Previously:
As I pass through the doorway though, a knife goes flying past my head, lodging itself into the wall behind me. I stop walking, staring at it, then her. My eyebrows rise incredulously as I try not to show my surprise. "Only agent Coulson," her tone is unapologetic.
As it turns out, Phil is okay with it. "But Barton… you have to realize that if anything goes sideways while you guys are on your… other errands, I can't send a team in after you. You'll have no back-up," he says it in his mildly worried way. I nod my head, "Duly noted," and leave.
Chapter 7Romanoff's week of testing is quick yet sluggishly long, as we use our evenings to plan with Phil. We'll need a solid plan to take down the red room, but unbridled genius if we're to take down the KGB's division of HYDRA along with the red room.
Finally we're in the weapons room, grabbing our general gear, before moving to the special weapons section, where I retrieve my bow and quiver.
"Oh yeah, I'd head down to the R&D department before boarding the hellicarrier, if I were you," she tells me mysteriously. My eyebrows rise. I want to ask her what she's talking about, but she's already gone to do her own last minute checks.
So I decide to follow her advice, and ask a random desk-jockey to direct me to the R&D department. I didn't even know we had one.
"So, you're bird boy?" a techie asks me when I arrive. "Huh?" I reply eloquently. "Agent Romanoff sent you?" he asks in a more composed tone. "Yeah" I answer absentmindedly, following him as he walks to a desk at the far back end of the room.
"We developed some new gear for you to try out," he tells me, handing me an empty quiver and a bundle of arrowless shafts. I look at it, frowning. The techie seems disappointed at my apparent lack of understanding.
"She said you would know what they're for?" he mutters to himself. "I know what they are," I reply snappishly. "I just don't get why they're missing a lot of key components." He seems to sigh at my apparent stupidity.
"A demonstration then," he takes the quiver from me. "There's a wheel on the bottom here," he tilts the quiver a little to show me, "and a narrow groove inside, over here," he continues, pointing to the inside of the quiver. He then takes one of the arrow shafts. "Put it in the quiver, and it will slide into the groove, where an arrowhead will attach mechanically." There's a soft whirring sound as he slides the shaft into the groove, and when the shaft is pulled out, it has an arrow head. I nod dumbly.
As innovating as I'm sure they think it is; I'm certain it would be easier if arrows come already fully assembled. I'm about to question their logic, when the techie continues.
"On default, the quiver will deposit normal arrows. The dial is for the specialty arrows you seem to favor. You can always come back to add more arrow types, but right now we added two specialty types. The dial is for choosing the kind of arrow you want. It will click to let you know an arrowhead is aligned for attachment. The three protrusions next to the dial tell you what kind of arrow is in place. The first indicates a normal arrow, the second an explosive, and the third is a grappling hook."
He demonstrates this by turning the dial. Each time it turns, one of the three protrusions lifts. "It will load the same type of arrowhead you selected until you run out of that type, after which it will fall back to the default normal arrow."
I almost smile. This is kind of genius. "What's the holding capacity of the quiver?" The techie puts the quiver down and goes to a nearby cupboard while answering. "It holds around fifty arrowheads. Right now there are 40 normal and 8 exploding arrows, and 2 grappling hooks. You can reload if you run out," he tells me, handing me the three circular disks he retrieved from the cupboard. They look like the bottom of the quiver.
"You can reuse a normal arrowhead if it's not damaged in any way, but I'd only do that in extreme emergencies if I were you. Just place the arrowhead in the correct position. You'll see each spot is marked to indicate the type. Screwing on new cylinders take around the same time as reloading your average fire-arm would, so allow time for that in the field." I look down at the narrow groove, before regarding an arrow shaft.
"How am I supposed to carefully position each and every shaft in the groove in the middle of… say… a shoot-out? I can't exactly be distracted with loading my bow during a mission?" He shakes his head, "Don't worry about it. You just have to place the arrows in the quiver, since they'll line up with the groove automatically, allowing you to take arrow after arrow until you're out. It's a new technology we've been developing for something else this past year. There's around 250 shafts, so you probably won't run out, but they can reload too if you do. I promise we've tested the technology thoroughly, so you shouldn't run into any problems. You should probably start moving since I think the hellicarrier was scheduled for take-off five minutes ago…"
"Thanks, whoever designed this should get a reward," I tell him, slinging the empty quiver over my shoulder before adding the rest to my half-full gear bag. On my way out, I hear laughter behind me. "Wait, she didn't tell you?" I turn around, "Who? Tell me what?"
"Agent Romanoff, sir. She gave us the already fully-drawn schematics and told us to get our asses into gear. We only used the technology available to put everything together. She was bloody terrifying at first, by the way. Told me to tell you she wasn't going to keep covering your ass just because you like it old-fashioned."
A little stunned by that I keep on walking, before being brought to a halt again, "Oh and I almost forgot. Once you retract an explosive arrowhead, you might want to shoot it immediately, since it has a fifteen second unstoppable timer which sets off the moment it leaves the quiver…" Filing the info away somewhere in my head, I leave the room with a barely audible "Fantastic."
When I get to the hellicarrier, the pilot is giving me a pissed-off look, which I salute sarcastically when he's within range of normal eyesight. We depart almost immediately after I board.
Romanoff smirks at me when I lift an eyebrow in question. "Hope it helps," she tells me. I smile, "Thank you. I had been trying to find a solution for a while now, but nothing seemed to work." She nods.
"How did you even know we had an R&D lab?" Regarding me seriously, she explains. "Barton, you're in a multiple story building, filled with people. What do buildings crammed with people have in common?"
I think about it, but can't come up with a sensible answer. So I fall back on snark, "Sucky air conditioning…" Her smile widens, "Which means?" I think about hating air conditioning and all the microbes probably growing in the… "Air vents?" I ask, not smelling what she's cooking.
"And how big are air vents?" she continues. But she doesn't really need to, since my brain kicks in seconds before she speaks. I raise an eyebrow, "You're not serious! You've been crawling around up there? But why?"
Her smile drops then, "peace, solidarity, info?" she lists absentmindedly. I think about it. It makes a lot of sense. No one would ever expect anyone in their own damned roof! That's what hallways are for.
I nod in approval, "Smart." I'm kind of latching onto the idea the more I think about it…
"Your little not-so-safe house had air vents too you know…" No way! No fucking way!
"You could have killed me that whole time? Why didn't you?" I demand. She shrugs and answers my question with her own, "Why didn't you?" We both fall silent then, lost to our own thoughts.
A/N
I just wanted Natasha to be the reason Clint has such awesome gear. Luckily for me this is FanFiction so I can actually make that happen.
Also, yeah it would have made more sense if Clint developed his habit for air vents during his stay at the children's home as a kid or at the circus. But also, I thought it would be cool if they developed into the super people we see today, because of their influence on each other, and not because of what they went through growing up. And again, thank you FanFiction for allowing me to do that.