Papapapapapa-POW
Silently, the gun's scope trains on the dummy carefully lined up to its head. As soon as the barrel settled, the trigger was pulled, a loud bang joining the others as they echoed off the mountains. The dummy's head exploded, and the one next to it nearly two seconds after. Then the next, and the next, and the next…
The gun is dropped, the rifle hitting the ground with a bang. The hair-trigger trying to fire but there were no bullets left. I survey the area, picking up ten dummies with head shots and nine with chest shots. Smoke rose from the barrel, joining the low grey clouds that snaked between the mountains.
Another puff of smoke – Victor drew in one last breath from the cigarette, dropping it to the ground as he blows it upwards to the hidden sky. With a little shuffling of clothes, the last of the hit was nothing but a silver of smouldering smudge on the concrete.
Scowling, Victor stood, arms immediately crossing over his chest. His shoulders were up, and dark shadows enclosing his eyes.
"They're here," He grunts, narrowing his eyes to the entrance to the gun range. "All dolled up and about as inconspicuous as an orchestra in a library."
There was no denying the fact that a bright white, blue and red dot captured everyone's attention around the vicinity; at least the rest of the team members chose a dark green in an attempt to be discrete.
There was nobody else in the range, apart from one or two stragglers at the entrance, yet one of them – Bucky, I suppose – raised his hand to wave. Victor does nothing, so I return the greeting.
The closer they got, the more details I could spy. Bucky was looking better than ever, the dark bags under his eyes a lighter colour and wrinkles that I had thought came from age had disappeared. He looked younger than I remembered. Yet, there still was a dark note hidden in his eyes.
Steve was wearing a gigantic green coat over his costume, although his shield was still uncovered in its blinding colours. I cast my eyes on the rest of the Howling Commandos – Jacques was the only name I could recall, which was a shame since all of them were pleasant companions.
"Hey," Jacques greets in French, "where's your son?"
"Last I knew he was heading for Brazil." I shrug, and shake Gabriel's hand, overhearing his name from Dum Dum. "How's the English going?"
"Terrible," Gabriel grumbles, "he hasn't even attempted."
"Good. English can go fuck itself." I nod and greet the others with pleasantries.
The lasting impressions from his capture by HYDRA still left their marks on Bucky, but his shoulders were relaxed, a little more energy from sleep bundled up in him, and his hand didn't quite hover over his gun. He opened up his arms more, and the deep grooves between his eyebrows were almost gone.
The lot of them seem interested in what I had been up to while I was gone, and although I left out a good size of the story, it kept them entertained for a while.
I mentioned the phone calls, sliding the fact the King of Britain had called me under the carpet and asked what the two wanted to talk about.
"Oh, we've been finding the occasional mutant in our tours. Red Skull seemed to have an avid interest in collecting mutants, and while some of them are, ah, basically dead, quite a few are okay. They normally don't trust us until we mention your name." Bucky explains, using hand gestures and all. I idly wonder if they put their trust in my name or in LYALL.
"I called because you hadn't replied to Bucky's call, so I was just checking in, in case you hadn't realised Bucky rang." Steve says, "are you going to join the D-Day program."
"Was planning to, but if Victor wants, we could join you guys."
Victor shrugged and grunted. "I don't care."
The shield was slicing through the air, barely wavering as masses of blue clouds try to knock it from the air. A man with thick metal armour and gigantic flamethrowers attached to his arms couldn't get out of its path fast enough, the vibranium sending a loud ringing noise as it connects with his breastplate. He stumbles over, hungry flames rising from under his hands, torching the HYDRA grunts that tried to help him up.
The shield rockets around, hitting more and more people. Smirking, I jump out of the tree, aiming my claws to land in two enemy men's skulls. They immediately pull out, stabbing every exposed chest or jaw that came into range.
Someone yelled and I turned around, only to see the shield slicing through the air towards me. Natural reflexes move my claws to form an X, but I knew it was pointless.
The shield slices through the bone, six knobby bloody bones clattering to the ground. The shield cuts into my chest; thankfully it doesn't mow through, the shield coming to a stop just as it cleaves my heart in two. I throw up blood, the warm liquid a stark contrast to the cold German air; my legs went slack as soon as the shield touches the spinal nerves. A spell of dizziness fell onto me, and I couldn't tell which way I fell.
Steve's yelp sounded from my right, and I could hear Victor's furious growling's as he battles to my fallen body. Any HYDRA men that tried to touch me soon found themselves draw into a deadly battle with Victor or their heads exploded as Bucky shot bullet after bullet.
Victor doesn't ask for any ceremony when he gets to my body; he rips out the shield, and I could vaguely see the dark blood that saturated the edge, along with some important insides and lungs.
The healing factor that had snapped into activity as soon as the shield breached my skin happily fixed what was life-threatening first, generating cells that wouldn't be in a normal human body, smoothing over wrinkles in the formation of organs and patched up the spine, removing the paralysis.
Groaning, I sit up, a whole body shudder convulsing through my body as the claws regrew and the ribcage encased my lungs once more. In not even three minutes, I was up and running again, the last bruises vanishing as I rejoin the fight.
It ends within the next twenty minutes, all attacking HYDRA men killed or mortally wounded and scientists surrendering. Bucky comes out of the forest as Dum Dum and Jacques herd the POWs to a suitable holding place.
Bucky and Steve both wore mirroring sick, vaguely sick faces, Steve now trying to not touch the dried blood on the edge of his shield.
"That was disgusting," Bucky blurts. "I watched the whole healing thing from my gun's scope." He shudders.
"I'm sorry that I hit you," Steve says, landing a hand on my shoulder. "I should've watched where it was going."
"Dude, not your fault. I just got unlucky to where and when I attacked." I smile at him.
"I had a front-row seat to your body reattaching itself together." He makes a weird face, like he was about to throw up, but swallowed the foul vomit. "That should be a torture technique." A horrified Steve wacked Bucky on the shoulder and dragged him away to the rest of the group to stand guard with the prisoners and hopefully remove the poison tooth before too many scientists could use them.
"I'll leave you to search the building." He shouts over his shoulder, tilting his head towards the smoking ruins of the HYDRA facility. I wave agreement and started to slink over to the entrance, iron doors blasted open courtesy of Gabriel's bombs.
Steve's use of his shield was incredibly complex and mind-boggling to the average human. Not only would he use physics to predict where the shield would go, he would also compute to where each person on the field would be to maximise lethality and to not hit allies.
Jacques describe the first few fights together – Steve had to constantly jump in the way of one of the Howling Commandos to block the oncoming shield and frequently it was flying off into the forest because the lack of soldiers that could bounce it back into the fight.
Later, as Steve learned the Howling Commando's attack habits and HYDRA battle tactics, the time the shield was in the air grew longer and longer until it became the feared weapon it was today. With Victor and I joining the fight, his plans were thrown into whack, not only because our fighting skills were a little old school, but we weren't afraid of throwing ourselves into an oncoming bullet. Many times Steve had forgotten that we could survive a bullet to the skull and this battle wasn't the first time I had nearly been hit by the shield. This was the first where I actually got hit.
The building wasn't pretty; dead and groaning guards decorated the walls and floors. The last few stragglers died with the introduction of Victor's or my newly grown claws. At first glance, this building didn't resemble any other base we had hit, but half of HYDRA's security relied on secrets got getting out to the enemy.
The hidden rooms to mutant storage were normally marked by a little notch or a bookshelf that was a door. Important files were normally hidden nearby the mutant room and with a vaguely similar mark.
This base only had one mutant, luckily, and looked fresh and well-fed enough to guess they hadn't been held for long.
The mutant's gender was impossible to identify through the gender neutral clothing and shaved head. Every time I blink, the soft features switched to masculine and then back.
"Hello, don't worry, we're here to save you," I cheerfully say, and the mutant slowly brings up his/her head, eyes blinking slowly. Even from the distance, it was easy to see one of his/her pupils were far large than the other. "Please don't attack us when we release you. It would create a large hassle that I don't want to be bothered with today."
The mutant didn't say anything, just watched me as I cut through the binders on the wrists, stomach and ankles.
I position myself to kneel backwards in front of the mutant, waiting for the idea to be passed along. Gingerly, small arms circle around my neck, followed by legs around my hip.
Victor comes back from the usual search-and-find-nothing of the room, waving us on. Gabriel was already shuffling through the hidden files to deem what was good enough to take home with us.
"Your son doesn't think you see him like that." The mutant murmurs against my neck, sending a little chill down my spine. I pause, waiting to see if there was anything they wanted to add, but it sounded like they were asleep.
Any normal person would seem spooked, but I had come across a fair share of powers that just seemed so out there that it was impossible just to think it up by yourself.
This mutant could probably see the future, or the past, or something, probably triggered by skin touch or close proximity. A usual power.
"Thank you for your insight," I say and exit after Victor, vigilantly keeping an eye out if anybody that refused to die wanted to put a bullet through the mutant on my back.
The remaining POWS had dropped to a mere three, with Jacques throwing away a small white thing. This small number were the only ones they were able to remove the tooth before they could commit suicide. Steve looked extremely disgruntled by this fact.
"Ok then," he says. "Time to call back to base." He grins and waves to Dum Dum, who had just returned from the forest to find their hidden radio.
"Is the mutant ok?" Jacques asks as he shackles the scientists with rope.
"He wasn't in there long enough to receive physical damage," Victor replies, calmly switching to French. The first time this happened, Gabriel couldn't believe Victor spoke anything but Grunt and Glare.
The Howling Commandos and Victor had bonded over the past few weeks; fighting together was really the only way to get close with my brother.
The base called in, saying there was a good clearing for landing a few miles from our current position, and without further ado, as soon as Gabriel returned from the base, we set off.
Victor and a few of the others were conversing on the fight and how to improve our attack, with Steve included. He seemed quite worried about the fact that he nearly cut me in half, and several times they tried to draw me into the conversation, but all I could think about was the words the mutant had whispered.