#Calder was peer pressured into saying I love you and he snapped

[asimovsideburns]

the way that Jake soooooo quickly led the party into going nearly Trinyvale Triplets level interaction with Albin is absolutely hilarious to me

“You can be your own boss and make your own hours but only if you do what we asked you to, also I’m seeing you haven’t quite met your quota today so you should really stay up doing that instead of sleeping. I love you.”

[bobby-hockey]

CHERRY TREE

arc: gongshow (arc introduction here) tws: vehicle accident, death.  length: 2k. summary: in which i incontrovertibly hurt the capitals. also, sasha “ghost” molchalin gets an unwilling new roommate. taglist: @kidsarentallwrite

-

Philadelphia Flyers @NHLFlyers - Nov. 4 They may be from Washington DC, but this is the City of Brotherly Love! Bring it on, Capitals! 

Philadelphia Flyers @NHLFlyers - Nov. 4 Mitty, Martin, and Molchalin start tonight. Retweet for a chance to win five gallons of Flyers-themed M&M(&M)s!

-

Clarence Taylor. Even the mention of his name is enough to make Sasha break out in annoyed hives—no defenseman has ever been able to read Sasha like Taylor does, and it’s literally the most aggravating thing. Like—yes, okay, Taylor is the captain of the Washington Capitals, was the first overall pick in 2012, got the Calder his rookie year and the Norris last year, has been to the All-Stars more times than Sasha cares to count. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to jump on Taylor’s dick. The guy is fucking irritating. 

“Calm down,” Marty says during warm-ups, spotting the look on Sasha’s face when Taylor skates by with a snide little comment lobbed in Sasha’s direction. “I can see your blood pressure rising.” 

“He’s a bastard,” Sasha says. He wants to snap his stick in half and maybe use the pointy ends to commit a homicide. Marty’d scruff him like a little cat and Sasha wouldn’t get more than a few strides before his feet cartoonishly skated out from underneath him. But it’s the thought that counts.

“You’re giving him exactly the reaction he wants,” Marty says. “And you’re not special, Ghost, he does that to everyone.” 

Sasha does not snap his stick in half, but it takes a Herculean effort. “Don’t bother trying your hippie elementary school teacher horseshit on me,” he says. “I hate him.” 

Marty sighs. “Just don’t let him get in your head,” he says, sounding resigned. 

Too late. Sasha takes a wild shot at the empty goal and misses—the puck ricochets off the crossbar. Goddammit. 

The Washington Capitals are a well-oiled machine: a steady, productive offense backstopped by a tenacious, elite defense and an almost jaw-droppingly good goaltender, and Sasha hates playing against them, mostly because they never fall for Mitty and Marty’s fakeouts. By second intermission they’re still deadlocked at 0-0, and the game—already ugly—is starting to get nasty. While there haven’t been any fights yet, Sasha can feel the tension in the air, a heavy weight like a storm brewing on the horizon. 

So maybe Sasha curses at Taylor a little more thoroughly than is strictly warranted when he shoves Sasha into the boards. Sasha hates the guy. It’s been a hard, awful game. He’s allowed.

“Your mother must be so ashamed of you,” Taylor says as the referee whistles the first play of the third period dead, black mouth-guard half-hanging out of his mouth. He’s Canadian, Taylor is, and so is Marty, and while they have the same kind of soft, shallow vowels, Marty is fun and easy to listen to but Taylor’s voice grates against Sasha’s nerves. Sasha’s not a fighter—why would he be, when Marty is 6’10” and impossible to take down—but a single word out of Taylor’s mouth makes Sasha want to drop his gloves and start swinging.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sasha says, scowling. 

Taylor grins and, in a bad imitation of Sasha’s Russian accent and a worse imitation of Sasha’s voice, says “Go fuck yourself,” all mocking like. “Come on, Molchalin, what’re you gonna do? Frown at me some more? Y’know your face could get stuck like that.” 

Sasha sneers. His shift is up and he’s supposed to be getting off ice—Hartsy’s half over the boards, looking at him expectantly—and Taylor’s heading back to the Capitals bench, this grin on his face like he’s pleased with himself at getting the last word. Sasha doesn’t care for it. At all. 

He drops his shoulder and half-checks Taylor as he leaves the ice, sending the defenseman reeling, and when Taylor regains his footing and turns around the grin’s gone, replaced by an annoyed stare. 

“Three months and four days,” Sasha says, although if asked he wouldn’t be able to say why: the number just pops into his head, trips off his tongue. “Keep an eye out.” 

“What the fuck, Molchalin?” Taylor shouts after him. 

Hah, Sasha thinks, and skates back to the Flyers bench. 

The Flyers lose—one of the Capitals manages a nasty goal forty seconds before the final buzzer, and the Flyers make an ignominious retreat into the locker room. But that’s fine. Sasha doesn’t mind. It wasn’t Taylor who scored the goal, and Sasha played well. That’s all that he cares about.

-

Washington Capitals @Capitals - Feb. 8 Just try to beat us at home, @PSSkimmers. 

Port Sterling Skimmers @PSSkimmers - Feb. 8 We’re setting sail for Washington DC… time to tackle the Capital! 

Washington Capitals @Capitals - Feb. 8 Team bus has been involved in a collision on the I-50E returning from Delaware. Updates will be posted as they come in.

-

Of course, Sasha thinks to himself, staring up at the floating, incorporeal form of Clarence Taylor hovering over him, Taylor always did have a way to make him regret literally every decision he’d ever made in his life.

“What the fuck,” Taylor howls in his face. “Three months and four days. That’s what you said. You motherfucker. What, you some fucking psychic or something? What kind of sick freak does that and doesn’t give any context? Jesus Christ. You’re an asshole.” 

Literally five seconds ago Sasha was sleeping. Why is this happening. He’s not awake enough for this.

“What?” Sasha says, when Taylor seems to break off, and then he remembers their last meeting, back in November: Taylor’s shocked green eyes peering at him over the Capitals bench, blond eyebrows furrowed as he gaped at Sasha. He rubs his eyes, sits up, and then, around a yawn, says “You were counting?” 

“Wh—Of course I was counting,” Taylor says, floating backwards. Maybe he’d think it weirder, Clarence Taylor literally floating in Sasha’s bedroom wearing a Capitals shirt and sweatpants, but then again, Sasha’s seen weird, and this is not that. No offense to Mitty, but Mitty kind of breaks the scale of weird shit all on his own. “You mean to tell me that if some asshole came at you with some ominously specific date you’d just, I don’t know, write it off, or whatever? Of course not! I thought you were just gonna play some, some stupid prank on me or something, some bullshit like that, and then—” 

His form flickers out, the space he had been occupying suddenly empty. Sasha blinks. 

“And then what?” Sasha says. Silence. “For the record, I would definitely ignore it, because it would be bullshit and wouldn’t matter anyways.” 

Except Taylor clearly hadn’t let it go. 

There’s no response. Sasha reaches for his phone on his bedside table, and blinks again when he turns it on and it starts buzzing almost incessantly with incoming texts. They’d just finished a long roadie through Canada, and they didn’t have anything except practice later today, so the fact that the group chat is absolutely lighting up is something of a surprise. 

Sasha scrolls through quickly, not bothering to try and decipher most of the texts, but he more or less gets the gist of it: some shit happened with the Capitals. Something big. Maybe Taylor did something stupid. 

He rolls out of bed. Shuffles into his living room, scratching his stomach. Light slants in through the window, and Sasha squints at the sun peeking in through the blinds—it’s earlier than he thought it was. Fumbles for the remote, turns on the TV, switches it to the news—

“Oh, fuck,” Sasha says, suddenly wide awake. His stomach churns. 

It wasn’t Taylor doing something stupid. Not even close. They’re playing footage: a nighttime aerial shot of a charter bus, a tipped-over semi-truck plowed into the side like a beached whale. Streetlights and ambulance strobes and spotlights from helicopters illuminate firefighters and EMTs carting out hockey player after hockey player and bundling them into ambulances. 

“It looks better like this,” Taylor says, his detached, oddly clinical voice coming from somewhere over Sasha’s shoulder, and Sasha almost trips over his coffee table and goes headfirst into his TV. “Not as much blood.” 

God. That’s a horrifying thought. Sasha lets out a string of foul curses, running a hand through his hair. If they had heard, all of the generations of women who came before him would have either given him an ass beating into next year or washed his mouth out with soap. Since he’s in America and they’re buried in Russia, they’ll have to settle for turning in their graves. 

“I only caught about three words of whatever you just said,” Taylor says, “but yeah. That.”  

Sasha looks at him—properly looks at him. Taylor looks mostly exactly like how Sasha saw him last, back in December: blond hair spiked up, red Capitals long-sleeved shirt, sweatpants from some brand Sasha doesn’t recognize, a pair of Ugg boots because apparently Taylor is a teenage girl. He’s dressed down, and he’s see-through, but other than that he looks pretty much like Sasha would expect Taylor to look, even if he wasn’t anticipating the boots.

“You’re dead,” he says, almost a question.

“I think so,” Taylor says. His voice is odd, too, echoing and faintly staticky, like he’s standing in an empty room and Sasha is hearing his voice over the phone from far away. 

Clarence Taylor, dead. It doesn’t seem possible. Sits wrong. Sasha presses his mouth into a thin line to avoid admitting that, because he would never. “And you’re stuck with me.” 

Taylor almost laughs. His chest expands and deflates like he’s actually breathing. Do ghosts breathe? Sasha’s nickname might be ‘Ghost,’ but somehow he doesn’t think he’s an authority on whether spirits need lungs or not. “You think that if I could be anywhere in the world, I’d be hanging out with you?” 

“Nope,” Sasha says, “which means you’re definitely stuck with me.”

“Just what I always wanted,” Taylor mutters, in a way that means this is absolutely not what he wanted, in any sort of way, at all. 

Sasha would agree, but that would mean agreeing with Clarence fucking Taylor, and he has absolutely no urge to do so at any costs. “You don’t have to sound so thrilled about it,” Sasha says. 

“Trust me, I’m not,” Taylor says, and then he fades out of existence, like he was never there to begin with. 

If Clarence Taylor simply didn’t exist, Sasha’s life would have been so much easier. 

But now the guy’s dead, and Sasha doesn’t know what to think.

-

Washington Capitals @Capitals - Feb. 9 We’ve received word that several players have passed away, including associate captain RJ Radulov and Jean-Sebastien Fontaine. We ask that you keep their families in mind during this trying time. Stay strong.

Philadelphia Flyers @NHLFlyers - Feb. 9 Our hearts go out to our friends the @Capitals, their families, and everyone affected by the I-50E tragedy. We’re here for you. #CapsStrong

Washington Capitals @Capitals - Feb. 9 Capitals captain Clarence Taylor remains in critical condition at Pennsylvania Hospital.

[valkyrie-echo]

Project Echo, Part 3: Chapter 22 (Out-Fox the Wolf)

Part 3 Summary: Seven years after the events of “Part 2”, Avengers Tower explodes, fulfilling Bucky’s vision. All evidence points to Avengers Shadow-Ops leader Inessa Ryker, who is forced to seek out Bucky in hiding. Together they must determine who the traitor is in their ranks and if their friends are still alive- all while trying to survive deadly ambushes orchestrated by Sam Wilson and his hand-picked army. 

Chapter 22: Out-Fox the Wolf

Sam leaned against the wall as Geoff and Travis carried Amadeus out of the brig. The boy's face was a complete wreck, but given the fact that he made the frequency change that let Inessa escape them in New York and he, the 5th smartest person on Earth (now that Stark and Banner were dead) refused to see Inessa for the snake she was, Sam was content to let him persuade Eoin to fix his wounds. As if he could.

"So," Sam eyed Bucky as the man wiped blood off of his knuckles and onto his pants, "why shouldn't I kill you and be done with all of this?"

"You said your people would be making that choice," Bucky wasn't someone with a mission now, neither was Inessa. Everything rested on Amadeus at the moment, and since his only job was to stay alive until the boy carried it out, Bucky wasn't feeling much pressure. Sam would never kill him, no matter what he thought Inessa had done. He was a man of principles, a man of justice, and a man who was literally unarmed was no threat to him (well, technically he could still rip Sam's spine out of his back even with just the one arm, but that wasn't his M.O.).

"The thing is, I don't know yet that she's really gone, and I don't know what you know about her master plan. There are three scenarios, the way I see it. One- you break out and go implement phase two of her plan. Two, she's already found a new body to play house in and one of my people is a time bomb, ready to go off at any second and bust you free. Three- Inessa's gone and you don't know jack. See, three looks more likely than one or two, given what we know about Nessie, but the first two end with whatever the next phase is of Inessa's plan is activating and killing a lot of people, so I really don't want to make the wrong call."

"And you're talking to me because-?"

Sam shrugged, "Because I don't like being in this position. I'm the leader of the Avengers now Bucky, the last founding member left-"

"Last second-generation member, actually," Bucky considered it, "actually wait, no you're not. You're not the last anything." He couldn't resist pissing Sam off, not with everything he'd put them through, "You're not the last original Avenger, all of those are missing. You're not the last of the second wave because that one includes me. You're not the last leader because Wanda and Vision are still very much alive and, well- nope. I can't find anything where poor Sammy comes up last. With one notable exception- from what I've heard you were the last to turn your back on Inessa."

"Let me guess. The boy riled you up and now you're trying to get a rise out of me? I lost six of the best friends I've ever had, killed by someone I'll admit I loved like family, and now I get to decide which I'll regret more- killing you and finding out there was no phase two, or not killing you and seeing thousands if not millions die in the days to come."

"You missed the one where you let me go and find out there's no phase two."

Sam held up a scrap of paper between his fingers and Bucky's stomach dropped. He'd slipped the paper into Amadeus' pocket after the boy passed out. He didn't even see Sam search him when they ran in to find out what the cause of the screaming was, "I left out an option before when I was listing scenarios. There's a fourth I'd like to run by you. The fourth doesn't really include a provision of Inessa being alive or not, but it's where you play on the mind of a confused, angry genius and convince him to find your intel for you. Then I'm betting you bust out of here, probably grab Inessa's body, and run off, continuing your race across the stars. Given the fact that when we pulled you off of Amadeus Travis found this tucked into his pocket I'm betting that is the correct guess."

"I don't know what you're talking about. The boy must have had it on him," Sam was holding a scrap of the note Fandrel stabbed Inessa to deliver- the one she threw in the trash and Bucky retrieved. He'd torn out the name of the traitor, hoping that the Collector or even Berny would have a way to translate it. On Peter's ship the trash was incinerated, she thought the note was long gone and he'd been so desperate for any intel he could get… He knew now that Marie was the traitor, the note was useless to him, but if it ever got back to King Odin then Fandrel could be executed as a traitor. Not to mention it outed Amadeus as his helper.

"Not one of your more convincing lies," Sam glanced out the cell door, "Calder, may I borrow your expertise for a moment?"

"What do you want?" the sour-faced man sneered as he entered.

Sam held the paper up for him to see, "Any idea what this says?"

"It's a name. Midgardian," he shrugged.

"Who's name?"

Calder peered at the paper, but did not touch it, he frowned, "Midgardian names do not translate well into Asgardian. Ours is a phonetic alphabet, we don't have the same characters your language does." He pointed to the first character, "That is a hard 'm' sound. It distorts along the vertical axis, so it is repeated. The next is 'ah', then 'rhee', with a strong 'e' sound."

"Ok, so that means-"

"Marie," if anything Bucky sure as hell felt validated.

"Isn't that one of yours?" Calder didn't wait for a reply, he had better things to do than teach Midgardians how to read Asgardian, and he could care less about their little squabbles. He'd kill them all soon enough.

"It's in Asgardian," Sam called out after him, "I'm betting it came from Fandrel or Hoggun, won't King Odin want to know if-"

"King Odin already knows," the Asgardian stopped at the door to reply matter-of-factly, "Asgard is already debating the Counsel's order to execute Lady Ryker versus simply capturing her to get to the bottom of all of this. They won't like a member or two of Thor's Warrior's Three imprisoned for what was likely an act committed under the compulsion of an offworld child. The politics of Asgard are much more intricate than in your realm. King Odin will handle them."

"They may have knowingly betrayed him, they could still be dangerous!"

"And so they will be separated and placed at remote outposts on realms far from their homelands. In a few years, when everything has calmed, I will put a dagger through each man's spine and call it the work of the Shadow King."

Sam was taken aback, "You're talking about murder!"

"The punishment for high treason on your world is-?"

"Execution, but-"

"This is simply a delayed execution."

"And King Odin approves of that?! It isn't right!"

"I'm sure that keeps him awake at night."

Bucky snapped his fingers and breathed a sigh of relief as the fragments of memory clicked into place, "That's why you seem so familiar! Jeez, it was really beginning to bug me, thank you. The tone, pitch, accent- and that's not to mention your face, I almost missed it."

Calder shook his head and frowned, "Take my advice Sam Wilson, put a blade in this one's back now and just say he tried to run."

"I'm going to put a knife through your eye," Bucky waved cheerfully as Calder left.

Sam sighed and rolled his eyes, "Alright, I'll play. How do you know him?"

"Oh no, it'll spoil the surprise. Let's just say we are both pretty well acquainted with his friend or cousin or brother- whatever they were."

"And you think I'm going to let you kill him? An Asgardian emissary?"

Bucky nodded, "And once you figure out who he is you'll let me out of here and give me the chance to prove Inessa wasn't the monster you all think she was. That honor goes to Marie."

"Inessa's still trying to convince people Marie's some evil secret agent?" Sam rolled his eyes and began to shred the paper, "She tell you the girl has Pryor's powers? That's her favorite theory."

"That note came from someone who didn't know Marie, who couldn't have known Inessa suspected a traitor!" He was firing shots in the dark, but it fit with what he'd seen- Inessa hadn't been in contact with Fandrel since she was attacked in Niflheim and yet he wrote Marie's name on that note, somehow he figured out she was a traitor. If she had Pryor's powers, it would certainly explain how Sam was acting.

He just shook his head, "I'm not even humoring you anymore on this whole 'traitor' thing. We're professionals, remember? Steve, Nat and I took down SHIELD to expose Hydra, we took down the Winter Soldier to recover Bucky Barnes- and that's just three out of seven. Inessa kept her suspicions about Marie secret for a long time, but when she went after her we all investigated. Every psychic, every contact every last one of us had- that girl wasn't on anyone's radar. The most dangerous thing Marie Richards has ever done was steal some kid's glitter-glue in their kindergarten art class. She's squeaky clean."

"But Inessa said-"

"Everything Inessa has ever tried to pin on Marie was based off of one misunderstanding. Marie is innocent. The only thing she's guilty of is joining the Avengers when Inessa needed someone to use as a scapegoat while she made arrangements for whatever the hell her master plan was."

Bucky shook his head, "You're wrong. You're on the wrong side of this. She was your friend and you turned against her when she needed your support!"

"You know everything, huh? Everything anyone would need to know to prove she's worth believing in?"

"Yeah, I do."

"How many Avengers per team?"

"Four."

"Who was on Inessa's team?"

"Inessa, Amadeus, Marie-" Bucky paused to think who the last one might be. Had Inessa ever told him?

"Yeah, see, with Inessa it's never about what she says, it's what she doesn't say that gets you. Let me help you out," Sam snapped, "her name was Noelle Martinez. She was an Avenger for about four and a half years. She's gone now, and it's all on your girl Inessa. Nah- you know what? I'm done calling that thing by the name Nat and Clint gave her. Inessa was supposed to mean 'hope', what a load of shit!"

Sam's nose curled into a snarl and he walked over to Bucky to make his point, "Nadya. Nadya's the reason Noelle's gone. Nadya turned on us, Nadya killed my friends, destroyed my home, and she paid the price for that!" When Bucky tried to speak he held up a hand, "Marie is on her way to have a nice little chat with the host right now. If Nadya is really gone then we're done here and you'll ride in this cell all the way back to Earth- unless I throw you out the airlock into space. If she isn't gone though- if there's even a sliver of her left in this world, then Marie will expose that and she'll get the honor of putting that bullet between Inessa's eyes."

"You know what? I like this, it's a nice change of pace," Inessa was focusing so hard on keeping her eyes brown she barely needed to fake the listlessness from before. Amadeus' body was able to hold her and allow her to use a little power, but this body was different. Whatever exactly Project Helius changed in Emilie Ryker's unborn child, she was a live wire overflowing with power. Holding it back felt stupidly similar to holding back a sneeze.

It took a bit of effort to focus on Marie without opening even a peephole into the Valley. She was standing with her arms dangling through the bars of the cell, confident but weary, "You get to be the one inspected, pulled apart, and put back together again this time. All I need to do is break your nose and we're even! Well, at least until I prove you're still in there and you end up on the chopping block."

Marie popped her neck and watched the girl on the cot, "I almost feel sorry for you… In the same way you almost feel sorry for the lost little angel tossed from his home and uprooted from everything he knew and loved... Right up until you remember that angel was Lucifer." She shook her head, "Ellie says whatever is left in there is basically a vegetable. She thinks there's potential for growth though, once it recovers from being a meat-suit to a psychopath for twenty-something years. Sorry the boogie-man wrecked your body." She tapped one of her arms to emphasize the scarring on Inessa's.

"According to Ellie, you're just a sliver, but other than the feeling changing you don't look too different from the autopilot Inessa would leave behind," Marie opened the cell door and came in. "See, before when you were out of body Ellie says looking into your mind was like looking into a big, empty museum. There were little things flickering on the walls- memory, emotion and the like- and each one led back into the Shadows. Now though, those memories are gone. The museum has been abandoned and the art is off the walls." She sat on the foot of the cot Inessa was propped up in, "The thing is, I don't think it is abandoned. I think you just learned how to pull the decorations down. Assumptions like Ellie's get you nothing but trouble- I learned that from watching you, boss."

If you're ever going to be an Avenger, you really need to learn how to resist doing the monologue.

Marie reached out and took Inessa's head in her hands. When she spoke her voice was lower, darker, "You don't trust the man with the metal arm. He's not an ally, he's an enemy and you're going to do something about it to protect everyone here. You'll knock me out, take my knife, lock me in this cell, and go kill him. Then, when your mission is complete, you won't be able to think about anything but the friends you've lost. Sam will kill you, he has to. The Counsel of Yggdrasil ordered it. You're going to do something for him though, to make up for everything you've already done. You'll kill yourself with that knife so he doesn't have to."

It was a plan worthy of a Shadow Unit member, Inessa was impressed enough to forgive the monologue after all. If Marie used her powers of persuasion on a body void of Inessa, then they would work. If she used them on Inessa, they wouldn't. Sam probably wouldn't let it go far enough for her to actually kill Bucky, but if Inessa moved there wasn't any room to make a change of course without giving everything away, and fleeing with Bucky now would guarantee they'd never get the intel they needed to push on and find the Avengers.

Luckily Inessa was older and wiser than the last time she squared off against Marie. She'd been too rash in her pursuit of the girl, and looking back through it all she knew the truth. She knew Marie was no psychic. Her brother's powers were his own. Marie wanted nothing better than for Inessa to move, to go against Bucky thinking she was protecting her cover when in reality it would blow it and guarantee her execution. She's really grown up, it was hard to think this was the same person who nearly had a meltdown in the lobby of Avengers Tower over Anaiis' expensive clothing.

The memory of the Tower lobby and her friends there actually helped distract Inessa from the burning behind her eyes. She wasn't made to hide her power, she was made to wear it on her sleeve. Marie didn't wait long before lowering her hands and really looking at Inessa for the first time- inspecting every twitch of her face, every blink. As she did, Inessa thought about Gunther and Brenden- the receptionist and the security guard in the Tower lobby. Her friends were the Avengers, almost exclusively, but she had a sort of alliance with both men and Anaiis. They let her play security guard whenever she wanted to spy on someone coming in and never questioned it. She didn't even know who they thought she was. She had Avengers-level clearance, but all of the members (save the Shadow Unit, of course) had profiles out there for the world to browse on the Avengers website. Every Avenger had their own action figure for sale in the Avengers store (though hers was a half-formed hell-beast and the other figurines for her teammates were generic and accented by hoods or shrouded in shadows- void of even race or ethnicity). It wasn't beyond reason to think that they suspected she was one of the Shadow Unit members.

What did they think happened? The Shadow went off its leash and killed the Avengers, that was the story that was already making rounds (the rumors began after Tony failed to post to his social media accounts for a record three days). Amid the uncertainty and chaos had anyone even spared a thought for the sometimes-guard who somehow had access to the Avengers floors? Did that girl die in the explosion as well?

Marie sighed and shook her head, "Either you're as good as Amadeus insists you are or you're really gone." She stood up and walked out of the cell, re-locking the door behind her, "You said once that with my powers- or what you thought were my powers- you could never trust that anything you learned about me was right. I'm starting to see what you mean."

She turned to go, then stopped abruptly, "That doesn't mean I don't think Inessa Ryker planned and carried out the murders of Steve, Thor, Tony, Natasha, Clint, and Bruce Banner. I'm on Sam's side in this. One-hundred percent. It just means that given your history and your ability to fake-out people I can't say one way or another that you're really gone for good."

As soon as Marie left the holding area Inessa began to move towards the bathroom. She couldn't do it anymore- she couldn't contain her power. It made her skin itch and burn- she wasn't used to having to contain it so much. Her movements had to be automatic, a facsimile of the autopilot the Avengers knew so well. She'd look to them as she always had- a void with some pre-programmed instinct telling her to go use the can- just like the blank shell the Avengers brought in from the Hydra asylum in South Korea.

The bathroom in the cell was small and bare- she was basically standing in the shower just by entering, but she didn't really need anything fancy. The important thing here was that it didn't seem to matter who was holding you captive or how evil they were- bathrooms were always void of security cameras. The door closed behind her automatically and Inessa breathed a sigh of relief. Her brown eyes reflected in the mirror made her shiver- it was unnatural and weird. She relaxed her control and immediately silver mist began to bleed from them. It rolled down her arms and legs, filling the bathroom completely. Wisps of black mist joined the flood as more power than she'd ever contained was let loose. Her eyes weren't just silver, they were metallic- and it felt incredible.

On a whim, Inessa grasped her power and shaped it- formed the shadow-armor in its entirety. The creature that took her place was almost entirely humanoid- just a bit off in its proportions. Before she was restricted in her appearance by Nadya's form, now though she was free to twist and shape it as she saw fit. No more Glasgow-smile stretching ear to ear as the wolf's muzzle was flattened. Now she had more of a dog's muzzle with rows of fierce silver teeth. Her arms she made longer, matched the proportions of the old Shadow- but her talons extended even further. Without the benefit of a different body she was impeded by her own bones- no more double-jointed knees permanently bent for running at high speeds. The trade-off though was worth it.

She'd be a bit slower, but this armor was rock-hard and took almost no effort to contain. She didn't risk being locked out of her own body, her mind wouldn't slowly dull over time, and even the harsh lights in the bathroom didn't strain her abilities in the slightest. With a nudge the silver was replaced with inky black.

Inessa looked behind her in the mirror, to the loose black mist spiraling like steam. She could see the outline of a wolf's head there, watching. Inessa held her hand out to the side and the wolf stepped forward from the mist. Nadya nuzzled her mistress and growled slightly, "Don't worry, we're still a team. In fact, I might just have a mission for you."

"Clever little bitch," Sam shook his head in wonder as he watched the security feed Ellie set up in the bathroom. A full-scale mental scan took at least twenty minutes. Sam had given her five to see if the mind was empty, then ordered her to set up the camera.

"How is that possible? The gun should have worked- I saw it! It killed the other wolves," Berny rubbed his chin and shook his head, "Stark's research was sound. It should have worked. Maybe I stopped too soon, maybe one got away and helped her get back. Dammit!"

"JARVIS," Sam tapped his comm unit, "Pull up the plans for Tony's anti-shadow gun."

"The weapon is fully operational and experiencing no technical failures."

"That's not what I wanted to know. Humor me and let's assume Nadya was human, what would the gun do?"

"As you well know, Master Stark calculated with 99% certainty that Miss Ryker-"

"-is a shade, yeah, I know. Like I said- humor me."

"If Master Stark were incorrect," the computer seemed offended by the mere suggestion, "then it is possible exposure to the weapon may increase her power."

"How much?"

"Exponentially, sir."

Sam had to laugh again, "You said she stopped Bucky from kicking your ass?"

Berny nodded, "She basically gave me a target I couldn't miss."

"And almost pulled one over on us. Tricky, clever little bitch."

"Barnes probably knows then," Berny growled, "and we already know he and Cho have something in play, we have to assume it's her plan."

"She wants the point of origin for a shipment going to the Collector. She'll have Amadeus head for your computers."

"I'll send some security bots to-"

"-don't," Sam interrupted Berny. "Nadya knows she can't fool us for too long. She must have some sort of contingency in place for that. If you increase security around any part of your base, she'll know she's busted, and people will probably start to drop. We can't follow the normal patterns, not with her."

Berny considered it and nodded, "We change our routine, let this play out. Every plan has a make-or-break point, that stroke of luck everything is based on. We wait for that then take both Barnes and Cho out of play and she's lost the whole thing."

Sam began to laugh in earnest, "Change our routine!"

"Why is that funny?"

His smile was sly, dangerous, "Before you attacked with Morris we had a little prank war. Bucky just about killed me pushing me into a pit Natasha and Steve had dug for him. I was cursing, Bucky was laughing, and Steve just said 'Rule one of a prank war- change your routine'. Which means Nadya just caught herself in the same trap your brother always did."

"Which is?"

"Rule four- showers- and bathrooms- are sacred. Except when they're not."

Berny didn't find it as funny as Sam, "From what Clint told me, she's never been defeated in a prank war."

"She's never played against me," Sam half-turned to see Eoin O'Meara in the doorway with a matching grin on his face.

Chapter 23: 44 Days Before the Explosion