January 21, 2015:
Boom tomorrow. Or in this case, yesterday. SHIELD investigates the explosions and other drone.
Maui - HI
See Log
Characters
NPCs: Goons
Mentions:
Plot:
A Dark Hold
Apocalypse: Only the Strong
Blood versus Family
Bones Of The City
Breaking the Universe
Cyberdata War: First Strike
Dangerous Esterikos Wonderous Mystikos
Dark Gods & Times
De Oppresso Liber
Demon Lord of New York
Diaz de Muertos
Don't Tell Thanos The Babysitter's Dead
Empire of Tears
Escape from Sakaar
From the Ashes
Gateway to the Stars
Genosha: Rebirth
God Of The Dead
Hacker, Sass-Mastah, Engineer, Spy
Himmel und Hölle in Bewegung Setzen
Mood Music: None.
Fade In…
As the day quickly approaches noon Hill puts the call out to the team, specifically requesting Bobbi with her hazmat gear and Kate with her equipment for gathering samples. It's time for a nature run! She even rents (and doesn't steal) a green Jeep in order to bus everyone to and from the site of last night's Incident. With two of them sick already it might seem kinda mean to make them walk all the way there and back. With extra gear.
She parks at what should seem like a safe distance from where the detonations had taken place, grabbing a pack of her own from the back of the Jeep. From the pack comes one of the Division's fancy, newish Night-Night guns (who the hell comes up with these names, anyway?) and tucks it at the back of her waistband.
"Sniffers are live, if we hit high areas of high nitrogen concentration you're all going to hear about it real fast. Anyone not taking a sample should keep some distance from the giant holes in the ground."
*
Bobbi has her Mockingbird suit on, with the hazmat suit et all in a duffel bag. After all the explosions last night, she wasn't going anywhere near the jungle without her face smashing gear. She has the pair of batons from her back slings out and linked together into a bo staff. She has a small rebreather snapped to her belt in case they hit the high nitrogen levels.
"Ready when you are, Director," Bobbi says, as she begins her trek into the blast zone from the night before. "Are you sure it was a good idea bringing H-squared back out here?" she asks.
*
Not sick with that, dammit. Too much seawater in the lungs. Even people in Hawaii get sick! Clint's sitting in the back of the jeep, his bow in hand, quiver at his feet on the floor. Every few minutes is punctuated by a *cough*. He's got his ibuprofin in a bottle, and he's swallowing it as if it were candy. Liver toxicity be damned! It keeps the headache at bay and those thousand little 'ouches'.
When they get there, Clint peels himself from the car and starts a brief perimeter. Sniffers are fine. Cameras, great… but nothing beats a Hawkeye keeping watch for the team. "Going up.." *cough* "..high." As high as he can, anyway. Not that it's too far off the ground. Still, better vantage than ground level.
Blue eyes level at Bobbi, a thin sheen of sweat showing on his brow. It's hot in Hawaii, dammit! "I'm fine."
*cough*
"Ditto."
*
It's hard to tell which Hawkeye is more stubborn, but Kate is certainly giving Clint a run for his money. At least she's not limping or bleeding anywhere. But she's been "not" coughing into her shoulder off and on for the last few hours. "Besides, I want to know what the hell makes an entire jungle go boom at one little spark." She hops down out of the Jeep, keeping a hand on it as she waits for Clint to pick a direction before heading out the other way. "Did the tracker take, by the way?"
*
"If it hadn't been for Barton's eyes we would have continued to miss something of critical importance, and given his condition already there's nothing I could do to keep Bishop from tagging along short of throwing her in the brig, and I'm all out of brigs," Hill replies to Bobbi. "No, it's not tactically wise, but right now I need the team together and you know how damn stubborn these two can be."
Yes, she's aware that they can both hear her just fine.
Hill isn't quite through gearing up, hefting the entire jackstand out of the back of the Jeep and a flat hunk of plywood. The stand weighs an absolute ton but she's going to have need for it soon enough. "If you fall I'm not catching you, Barton. If you fall and a tree lands on you I might come looking for you after I've recovered whatever's left of the drone."
Responding to Kate's question, Hill isn't feeling shy when she says "We did. Nice shot. I've got Romanoff in line to follow up on our mystery party as soon as possible. There's only so many places to hide on Maui, we'll find 'em."
That said she hefts the jack up onto her shoulder and soldiers onward into the woods.
*
"Sure you are fine, Featherbrain, sure," Bobbi quips back at Hawkeye. "And those are totally Flintstones chewables you're dining on." Point. "Hunter went through those drives we pulled from the lumber company. Some financial advisor from California named Simon King is the one who put in the massive order for Koa. Not sure what he needs with it, but he, or whoever he's getting it for, would be my guess for whoever is laying out these trees to let the loggers get around the eco laws." She paces alongside Hill, pulling out a sensor to take air quality readings as they move.
*
"I can hear you. Not de— okay, I am. But I'm a damned good lip-reader too."
*cough*
"So don't you forget it." Clint postures, but it's hardly serious. This is more his 'oh yeah?' stance rather than anything that might spoil for an argument. "Is that what they are? Koa? What sort of name is that? 'Koa'." Ah well. "Yeah. Always did have a thing for Betty." With something of a two-fingered salute, he's gone to find somewhere good to perch without waiting for an answer. He'll find something.
*
"Awesome," Kate grins at the word on the tracker, stifling another cough in her shirt. Nothing to see here. Totally responsible archer. Just some dirt in the lungs. Responsible enough, at least, that before she starts up a tree, she pauses to stare up the height.
You know, that may just not be the best plan in the world.
Pausing, she heads over to Bobbi. "So. Hypothetically speaking. If someone were already sick, then it'd be safer for them to gather samples on the ground, right? So no one else was going to get sick?"
*
The report from Bobbi and Hunter is met with a dip of Hill's head in acknowledgement. "Put word through to HQ when you can, we'll get the process rolling for a line tap. Good catch."
Back to Barton, one brow arched, she asks "Am I wrong?" regarding his sheer stubbornness. "Go climb a damn tree, Chicken Little."
Kate's next question is one which the DepDir doesn't bother to answer, mostly because it's directed at Bobbi. She's also focusing on a tracker, working her way through the woods to where the drone had taken its last fall. In a way it's kind of handy that it got caught up in the middle of the explosions, it's going to lead them all right to where they want to be. It's not all that far away, either. Pretty close, in fact, if one goes by the tufts of dried out dirt lying all over the place. Natural shrapnel.
Cresting a small incline reveals a whole lot more, showing not just large holes from where hidden pockets of fuel had exploded but smaller strings carving through the dirt, linking them all together. It looks like someone had tried to rip out a series of large roots.
"Welcome to 'Gardening with the Hulk,'" Hill deadpans at the sight. "Ladies, the ground is yours. If you see anyone around here that hasn't RSVP'ed, get 'em down. I have questions."
And a drone to unearth. Spotting the offending tree brings forth a slight grimace. That..kinda looks like a rotor poking out of the grass. Part of one.
*
"No, there's a finite amount of ammonia you can have in your system before it kills you, H2," Bobbi replies. "If you two get any sicker, we'll be flying you home in body bags." She glances down at her readings and hands Kate the rebreather. "If you're staying down here, wear that." As she crests the hill she blinks at the carnage. "What the hell? It's like a giant plucked everything up, or like the root system was det cord."
*
"Well that sounds super fun," Kate murmurs at the talk of going home in a body bag, taking the rebreather with a sigh that doesn't quite turn into a cough. Clint insists on acting normal. Kate at least takes it easy, conserving her energy so she can keep going a little bit longer. "It was a really big explosion," she notes scientifically as she gets the rebreather set up and looks out over the chaos. "Det cord root system is pretty accurate, actually."
*
Clint doesn't read medical reports. As far as he's concerned, he's picked up a damnable cold. Just his luck. And warm weather colds are the worst. If the headache would just go away…
The senior of the two Hawkeyes does find a perch, and he radios in position. "If anyone shows," *cough* "you all will be the second to know." He'll be first. "I promise. These guys, you'll be able to interrogate."
*
"Detcord's a very good description," Hill also agrees while stepping over to one of the fallen trees. Down goes the board, then down goes the jack. They won't appreciate the humor of her returning the drone to the Iliad techs in a giant Zip-Loc bag but hey, what else can she do?
"Video proves that the explosions occurred from underground, never too far from the trunks, and I -believe- they were all koa. Be real careful if you start digging."
The jack gets wedged beneath part of the tree then kicked further into place, fitting the handle into place as she offers back "That's very reassuring, Hawkeye. Maybe this time put the arrow in their knee and not their elbow, turns out they can still run away with an arm injury."
Tree..heavy..need..bigger..jackstand..!
*
Bobbi uses her bo staff to level herself down into one of the holes where a tree used to be, slapping a medical mask over her face in place of the rebreather. She sets the duffel down beside her and begins pulling out jars to put soil and debris samples in, digging carefully through the dirt to see if there is anything artificial beneath the ground that might have caused this.
"Is there any chance this is some sort of altered form of fertilizer? Ammonium nitrate is used for fertilizer a lot, but it shouldn't be in a concentration this volatile. It's used in mining explosives and IED's too, but this seems like it might have actually penetrated the trees to saturation, then exploded." Mockingbird frowns as she begins packing the samples up. "No one has anything flammable on them here, right?" she asks, with a tinge of concern.
*
"I'm still thinking meta," Kate suggests. "Maybe it's a side effect of some sort of growth power." Every time, she's got a new, Scooby Doo-worthy theory. It's like she spends her free time thinking up the wildest possible explanations. She doesn't go into the holes, but instead keeps moving along the chain of explosions, trying to trace them back to each other.
*
"Felt like detcord," Hawkeye agrees. "Never felt the ground," *cough*, ".. shake like that before. Like it was following a path."
*cough*
"Dammit," comes softly.
"Flammable? I left the incindiary arrows back at base." He's got his tracking, goop- and a couple of others that he's been dying to try out.
"Not everything has some creepy magic stuff behind it, Katie." *cough* "Didn't you ever watch Scooby Doo? I mean, the originals. Not the crap they've got out now."
*
"Nothing more than usual," Hill replies about having anything flammable.
While she's fighting with the remains of the upper part of a tree, Bobbi's left surrounded by the remains of the lower part. Quite possibly of the same tree. Inside of the ruptured dirt there's more to be gathered than samples, careful examination of the dish-shaped depression would show the remains of root material deeply embedded into the soil. It almost looks like there had been a bulb of some fashion within the roots, themselves. The 'detcord roots' all spread outward from each of these pockets, all of them linking together to cause the chain reaction. While the roots aren't all connected together they could have triggered nearby sets by proximity.
"Fertilizer…" Hill repeats, thinking aloud. "Koa only grows in Hawaii, right? At elevation, which means they're growing off of volcanoes, which I don't recall as being the most fertile of ground to begin with."
Jason back at the lumber yard did say it must have been a good season for koa not too long ago.
Piece by piece the drone is unearthed, Hill prying a severed camera lens from the UAV-shaped crater with a grimace. "I really hope these lenses didn't cost as much as they look like they did."
Eh. For now it gets tossed into a bag.
"At this point I think a meta would be easier to handle. Maybe it's time to suggest that Maui get its very own SRD."
*
"Wait, they redid Scooby Doo? Why would they need to do that? It was fine like it was!" Old people unite. Bobbi grouses as she labels each jar with the date, time, and GPS data. "And I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!" she old fogey voices.
"Volcanic soil can be very rich and good for growing things, but only if it isn't heavily weathered. Up in the higher elevations it's likely been weathered, and Haleakala has only erupted three times in the last 900 years. And they're pretty sure the last eruption was earlier than AD 1600." Ah Bobbi, she always does her proper research. It's why they pay her the big bucks. That and she's good at breaking faces.
*
"I have actually heard that line before," Kate notes academically on the matter of meddling kids. "It's good for a laugh every time, though." Coming up on a crater that gives a good look at where that bulb may have been, she tilts her head, considering it. "Maybe they're mutant trees. Tree cancer!" Which brings on another bout of coughing, as she wipes a hand across her brow. "Probably not tree cancer. Seriously, do you really think someone is so shitty that they'd engineer this much bullshit just to get enough koa for some feature wall in their California mansion?" There's a pause, and she grimaces. "Don't answer that, I know those people. They would."
*
"Nah. All we have to do is unmask old Mr. Jones. He'll say something to the effect of 'I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling SHIELD agents..' and we haul him off to jail or something." Clint laughs as his words pretty much echo Bobbi's, at the same time. Of -course- she'd remember it too. "Yeah, they made new ones, only in the new ones, there really are things that go bump in the night. It's not just Shaggy's bad trip."
A cough sounds at the same time Kate's does; of course they'd be sick together, right? Doesn't mean Clint's not a touch concerned for her. With all this talk of 'poisoning'. Clint's happily perched in his tree, keeping an eye out, watching the lay of the land. The little historical facts, and the ecological social commentary passes by; not his job. "I still thing Koa is a dumb name for a tree."
*
MEANWHILE…
Some reasonable distance away from the home of the fellow who has the other drone, there's a redhead (well, a redhead with her hair dyed brunette) tucked into the scrub. Possibly she's out for a wander, but though she looks like she's listening to tunes on her phone, she's in fact checking out the security in the direction of that house. How good is he going to be at detecting bugs? How well can he detect… well, anything else? So she's scanning frequencies and cursing the fate that says she doesn't get to have an entire surveillance van.
*
With Bobbi's response Hill pauses, thinks it over, then lightly shrugs while muscling a chunk of the fuselage out of the dirt. "Close enough." Now she's agreeing with Bobbi -and- Kate, hopefully she isn't getting sick as well… "The idea of fertilizer would make sense from a productivity standpoint, if the lumberyards wanted faster turnaround and potentially some way to make them die off quicker of 'natural' causes then it might be an engineered alteration. And yes..they would." Pause. "Or if someone wanted to try and discourage anyone that tried to harm the trees, such as by cutting them down."
"Here's an idea. Hey Barton, try poking your tree with a broadhead a couple of times and tell us what happens."
Another handful of mangled parts gets dropped into the bag. "Just be glad we have something easy to say like 'koa,' and not 'acacia koa.'"
Out by Widow's position a full-on surveillance team may..not actually be necessary. It's a shack in the woods, a rough dirt driveway all which visually connects it to the rest of civilization. There's a garage, the door left wide open, with the very same blue pickup truck that had carried the other drone last night. Kate's tracker arrow isn't far away, having been pried free then carelessly flung into the woods. The peculiar thing is that it doesn't look like a 'base' at all. Zero fortifications. No surveillance. It literally looks like some guy's home. Probably some single guy at that, the yard could use some serious TLC.
*
"People suck, so I wouldn't put it past them. I'm more wondering if this California financial analyst is dabbling in lumber futures or something, and making his money of advising clients to invest," Bobbi muses with a frown. "Hill's right. Mutant trees would be easier. I don't relish the idea of having to slog through this guy's financials."
Bobbi snorts at Clint. "It's an acacia hardwood, Birdbrain. Koa is derivative Proto-Polynesian. It means ironwood. Hardwoods are really pricey and sought after for everything from crafts to musical instruments, but furniture making especially."
*
"No money in futures if you're glutting the market," Kate points out, nudging a bit of exploded root with the toe of her boot. "I'll vouch for people with money using it to get what they want, though. Without really thinking about the long-term consequences of it. I guess that'd be easier, though? Maybe?"
*
This is possibly pathetically easy. The man has no surveillance cameras that Widow can see — and if she can't find them, they can't be found. She's expecting… well, if the guy is playing with their drone, maybe he has drone-detecting equipment? But no. Nothing. This is quite possibly just some guy who found a drone.
So Natasha creeps closer and, when she's within a fairly short distance, pulls out a tiny drone of her own. It looks like a junebug. It runs like a junebug. It has a teensy camera and a teensy microphone, both of which transmit back to her, and she can control it from her Not A Phone.
As she sets it skittering, she murmurs very softly into her comm: "Spider in position. Do you want me to just bring your toys back home?"
*
"Oh hey… what happens if you do 'this'?" Clint coughs again and it takes a couple of seconds for him to catch his breath. "Right up there with, 'This is disgusting. Here, you try it.'" Still, he does pull one of his arrows out to carve in the trunk of the tree. 'CB'.
"Proto— what?" He pauses before, "It's a -tree-. You know, the 'I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree..' tree." A tree.
"What I can see so far is that the issue seems to be isolated just with the koa, which should make it much easier to pin down," Hill offhandedly remarks.
Once more Barton proves that steel trumps iron(wood) as he carves his initials into the trunk. Fortunately there's not another explosion, nor any obvious decompression. Nothing to see here, sir. Juuust another hardwood tree.
*
"Negative, Widow. We're limited on toybox space. Just take out the batteries first if you plan on making any local donations."
Just don't let Barton see the junebug drone, he might get jealous.
The windows are already open at the shack in the woods. Pleasant, predictable weather, year-round. The other drone from last night, in all of its haphazardly coated camoflague painting, sits right in the middle of the living room table. Beside it, sprawled out on the couch, is a man who is trying with varying degrees of success to rest with an arrow stuck in his elbow.
In the kitchen there's another man, no worse for wear, talking on a phone.
"-eed a medic, he's in real bad shape, okay? He got hit by an -arrow,- I don't think this has anything to do with the Feds! Look, we can't be blamed for what happened. If we hide we all look guilty and Mark could bleed out all over my couch. What then?" he asks then holds to listen, nervously pacing around the kitchen.
"Charlie and Greg already found where they're hiding out, right? Yeah..yeah yeah, I know you told me, but she didn't actually -shoot- at either of them, did she? I just don't want to be pulled out of bed by the Army, alright? That's all that I'm saying here."
*
"You do realize there are different species of trees and they all have names, H1?" Bobbi quips over the comm. "I hope we never have you along if we investigate something with Jabuticaba trees, or Boojum, or Ta Prohm." Surely she's making these names up, right? She continues to gather samples and dig in the soil for anything that might show a controlled method of detonation rather than the chaos of last night.
*
Kate shrugs, mostly to herself, then steps away from her current spot to go peer into another divot in the world. As she does, though, she gets hit with a dizzy spell, swaying. Whoa, need to…She reaches out for support, but someone's gone and blown up all the trees, which means there isn't anything there when she reaches out. Awkwardly, she goes stumbling into the divot, rolling down the dirt.
"I'm fine! That was totally *cough* on purpose!"
*
"Yeah. Oak. Pine. We used to boil down Sassafrass roots." See? Real trees with 'normal' names. Clint puts his arrow back into his quiver, his bit of graffitti accomplished. After second thought, he pulls it back out and puts another set of initials under it.
*cough*
The archer is in the tree, presumably he can see everything that's going on down below. Digging fingers into his eyes, Clint finishes to catch the last bit of Kate falling over. "Not enough sleep, Katie-Kate?"
*
Charlie. Greg. Natasha starts cross-referencing the names with the name of the man in this shack here — whoever owns it, anyway — and continues watching and listening.
Meanwhile, it would be really nice to know who he's on the phone with. If it's a landline, that's going to be slightly harder to pick up, but who uses landlines anymore? Cell transmissions, meanwhile, are pie to listen in on.
"Copy," she mutters. "Looks like someone got an owie. That's what happens when you give kids BB guns too early."
*
A 'controlled explosion' is probably out of the cards with this scenario. It just looks too random, too violent. It also serves as a good suggestion as to what the rest of the yet unexploded forest might be holding around the group. At least there's no shortage of places to take samples from!
With the broken UAV bagged and stowed Hill drops the fallen tree and pulls the jack free, not really caring about the plywood section with the extra weight she already has to lug back to the Jeep. It's sounding like good timing as well, her attention snapping up and over to Kate as she disappears from sight into one of the dirt blisters. "Bishop? Okay, I think you kids have had enough playtime for today. Morse, how quickly can you be wrapped up?"
No nitrogen spikes have been found so far on the reader, it's probably safe to assume that a lot of it had already been vented after last night.
The shack is listed as being owned by a Lewis Monroe who also, as it turns out, happens to be licensed to operate a helicopter. Which should make it easier to pull off advanced drone flying maneuvers beneath the canopy of an exploding forest. Sure enough, he's on a cell. The signal's going to another part of the island, likewise not too far away from the epicentre. Lewis is also getting pretty frustrated.
"Fine, if you want to stick your head under a rock and hope no one notices then go ahead, I'm not gonna lose my license over this."
Before the person at the other end can reply he ends the call, tossing the phone onto the counter before running fingers through ragged brown hair. "It's all just a big misunderstanding..we can work through this…"
"Yeah, thank Hawkeye Prime for that," Hill replies to Widow's observation.
*
"All done, Boss," Mockingbird quips as she finishes loading her jars back into the duffle. She peers out of her crater to sigh at Kate's. She leaps out and twirls her bo staff, handing one end down to the young archer to help her climb out. "You're really bad at not getting in trouble, aren't you?" she queries.
*
"Or oxygen. It could probably be either," Kate replies to Clint, sighing heavily into a cough before starting to dredge herself out of the hole. "You know how it goes," she smiles weakly up at Bobbi, reaching out to take the end of the staff and start pulling herself up. "You spend enough time around Clint, and it just rubs off? Yeah, no, even I'm not buying that. I totally earned the Hawkeye name in every possible way." Once she's out, she brushes herself off half-heartedly.
*
"Yeah. Next time, I'll go for the knee," is offered over the radio. Clint's grousing now, "Any idea how much knee-shots hurt?" As opposed to elbow shots? Okay. Maybe about the same. Or a little more.
Hawkeye catches Bobbi's aid, and he nods his approval from his spot. Worst part about being in the nest is sometimes observation is really hard. Like, the documentary cameraman filming little baby sea turtles get eaten by seagulls. To sit and not give away one's spot really takes willpower. Training. And an ability to sleep at night.
*cough*
Clint digs into his pocket, pulls out his bottle of over the counter stuff and dry-swallows a small handful. (Nothing like self-medicating!). "Hey, no blaming me on that one. You fell in all by yourself." It's clear in the undertones; he's a little concerned. She's a whole lot more graceful than that. Way more than he is.
*
Widow's sneaking forward as she listens, records the conversations, keeps a close eye on her surroundings. This sort of place could have awesome boobytraps. Evidently it doesn't, but that's no reason not to be careful.
She slides a hand into that kicky little straw purse she's been carrying around. A couple of knockout gas pellets slide into her hand as she takes position under the window. She flicks them in quickly, flattening herself against the wall and waiting for the thuds. At least she can watch through her little junebug.
*
"-Fine,- Barton, then aim for the calf," Maria replies with a heavy sigh.
"Alright people, we're clearing out," Hill calls to the others. "These samples are high priority, I want to know what the risk is of this all happening a second time. Enough people are already worrying that the rumbling was Pele clearing her throat. Soon as we get home I want the Hawks back in their nests and taking, or -not- taking, whatever our songbird happens to prescribe."
And stop trying to medicate your own damn self, Clint!
Well, poor Mark on the couch is finally getting some much-needed rest. Lewis follows his lead a second later, he never sees it coming. Then he's lying on the floor, done and out. Sending Widow in to handle these guys isn't much different from using a tactical nuke strike to level an anthill, they're just regular old simpletons that made the mistake of standing out.
Robo-Junebug don't care.
*
"Yeah we should get these two back to Ops, Director," Bobbi notes. "They both need some follow up tests and rest. Those loggers were laid up for weeks and these two went into the field less than 24 hours after being exposed." She looks at Kate, then up at Clint's perch. "THERE MAY BE SHOTS!" because threatening them with pointy things is about the only way to get them to actually rest.
*
"See, that's the kind of recovery I'm talking about," Kate grins when Bobbi threatens shots, winking up at Clint. "In Hawaii recovery, shots come in glasses with tiny umbrellas." She tries to make light of the recovery process, but underneath it all, she's definitely looking a little gray, and there's a wheeze under her breath. Which isn't even a little bit normal for her.
*
Shots?
A prolonged coughing fit sounds from the tree. Clint knows the threat and he shakes his head. "Not coming down, then." Of course he is, but he wants to be sure that his displeasure is noted for the record.
When he does depart from his perch, he's a little less than graceful himself, more falling than climbing down, landing with a *whump* on the ground. And a groan.
Neither of them are looking all that good. As he lies there, Clint's hand is twitching. "Okay.." is signed with one hand. Slowly, he gains his feet and offers a half-quirked smile. "I'll go for an umbrella?"
Tch. It's not even a challenge.
*
Natasha snags her bug, drops it into her purse, and lightly slides in through the window. Poor guys. Just flying in the wrong airspace. Her work is quick and deft, though: she starts pulling anything that could lead back to SHIELD or to any of her agent friends. It's nothing at all to fry the logic board on the drone — it can be repaired, it just needs a new part ordered in. Probably from the mainland. Lame.
She also takes a moment — and it won't take more than a moment — to clone the phones of the two men. All their contact lists, all their recent numbers for calls made and received… she ought to be out of the room in five minutes, but she takes an extra moment to see if there's anything else.
"Looking good," she murmurs into her comm. "This isn't even taking candy from a baby."
*
(Shots?) "Hell, maybe I should get sick," Hill mutters while shifting the weight of the jackstand on her shoulder. "This..was a lot easier to carry going downhill."
Stubborn agent alert! "Barton, get your ass down here before I blow up your tree." Aaand here he comes. "Graceful. Come on. Back on your feet, soldier."
Back to the Jeep, back to the studio, and back to the lab equipment they shall go.
For Natasha, clearing the place out barely rates as a training exercise. There's no hidden caches of firearms, no secret tunnel entrances to a doomsday device. Just a couple of simple people living simply. With the two phones cloned it should be a simple matter to gather the rest of the pieces and put together what seems to be like a fairly unexciting picture, but at least then everyone will know the score. That, and the people that got caught up with the Division's business won't have any hard data regarding the encounter. Sometimes all it takes is to plug a few leaks in security. At least the weather's still warm and the drinks are still chilled.
"Copy that, Spider. Soccer practice is over, I'm taking the kids home."
*
"Shots as in needles, injections, hypodermics, syringes," Bobbi clarifies. "Sharp pointy things that are going to be jabbed in uncomfortable places. And the more you two sass me, the less gentle I will be with them! I will totally go Nurse Ratched on your asses," She mutters, "But if you behave I'll put little umbrella's in your bottles of cough suppressant." Stick. Carrot. Their choice.
*
"The good stuff, with the codeine?" Kate asks with a hopeful lash flutter in Bobbi's direction. "Hey, are you licensed? Can you actually write prescriptions? Because I need to keep track of who to kiss up to," she says as she leans down to offer Clint a wobbly, clammy hand up. "I'm not sure I've got a lot of it left in me."