The helicarrier shook slightly from a concussion. That was usually enough to get James' attention. But then the signal went out from Black Panther's communicard. "Avenger down" was all it said. Captain America stared at it. James looked up from the console in his make shift office in the Helicarrier. The news display alert flashed in front of him. His aide came in, overriding the door lock. "Commander, I don't mean to interrupt, but you need to see the news feed." It took him a second but he tapped it and saw the instant replay. T'Shan and his sister fighting Gizmo. That guy was a third rate inventor. He didn't know why the guy kept trying to kill T'Shan either.

The video showed a robot melting followed by a Lydia and T'Shan flying up and then a flash of light and a concussion. It was only seconds, but James felt like it was years. He just stood their slack jawed. After a moment, he looked to the Ensign. "Get a team together. Get them there now. I want the scene secured immediately."

"Sir, Director Coulson gave orders to..."

The data pad on James desk went winging into the wall and smashed into tiny pieces. "I said get a team in the air now. I will not repeat myself. Director Coulson can deal with me." James grabbed his shield and the Ensign ran off to get a team assembled. 120 seconds later, he was materializing out of a beam of light. The SHIELD team arrived a few moments later out of the same beams of light. A mobile unit would follow to process the scene.

Captain America made gestures and the team spread out, to contain the media and preserve the scene. James walked over to Ada. His eyes held a fury barely in check behind the cowl. Cap was angry. Lydia and T'Shan were okay. They had to be. They were two of the strongest people on the planet. His sister and his friend had to be okay. They had to.

 "I need to know what happened here, Panther. Tell me everything." The words came out soft. Barely a command, but a command still. He needed to know.

COUNT:xxx TAG: names OUTFIT: link NOTES: blah blah	Ada didn't look up when the hands left her shoulders. She understood their need to leave. Humans didn't like to stay in one place for too long in a place like this, what Time Square had been turned into; a scene of horrible death. A beam of light flashed somewhere near her. She was on her feet in seconds, hoping. She watched Captain America appear, and her shoulder visibly sank. She knew who he was; James Barnes Jr . She knew he was Lydia's brother, or at least close enough. What was she going to say to him? What could she say. "I...I can't," she said. She couldn't look him in the eye as she spoke. "It's all my fault. I...It's all my fault." She felt dead, simply dead as she spoke.
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SHIELD mobile units pulled up, while air units secured the skies around them. James stared at Black Panther. She was clearly beside herself with grief. It didn't make sense. They weren't dead. He'd already decided they couldn't be. Captain America started gesturing to the techs. "Start scanning. I want to know what's going on. I want to know yesterday." He looked over to a man nearby. "Lieutenant, I want to know where Gizmo is. Get on tracking his teleport signal."

The man saluted. "On it, Cap. But it's going to be hard with this distortion from the blast."

"Then the sooner, the better. Pull in whoever you need. Director's orders." The containment team would take care of processing the evidence and finding out where they went. James focused on Ada. "This is not your fault, Ada. This is the fault of that deranged man. We'll find out where he sent Scion and Captain Marvel and then we'll get them back." He said the words with more faith than he had. It made sense after all though. Gizmo had proven on several occasions that he had access to teleportation technology. A blast like this would obscure traces of it.

It was what James would do. He looked around the scene, scanning with the various vision modes built into his cowl, looking for any other traces. He reached up and tapped the comm in his ear. "Ensign, I want you to put people on scrubbing the news footage. I need to see some accurate reconstructions of all the possibilities. I want to know where Gizmo is and where he sent Marvel and Scion."

There was a heavy silence on the other side. After a moment, "Uh.. Yes, sir. I'll get people on that right now. I believe Director Coulson has already put people on it, but I'll add your requests onto the list."

Captain America turned back to Ada. "We'll figure this out. There's no way that they're dead."

COUNT:xxx TAG: names OUTFIT: link NOTES: blah blah	Everything was numb. She just couldn't. Everything was so surreal. She'd dissipated as much of the smoke and radiation as she could. She'd also tried to get as much of the ash rounded up as she could, sending it high into the sky. She didn't have a body to burn to send off, so sending his ashes up as high as she could was the next best thing. She could hear James giving orders, like it was going to help. Even IF they weren't dead, and they were, she could feel it, him trying to scramble people at this time was just too little too late. "stop it," she said, her voice so quiet it couldn't be heard, ever by herself. " Stop it," she said, a little bit louder. Now she could actually hear herself. Her voice cracked a little bit. James turned to her. Maybe he'd heard her. No, he started going on about how they were going to find them. She rose quickly, faster than she'd intended. Her hand struck out, aiming to grasp his throat. "I Said, Stop It!" Not everything was silent, but there was a good ring of it around them as people stopped what they were doing to look at them. "They are dead James. Gizmo blew them up. It's all m-my fault, and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't protect my little brother." Her hand dropped to her side and her eyes to the ground. "And I got your sister killed."
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The words rang in James' ears. Ada telling him to stop it. Stop what? Grasping for evidence? He knew there was no way they could be dead. He didn't understand how she could think that. Her brother was part Asgardian with all the durability that came with it. And Lydia was Captain Marvel, with all the everything that came with it. Gizmo didn't have the know how to kill them both. He just didn't have access to the kind of tech that would kill them... did he?

James' muscles tensed when Ada shot up. His hand flew up and grabbed the wrist of the arm around his throat. She was stronger than he was and there wasn't much of a chance for him to get any more leverage against her. He took a breath in through is nose and calmed the old reflexes and muscle memories. Her hand dropped to her side and she looked down. James heard the things that she said and growled.

"No. I don't and won't accept that. Neither of them is dead. Gizmo isn't capable of that. He couldn't blow out the candles on a cake without setting himself on fire. I cannot believe that he had technology capable of killing them. Where was it before? Why didn't he deploy it against all the Avengers? None of this makes sense. We wait to hear back from the reports." Then his voice darkened. "And if they come back, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. But I promise you that there is no place on this Earth that man will be able to hide."