. .
three
. .
Summer daylight was beginning to fade half an hour into the trip out of whatever region Damon had gotten stuck into (he was betting somewhere in England. America doesn't have this much green - if they did it wasn't the America he knew).
The majority of the ride was spent resembling a mummy that had unwittingly woken up in its sarcophagus, found that they didn't really like it all that much and mummifying really wasn't all it was cracked up to be and ran away.
By the forty minute mark, the temperature had dropped along with the sun.
Pulling over on the dirty backroads of whichever freeway he was hightailing it out on, Damon scurries from the car, untangles himself loudly, bunches up the curtain and shoves it into the passenger seat and starts tearing it down the road again like a lunatic. Causing severe damage to the structure of a vehicle that was not made for backroad adventures.
Headlights gleamed a dirty path he furiously hoped lead somewhere with civilisation apart from cows, horses and sheep. As so far, that's all he's seen.
The combination of bourbon and classic rock radio station shouting at him helped Damon enjoy the ride more comfortably. It being such a potent mixture, he couldn't hear his own thoughts of concern about having an X-File, secrety-secret-hush-hush behind the curtains government out for his blood in the manner a mother bear after witnessing her cub die a horrendous death.
"whoo hoo," he says and carries on careening down an undisclosed path in an undisclosed country - he was still betting on England.
Okay, maybe Scotland.
.
Ignoring his problems end in a tragic turn of events.
Or rather. It ends with a man dropping through the car's metal roof and into the passenger seat like a gift from Heaven.
"Hi there!" Damon grins, shouting over Billy Idol as though this were a common occurrence.
(after getting popped into another universe like a cork on a bottle of bubbly, everything is fairly regular in comparison)
It's an insignificant fact, but Damon has to say a grown man wearing an American Flag for a suit does little to inspire.
"Hi!" Steve greets back, finding it only polite. He too, has to shout. "You're under arrest!"
"Really?" Damon hazards. Keeping one eye on the road and the other on the spangly man. It was a neat trick. Took him half a decade to master. "Are you sure you've got the right guy?! I mean, I do my own washing!"
"How bout you pull over!"
"Eeeeeeh!" Damon checks to see if he had his seat belt on. Surprisingly, he does. "How bout you go fuck yourself, Blondie!" Damon breaks and the man's body explodes through the windscreen. The wheel punches into Damon's sternum and a rib punctures a lung. He's pretty sure he's got whiplash and a multitude of life-threatening injuries. Nothing that lasts little under ten seconds after his fresh feast. "High ho Silver!"
The arrow on the mph dash goes up like a rocket.
Billy Idol rocks on.
In the torch of headlights, Spangles picks himself up only to get nocked down again by a growling car.
Damon cackles evilly over the human speed bump. Car leaping and crashing and groaning.
"That wasn't very nice" Billy Idol tells him through the speaker's in a not-so-Billy-Idol voice. A ball of shiny metal shaped in a vague humanoid form lands right on the bonnet. Crouched and waving metal fingertips.
"Hi!" Damon greets again. Car shooting across the road at accelerating speed. "Friend of Blondie's?"
The man - not robot, Damon can smell and hear the man's pounding heartbeat, tainted and coppery with something metal and electric fuzzing just the tip of his tongue- raises a hand. Blue encircling the centre of the palm ignites and turns orange then yellow then fuming red.
Damon can feel the static in the air and spots just beyond, in faint headlight, a tunnel.
"I'll take that as a yes," he chuckles and just as the tunnel comes up he swipes the wheel left and slams the side of the car up against the bricked wall. Wing mirror buckles and tears away. Metalwork grins and screams fill the black tunnel with sparks and flashes.
"Son of a bitch!" Billy Idol curses. Illuminated by the fitful flashes of tearing car parts.
Grip on steering wheel tight Damon slams the right side of the car against the tunnel with the cheer of a toddler being handed a new toy. The man's balance drops left and he falls. Catching himself with rockets on his palms and feet.
Damon opened and shut his mouth a few times.
That was aimed at his face.
"What a psycho."
Breaking free of the tunnel the road suddenly decides to turn drop into a hill, and being at high speed, you can imagine what happens next.
He soars.
Into a surprising patch of forest that was recently transferred there from some other part of England by a bunch of people from the restoration society of native trees. Three months from now Damon reads it in his SHIELD file and has a sudden urge to kill the whole lot of them.
With incredible accuracy the bonnet slams in-between two tree trunks and Damon's thrown. Seat belt not able to withstand the full-fucking speed his body was travelling at - seeing as, during the safety test when this exact car model was made, nobody in the lab foresaw this exact scenario and planned for such occasion. Nobody blames them.
Shit happens.
He topples through branches, lands on one or two bird nests, gets scratched at by a startled squirrel and eventually lands on his back. Windblown and bewildered.
Some leaves and branches flutter around him and Damon's pretty certain his limbs aren't supposed to stick at such odd angles. In a groan, a curse, a growl he sets everything right again. Blood circulating, bones, arteries and membranes knit back together. He licks his bloodied lips. Blinks blood clots away and sways to his feet.
This is ridiculous.
Metal man lands in front of him like a miniature comet. Damon hears the speakers through the helmet ping on.
"How 'bout - "
Two strides bring him to contact, hand finds the face plate and it crumples under him like wet cardboard. The bodysuit's alarms go off and Damon is grinning in surprise at suddenly being air born with his transport flailing about. Clinging to the man's faceplate like Tarzan on a tree branch he says:
"I wonder what you taste like -"
and rips it off.
Seperate hand coming up to grip the back of his neck at the same time, he pulls up and bites the human's lower lip.
The blood Damon tastes it so vile he lets go and retches all the way to the ground.
"You bit me!" The man screeches.
"You need to see someone about your genetics, man," Damon advices. Gagging. "Oh the aftertaste," he spits, "Oh that's terrible. I think I swallowed one of your beard hairs."
"First you bite me and then you insult me," the man lands besides him. Bleeding and looking haggard. "You're no fun."
Damon rears up for another attack only to dodge a dart to the neck. He turns, smelling her before seeing her.
"Hello there," he smirks, giving a friendly wink. "You smell equally as awful as Roadkill and Metalhead."
"What's with this guy?" Metal guy asks the woman with hair red as blood. She saunters from the mock of trees. Tranq guns raised.
"You're surrounded," she says. "Resistance is futile."
"I don't want to make a meal out of this 'coming silent' thing," says Damon. "But surrendering seriously isn't my style."
"Figured," she has a friendly smile on. "That's why I'm the, as you'd put it, 'bait'."
Damon's smirk drops. "Wha -" about a hundred darts ping from the trees in a 360 degrees circle.
He hits the earth in a pained curse. Resembling an extravagant pin-cushion.
Yes, when Damon found out who put that forest there, he truly wanted to murder them.