Avoiding the Avengers

Jemma had managed to retrieve her towel on the way off the bridge, but as the Helicarrier lurched to the side she lost her grip on it, and before she knew what was happening found herself tumbling down a ladder.

In the only piece of good luck she had all day, the floor below had a cupboard used for storing inflatable rafts for water landings. As the Helicarrier moved, one of these fell out of its cupboard, hit the deck and inflated just in time for it to break Jemma's fall.

Dazed but physically okay, Jemma realised she had lost her towel, and quickly pulled herself up the ladder.

As her head popped over the top, Jemma heard approaching boots. She looked down the corridor and saw six armed men marching towards her, led by a figure she recognised from the SHIELD files as the agent Hawkeye. Not wanting to be seen by them, Jemma ducked back down just as they passed above her.

"Stay here and stand guard." Hawkeye's voice came from above. Jemma looked up, and saw one of the armed men stopped right by the ladder.

"Rats!" Jemma whispered to herself. So much for getting the towel back. At least she had held on to the signed requisition form, she covered herself with her hands and hurried off down the corridor.

She had been confident on where she was heading before, but since her unscheduled tumble down the ladder she was less so. Still, she thought she could get back to where she was if she headed down another level, and she was coming up on another ladder.

Cautiously descending, Jemma looked around and realised she was not where she thought she was. She was in some sort of maintenance area, possibly connected with either air or water processing, judging by the amount of pipes around her.

She was shocked by a sudden clanging of running feet, and before she could find somewhere to hide two workers came sprinting towards her. Jemma froze on the spot, but both men went straight past her, and up the ladder. This confused her; what could have them so distracted they didn't notice an attractive nude girl standing there?

Jemma took a couple of steps forwards, and got her answer. Behind some of the pipes, she could see a red-haired woman in a tight black catsuit sprinting for her life, chased by an enormous green man-shaped monster. Jemma recognised Black Widow by reputation, and she had seen photos of the Hulk as part of her studies but never been this close to him. As he chased behind Widow, he crashed through pipes and machinery, sending sparks flying.

Widow passed by Jemma without noticing her, then came Hulk, smashing as he went. A pipe by Jemma was broken in half like it was made of paper, sending a torrent of cold water gushing over Jemma, before Hulk also ran on.

Jemma spat out water, and pushed soaked hair out of her face. Her skin reacted with goosebumps wherever the freezing water had hit, and her nipples turned rock-hard with cold.

"Definitely a water processing site." Jemma nodded to herself. She suddenly had a horrifying thought, and checked her requisition; it was splashed and starting to go translucent, but Hill's signature was still legible.

Deciding to go in the opposite direction to the rampaging Hulk, and trusting Black Widow to live up to her reputation and be okay, Jemma made her way past the shattered machinery. After a minute she found a hole in the ceiling, which the two of them had apparently come down through. There was a multitude of pipes, both broken and whole, and Jemma was able to climb up into the room above.

"Oh, wow." she said, looking around at the room she found herself in, "This is the nicest laboratory I've even seen." she would gladly have spent hours in that room exploring the equipment if it hadn't been for her perpetual nudity, so Jemma hurried out through the door she thought would lead her in the right direction.

Round another corner, Jemma found the source of the explosion she had heard; a chunk of wall was missing, leading to the sky outside. One of the armed men she had seen earlier was standing here, but hadn't noticed her yet, he was holding a rifle and looking intently through the hole in the ship.

Jemma got on her tiptoes and dared to move on, round the back of the man. He was so immersed in what he was doing that he had no idea of the woman sneaking past.

Jemma couldn't help herself- she needed to know what the man was looking at, in what should be an empty sky, that he had no idea she was there. Peering over the man's shoulder, she found herself looking down on a control panel for one of the Helicarrier's large turbines. Someone had pulled it open to look inside, and as this someone moved slightly to the side Jemma recognised who it was that the armed man was watching, aiming his rifle with his finger ready to fire on a red, white and blue figure...

"Captain America!" Jemma exclaimed.

"Wha...?" the man spun around, and at the sight of the beautiful naked woman, dripping wet, he froze.

"Oh, hi." Jemma smiled nervously. "You're one of the bad guys, aren't you?"

She put everything she had into the punch, and whether it was her fist or him bouncing off the wall behind him, the man went down cold.

"I just saved Captain America!" Jemma gasped, "In the nude!"

After another few minutes of frantic wandering, the corridors began to look familiar again, and eventually Jemma found the quartermaster's office again.

He looked up as she entered.

"Weren't you wearing a towel last time?"

"I lost it. But I have my requisition form, authorising me to be given one standard-issue jumpsuit." Jemma held the form towards him proudly.

There was a flash of light, as a blue energy beam came bursting through the wall, burning through the form and turning it to ash in her hand.

Jemma looked to the wall, and saw a hole burned through it by the beam.

"What’s in there?!"

"Some sort of containment cell." the quartermaster shrugged, "Never seen anything like that before, though."

Jemma looked at her hand, now holding only a tiny burned corner piece of her requisition form. She looked from this back to the quartermaster, who shrugged and made no move towards giving her any clothes.