"Well, they were certainly made by someone very skilled," Bruce said, admiring the arrow he held. "This one could easily split bone, and you'd have a tough time pulling it back out."
"Yeah, but who would go to the trouble of making these? Clearly they took more than a week to make." Steve speculated, frowning at the short, blunt black blade that he'd found inside the box of arrows. "And are you sure they won't be mad for us taking them?"
"Whoever built the place didn't seem to care that much, it wasn't locked up or anything." Sam shrugged. "If they wanted to keep it secret, they would have carried it with them and not left it in effectively a pile of sticks and vines."
"Hmm, I'm going to go out and test the bow," Clint grinned. "Anyone wanna come?"
Pietro and Sam rose, grinning. Clint led them outside, much to the protest of Natasha and Wanda, who both saw that it was likely Clint would injure himself and at least two others.
Clint nocked the arrow and lifted the bow, drawing the string and aiming. He fired the arrow into the centre of the nearest tree trunk, hitting with incredible accuracy.
"Holy-" Pietro started, not at all expecting this.
Clint grinned and loaded another arrow, aiming for a further tree. Of course, it hit dead-centre, again. "I've been taking archery classes for a while."
Sam just rolled his eyes, muttering something about Clint having weird talents. The archer just responded by taking another shot at an even further tree; he hit of course.
Pietro soon decided to experiment. He had a theory that he was fast enough to catch a bullet, but as there were no guns around, he'd have to settle for the next best thing.
As Clint pulled back the drawstring, Pietro leapt. The world was plunged into slow motion, silent and slow, as the arrow came gliding through the air. He easily leaned forward and closed his fingers around the long, smooth shaft, twisting the arrow off course and turning it back around, holding it at his hip.
Clint's face was hilarious. One eyebrow raised, mouth half open, eyes not able to decide between staring at the now-still arrow and Pietro's smug smirk.
"You're gonna end up skewered!" Bucky's voice sounded from somewhere. The others broke into shocked muttering, some hyped about the cool powers some had started to display.
Meanwhile, Wanda slunk off downstream, nervously sprinting over the unsteady bridge, and heading off into the woods. She had intended to go and practise, so she would.
Wanda found a large hunk of firewood pretty quickly; no doubt Steve or whoever had chopped it hadn't taken enough care when carrying it back to the house. She sat it in front of her and kneeled, surrounded by a protective layer of branches.
Wanda focused, rage and fear quickly filling her mind. She noticed a red haze surrounding the wood - almost mist-like, it swirled and made beautiful crimson patterns.
Closing her eyes, she focused on tearing the thing apart. When she opened her eyes, a large crack had appeared across the top, but the wood was still largely whole.
Closing her eyes again, Wanda focused. And focused. And focused.
Opening them again, she saw that the crack was bigger, but nowhere as big as the giant split she wanted to create.
This time, when closing her eyes, she lifted her hands, making both of them into fists, outstretched towards the wood. Now, she ripped the fists from each other, swinging her arms to her sides. A loud, almost earsplitting crack followed.
The wood had been torn cleanly into two pieces, both of which were hovering around her fists, shrouded in a thicker form of the 'red mist', as she called it.
Wanda began to make random movements with her hands, keeping them enclosed as fists, and laughed as the hunks of wood followed. She could push them from her, pull them back, rotate them; in all honesty, she doubted there was nothing she couldn't manipulate them into doing.
In a fit of curiosity, Wanda swung one fist and released it as the wood moved, sending it slamming against a tree, where it burst into splinters and left a hefty mark on the tree. She dropped the other wood and ran over to inspect the mark she'd made, but fell and became disoriented.
She rose again, but froze. A large, dark figure was crouching over the intact piece of wood she had dropped in her excitement. Two small, sharp points extended batman-style from the top of the person's head, and their features were obscured by a thick, leathery material that appeared to cover their whole body.
Gold, or at least somewhat gold-coloured claw-shaped pieces of metal formed a tooth-necklace-style pattern around the person's throat and over their shoulders, with an odd-looking silver amulet in the centre, above the joint in the person's rib cage.
Even from such a distance, Wanda knew not to hang around in the presence of the person. He, as his build said he was male, had broad, arching shoulders, with muscles visible through his shirt, and arms to rival Steve's. His legs were long and thick with muscle, no doubt capable of outrunning Wanda. His stance was catlike, with a curved, flexible spine and intense expression.
Wanda felt his heavy gaze on her, contemplating how to proceed. She had some sense of confidence in her abilities and mutation, if it should be titled so, but didn't know anything about him aside from he was far stronger than her and looked more than able to kill.
Wanda gulped, backing away from his still, silent figure. She noticed that on the end of his fingers, long, black, sharp talons curved over, easily sinking into the wood she'd messed around with. No doubt, they'd slice through her flesh easily. As if that wasn't enough, he held a medium length, straight and serrated black blade with the hand not balancing him. The blade was being tossed up into the air and caught perfectly on the handle; he was waiting, and certainly would have no trouble handling the knife.
Is this the person who made the bow and arrows?
Wanda didn't stay to find out.
A/N: Guess who the dark character is? ;)