It had been more than five minutes, and Nellie was beginning to freak out. More so than she had been before.
She stood at the edge of the roof, squinting her eyes to get a clearer picture of what was going on below her. Everyone looked like tiny ants from the skyscraper, and she couldn't spot Peter's red suit anywhere on the streets or against the skyline, either.
She waited a minute longer, but that was all she could take. More explosions continued, along with the firing of weapons, and other alarming sounds that told Nellie the other Avengers must have arrived. With no sign of Peter or MJ, she could no longer continue to be a sitting duck.
Nellie took off across the roof to the stairway, pulling the door open and slipping in quickly. She must have jammed the elevator button with her shaking thumb at least thirty times before it finally reached the top floor to retrieve her. She rushed in and pressed the L button for the lobby.
Her heart was beating a mile a minute; it was the closest she'd been to any of Peter's conflicts since the night of Homecoming, when Mister Negative had taken her hostage to lure in Peter.
As she descended to the bottom, one floor at a time, her phone begin to buzz in her pocket. She pulled it out instantly, thinking it might be Peter, only to be met with Happy's contact.
"Uh, hey-hey Happy," She answered, failing to sound as casual as she thought she did.
"Tell me you're down in the hospital cafeteria getting me a ham sandwich," his voice was firm on the other end of the line, but worried.
Nellie clenched her teeth, watching as the number three appeared in glowing yellow font on the elevator ceiling, "I'm in the hospital cafeteria getting you a ham sandwich."
"Then why is your GPS alerting me that you're in Greenwich Village." Now he was the one speaking through clenched teeth. "Which according to the news is exactly where some of the remaining Avengers are having a shoot-out with an unidentified enemy from space?"
Nellie gasped, "Since when do you have a GPS tracker on my phone?"
"Since the day you started dating Peter's dumb ass, and it was for this exact reason!" Happy shouted into the phone.
The elevator dinged and Nellie ran out into the building's lobby. By then, a janitor was the only one inside mopping the floor. She nearly wiped out as she ran across the wet marble, the janitor shouting at her as she did so.
"I'm sorry, sir! So sorry!" She yelled at the janitor before pushing the big glass doors open and running out into the street.
"Hap, I can't talk right now." Nellie breathed out, dodging a cab that nearly ran into her as she darted to the other side of the road where she and MJ had been standing.
"You are going to regret--"
"As always, you're probably right!" Nellie shouted into the speaker as she pressed the end call button. She'd apologize to him later, and probably every day until the end of time knowing his ability to hold out a grudge.
She made it to the other side of the street but MJ was no where to be seen, nor was Peter. She looked up to the sky but still couldn't spot them.
"Where the heck are they?" She muttered to herself, taking off down the sidewalk towards all the noise.
She wasn't a hero; she knew that much. But MJ and Peter were no where to be seen, and she was not just going to wait around just to find out she had two more people to bury. She was done saying goodbye.
"Peter!" Nellie shouted before clamping her hand over her mouth.
She looked around, but most people were running away, weaving around her as they shouted. They definitely weren't paying a misplaced teenage girl any mind.
"Spider-Man! MJ!" She corrected herself, her converse hitting the concrete so hard she felt as though she might break an ankle. Even so, she knew she was barely half as fast as Peter.
As she got closer to the explosion site, she could see several cars were on fire in a wrecked pile outside of a building now missing its doors. The sounds of gunfire and shouting were coming from inside, but she knew better than to run in there without any protection.
Hiding behind an abandoned cab car, she peered out to see if she could spot her friend or boyfriend. Nothing.
"What the hell are you doing here, Stark?" A familiar voice sounded from behind.
She spun around and was met with the face of Sam Wilson, whom she'd finally been introduced to at Tony's funeral days before.
"Where's Peter? He went to find my friend but he never came back--"
Sam pummeled into her in an instant, the sound of metal warping overwhelming in Nellie's ears. When she opened her eyes again, Sam was hovering overtop of her, the metal wings of his suit over top of them like an umbrella. One of the wings had damaged, though, and Nellie realized it was from a large piece of metal that had been thrown at them. It had struck him.
"What is going on?" Nellie questioned him as they stood up.
He kept his hands on her shoulders as they ran to safety in the archway of a nearby building.
"That's the Sanctorum Sanction? Sanctum Sanctorum? The -- whatever, it's Stephen Strange's quarters. She's got some pretty gnarly anger issues, this one." Sam responded, though most of his attention was on the building and teammates going in and out.
Nellie poked her head around him, spotting Rhodey suited up alongside whom she recognized as Doctor Stephen Strange from Tony's funeral. She then spotted the woman from the subway platform, only now she was levitating above Strange, her hands omitting purple flames -- at least, that was as much as Nellie could piece together.
"Who are you?" Strange shouted at the woman who was now hovering above the second floor of the Sanctum Sanctorum.
"I am Umar, sister of Dormammu--" She spat back, her voice filled with rage. "And I've come to avenge my brother."
"I'm sorry, Door Man who?" Rhodey shouted up at her.
They had momentarily stopped firing their weapons, giving her a chance to speak, though Nellie was unsure why. It didn't seem as if they could risk it. But she trusted that they knew what they were doing.
"Can you believe this shit?" Sam muttered from beside Nellie. "You stay here," he warned her. "I'm sick of these space freaks." He snarled as he ran over to join the others.
"Yeah, so avenging is kind of our thing!" Sam shouted up at her as he fell in behing Rhodey.
With his suit's wing damaged, Nellie was unsure how he was supposed to handle himself. She'd never really seen a fight with this many heroes play out before, other than on the television. She couldn't help but feel sad for them that Tony wasn't there to help.
She continued looking around the area, trying to spot Peter and MJ, but couldn't find them. She wondered if they'd made it back to the roof, after all. If they had, she knew now they were probably worrying about wherever she was. That thought made her stomach churn; she knew deep down it would have been better for everyone if she would have just stayed put.
Or better yet, if she never would have left the hospital ill-prepared for something like this in the first place.
"Dormammu," Strange responded, keeping his eyes on Umar and his hands raised as he spoke. "But I didn't kill him; I couldn't. I simply trapped him in a time loop," Strange explained.
"Why are we still talking?" Sam questioned them, only to be hit with a blow of the flame-like energy omitting from her fists.
Nellie gasped as Sam was thrown back against a vehicle, then falling on his back in the street.
"What you did was far worse than killing him, Strange." The woman drew back her hands once more, a build up of more purple flames formed around her hands. "I can only assume killing you means he will be free of your spell."
"Hold up, nobody's killing anybody! So, you can go back to wherever the hell you came from!" Rhodey shouted back.
Umar forced her hands forward, striking Rhodey's armored chest with her magic, or whatever it was she was doing. Nellie hadn't the slightest idea.
The way this was playing out was not the kind of Avengers level fight Nellie had built up in her head whatsoever. It was like a band of misfits trying to figure out why they were fighting, and if they should even proceed. Umar seemed strong, but nothing compared to what Peter had said of Thanos. Surely, they could defeat her easily, Nellie thought.
Nellie had made her way to Sam by hiding behind wrecked cars and downed poles along the way. By the time she reached him, he was beginning to sit up on his own.
"Are you okay?" Nellie asked him, but found her answer when she saw the gaping wound on the inside of his forearm.
She nearly gagged at the sight of it; scarlet blood seemed to flood out onto the concrete. More than she'd ever seen. Surely, more than Sam could afford to lose.
"I told you," Sam muttered through staggered breaths, "to stay over there."
Nellie glanced over her shoulder but she knew there was no way she could get Rhodey or Strange's attention without also gaining the attention of Umar. Instead, she had to think fast.
"Okay, okay, okay," she tried to catch her breath, lifting his arm to examine the size of the gash.
"I'll be fine, just get out of here. Go find Peter," Sam tried pushing her away, but was unsuccessful. He as growing weaker by the minute.
"I'm not leaving you like this," She refused to leave his side, not when he was injured. If Tony had taught her anything in the short time he had as her parent, it was that he never left anyone behind. Even if it cost him everything else.
Nellie closed her eyes to collect herself -- to think about what she could do. She wasn't like them; when it came down to it, she was just a kid. She never expected to be in this kind of situation. Tony had never intended for it, either.
And then -- lightbulb.
She reached across Sam and grabbed a piece of broken glass that had fallen around him from the car he'd crashed into.
Nellie took a deep breath as she began sawing at the hem of her t-shirt with the glass, some of it cutting her hand in the process.
"What are you doing?" Sam questioned her, holding his wound with his other hand to stop the bleeding.
"You need a tourniquet to stop the bleeding," Nellie explained as she made the final cut.
She began wrapping the stretchy material around his arm, above the wound. While doing so, her charm bracelet brushed against his skin, catching his attention.
"What's this?" He questioned her through short breaths. Nellie knew he was in pain, and was more than happy to help a distraction take his mind away from it.
"My charm bracelet. My dad -- Tony-- gave it to me a long time ago." She responded, tying off the tourniquet.
She watched with satisfaction as the blood flow began to slow.
Sam chuckled dryly, shaking his head in disbelief, "Tony Stark, billionaire, genius, and inventor of the most advanced tech the world has ever seen, gave you a charm bracelet?"
Nellie smiled a little, looking down at it, "I guess he knew I didn't need him for all the reasons the rest of the world did."
Sam reached out to touch the largest of the five charms -- the one resembling Tony's arc reactor. Nellie could see in his eyes that he was fading; he needed more help than just a tourniquet. He'd lost a lot of blood already.
"Wait a minute," Sam shook his head weakly. "This isn't just a charm; it's a locket."
Nellie narrowed her eyes as she looked down at the charm on her wrist. She held it up closer for the two of them to see. Before she knew it, Sam raised his other hand and used his fingertips to pop the small circle open.
She looked up at him in confusion, "I don't understand."
He smirked, turning the charm around for her to see what he had now revealed on the inside.
"Tony had something like this, I watched him use it a few years back. Except his was like a watch. You had no idea what he gave you, did you?"
Nellie shook her head, not at all understanding what Sam was getting at.
Another crack through the air caused Nellie to duck down, but Sam only tightened his grip on her wrist.
"If you insist on sticking with me, then I'm gonna need you to get to work."
Nellie swallowed and stared at Sam as he pushed the opening of the charm against her fingertip, which instantly caused the bracelet to transform on her hand. She recognized this immediately as the fingerprint tech that used to act as her key to enter Stark Tower when she'd lived there.
The two watched in surprise as metal unfolded from within the bracelet and formed across her hand almost like a metal glove. The five charms extended and capped over each of her five fingertips, connecting with the rest of the pieces.
"Now that's what I'm talking about," Sam exclaimed, though Nellie wasn't sure what to think.
She held up her hand, examining the invention that Tony must have given her had the need ever risen for her to protect herself -- something she'd only ever have to do if he was no longer around.
Nellie turned over her hand and made a fist, the red and silver metal conforming perfectly to the challenge. She opened her fist again, only for a bright, harsh beam to erupt from her palm into the air above them.
"Woah, woah, don't do that. Not yet," Sam held up his hands and closed her fist again. He leaned over to look around the car, trying to spot the others. "I'm guessing you've never had any training," he trailed off.
Nellie shook her head, her mouth gaping open in shock. She, too, peered around the car to see that the others had vanished into the building. Her heart had never beat so hard in her life. She wiped the sweat from her forehead as she leaned back against the car Sam also was resting against.
"I'm in way over my head."