It was scarcely two weeks before HYDRA's sudden but inevitable betrayal. I honestly had no idea why the hell they'd choose to spring it when I wasn't even ten percent of the way done training their troops. Oh, I wasn't about to actually teach them anything dangerous; Steve and Nat were one thing, but this group of yahoos and radicalized ex special forces chad boys would have hurt themselves trying some of my stuff. No, I mostly taught them more useful lessons.
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"AAAHHHHH!" He screamed as I twisted his arm further.
"See kids? This is what's going to happen to you if you try to do something stupid like challenging a Saiyan warrior face to face."
"STOP! STOP!" Another one cried, as I put more pressure on the broken finger that had once been through the trigger guard of his gun.
"And this is what happens if you think just shooting one from afar will help you out."
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Really, they should be thanking me. Sure I'd put several of them in the hospital and probably put a few of them into early retirement. But look on the bright side! That meant that they weren't in the building when somebody decided that things weren't moving fast enough for his tastes and started pumping knockout gas into my shower.
It might have even worked too, except for the necklace I'd pointedly worn into it. The one item that I'd made absolutely sure to never remove, no matter the circumstance. It held three things; an injector full of antidotes for every toxin that SHIELD knew about; which was a more extensive list than I was strictly comfortable knowing about, a small rebreather in case they decided to just suffocate me, and of course, my new best friend the bauble that HYDRA might very well be trying to kill me to get, if they knew I had it. I wasn't all that concerned with the why honestly. Only that there was a sudden prick in my neck and JARVIS's tinny voice informing me of what he'd just stabbed me full of. He was only a recording of course; the real JARVIS was getting a bit too big to fit into a dog collar.
So I didn't feel much pity for the guards who rushed into my little apartment; gas masks around their faces, as I burst out of the room, gripping their heads and hurling each of them into the opposite wall with a loud crunching sound that wasn't all helmet. I stepped out into the hall and a hail of bullets hit me. I turned toward the idiot who'd decided to make my day and saw my own bloodshot eyes staring back at me; something roaring in my ears as I caught up to him and grasped his gun, pinching the barrel shut with my fingers. "You really should have come to the lessons." I said, before I got my hand around his neck.
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"I wonder where Charud's been." Steve said as he ducked and weaved his head in time with the ongoing struggle.
"I'm sure he has his own business to take care of; even though I figured him for some kind of alien neckbeard." Clint said as he jumped a low leg sweep and followed it up with a hadouken.
"I thought he shaved though." Steve said, furrowing his brow and relaxing his grip before he crushed something.
"Uh, no, that's not what he means." Natasha said from nearby, flipping through a magazine. "Are you two going to do anything productive today or just mess around?"
"Hey; I tried, Steve wanted best three out of five." Clint said; tongue pinned between his lips as he leaned forward.
"I'm just getting the hang of it. Guile plays a lot differently than Ken..." He complained.
"Ugh... Anyway. I'm sure whatever he's up to, Charud's probably enjoying himself."
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Aw man this was going to be so fucking sweet. Whatever the fuck was in this stuff I had pumping through my veins felt like liquid Rob Zombie. It took me a minute to remember my objective in between killing people with a floor waxing machine I'd pulled out of a closet. Not a new one either; a 1970s model that had some real CLANG to it, ya know?
Anyway I was pretty sure this was the right spot... just had to wait for him to take a step aaand!~
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"What the hell do you mean it didn't work? We've got his bio material, we know that it should have knocked him out, one of you idiots must have miscalculated. Yes I'm AWARE it's my job to contain the situation; but you're not the one who's got to deal with him murdering his way through your-"
Rumlow's rant was interrupted by a fist shooting straight through the reinforced concrete wall; a hand grasping him by the jaw and an arm slowly crushing it's way through the concrete as he was lifted up off his feet; the entire thing bowing outward and then shattering into pieces as Charud stepped through; covered in dust and sweat; eyes rolling and mad, as he hurled him through the air and into a row of monitors; all of them shattering under his back as the alien stepped heavily toward him.
He rolled off the desk and pulled his sidearm out; taking aim on pure instinct; a single round all he could manage before the alien caught the slide in his long apish fingers and crumpled it like a soda can. He'd caught the bullet in his teeth.
"Heya Rummy!" He said, spitting the bullet out onto the floor. "You know I was just thinking about how much fun it would be to murder you. And here you are, giving me a good excuse! I missed you at training the other day. You still mad I pulled off your thumbnails? Come on man, you tried to garotte me during sparring."
"You said it was anything goes." He protested.
Charud laughed and picked him up by the collar. "I said a lot of things doofus. You idiots just couldn't RESIST could you? You couldn't even wait a month before pulling the trigger? You must be awful desperate for a shot of Vitamin Charud. What were you going to do, dissect me and learn the secret of ki control? Or clone me? I bet it was clones." He grinned, pulling Rumlow down into a headlock and grinding his knuckles painfully into his scalp.
"We had to do something! You weren't teaching us anything we could use! If Fury's agents get too far ahead of us we'll never be able to-"
"To what Rummy? No no, don't stop there. I wanna know everything." He said, pulling him up higher. "Ssshh.. Listen. You hear that?" He said. There was a commotion upstairs; gunfire far from them. "Why I do believe somebody sent a rescue."
"...You fucking snake. You were Fury's all along."
"Uh-DUHH! Come the fuck on Rummy, do you think you're the first person who tried to buy me off? You weren't listening very close during New York, were you? If my own species can't offer me anything, what the hell do you think you've got?"
"You're not getting anything out of us." He said, fuming.
"Uh huh. I'm sure your guys are trying to wipe the computers as we speak. Just one little issue with that."
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Two weeks earlier...
"Obviously I'm not the only interested party. Your car is on it's way to one of our secure facilities; once you're there you'll be briefed more thoroughly than I can risk remotely; even over a secure connection. Agent Rumlow will be your handler until we've got your position sorted out. Trust me on this; I think you're going to be very interested in what we have to say."
I clicked the pause button and looked across the desk.
Fury seemed troubled, staring at the recorder for long, pregnant seconds. "Pierce and I go way back. It's hard to believe he'd go behind my back like this..."
"Trust me." I said. "It's about to get a lot worse." I said, before switching to the next recording I'd made.
"Greetings Charud. My name is Arnim Zola."
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And Currently...
"I am assuming direct control Mr. Stark." JARVIS said as Tony rocketed in through the roof and began blowing away impromptu emplacements of HYDRA soldiers.
"Buddy I'm going to have to ask you to never use that exact sequence of words again please."
"Is it the AI Overlord thing again sir?" He asked, sounding slightly despondent.
"Lil bit."
"I must make a note to thank Charud for his assistance; this is amusingly simple, having had access to HYDRA's systems for so long."
"Nobody ever checks the old work stations in the basement." Tony chuckled, tossing a frisbee shaped grenade at a group of nazis trying to set up something heavy and tripod mounted.
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"So yeah; if you want to flip for us, now's probably the time. Anything your guys know, we'll know. We've got the scent of you now; and unlike your side, Fury's got me and my best buddies in his corner. At least until he tries some weird nazi shit, but given his- well you know, I don't see it as likely."
"Tch. So what, you hauling me in now? Don't you think you should put some pants on?"
"Ha ha ha. No, see, I'm not bringing you anywhere, because you're going to tell ME everything you know. And I'll tell Fury. See, you assholes tried to poison me in my shower, so now THIS is happening. And whatever the hell you gave me is interacting with the stimulants I used to get through it in some nasty ways. You ever do uppers and downers at the same time? What am I saying, look at you, of course you have. So you know-" I said, and threw him up through the ceiling to flop onto the floor beside the hole he'd just made. I floated up and followed him through. "I'm feeling real unsympathetic to your hardman alpha male bullshit. You're going to start talking, or I'm dragging you out into the street and you can tell everybody out there while a hairy naked dude gets REAL acquainted with all of your soft and squishy parts." I said, leaning down over him as he coughed and tried to crawl away. "And believe me when I tell you; when I look at a human being, ALL I can see is soft parts." I said, stamping on his kneecap and grinding down until the grates turned to pops.
"Fuck. You." he said. Intending to go out on one last "I'm so cool" line. He pulled a grenade off his belt; pin popping loose as he threw it up at me. I clapped my hands around it and held it tightly between them. There was a pregnant pause; and then an incredibly loud, nasty crack; and it suddenly felt like I'd clapped my hands together too hard.
I dropped a small pile of hot shrapnel down onto his chest and watched him brush at it frantically as it burned holes in his shirt. "Hard way it is, earth boy. Good thing you wore your brown pants."
--------------
Clint threw his hands up and flopped back in his seat. "Alright, alright, I give. Seriously, I'm getting embarrassed by a 90 year old man at video games. Can't you leave us normal humans with a little pride?"
"You're not normal Clint. You're just a little less..."
"Super?" He said with a roll of his eyes, standing up and shaking his wrists out. "Come on, let's get back in the ring, I really want to try and see if I can do that eye lasers thing."
Nat stepped back into the room with her phone to her ear. "Charud- come on, slow down, I can barely- Look I'm putting you on speaker."
Both Clint and Steve's eyebrows went up as the first thing to come through the speaker was gunfire, followed by a familiar voice. "-can't slow down NOW Nat I'm just picking up SPEED! Hahahaha! See it's funny because I'm on speed! LAUGH RUMMY!"
There was a sound of muffled screaming.
"Rummy says hi everybody. Anyway I'm back from vacation, sorry I didn't call but uh. I didn't want to. Anyway I brought souvenirs, even though THIS one is being a little BITCH and won't stop PASSING OUT every time I want to get something juicy out of him. So can you guys pick me up? And bring pants? Mine are... somewhere, I dunno. Oh and call Fury, he's probably gonna be real mad when he finds out HYDRA was gonna use his fancy Helicarrier to kill all the black people."
"That was never the idea-"
"QUIET RUMMY. Adults are talking!"
There was a thud, and more screaming.
"Wait a minute; did you just say HYDRA?" Steve asked, alarmed, for more than one reason at the moment.
"Please tell me you're recording this." Clint whispered.
"Huh? Oh yeah they're back. I guess I probably should have told you? I mean I was gonna, but I was honestly expecting them to have more patience before they tried to vivisect me. I guess Nazis are kinda stupid though. Who'd have thought? Anyway; I think I'm on... Nope, street signs look like gibberish. I am.. not doing super great, I'm not gonna lie. Uhh... Hey just have Tony track my phone, I assume he can do that. I'm gonna knock Rummy out and... find someplace to lie down. Oh boy."
There was a click and a digitally generated dial tone.
"...He is never allowed to go on vacation again." Natasha said, rubbing at her nose.
