So I was looking up ways to stop GPS signals, and one of them was using a metal shield, and I had the tracker in Bucky's arm... then, after freaking out thinking I screwed up, I realized that HYDRA made a super-advanced prosthetic arm in the forties, so they can probably make a tracker that can be in said metal arm and still work.
The Asset carries his sleeping mini-handler, the bags of food and his backpack, with only his prosthetic arm. He could still use his flesh arm, and ignore the pain- he's good at that, and he's worked through pain worse than his current gunshot wound- but using the injured arm will slow down its healing, and at the moment, there is no need to use it.
This vast, open countryside is both advantageous and disadvantageous. There are currently no people around to spot him here, but it is a lot harder to avoid detection. There would be more places to conceal oneself in a city, but there would be more people who could potentially be HYDRA agents looking for him.
He keeps walking away from the road, and uses the hills to conceal him as much as possible. Only two cars have driven by in the past 25 minutes. Both times, he wondered if they were HYDRA, but the cars drove by without slowing down and so far, nobody has come after him. Still, the Asset will not let his guard down.
The Asset can move at least 1.5 times faster than the non-enhanced human, but he walks instead of jogs, since the boy had thrown up last time the Soldier had jogged while carrying the child, and would likely regurgitate again.
He would be able to cover even more ground if he had a car, but he had to leave both the car he stole and the agents' car at the lodge. The authorities are looking for the one he stole- which was almost out of gas anyways- and the agents' car could have one, or several, tracking devices in it.
They are looking for him, and have a way to track him down. The agents let that slip.
Remove the tracker.
The Soldier does not yet have permission from his handler to do so. He increases his pace slightly. HYDRA is surely looking for him, and most likely already sent more agents now that the ones the Soldier left in the lodge are unresponsive.
The mini-handler is wriggling around in the Soldier's grip 56 minutes later. "Puh-ease, no..." The child cries even as his face is buried against the Soldier's neck. "Hurts."
The Asset looks down at his prosthetic hand to make sure he is not gripping his new handler too tightly. His prosthesis is strong enough that it could crush the boy's bones.
He realizes that his handler is still asleep, meaning the words are most likely not directed at him. Still, he loosens his grip so that he's only exerting enough pressure to keep the boy from falling, and he's careful to avoid touching any of the boy's injuries.
"No more... p'ease stop, Uncle Vernon..." Potter begs in his sleep, confirming the theory that the boy is not actually addressing the Soldier. The Soldier scowls as he remembers watching the boy being beaten and starved by his relatives.
Anyone who tries beating his handler now will find the Soldier's fist in their face. For some reason, his mind conjures images of various alleyways, similar to the vision from before of that unidentified skinny blond person bruised in an alleyway.
"...'m s-sorry." The boy squirms in his sleep, and some sort of unseen force explodes outward from Potter, trying to force him away from Potter.
Something in the Soldier's prosthetic arm gives a sputtering beep, and he tightens his hold to keep his handler from tumbling out of his arms to the ground.
MAINTENANCE REQUIRED.
The mini-handler wakes with a cry of pain when the metal hand squeezes his fragile body too tightly. He trembles in the Soldier's arms with ragged breaths, letting out little whimpers of pain. The boy immediately presses his knuckles to his mouth to stifle his sobs, looking around fearfully.
The Soldier is never permitted to silence its handlers, although its handlers often enforce the Soldier's silence by making it wear a mask on the lower half of its face, like a dog with a muzzle.
He puts the boy down and hoicks up the boy's jacket and shirt to examine his torso. There are still marks from the beating Vernon Dursley gave him the previous night, although their healing has progressed further than the Asset would have expected.
But there are fresh bruises, the exact size and shape as the Asset's prosthetic fingers on the boy's side. The injury could have been much worse than it is, it easily could have been fatal.
It is still mission-noncompliant.
PROTECT THE HANDLER. The old voice reminds the Asset of the mission, even though it is obvious he failed.
Hurting handlers warrants corrective punishment, even if he had meant to keep the boy from falling, or if the force had somehow affected the arm.
Previous incidents of harming handlers have resulted in: beatings, deprivation of food and sleep, electrocution, simulated drowning, or the Chair.
The Asset scowls at its flesh fingers, which tremble at the thought of the Chair. It reaches into one of the bags of food to grab the medical kit from the ski lodge. It then drops the bags of food at its handler's feet, shrugs the backpack off its prosthetic shoulder. Pulling the shirt and jacket off the boy, it places the clothes on top of the backpack so they will not get dirty.
The Asset offers the two animal crackers in its pocket to its handler. The handler had been carrying them before falling asleep. The handler grabs the crackers, smiling slightly, but stands still when the Soldier starts to doctor the wounds it inadvertently inflicted.
"Mr. A'set, sir?" The handler bites his small lip worriedly as the Asset wraps more bandages around the boy's already heavily-bandaged torso. Ice would help decrease the swelling, but there is no ice available. "Are you gonna wallop me?"
"Negative."
"W-really?"
"Affirmative. I am your Batman." The use of the newly assigned codename makes the handler smile, but it falls quickly.
"B-but you squeezed me an' it hurt." The handler is extremely confused, lower lip trembling.
"It will not happen again." The Asset lowers its head. "Awaiting punishment."
The handler whimpers at the last word. The Asset cannot help wondering what the punishment will be.
The new handler does not have access to the Chair. All the boy currently owns are the clothes he is wearing, plus everything the Soldier is carrying, since the Soldier cannot claim ownership of anything, not even the prosthetic arm attached to it.
Even the Soldier is owned by its handler.
The Asset's mini-handler is not strong enough to deliver any sort of physical punishment, nor does he have any restraints. He could take the deprivation angle when it comes to punishment.
Perhaps the mini-handler will take one of the weapons from the Soldier's sheaths or holsters. One of the knives could provide sufficient correction, or a gunshot wound to some non-fatal area. The Asset keeps his hands away from the weapons, leaving them open for the handler to grab, even as some part wonders if a boy as young as Potter would know how to use the weapons.
Of course, if the handler chooses to, he could simply kill the Asset. Or even order the Asset to shoot or stab itself, to end its own life for hurting him.
The Asset waits for correction. It tries to still the tremor in its own body, but the body refuses, so only the prosthesis stays completely unmoving.
1.6 minutes pass.
There is a dark shape in the distance, approaching them. Large, but not tall enough to be a person. The deep barking indicates it is a dog.
The Asset draws a gun, aiming it but not shooting yet. His handler has not given the order to kill, but seems nervous when he hears the barks, saying something about an Aunt Marge and mean dogs.
The Soldier positions himself between the incoming threat and his handler.
The shape turns out to be a huge black dog. The lack of a collar, as well as its disheveled, skinny state, indicate that it is a stray. It stops in front of the Soldier, sniffing hopefully at the bags of food.
The dog is not one of HYDRA's dogs- it's a different breed, although the Soldier isn't sure exactly which. He only ever saw HYDRA's dogs when they were snarling through their muzzles, ready to attack an enemy when given the command. Which isn't too different from the Soldier, really. He sometimes wears a muzzle as well.
"No." The Soldier tells it. At least the dog seems to know that command, and leaves the food alone, albeit with a whine. It then eats the animal cracker loosely shaped like a dog in the handler's hand.
The boy does not protest the dog eating his food aside from pouting slightly, as if he believes the dog has right to claim it over him.
He thinks the boy will shy away from the dog, which is bigger than he is but Potter seems to realize it is doing nothing harmful by sniffing him. The mini-handler cautiously pats the dog's black fur with a bandaged hand, a small smile on his face that grows as the dog licks him.
The dog's tongue makes the boy squirm and squeal, and the Soldier is about to pull it away from his handler when he realizes the boy is laughing, even though his glasses are now smeared with dog saliva.
"Are you a boy dog or girl dog?" Potter asks the dog as if it will actually answer.
"It is male." The Soldier answers since dogs cannot talk. He wonders if his handler is even old enough to think to determine the animal's sex by looking at its genitalia. "Male means a boy or a man." He clarifies at the boy's blank look.
The Soldier stands, silently watching his handler pet the dog. The waterproof coat is effective against dog saliva as well as the boy's own messes. The voice in his head says they need to keep moving to avoid HYDRA, but his handler shows no signs of deciding to continue walking.
Right now, they are sitting ducks for HYDRA, and the mission is to avoid HYDRA.
MOVE. RELOCATE.
"Sir," The Soldier ventures. Handlers usually insist on being addressed that way, especially when the Asset speaks to them without prompting. He never thought he'd be calling a child barely over four years old sir, it seems strange, but it is strange to have a handler so young.
The boy doesn't even look up, not that that is uncommon. What is uncommon is that he has not administered correction or asked for a status report.
"Permission to disable the tracker in my arm." The Soldier says, wondering if the handler will decide he is speaking out of turn and add to his undelivered correction.
"You have a tractor in your arm?" The child laughs a bit.
"There is not a tractor in my arm. HYDRA put a tracking device in my arm that reveals our location to them. That is how the agents found us in the lodge." The Asset tells his handler.
"The scary men?" Potter shudders.
"Affirmative." The Asset answers, even though he would not have called them scary. "They will track us down again, unless it is disabled or removed."
"No scary men." Potter shakes his head fearfully.
"Is that permission to remove the tracker?" The Asset thinks it is, but it is best to make sure.
"...Yes?" Potter answers as if he's hoping his answer will please the Asset, as if the Asset's opinion matters when it should not even have opinions.
Even though the boy gave a very unsure affirmative, it is still an affirmative.
Unfortunately, he does not possess tools beyond the lock-picking kit, which is not suitable for tinkering with his prosthesis.
Find tools, becomes a new mission sub-objective.
The Asset picks up the bags, though he will not eat until given permission from his handler. He still does not know if the handler will withhold food as punishment.
After 5.3 minutes of walking- at the boy's slow pace- the Asset spies a cottage 102.5 meters away. He is approaching the back of it, which means there must be another road ahead. A shed is 10 m away from the cottage. It might contain tools.
The shed's door faces away from the house, so the Asset can conceal himself behind the shed as he breaks the almost useless padlock on the shed door. Even an ordinary human could break into this shed without much effort.
The shed contains various gardening tools, a lawnmower, three bicycles- one sized for an adult, and two smaller bicycles, a red one, and a bright blue one with dirty white wheels. They are unimportant.
There is a workbench, with a messy assortment of tools scattered on it.
The Asset strides over to the workbench, frowning at the complete disorder of equipment. Before he can begin repairs, he first needs to arrange the tools in some semblance of order on the pegboard mounted on the wall.
The mini-handler sits out of the way in the corner of the shed with the dog, which so far has remained silent. If it barks and alerts the cottage's residents to their presence in the shed, the Asset will silence it.
He tests the functionality of his prosthesis. There is a problematic clunking sound and resistance when the Asset twists the arm at the wrist, but other than that, movement is not impaired. He reports this information to the handler.
The Asset grabs a flat screwdriver with his flesh arm, gritting his teeth through the flash of pain from the gunshot wound, and starts to pry the metal plates off his prosthesis and expose the arm's innards.
He does not know where the tracker is in his prosthesis. Is it in the metal hand, the shoulder, the forearm? It is not under the first plate he tries, so he replaces it- which is tricky with just his injured flesh arm- and tries another.
Potter watches in awe, and asks a few questions that he seems to think he will be punished for asking, but the Asset has to answer his superiors. Again, the Asset tells the boy he is not a robot, one of the first things the child asked him.
20 minutes pass, consisting of the Asset pulling more metal plates off to find the damn tracker.
The handler starts talking quietly to the dog, saying more to the animal in the 20 minutes than he had during the five hours the Soldier had seen him at the Dursley's. He talks quietly enough that someone without enhanced hearing would not be able to make out all the words.
"Mr A'set's my Batman, 'cos he pr'tects me from da bad guys an' my Aunt and Uncle! He only punished me once, when I was sleeping, an' he helps me get better. He says he's a sol-der too. He's gotta dark costume like Batman, but a star, like a superhero."
The red star on the metal shoulder marks the Batman as HYDRA property. Hearing it referred to as a superhero mark is odd, but a star would not be a bad symbol for a superhero if it was emblazoned on the hero's chest.
He has a brief flash of a silver star on a blue costumed chest, but the rest of the mental image is blurred.
With his other hand, the boy fingers the lightning bolt scar on his own forehead, as if comparing them.
Is the boy's scar a mark showing that he belonged to the Dursley family, that they were his handlers before the Soldier assassinated them?
After another 6.8 minutes, he finds a small circular device, that is not connected to any of the arm's wiring, as if it had been added as an afterthought. Even though he did not know it was in his arm, he recognizes it is a tracker.
He pulls it out with a sense of mission progress. The little power light is off, but crushes it under his boot anyways.
The Soldier does not know how much he can do to fix the wrist clunking when it rotates.
"You hungwy, doggy? Skinny." The mini-handler says, despite being more malnourished than the creature. The Soldier turns to give his handler his full attention, arm still uncovered.
"You are more malnourished. You should eat." The boy's eyes light up and drift towards the animal crackers sitting at the top of one of the larger bags, and the Asset hands it to him. The boy opens it and munches on one, and the dog tries to grab the box in its teeth.
The Asset lifts the boy up and places him on the edge of the workbench. The dog is large enough that it could go on its hind legs and still easily grab the box, but it doesn't.
"They aren't dog biscuits." Potter mumbles, before pointing at a jar of peanut butter in the bag. "Ripper likes dat." It sounds like Wipper when he says it. "Can we give it to our dog?"
So the dog is theirs now. It had already been following them, after all. They are all strays, except the Asset, since he has Potter as his handler. Potter has nobody, since the Asset assassinated his relatives.
The Soldier nods and unscrews the cap, handing the plastic jar to the boy. The dog immediately claims the whole thing by sticking its snout directly into the jar and licking at the peanut butter.
Once it takes its snout out of the jar, the dog licks at the crumbs of crackers on Potter's hand.
"You're nicer than Ripper. He bites." Potter says to the dog, actually pronouncing the r correctly. He giggles again as it continues to lick him.
Hearing a noise outside, the Asset glances out the small shed window. The family is heading out the front door getting into one of the two cars parked in the driveway. An ordinary civilian family, it seems. A man and woman, both in their early thirties, and two children- a boy and a girl around the same size- twins, perhaps.
He watches the family get into the car and drive away. They had not even locked their door, although their boy had been the last one out. They are incompetent.
The Soldier starts reattaching the metal plates to his prosthesis. The handler starts squirming around with his legs wound tightly together, hand pressed to his groin.
It is obvious he has to urinate, but he makes no move to get down from the workbench.
"M-mr A's-set, sir, I haf'to..." Potter stammers.
"You do not have to ask to urinate." The Asset tells him, remembering earlier today when he told the boy not to urinate in his pants. Of course, now that he is a handler, the boy does not need to listen to anything the Asset says.
"Tank you." Potter bursts out. Before the Asset can even offer to take him into the empty cottage, the boy pulls down his pants, squats over a bucket, and urinates. The boy mumbles something about his cupboard.
The Soldier has urinated in a bucket before as well, and does so now, standing up and facing away from his handler. He dumps the bucket's contents outside the shed.
By 1836, over 24 hours after first observing Potter at the Dursley's, the Asset finishes reattaching the plates on his prosthesis. His flesh arm is exhausted, and his bandage is stained red. His stomach growls, he has used a lot of energy since he last ate.
The boy passes him an animal cracker shaped like a lion, apparently not planning on withholding food to punish him. He continues to pass the Asset food, like he had at the lodge.
This handler is very lenient when it comes to correction. He even gives the Soldier another plum.
Unlike Potter, the dog does not know how to properly relieve itself and demonstrates this by defecating on the shed floor.
The dog seems totally unconcerned while the boy clearly fears punishment, stammering out apologies intermixed with statements about "Aunt Tuna" and Ripper. The handler insists on cleaning it up, but there are few cleaning supplies in the shed.
The dog starts eating its own feces, which is disgusting but means Potter stops worrying about cleaning it. Is it normal for dogs to eat fecal matter?
Scrunching his nose, the Asset puts the most useful tools in the shed inside his backpack. After gathering up the bags, he checks that the coast is clear and then walks towards the driveway, where the family's second car is parked. Having two cars is excessive, but it is fortunate for the Asset. He quickly hot-wires this one, loads up the boy and the dog in the back (though the car lacks child-safety seats), and puts the car in drive.
"You never drive the Batmobile." The boy remarks. "Dudley had a toy one but he it bwoke when he pushed it down the stairs, an' Aunt Tuna didn't let me keep it."
"Destination?" The Asset asks, and when he gets no response, adds "Sir?"
DRIVE. He's commanded in his head, but the handler does not respond, and so the car remains stationary.
Avoid HYDRA. The newer voice adds, because the first voice seems unable to say it.
"Why'd you call me sir?" The handler asks in confusion. "Adults don't call kids sir... not bad worthless boys."
"You are the handler. How do you wish to be addressed?" The Soldier asks, frowning slightly. What handler doesn't want to be addressed with sir or ma'am?
"...Harry?" The boy whispers as if he doesn't mean to say it aloud, and hunches his shoulders as if the Soldier will get mad at him.
Addressing a handler by their first name is extremely disrespectful- the Asset has never done so- but it is what the handler requested to be called. This handler is exceedingly incomprehensible.
"Affirmative, Harry." The Asset answers, and Harry smiles at the use of his first name.
"Aunt Tuna an' Uncle Vernon never called me dat. Just 'boy.' 'Freak.'" Harry mutters, and then starts to debate names for the dog. Harry still seems to think that Asset is a real name, but he gave the Asset the new codename of Batman anyways.
The Asset is glad that Harry does not consider giving him the codename Blackie. Or Tickly-tongue, when the dog licks Harry again.
DRIVE. The mission pounds again in the Asset's ear.
"Where do you want to go, Harry?" He asks.
"Away from the scawry guys."
That is not a destination, but it is the direction he'd been headed anyways. The Asset puts the car in drive.
Unfortunately, they drive the family driving back in their other car, and they recognize their car. The man does not chase him when he floors the gas and speeds away, perhaps because he does not want to involve his family in a car chase, but they are surely going to call the authorities sooner than he would have liked.
The police will most likely barricade the road before the Soldier can get anywhere. He cannot turn off anywhere now, so he reluctantly parks the car, unloads the boy and the dog, and sets out on foot once again.
Maybe, in the future, he should just try to sneak rides in the backs of delivery trucks or cargo trains and avoid all the hassle of stolen vehicle reports.