The first base I hit was not like the one of yesterday. The one was just a surveillance unit.
They were tasked to monitor parts of the city so the armed personnel in the hideout wasn't much.
Following the routes Barton pointed out to me, I was able to escape the cops pursuit and made way to the second hideout.
This one was a warehouse with a mill underground that they used to process materials so it had a lot of guards which was the reason why–
"Stop him!"
I walked through the base like a human tank.
"Why do you do that?" Barton asked me as I killed another one.
"Do what?" I asked.
"The whole barbarian thing. Like why use your fists when you could just put a bullet through their head. Do you… I don't know… like it?" What the fuck?
"No! No I don't like it!" I screamed into my comms.
"Hmm hmn." He just hummed in disbelief.
"It's different for me you know," I started, "sure I could use guns, but then my abilities wouldn't grow as they should. Mutants can't stop themselves from using their abilities… it's a part of them. Suppressing that aspect of their life is just like creating a time bomb. It'll blow up sooner or later."
"So the viking style you got going on is…" He asked still not dropping it.
"Basically, it's just me learning how to use my abilities better and being in sync with them than… being a viking." I explained.
"In other words… you ability makes you a viking." He teased.
"Christ Barton! You're not gonna drop that are you?" I asked while throwing a guard to a pole impaling him in it.
"Not any time soon, no." he said and paused before he continued, "…Clint."
"… Gotcha Clint. Draul then." I reciprocated. Clint was a nice dude to know.
"Sure. Oh and you got a party coming to you in five." He informed me.
Well then, I better put on my dance shoes.
I stood waiting for them at the same spot in an open area and watched as 20 something armed men filtered in front of me with guns at the ready, all aimed at me as we stood in a stalemate until one of them came forward, probably the supervisor of this base.
"Under normal circumstances, I would be happy to have someone like the famed Draugr coming to my base." The words the guy spoke made me raise an eyebrow. HYDRA really did a good job on PR.
I've only been on what, two missions and people already know who I am… or maybe information about me was spread across their bases because of what I did yesterday.
"What can I say, I am quite satisfied to be acquainted under such circumstances." I replied with a smirk adorning my lips.
"Well I'm not." He said not at all amused, "It would do you well to surrender because as you can see," he gestured to his men, "you are vastly outnumbered."
"You don't really believe you have the advantage do you?" I asked, putting my mind in full focus reading everything I could from his expression and body movement.
"I do. I've read you files дьяволенок(Adskoye otrodʹye), in as much as HYDRA may like to believe, you are not infallible." He said.
"What did he just call me?" I asked Clint in a whisper.
"It's Russian for 'hellspawn'."
Would you look at that, not my first choice for an epithet but it'll do for now but something about what he said and the way he said it made me cautious.
I tensed my muscles as steam started leaving my body and my veins started glowing. I looked at him to see his reaction and they was only a flash of surprise before he regained his confident look which only made more cautious.
We were locked in a staredown, 1 vs 26, we continued like that for seconds until someone folded to the pressure and released a gunshot which drowned the place in chaos.
I rushed at the crowd keeping my focus peeled as I dodged the bullets I could and tanked the ones I couldn't.
As I fought and dodged, I realized that I would soon need a weapon to fight with. Guns didn't do it for me anymore, not in this type of fight. I couldn't use a gun when I was in a fight like this surrounded on all sides by enemies. But that was for later.
Twisting behind an HYDRA agent I held his head from the back and broke it against my shoulders and flipped him to throw against a group of agents.
I cartwheeled backwards and followed with a flip and perched on top of the shoulders of an agent. Before he could shake me off I used my searing red hands to crush his throat.
I took his gun and opened fire at the group in my front and watched as they scrambled to find cover. Some returned fire while others dived to shield themselves from stray bullets.
It was during this time as I weaved through obstacles to find a good spot to shoot from that I felt it. It was a coldness that was unfamiliar to me. Given my resistance, such minute degree of coldness couldn't in anyway affect me nor my efficiency.
… That was until I saw myself bleeding.
Trickles of blood were coming out of the wounds that still wasn't fully healed. I was alarmed as I saw this.
Due to how high my temperature gets when I heat up myself, any wound I received in that formed gets cauterized preventing any bleeding and blood loss in that state, so me bleeding while I was still in that state left me very alarmed.
Did this state have a cool down period? It might be possible but I didn't think that was it. I could still feel the energy in my cells increasing every moment in drops even now so it couldn't be a cool down as I used for a much longer time yesterday.
With that theory debunked I went for the most viable hypothesis – something was done to me, so with my control over my muscles and bloodstream I slowed down my blood flow and searched for any foreign substance in my body.
I felt all the locations of the bullets in me and also felt how my regeneration was working fine, albeit very slowly. I felt for anything other than the bullet and that was when I found it.
A bullet shot to my ribs.
But this bullet was different. I pulled it out and saw that the tip point of the bullet was broken like it was made of glass and there was something inside it. Mostly what was inhibiting my regeneration.
Damn! It was just a night, less than 24 hours, and they already had distributed regeneration suppressing bullets most likely to the other base in the city.
This just made raiding a lot harder.
I focused on the wound and saw that it was the only one that haven't started healing while the others were doing so very slowly.
With my reduced blood flow, the drug or whatever it is would take longer to circulate my body thereby reducing its effects.
I could already here that guy shouting at his men to form a perimeter around me probably because he assumed whatever I was shot with had already taken effect.
So this was why he was confident.
"Hey, what's going on? I lost the feed to where you are so I'm blind right now." Clint asked.
"Nothing much. Just got shot with a bullet that dialed down my regeneration from 10 to 3. Other than that I'm good." I was already thinking of how to stop this drug from affecting me more as I replied to Clint.
"You can't heal?!" Cried out a spooked Clint.
"I can but its slowed down. I'm seeing if I could purge it from my system." I reassured him.
Wait.
Purge.
"That's it!" I immediately had an idea, a viable one at that. Thanks a lot super brain.
They already started shooting at where I was so I had to hurry.
I started releasing steam from my body as it boiled. But instead of letting it flow through my entire body I pushed it all to the area around that particular bullet wound as I pumped in as much heat as I could.
It took a few seconds before I could feel it working. I used the same principle of exercising to burn calories on the drug and since it wasn't a part of my body, meaning it didn't have my mutant ability, I was able to purge the source of it out of my body by focusing most of the heat I could muster to the wound.
The moment I did, my regeneration sped up and I could feel the effect of the drug wane considerably.
I was left panting after burning tons of my energy that I didn't realize when I was surrounded. They were eight people around me, all with guns, as the leader came forward.
"You thought you were special because you couldn't die, non. HYDRA made you special," he waved a bullet in my face that had a blue tip, "meaning they can take it away if they please."
"You don't need to be surprised, you can only blame you ignorance… and foolishness."
I was just wondering when he would notice that the drug didn't have any effect on me. Probably not any time soon.
Bang!
His voice was cut off courtesy of the bullet sized hole in his head.
I stood up from the ground and they all flinched and move backwards. Well isn't that cute.
"Where was I? Ah yes, lets dance."
…
[2 Hours Later]
I was back in the house with Clint and the time was currently a few minutes past five. We were waiting for Fury and whatever grand reveal he had to be laid bare.
Clint and I were snacking on pizza and beer that I picked up on my way here while we watched a game like two normal dudes except…
"What if you heated up your balls? Would it melt, boil… or harden?" Turns out Clint Barton had a very… expressive imagination.
"I don't know man, why would I even want to do that?" I groaned and asked with genuine intrigue.
"I don't know," seriously dude? "You could maybe get hit in the nut and then think, 'if only I had set it on fire', anything could happen. I'm just saying." I looked at him with the most disbelieving expression I could make and he just shrugged.
"Why would you even think that." I a inclined to believe it's the beer talking but given his line of work I am disinclined to believe that.
"Circumstances y'know, circumstances." Was all he said as we shared a laugh.
He stayed silent for a while before he asked.
"What are you gonna do next? I mean after HYDRA."
That was a question I didn't have an answer for.
If it was a year ago I would have said I wanted to live a quiet life, but now I couldn't see myself doing that. I couldn't form a picture of that kind of life in my head.
There was only one thing one see myself doing.
"I guess… I'll find a way to get stronger." He looked at me in surprise as I said that.
"What?"
"Nothing. It's just that given your past… before HYDRA, I figured you'll try to get it back." He said.
"Can you?" I asked him.
"After all this, do you think you'll be able to get back to a normal life?"
He didn't hesitate at my question before he answered.
"That's what I'm working for."
True. Clint Barton wasn't like the rest of the Avengers who didn't have a normal life without their suit. All he wanted was a house, on a farm, and a family.
Unfortunately, that road wasn't one I could take. Destruction was what awaited me if I did.
I tried to do that for a month and my freedom got taken away for two years. Simple math favored the latter.
Like the famous saying, 'knowledge is power', I had the knowledge, even if not accurate, was more than anyone had the right to know. That was my avenue to power.
But unfortunately, the quote didn't end there, '… and it is also a curse'. This was balance.
Nothing good lasts forever. I had been blind to that fact.
The knowledge I had that could have been a blessing cursed me for two years because I didn't use its power. I would do everything to escape that curse.
"That's nice, but unfortunately it's not in the cards for me… Not yet anyway." I said in a low voice but it seemed that he heard me.
"Don't you think you are being harsh on yourself. HYDRA… HYDRA was a fucking cop out. It happened. This best thing you could do to yourself is try to get over it unless you want to end up like the boss." He sympathized with me with a little tease at the end.
"I'm already in the process of getting over HYDRA." It was true. My mind wouldn't allow something like HYDRA to break me down.
"Then why?" This time he looked at me.
"Because knowledge is power… and also a curse." I said cryptically.
He went silent at that as his face gained a serious look before it disappeared.
"You think others will come for you because of what you know and what you can do." He said with certainty as if he understood what I meant. He most probably did.
"I know they will." I said and laid back deeper into the chair and turned to the TV.
We watched TV for a while before he said something that made me smile.
"As long as it's not a global terrorist organization capable of starting a world war… feel free to ring me up."
"Will do."