The First Avenger (Aftermath)

February 07, 2016:

Some socializing took place after the Avengers first mission in Mexico.

Characters

NPCs: Grunt and Hawkes

Mentions: MoonDark and Baron Zemo

Plot:

Mood Music: The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton by The Mountain Goats


Fade In…

The hangar is large enough to house the C-130, but that's about it. Otherwise, there's an office and a holding cell. If this is what Cap plans call his new HQ, it's certainly the definition of sparse.

Shift strides down the cargo ramp, walking his motorcycle with him. The poor thing is beyond wrecked; it barely is capable of rolling on both wheels. The frame is bent, one tire flopping, the handlebars all out of sorts, and there are pieces of it that are simply missing, such as the headlamp and kickstand.

Once a decent distance from the plane, he tries to prop the Iron-883 up against an empty cargo crate, but it ends up falling to the cement, making a lot of noise. There is grumbling, followed almost immediately by the click of a zippo as he lights up a cigarette.

*

Melinda May slowly disembarks from the C130, moving like someone who is about a day out of having stupidly done an extremely intense workout routine cold turkey. Point it out to her ONLY if you have absolutely zero self-preservation.

*

Audrey has liberal amounts of Grunt's blood on her, which is not improving her mood. Thankfully, it looks like the agent is going to pull through. Audrey, on the other hand, has a lotof unpacking to do. Claiming a space of her own, she starts to unload her various weapons, checking on each of them as she does.

*

Bruce Banner is wearing a pair of sweatpants and a spare undershirt borrowed from one of the soldiers. He lights a cigarette the second he got off the plane, the same soldier having handed over his pack to the man who'd been a monster not so long ago. His head throbs a bit and he knows he probably needs to sleep, but he, frankly, doesn't exactly want to give the Hulk the satisfaction.

"Well, that sucked a fuckin' dick," he says idly to Shift.

*

Coming behind Melinda is not a cheshire cat but a red-headed young man in shorts and a T-shirt. He's moving rather stiffly as well, but in his case it also comes from the fact that there are multiple cuts across his body, from the bottom of his feet up to his arms and torso. They are all properly bandaged now, but there's one session of tetanus shots in the future for Keith O'Neil. He inwardly kicks himself for the brilliant idea of running up a junk golem. All of the broken metal, sharp edges… it was easy to ignore the cuts when adrenaline was high, but once it was past.

"… that could have gone better. But on the other hand, we didn't die. That's a perk, right?" He descends from the C130 and stretches, wincing a little.

*

Looking up from his wrecked beauty, Kwabena eyes Bruce with a tired look. "Whole bag of dem," he agrees. He can appreciate the fact that he and Bruce have created what those in High School affectionately called, 'smokers corner'.

"Your head hurt?" he asks, sharing a bit of concern, before allowing his silver eyes to drift over to the others who have made an appearance. Seems everyone took a beating in this affair. "You think Rogahs has some booze stashed around here?" he asides to Bruce. "Rather have whiskey den some mil-grade painkiller, probably loaded with opiates."

*

"Here," Steve says as he hands a jar from a card table towards Shift and Bruce. "I'm sure this will get filled a lot quicker with you guys around." Inside there are four quarters and a one dollar bill. Put there by Hawkes. On the outside it says, "Swear Jar."

*

"Not dead is good," Audrey agrees with Vorpal. "Though I'd like to know where all these leaks are coming from. People attacking SHIELD agents. These guys figuring out we were coming and being ready for it." Several guns pile up on the table, followed by a collection of knives.

*

Melinda May stops and turns to look at Keith, then points him toward one of the very few chairs in this hangar. She's moving like she really ought to sit down as well, but she doesn't. And… she doesn't have to tell Banner and Odame to mind their language around Rogers, he beats her to it. Instead, she makes her way over and pulls a $10 to wordlessly stick in the swear jar.

*

Bruce Banner raises an eyebrow, "Sorry, I left my wallet in my other pants," he says, taking a drag on his cigarette. He's more than happy to partake of the booze, grabbing a glass and sliding one across to Shift as he takes a seat at the table. "Plus, y'know, I don't actually care about your tender ears. If we've got any little kids hanging around here…well, someone should call child endangerment," he says.

*

Keith sees the swear jar and starts digging into his shorts. He limps over to it and tosses a few dollars in there for the future tab, smirking a bit at May having the same thoughts. He gogs a bit at Audrey's collection of knives.

"Beats me. But someone sure wants Cap dead. No offense, Cap," he adds hastily, "We just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. Everyone," he adds, looking towards Banner. He's not too sure they would have made it in one piece if the green guy hadn't taken care of those enormous tanks. He sits down on the chair because… well, you don't contradict May. "We've met before,you remember?" the young man says to Audrey. "A while back? I thought you looked familiar…"

*

Kwabena eyes the Swear Jar, then gives Steve a dubious look. "Does it look like I crammed a billfold in here somewhere?" Semantics. Shift does have a change of clothes, but he just hasn't bothered yet. Instead, he takes note of May's donation, and asks her drily, "Oh, you're covering mine? Thanks."

He knows better.

Bruce's remark earns a snort. Shift certainly has an appreciation for such humor. "Cheers," he offers, then downs the glass in one gulp. For the moment, he isn't weighing in on the conspiracy talk, though his eyes drift to Keith and Audrey, clearly listening.

*

"It's okay, it takes IOUs," Steve says casually. He nods to Vorp, "No offense taken. It isn't the first time someone has wanted me dead. Today." His eyes flicker towards Audrey and her arsenal, but he says nothing of it.

"I have a bottle around here somewhere," grunts Grunt as he rips off his mask. He's still wearing his bloodstained clothes, but actually looks pretty good, all things considered. "Looks like you found it. There's a case of beer in a big cooler in the office too." He then seems to notice he just unmasked himself and looks to Cap worriedly. "They're cool, right?"

*

Melinda May narrows her eyes at Kwabena then turns to walk back over toward Keith and Audrey. She's never been a fan of cigarette smoke.

*

Audrey glances back to Keith, smiling faintly. "Rings a bell," she nods, reaching for a towel to wipe her hands off. The blood is not a plus. It makes her feel guilty for letting her cover fail, even for a second, even under fire. Even if Grunt is sitting there offering booze. "Not legal," she notes with another flicker of a smile and a sidelong glance at Cap. Which probably makes it a little more awkward when she goes for a bag and starts digging out a change of clothes.

*

"I'm perfectly legal for the both of us, so I'll take two," Keith smirks and resists the urge to put his feet up on the card table. "But our friend here does bring up a valid point. Leaks that need to be plugged before they can plug us."

Keith leans back on the chair thoughtfully and hmms. "I'm going to assume that right now we're all targets now, even if Moonglow or whatever his name is was captured. I'm willing to bet a hundred for the swear jar that the ambush was monitored from a distance."

*

"MoonDark makes the most sense to look at to begin with, but if whoever this is is smart, then he won't know all that much," Steve says as he folds his arms, looking towards the ground as he thinks. "He said he was working for Baron Zemo, but Baron Zemo is dead."

"Hell, I was dead," Grunt says, tossing out a beer from the coolerhe drags out of the office. "Where's Beacon at? I owe him a couple of these." One flies towards Keith instead.

*

"Zemo… isn't he, like, that guy who had the submarine and fought a giant squid underwater?" Keith says, catching the beer. "… or was that that Disney movie I watched when I was hallucinating from high fever?" he muses.

*

Bruce Banner snorts, "They can't be that smart if the best codename they can think of is MoonDark. Were their parents evil hippies or something? Are they really into Pink Floyd?" he says, kicking up his feet and sighing. He really did have a headache and he knew the booze wouldn't help, but his prescriptions were not here. He'd have to try and make sure he gave Shift or somebody else a spare bottle just in case he ended up half-naked again in the future.

He makes a face at May behind her back and shrugs as he focuses on pouring himself another shot.

*

"I've been dead befah," Shift points out to Steve. His death was likely a bit more dramatic than this 'Baron Zemo's, as well.

May gets the hairy eyeball for a moment. One of these days, he's gonna get another grin out of her. It happened once. He's pretty sure, at least.

"Well, stupid code names aside?" He nods his head toward Keith. "I'm with Disney, here. Guarantee dis doesn't end with Pink Floyd over dere." Another nod of his head toward the holding cell, before he reaches to pour another glass of booze for himself, one for Banner, and two for Keith.

*

"That's Nemo," Audrey corrects Keith, taking a few steps away from the group. "And lots of people are supposedly dead, yet keep turning up." She could just go invisible to change, but that's just weird. Less weird - by her standards, at least - to just pull a wall of shadow around herself. It doesn't take long, and when she drops the shadow, she's changed into fresh clothes. Ones that aren't bloody. "I got the laptop in," she adds, nodding to Bruce. "And we can always interrogate."

*

Nodding her agreement to Audrey's words, May settles almost creakily into a chair next to Keith, just barely keeping from grimacing. Note to self: the leyline pendulum does NOT like being forced to pull more than one passenger. ANd it takes it out on the pendulum-bearer.

*

"NEMO, that's the na- wait!" Keith frowns, looking at Audrey. "I thought that was the little boy who got crowned king of Dreamland."

Audrey can probably see a mischievous twinkle in Keith's eyes. "So that makes three of us who have been dead in this room? We could do a round of thriller. I've got the shambling and limping down right now." The young man grins.

Keith gladfully goes for a second serving, "Good job getting the laptop, maybe we can get something off it that'll illuminate some of this mess."

*

Drained and a bit wobbly but… glowing just as much as ever, the angelic nightlight makes an appearance, wandering out of the C130. Speaking of bloody, though, Joel is — splattered, but for the most part, his glow makes it less obvious, since usually he's just a kind of splotch of golden light a lot of the time with a head, and often wings. He doesn't do anything in particular other than wander out of the plane and look around, glowing energy-wings sort of feeble in their fluttering twitches now and then at his back.

*

"That reminds me, I've got to file this with SHIELD so they know what happened," Steve says holding his hand to his head. "It's going to take me forever because I type like a four year old." He then adds, "And Hawkes says "dial up" is not good enough for a proper superhero team. Whatever that means." On his way toward theoffice, Steve sneaks a beer from the cooler and gives Joel a light slap on the shoulder as he passes.

Grunt looks up towards Joel and smiles, "Here, have a beer."

*

Once she's changed, Audrey starts collecting her weapons to safely pack them away in turn. "Whoever they are, they had intel. Not enough to be prepared for the firepower we brought, but enough to prepare for more than just Cap. That was a lot of men."

*

"Hello Starshine, the earth says hello!" Keith calls out to the descending angel. "Come over, grab a beer and call the cat a bastard. Sorry about going all pink on you back in the plane," he gestures to his exposed, very furless and totally human arm. The transformation had been very abrupt and caused Keith to keel over for a few seconds. "Holy stuff kind of turns me off. Literally, I mean. Not figuratively." He pauses.

"I think I got that right. In any case, we were talking about stuff… but I forgot my manners. We didn't exactly have time for lengthy introductions. You guys can call me Keith. Or Vorpal. Whatever rolls off the tongue best."

A pause, and then he adds, "Except Sylvester. I draw the line at Sylvester and Felix."

He looks over his shoulder as Cap goes to the office, "Speaking of letting SHIELD know about the leak… we really should totally pitch in to hire Cap a stenographer. We might all get ambushed again before he finishes that letter."

*

Joel looks like he doesn't know what to do when Captain America touches his shoulder, staring in a sort of shock, but then slowly approaches Grunt and accepts the beer. Just to hold onto. He may forget to actually have any. "Starshine says hi back," Joel answers to Keith with a (literally) radiant smile. He shrugs some at the 'pink' comments, apologetically, possibly not entirely following what Keith is talking about entirely, but willing to… go along with it and nod and belong. "I'm Joel," Joel offers quietly, when Keith starts throwing names and manners around. He'll mostly focus, after that, on Grunt— as well as anyone else with any injury. He's exhausted, but… he'll still give four hundred percent to anyone that needs it, even if it's a papercut.

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