Title: quivering
Fandom: Marvel Comics (West Coast Avengers 2017)
Characters: Team! (Clint Barton, Kate Bishop, Gwen Poole, Quentin Quire, Johnny Watts, America Chavez)
Rating: Teen
Length: 443 words
Summary: The team finds themselves in a strange forest in another world.



Looking up, Kate spotted Clint high up in the branches of a very tall oak tree, dangling by his feet. It looked as if a vine had wrapped itself around him and pulled him up. She shook her head. "I told you not to touch it."

"It was quivering," Clint said, upside down.

Gwen made a face. "Ew...you did not just say that."

"Gross, dude," Johnny said.

"What? What's wrong with quivering?" Clint twisted while muttering the word "quivering" over and over again but the vines only wrapped around him more tightly. "Yeah, I hear it now, sorry." He grabbed a vine and tried to pull himself up, only to have it entwine itself around his wrists. "I don't suppose one of you could help me get down from here?"

Quentin slow-clapped and rolled his eyes. "Maybe you shouldn't have gone and touched the quivering leaf there, Hawkeye." Somehow the word was even creepier coming out of Quire's mouth.

Gwen punched Quentin in the arm. He took a step back, rubbing his arm.

Clint continued his struggle to free himself from the tree's grasp without much luck. "How was I supposed to know it was boobytrapped? It's a leaf!"

"In a haunted forest," America helpfully pointed out.

"Not haunted; sentient," Quentin said, smugly.

Kate turned to Quentin. "Are you trying to tell me the forest is alive?" Kate asked.

Quentin shrugged and nodded at the same time, and Kate had to suppress the urge to punch him in the face. She narrowed her eyes at him instead.

"Just get me down," Clint said, his voice sounding further and further away.

Kate looked up and saw that he was even higher now. The tree was pulling him up. "Quentin," she said.

"Gimmie a second." Quentin put his finger to his forehead and squinted. "Okay, get ready."

"Ready for --" Clint started.

The tree let him go and he began to fall. Kate put a hand to her mouth and gasped. A moment before Clint would've hit the ground, one of Quentin's TK bubbles enveloped him. Kate let the breath she was holding out and pulled herself together. Clint was safe. Everything was okay. Now she just needed to get everyone out of this forest. She turned to her best friend. "America, can you open another portal?"

"On it." America kicked a star-shaped portal into existence.

Kate smiled and took the lead. "Okay children, let's get out of this dimension before the trees get cranky again." At her words, acorns rained down from the trees as they all made a mad dash home through the portal. She was so never coming to this world again.