Movie Time

"Oh my god!" Steve yelled in horror as we watched a snake-like creature burst from John Hurt's chest. The super-soldier yelled again, ignoring Tony laughing at him.

"Whoa," Bucky said, blinking as the crew of the Nostromo screamed in horror at the sight of their friend giving what I've heard described as 'violent chest birth.'

"How awesome is that!?" I yelled, grinning at the reactions of Bucky and Steve. "And you guys thought it wouldn't be scary!" I thought about mentioning how the actors fear was real since the directors had never told them what was going to happen. But that was better told after the movie, to make it better for a second watch.

Steve continued to stare, eyes wide with shock. Bucky only shook his head, not as shocked, but still looking surprised. Guess everyone reacts differently to the chestburster scene.

We'd watched Frankenstein already, of course, so Alien had been the obvious next film. As Steve and Bucky continued to watch though, I realized eyes were on me.

I looked around. Creel, Sam, Tony, and Clint were all staring at me. No, wait. They were staring at the Omnitrix.

A sigh left my lips as I rolled my eyes. "I told you, there are no Xenomorphs in the Omnitrix."

"Oh yeah, but there are Frankenstein aliens?" Creel pointed out smugly.

"I'm with Mr. Periodic Table over there, I'm not taking your word for it," Tony said with a grunt. "Barton told us about you going into that ladies eye."

"Her eye was cybernetic!" I complained, leaning away from the couch to look at a disgusted Tony. "It's just how Upgrade works!"

"..." Bucky stared at me, his robotic arm very carefully moving to hide behind his back.

Before I could decide if that was speciesist towards Upgrade or not, Sam sighed. When I looked at him, his mind clearly wasn't on the movie. I nudged him until he looked at me.

"You okay?" I asked, slightly concerned.

"...Just want to go on the next mission. Feels like we should be doing something right now," he admitted.

The mood lowered. In truth, I think we all felt that way. Like we were just forcing things.

"We'll go soon," Steve said, putting a hand to Sam's shoulder. Bucky frowned at that but didn't speak. "We're just waiting for Hill to finish the interrogations. In the meantime, we need to take our chance to breathe. Too much time on the front lines will wear anyone down, you know it as well as we do, Sam."

"I wonder how those interrogations are going anyways," Creel said idly.

"Probably great," Tony said with a smirk. "I heard she's threatening to sick Upgrade on the Centipede soldiers."

"Seriously?" I asked incredulously.

"Well, the ones who weren't being given 'incentive'," Tony said with disgust. "Apparently the chick you 'cured' is screaming about how you stole her powers."

I had no idea what to think of that... I thought I'd been doing a kindness, considering how destroyed her metabolism had been

Steve sighed, reaching for the remote and pausing the movie. We probably weren't going to focus on the movie anyway. "Hill says that she's working to find the people who are being held hostage, but it'll take some time," Steve shook his head, a deep sadness in his eyes. "Still no word on Sharon, Trip, and Jennifer though."

"Well with that, the mood is officially ruined," Clint mumbled, though he seemed as dismayed as the rest of us.

Sam gave Clint a look, shrugging. "Sorry, Clint."

"What, for ruining a party?" Tony asked sarcastically, grabbing a package of Oreos and taking a stack of them out. "Turning us all into angst-ridden teenagers?"

"Tony," Steve said, glaring at him. "Sam's right. We're trying but... I think we all know HYDRA is on our minds."

"Hey, I'm just saying," Tony replied. "Could have spent a bit of time talking about how there are apparently alien Frankensteins out there in the universe. Instead, we're talking about HYDRA again. I'm seriously getting tired of those guys dominating my thought processes these days. Could be making more cool toys with those brain cells."

In his defense, Tony was right. Ever since the Triskelion, pretty much every conversation I'd been in came back to HYDRA at some point. Seriously, I was pretty sure the Avengers ended up fighting other bad guys. Where were AIM, Ultron, Galactus? ...Actually, thinking about the last one, I felt a bit of relief in retrospect. I didn't want to even see Galactus without at least Atomix helping me.

"That's the way war is," Steve said with the wise and sad voice of experience. "HYDRA is always going to be in the back of our minds."

Tony didn't seem satisfied with that. I don't think any of us were.

"Well, on that depressing note," I said with a sigh, rising off the floor. "I gotta meet Skye. You guys can hang out here, just please clean up when you finish," I directed the last bit more at Sam and Steve, the ones I actually trusted to do it.

"Skye, huh?" Tony said with a glimmer in his eyes I didn't like.

I decided to ignore him, said my goodbyes, and walked out to head to the elevator. It didn't take long to get to the Claytronics lab from there.