When the four men plus Mazzy step out into the streets of New York, they are unsurprisingly met with screaming civilians and ugly aliens emerging from a ginormous spaceship in the sky. A strong wind sends debris flying through the air so fast that Mazzy has to shield her face with her arms so that her eyes don't get stabbed out by twigs. It feels like tiny bugs nipping at their cheeks, trying to tear their skin off and blind them simultaneously, but the group heroes trudge through it regardless.

"That's the weirdest frickin' spaceship I've ever seen in my life!" Mazzy shouts over all the noise. The spaceship in particular is oddly O-shaped and Mazzy doesn't understand the physics behind that at all. "Dad, what d'you want me to do?" she asks. She knows she can help; she just doesn't know what that help looks like just yet. She still needs direction.

"How 'bout get the hell out of here?" Tony suggests without looking away from the ship.

"Don't treat me like I'm useless!" Mazzy yells. She's not useless. That's a lesson they've both learned long ago. And treating her like she's useless only causes more problems in the end.

It's better, Tony has learned. to treat Mazzy as what she is rather than to treat her like what he wishes she could be.

"Fine. Get these people out of their cars and as far from here as possible," Tony tells her. He turns to her and taps his ear. "Time to put those new features to the test, huh?"

Mazzy nods and presses a button on her hearing aids. The new features he's talking about refer to the modifications he made when Mazzy needed new hearing aids. Her old ones were a little worse for wear after the whole crashing a helicopter into the water fiasco.

One of the many benefits of having Tony Stark as a father is that he's a tech genius, which means he can add features to Mazzy's hearing aids. He's made it so her hearing aids can be connected to the comms she's been missing out on all this time, plus he added in FRIDAY so that Mazzy has some help even when she's without him.

After connecting to comms and making sure FRIDAY's working, Mazzy turns her focus to the task at hand. She needs to get civilian out and she needs to do it fast.

There are still confused people rushing out of their cars and out of coffee shops, disoriented and afraid, and Mazzy makes sure to point them in the direction of safety. After assisting a man through the maze of cars on the road, Mazzy spots something.

In the backseat of a nearby taxi is a scared daughter with her even more scared mother. The doors are all blocked from opening by other cars and debris. So, Mazzy has to think quickly. Storms, debris, things that can break glass. She grabs a broken cinderblock from the ground, climbs onto the hood of the car, and smashes the rock into the windshield. Using her foot to push as much of the broken glass out of the way as possible, Mazzy crouches down on the hood.

"Come on, come on!" she says to the mother-daughter duo, gesturing for them to climb out of the car.

As the mother and daughter climb into the front seat, Mazzy stands up to check on what's going on with the whole spaceship debacle, and what she sees is pretty unfortunate: one skinny, grayish-purple alien thing and one beefed-up, armored alien thing. She quickly crouches back down to check on the mother and daughter duo's progress. 

"Let's go, guys. Trust me, you don't wanna see these aliens. They're super ugly," she tells them.

The daughter gets to the front of the car first, and she's got a really excited look on her face as Mazzy helps her climb through the broken windshield. "How ugly? Uglier than those aliens that came when I was a baby?" the girl asks as soon as she lands on her feet. "I saw them in a book at school. They were really ugly."

"These guys are somehow way uglier," Mazzy tells the girl as she turns around to help the mother out, too. "Their ship is pretty dumb-looking, too. Who makes a spaceship shaped like a hula-hoop?"

"Maybe ugly aliens like ugly spaceships," the little girl says with a shrug.

"Probably."

The woman lands beside her daughter on the street, but she's way more afraid. Tears are even streaming down her cheeks. "Thank you! Thank you so much, honey!" she practically sobs, her grip tight on Mazzy's sleeve.

"Yeah, but you should actually start running now because the uglies are coming closer," Mazzy tells her, ushering them away.

The woman nods, picks up her daughter, and starts running off as fast as she possibly can.

When Mazzy turns back to check on the progress of the fight, she only sees her dad in the Iron Man suit being grabbed by a super long, extendable claw. She then watches with a sigh as he is smashed through the bottom floor of the nearest building and thrown against a tree in the park across the street.

"I take it things aren't going well?" Mazzy says to her dad over comms.

"Things are suboptimal," Tony answers exhaustedly. "Look, Bruce is having some relationship issues with his green pal right now, so I need you to get over here and make sure he doesn't die."

"Sounds good!"

Mazzy is actually quite thrilled to have a super important job like this. She loves protecting people. Especially when she gets to protect people who are older than her because that just boosts her ego a little bit. So she happily runs as fast as she can to meet Bruce and her dad in the park, and she gets there just in time to shove Bruce out of the way of being killed by blunt force trauma to the head. Just as quickly as they dive out of the way of the claw, though, Tony misses a shot at the big alien and slices the trunk of a tree instead.

Snapping, crackling, and popping like a bowl of Cocoa Krispies, the tree comes down and traps Mazzy and Bruce under a tangled net of branches. Slowly but surely, the two of them have to crawl their way out from underneath.

"Come on, Hulk! What are you doing to me?" Bruce argues with himself. He starts slapping his own cheeks and Mazzy's nose scrunches in judgment. "Come out! Come out! Come out!"

"No!" Hulk suddenly breaks through and shouts.

"What do you mean no?!"

Mazzy can't help but laugh at the way Bruce plops backward into the grass, despite the direness of this particular situation. "Haven't you ever watched a coming-of-age movie? He'll come out when he's ready," she jokes. She grabs Bruce's wrists and pulls him back up again. "Probably time to accept defeat, I think. Right? Run for safety instead, how 'bout?"

That's when, out of the corner of her eye, Mazzy spots Strange being chased through the air by the grayish-purple, ugly alien. The most concerning part is that he's wrapped up by some weird ropey-wire stuff, and he looks very much stuck.

"That's not good," Mazzy murmurs to herself. She turns back to Bruce. "Okay, um... don't die. I'll be right back."

Abandoning Bruce beside the fallen tree in the park, Mazzy starts chasing after the alien and Stephen. She's sure Bruce will be fine on his own. No one is really in pursuit of him considering he isn't the one with the Time Stone. So as long as he stays out of the way, he'll be fine. She's pretty sure, at least.

As she's running through the streets, weaving in between abandoned cars and flying newspapers, Mazzy spots Peter swinging in the same direction she's running in. She waves her arms wildly in the air. "Peter! Hey! P- I mean- Spider-Man! Hey, Spider-Man! I need to get up there!" she shouts.

Peter quickly spots her running below him. "Hey, Maz! What's up?" he asks.

"Nothing much. Just need to get up to that sorcerer with the weird hair so the ugly alien can't kidnap him. He's got a super important green rock in his necklace," Mazzy explains briefly.

"Right, right. I gotcha!" Peter replies. "Don't get me in trouble with Mr. Stark!"

He shoots a web down at Mazzy and it latches onto her wrist. She quickly wraps the web around her hand a couple of times, just to make sure she's got a good grip because, despite how often Peter's webs work, she still doesn't have full trust in them. Not for any reason other than her own anxiety. Even if her broken bones heal quickly, they still hurt like hell when she has them. So falling would suck pretty bad. Better safe than sorry, or whatever.

With Peter's momentum, he swings Mazzy up toward Strange and the alien. When Mazzy gets to Strange, she grabs tightly onto his arm—because falling from that height would totally suck, as previously mentioned—and shakes her free hand to shuffle her sleeve a little ways down her arm, revealing a bracelet around her wrist.

Lately, Tony has been working with nanotech a whole lot, and the great thing about nanotech is that it's just that: nano. Super small and perfectly unsuspecting. So no one knows Mazzy's bracelet is actually a weapon except her and her dad.

Using her bracelet, Mazzy shoots a ray at the wire binding Strange. It only gets the chance to make a little bit of a dent because before it can actually free him, he suddenly slips free and starts to fall, Mazzy going down with him. Peter is quick to catch the two, but soon enough, they're being sucked in by a light shining down from the hula-hoop spaceship.

Peter's web still has a hold on them, and he's holding onto a streetlight as best as he can, but the beam is stronger than him.

"This is bad!" Mazzy shrieks. Everything is moving way too fast. She doesn't know what's happening and she doesn't know what to do. Her dad's too preoccupied with the other alien to give any instruction, and Strange is seemingly out cold. Mazzy has to do this on her own.

"What's going on?" Tony asks her.

"Nothing!" Mazzy replies instantly. It's not true, obviously. She just doesn't want to be banned from helping.

Peter, however, is more concerned with her, as well as his own, safety, so he tells the truth without a second thought. "Uh, Mr. Stark, we're being beamed up."

"What?" Tony asks. Mazzy can hear the sounds of him still fighting the bigger alien in the park. Crashing, grunting, and roaring. "Hang on!"

The next thing Mazzy knows, Peter's web breaks with a quiet thwip. Just like that, they're separated. Mazzy and Strange are so high up in the air at this point that Mazzy's too afraid to let go of the sorcerer's arm, so she just hangs on as tightly as she can. Besides, as long as she's with him, she might be able to help. That way, Thanos doesn't get the Time Stone and everything turns out alright.

"Dad, I think I'm being abducted!" Mazzy says as she's pulled into the spaceship.

"Peter, don't let her get abducted."

"I'm trying my best, sir!"

His best isn't enough, unfortunately, because the gates close before Peter can get inside of the ship. Peter clings to the outside while Mazzy is stuck with Strange and the alien on the inside. Now that she has a surface to land on, Mazzy lets go of Stephen's arm and stands on her own two feet in the spaceship. With a running start, she makes one last-ditch attempt at stopping the grayish-purple alien, but before she can get to him, she's got her own ropey-wire stuff wrapping around her body and pinning her arms to her sides.

"You're an exhausting little brat," the alien quips in a—for some reason—British accent. What's up with people from space having British accents for no reason?

"Dad! Dad? Hello?" she says, completely unsure if her comms are even working at this point. "It's official, Dad; I'm abducted by aliens. They're gonna make a documentary about it, I bet. I'll sit in a chair and I'll sigh, and I'll pretend I don't know the cameras are rolling, and so many people will watch it. It'll be- mmph!"

Mazzy's nervous rambling comes to an abrupt halt when a piece of metal is clasped over her mouth. She lets out a muffled groan and tries her best to explode the ugly alien with her mind.

It doesn't work. 

✮

For a little while too long, now, Mazzy has been watching the ugly alien poke scary, mystical needles into Dr. Stephen Strange's skin. Strange has a very strong pain tolerance, apparently, because he still has yet to give up the Stone.

Mazzy would applaud him if her hands weren't pinned to her sides. Not moving is really starting to get numbing. It's a weird feeling.

The only thing Mazzy really can move right now is her eyes. She's been able to look around the ship, up and down, side to side, with only her eyes, but so far, she hasn't found any secret thing that might help her get out of this mess. She didn't watch much Mickey Mouse Clubhouse growing up, but she's still hoping that, somehow, a Mystery Mouseketool will appear in front of her.

She's starting to give up hope, though, until she spots Peter and her dad looking down at her from an edge way up above her. So they are the surprise tool that will help her later.

It's a hard task, but Mazzy makes sure not to look up at her dad and Peter longer, so as not to reveal their hiding spot. Instead, she shifts her eyes back to Strange and the mystical needles. They look almost unbearable.

Strange lets out a loud groan of pain and it makes Mazzy cringe. "Painful, aren't they?" the alien asks Strange. He's in too much pain to answer, though. "They were originally designed for microsurgery. And any one of them..." Tony lands on the platform behind the alien with a thud, and the alien turns around to look at him, "...Could end your friend's life in an instant."

"I gotta tell you, he's not really my friend," Tony replies, making Mazzy snort out a muffled laugh. "Saving his life is more of a professional courtesy. Plus, you abducted my kid, so..."

Slowly, large metal objects begin to float in the air as the alien lifts his hands. Telekinesis. Mazzy wonders if it's a unique power or if it's an ability belonging to all of his species.  She knows very little about aliens.

"You've saved nothing. Your powers are inconsequential compared to mine," the alien says confidently.

"Yeah, but the kid's seen more movies," Tony quips back.

Suddenly, he blasts a hole into a wall of the ship. The pressure difference between the inside of the ship and the vacuum of space causes the alien, Mazzy, and Strange to be instantly sucked toward the hole. The alien is sucked through first, yelling in defeat and panic. Mazzy can't help but yelp, too, but before she and Strange can be sucked through, too, Peter shoots a web at each of them. With all of the strength he has, he pulls them back inside the ship and Tony uses his nanotech to fill in the hole, stopping the vacuum and setting the pressure back to normal.

When Mazzy lands back on the platform, Peter lands beside her. "Wasn't that awesome? It was my idea," he tells her proudly.

"Mhm! Mm-m m-mm-m!" she murmurs, her mouth still sealed shut by the metal. Tony pulls it from her mouth. As soon as she can open her mouth again, Mazzy takes in a deep breath, then repeats what she was trying to say. "Yes! Like in Alien!" she says enthusiastically.

Alien happens to be one of the movies they watched together.

"Yes! Exactly like in Alien!" Peter tells her, nodding his head adamantly.

Mazzy turns to her dad next, an excited smile still plastered on her face. "Dad, can you believe I got abducted? This is so crazy," she breathes out, rocking on her toes.

Tony, however, seems incredibly unenthused. He actually looks quite angry. "Your job was to stick with Banner. Was it not?"

Pursing her lips, Mazzy shrugs her shoulders. "Well, technically, you said make sure he doesn't die. I did that. And then I tried helping Strange. Worked out in the end, right?"

"No," is all Tony bothers to say.

The one word is enough to make Mazzy feel bad, though, especially because of the tone of his voice. It's the dad tone that he uses when she's done something especially wrong. Tony saves it exclusively for when she's done something that puts herself or someone else in danger. And there's no denying that Mazzy is in danger at the moment. Mazzy just doesn't understand the level at which she's in danger. She doesn't know, yet, just how hard it is going to be to get back to Earth.

There's no going back now, though. It's not like she can undo the past, and Mazzy's sure that her dad will get over it in the end. Maybe he'll even be grateful about it later on. Maybe it's the right choice.

Strange gets up off of the floor and dusts his clothes off, and his somehow sentient cape wraps itself around his shoulders like substrate to an enzyme. "We gotta turn this ship around," Strange says as he catches his breath.

"Yeah. Now he wants to run. Great plan," Tony scoffs irritatedly as he walks away from the sorcerer.

"I want to protect the stone," Stephen says, following after him.

"And I want you to thank me. Now, go ahead. I'm listening."

"For what? Nearly blasting me into space?"

As her dad and Strange continue to bicker, Mazzy leans in a little closer to Peter in order to quietly inform him that, "These two really don't like each other. They're never gonna shut up. Ever."

"Yeah. I'm getting that," Peter says with a nod.

Mazzy crosses her arms and shakes her head like a displeased coach at a high school football game, watching his team lose from the sidelines. "We were probably better off with the ugly alien," she mutters.

It's not true, but it's starting to feel like it with the incessant arguing. It's always been like this, though. The Avengers have always argued. Without the arguing, there would never be an eventual agreement. And eventual agreement is absolutely necessary for plans to be created and fights to be won.

"Unlike everyone else in your life, I don't work for you," Strange is saying when the two teenagers chime back into the two adults' argument.

"And due to that fact," Tony says, his eyebrows raised so high that Mazzy can imagine they might fly off of his forehead, "we're now in a flying donut billions of miles from Earth with no backup."

Peter raises his right arm and uses his left to gesture to Mazzy. "We're backup," he offers.

"No. You're stowaways. The adults are talking."

"Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that whole Alien plan Peter's idea? Have you even seen Alien, Dad? No?" Mazzy raises her eyebrows, too, and tilts her head to the side. "Right. So, if it weren't for Peter, Strange would still have those freaky needles in his face."

"So, in conclusion, he's not a stowaway, but you, on the other hand, absolutely are," Tony says. Mazzy gives a compromising nod. At least Peter deserves credit. She may be a problem, but he's not. "Right."

"I'm sorry, I- I'm confused as to the relationship here," Strange suddenly interjects, scrunching his face up with confusion. He gestures to Peter but looks at Tony. "What is he, your ward?"

"No," Peter answers immediately as Mazzy scoffs out an amused laugh. She kind of forgets about the whole secret identity thing. All the Avengers—or who used to be the Avengers—are public about their identities. Peter, however, doesn't want a single soul to know that he is Spider-Man. So no one really knows about him. Including Dr. Strange. With that in mind, Peter steps forward, holding out a hand for Stephen to shake. "I'm Peter, by the way," he says politely.

Stephen doesn't bother to even face him, let alone shake his hand. "Dr. Strange," is all he says.

Peter lets his hand drop back down to his side. "Oh, you're using our made-up names. Um... I'm Spider-Man, then."

"I want a made-up name," Mazzy huffs to herself. While Strange turns back to her dad to discuss their whole Thanos-defeating plan, she turns to Peter to discuss a made-up name. "What do you think my made-up name could be? I mean, Pietro and Wanda always called me Mighty Mouse, but that's not really that cool of a name. Plus, it's already taken."

"Yeah. Mighty Mouse is only cool when you're actually a mouse," Peter agrees with a nod.

"Problem is, when you make up your own superhero name, then it sounds kinda stupid. Like, you're only Spider-Man because the people on YouTube started calling you that. But no one calls me anything except for Mazzy Stark, 'cause they already knew who I was before they knew that I'm, like, not normal and stuff," Mazzy ponders aloud. She looks all over the ship, as if that will give her some grand superhero name idea. She turns up blank. "This is really hard."

"Hmm," Peter hums. "What about, like, Iron... Girl?"

"No, that doesn't make sense. My dad won't even let me have an Iron Man suit," Mazzy says, giving her dad a glare out of the corner of her eye. He's not paying attention, though. He still seems to be arguing with Dr. Strange. Mazzy doesn't think that's going to stop any time soon. "Maybe I'll get an Instagram and then ask my followers what I should call myself. I'm thirteen now, so technically I'm allowed to have it."

"That's a good idea. Maybe," Peter replies with a nod. Really, though, he's not so sure. Considering Mazzy has never been to school, she is underestimating just how stupid and mean teenagers can be. Especially over social media.

Anyway, Tony is all of a sudden done arguing with Strange and has come to join Peter and Mazzy on the other side of the platform. "Alright, kid," he says to Peter. Mazzy watches as her dad taps each of Peter's shoulders with his hand, like a king knighting someone. "You're an Avenger now," he says.

Mazzy's eyes widen and her jaw drops with jealousy. "What? And I d- wait, so- so he gets to be an Avengers, but I don't?! This isn't even my first time fighting aliens!" She follows Tony at his heels as he walks away again. "Dad, please. Come on. Please. I'm an Avenger, too. Right, Dad? Right?"

"God, you are an annoying little puppy begging for scraps at the dinner table," Tony huffs out. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes, but doesn't turn to face his daughter. Not because he's ignoring her, though. It's actually because he has an amused smile on his face that she can't see.

"Please! Please, Dad!" she begs. "I wanna be an Avenger, too. Pleeaaase." One more moment and Tony finally comes to a stop, turning around to face Mazzy. When she sees the smirk on his face, she instantly crosses her arms and narrows her eyes at him. "You're messing with me?" she says more as a statement than a question.

Tony nods, snickering to himself. "Yeah."

"Not funny."

"Pretty funny," Tony counters.

Mazzy stands up a little straighter and lifts her chin. "Okay. Make me an official Avenger, too, now. Please and thank you."

"Fine," Tony sighs. He taps both of her shoulders, just like he did to Peter. "You're an Avenger, too, Maz. Congrats."

⭐️💫⭐️💫

double update 🗣️