The gun was level with Bruce's head, the scrapper poised to fire.

From the Stark pack, Naomi felt herself draw out an object, familiar in her hand. With one hand still gripped onto the open pack, the other slowly raised in the air, weighted with a weapon. Her mind was disconnected from her body as her own battered gun lifted in the air, drawing level with the scrapper. For a moment, everything was still.

Bruce was huddled against the wall, helpless to do anything as he stared down the barrel of a gun. His lips still moved with unheard prayers, and his trembling head shook side to side, a plea to the unmoving scrapper. Even with her own weapon ready, Naomi's finger was frozen on the trigger, her mind disconnected from her body as it acted on instinct.

The scrapper cocked it's gun, and from the corner of her eye Naomi saw its finger begin to press down on the trigger. Still, her hand refused to move. Naomi's heart was quiet in her chest, and she was barely aware of the pain as her lungs began to constrict from lack of oxygen.

Shifting away from the scrappers gun, Bruce's eyes met Naomi's. In the second that they met, Naomi felt as though she saw straight into the mans soul. His raw emotions laid out to her like a book- Bruce Banner was about to die, and he was in anguish. His eyes were wide with terror, and unending devastation welled up in them. Naomi saw his expression shift as the realization settled on him that he could do nothing to prevent the scrapper from firing.

But Naomi could.

All it took was one second, one look at her beloved scientist, and Naomi's mind and body reconnected. She could feel the flow of the adrenaline as it rushed through her, spreading from her heart into her fingertips, where she finally pulled the trigger.

The blast from her gun knocked the scrapper back, sending it sailing into the wall of the jet, dropping its gun as it flew. However the fight was not over. It was a crumpled heap against the wall, but its gun was dangerously close, and Naomi could see its head stirring, meaning it had retained consciousness. Re-adjusting her grip on her gun, she considered her options for a moment. Her gaze never left the figure, her concentration on it unbroken as her only objective became to keep Bruce, and everyone else on board safe. She was the only non-superhero on the jet, but that thought didn't cross her mind as Naomi kept her gun carefully trained on the scrapper.

"Bruce, get to the front." Naomi's voice was steady, and she could hear the mans footsteps as he used the walls to drag himself toward the front. The scrapper remained still, and she could feel its eyes boring back into hers from behind its cowl. It was waiting for her to falter, for an opportunity for it to grab the gun that lay prone on the floor of the ship. But Naomi did not falter, she watched the figure unceasingly, debate raging in her mind. She knew that the logical choice would be to shoot the scrapper now, so it would no longer pose a threat to her and her friends safety. However Naomi was not a warrior, she was an ex-assistant at a regional paper supply company. Shooting someone, even if she only held a stun gun, was not a normal reality for her. She shot the scrapper the first time out of necessity, but now that it was only standing before her, unarmed, it posed an ethical question. Naomi knew that onscreen, any one of the heroes wouldn't hesitate to shoot the scrapper, especially since chances of killing him were low, but Naomi Swanson wasn't a superhero and she knew it. She would do what she had to to protect her loved ones, but going further was something she hadn't had time to consider, and didn't want to.

But she would be forced to fire again when the scrapper suddenly, and without warning, lunged forward for its weapon. Sucking in a breath through her teeth, Naomi fired at the figure- but her shot was too high, and she barely grazed it, hitting the wall behind. In the time that she had fired, the scrapper had its gun back in its hands, this time pointing up at her.

The pair stilled, each pointing a weapon at the other- Naomi still standing, clutching the bag on the wall to keep her rooted in place against the harsh winds- and the scrapper, sat on the floor with its legs sprawled, its expression unknown beneath its hood. For several tense seconds, neither moved. But nothing could last forever, especially when Naomi couldn't afford for the scrapper to enter the wormhole with the rest of them. Hastily, she constructed a plan in her head, something that would only work in the MCU, and would probably just get her killed back home.

"RIGHT!" Naomi screamed, praying that her pilots heard her order. As she ended her cry, Naomi let go of the bag and dropped onto her knees, keeping her gun pointed at the scrapper as best she could. As the woman had predicted, her sudden shout had startled the scrapper, and prompted it to end the stalemate, shooting first. But thankfully, she had ducked just in time so that its shot missed, just as hers had only moments beforehand. But time was of the essence, and Naomi had no time to revel in her small victory- it would only take the scrapper a second to zero in on her new position and fire again.

As it aimed for her head, the jet lurched to the right, turning in a full 90 degree angle. The sudden shift in movement ripped away the walkway that had still connected the scrapper's ship to the Quinjet, leaving the scrapper ship behind. The turn also serviced to forcefully throw Naomi away from the wall she had been sticking so close to, and send her sliding toward the scrapper. Maintaining control as she flew forward on her shins, Naomi kept her upper body tilted back, and her thighs spread slightly apart to keep her balance.

In a moment, she was merely inches away, and to avoid collision, Naomi simultaneously shoved her gun into the center of its chest with one hand, and grabbed the scrappers weapon with the other, pointing it towards the floor. Her motion was fluid, likely a product of Valkyrie and the Hulk's training, which had allowed her to keep a semblance of calm in battle.

In their new position, just breaths away, Naomi could finally see underneath the thing's hood. Its face was humanoid, with eyes and lips and a nose. Its skin was stained a deep purple, the surface of its face ridged and rough. However its eyes were strikingly human, a light golden with a black pupil that Naomi watched dilate when she stared into them. Its eyes made her pause, gave her a second to hesitate about shooting her gun so close to it, even though the weapon wasn't set to kill.

But the scrapper had no such concerns, and stared straight back into her eyes as it's gun twisted underneath her grip, and fired directly into Naomi's thigh. It watched Naomi's face suddenly contort with pain, and felt the pressure on its chest from her gun alleviate as she dropped it, both of her hands moving to grip the wound. This gave the scrapper no pause, and it would have fired again had it not been for the scream.

Naomi Swanson had never been shot before. She had never experienced the pain that came with having an energy blast shoot into her thigh from only inches away. The closest experience she had ever had was twisting her ankle in the fourth grade, which at the time, the pain had convinced her that she was going to die. But when the blast entered her leg, the sheer force of it ricocheted into the rest of her body, doubling her over as her hands clasped the wound for hope of stopping the pain. Her leg was on fire, and the pain of it resounded through her being, and conveyed itself to the rest of the world as a scream- a scream that ripped through Naomi- seemed to tear at her vocal chords as the burn of the wound manifested itself into pure sound.

However it may have been that scream that saved Naomi's life, as the volume and proximity the scrapper had to it forced the thing to shove itself against the wall, its body attempting to physically remove itself from the injured woman. It pushed away from her, and the grip on its gun loosened as its features scrunched, some of her pain conveyed to it through the sound.

But Naomi Swanson was more than a woman shot in the leg. Though her burning pain did not cease, after a moment she was able to shove it out of her mind, and raise her head to meet the scrapper's eyes once more. She sucked in a breath through gritted teeth as she stared it down, her eyes burning with the anger of her maimed leg. Naomi saw something spark in the scrappers eyes, a flicker of fear. Naomi fought for the will to move her hands, to grab her gun, to do anything to complete her mission and eliminate the threat of this scrapper. But the pain was too great for her, and from the corner of her mind Naomi could her her companions screaming at each other in the cockpit, their words overlapping.

But against the others, her ears picked out the sound of Bruce's voice. His words were lost to her, but the simple sound of the mans voice reminded Naomi of something. All the pain she felt- all the burning, as though a fire had been lit inside of her, originating in her thigh- had been meant for Bruce. The scrapper's gun had pointed to Bruce before it had pointed at Naomi, and the shot for him was meant to be lethal.

The thought finally drove her to remove a hand from her thigh, staring into the scrapper's eyes as she went. Her free hand closed into a fist, her mind barely registering the blood coating it. Naomi stared into the eyes of the scrapper as her fist connected with the side of its head, driven with the force of her pain, her anger, and her love for the people on the ship with her.

The blow knocked the scrapper out immediately, its body falling limp in front of her. Without a second thought, Naomi grabbed a fistful of the cloth covering its body, and dragged it as best she could toward the back of the ship, its doors yawning open. Outside, the final trailing ships were being picked off by Thor, but Naomi didn't turn her attention to him. Instead, she watched as the air currents raging inside the jet pulled the scrapper's unconscious body out into the air, its useless hood flapping in the wind as it fell before it plunged into the sea, no longer a threat to Naomi, or her companions.