Title: An Infinitesimal Problem

Author: Jedi Buttercup

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

Rating: PG-13.

Summary: B:tVS, MCU. Apparently, the guy had ridden a flying ant to find them. Good grief, and Dawn had thought her life before the Hellmouth's collapse had been weird. 1700 words.

Spoilers: Post-series, and post-Ant Man in the MCU.

Notes: Because I saw Ant-Man, and was unexpectedly charmed.

"I hate to say it, Xander," Willow said unhappily, looking down at the plans spread over Dawn's kitchen table, "but I don't think we're going to be able to get in there."

"What?" Xander widened his eyes, looking betrayed. "But Wills, we have to. She hasn't come out since they took her in; you know what they're probably doing in there. This is like Oz and the Initiative all over again."

"I know, Xander; believe me, I know. But what I'm looking at here...." Willow shook her head.

Dawn brushed a fingertip over the blueprints, tracing the white lines of doors and hallways and security systems, forehead wrinkling as she tried to see what Willow had seen. They had a genius hacker slash powerful witch and the rest of the Slayers in the local team on their side; no matter how tough the security measures, anything that was intended to stop a standard issue human being....

Oh. Dawn swallowed, picking up on the notation for runes, and walked her fingers further across the map. There were other esoteric-looking notations, too; not the most encouraging sign.

"She's right, Xander," Dawn said, wincing. "You said you were afraid they were HYDRA; I think you were right. How much do you want to bet they infiltrated the Initiative the same way they did SHIELD? Sure would explain Walsh. And since that dude Loki showed up a few years back... it was probably only a matter of time before they started using more magic in their defensive measures."

"Magic," Xander repeated flatly. "These guys take superheroes apart and brainwash them, they've captured one of my Slayers... and you're telling me I can't rescue her because of magic? Which is pretty much the only reason we're even still relevant in a world where there's aliens and giant armies of death robots?"

He ground his jaw; and Dawn could see the fury in the way he clenched his fingers, all the things that had kept them all up at night since Buffy had nearly been assassinated several months ago in New York. Dawn was at least as angry with the Avengers over that as she was grateful that Buffy had survived; there'd been more than one casualty in the extended Council during the coordinated attacks that day, and it never would have happened if they hadn't released Project Insight's target list as well as all the data SHIELD had on the Council in the process of exposing HYDRA. It might technically have been one of the least worst options for getting out of that mess, but Buffy was the big picture girl; Dawn never had been. She'd been majorly stressed even before the youngest Slayer in San Francisco had disappeared on a patrol only to be spotted several hours later being wrestled out of a nondescript van.

"Whoa, whoa, calm down," Willow said, holding up a hand. "I can probably get through them eventually, but it's going to take time; runes aren't my strongest suit, and frankly we were amazingly lucky to get our hands on these plans in the first place."

"Eventually?" Xander threw up his hands, then turned away from the table, rubbing at his empty eye socket with the heel of one hand. "How did this even happen? How did none of us even know these guys were in San Francisco? I thought we had a program to watch for weird warehouse purchases. It seems like it's always a warehouse. And it's never as empty as it looks."

"So we can't send in a witch, and we don't dare send in another Slayer, but we don't dare just wait around...." Dawn bit her lip, thinking. Xander was going to volunteer, obvs. But they'd probably need at least one more skilled fighter so they could watch each other's back if they wouldn't have magic or super strength on their side.

"We can't send a normal human being either," Willow regretfully added, heading her off at the pass. "Between the guards, and the physical barriers... the only thing that's going to make it through all their security without being noticed is, like, an insect."

An insect? Now why did that sound familiar....?

Dawn snapped her fingers and pointed at Xander. "You and Buffy have been keeping an ear to the ground for new superheroes, right? Because sometimes they're just misidentified Slayers? You hear anything about that guy that can shrink his size? Vi said she overheard a couple of people in a bar talking about him recently, in context with that weird industrial building collapse. And there was that rash of news reports about an oversized ant straight out of Them, and that ginormous Thomas the Tank Engine toy that erupted out of the side of a house from a room it couldn't possibly have fit in. Willow said she didn't detect any magic there, right?"

She turned pleading eyes to her sister's best friend at that. Willow bit her lip, then nodded slowly. "Either it was too faint for me to pick up... or it's possible there could have been some kind of technological cause. I mean, no science I know could do that-- but we sorta pegged the needle on 'impossible' when we took down a god, never mind everything that's happened since. We practically live in a comic book as it is."

"You're talking about Ant-Man," Xander said, his fury visibly backing down a little as he thought about it. "Yeah, he's real, as far as I've heard, and he's local, but... I don't know. It's not like he's an Avenger, and he doesn't have any ties to us. You really think he'd help?"

"You said it yourself, we can't just leave her there," Dawn said, looking down at the blueprints again and covering the area they thought was the secure experimentation lab with her palm. "She's my friend too, Xander. And this Ant-Man guy-- most people don't turn super-powered vigilante for no reason. So he does have some kind of skin in the game, even if we don't know what it is."

"All right, all right. I know a guy who knows a guy; but if he turns us down...." Xander sighed, then fished the phone out of his pocket.

"We do what we gotta do," Dawn replied, with a solemn nod.

Fortunately, the guy didn't turn them down; he dropped out of the sky later that evening in a dorky-looking red and black full-body suit. Literally dropped out of the sky, leaving foot-dents in the lawn-- apparently, he'd ridden a flying ant to find them.

Good grief, and Dawn had thought her life before the Hellmouth's collapse had been weird.

"You ever think about another name than Ant-Man?" Xander asked skeptically, staring at the superhero after they welcomed him in and he retracted the face plate of his helmet. The guy was built lean and agile, with unruly short brown hair and a stupidly endearing face to go with his willingness to help; good thing Buffy wasn't there, or they'd probably have been adding her libido to the list of obstacles their plan needed to overcome.

"It's kind of a legacy," he shrugged. "And besides, what other name could I use that wouldn't sound worse? Believe me, I've thought about it. Resizing Guy? Micro Man? How about The Amazing Shrinky-Dink?"

Dawn stifled a chuckle, thinking over the ridiculous names some of the other superheroes used. Buffy's friend Hawkeye, for example, and the originator of the current trend, Iron Man.

"I don't know, I kind of like the Little Guy," she mused, prompted by thoughts of the other Avengers.

Xander snorted, getting the reference right away. "Like the opposite of the Big Guy?" he suggested, rounding his arms out to the sides, then made an angry expression and growled.

"Cute," Ant-Man replied, "but it would probably be weird to reflect my name off an Avenger, since the only time I've ever seen one in person, I was kind of breaking into a facility he was guarding."

That took Dawn aback; but since she kind of wanted to break into a particular Avengers facility and punch someone after half the conversations she had with her sister these days, she wasn't going to straight-out bounce him for it. "I'm gonna assume you had a good reason?"

He gave her a crooked smile. "I did try to talk to him, first. But you know, heat of the moment, really needed one of the things he was guarding to save the world," he shrugged.

Willow and Xander exchanged a glance, but nodded slowly. It wasn't like they could throw stones, not with stolen rocket launchers and fertilizer bombs and who knew what else that could get them labeled terrorists in today's political landscape littering their pasts. "Yeah, we know how that goes."

"Besides, it doesn't pass the 'truth in advertising' litmus test," Ant-Man continued, breezily changing the subject. "You know, the ant technopathy thing. I think it freaks people out less if they see it and think, 'Oh, Ant Man.'" He made quote marks with his fingers.

"Ant technopathy?" Willow's eyes went very round, and Dawn startled at that, too. That part they hadn't heard yet. Though she guessed it explained the tabloid reports about that one little girl and her sugar cube eating pet, Fluffy.

He lifted a hand to one ear and grinned at them. "How'd you think I got that one to drop me off? Want me to demonstrate?"

"No, no, that's all right, I think we're good," Xander said, hastily. "You, uh. Just ants, right? Not-- anything like, say, praying mantises?"

"Nah, just ants," he shrugged.

"Okay then. Ant-Man it is. Unless...?" Dawn suggested.

"No, no real names; don't need yours either. I've got a daughter," he shrugged.

Point in his favor; plus, he'd been brutally upfront about issues that might cause trouble if they found out about them later. Xander looked to both Willow and Dawn, checking their trust levels, then sighed and nodded, just once.

"Okay," Dawn took it from there, clearing her throat. Then she gestured toward the still-spread plans.

"Like we said, it's a rescue mission. The security's ridiculous, natch, so what we were thinking is this...."

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