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Nadia grabbed a fistful of chest hair and used it to lever herself up and out of the offensively-scented button-down. She sped toward the ground, hitting the sidewalk the same second her target did. Nadia looked around quickly for somethi
ng she could use, and—
There. A tangle of long USB cables. Perfect.
Nadia alighted, skimming close to the ground and grabbing one end of the cable as she flew. She could see the man already trying to get back up and knew she was running out of time. She flew straight at his ankles, slamming a USB connector down into the back of his brown loafer. Letting the rest of the cable slip through her hands as she flew, Nadia zoomed in figure eights back and forth between the man’s feet, over and over and over again until she was finally out of cable. She wrapped the free end around the center of the complex knot and rushed to the side, just as he faceplanted right on top of his other two downed friends.
Nadia looked up. The cops were lowering their weapons.
She smiled. Crisis averted. And she’d done it all in a matter of moments.
And then Nadia lay down on the ground next to the three unconscious business bros, and caught her own breath.
“Okay, impressive. But…” Tai raised an eyebrow. “Did you do it?”
“Tell me you did it,” Bobbi added, grinning.
Nadia was going to disappoint them both. She shook her head, and both of her friends threw their hands in the air in exasperation.
“What is even the point of being tiny and super-strong if you can’t give some estúpido the world’s worst purple nurple?” Taina sounded exasperated.
“Don’t ever tell me what any of that means!” Nadia suggested cheerfully.
“Fine, fine,” Taina acquiesced.
“I did hit him in the nipple with a Sting, though,” Nadia offered. The gauntlets in her Wasp suit collected Nadia’s natural bioelectricity and she could harness the reserves with a well-aimed shot. With a Sting, Nadia could zap her target with an electric shock strong enough to knock a grown man to his knees.
Especially if you aimed it right.
“So S.H.I.E.L.D. never showed up?” Bobbi asked with a frown. She pulled on a pair of boxing gloves and waited for Nadia to do the same. Usually Bobbi preferred sparring with Ying, but she was still nowhere to be found, probably out with Shay. Nadia wanted to work off the rest of her excited and nervous energy from earlier, so she’d agreed to it. Taina would be their impartial ref.
Though she tended to favor Bobbi. Nadia was fine with it.
“No.” Nadia shook her head, reaching down toward her toes to stretch. She flattened her hands out on the floor in front of her and craned her neck up to keep eye contact with Bobbi. “At least not as long as I was there. They must have heard it was nothing serious—maybe an overdose, or something?”
Bobbi reached over her head with one arm and bent to the right, stretching out her side. “Maybe.”
“Shay and Ying never showed up, either,” Nadia added carefully.
Tai sighed. “I’m not surprised.”
“Still, I could have used the assist on that one. I was very, very outnumbered.”
Bobbi stretched an arm over her head. “Did Priya make it?”
“It was too late.” Nadia shook her head. “We would have had to arrive as a group. But…”
“At least it wasn’t A.I.M. again,” Bobbi finished for Nadia diplomatically. “Did Janet tell you S.H.I.E.L.D. got something out of the guy you knocked out in front of our satellite office?”
“No!” Nadia pulled herself back up to standing and she and Bobbi started to circle each other. “What did he say?”
Bobbi jabbed a fist forward, but Nadia was too fast for it to land. “Apparently, they thought infiltrating the lab would be too difficult after last time—”
“Good,” Taina interjected.
“Agreed.” Bobbi danced backward out of Nadia’s reach as one of her legs swept out. “Seems like they thought they could infiltrate a side office, maybe bug it or draw security away from the lab, and it would get them one step closer to here. They didn’t anticipate you being there.”
“They usually don’t,” Taina said with a devious smile.
