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We Walk on Water (Don't Let Go)
Chapter 2
They landed the jet a good distance away from the base, and walked to it. The place was surrounded by a forest, it was dark, and there was no moon, but none of them had trouble finding their way.
"How are we going to do this?" Steve asked a few minutes into the walk. Sometimes SHIELD had detailed plans for stopping HYDRA, other times they didn't.
"If we can get in without being seen, we'll do it by stealth." Natasha said. "If not, we'll have to fight."
As they drew closer, the outside lights on the building illuminated part of their way, but one of the lights glinted off Steve's shield, and alerted one of the guards, who opened fire.
The four of them scattered for cover. Natasha reached for her gun, but before she could grab it, and answering shot rang out and the man who was shooting at them fell.
"Nice shot." Steve said quietly to Bucky, who nodded.
"Thanks." He replied, still holding his gun.
"We've got company." Clint warned over their earpieces. From his vantage point he had seen a group of guards headed in their direction. "Forget getting in without getting seen. We'd better get in without getting shot, and before they move or destroy anything we need."
"Alright." Steve replied. "Let's go." He looked at Bucky. "Cover us?"
"Yes." The Winter Soldier replied, and Steve gave a nod before getting to his feet.
"Widow! Hawkeye!" When the three of them burst out of the undergrowth, the guards opened fire. Steve took the lead and blocked the brunt of it with his shield as Bucky began sniping the guards.
Clint armed his arrowhead with an explosive tip and fired it at their attackers. The ensuing explosion was enough distraction for the three of them to reach the door. Natasha yanked on it. To her deep non-surprise, it was locked. "Cap, you're up!" She said, and ducked around the other side of the door frame. There was little gunfire left to take cover from, though. Clint's arrow had been enough distraction and Bucky was quickly taking out the guards who were left.
Steve slammed his shield into the lock and it broke. "Bucky! Clint!" he called, as Natasha hurried in front of him into the building, taking out the guards inside.
Clint had been helping snipe the guards. Now he turned to look at Bucky. "You coming?" He asked.
"Go." The Winter Soldier replied, accidentally slipping into Russian, but Clint had picked up enough of the language from Natasha to know what he meant. The archer ran for the door as Bucky held off the remaining guards. When he reached the door frame and had sufficient cover, Clint pulled his bow back out, and put down enough fire to let Bucky reach the door as well, and they entered the building together.
Inside, Natasha and Steve were busily working their way through the next round of guards, and with the combined assistance of the two sharp shooters, cleared the room.
"Did they know that we were coming?" Steve asked. "There are more guards here than I expected."
"HYDRA knows we're hunting them down." Clint replied, retrieving what arrows he could and putting them back into his quiver so he could attach new heads and reuse them. "I wouldn't be surprised if they increased the guards for that reason alone."
"There must be something here that they really want to protect." Natasha said.
"We've got to get that information and get out of here. The hallway on the other side of this door splits. Let's split up. Natasha, you and Clint take the North. Bucky and I will take the South. We'll stay in touch and radio the other party when we find something."
"Are you really going to put both super soldiers on the same team?" Clint asked. "If there are any more doors ahead that need opening, it might be better to split us up a little differently."
Steve looked uncomfortable, and then Natasha spoke. "Come on Steve. We're going North."
"See you on the other side." Clint said.
~xXx~
There were only a few guards in the hall that Clint and Bucky took, and those were easily dealt with.
Until they came to the computer room at the end of the hall. There were more guards there, and the pair ended up being pinned down on the other side of the door.
Before they were pinned down, Clint managed to get off one arrow into the computer, just like he had on the Helicarrier so long ago. But there was no way to retrieve it now that they were pinned down.
Bucky debated using one of his grenades, but there was a limited space within which it could be detonated without damaging the computer. He looked at Clint contemplatively.
"Do you have another one of those exploding arrows?"
"Yes." Clint replied, pushing a couple of buttons on his bow to key the arrowhead he needed. "Cover me."
Bucky nodded, and loaded another clip into his gun before opening fire on the HYDRA agents below.
Clint used the opportunity to duck into the room and fire off the arrow before running for cover behind one of the rows of servers. A moment later the arrow exploded.
In the ensuing silence, Clint raced out to the computer, and pulled out the memory drive he'd managed to land in the computer earlier. But the explosion hadn't stopped all of the HYDRA agents, and no sooner had Clint pulled the drive out then a punch to the back of the head sent him crashing into the computer. He rolled out of the way of the next punch, and got back to his feet as quickly as he could. Another HYDRA agent grabbed him from behind, and held him in place for the other agent, who drew back a fist, only to find it grabbed from behind and have a metal fist planted on his own face as Bucky showed up, a trail of beaten HYDRA agents behind him.
Clint used the distraction to swing his head back and connect it with the other agent's face. Surprised by the attack, the man loosened his grip enough for Clint to get free and flip the other man over his shoulder and onto the floor. He grabbed the fallen drive and tucked it away before turning to Bucky. "Thanks."
The other man just nodded.
"Let's get Steve and Tasha and get out of here." Clint said. He pressed a hand to his ear. "Natasha, we've got the files."
There was silence.
"Natasha?" Clint repeated. "Steve?"
"Clint…found…HYDRA…base…" A broken, garbled message in Natasha's voice came back to them.
"Natasha? Where are you?" Clint asked.
"Base…tics…send…"
"Natasha?!"
"Some thing's interfering with our communications." Bucky told him.
"We've got to get over there and find them." Clint said.
But before he or Bucky could take so much as a step, the wall behind them seemed to explode, and both were forced to duck out of the way.
Steve was in the middle room, and starting to uncurl himself from his shield, which he had landed on. Something had tossed him through the wall.
Natasha came through the wall behind Steve a moment later. She came with much less force; she had jumped through, not been thrown. "Hawkeye, Winter, we know what else HYRDA is doing here." She gasped. Then she got up and ran, pushing Steve, who had finally gotten back to his feet, up and out of the way as a large robot came through the wall behind them.
Bucky was the first to react, reaching for one of the grenades he was carrying and tossing it at the robot. Not only did not-SHIELD have the small grenades HYDRA had preferred to arm him with, they had small ones that would stick to targets, and he appreciated the innovation. It stuck where it landed, almost in the center of the machine, and they took cover just as the robot exploded.
"I'm afraid to ask…" Clint said, glancing at Natasha and Steve.
"HYDRA's building battle robots here." Natasha said.
"It looks like some of Tony's stuff." Steve added.
"That doesn't mean much." Natasha replied. "Everyone either copies or steals his stuff sooner or later. Mostly they copy it."
"What do we do?" Bucky asked.
Steve looked back at where the wall used to be. "We can't leave yet. We've got to stop this. There's no telling what kind of harm HYDRA could do if they're able to finish mass-producing these things."
"Can we stop it on our own or do we need reinforcement?" Clint asked.
"We'd need to look and what's there." Steve replied.
The four of them moved quickly out into the other hallway, a path made easier now that there was no wall there. There were very few guards there now, the one that were there were taken out quickly by well-placed shots from Natasha or Bucky, since at the pace they were moving, Clint's bow was not going to be very useful.
The center of the building was open, and railing in the middle allowed them to look down and see the assembly line before.
"It's not moving." Clint noted. "I don't think they've made very many."
The others were looking down into the assembly line below when Bucky chanced to look up. "They aren't making many of them because they're building them bigger." He muttered, and the others looked up to see a robot twice the size of Tony's armor looming in front of them.
Steve threw his shield, but it bounced back without hurting the thing. Neither Natasha nor Bucky moved, both had known instantly that no bullets would work on this thing. It jumped forward, leaping the gap, and the four of them scattered.
Clint rolled out of the way on the robot, which landed in front of him, and pulled out an arrow as it rolled around to face him. He dropped to one knee and fired.
The arrow hit the machine and clung to it, releasing a burst of electricity that short-circuited it.
For a moment it looked like the battle was won. Then the machine started moving again, acting like it was slowly rebooting.
"Clint, how many explosive arrowheads do you have?" Natasha, who was doing a hasty mental inventory or her own gear, asked.
"Not enough." The archer replied, stepping back.
"This'll be just like Ultron." Steve grumbled. "I think I've seen this one before."
"How many grenades did you bring?" Natasha asked Bucky, but he wasn't listening to her.
"What is that noise?" The assassin frowned, holding on hand to the ear his earpiece was in.
The others followed suit, trying to place the sound, even as the robot behind them screeched and rumbled in reboot.
"It's…AC/DC," Clint figured it out, and sounded very confused as he said it.
"Tony." Natasha and Steve said simultaneously.
"This is so mean of you to hold a party at a HYDRA base and not invite me. I think I'm owed some retribution for that whole 'blow me and Pepper up with the Insight Helicarriers,' too." Tony said over their communicators.
"Don't you dare turn that music up in our ears any louder." Natasha warned him.
Tony sighed. "You take all my fun away. Oh, and when was someone going to tell me Phil was alive?"
They were spared form answering that question as the doors behind them were blown open and Iron Man flew into the room, plowing into the robot and carrying it across the room.
"Hey, I know this design." Tony had to use both hands and all the thrusters to rip off the chest plate of the robot, but once he did, he ripped out a handful of wires and the machine fell over.
"Sorry Tony, someone stole your stuff." Natasha said as he landed in front of them and flipped his faceplate up.
"How could they steal something I never built?" Tony asked.
"Aren't these your designs?" Steve asked.
"Oh they are definitely mine. But I never built any robots like this. I had the schematics all drawn up, but Rhodey didn't like 'em, so I never built any. I just put the blue prints away and built other things." Tony asked, looking at the four of them.
Clint and Natasha looked at each other, both thinking the same thing. Then Natasha spoke again. "Tony, who would have had access to those schematics?"
Tony thought for a moment. "Me, Pepper, Rhodey, JARVIS," He paused, and frowned. "Obadiah Stane." He finished, and sighed. "Looks like he had more than one reason to want to kill me."
"Who's Obadiah Stane?" Steve asked, not unkindly.
"Never mind. It isn't important." Tony said as he turned and walked over to the railing, looking down at the assembly line below. "Besides, he's dead anyway. He's not coming back to help HYDRA or anyone else." He furrowed his brow as he looked. "So who's running this place?"
"What do you mean?" Steve asked.
Tony turned and walked back towards them. "That system down there is all automated. Kind of like what I used when JARVIS built the first Iron Man suit and FRIDAY helped me upgrade this one."
"No one has to work the line?" Natasha asked.
"No one." Tony confirmed. "Someone else is giving the order to build these bots, and the automated system handles the rest."
"This just keeps getting better." Clint noted dryly.
[A/N:] I hope the battle scenes are alright. I don't feel like I do well writing battle scenes, and guess what the next two chapters are going to involve? Yeah, battle scenes. ChildofGod, if you're reading this (because I don't have an email address or an account to respond to you with) the answer is yes.
I corrected what looked like a missing sentence in the last chapter. I apologize for that; I thought I had proofed it pretty carefully but I missed that. I saw a typo in RBY, too. I'll have to make a note about that so maybe I can correct it later.
Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, followed, and Favorited this story so far! I appreciate your support, and hope you will continue to support me going forward! Please leave a review and let me know what you thought!