd mentally noted that to ask her father later on.

"Miss Thorson, good strength and speed, maybe work more on finding ways to use those lightning powers more effectively in battle,"

"Mr Barton, Mr Romanoff, less 'banter' on the battlefield, concentration is vital on missions like your last one," Astrid nudges the two of the boys who were looking slightly sheepish, their cheeks growing pink.

"And finally, Miss Rogers, Leadership is improving, taking a few tips from your father, but perhaps working as a more cohesive unit rather than a team with separate talents might work more in your favour?" I nodded, I'd been taking note on dads leadership, I'm glad it was paying off.

We then all separated and worked on our various training techniques, we'd found that going off in pairs had helped since there was 8 of us if you included Ned, and so we did that; Penny and Astrid, Oliver and Ned, Max and Hunter (despite Fury's attempts at arguing, they were still a great team,) and then Me and Pete.

After training, I decided that I wanted to have a look in the archives, it was really starting to annoy me where I had seen the symbol on Rebecca's bracelet before, it was definitely familiar. I got washed up and tied my hair back up into a messy bun so that it didn't fall in my face as I was searching through shelves and shelves of books and videotapes, voice recordings and family records dating back to before even I was born in the 1940s. I ran my fingers across the dusty volumes, carefully reading each title and time period, trying to decipher a code inside my own head.

"Whatcha doin'?" Astrid's voice came echoing out of the dark, making me jump almost a foot in the air.

"Astrid, don't ever do that again!" I laughed, taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm my heart which was now beating like a drum in my chest.

"Okay, but you didn't answer my question, what are you doing in here?"

"I'm looking for something, Becky was wearing a bracelet earlier and I saw that it had some sort of symbol on it, and it felt familiar but I couldn't point out what it meant or why it was familiar to me," I explained, not taking my eyes off the spines of the books and tapes I passed.

"There was something weird about her- in a good way... I think..." Astrid replied, agreeing with me to some extent. "Would you like me to help?"

I nodded, tearing my eyes away from the shelves to reach for a lonely empty pad of paper and a pen that was lying on a small nearby table to draw out the symbol for Astrid to see so that she could help me look through the archive. Two eyes could get the job done in half the time.

As I was drawing it out, Astrid watched over my shoulder. Once I had finished, she stood there, looking at me, her face blank but her mind racing.

"Astrid? Are you okay?" I asked. I'd never known Astrid to be so quiet, so yeah, I was a little concerned.

After a moment or two, she managed to come back to reality, seeing my confused face wanting my questions answered.

"Liberty, I-I know that symbol," She said, rushing to a certain section of the archives where non-fiction books were kept for research purposes. I followed behind her, watching her every move.

She reached up to one of the top shelves, bringing down a very large and dusty volume, putting it down on the small table with a thump. Pursing her lips, she blew off the dust to reveal its title; 'Norse Runes'.

I stood an observer as Astrid began frantically searching through random pages, her eyebrows furrowed which darkened her eyes, in the dim light of the archive library, one might even say she looked scary.

"There!" Astrid suddenly stopped flicking through the book, her finger placed on a page that held the exact symbol we were searching for.

My eyes scanned the information on the page for what the rune meant, but one single piece of information stood out in particular.

'The rune 'Kenaz' or '<' represents darkness and fire, usually symbolic of the trickster god Loki'

Loki...