The gang was back together, but it felt like a bittersweet moment. The three of them have had many moments of reuniting in the past when one returned from an assignment. But, instead of walking down the halls of the Triskelion with laughter in the air to go and get drinks together, they were marching across the helicarrier to collect weapons and head into battle.

No words were spoken. There was nothing that any of them could say. If there was a book on conversation starters before joining an alien war, they sorely needed to read it.

Eleanor desperately wanted to grab ahold of Natasha and cling onto her as though the world depended on it. She was scared but felt numb at the same time, she needed to feel - but there was no time to feel, or mourn, or cry. They needed to get to work.

Once they had reached their lockers which were all in close proximity to each other, they started gathering their spare supplies. Clint collected spare arrows and also gathered an assortment of trick arrows, such as ones that had mini explosives in the point. Natasha loaded up her widow bites and electric gloves, the familiar whirring of them booting up brought Eleanor some comfort for some reason.

Eleanor re-tied her hair into a high ponytail and then grabbed spare pistols to strap to her thighs, also grabbing a few knives to place inside of her belt. She already had another gun in her belt holster so she was armoured to the max, and she grabbed a lot of ammo, you could never have too many bullets in this line of work. She chucked a few magazines over to Nat as well to put her mind at ease, which was accepted with a grateful nod and smile.

Steve showed up just as Eleanor finished storing her masses amount of ammo in the various storage parts of her uniform, "We all ready?".

They all turned to him and nodded, following him out and towards the hangar to hopefully catch a ride. They all walked in a row, Steve a couple of paces ahead of them leading the group. Eleanor was next to Nat, and the way that they were presenting themselves in their strides made her feel more confident, it was a movie moment.

The group gracefully made their way through the hangar and towards a jet that had its hatch open. This would be their gleaming chariot into battle.

Steve continued walking towards it, so the rest of the group followed him inside. "Hey, you guys aren't authorised to be in here", another Agent informed them. Eleanor scoffed at someone trying to tell Captain America what to do.

"Son, just don't".

The Agents then promptly removed themselves from the jet after a staring contest with the group that lasted a few seconds, making them smirk at their triumph.

Clint proceeded to rush into the pilot's seat, Nat assumed her position in the co-pilot seat, whilst Steve and Eleanor stood a few feet away from the pair towards the middle.

It didn't take long for the jet to be up in the air, the group hastily making their exit toward New York City, even with the people in the control room yelling at them not to leave the hangar over the PA. Priorities people, priorities.

"So, you told us you would tell us where we're going on the way?", Nat started, hinting for Steve to actually start telling them the information that they need to know now.

"Right, New York, Stark Tower. Tony should be there already". The others in the jet nodded along and then went back to silence for a while, until Steve saw that Eleanor was tapping her fingers repeatedly against the outer side of her thighs due to nervous energy, "El, you okay?".

Nat frowned slightly and turned around to check on her girlfriend, "Yeah, thanks Cap", she smiled, clearly deflecting the question, none of them were okay really, but that answer would have to be good enough for now, as they had quickly reached the city.

All of their eyes widened slightly at the sight before them, they all leaned forward to get a better view of the window. A giant blue beam shooting into the sky directly from Stark Tower. A harsh reminder that what they were about to fight were things that they weren't ready for. "Stark, we're on your three, headed Northeast", Nat spoke into the comms.

"What? Did you stop for drive-through?", Tony snarked back at them, clearly overwhelmed with the current situation, "Swing up Park, I'm gonna lay 'em out for you".

The jet sped through the streets of the city, and Natasha released the gun from the lower hatch of the jet when seeing the Chitauri flying down another street in front of them on some weird vehicles, shooting at them when the jet was positioned directly behind them.

"Okay, so Thor was serious when he said aliens", Eleanor gulped, her jaw slightly slack at seeing what was happening, and they'd only just arrived.

Clint then started circling Stark Tower, Nat taking down any of the aliens in flight whilst they were at it. "Nat?", Clint said when they saw that Loki and Thor were fighting on one of the balcony areas.

"I see them".

He positioned the jet to face the two Gods so that Nat could start shooting at them, hopefully getting Loki, but unfortunately, they turned and pointed the Sceptre at the jet, completely taking out one of the engines in the left wing with a blast.

Clint tried to keep the jet in the air but it wasn't working, they were just going up and down all over the place, before just going down, barrelling towards the ground. The two pilots were strapped in, but Eleanor and Steve in the back were not. Steve jumped slightly and grabbed ahold of the bars hanging from the ceiling to keep from being flown around the jet.

After watching the Captain, Eleanor also attempted to jump, but she was considerably smaller than the man, and so failed miserably, and struggled to find her footing when she landed due to the jet swinging around in a million different directions.

Seeing that Eleanor would not be able to reach, he grabbed her wrist and lifted her into the air so that she could grab ahold of the bars too. "Thanks", she breathed out when she had a tight hold.

It was very hard to hand on, even Steve almost flew off a few times, so there was no chance that Eleanor was going to be able to cling on whilst being thrown around. Her grip slipped when one of the wings crashed into the side of a building, and she almost went crashing into the wall. Luckily, Steve had managed to catch her hand and stop her in mid-air. This would be the first of many ailments, as the force of suddenly being stopped jarred the muscles in her shoulder slightly. She would be able to shake it off, for now, she didn't really have any other choice.

When they had finally hit the floor, Steve let go of her hand and she landed on her side, "Sorry!", he shouted whilst hopping down himself. Nat and Clint unclipped themselves from the front and made their way to the other two in the back. Nat rushed to grab Eleanor by the arm and dragged her into a standing position.

"You good?".

"Oh yeah, never better", she smirked whilst rotating her shoulder trying to stretch the muscle a little to ease the light pain spreading through her shoulder blade.

The group then swiftly ran out of the opened hatch and onto the streets of New York, trying not to trip over the rubble that they had created from their crash landing.

They sprinted onto a tunnel bridge and looked up at the sky, seeing hundreds of flying Chitauri. If it wasn't crucial to keep her head in the game currently, Eleanor's mind would have gone static at what she was seeing. There were already so many damaged buildings and burning cars, and the battle had barely just begun. The screams of civilians running around desperately was haunting.

Just as Eleanor had convinced her brain that this was a semi-manageable situation, a huge roaring came from the giant space-hole-portal in the sky. Without much time to comprehend what it was, a giant Leviathan clad in plated armour made from a hardened material like metal flew out of it and above them.

They all just stared at it breathlessly, with looks of terror on their faces as it flew right past them, very close to the ground. How on Earth were they supposed to deal with that thing?

Eleanor took a few steps back out of instinct as it flew next to them close to the ground. The feeling of terror only heightened when aliens started being shot out of this flying monster and onto nearby buildings, like some sort of freaky vending machine.

The three just continued to look around in disbelief at the utter mayhem that was erupting in the middle of the city, with it only seeming to be getting worse with every passing second. "Stark, are you seeing this?", Steve said into the earpiece.

"Seeing, still working on believing", was the response. Eleanor nodded along whilst staring open-mouthed at the sky. "Where's Banner? Has he shown up yet?".

Eleanor was snapped out of her trance, "Banner?", she responded into her own earpiece. Why would Banner show up, he went M.I.A. after the whole chasing her and Nat through the helicarrier incident.

"Just keep me posted".

The four looked at each other and decided that it was finally time to make a plan of action, "We need to take cover", Clint spoke first, leading them all to an abandoned taxi. They crouched behind it trying to figure out what the hell they could do to stop this.

"We've got civilians trapped up here", they heard before a bunch of the Chitauri flew past them, blasting the street relentlessly below them, causing cars to explode. People's screams could be heard filling the streets, it was horrible to witness.

"Loki", Steve exclaimed as he stood to look at the wreckage. There was so much fire and smoke. "They're fish in a barrel down there".

Their thoughts were cut off by blasts being fired at them, one missing Steve's head by a couple of inches or so. Nat and Eleanor got out their guns at high speed, one in each hand, and aimed them in the direction where the shots had come from, shooting at the Chitauri that had landed a few metres in from of them before crouching back down behind the taxi. Clint shuffled over to another taxi in front for cover.

"We got this. It's good. Go", Nat aimed at Steve. Eleanor quirked an eyebrow at the confidence being shown because she was quite sure that they in fact did not 'got this'.

"Do you think you can hold them off?".

"Captain, it would be my genuine pleasure", Clint smirked before shooting arrows at the Chitauri. Nat and Eleanor took this as their cue to start shooting at them as well, whilst Steve ran and jumped off the bridge.

It didn't feel like they would do much damage against an alien army with a couple of handguns, but they took shot after shot anyway, trying to make at least a dent in the swarm of them.

A/n - Thank you for 1k reads!