0057 HOURS | NOVEMBER 09, 2014 | BELASICA MOUNTAIN RANGE, BULGARIA-GREECE BORDER
The elevator doors slid closed and they began their descent into the underground facility.
"Well, that definitely could've gone better," Rhiannon commented wryly, hunched over the elevator's control panel with her data knife stabbed into the meat of the circuitry. She got no immediate reply and turned her head to look over at Barnes. He was staring down at the metal-grates of the elevator's floor, the Longbow DMR and Spitfire LMG slung across his back by their straps, and she would bet anything that he had that patented zoned-out, glazed-over look in his eyes.
Apparently, the confrontation with Captain Rogers had not left him unscathed.
Pushing a button on the side of her helmet, the forehead and jaw segments separated and the visor retracted upwards, revealing most of her face to the open air. Physical eye contact had always seemed to work well to break him out of his own head.
"Barnes," she called out softly, abandoning her knife, and sliding slowly over towards her partner. The elevator would continue down regardless if she was standing there or not. "Still with me?" His head tilted in her direction, still not looking at her, but a display that meant he had heard her voice and was actively listening. "You've gotta stay with me. Gotta focus on the here and now."
He hummed, a plaintive sound from the back of his throat, before he whispered, "It hurts."
Her heart broke a little with his admission.
"I know it does. I know," she soothed, sidling right up into his personal space and putting a gloved hand on his right shoulder, squeezing and rubbing at the muscles underneath her grip. It had taken a great deal of patience and perseverance for him to become this comfortable with her touch, but it was proving to be an effective method of comfort for him. A way to ground his being in the here and now rather than the pain of his past. "But, as odd as it is to say, it's a good thing that it hurts. If you had been unaffected at seeing Steve again, I'd be more worried."
He drew in a shaky breath, followed by a second, as his right hand came up and was placed atop her own. His fingers wrapped around her hand and they stood still for a moment in a comforting silence with not much more than an inch between them. He looked over at her after a few seconds and she gave him a smile, full of as much warmth and compassion as she could muster in that moment. His eyes, which had previously been filled with a renewed sense of grief and pain, softened as his lips twitched up in an attempted smile of his own.
Several more moments passed before they pulled away from the comfort provided by their close-contact, Rhiannon returning to her knife and Barnes taking the time to check over his armaments for any possible problems.
"At least I didn't try to kill him this time," he commented, taking inventory of his remaining ammunition, with a sardonic positivity coloring his tone.
"Baby steps, right?" she joked and Barnes huffed in some semblance of an attempted chuckle.
"How long do we have until they come after us?" he asked, shifting slightly. "And could anyone below know that we're coming down?
"Not sure," she said, almost glancing upwards at the ceiling as if expecting the Avengers in all their superpowered might to sudden appear overhead. Rhiannon imagined that Captain America might be coming to take a pound of flesh out of her for daring to stand between him and Barnes. "I'd imagine Stark is a passable hacker, so maybe fifteen to twenty minutes at max. And no, the cameras in here are being scrambled and I've blocked any signals that might alert anyone that an elevator is descending."
"Good."
A brief lull in their conversation.
"Thanks for blocking that bullet, by the way," she says, thinking over that split-second moment where he'd saved her bacon while dooming himself in the process. It was that lone bullet that had revealed his identity to those who were smart enough to put two and two together. Skilled combatant plus titanium arm equals James Buchanan Barnes, formerly known as the Winter Soldier, ex-assassin for HYDRA.
"You would've done the same for me," he replied, shrugging his shoulders as if it wasn't that big of a deal and hadn't created one of the greatest impediments towards the success of their mission. But it was true nonetheless, she would've done the same. Regardless of the fact that she was distinctly lacking in a metal arm to deflect bullets with. But she could've thought of something.
Maybe thrown down her A-Wall again?
Yeah, that would've done the trick quite nicely.
A ding came from the internal speakers of her helmet and she clicked it back into place around her head, glancing off the side as her HUD reappeared and reading the status message it displayed.
"Forty seconds," she said, switching back to speaking over their private radio channel and bringing up the blueprints of the underground base's interior to refamiliarize herself with their best possible route. "Pull your goggles back up. I'm killing all the lights when we arrive so we'll be in the dark. First objective is the primary data center which is in the left-hand wing."
"Understood."
"Prowler 1-3, status update?" Rhiannon asked.
"Unchanged," RA-5172 replied. "Assumption that the mission had proceeded to Stage Two?"
"Affirmative, big man. You are cleared to begin making your approach on the base, but you are cleared to engage if you are engaged first or if any aircraft start trying to make a break for it."
"Orders received and acknowledged. Good luck, Pilot."
Rhiannon watched, beginning to feel her usual sense of anticipation for a fight rising in her blood, as the distance and time until the elevator reached their destination ticked down. Twenty seconds left and less than a hundred more meters to go. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Barnes pulling the goggles back up and over his eyes, while leaving the scarf where it lay around his neck, and adjusting the strap so that the eyewear settled in the proper place.
Ten seconds.
They prepared themselves for silent combat. Knives in one hand and leaving their other arm free for strikes and possible grappling with their opponents. There would be no firearms used unless it became absolutely necessary.
Five. Four. Three. Two.
"Killing the power."
One.
The interior of the elevator went dark and the both of them activated their night vision.
Ding.
"You have now arrived at the Super-Fucked-Up-Shit-Happens-Here Floor. Please mind your step when exiting the elevator and we hope you have a nice day."
There wasn't actually a ding or any such announcement, but Rhiannon's mind supplied them both for the enjoyment of her slightly perverse and dark sense of humor.
The pair slipped out through the open elevator doors on silent feet with Rhiannon taking point and Barnes guarding her six. In the distance down the hallways – in either direction – they could hear shouts and the general uncoordinated sounds of fear and panic from those personnel stationed on this level of the facility. They turned to the left and prowled down the hall on route to their current objective.
Any individual that crossed their path was killed.
Scientist or soldier, it didn't matter to either of them.
They worked for HYDRA and were therefore found guilty.
The two moved in tandem in an elegant dance of death down the grid-like layout of hallways. Throats were slashed open – a gaping red smile opened from ear to ear – with palms clamped over mouths to muffle the sound of their last gurgling breaths. Spinal cords were severed with point-first stabs from behind, a surgically precise strike between the first and second cervical vertebrae. Bones were crushed beyond repair when arms – powered by a strength far beyond the average threshold – wrapped around their necks, proving to be inescapable as heads were pulled and twisted with a sickening crunch.
Several minutes after beginning their methodical clearing of the floor, with a total of twenty-six bodies left in their wake, they closed in on the primary data center. Rhiannon's data knife hacked the doors, secured with a keypad and hand scanner, and with a quiet chime of success they swung into the room.
In the glow of computer monitors, the two inhabitants of the room spun on their heels while reaching for their sidearms. Rhiannon shot the one on the left a quick draw of her suppressed P2016 and Barnes took the other with a thrown knife to the neck. She lunged towards the nearest keyboard when she noticed what the closest monitor was displaying on-screen and a rapidly typed command had the data purge stopping in its tracks before any more information could be lost.
"How much did we lose?" Barnes asked quietly as he peered over her slightly hunched shoulders.
"Not too much," she reported as she took out of her data knife and prepared to siphon the data for their own usage. "Couldn't have been running for much more than a minute." She shoved the data knife in and ran the hacking suite once more, opening the channel for RA-5172 to download it all. As the data began to be transferred the two settled in the wait it out.
An alert suddenly went off in Rhiannon's helmet.
"They've gotten through the blast doors," she reported, watching over the security cameras in front of the elevator bank as the Avengers came charged in. "Took 'em ten minutes to get in. Now they've gotta get control over one of the elevators."
"How long will that take?" Barnes asked. "We've still gotta destroy the Chair…"
"Only a minute left on the download," she said, gauging the progress bar which was moving fast. "After that's done, we'll book it to the other side to set up the demolition before they can get down here."
He hummed, glancing over at the open door in a brief moment of nervousness, before settling back against the far wall to wait. The second the data transfer was complete the two took off at a sprint, no longer concerning themselves with staying quiet. The sprinted down the second major corridor that ran the length of the entire base towards the section containing the laboratories and storage vaults.
They ran into two teams of surviving HYDRA personnel, both of which were geared up as combat teams, and tore through them both with a sense of savagery born from their need for speed. Their full-auto guns were swung around and unleashed on the groups from a distance, with those few left standing after the hail of bullets facing execution by a slashing knife or a fatal fist to the face.
But less than five minutes after they began their run, they skidded to an abrupt stop before the vault that contained their second objective on this level. The Memory Suppression Machine, otherwise known as the Chair. A device that had been developed solely for the purpose of erasing the memories of the person thrust into its grasp via the usage of surgically targeted electricity to fry the neurons and brain tissue that corresponded with memory retention.
Its very existence made Rhiannon sick to her stomach and as the door was unlocked and swung open, she dreaded having to even enter the room. But she knew that her reactions could not even touch upon what Barnes must have been feeling in that moment. To look at the very thing that had stolen away your autonomy and made you into the slave of those who crafted you to be a cold-blooded murderer?
It must've been beyond horrifying and little did she know that her assumptions were all too correct.
Barnes felt truly awful in that moment.
The mind-numbing fear that was brought on by just imagining being forced into the Chair, all of the times that it had happened after he had been pulled out of cryostasis. The nausea that suddenly churned in his gut and the acidic taste of bile in his throat. A cold sweat that broke out underneath his clothes, turning his shirt uncomfortably damp and droplets beading across the expanse of his forehead to trickle down the planes of his face. And worst of all the phantom sensation of the burning pain that had seared through his skull with every session, every pulse of electricity that erased everything he knew and loved bit by bit until he was nothing more than an empty shell.
Barnes came back to himself with the sensation of warm, gloved palms cupping his cheeks, a pair of thumbs stroking lightly over his cheekbones and the removal of the goggles from over his eyes.
"Come on back, Barnes," Rhiannon was calling, her helmet opened once more which allowed him to see her features with a middling degree of clarity with his serum-enhanced night vision. "Come back to me."
"I'm here," he whispered, taking comfort in the contact along with the sight of her tanned skin and gray-green eyes. It was a soothing balm to be touched without fear of pain and he had become far too attached to Rhiannon's brand of ramshackle therapy. "Got lost for a moment. Memories, you know?"
"Mhmm," she murmured. "I know. I figured as much with this being such a big part of your past. Knew that you'd probably end up having some sort of reaction."
He hummed in agreement, enjoying the moment as her touch pushed back the nausea, the fear and the pain. He leant one of his stubbled cheeks more firmly into her gloved grasp, holding his head at a slight angle to do so, in an attempt to absorb all of the comfort that she could possibly spare into his body. Or at least to garner enough to see him through until the end of the mission.
The set-backs were becoming tiresome and he didn't want to be any more of a burden.
"Now, let's blow this fucking thing up and get the hell out of here, yeah?" she asked softly as she began to pull her hands away. He was loath to let her pull them away and was already feeling the loss on his face, but he also knew that they needed to finish the mission before Steve caught up with them.
As Barnes pulled the goggles back over his eyes, they entered and quickly began to assemble their rough-shod collection of explosive munitions. A pair of adhesive satchel charges that he had been carrying and a trio of Fire Stars from Rhiannon's pouches. Together the combination of high-yield explosives, thermite and the small space within the vault would turn the Chair into shrapnel and slag.
They hoped.
Halfway through the process, Rhiannon received another notification on her HUD.
"They're in the elevator," she reported and the two sped up their efforts. "We've got two minutes."
In the end, only seconds before the supposed arrival of the Avengers into the underground base, all of the charges were synchronized to a remote detonator. A detonator which Rhiannon meaningfully placed into his metal hand with a great deal of weighty gravitas. How poetic would it be that the hand crafted by HYDRA would end up destroying one of the tools that they had developed solely for the purpose of keeping him on their leash?
It felt good.
The weight of that device in his hand felt empowering.
They left and locked the door behind them, beginning their return to the bank of elevators, but keeping their pace slow. The detonator had a thirty-meter range, so that wasn't an issue. The main reason was that they needed to wait and see what the Avengers were going to so when they arrived. The two would need to end up skirting around them without detection, getting into the elevators once more and going down to the aircraft hangar to rendezvous with RA-5172.
Well before reaching the maximum range of the detonator they stopped as Barnes settled against the wall to wait for the perfect moment to make a break for it. But Rhiannon sped forward with a blast of her jump kit to clear the corner and pitch a pulse blade down the connecting hallway. The blade dug into the wall just above the elevators and began to send out its sonar pulses in timed waves of orange light on her HUD. She jetted back in a fraction of a second to where Barnes waited and nestled in beside him.
With their enhanced hearing they heard the metallic slide of the doors opening, soon after accompanied by the heavy clunk of Stark's Iron Man suit and the muted thud of multiple pairs of boots. The bloom of sonar unveiled their outlines to Rhiannon, who watching as the six divided themselves into two teams of three. One trio moved towards the offices and the others was headed in their direction.
Rhiannon and Barnes began to creep forward, wary of making even the slightest sound to be heard by any equally enhanced ears or sound sensitive technology. It was unfortunate but their need for silence gave the searching teams ample time to make up the distance that separated them. As they neared the maximum range on the detonator, Rhiannon looked over at Barnes and nodded her head.
He pulled the trigger and the explosion from within the Chair's vault rocked the Facility.
However, in an unfortunate turn, the explosion apparently made the Avengers pick up their pace.
Iron Man, the Asgardian and the archer came careening around the far corner just as the pair began their mad dash towards the elevators. The superheroes gave chase, but were outmatched in speed. But Rhiannon would bet more than anything that they had alerted the other three – Rogers, the Widow and the guy with the wings – and that group was on the way to cut them off.
And how true it was!
Nearly at the corner to the connecting hall where she had thrown the pulse blade, her expectation became reality as Captain America came charging around another corner at full speed. The shield was in the air and speeding down the hall way before Rhiannon could even manage to blink. It was aimed at her head and at the last second, she dropped onto her knees and slid underneath it with her jump kit propelling her along. Barnes pulled her back up onto her feet after the shield had flown over her head and they continued on their way down the hall.
"Buck, stop! Stop running!" Rogers shouted, his voice almost gone hoarse from the volume, as the pair made the corner only a handful of seconds before the Captain reached them. From inside her helmet, Rhiannon keyed one of the elevators to open but could feel the super-soldier on their heels getting ever so slightly closer with every passing moment. He must've been pushing himself to his absolute top speed to be gaining ground on them.
They needed more time to escape.
She fumbled into one of her ammo pouches and pulled out a Gravity Star, which was the most non-lethal of her current options to delay the Captain. A flick of her wrist drove the throwing star into the floor and she felt the sucking sensation at her back that meant the gravitational vortex had bloomed into existence. A yell of shock and frustration echoed behind her and she caught sight of Barnes looking backwards for a quick moment
"He'll be fine," she called, shoving at his shoulder to keep him moving, but suddenly found her legs immobilized and was falling forward to crack her helmeted head on the concrete floor. The brain rattling impact had her thinking disjointedly for a few moments before her mind cleared and she found herself cradled in Barnes' arms and being carried across the threshold of the elevator. A glance downward found her legs had been bound together with some sort of wrap-around restraint.
He set her down on the floor and there was a tugging sensation at her right shoulder, where her data knife was sheathed. Rhiannon, content to sit still with her rattled brain, watched at Barnes emulated what she had done before to control the elevator. He pried off the panel with the flat of the blade, keyed the switch for the circuitry to extend, thrust the blade into the electronics and pulled the trigger to hack it. As the doors slid closed, she watched as the Avengers tried their level best to converge on the elevator, but they were too slow and the elevator was going down.
Barnes was then back at her side, falling onto his knees and even in the still dark elevator she could see the concerned expression on his handsome face.
"Are you alright, Rhia?" he asked, or rather demanded, grabbing at her helmet to make her look at him. "Does your neck hurt at all?" She shook her head in the negative, feeling incapable of speaking for the moment as the taste of blood permeated her mouth and her tongue began to throb in pain.
She must've bit it when she fell and hit her head.
"Good, good," he mumbled. "Think you can turn the lights back on? Wanna see what I'm doing."
She didn't reply but used her helmet to turn the lights back on – not at full brightness – only at about half to prevent momentary blindness. And at the same time, she noticed that they had about three minutes until they would arrive at the aircraft hangar.
No sooner had the elevator lights come on Barnes was pulling off her helmet, gently but still urgently, and grasping her cheeks in his gloved grasp and bending his head down to look into her eyes. He was most likely looking at her pupillary response and for any other obvious signs of a concussion.
"Why aren't you talking?" he asked worriedly when she remained silent.
She made a face before choosing to speak even as the pain in her mouth only seemed to get worse as she moved her tongue around to feel for any loose or broken teeth. "Pain," she grumbled through a harsh grimace. "Bit my tongue, I think. Teeth seem okay, though."
"Oh, you poor baby," Barnes cooed mockingly after obviously deeming that she was far from seriously injured and therefore fair game for teasing remarks.
"Oh, shut it," Rhiannon hissed out as she began to flex her legs in an attempt use her rather formidable strength to break the restraints apart. However, Stark – because who else could've made something like this – had apparently made them with super-soldiers in mind and she found herself unable to break free on her first try. "Help me get this off, would you? Put that big, bad arm of yours to work."
Barnes huffed, but acquiesced to her demand.
Together the two of them managed to pry the shackle off of her legs. Barnes used his metal arm, which was far stronger than the other, to bend and pull at the restraint until with their strength combined, they loosened the clamps that locked it all together. With the screeching sound of warping steel, or whatever the hell this thing had been made of, Rhiannon snapped her legs apart and broke it into two pieces. Barnes stood as she freed herself and extended one of his hands out to pull her back to her feet.
As she bent to retrieve her helmet from the floor, Rome's voice emanated from the internal speakers.
"Be advised, Romeo-Alpha-5172 has been engaged by hostiles."
In an effort to respond to her Titan and fed up with the blood pooling in her mouth, Rhiannon gathered up as much as she could and spat it out onto the floor before shoving her helmet back onto her head.
"Received, Rome. We're on our way down," she replied. "ETA thirty seconds and the Avengers are about twenty seconds behind us."
She looked over at Barnes who had gone to retrieve her data knife from the elevator's control panel. He pulled the knife out, twirling it once in his hand once for no apparent reason other than dramatic flair, before offering it back to her handle first. She took it with a nod of her head, sliding it back into the sheath mounted at an angle on her right shoulder, before reaching for the submachine gun on her back. Barnes followed her example and readied the Spitfire LMG in his grasp, checking the box magazine and racking the bolt back to chamber a fresh round. It was all but guaranteed that there was a fight waiting for them below and they would definitely be shooting their way through to regroup with her Titan.
The elevator finished its descent and the doors slid open and exposed the chaos that had engulfed the hangar. Agents, soldiers, pilots and flight crews – numbering around fifty or so – scrambled all over the cavernous expanse of the large space. The hangar stood some thirty meters tall, a hundred meters wide and ran two hundred and fifty meters long towards the tarmac visible through another set of open blast doors. Two rows of various sorts of aircraft lined either wall, most in some stage of being prepared for takeoff, in addition to stacks of crates and cargo containers were scattered here and there.
It was into this pandemonium that Rhiannon and Barnes ran, following the sounds of heavy gunfire and the explosion of rockets and missiles that came from beyond the open doors. They skirted off to the side and began to eliminate anyone they came across on their mad dash towards the Titan's rampage. Even as they ran, they witnessed as one of the jets attempting to take off crashed in flames after it took a 40-millimeter Armor Piercing, Depleted Tungsten M20 Explosive Shell to the engine block.
Not even a fraction across the way, Rhiannon chanced a glance over her shoulder to look back the way they came. A second elevator had arrived and expelled its six superpowered occupants into the fray. The only saving grace was that in the lawlessness state of the hangar, it would take the Avengers quite some time to find them amongst the crowd even though the hangar was quite well illuminated.
"Prowler 1-3 to Prowler 1-1, please advise. Enemy transport craft on route and is demanding emergency clearance for landing. Scans reveal a minimal crew complement but abnormally high thermal readings from within the cargo compartment," Rome announced suddenly and Rhiannon was momentarily dumbstruck and stumbled just slightly before righting herself.
"Why the fuck is a cargo plane trying to land here now?" she yelled, overcome with an irrational anger which manifested itself as she ran along, snagging a grenade from Barnes' belt and tossing it up one of the jets with an open ramp.
"They must not know that the base is under attack," Barnes called out. "We did jam their comms."
He had a point, but it was just so inopportune.
"Pilot Lastimosa, please respond. Should I fire on the transport?"
The abnormal temperature reading had a particularly bad feeling rising in Rhiannon's gut. Could it be a weapon? Some sort of bomb? A gas? A biological weapon? Or it could be some sort of dangerous experiment devised by a maniacal scientist without a conscience? With HYDRA it could've been any or even all of those options. It was better to make the choice that would deprive the organization of anything they could possibly use to help themselves or hurt others.
"Fuck it," she barked. "Shoot it down, Rome."
"Acknowledged."
And no sooner had the Titan spoken there was a noticeable surge of booming gunfire from outside and the whistle of a hefty salvo of rockets being released into the night. An explosion was heard, painfully loud even within the safety of the hangar, and soon after was accompanied by the sudden roar of fire and the droning whine of jet engines under heavy strain. And then there it was, the shattered remnants of a cargo aircraft crashing out of the sky and turning the tarmac outside into a hellscape.
Crashing through the plane's debris came an incredibly large rectangular cargo container, propelled along by what remained of the plane's forward momentum and crashing heedlessly into the hangar. Both HYDRA forces and the smaller aircraft that were caught in its path were crushed beneath its immense weight, turned to nothing more than smears of red and metal scraps in its wake.
Barnes and Rhiannon slid into cover along the closest wall as the container continued its uncontrolled approach. They watched with wide eyes as it finally rolled once, twice, three times and then screeched to a stop in a shower of sparks. It had made it nearly half of the way down the full length of the hangar. The sheet metal of the container was bent and mangled into a geometric nightmare and on a curious whim, Rhiannon activated the infrared lens for her visor to see if the heat was still present.
Backlit by the fires outside, her world turned into a riot of vibrant colors. Cool purples turned to warmer reds to orange to yellow – growing ever brighter as the temperature rose and rose and rose.
But the container…
It was the palest of yellows with a center of blindingly white. The hottest gradient of color to be found on the infrared spectrum for any temperature beyond a certain range. But why the hell was it so hot? Not even the crash and its tumble into the hangar could've caused such a high amount of heat and Rome had said that it had been damn hot before they'd even shot the plane down.
Rhiannon looked on, even as the both of them prepared to move out from their cover to continue out towards the tarmac, she noticed the slightest bit of movement from within the thermal display. The white at the center was fluctuating in shape in an arrhythmic beat. Suddenly whiter and then yellow-ish and then back to white. A slow dawning of realization came to her as she continued watching, reaching out towards Barnes and gripping at the back of his tactical vest and tugging him towards her urgently.
One two. One two. One two three.
One two. One two. One two three.
It was a heartbeat.
A heartbeat that was getting faster and faster with every passing second.
The container had something in it.
Something alive and very, very large.
"Barnes, we gotta back up," she urged, switching her visor back to normal. "We need to regroup with Steve and the Avengers right fucking now."
"Why? What's wrong?" he asked, immediately concerned about something that had so easily unnerved the usually unflappable woman from the future and another planet.
But his question was rendered obsolete only a few short seconds later when the container exploded from the inside out sending warped sheet metal flying in every direction. The two ducked back down behind their cover as the huge chunks of shrapnel flew overhead. A second later they both peered over the edge and laid eyes on the container's contents.
It was some sort of monstrous animal. A hideous amalgamation of feline and serpent that was as large – both length and height – as a full-sized bus. Gold and black scales covered the dorsal side, while the underbelly looked to be some sort of grayish-brown colored leathery hide. Two thick forelimbs, bulging with corded brawn, supported a heavy cat-like head filled to the brim with ivory colored fangs and brilliantly green eyes that almost seemed to glow. A purple tongue, bifurcated like a snake's, flickered out to taste the air that was thick with smoke and the fumes of spilled and burning jet fuel. The rest of this monster's body was serpentine with no other additional limbs. It was just a long and sinuous body, just as thickly muscled, that ended with a tail tipped with spikes that looked almost like bone.
Barnes understood why Rhiannon had been so rattled.
That enormous beast was well beyond their current capabilities. They were both running low on ammo, with a magazine or two to spare between them and only a handful of grenades left. They needed help and they needed it now, and the Avengers were the only help that could turn to in that moment. Even RA-5172 would be no help for the time being because there was still a hell of a gunfight happening out on the tarmac.
The beast, whatever it was, shrieked and the pair made a break for it. They didn't even bother to watch as those few HYDRA goons too close to the thing found themselves being pounced upon and devoured.
They sprinted pell-mell back the way they had come, keeping their eyes peeled for the team of six internationally famous superheroes. They couldn't have gotten too far since it had only been a minute or two since they'd arrived in the elevator.
Rhiannon caught sight of a distinctive shield as it reflected a bit of light in her direction and quickly adjusted course to run straight towards it, Barnes once again following hot on her heels. Their approach was rapid. So rapid in fact that the Avengers were unable to even react before the two were skidding to a stop in front of the superheroes. Weapons were grabbed and pointed in their direction, but the two held up their hands in the universal sign of surrender and please, for the love of God, don't shoot us.
"We've got a big fucking problem," Rhiannon gasped, only slightly out of breath from the high-speed sprint back towards the elevators and the sudden surge of adrenaline in her blood.
"Yes, we can see that," the Black Widow barked back, looking both unimpressed with her statement of the obvious and a bit on the nervous side.
The nervousness was understandable, at least, as the panicked gunfire, the screams of the dying and the monster's roars and yowls echoed from the far end of the hangar.
"A Tatzelwurm? Here on Midgard? How can this be?" Thor asked himself, his eyes wide with equal parts fear and wonder as he looked upon such a rare and familiar beast. A creature that should have been living peacefully in its natural habitat on a world very, very far from here. He had only seen two before and had never dared to engage them in combat, even back in his foolhardy youth.
It would prove to be a formidable foe, even against the might of the Avengers.
"It was on a HYDRA cargo plane that was going to land here," Rhiannon explained. "Got some abnormal thermal readings from inside it. Thought it as a weapon. Ordered the plane shot down. My bad."
"Your bad? Your bad?" the Falcon asked loudly as a rage took over him. "You just shot down a plane and unleashed a monster straight out of some sort of fucked up nightmare…"
"Hey!" Barnes barked suddenly, taking a menacing step forward in the hot-blooded defense of one of the few people he cared about in the world. "Lay off, pal! It's not like she could have known that that thing was in the plane when she gave the order to bring it down."
"Oh, really? With tech like hers?" Stark chimed in, his suit looking noticeable worse for wear than the last time they had seen it. "I have a hard time believing that, Barnes."
"I didn't! I swear…"
"Enough!" Steve barked to interrupt their squabbling. "This isn't the time for this. Thor, you seem to know what this thing is. What can you tell us about it?"
"This is a Tatzelwurm, my friends and allies. A mighty beast from the realm of Vanaheim," the Asgardian Prince explained as the eight of them watched the creature's wanton rampage. "They are mostly cave dwelling creatures that only venture out from their dens to hunt, but I have never seen one quite so large as this one. The hide is thick and only the sharpest of blades may pierce it and the scales along it's back are nearly impenetrable. But it's greatest weapons, beyond its claws and fangs, are its poisonous breath and the barbs upon its tail that carrying a potent paralyzing venom."
As Thor described the monster, Rhiannon found her brain racing through an insane amount of possible strategies that might be successful against it. Ultimately, she had a strong feeling that her Titan would end up being necessary to win against the enormous mythological beast. A plan slotted into place as she studied the hangar's overall layout and their current combined armaments and physical condition.
It was a dumb plan.
A really, really stupid plan.
"I have an idea," she said as soon as Thor finished with his speech. "It's a dumb one, but it might just work." They all turned to look at her but she didn't even attempt to describe it in any amount of detail. There wasn't enough time to lay it all out and there were so many moving parts she had to consider…
No, she just needed to go and hope for the best.
"Shouldn't we call for Banner. I'm sure the Hulk could…" Barton began to suggest, but was cut off.
"No. There's no time for that," Rhiannon barked and she grabbed at Barnes, pulling the bandolier holding his remaining grenades over his head and slinging it over her own shoulder.
"Lastimosa…" Steve began, but was interrupted.
"Rhia, what're you…" Barnes protested, reaching out in an attempt to pull her back.
"Spread out. Distract it. Ranged attacks only. If it gets too close, fall back and regroup," she ordered abruptly, meeting all of their eyes but lingering for longer on the differing blues of Rogers and Barnes, before she took off like a shot.
She pulled an auto-injection syringe out from another one of her pouches and stabbed it roughly into her own neck as she ran. The syringe pumped her system full of top-grade stimulants, specially designed for Pilots of her caliber to push them far beyond their limits. Her jump kit burned with blue and hot as it ramped up towards its maximum level of thrust and the world began to slow around her.
But she knew – logically – in the depths of her mind that it was in fact the exact opposite.
The world hadn't slowed. She had sped up. Up and up to well beyond her usual physical limits. Her HUD at that moment in time said that she running at nearly 65 KPH. Not her fastest ever, not by a long shot, but hopefully it would be enough to get the job done. The usage of Stim was necessary for her plan to have a chance at paying off.
She somehow knew that the Tatzelwurm was going to be fucking fast as well as strong.
"Rome, rendezvous on me now with Sword Core active," she ordered over the comm, not caring that she might be pulling her Titan away from a fight. She was going to need his superior firepower.
"Received. On route."
Rhiannon jumped up onto an aircraft, one of the few that remained in mostly one piece, and then grappled onto the wall and ran along it to cover the distance between her and the monster. In the meantime, the Avengers began their attack just as she had ordered. They unleashed a barrage of bullets, arrows, lasers and lightning on the enormous creature, which shrieked and writhed under the onslaught, but it seemed to reacting in irritation rather than any actual pain.
She was closing fast and she readied the string of grenades in her grasp, shifting it down from her shoulder to be held in her free hand, flaring her thrusters for a jump off of the wall to land on another jet. She bounced off the surface, leaping into the air once more and sent her grapple at the rather unfortunate HYDRA goon she'd set her sights on. She landed right on top of him, wrapping her legs around her neck and jerking her hips to the side to snap his neck with an audible crunch. Soon afterwards, she had him trussed up with the bandolier of grenades and ready to be served.
The perfect treat for a big, bad monster.
She pulled the pin on one of the grenades, starting the four second countdown in her mind, as she blasted out of cover into the direct path of the Tatzelwurm. It saw her, ignoring everything else in favor of more entertaining looking prey, and spun on its serpentine body.
"Rhia!" Barnes screamed in panic over the radio and she heard her last name echoed by some of the Avengers, who seemed equally concerned with her current location. But she ignored them all, sinking into a crouch and waiting for the opportune moment.
The monster lunged forward, mouth gaping open and she struck. With all of her enhanced strength, she wrenched on the grapple line still attached to the dead man and swung the grenade-laden body straight down the beast's gullet. At the last second, she flared her jump kit and double-jumped away, but felt the faintest flare of intense pressure in the lower right-hand quadrant of her abdomen. With no time to investigate the odd sensation – dulled as it was by her liberal usage of Stim – she landed over a dozen meters away and began to sprint around towards its tail and the tarmac. In the distance and closing fast, she could see Rome's distinctive mechanical body emerging out from the darkness.
The Tatzelwurm, spun around as well and began to give chase, before convulsing all of a sudden as the grenades detonated. A spray of ink-like blood surged out of the creature's open mouth, chased after by crackling tongues of blue electricity, as both Fragmentation and Arc Grenades went off inside its body. But the grenades alone were not capable of downing the beast. That would've been too easy.
Rhiannon took off as the Tatzelwurm shrieked in pain and rage, charging after her in a bloodied frenzy and seeking retribution on the one who had hurt it so grievously.
But it was too late and Rome was within her range.
His front panels popped open as she pinged the embarkation command, grappling forwards and propelling herself along at the max thrust from her jump kit. She slammed into the pilot's seat with the hatch slamming closed behind her with a hiss before she had even turned around.
"Phase Dash, now!" she commanded vocally, even as she felt the cold rush of sensation in her brain as the neural link between her and her Titan snapped into place. The link would ensure that she no longer had to issue verbal orders. RA-5172 and her would become two minds crammed into one body, acting in perfect synchronization.
The world around her faded into a bizarre alternate dimension made up of monochrome shades, blurred shapes and a distinct lack of sound. A place where no other living beings existed except for them. But Phase Dash was geared specifically for tactical advances or retreats almost exclusively. A damn fine way to jump yourself into a fight while getting the drop on your opponent or a way to get out of dodge when things got a bit too dicey.
They emerged from the Dash only a second or two later, the world reasserting itself in a blaze of color, light and sound. They spun around on their feet to face the Tatzelwurm, which had passed through their previous location while they had vanished into the alternate dimension. Now Rhiannon and her Titan were placed firmly between the monster and her allies, Barnes and the Avengers.
Just where they wanted to be.
Rome deployed a pale greenish-blue particle wall onto the ground in front of them, an upscaled version of the A-Wall she had utilized earlier on in the battle, and brought the 40mm Tracker Cannon up to bear on their target. They unloaded a full magazine of APDT shells into the beast, watching in mute horror as the majority of the armor-piercing incendiary shells did little to no effect on the creature. If anything, the Tatzelwurm only seemed to flinch with every shot, crying and shrieking as the shells made contact with its head, neck and chest.
They were out of missiles and soon the 40mm ran dry as well, the twelve-round magazine dropped onto the concrete floor of the hangar with a sharp clang. It was left abandoned as they were forced to bring the massive gun up to fend off the Tatzelwurm's body as it pounced onto them, digging its claws into the chassis paneling and biting down on the gun's barrel. Warnings blared as the poisonous breath began to corrode the paint on the armor and the barbed tail wrapped around their body and began to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.
The Titan and mythological beast wrestled back and forth for what seemed like an eternity, until the Multi-Core System – a staple for the Vanguard-class – finished transitioning into one more suitable for close-quarters combat.
She called up a Flame Shield, letting go of the Tracker Cannon with one hand to shove the wall of fire into the monster's face. Scales, skin and the first layers of muscle beneath it were seared away after a few moments of forced application. The creature disengaged, leaping backward by using its tail like a coiled spring, and they dropped their gun in favor of sending a line of liquid thermite after it with a slam of their metal fist on the ground. It writhed on the ground as the thermite struck true and burned across the lower half of its body.
Rhiannon knew an opportunity when she saw one.
The sword mounted to their back swung out, one of the newer and slimmer designs by Burrell Defense meant for the Ronin Prime Titan, and into their grasp. Electricity began to crackle down the katana-like blade and while the Tatzelwurm was distracted they charged forward at a full mechanized sprint. The upper right side of the thoracic cavity had been damaged by the Flame Shield, exposing a decently sized chunk of raw musculature that had been hidden away under that durable hide.
That was their target.
The monster spun around upon hearing their approach and leapt into the air to meet them, slavering in rage and pain and hunger. The electrified sword was brought up and driven point-first into the body by the force of their combined momentum until it burst out through the creature's back in a spray of black blood. The animal keened and shrieked in pain, wriggling and lashing out in its death throes, but they twisted the sword and increased the voltage until the body finally went limp. The sword slid out from the body with a sickening squelch as they spun around to face their audience, like a thespian about to bow to the sound of thunderous applause after a spectacular performance on the stage.
The hatch popped open as she stood up and stepped out, but a sudden wave a fatigue had her wobbling on her feet before she could make the jump down to the ground. Rome said something but it sounded muffled to her ears. Like she was underwater. A searing pain suddenly surge up from the lower region of her abdomen. She looked down, only now beginning to feel an uncomfortably warm and wet sensation on her skin, and she brought her glove up to touch the area in question.
The glove came away slick with her blood.
She was bleeding.
She had gotten shot.
Picking her head up she caught sight of Barnes dashing across the hangar with Captain Rogers following close behind. Both of them at a full sprint, which was an impressive sight to say the least. The rest of the Avengers followed as well, at a slightly slower pace, but it was really that first man that she was by far the happiest to see coming her way.
God, she cared about him far more than she ought to.
She smiled underneath her helmet, feeling absolutely exhausted all of a sudden. But she supposed that blood loss compounded with the crash after a heavy dose of Stim would do that.
But Barnes was okay, so that meant everything was alright.
Her vision wavered, blurring at the edges while dark spots appeared in her field of view, and then she lost her balance, plunging head first out of the cockpit and blacking out before she hit the ground.