1227 HOURS | NOVEMBER 16, 2014 | UPSTATE NEW YORK, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Sometimes, and with greater and greater deal of frequency, Bruce Banner wished that he lived in far less interesting times than these.
The most current culmination of his ill-advised choices had found the biochemist and nuclear physicist standing alongside Tony Stark the previous evening as they had awaited the arrival of their compatriots. It was the events of the previous weekend, an all-out assault on a HYDRA Facility, that had thrown quite an unexpected wrench into the usual day-to-day minutia of the Avengers. Of course, the unforeseen development had Steve Rogers nearly in a state of giddy euphoria, but the others were rather worried by the sudden challenge that had been presented to them.
James Barnes, formerly known as the Winter Soldier and a lethal assassin for HYDRA, was coming to stay at the new Avengers Compound. By all accounts, the unfortunate man had been captured, tortured and brainwashed into becoming the Soldier, but that did not mean that he wasn't a very real and significant hazard. The level of danger that the man posed to them all had the Big Guy growling and pacing within the confines of his mind, ready to pummel the newest threat into a pulp at the slightest of provocations.
But that wasn't the end of these new troubles!
Barnes was being accompanied by a lady-friend. One who was in control of a giant robot, of all things, and apparently came from the far future of an alternate version of their reality. This mysterious woman, who apparently was named Rhiannon Lastimosa, was something called a Pilot. Most of them had taken that to assume that she was a variant of super-soldier from her reality and based on the video provided by Tony, Bruce was inclined to agree. She was clearly Enhanced – strength, speed, stamina, etcetera – and he had believed it to be along similar veins as what had been done to Steve.
What Bruce had attempted to do to himself and failed miserably.
And so, he had watched alongside Stark as the Quinjet landed and was followed down by a large ship that looked so clearly militaristic with its green and black plating and was quite heavily armed. Clint and Sam had exited from the former, while Steve and Natasha accompanied their newest guests out of the enormous, foreign craft. The robot had attempted to trail behind them all, but the blonde woman had waved it away, ordering it to remain with the dropship for the time being.
As they approached, carrying their luggage over their shoulders, Bruce had taken the time to finally get a good look at the pair in the waning light of the setting sun. While he had seen them both before at the HYDRA Base, it had been dark and they had barely exchanged much more than a brief word of greeting before the two had left to go their own way.
Rhiannon Lastimosa carried herself like a soldier, back straight and head held high. A natural fighter. But there was a lithesome prowl to her gait, akin to that of a big cat. A predatory animal. She was quite tall and rather muscular – though still shorter and slimmer in comparison to Rogers or Barnes – with tanned skin and extremely pale ashen blonde hair that caught the receding sunlight and gleamed. Objectively, Bruce would have claimed that she was a good-looking woman. Though, it was not in the refined or delicate way that Natasha Romanoff or even Virginia "Pepper" Potts were.
No.
Lastimosa was attractive in perhaps the same way that a tiger or a lion was. Fierce and powerful and capable of killing you in the blink of an eye should the mood strike her, but nonetheless appealing in all of its savage beauty.
And Barnes…
He followed after Lastimosa like a protective shadow, an image only furthered by the dark colored clothes he had worn at the time and the fearsome scowl on his face. His skin was pale, with a stubbled jaw and thick, dark brown hair that just barely grazed at the top of his shoulders. Barnes was shorter than Steve, but not by much, and even while clothed the brunet looked to be slightly broader at the shoulder and chest than the blonde super-soldier. Was that indicative of greater physical strength, or just a side-effect of his knock-off version of Erskine's serum? Or could it even have been a natural development meant to counteract the weight of his prosthetic arm?
Stark had marched out to greet them, with the restraint bracelets that he had designed to contain the two to the new base clenched in his fist, and Bruce had followed. The pair allowed themselves to be shackled; Barnes with an expression of only barely concealed anxiety and Lastimosa with a look of resigned weariness and an obvious grimace of dislike. The restraints themselves weren't more than a centimeter wide; made of blackened carbon-steel and barely weighed anything at all. But it was their purpose – the constant surveillance and tracking by J.A.R.V.I.S. along with the powerful electrocution should they step beyond the marked perimeter – that had the scientist feeling insurmountable pity for the two.
To so willingly accept what was basically a lenient version of imprisonment just because they were considered to be dangerous unknowns. For them to voluntarily surrender themselves into the Avengers' custody without a single ounce of protest? They had shown more bravery than Bruce thought himself capable of, certainly.
The loss of his freedom was one of his greatest fears.
That fear was the entire reason that he had run from New York and hidden away, constantly on the run, from everyone and everything. So that no one would be able to capture him, to use the Hulk for their own purposes. And here they – the Avengers… Earth's Mightiest Heroes as some had called them – were doing to others what Banner so desperately despised and took great pains to avoid himself.
Barnes and Lastimosa had been escorted into the main building some distance from the landing pad. It was a sprawling complex which was set to contain the majority of the living quarters, recreational areas, laboratories and offices that would be needed for the Avengers personally. The secondary buildings were still being constructed – meant to be the workplaces for any additional employees or agents they might acquire in the future – but for now only the primary building was habitable.
As it was, and for the foreseeable future, all of the construction projects had been postponed while Barnes and Lastimosa were being contained on site.
Stark had shown them to their assigned quarters, a pair of modestly sized suites – basically just small, but luxurious apartments – that had been originally planned to be guest housing for people close to the Avengers. Friends and family and such. The rooms were next to each other at Steve's insistence and located at the very end of the hall that contained all of the team's planned rooms. Few were currently completely furnished, but all of them already had the basics.
Well… The basics according to Anthony Edward Stark.
But after depositing their numerous bags, the two had been turned over into Bruce's hands for their preliminary medical examinations, which by some miracle they had both agreed to allow. While he did have a Doctorate of Medicine, he did not often consider himself to be a doctor in the usual sense. No matter what he had spent all those years doing in some of the worst slums and villages in the world. However, due to the confidential nature of Barnes and Lastimosa's situation, he was on the only one on hand who could perform such an examination properly.
With assurances that Bruce was comfortable being left alone with the two– he really wasn't, but they deserved some privacy – the three were left on their own. The others returned to Lastimosa's ship to confiscate ammunition and weaponry that had been deemed too dangerous for them to remain in possession of. Nonetheless, Bruce could feel the Captain's eyes on them until they turned the corner and vanished from his line of sight on their walk to a suitably prepared lab.
"How are we going about this, Doctor Banner?" the blonde woman had asked as the trio entered the room. It was furnished with a fair smattering of medical technology, most of which had been developed by Stark Industries, and had everything that he would need for their very basic examination. "Do you need us to take off any of our clothes?"
Barnes had shifted nervously at the question, but had nonetheless begun to reach for the hem of his heavy sweatshirt with a twitching and hesitant hand.
"No, that won't be necessary," Bruce had been quick to say. "I just need the both of you to stand here." He had gestured over towards a large, translucent display screen mounted onto a moveable arm in a corner of the room. "And then I'll run a scan and move the screen down your bodies. Front and back. The scan will take your vitals and well as look at your internal systems for any anomalies that will cause problems. Then I just want to take some blood from each of you and then you'll both be free to go."
"Fancy," Lastimosa said, but seemed as relieved as Barnes was that they didn't need to strip down.
The exam went as well as could be expected.
The scans performed on each of them, Lastimosa first and Barnes second, and a single vial of blood drawn from them both. If any issues were to be had then he would've expected them when he had stuck the needles into the crook of their elbows, but neither had flinched even the slightest bit. Bruce had actually been rather convinced that Barnes would react violently to the pinching pain. However, contrary to his expectations, there had only been a slight twitch of the muscles in his square jaw that had the scientist letting out a mental sigh of profound relief.
"So, how much of what you learn here is going to be shared with the rest of them?" she had eventually asked as Barnes was rolling his sleeves back down. "Is doctor-patient confidentiality going to still apply for us given our unique circumstance?"
Bruce was taken aback at the question, both for its unexpected nature and the fact that he had genuinely not thought about it. He had to think for a minute about what he was going to say.
"I'll admit that the majority of what I learn – your capabilities and what it is that makes the both of you enhanced – is going to have to be shared with the team. That was the primary purpose of this exam in the first place, not just to make sure that you were both actually healthy," he explained, sad of that fact that he was unable to tell them otherwise. "Though, I don't think I'll need to say anything beyond that."
They had left shortly afterwards, but Lastimosa had taken a moment to more politely introduce herself, shaking his hand firmly and thanking him for his help as well as his honesty.
After that the rest of the evening had passed by quite rapidly.
Stark had ordered copious amounts of take-out from a local restaurant and had sent Barton to retrieve it all. A good portion of the confiscated goods from the ship had been removed and locked away into a secure vault on the property, which only Steve or Tony knew the code to access. The remainder was planned to be unloaded the next day, in addition to the piece of ancient alien technology – locked up in a hastily constructed containment unit – that Lastimosa had briefly spoken to him and Tony about.
It was the only way she thought it might be possible for her to return to her reality, being the cause of her arrival on Earth in the first place.
Bruce had seen the gleam of interest in the multi-billionaire's eyes at the prospect of fiddling with a piece of unknown and unpredictable technology and he wouldn't deny that he too was quite intrigued. He also hoped that they would be able to help the poor, lost woman, but had no guarantees that they would manage to be successful in figuring out how the device worked.
When the food had arrived, Barnes and Lastimosa had been given their share by Steve, but excused themselves from the casual gathering of Avengers. The two had vanished into the room chosen by the blonde woman and it was only by the eye witness reports of J.A.R.V.I.S. that they knew Barnes had eventually left and returned to his own room.
Steve had seemed unusually interested in knowing if Barnes was planning to spend the entire night in Lastimosa's room. It was slightly understandable, but still a bit on the peculiar side for Rogers to have been so curious about something so comparatively trivial.
But now it was the next day.
Breakfast had been consumed and Bruce had cloistered himself in the same lab room from the day before. He had spent those hours looking over the results of the tests he had run overnight on the scans and the blood samples. Safe to say he had been astounded by what he had gotten in response.
It was not so much Barnes that was the shocker. Although, the scans of his prosthetic arm were quite interesting and he was eager to share them with Stark for his opinions from an engineering standpoint.
But, no.
It was Lastimosa's results that had come as a completely surprise. Her enhancements, while producing similar results to the serums that Steve and Barnes had received, came from an entirely different source. And it was this news that had Bruce striding eagerly into the conference room the Avengers had chosen to meet in for lunch and a much-needed debriefing about their guests.
Clint and Natasha were already there, seated side by side and perusing the prepared spread of food on the table, trying to determine what they both wanted to eat. Bruce greeted them both warmly, his eyes unintentionally lingering on the beautiful red-headed spy, before he moved to gather his own meal. He got himself a drink, a sandwich and sat down to begin thumbing through the data on his tablet while he waited for the others.
Steve and Sam arrived next and were followed shortly afterwards by Tony, who miraculously was on time in spite of his usual proclivities for being late – even to the meetings that he had organized himself.
"Alright, let's get this party started," the genius engineer said in lieu of a proper greeting. "Who wants to go first for show-and-tell?"
The Black Widow opted to report first. "We just got finished moving all of the ammunition for Lastimosa and Barnes' guns, along with all of their knives, grenades and all the ammunition for the Titan's weapons into the vault. So, we're good on that front."
"As agreed beforehand, they are being allowed to keep the guns," Hawkeye added. "Lastimosa brought up a good point in suggesting that cleaning and maintenance would be something that she and Barnes could do to pass the time."
"I'm curious, Tony," Steve said, his tone overall light but carrying a faintest trace of accusation. "What else are they being allowed to do to keep themselves occupied?"
"Whatever they want… Except leave. They can watch TV, watch movies, read books, work out, go on the internet, walk around, whatever. It's not like they're confined to quarters, Rogers. There's well over one hundred acres to this place. They've got plenty of room."
"I know. It's just…" Rogers began and Bruce was able to connect the dots.
"You don't want them to feel like prisoners," he guessed and Steve nodded.
"Kinda unavoidable now, isn't it?" Sam mumbled under his breath, though everyone heard him.
"It's not jail," Tony protested angrily. "It's more like… I don't know, house arrest? And as you've all told me – constantly – it's only going to last until we can be certain that they're not going to try and murder us all in our sleep. Then the restraints come off and they're free, I promise."
The occupants of the room seemed mollified by Stark's vow, Bruce included, though Steve still looked troubled. But that wasn't likely to change anytime soon. The scientist, with the first matter resolved, took that as the time for him to reveal his own discoveries.
"Well, I suppose I'll go next," he began, scrolling through his tablet for the notes he'd taken. "From the scans and the blood tests I ran last night, I can safely say that Barnes' enhancements are nearly identical to Steve's. The only true differences seem to be in regards to his physical strength, which looks to be slightly higher, and the speed at which he heals from injuries, which is slower. Beyond that, ignoring the advantages posed by his prosthetic arm and any actual combat training that he received from HYDRA, he is on par with the Captain's level of physical ability."
The news was met with nods of understanding, but there was no particular shock to the discovery. They had all operated under the assumption that the Winter Soldier had been designed to be the exact match for Captain America. Due to that simple fact it would've been prudent that their abilities would've had to have been nearly perfectly matched as well.
"And what about Lastimosa? What's her deal?" Tony asked, leaning forward in his chair in undisguised and eager anticipation.
"Ah… Well, for that I'll need to show you something for you all to grasp the full scope," Bruce began, rising from his chair after taking one more bite of his meal before making his way across the room to the rather large display screen mounted on the wall. "J.A.R.V.I.S. could you bring up those files I sent you earlier, please? And turn down the lights as well."
"Of course, Doctor Banner," the AI replied in his always pleasant and polite British accent. With the words, the room darkened and the screen lit up with the images taken by Bruce's scans from the day before. The first of the images shown was a color-coded interpretation of Lastimosa's skeletal system, with bone highlighted in pale blue against a backdrop of black. But anything not made of natural, calcium-rich osseous tissue was highlighted in a bright and alarming shade of yellow.
And nearly the entirely of her skeleton was yellow.
Her skull, spine, ribs, arms, pelvis, legs… All of it.
Only the barest hints of that pale, sky blue peeked out through the sea of overwhelming yellow.
"What are we looking at here, Bruce?" Natasha asked, her eyes narrowed in on the screen.
"This is Rhiannon Lastimosa's skeleton. The blue is normal bone tissue, while the yellow is a metallic alloy of unknown origin. I can only assume that it is a combination of elements native to where she is from," Bruce reported, feeling the same amount of shocked horror and burgeoning scientific interest that he had felt only a few hours earlier. "Her skull, spine and joints have all been heavily reinforced with it, while the majority of her other bones only have a light coating. Like internal armor. This is also the reason why, for a woman who is five feet eight inches, Lastimosa is a great deal heavier than a woman of her size should be by at least thirty or so pounds."
He paused for a moment to allow the room to soak in the information.
"Was all of this done surgically?" Tony asked, entranced but also concerned by the display.
"I don't believe so," he answered, gesturing to the slightly darker blobs of yellow on the woman's skull. "Her eyes and ears do show sign of what are essentially cybernetic implants – those would've had to have been put in through surgery – but the rest of her system shows no signs. It's actually what I found in her blood that answers the question about how all of this metal ended up coating her bones."
The image changed to an enlarged image of blood cells, those that he had studied under a microscope that morning. However, the usual purplish-red circles of cells were not alone in the image. Amongst the erythrocytes, leukocytes and thrombocytes there were little specks of black – barely even a twentieth of the size of the red blood cells – darting back and forth erratically in the liquid medium of plasma.
"What are those?" Steve asked, eyes wide and looking both worried and almost horrified.
Bruce swiped on his tablet, linked with the screen to follow his commands, to the next image. An even further zoomed in image, focusing on those black specks. Those little guys were the linchpin to all of Lastimosa's slew of physical enhancements.
It was all because of them.
"Those are nanites," he said. "And she's full of them. There are nanomachines permeating every single one of her biological systems. Skeletal, muscular, nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, endocrine… All of them. They have literally reshaped her body's structure to operate at or beyond peak efficiency. They're what has turned her into a super-soldier."
"So, that's what Pilots are?" Clint asked rhetorically. "Humans that've been pumped full of nanites."
"That is correct, Agent Barton," J.A.R.V.I.S. interrupted. "However, I have received further information to contribute to our complete understanding of Pilot Lastimosa's physiological enhancements."
"What?" Tony asked in blatant confusion. "How'd you get your hands on that, J?"
"Earlier this morning I received a handshake request from the Vanguard-class Titan, Romeo-Alpha-5172, on the behalf of Pilot Lastimosa. I accepted the request and we initiated a data transfer," the AI replied. "I have obtained all of the intelligence Pilot Lastimosa and Sergeant Barnes have compiled on HYDRA during their time abroad, in accordance with the request of Agent Romanoff. That is being processed by some of my sub-routines now. But in addition, I also was sent several more document files and video logs in regards to Pilot Lastimosa herself."
"Why would she do that?" Sam asked.
"I believe – though I can't be certain – that they were sent as a gesture of good will on Pilot Lastimosa's part," J.A.R.V.I.S. supplied.
"Well, don't keep us in suspense," Tony urged. "Show us what you've got."
"Very well, sir." The images on the display shifted into a series of documents and Bruce took that as his queue to return to his own seat. "I have received a copy of Pilot Lastimosa's service record. Though, in accordance with her elevated rank and level of experience, most of the details have been blacked out as classified material. However, I would have you know that she is a Captain in the Frontier Militia and a senior command officer of the Special Recon Squadron with dozens of medals and commendations."
"Great," Sam said with a groan of realization. "She's basically the Militia's version of Steve, isn't she?"
"That is not an inaccurate assessment based on the data," the AI admitted. "However, in regards to her augmentations, it is important to note that her variant of nanites are far above the average model."
"What does that mean?" Steve asked only half second before Bruce could ask himself.
"From what I have been able to decipher," J.A.R.V.I.S. began to explain. "Once beginning their training to become Pilots in a combat capacity, all applicants that show promise receive a low-level dose of nanites to ensure that they are capable of surviving the training itself with sustaining fatal injuries."
"Surviving? Do people actually die trying to become Pilots?" Natasha asked with a hard expression.
"The failure rating is recorded at approximately ninety-eight percent. Whether or not they are all deaths is unclear, but it can be assumed that the training is incredibly difficult and prone to cause injury."
"Lastimosa really meant it when she said that Pilots were the best of the best," Barton said.
"So, Pilots receive the nanites for their training," Bruce prompted trying to get the conversation back on track. "What makes Rhiannon's enhancements so special?"
"Over the course of a Pilot's career, they can sometimes be contacted by an individual known only as The Advocate. This individual will offer the Pilot further augmentation – to make them even more lethal on the field of battle – at the price of minor to moderate levels of memory loss. This process is known as Regeneration. Pilots begin as Generation One, the lowest level of augmentation fielded in combat."
There was a pause, heavy with anticipation, before J.A.R.V.I.S. continued.
"Captain Lastimosa is currently listed as a Generation Ten Titan Pilot, which is the highest level to have been documented. According to the Frontier Militia's records, there are fewer than a dozen Generation Ten Pilots in existence."
Bruce leaned back in his chair, stunned by the revelation and falling into deep thought. From what he had been able to glean from the others, Lastimosa came from a place embroiled by war. But to think that the fighting was so bad where she was from that she would voluntarily risk losing her memories to become a more effective soldier. It was nearly incomprehensible. The woman had sacrificed so much for her home, only to – in a random turn of fate – be sent so, so far from it all with no clear way to return.
It was unimaginable.
That poor, poor woman.
It was admirable that she had made it eleven months on Earth without giving up hope.
The scientist picked his head up when he realized that J.A.R.V.I.S. had continued to speak.
"This data, combined with the findings of Doctor Banner, put Captain Lastimosa's strength and speed, without the inclusion of her advanced equipment, at a level slightly below that of Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes. Although, her rate of healing, stamina levels and physical durability seem to be greater than theirs. However, without further information I can only infer from Mister Stark's video footage that while wearing the piece of equipment known as the jump kit, she capable of matching their strength and speed. And then, while under the effects of the substance referred to as the Pilot Stimulant, she is capable of surpassing their levels for a limited period of time."
"Damn," Sam commented lowly. "That's… actually really badass. Like hardcore badass."
"Becoming stronger and harder to kill all the while running the risk of forgetting everything important," Barton said musingly, looking conflicted and saddened by the knowledge. "Makes me wonder just how bad it is where Lastimosa's from to make that something that someone would volunteer for."
"Well," Natasha began, looking to be digesting the shared information just as much as the rest of them were and was equally shocked by it all. "We all knew she was dangerous. Now we just have a better understanding of what she might be capable of. Now we'll be able to have a good idea on how to counteract her should things end up taking a turn for the worst."
Captain Rogers hardly looked pleased with the Widow's assessment, if the frown that Bruce saw forming on his face was anything to go by. "That won't happen," the blond said sternly and with firm conviction.
"You can't know that, Steve," the red-head argued, but not without a degree of kindness. "And I hate to say it, but your judgement is extremely biased in this situation. The fact that Barnes trusts her is making you trust her too."
The blond haired, blue eyed super-soldier looked far from being successfully convinced by Natasha's argument. Bruce was even beginning to see all of the hard-headed stubbornness that Steve was known to display on occasion coming to the fore. The scientist could see the Widow's logic – in spite of his pity and sympathy of the plight of both Barnes and Lastimosa – but it would seem that Steve refused to.
Bruce hoped that his blind trust wouldn't come to bite him in the ass later on.
"Settle down, kids," Tony chimed in teasingly, though the wary flickering of his dark eyes between the ex-Soviet spy and World War II veteran betrayed a hint of nervousness. Bruce hardly thought the two would come to blows over the issue, but the tension was becoming rather uncomfortable from the way Wilson and Barton were shifting almost anxiously in their seats. "No fighting at the table. Let's just agree to disagree and move on for now. I believe J.A.R.V.I.S. still has more to share. Don't you, buddy?"
The AI picked up the conversation as if there hadn't been an interruption, "Yes, sir. Upon further review, the video logs sent in the data transfer appear to be recordings from some of Captain Lastimosa's combat operations."
"How many did she send over?" Steve asked.
"Eight logs have been received," J.A.R.V.I.S. reported. "Though, RA-5172 has implied that should further footage be required there are several more that can be forwarded. Would you be interested in watching one of the videos at this time, sir?"
"I don't know," Tony said, glancing around the room. "Do we want to watch one? We've got the time."
Bruce would admit that he was quite interested in seeing Lastimosa in action without the necessity of being in the middle of a fight. The recordings from the Iron Man Suit had been illuminating and he was eager to see what the woman could do. It would also mostly likely allow the Team as a whole to get a better sense of how the Pilot fought and develop possible strategies to subduing her. But he didn't really want to think of it that way. He didn't want to assume that things would go wrong and they'd have to fight her. He most certainly didn't want to think of what the Hulk might be possible of doing against a combatant as agile and intelligent as the woman had proved herself to be.
Her nimbleness would be sure to irritate the Big Guy to no end.
"I'm down for watching one," Sam said. "Woman fights like she's in some sort of science-fiction action movie and that's damn cool to see."
"It might also give us a better idea of how Titans are utilized in combat," Clint commented wisely and Natasha was quick to nod her head in agreement with her fellow spy's remark. While, at the same time, a sparkle of interest began to glitter in Stark's eyes at the thought of the enormous robot and all of the information that might be uncovered about how it functioned and operated.
It was only Steve that looked conflicted, but he nodded his head in assent to Stark.
"Alright then," the multi-billionaire said with a bright smile. "We're all in agreement. Movie time. Go ahead and play one, J."
"Of course, sir," the AI said and the documents on the display screen switched over to a black screen with the white triangle of a play button in the center. "This particular one has the earliest timestamp, and I believe that will be the wisest place for us to begin. It is logged as having happened approximately seven years ago and is filed under the name: Operation FRACTURE – Refueling Raid on Planet Victor."
A brief circle spun on the screen as the video buffered momentarily and then it began.
And what they then saw was a first-person view out of a window unlike anything any of them had ever seen before. The massive shape of what could only be a spaceship, sharp lines of metallic gray plating accented with vibrant stripes of orange and red, with bold white lettering written across the hull. MCS Redeye. The backdrop beyond the ship was the swirling green cloud of a nebula with smaller ships, not all too dissimilar from Lastimosa's own dropship, but far smaller and more skeletal in their design. Three of those ships were arranged in a line and it became obvious that Lastimosa – if this was actually from her perspective – was riding in another if the muffled drone of engines was to be believed.
Their view shifted with Lastimosa's head turning and revealed the other occupants of the dropship. Just the barest hint of the heads of two pilots at the front of the ship in their chairs, a stern looking woman in jumpsuit of smudged sky blue and larger man sitting down on a bench looking over a tablet of some sort. Standing in the troop compartment of the ship, however, were five more people – four men and one other woman – all kitted up in their futuristic tactical gear, helmets included, all in shades of mossy green, muddy brown and blazing orange.
And each and every one of them was armed to the teeth with guns, knives and grenades.
The HUD within Lastimosa's helmet, which had only been showing a blank mini-map and a read-out of information on her weapons, suddenly lit up with names above all of her fellow Pilots' heads.
Abigail Himura, Carlisle Carter, Jason Matthews, Ryan Hakik and Aleksander Roycewicz.
Those names as Lastimosa's gaze passed over them abbreviated themselves to just their last names and stacked up on the left-hand side of the screen. This must've been her team forS this operation.
"Jump Control, this is Phantom One. Flight is green. Fifty klicks from IP links. KPS is 2.25. Over."
"Roger, Phantom One. Proceed to links. Then track Radio 1-4-9. Align to primary JP and sound off."
"Two, standing by."
"Three, good to go."
"Roger that. All Flights, initiate jump sequence."
"Jumping in 3… 2… 1… Mark!"
The video recording blurred – stretching and twisting as a great white shape sudden swam in the middle and smaller white sparks zoomed in from the sides – as the dropship's engines whined higher and higher until there was a loud snap of sudden sound. Like a muffled sonic boom. The screen went pure white for a split second before a sense of normal vision reoriented itself. The camera's view turned to the right and the view in the window had changed into the cloud-obscured upper atmosphere of a planet.
"Dammit, I fuckin' hate that feelin'," the male Pilot named Carter – who was the tallest amongst them – grumbled in a deep and unmistakably southern accent. "Makes me dizzy every time."
"Quit ya bitching, Carly," another one of the men – Matthews – commented snappishly, his voice thick with an Irish brogue. "When ya gunna man-up like the rest o' us. Hell… Even Abs has more balls than you sometimes."
"Abs has more balls than all of us combined, Jay," a third of the male Pilots – Hakik – interrupted wryly as his head turned in Lastimosa's direction. "Isn't that right, Last? You're the poor bastard dating her."
The woman barked a short, but raucous, laugh. "Shouldn't you boys know this by now?" she asked, her voice sounding far lighter and happier than anyone in the room had ever heard it before. "She definitely wears the pants in our relationship. Can't get away with anything anymore. And she just loves to try and top from the bottom."
Bruce startled slightly, so engrossed in the video as to have shut out the world around him, as he heard a sudden – but stifled – choking sound from his left and looked over to spot the Captain. The blonde super-soldier appeared to have the barest hints of a flush on his cheeks and the tips of his ears seemed to have gone a bit pink. Had he been shocked to hear Lastimosa openly admitting to being a sexual relationship with another woman? Surely, the man's attitude towards homosexual relationships had caught up with that of modern times by now? Or was it a more personal matter than that?
Bruce was rather sure that it was that secondary option that was the more believable. The scientist certainly wasn't blind enough to not notice the tension and restrained longing that Steve always seemed to display when James Barnes was around or at the forefront of his mind. And with Barnes being so mentally and physically attached to Lastimosa…
"Hey, Roy!" The sharpness of Lastimosa's voice snagged Bruce's attention once more and he looked back to the screen. The woman was looking at the fourth of the men that were on her team. "One of your jump kit straps looks like it's starting to fray."
The man, the shortest of the bunch, began to frantically pat down the area around his waist, hips and thighs with gloved hands. "Fuck! Where? Where is it? Knew I should've…"
A softly feminine and lightly accented – Japanese, perhaps? – voice interrupted, "Calm down, Roy. She's just messing with you." The second woman, a truly petite figure even underneath all of the layers of tactical gear and hefting an enormous anti-material rifle in her hands turned her helmeted focus onto Lastimosa. "And you, try to behave yourself for once."
Lastimosa chuckled playfully, bringing a gloved hand up to her forehead in a jaunty two-fingered salute. "Yes, ma'am," she vowed, but clearly didn't mean it in the slightest.
"When is Last not pulling a fast one on Roy?" Hakik asked rhetorically to the occupants of the dropship.
"Some fireteam leader you are?" Roycewicz hissed. "Gunna make me shit myself one of these days you keep doing stuff like that."
"It's not that hard to do, Roy. You're just so easy to frazzle," Lastimosa reported bluntly, before her attention snapped towards the short haired woman in the blue jumpsuit, who wore a red bandana wrapped around her forehead to keep the spiky brown locks of her hair contained. The woman, who was clearly a commanding office of some sort, marched to the back of the ship before turning back to address Lastimosa's team.
"Listen up," the woman announced. "The civilian fleet's right behind us and most of the ships are running on nothing but fumes right now. We're out of options. So, it's now or never."
"Don't worry so much, Briggs," Lastimosa barked with an air of surety. "We'll handle it. And when has Fireteam Prowler ever let you down before."
"Never. And that's why you're getting the toughest job to secure fuel for the Redeye." The short-haired woman yanked on a nearby lever and the ramp at the back opened. Gusts of wind raced into the cabin and everything being said became that much harder to hear. "You all know that we need this fuel or none of us are going to make it! The Fleet's counting on you! Go! Go! Go!"
Briggs stepped to the side and waved the team out into the open air.
"Let's go kick some IMC ass, ladies!" Lastimosa yelled, lunging forward and leaping out of the dropship without a trace of hesitation. The view tilted down to what was well over a three-hundred-foot drop, before look out across the surrounding area to take in the lay of the land.
A motley spread of half-destroyed buildings across a sizeable expanse of dying grassland, with shattered roads winding between them all. The face of a cliff off to one side and what might have been civilian homes on the other. But it looked all but abandoned now and in great need of repair. Except, of course, for the three enormous anti-aircraft defense turrets that seemed to have been a more recent addition.
The ground was approaching quickly and Lastimosa shifted her weight backward to bring her feet around to point downwards. She landed with a muffled thump and a brief exhalation of air in time with the impact, before her gaze looked to either side as the rest of her team landed with similar amounts of grace. A swarm of other soldiers, who did not look to be Pilots, had gathered in front of them and were listening to a man seated in the cockpit what could only have been a Titan.
"McCord, take your squad up this road!" the man in the Titan ordered as Lastimosa's HUD named him as Captain Dunham. "The rest of you move through this building behind me and secure the area!"
The soldier moved off to comply with the orders, while the six-man fireteam of Pilots gathered up to make their own plan of attack.
"Okay, Prowler," a male voice chimed in over the radio. "This is gunna be a Hardpoint Operation. Take control of as many hardpoints as you can, patch me in and I'll take care of the rest. We've gotta get this fuel pumping quick and keep the anti-air offline."
"On it, Bish. We'll get it done," Lastimosa replied, settling her gaze on her team. "Roy and Abs, your taking Hardpoint Charlie. Carly and Jay, you get Bravo. Hack, you're with me. We're taking Alpha. Once we get them under control, we'll see what needs to be done to keep it that way."
They broke off into their pairs, with Lastimosa and her partner racing along the road after a troop of soldiers and Dunham in his Titan. Another Titan, painted in white and red, came barreling around a corner and engaged with Dunham, both firing their enormous guns at one another.
"Hack, you wanna take it?" Lastimosa asked, barely out of breath as the thunderous boom of the anti-aircraft guns began to sound off. "No. You know what? Go to Alpha and get to work. I'll help Dunham."
"Got it. Don't get dead," Hakik grunted out before his jump kit flared and he was jumping nearly twenty feet up onto a nearby rooftop. Lastimosa altered her course, bringing her gun up and mowing down a trio of white-clad soldiers, before she was closing with the white-colored Titan. She wall-ran across a building, jumping on top of the twenty-foot construct's body to rip away a sheet of plating. A mess of circuitry and wires was revealed and she shoved the muzzle of her gun into it all and pulled the trigger.
A status bar on her HUD began to go down and down and down before eventually, after a magazine and half in combination with Dunham's continued fire the bar turned black and yellow and then an ominous crimson. Lastimosa disengaged, backflipping off of the Titan and sprinting away as quickly as her feet could carry her. The distinctive sound of an explosion took place just behind her, but she never looked back and just continued on running to rejoin her teammate.
"This is the Redeye! We're taking a lot of flak! Bish, we need those turrets offline ASAP!"
The two Pilots joined up inside of the furthest building and killed all of those soldiers in white that were clustered around an array of screens and servers. While Hakik got to work on the technology, Lastimosa turned her back on him and kept watch with her gun up and at the ready.
"Charlie is secure."
"Bravo is ours too."
"Alpha locked down," Hakik reported over the radio.
"Good work, team. And… the Air Defense Network is down. Accessing the fueling systems. And… done! Pumps are online and the Redeye is taking on fuel. Now defend that hardpoint so we don't lose control."
"Copy that, Bish."
Sam had been quite correct when saying that the way Lastimosa fought was like something out a high-budget action movie. Bruce watched with begrudging interest and admiration as the woman ran, leapt and gunned down anyone that came up against her. Swapping magazines out of her gun with practiced efficiency, tossing grenades into dense clusters of enemies and racing around the area at a speed that no one other than another Pilot could even hope to try and match.
"Pilot, be advised, your Titan will be ready in thirty seconds," the voice of the woman from before, the one called Briggs, came over the radio and a huff of acknowledgement escaped Lastimosa as she ran along the exterior of one of the broken buildings.
"Last, you've got an IMC Pilot on your ass. Fifteen meters back," the voice of Abigail Himura said and there was a slight jerk to Lastimosa's head as she instinctually tried to look over her shoulder. "No, don't look. He doesn't realize you know yet. I don't have a clear shot, but there some scaffolding up ahead of you. Do that weird flip-thing and get the drop on him."
"Oh, Abs, I love it when you talk dirty to me," Lastimosa purred, pushing herself to greater speed and altering her course for the aforementioned scaffolding.
She hit the top rail, reaching down with one of her hands and pushing herself up and over into a front flip. Their view of the world from the helmet's camera spun in time. Her other hand, clenched around her gun, pulled down on the trigger as her sights lined up with the charging enemy Pilot. A spray of bullets caught him in the abdomen and across his chest. One of his legs collapsed out from underneath him as he stumbled and fell, rolling onto the roof of the building with a shout of pain.
But he hadn't been killed, only seriously injured.
Lastimosa finished the flip, landing on the balls of her feet with only a slight stumble, before she spun around and trained her gun back on her writhing enemy. For some reason she didn't shoot him right then and there, instead walking to stand over him. Though, the sightline of her gun never wavered from his helmeted head.
"Terrorist bitch," the man hissed out, before beginning a series of wet and hacking coughs as blood was undoubtedly already beginning to pool in his lead perforated lungs.
"That's not very nice," Lastimosa grumbled, letting out a huff of breath as she sunk down into a crouch next to the dying man. "But none of you IMC assholes seem to have any manners. Nah. Nothing matters except for the company's bottom line, right? That's why you raze farms, steal crops, poison our water and kill those that you deem to be inconvenient. That's why you mine our planets for fuel and minerals until there's nothing left for us." She pressed the barrel of her gun to the forehead of his helmet. "And that's why we'll keep on killing all of you until you finally get it that we won't let you take our planets. We'll keep killing until you get smart and go back to the Core Worlds where you belong and stay there."
She pulled the trigger and in the blink of an eye she was back on the move.
"Hey! Your Titan's good to go. Call it when ready."
"Send it now, Briggs. Right on my location," Lastimosa ordered and the camera's view tilted up towards the sky. A sky that was full of spaceships in all sorts of sizes and shapes and filled with the roar of their thrusters and engines.
From one of the ships a bright flare of orange light came careening down at incredible speed. A casing of metal exploding off of the fire-encased object to reveal a Titan of very similar design to the one Captain Dunham had been piloting. It crashed into the ground with an equally loud sound of impact, only muffled to tolerable levels by the helmet, as plumes of dirt and rock were sent up from the crater. A dome of blue light – a shield of some sort – encased the Titan, but Lastimosa ran through it without fear and leapt into the cockpit of her Titan.
"Relinquishing control to Pilot," the enormous machine said emotionlessly, though the voice sounded quite similar to Lastimosa's current Titan, RA-5172.
"Got my Atlas. Where am I needed?"
"An Ogre and Stryder are advancing on Bravo and our Titans aren't ready yet," Matthews barked over the radio with the telltale sound of large mechanical footsteps thundering in the background, along with close gunfire – both human and Titan – and the whoosh of jump kit thrusters.
"On my way."
Lastimosa thundered forward in her Titan, controlling the giant robot with as much ease as she would her own body, the enormous gun in her metal hands up at the ready. She rounded a corner, ignoring the screams of those she purposefully trampled under the feet of her Titan, and caught sight of two of her fireteam members zipping back and forth. They were both firing on the soldiers swarming their position and the two different looking Titans on approach a short distance away.
"Warning. Multiple threats attacking."
The battle between the three Titans, which for all intents and purposes was not in Lastimosa's favor, played out on the screen in a cacophony of explosions and the ear-piercing screech of metal on metal. They exchanged fire, circling around each other as the blonde woman played to her strengths, targeting the joints of her opponents, catching their bullets and rockets in a circular shield of blue energy before flinging it back at them with a flick of her wrist.
"This is the Redeye! Bish, we're at fifty percent hull integrity and dropping fast!
The slimmer Titan was the first to fall, caught off-guard by a barrage of missiles when it tried to circle around Lastimosa with its seemingly superior speed and maneuverability. The plating on the cockpit was warped out of place and before the occupant could escape, Lastimosa plunged her Titan's four-fingered hand through the weakened metal and snagged the enemy Pilot in her metal fist.
Heedless of the man's screams of terror, she flung the flailing body at her remaining opponent – the larger and bulkier model of Titan – and used the distraction to close the distance at a lumbering sprint.
"Enemy Pilot eliminated."
The two engaged in what could only be compared to an all-out barroom brawl of a wrestling match. Both ripping and tearing at each other's external plating and slamming their fists into each other with devastating force. The status bar on the Lastimosa's Titan was getting dangerously low, slipping over into the black and yellow striped bar just as her opponents did the same.
"Second Ogre closing in on your six, Last!" one of her teammates shouted over the comm.
"Good. I'll fuckin' nuke him too. Clear the area around Bravo. I'm ejecting." The view shifted downwards and she reached for the bright red lever between her legs and pulled it. Explosive force sent the woman flying into the air, well over two hundred feet straight up, and the camera took in the full expanse of the battlefield. Beneath her, Lastimosa's Titan detonated and destroyed both the damaged Ogre and the second one that had been rushing her from behind in a wave of intense fire and shrapnel.
Suddenly there was another body soaring up into the air nearby. A female IMC Pilot in her white tactical gear – possibly belonging to one of the Ogres that Lastimosa had just demolished – and the two women began to engage in a furious gunfight while they fell. A lucky shot killed the other Pilot, but Lastimosa didn't escape unscathed as injury notifications appeared on her HUD.
She landed hard, sinking down onto one knee as one of the bullet wounds – a graze across her right calf – took its toll. Limping slightly over to cover, Lastimosa patched the wounds as best she could before rejoining the fight without a single word of complaint. Running and gunning once more until the radio channel crackled to life once more.
"All right, we got what we came for! Awesome work, team. Mission accomplished."
"We've beaten the IMC, but the battle's not over! Intercept any stragglers before they get away!"
What followed was a frantic scurry of the remaining Militia forces, Lastimosa included, to lay into the dropships that had returned to attempt to evacuate the surviving IMC soldier and Pilots. Some of the ships escaped, but a majority of them were shot out of the sky by those Militia Titans that were still operational on the field.
Only once the IMC had fled did the green colored dropships of the Militia return and Lastimosa's team gathered together to board. The woman in the blue jumpsuit and the rotund Asian looking man were inside the dropship and they quickly ascended into the sky to return to the fleet.
"Well, the fleet's got enough fuel to get through another month," the man said as he scrolled through his tablet once more, with Lastimosa limping over to look at the screen's readouts for herself.
"That was chaos down there, Bish," Briggs groused. "Our tactics are a mess."
"Sarah, neither of us have any experience leading a force of this size," the man protested, looking up from the screen to meet the woman's hard gaze. "With General Anderson dead…"
"Then we're gonna have to work with what we've got. We can't let the IMC get ahead of us."
"Briggs. Bish. Stop snapping at each other's throats," Lastimosa interrupted sharply as she removed her helmet. The camera view jostled around until it was balanced on what might've been her stomach and looking up towards her face. Her bronzed skin was drenched in sweat, gray-green eyes blazing with the adrenaline of the fight and her hair – cut far shorter than it was now – sticking straight up in a wild array of sweat-slicked, blonde curls and spikes. "We'll figure it out. For now, we just have to keep on moving and keep on winning and helping our people."
The screen went dark as the video came to an end and the lights in the room turned back on to full brightness, which had Bruce squinting his eyes as they began to water. He rubbed at his eyes to clear away the moisture and chanced a glanced around the room. None of the others looked particularly happy. But as to what about the video it was that had them upset, he couldn't be entirely sure.
It had been quite a lot to comprehend.
Personally, the scientist was unnerved by the sheer violence of the conflict. To see Lastimosa taking so many lives without a second of doubt or indecision was eye-opening. To watch as she used her Titan's superior size, weight and strength to literally crush men and women beneath her feet… It could have just as easily been the Hulk doing those things. Perhaps that was why he was so uncomfortable all of a sudden. There were too many similarities that he could pull together and connect between himself and the woman from another reality.
At least when she was in her Titan, Banner could see the obvious parallels.
Banner turned his eyes onto his teammates to try and decipher their thoughts.
Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff looked grim, with mirrored scowls and furrowed brows on each of their faces, but they also appeared thoughtful at the same time. Digesting the information with all of their considerable years of experience in the ways of spy-craft to come their own conclusions about the new woman.
Sam Wilson was still staring at the display screen, wide-eyed yet almost unseeing, as he probably tried to wrap his head around the contents of the video in his own way. Despite his usage of the EXO-7 Falcon winged jetpack and his history in the United States Air Force, the African-American man was still a relative newcomer into the world of superheroes. Wilson could still be considered to be going through his period of adjustment. Surely the weighty footage was mind boggling for the inexperienced?
Hell, it was overwhelming even for those that were supposed to used to all this by now!
Tony Stark looked troubled. There was a similar scowl and furrowed brows on his face as there was on the faces of the super-spies, but his eyes were hardened by what looked almost like guilt. Was it the fact that the multi-billionaire and genius engineer extraordinaire had found similarities between the IMC and the former business practices of Stark Industries? Was it that a company was responsible for the warfare that had engulfed Lastimosa's home and killed who knows how many of her friends and family?
Bruce couldn't hope to know. Though, he resolved himself to sit down and have a talk with Tony soon. After the events with A.I.M. and Extremis, Stark had taken to talking to the dark-haired scientist as one would a therapist. And while he wasn't really qualified for such a thing, as the man's friend, Bruce was inclined to offer whatever help he could in whatever way he could to ease Tony's consciousness.
But it was in Captain Rogers' face that Bruce found the most difficulty. Even as he watched covertly, the scientist struggled to determine what it was that the blond super-soldier was thinking. His mouth was pulled down into the slightest of grimaces, and yet there was no true trace of anger or judgement on the man's face. Instead he seemed almost distraught, but it was hard to tell from the downward angle Steve was holding his face at. His chin tilted downwards and his eyes trained onto his denim-clad knees.
Was he grieved by Lastimosa's bloody past? Surely the woman had lived a life fraught with violence and had well over seven years' worth of combat experience. A number which was chronologically was far more than even the Captain himself had under his belt. But Bruce just couldn't be sure…
However, he was almost certain that the Captain would seeking out the woman in the near future to speak with her about what he had just witnessed. To ask questions and offer comfort.
Steve liked to solve problems. He would so willingly throw himself into danger to lend a helping hand to anyone he thought he could. And if the video had made one thing clear, it was that Lastimosa definitely needed their help and Bruce knew that Rogers would be utterly unable to resist the siren call of the lost woman's troubles.
Especially because James Buchanan Barnes was tangled up in them as well.