Can you fight a shadow?

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As far as energies went the nightmare creature had a potent one. The thing was, it would vanish, appear, vanish, appear, on and on with seemingly no rhyme or reason. "It's almost like trying to track the big guy when Banner is behind the wheel," Tony groaned in frustration.

He'd been up for days, working, always working. Clint's new arrows were completed, everyone looked a little brighter, a little more disco babe. Steve hadn't understood when tony had said so and had made a note to look it up.

Tony had made a mental note to introduce him to Mama Mia first chance he got. It sorta romanticized the music, if you were to ask him anyway.

"You're right," Bruce murmured as if he'd had an epiphany and tony squinted, wondering what exactly he was right about. He needed more coffee. "About it being like looking for the other guy when I'm standing here."

"Oh, right, of course I am," tony agreed readily and moved toward the coffee pot. "So, where do we go from here?"

"We track this energy like we tracked down Banner," Natasha interrupted before either of them could respond. "Even smaller its still the same signature. The space station is always the space station, whether it's situated right above us or on the other side of the world. We need to stop focusing on the size and focus on the nature, what's the nature of it?"

"It's unstable..." Banner murmured quietly. "When we saw it, when the others saw it..."

"Reminds me of exorcist movies," Tony snorted as he found a bag of granola and began snacking on it. Granola was healthy right? This counted as eating. Knock one more useless waste of time from his list and he was one step closer to stopping this. Saving lives, getting back to his baby girl...doing something right. He really needed to stop getting lost in his own thoughts because they were all staring at him again and for a split second he wasn't sure why. "You know, exorcist films. The body is always kinda jerky...trundling along like, 'no no you can't make me ahhh!' Possession. Oldest monster in the book. Thing moves like that."

"Right...well why don't we just hand it over to the pope then, Stark?" Steve snapped in annoyance.

Banner shot tony a worried look and resumed speaking, waves, particles, energies. He could drone on and on with the best of them and, normally, tony would be right there with him but he had other things to do! He wanted to fit smaller gauntlet like repulsers to the widow's gloves, what if Steve's shield had spikes? He had a sudden image of Steve slashing the thing at him in annoyance and promptly deleted that idea. Steve's shield was dangerous enough as it was. Still, the thing they were up against could take a wallop almost as well as it could dish one out and his team needed new ways to fight it. "Has it hit anywhere in the daylight yet?" He asked suddenly, once more derailing the conversation.

Clint and Natasha shared a glance and shook their heads, "no."

Tony remember how dark his tower had been, the lights through his wall of windows blotted out with a darkness that seemed to envelop the entire room. At the time he hadn't thought anything of it but now... "Bruce, budge over for a second," he muttered and began typing rapidly at the computer. "What if..."

"Yeah I see what you're doing there," Banner murmured and moved to assist.

He hated this, not understanding, being out of the loop. To be fair, even people from this time were unlikely to keep up with Stark and Banner. Even still, it frustrated Steve. "What exactly are we doing?"

"We are...tracking a small, localized, black hole."

"Sort of," Banner corrected Tony's, undoubtedly, embellished description. "It behaves similarly, eats up the light but...it's not swallowing anything but light it's almost like..."

"I am the night..." tony quipped in a deep, gravely tone and promptly began to cough from the effort. "No but, literally, I think it is. It's darkness, it's shadow. I suspected when my repulsers had more effect than any of your weapons..add in the fact it only shows up at night and... voilà. Shadow creature."

"Shadow creature...why not," Steve sighed. What he wouldn't give for the days when bad guys were simply men. Rum runners, nazis, gangsters, those made sense. None of this made sense.

"I think we should come out of hiding," Tony murmured. "But...not all of us..."

He grinned and stood to circle Natasha slowly. "Things, Wild things, they go back home...right? So, we draw it out, give it a battle, bug off...leaving our favorite little spy behind...you can wait and tail the thing, yeah?"

"No," Steve scowled. "You're not using a member of our team like that."

"Cap, be reasonable, it's not using its utilizing. She's good at this! It's like having me and Banner in here doing this!"

"I said no, Stark!" He roared at him. Steve had been steadily inching nearer and the pair were now inches apart, nearly nose to nose as they scowled at one another. "You're reckless, Stark, you aren't a team player! This is why I make the decisions! That tin can of yours has stealth, right?"

Tony forced a cold smile onto his face and nodded, "only the best, Cap."

"Alright, Banner, Thor, Nat, and Barton, you're the main force. Give it a fight, hold him off as long as you can to make it look good, then get out, understood? Tony, you're my ride."

"Aww, Cap, if you'd wanted to take me for a ride all you had to do was ask," Tony laughed and swatted his butt as he left the room.

Steve very nearly snarled. "Suit up," he snapped and left the room.

"Wish those two would just fuck and get it over with," Clint snorted as he left.

Hellos! I am (freakin finally!!) feeling inspired! I hope you all can forgive me for the long wait and I hope I haven't lost my way/mojo with this thing too much. Next chapter (unless it takes on a mind of its own) is feeling fluffy so far so stay tuned for that lol mwa 😘💙

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