It's quiet...too quiet.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

Sam got some intel about a possible safehouse-slash-weapons depo that might be of interest to Bucky, so he and Steve head out to upstate Pennsylvania to check it out.

Steve doesn't have much hope for finding Bucky there--they're always at least two steps behind him, it seems, cleaning up what he leaves behind-- but sometimes standing in rooms he knows where Bucky has been is all the comfort he can find. Sometimes he feels like painting "BUCKY COME HOME" on the walls, just to see what would happen.

But Bucky won't be back to places he's already destroyed. Steve knows that.


Anyway.



The warehouse is on the edge of a small rural town that the economic crisis has hit hard. Most of the store fronts are boarded up. Some of the fields are bare, some are overgrown, and some hold the machinery of fracking. The warehouse itself looks rusty and abandoned, and Steve would pass it by if there weren't the hope of some sort of clue.

(Or the chance to bash some heads.)

It takes only a tap from the shield to break the padlock on the small door to the side of the building. No reason to break into the main security doors and draw attention to themselves. Steve eases the door open and steps inside, and nods to Sam.

Comments

[notapilot]

Sam keeps his breathing steady, his pulse low, and checks all the cardinal points, as well as those above. He already has his goggles on the IR overlay but sees no heat.

"Not seeing any heat," he reports quietly, raising his machine pistols to guard position. "Maybe there's shielding of some kind?"

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

"Wouldn't put it past them," Steve says, moving forward cautiously, trusting Sam to stay close to his side.

There are rows of crates ahead, and catwalks overhead. There's a stillness that's unsettling.

[notapilot]

Sam gives a nod of agreement and falls in behind Steve, shifting his attention to sweep from side to side. He's also careful to keep an eye on the catwalks, looking for any movement or heat signature.

"Kinda creepy." He murmurs. Though if this was a hidden base, it wasn't like they were going to have a neon sign.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

"Like they just left out the back door."

He pauses, tilts his head to one side, lowers his voice even further.

"Or they're still here."

At the end of the vast warehouse doors to the built-in offices fly open. Out pour HYDRA agents, flamethrowers blazing.

[notapilot]

Sam triggers his wings and leaps into the air vertically, hoping that splitting up the targets will give Steve more space.

"I think we found the bad guys, Cap." He says over the comm as he sends a few smoke bombs into the clusters of HYDRA agents while they remain clustered. He can tell they are out numbered so any advantage would be good right?

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

"They're not too friendly, no," Steve agrees.

He throws the shield at the nearest thug -- it knocks the flamethrower from his hands, and his cry from probably fratcured if not broken fingers echoes through the warehouse. Steve ducks behind the crates as the rest of the thugs turn the flamethrowers his way, filling the air with the scent of burning wood.

[notapilot]

"Maybe we should've called first. Make sure it was a good time for them and all." Sam offers as he switches to a forward dive and strafe with his sub-machine guns. And of course he manages to find the ones wearing armor.

From his vantage he can also see more and more agents spilling in. This was definitely a trap and they are seriously out numbered.

"Cap, there sure do seem to be a lot of them. Maybe we should call at another time?" It's also right about then that mini grenades start exploding around him.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

"Might have to come back later," Steve agrees, and tries to pick up the shield--his arm jerks back when one of the agents aims his flamethrower right at the shield.

[notapilot]

Sam sees Steve getting pinned down and sees a unit of the armored agents heading his way. He quickly changes his flight path (wishing the warehouse had more room to maneuver) but gets pinned himself as he is forced to dodge more mini grenades. He also sees the front doors getting swarmed with HYDRA agents as well.

"Hold on, Cap. I'm trying to get to you. I'm afraid our entry is compromised."

Distracted, he missed one grenade that is arcing towards him.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

"Sam, four o'clock!"

[notapilot]

"Shit!"

He dodges left into a barrel roll just as the grenade explodes. Shrapnel pings off the wings and he feels a slight tear in his leg. Then he's punched by the concussive force, which knocks him out of the sky and into one of the offices in the back of the warehouse. Sam manages to fold the wings in and curl into a ball just as he hits the door and slams through.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

"Sam!" Steve shouts, and dives across the aisle between the crates for his shield, flamethrowers be damned.

Back from Milliways

[notapilot]

"Sunny-D," Sam calls out to warn Steve a bright flash is on it's way, before he tosses out a couple of grenades. Code words are so much fun, especially when agreed upon before hand. The grenade goes off, a bright flash but no bang since Sam wants to make sure Orpheous' trick has a full affect.

He does fire a few bursts of his submachine guns though, cause he's still worried about bringing Steve's main guy into a firefight.

[golden_lyre]

Orpheus is right behind him, and for a moment, he looks like nothing less than a very unfortunate civilian who just wandered into a fight he has no chance of surviving.

And then he starts to play.

Orpheus' music is always beautiful, sometimes achingly so, but this is a very different sort of beauty, and it has a very different sort of effect. Orpheus walks as he plays, and any stray bullets that Sam's tactics don't manage to turn his way seem to just...slip around Orpheus, changing trajectory mid-air to avoid the musician.

His song is quiet--acoustic guitar has no chance of being heard over a firefight--but it hardly matters. The music slides underneath the cacophony, reverberating beneath the sounds of bullets and explosions. It resounds a deep anger throughout the building.

The foundation begins to crack.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

"Orpheus," Steve whispers as he watches this, and he starts to move out from behind the crates toward him.

As he sees the bullets turn away from Orpheus, Steve's mouth drops open in wonder.

[notapilot]

Sam gets lost in the memory of hearing, really hearing, Marvin Gaye for the first time and his eyes tear up. He quickly comes back to the present and sees what Orpheus is doing. To Sam's credit, he doesn't gape but he does lose another moment to awe.

It's about then that Orpheus gets moved from "civilian to protect" to "asset to protect" and Sam starts targeting any HYDRA agents with long range or heavy weapons.

[golden_lyre]

As Orpheus moves further into the room, his song makes a subtle change. The anger stays, but something insidious slips into it. Something paranoid. A subversion of trust. Gradually, the HYDRA agents falter in their attack, and weapons shift trajectory from the enemy to each other.

Not all of them are susceptible to Orpheus' song, though. The trouble with villains is that they tend to throw themselves fanatically into their villainy, and where there is no trust to subvert, the HYDRA agents continue their attack, even as their cohorts turn on them and on each other.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

The HYDRA goons turning on each other gives Steve enough time to dive for his shield, and it rings like a bell as he throws it to a clump still firing, bounces off a few heads and then returns to him.

He catches the shield on his arm and whirls in toward the next wave.

[notapilot]

Sam keeps having to force himself back to focus, the music is that compelling. He starts to wonder why Cap keeps him around when he has such power at his call. And really who is Sam but a guy with a suit of wings. He knows Steve trusts him and he trusts Steve, but what if Steve is just humoring him?

Sam shakes his head and fires off another burst of bullets at an agent setting up a rocket launcher. Doesn't matter if Steve is just humoring him or not, he has a job to do. Orpheus seems to have himself covered well, so Sam launches himself back in the air where he can do the most good, firing off more smoke bombs and flash grenades.

[golden_lyre]

Even in his anger, Orpheus is careful and targeted with his attacks. He can't, of course, keep his music completely contained, but he can play it focused on only certain individuals or, say, certain parts of the building.

The mistrust and division is still an underlying theme to his song, but he weaves another layer on top of that so the very structure of the building begins to distrust itself. A support beam falls on one of the groups attacking. An outer wall falls on another.

And once the space is open to the outdoors, Orpheus can truly work.

He drops the mistrust entirely, but while the HYDRA agents are still coming back to themselves, the landscape around them changes. Trees uproot themselves and fall into clusters of HYDRA or simply walk into the midst of the firefight to block bullets.

It will take some time to get there, but amidst the music and destruction, there is the sound of rushing water, growing ever closer.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

Steve watches all of this, and has to laugh in sheer wonder.

Then he takes off through the HYDRA agents to the rooms built into the back of the warehouse, in the hope that there's something in there worth recovering -- some kind of intelligence, something that will tell him their plans, something he can use to find Bucky.

[notapilot]

Sam just stares at all that happening, lost in awe until he sees a blue streak out of the corner of his eye. Quickly catching onto what Cap is up to, Sam drives down, calling out, "On your left," as he passes Steve. Even flying, he barely gets to rooms before him.

[golden_lyre]

Orpheus is focused purely on destruction at this point. As the river he diverted comes closer, it sweeps into the space, a flash flood only barely controlled. If Steve should find himself caught up in the wake, it will simply carry him along, but it cuts through HYDRA's forces, sucking them under.

[thekidfrombrooklyn]

Steve makes it through the doors just as the waters rush into the building.

[notapilot]

Sam folds his wings in to make sure Steve has enough room and then looks around for anything promising.

"You want me to guard or help search?"