Chapter 2: Woodpecker Part 2
Authors Note: Here's the next chapter, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers.
(Ten Years Later)
It was a cool fall evening in the slums of Hell's Kitchen as a small S.H.I.E.L.D team was ready to take down a weapons dealer who was in the market for some chemical enhancements. S.H.I.E.L.D had managed to track them down through the dealer and by launching this sting operation and find the supplier of the chemical drugs.
And S.H.I.E.L.D had picked the best man for the job.
"How are things looking on your end, Barton?"
Clint Barton, also known as Hawkeye, had finished checking his last arrow, before grabbing his bow and getting ready. He had taken position at the top of a nearby building overlooking an alley where the meeting was taking place.
"I'm all set down here, Phil." Clint stated as he readied an arrow. "How's the alley looking?"
"Cameras are all set the audio is good and if the traffic cams are accurate then our target is on his way."
"Finn O'Malley, 34, German-Irish. He deals with guns and heavy explosives in New York, but he's looking to expand. What is it about these chemicals that make them so deadly?"
"Intel is still fuzzy, but they are a minor strength enhancement." Phill explained on the other end. "They are red capsules that come in small metal cases. You need to make sure no one uses them. They'll pack a punch for your muscles, but after an hour they'll destroy your cartilage, brittle your bones and leave you a broken mess. So be careful not to breathe any in."
"Copy that, but why would O'Malley want to buy hazardous drugs?" Clint asked.
"Unknown, maybe O'Malley doesn't know, maybe this chemist wants some patsy to try out his new batch or maybe he's made a perfect batch and he's looking to make an army. That's why you're there to find out. Now get ready, they're coming."
Clint crouched down by the edge of the rooftop and watched as three black SUVs approached and parked at the end of the alley. Finn O'Malley stepped out first, a big, buff man with messy black hair and a little scruff on his face. He fastened his leather jacket and motioned for his men to followed.
Clint spotted six guys, including O'Malley, some armed with shotguns and the others with AK-47 assault rifles. There was still no sign of the scientist. Everyone waited patiently for a few minutes before a limo pulled up. The driver stepped out and was followed by tree more guards before opening the back door allowing an old man in a crisp blue suit to step out. The man looked to be about fifty with dark grey hair that was swept back. His face broke out in a smug smile as he approached O'Malley with a metal briefcase handcuffed to his hand.
"Sorry for the wait, Mr. O'Malley." He said, not sounding apologetic at all. "I trust you are well?"
"Skip the bullshit doc, Donny!" O'Malley barked with a snap of his fingers. One of his men approached with a briefcase of his own and popped it open revealing it full of money. "Half a million dollars for your pills."
"Capsules, and as you can see." The man opened his briefcase revealing a smaller, shinier case the size of a playing card. Using his free hand, he pulled the small case out and flicked it open with his thumb revealing five red capsules.
"I got eyes, should I go in?" Clint asked as he readied his bow.
"Not yet," Phill said. "Wait until he puts them back in the case. If one of those capsules break, you'll be up against a whole alley of mini-Hulk's and I don't like those odds."
"Good point." Clint said as he continued watching the meeting between the two.
"These capsules are an updated and much safer version of my previous formula." He stated as he placed small package into his briefcase. "While the effects are not permanent, they will give you a boost in strength for an hour. Be warned that the effects can be jarring, they will not harm you in anyway. Your muscles will be sore, but nothing a soak in a hot tub can't fix."
"Very good, but—"
O'Malley was interrupted when someone started singing from the end of the alley. Clint spotted the source. From the sound of it, it was a young woman, but she was dressed in a black hoodie with the hood up, blue skinny jeans and brown boots. She stumbled down the alley singing, 'I Kissed a Girl,' by Katy Perry.
"I kissed a girl I liked it the taste of her -hiccup- chap stick." She slurred as she stumbled into the meeting. "Who, the hell are you guys?"
"Miss, you have picked a bad time to get stumble into our meeting." O'Malley grumbled. From the rooftop Clint rolled his eyes.
"What's happening?" Phil asked.
"Some drunk chick stumbled in the alley I'm gonna go after her." Clint grumbled in annoyance as he prepared to save her, but Phil thought differently.
"Negative, Clint. You are there for the chemist only. If he gets away it could be months before we get a lead on him again and by then who knows what kind of damage he could cause."
"And the girl?" Clint asked skeptically.
"I don't like it either, but we can't let our work be jeopardized by one drunk girl who wandered down an alley…there's no bar in that area. Why would a young woman wander around drunk in the slums?"
"Maybe she came from a party or something?" Clint grunted as he looked down at the girl.
"Heey, what are you guys up too?" She slurred. "You selling drugs?"
"None of your business." The chemist sneered, before looking at one of his men. "Glenn, escort this woman to my car."
"Whoa, easy Mr. Peacock I don't ride with strangers!" She backed away with both hands raised as the chemist was startled by what she had called him.
"What did you just call me?" He asked.
"Mr. Peacock, that's what we had to call you, right?" The girl asked, her voice losing the drunken slurs and coming out calmer and clearer. "It's been a decade since I last saw you, but I still remember when you made us take those pills, but unfortunately, they yielded results, so you decided to switch from pills to syringes. Sure, it hurt like hell when you stuck those needles into my head, but look on the bright side."
The girl pulled her hands back and to everyone's surprise all the guns the men were previously armed with were yanked out of their hands by an unseen force and flew behind her.
"Your drugs worked."
"It's you…Woodpecker!"
Woodpecker raised her foot and brought it down hard on one of O'Malley's thugs knees shattering his leg. He screamed in pain as she threw a quick jab at his windpipe canceling his scream.
As he fell the rest of the guards on both sides moved in on the girl. She pulled out a riot baton and delivered a hard smack across one thug's face, before using her powers to lift him up and throw him into another on coming man. They both crashed hard into the brick wall, the young woman heard some bones breaking as she fell to the ground, sliding on her knees as she retrieved a discarded Glock 17 and started firing at the remaining crew members.
The gunshot wounds weren't fatal, but they were enough to immobilize them. O'Malley rushed at her last, but with a flick of her wrist an assault rifle flew across the alley and upside the arms dealer's head knocking him out cold.
"Just the two of us now, Mr. Peacock." Woodpecker said with a hint of malice. The chemist fell to his knees holding his hands up defensively.
"P-Please, Woodpecker," He stuttered. "It wasn't all just me. Crow was the one who wanted you girls perfected."
"And you had a helping hand in that didn't you." She said with a flex of her fingers.
"Please, I can give you anything."
"Why would I listen to your lies when the journey to the truth is all the more painful," She placed her right hand on his forehead. "For you."
Meanwhile on the rooftop Clint was taken back by what he had just witnessed as Phil screamed in his ear.
"Clint, engage!"
Clint fired an arrow at the young girl's hand and with his sharp eye he only managed to graze the top of her hand causing her to flinch away from Peacock. The girl hissed in pain as Peacock fell onto the ground spasming.
Woodpecker looked up to where the arrow had come from and watched as Hawkeye slid down on a zipline. Hawkeye readied another arrow the second his feet touched the ground as Woodpecker raised an eyebrow.
"Who the hell are you?" She snickered. "And by the way it's almost twenty twelve and you're using a bow and arrow. What inspired that, Robin Hood or Hunger Games?"
"The circus, now who the hell are you and what did you do to that man?" Clint asked.
"Using the word, 'Man', a little loosely, aren't we?" She stated with a smug grin. "Anyways, this spineless wretch was responsible for the torture and deaths of countless children. I was almost one of them if I didn't bond to the drugs, he had given me."
"What drugs?"
"Honestly, I couldn't really pronounce it, but it had something to do with neural enhancements and measuring brainwaves. All of which gave me the power you see before you." She demonstrated by levitating Hawkeye's discarded arrow with her power. "Anyways, I got what I wanted from him."
"Wait, what did you want, more of those drugs?" Hawkeye nodded over to the case of capsules near Peacock.
"Pfft, no." She scoffed. "Those drugs are some defected steroids he could never got quite right. He was planning on ripping off O'Malley and assassinating him at the same time. It would seem a certain someone is planning on making a move on the criminal underworld in New York."
"Who and how do you know?"
"Sorry, Mockingjay, but I have my own list of names that need checking off and I've already wasted enough time. So..."
She flung her arm towards Hawkeye and the arrow she had floating in midair flew towards the archer. Thinking fast, he rolled out of the way and fired another arrow at the girl only for her to catch it again with her power.
Hawkeye predicted this and caught the girl by surprise with a flash bang in his arrow. The girl was blinded by the arrow and fell onto the ground in blinding pain. Hawkeye moved in quick and quickly restrained her wrist with his handcuffs. The young woman wasn't going to make it easy for him though as she used her powers to levitate the both of them off the ground.
Clint was taken back by this move and lost all control of his movement as the two started to levitate up towards the building. He tried to reach for the girl, but he couldn't move any closer to her as they made it above a rooftop.
Woodpecker managed to get her vision back, despite still seeing spots and she lifted herself and Hawkeye above a rooftop and dropped the both of them safely on the roof. Once they had landed Woodpecker used her powers once more to remove her restraints. Hawkeye attempted to fire another arrow at her, but Woodpecker used her powers to rip the bow from his hands and throw it to the other side of the roof.
"Don't follow me." She growled as she turned around and leaped off the edge of the roof. Hawkeye chased after her as fast as he could but when he made it to the end of the roof, he looked over the edge and saw nothing but the alley.
"Damn." He grunted slamming his fist on wall.
Back down on the ground S.H.I.E.L.D was salvaging anything they could find to help their investigation. Phil and Clint were looking over the man, Mr. Peacock as Woodpecker described him.
Phil let out an annoyed sigh as he looked at the twitching man being carried out in a stretcher. O'Malley, who was now conscious from his head trauma, was being escorted out of the alley in cuffs. He glared at Phil and Clint with his one good eye as his left eye was swollen and sticky with blood.
"Well, this was a disaster." Clint snapped. "That damn kid screwed everything up. I mean who the hell even was she and how could she do all that crazy shit?"
"I think I might have an idea." Phil stated as he led Clint over to his SUV. He reached in and pulled out his touch pad and handed it to Clint. It had as picture of Peacock, who looked ten years younger in the photo.
"That man that was responsible for the faulty chemicals is known as Thomas Gruber. Former Hydra chemist turned freelancer. Ten years ago, he and a few dozen other scientist and associates of his were responsible for a super soldier project that involved using orphaned children as lab rats. A lot of them didn't survive."
"Oh god," Clint said in disgust as he flipped through pictures of young teens lying dead in a morgue. "What were they trying to do exactly?"
"Human enhancements and gene splicing," Phil explained. "They combine animal capabilities like night vision and senses to reflexes and regeneration. Then there are the enhancements they tried to increase someone's strength, speed and even try to get them to bend elements and energy to their will. That's when they discovered a new enhancement, telekinesis and telepathy."
"The power of the mind." Clint said as he flipped to the next picture and this one was a familiar face. She was young and her hair was long and messy, but it was the girl he had met tonight. "This is Woodpecker." Phil nodded.
"Up until now it was the only photo, we had of her. She along with twelve other girls were experimented on and out of all those girls she was the only survivor. She didn't suffer any brain damage or cancerous tumors she had developed the power of telekinesis."
"If she's so powerful how come she's bleeding out of her nose?" Clint asked.
"She's strong but not that strong her powers start to take a toll after excessive use, but once she heals, she gets just a little stronger every time. Thanks to an inside source we were able to track down where she was being held and raided the base. We managed to save a few kids, but Woodpecker got away."
"What about the people that did this to her."
"Most died in the raid, some were arrested and taken into custody and the rest got away, but the ones that did get away from us didn't get to far." Phil said with a small grin. He took the pad back from Clint and after a little typing he pulled up multiple files.
"There were a total of fifteen unaccounted scientist and guards that went off the grid, but someone found them for us." Phil stated as he started flipping through some files. "Head of security was found dead in his apartment two years after the raid, shortly after a doctor who was in charge or electroshock therapy was found with his mind scrambled like the chemist the list goes on."
"She's going after the people who did this to her. That explains why she didn't try and kill me I'm not on her list. Which brings up the question how many people are left on that list?" Clint asked.
"As of now, four I would suggest we go and follow her, but thanks to her scrambling Gruber's mind we got nothing."
"What exactly did she do to him anyways?" Clint asked.
"Well, what we know through the data we acquired she has a telepathic ability and can read people's minds and from what we saw she has to physically touch them in order to do it, but did she purposely scramble his mind or was that just a side effect from reading his mind?" Phil did a coin toss not knowing how to answer that question.
"Well, she's going after people on this list right, let's look into these people and run a background on Gruber and see if we can come up with something." Clint stated as he started going through Gruber's file.
"That could take forever and by the time we find something she could already be on her way to kill the guy." Phil said.
"Nah, she has to know that S.H.I.E.L.D has eyes on her now and not only that, but if Gruber has had any contact with the men on the list, they are going to be extra careful with how they move and if we run checks on these men then maybe we can follow Woodpecker right to the next mark."
Phil let out a heavy sigh and shook his head.
"Let's get started."
(Meanwhile)
Woodpecker sat in her dingey studio apartment surrounded by her guns, files and fast-food wrappers as she typed into her laptop. From what she gathered from Gruber, he was working for someone named, Fyodor Maksim. Thanks to Hawkeye interrupting her she only managed to get a name, a face and a partial look at the building. Someplace called, Brainwave.
From what she was able to look up it was a company out in in Moscow that specialized in making technology that would benefit people who suffered from total paralysis or other injuries involving limb loss. They also managed to aid in other neural sciences that would benefit the world. Their most recent project being cybernetic prosthetic limbs that connect to the nervous system and function like natural limbs and the man responsible for this scientific discovery is, Victor Fyodor.
"Mr. Owl." She mused as she remembered all those experiments that made her what she was. Between Peacock injecting her with drugs and Owl sticking wires in her head she had a lot of catching up to do when she found him.
There was only one problem, that archer she had encountered earlier. She didn't have a doubt in her mind that he was a part of the same group that raided that testing facility when she was a child.
She didn't have a grudge against these, S.H.I.E.L.D agents, but she couldn't risk getting caught by them. After all, at the end of the day S.H.I.E.L.D and Hydra were just two sides of the same coin and they both wanted to use Woodpecker for their own gain. She also couldn't risk them getting in the way of her revenge.
She would have to play it safe to Moscow, luckily, she had a backup plan for that. She grabbed a duffle bag and filled it with money, a few passports, clothes and a couple of sidearms. She changed into a blue leather jacket, black jeans and purple sneakers.
She did a quick once over for anything she might have left behind, before grabbing a black baseball hat and fastening it on her head before running out of the building. Once she was outside and halfway down the street, she pulled out a detonator and pressed the red button blowing up her apartment. That'll keep those agents busy while she makes her way to Moscow.