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In a millisecond, Nadia went from being just over five feet tall to being barely a centimeter tall. She could feel the energy in her body buzz like an archer’s string pulled taut; in the same instant, she felt the rest of her mass slipping away entirely. It was like falling too fast in an elevator, only if you were the elevator and also if the elevator was really super small now. It was freeing. And that was coming from a girl who already knew how to fly.
From her new vantage point, Nadia looked up and saw Monica’s gloved hand soaring toward the space Nadia had occupied just a moment ago. The glove looked as if it were moving in slow motion.
It wasn’t, of course. Moving in slow motion, that is. But Nadia was very, very small, which meant she could now move very, very quickly, which made all other humans seem positively lethargic by comparison. The perfect moment to act.
Nadia narrowed her eyes and jetted upward. Maybe she could get away with hurting Monica just a little. She was going to have to hurt the almost-Teleforce quite a bit, though.
She landed on Monica’s fist while it was still moving forward, running at full speed up the length of her could-have-been-friend’s forearm. The fabric below Nadia’s feet was rubbery—she wasn’t sure what her super suit was made of, but it likely kept Monica safe from the electricity sparking off the tower. Some kind of vulcanized rubber, maybe. Clever. She’d made some modifications to her old suit in her spare time post–S.H.I.E.LD. custody jailbreak. Nadia approached Monica’s elbow, hoping this might be easier than she’d thought. Because she was running out of time.
Nadia had always been better at science than at fighting, but the two weren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, being good at science had always made Nadia a much better fighter.
The human body is just a machine, after all—a very complex, organic machine that doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to and is much more challenging to program than a servo, for example, but still a machine. Disrupt even one key joint or mechanism and the whole thing goes down.
Nadia eyed Monica’s elbow, currently the proportionate size of a massive boulder in her path. Monica’s rubbery suit was thick, but it was no match for Nadia’s knowledge of human anatomy. She pinpointed her destination, pulled her arm back, reached the proper crevice and…
Jabbed.
Here’s the thing about the “funny bone.” It is not a bone, and it is certainly not funny.
NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!
What we think of colloquially as the “funny bone” is actually the ulnar nerve, which runs all the way from your neck to your pinkie finger. Like most nerves in your body, the ulnar nerve is hidden under layers of muscle and bone and other things that are good to have inside you. At the elbow, however, it is not hidden quite so much. In a spot called the cubital tunnel, the ulnar nerve runs parallel to the bone and is covered only by skin and a little bit of ligament. If you hit your elbow in just the right spot…
Funny!
Well, for me, anyway. As the person doing the hitting. Externally. In this moment. You understand what I’m getting at.
Nadia heard Monica howl and pushed off into a backflip, taking to the air again. As Monica grasped her arm and cursed, she was snagged from behind by a tangle of sentient vines flying through the air, courtesy of Priya. Nadia changed course, watching as the vines restrained Monica and she began to struggle. As she zipped directly toward a vent visible at the base of the tower’s control panel, Nadia could see Ying rushing out toward Monica from behind the nearby restaurant.
Monica was handled. But the Teleforce wasn’t.
Once Nadia crawled inside, Monica’s obscenities faded to background noise. Nadia was in the cooling vent and had to get to the proper controls to short-circuit the thing before it could hurt any innocent people. The console was big; it was going to take Nadia a
ges to find a path that would lead her to the thing’s servers. She didn’t know exactly how long she had left before the timer hit zero and the Teleforce went full death ray all over Bay Ridge, but it couldn’t be much.
She was going to have to do some science, and she was going to have to do it fast.
Luckily, fast science was what Nadia did best.
“I did not do any fast science, per se.” Nadia shook her head. “I wasn’t sure how long I had on the timer and the panel’s circuitry was a mess. So I just…returned to my normal size. Inside the panel. And shredded the console to pieces in the process, which disabled the Teleforce. Maybe not the most elegant scientific solution, but it worked!”
Nadia: 1, Death Ray: 0.
“Ying and Priya had Monica tied up, but she used her Phasing Belt and vanished. Typical. But Tai was right, there was no one else from A.I.M. in the vicinity. And with Shay’s teleporter, we were able to get straight back to Pym Labs.” Nadia paused. “Though I can’t say I always trust the thing, to be honest.”
“And how did this experience with Monica make you feel?” Dr. Sinclair peered at Nadia over her reading glasses.
“Well…” Nadia paused, pulling her knees up to her chest and crushing the overstuffed pillow in her lap. She closed her eyes, blocking out the light streaming in through the big bay window behind her. Dr. Sinclair’s office was always so bright and welcoming, which made it easier to come back over and over again.
Nadia took a deep breath and tried to put herself back in the fight with Monica, emotionally. It wasn’t always easy for her, revisiting the emotional complications of official Avengers business, but she owed it to her therapist—and to herself—to try. “Good,” she finally responded, “that I was saving a neighborhood. But…frustrated, too.”
“At…?”
“At Monica, for choosing to be so evil.”
Dr. Sinclair uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. “Just at Monica?”
Nadia swallowed and looked down at her shoes. How did Dr. Sinclair always know exactly the right buttons to push?
