#soaringshield

Soaring Shield at your service!

Protection Pegasus Paladin with a Palamino Palette.

✘ ⌖ ➶ Natasha always felt comfortable when a plan was in motion. Whether that plan was to take down corrupt governments, or save the world from malicious extraterrestrials, or even take an old friend by surprise on his birthday, it was all the same. The text thread between herself, Sam, and Bucky had gone quiet, which let her know that Bucky was probably taking it very seriously and beelining his way to Delacroix at that very moment.

The weather couldn't be more beautiful. Sunny, a few clouds, warm temperature. It was the perfect day for a surprise party on a boat. Balancing up on the outside of the helm, she hung cheap party streamers that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY. It was cheesy and over the top, but somehow she knew that the more brightly colored things were, the more annoyed her former instructor would be. And that was a chance she couldn't pass up. Plus, he deserved the extra effort. More than that, she wanted him to see that he had friends willing to put that effort in. That he was worth it.

" I want my hulk back."

He didn't spend years of research and genetic testing to lose his own hulk experiment. As far as Sterns was concerned, Thaddeus Ross was his property. And he wanted him back.

" I made it in my laboratory and I want it back. You have no right to take away what belongs to me."

He purposely avoided referring to Ross as a person....because he wasn't a human anymore. Just a weapon......his perfect one.

( @soaringshield smacked the hammer )

[ ϟ ]— ' That is indeed very fine Midgardian craftmanship, very intricate, shiny.... interesting. I can guarantee you that I am much, much faster however.'

"why - why are you people literally everywhere anymore? you know your little superhero club isn't that exclusive when you keep adding every little powered-up urchin you come across."

agatha looks utterly annoyed that she's crossed paths with . . . whatever superhero this one is pretending to be. she hardly keeps track; they tend to switch monikers so often that it's not worth the effort. of course new york is a breeding ground for superheroes and their nonsense - she tends to avoid it, but given that she's after a certain someone, well, she's here. and regretting every second of it.

The war had been over for sixty-six years. That's what they, being the SHIELD agents tasked with updating Steve on world history since the plane crash and make sure he had proper identification to restart his life in the modern era (including issuing him a social security number), had told Steve when he woke-up. Hitler had shot himself in a bunker in 1945 and America dropped two atomic bombs, a glorified version of Schmidt's tesseract weaponry, on Japanese cities. In the months since he's etched together a more complete picture than his limited perspective as a solider on the front: the horrors of the concentration camps, the grief and confusion of the living, the shifts in change in politics, and war, in the intervening years. It had been sixty-six years since 1945 and the war was over for the rest of the world, but the war wasn't done with Steve.

It haunted him in bizarre figments, a melding and molding of memories, battle strategies, imaginative additions, and brutalized human bodies. Most nights, at least, he had a nightmare. Sometimes vivid enough that he'd wake-up swearing it was 1944 and then he'd look at a window, and the cars were shaped wrong. Sometimes, he didn't even wake-up. Sometimes, he did wake-up but it was quieter, startled, sweat drenched, nervous and anxious, but unsure of what there was to be afraid of. Jumping at ghosts. Seemed fitting then, that he and Sam were hunting a ghost.

The morning Steve woke-up at just twenty minutes shy of five AM, uneasy and exhausted, they were two weeks into their search for Bucky. They'd been up and down the Eastern seaboard, spent nearly two hundred dollars in gas (he couldn't believe the prices these day, gum used to be expensive at a nickle), and had found neither hide nor hair of Bucky, the Winter Soldier, or his handlers. It was like they all, along with any smart survivors of Hydra, had gone underground. And Bucky was now one faceless, unknown, lost in the crowd of millions of Americans. They were hunting for a needle in a haystack and anything they uncovered about the past, records, files, names of previous handlers, told them nothing about the future: where the hell would Bucky go after fishing Steve out of the Potomac?

Sam was still in the other bed, a lump under the covers, obscured in the shadow of the dark motel room. Steve moved quietly, rolling out of bed, and then vanishing into the bathroom to shower, dress, and brush his teeth. When he came out, his hair still damp, Sam was just starting to rouse.