Clint's brother smirked widely, somehow managing to look down at him.
Clint's eye twitched at the manner in which the prisoner spoke to him almost condescendingly. He scowled and turned his back to the cell, which only made Barney start laughing
"Sho', jus' igno' meh, like usual," he barked between laughs. Hulk shifted to also turn his back on the inmate.
"You know this guy?" he grunted quietly, side-glancing at Clint.
Clint's expression was still stuck in his scowl- it felt like he had no control over his face anymore. He didn't know how to answer Hulk's question, instead looking over the large, high-ceilinged corridor filled with cells and various inmates and guards. He surveyed their faces, trying to figure out what the escape plan could possibly be. He didn't see any obvious points which would be easily overtaken by any un-super-powered group.
"Yeah, boy. You know dis guy?" Barney questioned sarcastically.
He turned back around to find Barney leaning against the wall inside his cell right beside Clint. His arms were crossed and the toe of one of his feet rested on the top of the other, his hips and head cocked to the side to lean place more of his weight on the wall- exactly how Clint did, god dammit! This served to intensify Clint's scowl and causing him to arms.
"Stop that," Clint demanded.
"Stawp wut?" Barney asked innocently
"You know perfectly well 'wut'," Clint exclaimed, pointing accusingly at the inmate, his posture quickly changing to reflect his readiness for a fight- though you can't fight with someone through bars.
The prisoner sighed in return, saying, "You really haven't changed at awl, eh, Hawky?" as he rolled his head to the opposite side.
"Is there a mute button on this or somethin?" Clint asked himself, looking around the wall outside the cell for a control panel of some sort. Barney just snickered in response.
After concluding that no, there was not a mute button, Clint blew an irritated breath through his teeth and resolved to turn his back to the man again.
Suddenly his com sounded, and he could hear Ironman ask, "Hawkeye, any movement in the jail yet?"
"Not yet. How's you situation?" Clint responded.
"Cap and I are just cleaning up here. Minor civilian injury, but that's being taken care of. We'll join you at the prison in a moment."
At that moment, Hulk grunted, his head jerking towards the ceiling, and, as Clint clicked the button to respond to Ironman, that was all the warning they he got before a large portion of the roof fell in front of them.
A gigantic man with a grey hide and a horn like a rhino's stood huffing before them. Hawkeye assumed that this was the criminal known as Rhino. Behind him, he could hear his brother howling with laughter now. Hulk roared and rush at the new comer, even as more, normal-sized mercenaries filled in around him. Most of them held large guns or looked like they could rip Hawkeye apart like a piece of paper.
Hawkeye grabbed an arrow from his quiver and put it to the bow, aiming for the center of the group of mercs. The ground shook as Hulk attempted to smash Rhino to a pulp, although he was putting up a pretty good fight. The magnetic shock of his first arrow filled the air and slowed down the mercs attempts to free every prisoner in sight.
Before he could dock another arrow, an explosion went off on his left, throwing him off balance and onto the ground. His bow fell out of his grasp spinning as it hit the ground and sliding away.
More laughter came from the cell as Barney watched the scene before him gleefully. Clint hopped up just as a stout man with a toupee and tux jogged over to the lock on Barney's cell. Clint's eyes darted between his bow and the man pulling something small out of his pocket.
Before he could decide which situation was more urgent, however, the man had set up a detonator on the lock, covering his ears and running off to be lost in the crowd of inmates.
Hulk had taken Rhino out by now, and as the ticking on the detonator got faster and faster, a blur of red, gold and blue flew in through the hole in the roof. Shell Head released Cap, sending him smashing through the villains. Rays of light from Ironman's hands and feet blazed through the corridor, destroying more of the concrete structure.
Hawkeye ran towards the detonator as it sped up, trying to knock it off its place on the lock.
Unfortunately, when he was only about five feet from the bars, it went off. Once again, Clint was thrown to the ground. His head ached and his ears rang loudly. The world outside his head seemed to be quiet, the oppressive silence sinking in on him even as he just lay sprawled on the ground. A white light exploded behind his eyes. He squinted against the excruciating brightness of the overhead lights.
He sat up slowly, his entire body aching from the aftershock of the bomb. He looked around himself, and found that most of the people who had previously been up and fighting were now draped across the prison floor, even most of the mercenaries and Ironman. Hulk collapsed on top of several mercs, leaving a slight dent in the concrete around him. Ironman had collapsed and Steve was sitting up gingerly, favoring his left wrist.
Clint looked up and saw Bernard step out from behind the rubble that used to be the bars holding him in. He was smirking widely, and the man who had set up the bomb returned, his tuxedo still perfectly wrinkle-free. He handed Bernard a leather jacket, which Barney easily popped up over his arms and onto his shoulders. With a broad grin on his face, he looked over the crowd now jumbled at his feet. He sighed happily and made eye contact with one of his men still standing, motioning him to come over to him.
The boy, probably not any older than nineteen, had a creepy, wiry frame, and his lips seemed to naturally curl into a malicious smile. His eyes were dark and his black hair seemed to curl back on itself to form horns.
Bernard whispered something in this boy's ear, and they smiled at each other before the boy moved his arms, so his palms faced the ceiling, and he mouthed some incantation. Green energy enveloped itself around Clint, and gently pushed him to his feet. Blinking, he tried to move away from the energy, but it seemed to be preventing him from moving at all. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that all of the Avengers were in a similar predicament.
"So, dis is all dey sent ta try ta keep me in jail? Ah'm a little insulted" Barney commented loudly, his voice echoing so that everyone heard it.
He strolled over to stand in front of Clint and smirked even more so than before. "Ya look pretty good, Clint. Been workin' out or somet'in'?" he laughed, "Ya know, I been meanin' ta return somethin' ta you…" he felt his pockets and pulled something out, grabbing Clint by the wrist and opening his hand against his will. He slid a small piece of metal into his palm and closed Clint's fingers around it. "Rachel t'ought ya might have use of it, seein' as we don' need it no more."
Clint blinked, and tried to feel what he was holding without the ability of flexing his hand or looking down. Bernard smiled at him- really smiled- and then moved away, looking out the gaping hole in the roof.
"Frederick, where's de copter?" he asked, looking towards another man.
"It should be just about thirty seconds out." And he was proven correct by the faint beating sound of a helicopter. Barney nods and looks back around at the Avengers, motionless and wrapped in the strange green energy.
"Capt'n Amurica, I'onman, Hulk, and Hawkeye. Dat's about half of 'em, right?" Barney asked Frederick.
"Yeah, I think so," he responded dumbly.
"The others'll prob'ly show up quick enough. You all ready for dat?" he nodded to the group of mercenaries now gather under the gaping hole. They nodded and grumbled something all at once.
"Here we are, sir!" the man with the tuxedo yelled. The beating from the Helicoptor had grown slowly louder in the last minute, and was now hovering above them. Several ropes dropped through the hole, along with one rope ladder, which Barney climbed onto, the rest of them grabbing a rope.
Barney turned back towards Clint as he was slowly lifted out, a smirk on his face, and winked, "See ya, Hawky."
And he was gone, along with the green energy.
Without the energy to hold him up, Ironman fell to the ground.
"Shell Head! Are you okay?" Steve shouted, running over to his side, his wrist held to his chest.
"I-… I'm fine… what was that that hit us?" Tony responded blearily
"It was a detonator, I think. You guys were farther away from it, but it looks like it hit you two harder," Clint responded, "What's wrong with your wrist, Cap?"
"It's nothing. Are you gonna be okay, Ironman?"
"Uh, I may need to recharge my battery," he tapped the arc reactor, which was glowing faintly, "It felt like some kinda solar storm- it completely zapped my wires."
Around them, as they spoke, guards filed into the wreckage of their prison, grabbing the escaped inmates as they slept, and re-chained them.
"We need to get everyone back to the mansion- where are the others?" Tony coughed, sitting up slowly, with assistance from Cap.
"Wasp, Ant-Man, what's your situation?" Cap barked into the comm.
"They've got several hostages- we can't really do anything here, but we're waiting for an opportunity, Cap. The cops are handling the best they can. They've got the place rigged, and no one can enter the premise. Wasp tried, but there was a motion detector. She's sitting the rest of this out. What about you?"
"The convict escaped. My wrist got banged up and so did Ironman. Clint and Hulk seem to be fine…" Cap said, then looked up suddenly, "wait, where's Hulk?"
As if on cue, a pile of rubble shifted, and Hulk stood up, the slabs of concrete falling of his shoulders and landing by his feet.
"Are you in pursuit?"
"No, Shell Head's armor was fried, and we're all a bit too shaken up for pursuit. Have you gotten word from Panther and Thor?"
"No, you'd better check in on them. I'll meet you back at the Mansion when the situation here is dissolved."
"Roger that," Cap nodded, clicking several buttons on his comm. "Panther, what's your situation?"
And it continued on like that until Cap figured out what was going on with everyone.
Meanwhile, Clint was able to look at the object in his hand. It was a little, golden ring with a heart on it. The heart was held by two hands, on either side of it, and was wearing a little gold crown. Clint blinked, surprised, and swallowed around the lump suddenly forming in his throat.
When they all met back at the mansion, they sat around the round Avengers meeting table. Wasp was holding an icepack to her head, Cap had his wrist wrapped up, Tony was looking all over frail, and Panther had a black eye- although no one could see this through his mask.
Clint had a headache, and he wasn't sure how much of it actually came from the fight. He still held the ring in his hand, looking at it from time to time.
"Clint, who the hell was he? It didn't say his name in the description, and from the looks of it, you and him were pretty friendly once," Tony looked at him with a faint scrutinizing scowl, which was all he could muster in his current condition.
"It was, uh… it was nobody." He said, looking up from the ring to meet Tony's gaze, squeezing his fingers around the old Kennedy family heirloom.
