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i.
They hadn’t meant, really, to have a teleportation device on hand, but after the third time one of the Avengers had come to make sure they were all doing well, and the third time Feuilly and Courf had got their hands on Starktech it… kind of happened.
“We know they can get here if they need to,” ‘ferre opined one meeting. “But how in heaven are we supposed to get to them?”
Feuilly, sitting in the corner, tinkering with a radio, wires splayed out around his hands like some kind of bizarre electrical spider, lifted a finger. “Um,” he said. “I may have figured out a way to make a teleportation device?”
ii.
Feuilly was, in a way, a technopath like Courfeyrac. He could touch tech and understand it. But, where Courf could claw through the code, reverse it, make it bow to his will, or simply sit and explore, Feuilly understood how to recreate it.
“It’s called psychometry,” Courf said. “I think. Maybe technopathic psychometry? Creative psychometry?”
“Whatever,” Bahorel said, folding his arms, muscles flexing. “It works, right?”
So, Feuilly and Courf had linked their brains together, courtesy of Cosette, and the rest of the Amis had been assigned into tracking down all of things Feuilly would need.
It turned out, he needed a lot.
iii.
They were grateful for this, when their tablet started screaming one evening.
iv.
It was an uprising. Robots, some eerily similar to Stark’s, rushed through the streets, people, webs of icy control over their minds, followed suit.
“You see what we’re up against,” the Captain said. “You know we would not have called you if we had any other choice.”
Lorna, so small between the twins, smiled. “You need someone who can control metal,” she said, simply. “I can do that.”
And she lifted off, balancing herself as well as Tony in his suit, and started to twist robots out of the crowds with nothing but her will.
v.
Bahorel was at the Captain’s side, and the Hulk’s. R floated along beneath Thor’s flightpath, absorbing stray lightning strikes and using the static to hover just as Eponine could. When robots got in range the lightning stored under his skin flared out bright and pale and deadly, and Enjolras did not think he had seen something as beautiful except, possibly, the sight of his own fire lighting R’s skin.
Cosette was on a rooftop, protected by Andrej’s snow and Andrei’s stone and Gavroche’s more-terrifying-than-it-should-be ability to disintegrate tiny, integral parts of mechanisms, working to corral any minds within range towards where Wanda waited. At her side Musichetta shared the mental load, her empathy allowing Cosette to see deeper into the minds around them, helping her link what she could see and sense down to where he stood, back to back with Wanda, and ensure he hurt no civilians with his flame.
There were so very many.
vi.
Wanda’s magic was darting out of her hands as she tore the webs of control from the minds around her. Cosette, working on a larger scale, was corralling them and Marius, Courf and Pietro were with Stark, trying to get to the thing which was causing this. With their gifts - Marius’ total immunity to mental powers, Courf’s mind like code, Pietro’s unbreakable link to Wanda’s mind - whatever was controlling the people couldn’t get to them.
The scarlet spun from her hands as, at her back, fire spun from Enjolras’ trying desperately to target only the robots in amongst the crowd of people.
Purpose, she thought to Enjolras, and again, echoing firmly down the ever-present bond to her brother’s mind. Focus. We are here to help, not to harm.
And then Jehan rounded the corner, all the plants of the city following his path.
vii.
With Cosette - “Nette, like Net but also for the -ette, get it?” Montparnasse had said - linking their minds at ranges Wanda would strain to, Pietro could see Jehan’s hand come swatting down, and, echoing the movement, the bough of a tree smash three robots into shards.
From above Jehan, Lorna floated down, settled on a tree branch. “There’s more that way,” she said, pointing. “If I pull them towards you, can you destroy them? My arms are getting tired.”
Lorna, small, strange, unknown to them all until she had become one of them was almost as close to the twins as they were to each other, and Jehan had accepted what that meant as readily as he’d accepted Pietro. Down the bonds Cosette has strung between all the Amis’ minds, he could feel how easy it was for Jehan to smile and march the tree forward with him.
viii.
At her side Andrei's ever-shaking hands directed quaking stone to block the blasts of robots. All the Amis had tried to wean him off his drug habit - even Joly who could see what it was doing to his biology - but Andrei didn’t want to listen. At her other side Andrej sent shards of ice from snow-pale hands, spearing robots that got to close and making slippery stairs and handholds that controlled humans might try to climb. Hand on her shoulder, forehead pressed to her cheek, Musichetta’s breath was warm against her neck as their minds intertwined as only their minds and Wanda’s could.
It took this, this external understanding of the internal workings of human nature for them to work together like this and neither of them had ever understood how Wanda had found a way to do this with her brother.
But right now, that didn’t matter, and, together, they herded civilians to safety and the mind-controlled to where Wanda’s scarlet could tear loose the clinging cages around their minds.
ix.
“They’re good,” Nat said down the comms. Clint, on a roof opposite the blonde girl, shot an arrow at a robot.
“I know they’re good,” he said. “But every time Lorna lets a robot get too close my heart jumps like the time Lila almost broke her neck falling out of the tree.”
Nat laughed. “She was only trying to be like her dad.”
Maybe, Clint thought. Doesn’t make it any less terrifying to see small children in danger.
x.
They managed to get through with no injuries, the force of Pietro’s punches, Courf and Stark’s code, Marius’ nimble fingers, all together disabling the device that was controlling people and managing the robots.
It was as they were walking back to the tower that Feuilly said, “Shoulda made the teleporter two-way.”
Stark stopped dead.
“That’s how you got here so fast?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me you had tech!”
It took them three hours to extricate Courf and Feuilly from Stark’s lab after that, and even Gavroche and Lorna were trying to sneak in and help with the new toys they were working on.
“You know,” Maria said, prim and precise and somehow terrifying from where she’s sat at the bar. “We’re going to have to introduce the Amis now. We can’t just bring in new supers like that.”