Old Friends Chapter 5
By: Cadet Deming
I don't own the rights to Captain America or The Avengers, Marvel and Disney do, so please don't sue. Rated T for violence, language and adult situations. Thank you so much to those who read and review-)
Bucky tried to focus on surviving. What were the basic needs? Air, food, water, shelter, love and the feel of a rifle in his hand. Even if his left arm didn't process "feelings" normally.
How did HYDRA find him? He tried to focus, tried to remember what the technicians did to him when they took him out of stasis. He remembered the electroshocks, having things strapped to his chest, and the scientists opening up his metal arm and poking around with the wires inside.
They spoke in different languages: English, Russian, German, some dialect of Chinese. He remembered hearing "tracer signal" in Russian. They must have put a tracer signal in the arm.
He stared at it, his blessing and his curse. Having it strapped to him kept him from bleeding to death, and made him stronger than anyone not superhuman. It also made him stick out like a radioactive sore thumb. Bucky needed to open the arm somehow.
He looked at the surrounding buildings and spotted a gas station. It was late enough for it to be closed. A gas station would hold the tools he could use. He covered his face.
Bucky hit the glass door with his altered arm. A spider-web of white spread through the clear glass. He hit it again and it shattered inwards.
An alarm shrieked. Its blaring echoed in his head. He opened the door and walked through. He broke open the cash register which held around $50.00. He wasn't sure if that was a lot of money or a little. Each decade he woke up in seemed to have more inflation.
The Winter Soldier strode to the repair section. He found a toolbox, grabbed a screwdriver and turned it on himself, mimicking what he'd seen the scientists do so many times.
The metal links on his arm opened and revealed its inner workings. He stared at the inside looking for something foreign, something that looked like the tracers he had been given in the past to use on his targets.
Bucky almost smiled when he saw a small device with a glowing red light. He couldn't remember the last time he smiled about anything. He used a set of pliers to remove it. The light went dead. He sealed his arm up again.
He studied a map on the wall. It gave him a good layout of the city. The question was where to go. Bucky was a soldier through and through. He needed orders and a mission. He was as lost as a child without them.
Alexander Pierce had been like his father, telling him how the world worked, what a good job he did, how proud of him he was. If he occasionally smacked him around, Bucky thought that was normal. In his day, parents were expected to give a little corporal punishment to their children.
Bucky heard the distant siren of an approaching police car. He caused so much murder and mayhem wherever he was unleashed, sirens where never far behind.
He hurried out the broken door and dropped the tracer into the gutter just to be sure. Bucky found refuge in an alleyway next to a dumpster.
He thought of his options. Did he have any friends or allies left? Steve Rogers had helped him. He was the only target to stop fighting him, he just begged him to remember his past. Bucky wanted to find Steve, but how?
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Steve watched Natasha arrive, carrying riot gear. She held a helmet and Plexiglas shield. It was a pale imitation of his own defenses. She looked glum.
She asked, "Are you sure this place is suspicious enough to warrant force?"
"We'll have to ask questions first and shoot later."
"And if they shoot first?"
'We'll have confirmation they're suspicious."
Steve noticed she wasn't wearing her gold arrow cross her chest.
"Nat, your necklace is gone. Did you lose it?"
She clutched at her clavicle. Steve tried not to stare at her cleavage.
"How observant of you. I took it off. While we were separated I…never mind."
"What?"
She sighed. "Clint and I just broke up."
Steve felt a rush of happiness, and then guilt that he was happy over something like that.
He said as a gut reflex, "I'm sorry."
"Why are you apologizing? You didn't have anything to do with it. The two of us just didn't work out. It happens. Let's just focus on our target."
She sounded nonchalant, but Steve figured if she was that blasé about it she wouldn't have removed the necklace in the middle of a mission. He tried to strategize an opening.
Steve said, "Well if you want to get together later and talk about it, you can come over to my place or I could go to yours."
She sighed, "Do you mean watch bad romantic comedies and eat a ton of ice cream?"
"Maybe not the bad romantic comedy part, but I'm always game for ice cream."
She kissed him on the cheek. He felt flushed.
Natasha said, "So wholesome. You're a good friend Steve."
He normally loved the word "friend," but now he wanted so much more. She walked ahead of him so he couldn't see her expression.
They crept down the stairs. He handed Natasha his body heat sensor. It showed two male figures sitting on a couch, probably watching television. He and Nat exchanged a look. Normally he would have just blown the door down, but with their sketchy legal status they couldn't risk it.
Steve knocked on the door. The figures leapt to their feet. One pantomimed the motions of covering his head. Was he putting on a mask? One appeared to be missing an arm, or at least it wasn't giving off a heat signature. Steve's heart leapt in his chest. What if it was Bucky? Except the right arm was missing, not the left.
The figures came to the door. Steve recognized their body language as grabbing guns.
A voice called out, "Who is it?"
Steve said, "Pizza delivery!"
Natasha whispered, "That's the best you can come up with?"
The voice said, "One moment please."
The figures aimed their weapons at the door. Steve held his shield up. The door opened a crack, and bullets started flying. They ricocheted off of his shield.
The door opened inwards, so Steve used his weight to force it open. Natasha leapt over his head and fired from her wrist bracelets.
Steve tackled the man in front of him to the ground. His head was covered with a skeleton mask.
Steve said, "Stay down HYDRA scum!"
The man answered, "We're not HYDRA! We're regular….legitimate businessmen! I'm Crossbones!"
Steve said, "Brock, I worked with you for years. I think I know your voice by now."
Brock growled in an unnaturally garbled tone, "I'm Batman!"
Steve punched him. The wrestled, exchanging blows and grunting.
He heard a woman screaming. He thought it was Natasha, but it came from the TV. He realized a horror movie was playing in the background.
Steve looked to Natasha to make sure she was safe, not that she couldn't take care of herself. She was fighting with a man whose eyes were obscured by a black hood. He smiled the entire time. He swung a metal scythe at her, but she continued to evade it with almost supernatural quickness. There were brand new slash marks on her helmet and shield. Steve wondered how long she could hold up.
The distraction gave Brock an opportunity to catch him off guard and head butt him. Brock got the upper hand and pinned Steve on the ground. He put his hands around Steve's neck and squeezed.
Steve pushed back at him and clawed at his face. He pulled the mask off Brock's head. Brock clutched at it defensively which enabled Steve to throw him back into a wall.
Brock's face was hideous, but his eyes were the worst of all. There was a look in them of pure rage that had never been there before.
Brock said, "Do you see what you did to me Rogers? Are you happy with what you did to me!?"
"You brought this on yourself by being a traitor to your country!"
"America is a cesspool you f #$%&ng Boy Scout freak! It's a land in decline pretending to still be an empire! HYDRA was going to make the world better! We were going to remake the world in our image and you ruined it! HYDRA was your real master all along! You turned on the hands that were feeding you! You're the real traitor!"
Steve kicked him in the chest. Rumlow coughed with pain in his voice.
He said, "The only reason you're stronger than me is because of HYDRA technology to make you a superman. But you're not a superman and I'll prove it. I'll do to you what you did to me and I'll show you even less mercy. God brought you to me so I can prove you bleed like everybody else."
"You dress as a skeleton, you fight for Neo-Nazis, you turn on your so-called friends and you have the nerve to think God is on your side?"
The other man in the room smirked and said, "Hey, we're not Neo-Nazis. We got rid of the racism and German Nationalism 70 years ago. We're technology-based post-Fascists. Get your lingo right."
Natasha said, "Are we going to stop brawling and have an intellectual debate? Because I'm getting kind of tired of fighting."
Brock's partner said, "Well if you'd stay still for a moment and let me behead you, it'd be over pretty quickly."
Natasha hissed, "Not going to happen ever. And I'm sorry, who are you?"
"I'm the Grim Reaper. Can't you tell by the hood and the scythe?"
Natasha deadpanned, "For a guy with Grim Reaper as a code name, you seem awfully cheerful."
The Reaper said, "I love my work."
Steve said, "Do my enemies all have a gimmick now?"
Brock said, "Because 'Mr. Captain America my name is nationalist propaganda' has any room to talk?"
Steve said, "I was the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan decades before you were even born, traitor."
Brock said, "And when you were my age, you had to walk 20 miles to school and didn't even have internet."
Steve swung his fist at him, but a loud cracking sound erupted and the room filled with smoke. Steve flailed, hoping to reach Natasha and for bullets to not to start flying again. When the smoke cleared, his enemies were gone.
To be continued.