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A red shadow slowly crept down a few stairs towards an office completely devoid of light. On the other side of the old manor another shadow, this one holding a bow, followed the red shadow’s lead.
Not a single sound was to be heard, even though the shadows had been told that the Russian mafia was holding one of their friends for information. They had both expected them to try to obtain the information through painful and definitely not legal means, which should result in a lot of screaming. Therefore, the silence wasn’t really comforting. It probably meant that their friend was already dead.
The shadow with the bow held up its free hand, motioning for the other one to open the door.
The moment it did, a voice with an Irish accent started speaking inside the office.
“I already told you, I ain’t interested in anything you can offer me and torture won’t really help you either.”
The red shadow stepped forward and switched on the light. The man with the bow, now identifiable as Clint Barton or Hawkeye for anyone who has access to S.H.I.E.L.D. records, stopped in the doorway to stare at the guy. He was thin. Really thin, sickly thin. His well-tailored suit was hanging of his body as if there was nothing other than bones holding it upright.
“You are not Phil.” Clint said.
“You are not who I thought would come for my rescue either.” The thin man answered dryly.
Natasha took a step forward, holding out her hand. “We are looking for a guy, maybe this tall, dark hair. Whenever he opens his mouth the only words that leave it are drenched in sarcasm. They probably called him Coulson. Maybe Phil.”
“Yeah, he was here a few minutes earlier. You just missed him. Managed to get out of his cuffs and made a run for it. They all went after him, left me here all on my own.” He sounded almost insulted.
A cough from the doorway stopped them all in their tracks. Two women were standing in front of them, one of them light, wearing brown leather motor cycle clothing, blond hair, a sword on her back, the other one almost her polar opposite. She was light skinned like the sword lady but her hair was almost black, same as her clothes. She was holding a stick, which was covered in blue illuminated symbols.
The man, Natasha and Clint were just about to rescue, took a step forward, dragging the chair, both of his arms were still cuffed to, with him.
“Valkyrie, Tanith, what a surprise to see you here.”
“Yeah,” the light one answered dryly. “Almost like we are on an official rescue mission to get you.”
The other one was even more judgmental. “You got yourself captured by the fucking Russian mafia in America when you are supposed to be in Ireland – care to explain how that happened? And why did we need to come and rescue you? You’ve gotten yourself out of more hopeless situations.”
Natasha raised an eyebrow. “He looked quite comfortable when we got here.”
Clint ever the more chaotic but also the one to worry, considering that he was still looking for his boyfriend, was the first one to ask. “Who are you and where the hell is Phil?”
“I don’t know any Phils,” the light one said, shrugging her shoulders “but your mafia guys were running towards the eastern exit. Looked like they were following someone.”
Clint turned around, started running and was almost around the corner, when he noticed that Natasha wasn’t following him. “What are you waiting for? Better Weather?”
“Na,” she said “he is an adult man, he can look out for himself, I am more interested in our new friends here.”
“We are not that interesting,” the dark one said, swapping her stick, which she put in a sheath on her back, for a knife.
“Yeah really, nothing here to see.”
Natasha’s eyebrow stayed raised. “Now, that part just made you more interesting than you’ve been before.”
The dark one turned toward the light one, who threw up her arms in return like she didn’t know what to do either.
“Next time we just take Geoffrey, that will make things easier.”
“Sure, have him running around thinking he will get eaten by another shark, that will be helpful.”
“It was one time. One. And he had just touched a cursed pen and he didn’t even realize he was doing it. I wouldn’t exactly call it his fault.”
“Do you tend to touch cursed objects before you know what they do?”
“Not to my knowledge, but I was possessed by a Remnant for a few years – so maybe?”
Natasha didn’t even bother to hide her staring anymore, the whole conversation only got weirder and weirder the more the two woman snarked at each other. Clint seemed to think so to, given hat he had put his arrow back where into its quiver and was now holding his bow like a baton.
“Ah girls,” he held up his free hand, “not to spoil your fun, but you are still in the middle of a mafia hide out and your friend is still tied to a chair.”
“I also think he might have a concussion.” Natasha continued. Cooking her head and examining his. “He’s got a strange dent on his forehead and his eyes are kind of weird.”
The dark one turned around, examining her friend too. “Na, his eyes are normal, they always do that. His head though… Skul, did you get hit by a bullet?!”
“Yah, they shot it straight through my forehead after my hat fell off, it’s a true disaster and a waste of a very fashionable skull.”
“I thought you were bulletproof.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call him bulletproof.”
“He is bulletproof. Having no organs which can bleed out when you get hit by a bullet, so you therefore can’t die when you get shot at, equals bulletproof in my opinion.”
“They still hurt when they hit.”
“You got yourself in this situation. You let them shoot a hole in a skull, I obtained through not exactly legal means and the help of a vampire who later tried to turn me–“
“After you used him to cheat on your boyfriend.”
“-therefore, your opinion doesn’t count.”
“Nothing you ever do counts as legal. Also, this isn’t my skull. I didn’t want to risk the original, when I knew that I could end up in a dangerous-“
“Just stop talking, it’s surely not getting any better.”
“Pretty sure, your fashion statement is now useless, you can still see the hole through your façade.”
They were mad. Clint was sure of it; he knew all kinds of crazy and they definitely made it up to the top ten of his list. Natasha on the other hand didn’t seem to think so. She had her head cooked and was following their conversation attentively.
The discussion came to a sudden end when the dark girl’s phone started to vibrate with a message.
“Fletcher is outside,” she said, after studying it for a moment. He wants to know if we are going to join him, or if he is supposed to find us.
“Na,” light woman said, “let’s not keep him waiting if we are already using him as our means of transportation.”
The blond one moved towards the chair thin guy was still handcuffed to and started – to Clint’s confusion – to pet them until they fell off. If he hadn’t still had a firm grip on his bow with one hand, he probably would have rubbed his eyes. Being as it was, he simply used the one hand he had to pinch his other arm to make sure that he wasn’t hallucinating. The boy who suddenly appeared in the doorway didn’t make it any better.
He didn’t fit in with any of them. He was wearing normal clothes in different to the girls’ combat gear or the thin man’s suit which was obviously still made from the same material as the girls. If Clint had passed him on the street, he would have never guessed that a guy like him would casually stop by in a mafia hide out to pick up his badass, ass kicking friends.
Given that Natasha gave him the same strange look Clint had just given him, he guessed that she just had had the same thought even though she was better at reading people than him.
“I could still hear you outside and I was standing on ground level, while you were all the way up here. I have really no idea how you are as effective on missions as you are considering this pandemonium.” He rubbed his nose. Extending his hand, he gave Natasha a bright smile and mimed raising his hat with the other in Clint’s direction. Once everyone of his friends or coworkers – Clint didn’t know – had gripped on of his hands or at least his arm he vanished, taking them all with him.
Clint blinked. Blinked again and stared at the place from which the four of them had literally vanished into thin air. The two agents turned to look at each other.
“Let’s not write that down in the report, I don’t want another twenty psych evaluations.” Clint said.
“Yeah, let’s not... Alright, come on. We still need to find Coulson.”