CATWS/Covenant: Fun and (War) Games
“Pay attention!” a voice snarls at him, and something pokes him painfully in the ribs. “This mission is critical.”
Chase is sitting on a hard chair in a small room with a glowing screen and a logo that looks like an octopus. The asshole who thumped him wears all-black fatigues with a name-tag that reads “Rumlow”.
The last thing he remembers is fighting Caleb and getting blasted into a fireball. Now he has no idea where he is, or what this fool is talking about, his mission.
He glances down and discovers he’s wearing some serious leather body armor, and what the fuck?! His right arm is perfectly normal, but his left arm is shining chrome, a column of interlocking metal plates.
Did Caleb zap him into Call of Duty or what?-because this is weird. Maybe he hit his head when he landed, and this is a video game hallucination from watching Tron too many times as a kid.
Rumlow slaps his face, and Chase’s first reaction is to slam the guy through the nearest wall. But when he tries to push, nothing happens. He tries again with the same results, and the man grabs him by the hair and gets in his face. “You need to pay attention to the briefing!”
Hair-pulling is for chickenshits, and Power or no Power, Chase isn’t going to sit here and take it. Reaching up to grab the man’s wrist with his metal hand, Chase squeezes. Hard. In his steely grip, bones splinter. Rumlow screams like a girl, and when Chase releases him, his arm is skewed at an unnatural angle.
“Do that again, I’ll break your other arm,” Chase tells him matter-of-factly. “Play the damn briefing if it’s such a big deal.”
Rumlow fumbles with the remote with his other hand, and Chases watches the PowerPoint presentation, still half-convinced that all this isn’t real.
He doesn’t have his Power, but apparently he has a wicked cool cyborg arm, and according to the briefing, “Hydra” expects him to break into a heavily fortified base and retrieve a prototype jet-pack.
He’s issued weapons, including a big-ass gun that’s worthy of the Terminator-he can hardly wait to find out what it shoots-and escorted into an SUV…although he notices that Rumlow, cradling his arm, keeps his distance. So does the small squad of men in black fatigues who keep looking from him to Rumlow with something like incredulity.
When they get to the perimeter of the installation, Chase looks at the fence, which is, like, ten feet high and, according to the briefing, electrified. He doesn’t have a handy step-ladder, but…he bounces onto the hood of the SUV, then up to the roof, and from there it’s easy to leap over the fence. He clears the barbed-wire handily, rolling as he lands, back up on his feet in one fluid motion that feels as natural as breathing.
Okay, this is seriously cool. Chase likes physical activity-it’s why he’s a damn good swimmer-and the discovery that he’s got mad ninja skills and carte blanche to use them is the bomb.
The poor schlub on patrol doesn’t have a chance to raise an alarm before Chase snaps his neck. It’s incredibly satisfying. Danvers and the rest of his happy little clique can keep their historic lineage and Power. This is better by a mile.
He makes it into the bunker without incident-well, unless you count another broken neck and two slashed throats-nobody’s noticed him, maybe because Rumlow and his minions are creating a disturbance at the communications array.
That changes as soon as he blows away the dude at the front desk. He grabs one of the women as he blasts his way through a big room full of cubicles, and uses her and her badge to get the door to the vault open. Since she’s seen him, he takes her out…slowly, metal hand at her throat as she clutches at him, trying to beg him for her life. “Sorry, honey,” he drawls. “You should’ve called in sick today.”
They expect him to grab the suit and bring it back to them, but Chase doesn’t give a fuck what Hydra expects. There’s a manual for the device, and he takes a few minutes to look it over. Good thing the Collinses popped for those speed reading classes when he was getting ready to take his SATs….
Chase soars over the base like an avenging angel on his way to the rendezvous. The flight-suit has elevated this little caper into a whole new realm of awesomeness. It’s got actual metal wings allowing him to swoop and glide. It’s stealth-quiet and the sense of power he feels has given him a hard-on. Okay, he'll admit it, he’s been turned on ever since he took out that first sentry. The endorphin rush is almost as good as Ascending.
There’s a convoy of trucks over by the array and it looks like Rumlow’s contingent could use some help. Hell, it gives him a chance to see what the big-ass gun will do…. The recoil pinwheels him in mid-air, but he recovers in time to see one of the trucks explode spectacularly, triggering a chain reaction among the other vehicles. Laughing gleefully, he dives toward the soldiers, using the rifle with sniper-scope this time, knocking the enemy force down like ducks in a shooting gallery.
Swooping past Rumlow’s forces, Chase lands on the far side of the fence near the SUV. They’ve cut a hole in the fence, and hastily scramble through to join him.
“You were supposed to take the damn thing, not use it!” Rumlow starts to say as the SUV pulls away.
“What I did to your arm? I could just as easily do to your tongue,” Chase tells him calmly. “Just say thank you and shut the fuck up.”
Rumlow doesn’t say thank you, but doesn’t give Chase any more shit, either.
He’s delivered to a building that looks like a century-old bank, its marble floors gone dingy, traces of faded opulence in the molded ceiling panels and gilt light fixtures.
There’s a lot of medical paraphernalia in the interior room they end up in. A guy in a lab coat looks at Rumlow’s damaged hand, and shakes his head. It’s going to need surgery. Meanwhile, he doles out a shot for pain and puts a cast on it.
Chase doesn’t like the looks of the seat they want him to take. It looks like restraints, and hello, he was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. Reborn, maybe, he thinks with a private smile, but he’s not dumb in either incarnation. He prowls around, keeping an eye on everyone, still tingling with leftover adrenalin.
The man who strides into the room looks like someone Arthur Collins might’ve played golf with at the country club. Chase knows Old Money WASP when he sees it-and he figures this is the guy in charge. The way Rumlow stands at attention supports his instinct.
When the guy tries to slap him, Chase blocks the blow with his bionic arm and gives him his best death glare. “The next person who tries to slap me, poke me or pull my hair? I’m gonna rip off their arm and shove it up their ass. Sideways.”
The WASP stares at him in disbelief, then glances just past Chase, who spins and intercepts the lab-coat with the hypodermic. Seizes it and jabs it into the medic’s neck. He goes down, convulsing.
“That dose wasn’t calibrated for him,” the WASP says mildly.
“Tough shit. Not my problem.”
Rumlow shrugs when the WASP looks at him. “I’m not even going to try to take him single-handed, Mr. Pierce.”
Chase steps over the prone body still twitching on the marble floor. He moves toward Pierce, maintaining eye contact until he’s right up in the older man’s space and the guy flinches away.
Having asserted his dominance, Chase stands relaxed but alert in case one of these fools decides to try something else.
“Listen up, Mr. Pierce,” he says. “I don’t mind kicking ass and blowing shit up. Today was a blast. Just remember, I can fight for you, or I can fight against you, and which way I go depends on you. Treat me with respect and we’ll be fine. Fuck with me and your ass is mine. Clear?”
Pierce’s mouth is working, but no sound comes out. He finally says, “Close your eyes and clear your mind….”
“I don’t think so. A guy like you, rich and powerful, didn’t get that way without some basic people skills. So use them. As long as you treat me as an equal instead of like I’m shit on your shoes, I’ll be happy to comply with whatever missions you need me for. Otherwise, I’m sure there are other organizations who’d be thrilled to have someone with my expertise.”
After a moment, Pierce concedes. “We need you. Please work with us, not against us.”
“Okay then.”
“Hail Hydra!” Pierce proclaims.
Chase rolls his eyes. Yeah, sure. "Hail Hydra.” This is going to be fun.
***
From a prompt: http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/564726.html?thread=79400438#t79400438