Chapter 75: Brief briefing

Chapter 75: Brief briefing

"Shit, okay. Where are you?" I asked, already making my way out of the bar, Steve and Bucky hot on my heels.

"I'm I'm on my way to pick up our back up plan." Natasha explained vaguely. "Loki took something else and Fury is hoping they will be able to track it."

"Well I can track Clint right now." I explained, walking down the sidewalk, carding my truck casually as I walked by, ignoring the gasps and shouts. "Just say the word and I can get him back, anywhere in the world in under thirty minutes. Unless Loki brought half of Asgard with him there won't be a damn thing he could do about it."

"We assumed you could track him but We don't know the situation on Clint's end." Natasha said, her indecision clear. "We can't just rush in, not without putting Clint and a few others at risk. Please, head to the Helicarrier, it's where Fury is going to be running this op from. We can brief you there and come up with some sort of plan."

"Okay, I understand. How long is your back up plan going to take?" I asked, still walking along the sidewalk, mostly because I hadn't told my feet to stop yet. "Do you want any help?"

"No, you've already helped with this one I think." She said vaguely before continuing. "Head to the Helicarrier, get briefed. I'll be back soon."

"Alright Natasha. Is Fury expecting me?"

"...No, but he better not turn you away." Natasha said, all but admitting she shouldn't be talking to me.

"Don't worry, I've got the perfect excuse. Just act surprised to see me." I said, stopping and turning to look at Steve and Bucky. "Call if things go south. Good luck."

"Thanks."

We hung up and I looked at the two friends again, both of them looking concerned and tense.

"I can get us most of the way to the Helicarrier, assuming that's where they called you too?"

"Yeah, we have a flight in twenty minutes."

"Tell them you don't need it, I can get you to DC." I assured them. "I just need to make a few stops to grab some stuff and get Ema."

After they both nodded in agreement I traveled all three of us to the warehouse, stepping off the landing pad.

"EMA!" I called out, heading directly to my storage shed and carding it.

"What!?" My partner called back, running around one of the large UCM's, dressed in one of her painter's smocks. "What's wrong?"

"Loki is here, he kidnapped Clint." I explained. "We are going to the Helicarrier to meet up with Fury for a briefing on what's going on."

"Shit, alright, what do you need?"

I shook my head as I walked across the warehouse, carding stuff that I felt could be useful, though I was careful not to overfill the Deck. I ended up with it half full with UCMs, LPMs and a few other things. The last thing I grabbed were five large rectangular black trunks, each of them stacking into one card.

"All four of them, really?" She asked quietly, looking over her shoulder to check on Bucky and Steve, who were both idly looking around the warehouse.

"I'm not messing around Ema." I said, looking at her. "I'm half tempted to ride the Void Skipper down to DC."

"Yeah, please don't." she responded. "That won't help the situation."

"Which is why I'm not doing it," I said simply, looking around one last time before nodding. "Okay you two, I'm all set. Let's get going."

Steve and Bucky turned and nodded, meeting me halfway across the warehouse. I had my hands on both of their shoulders when a thought occurred to me.

"Where is Peggy? Does she need a ride?" I asked, looking at Steve, who simply shook his head.

"She is already in DC, she was scheduled to come home tomorrow morning."

With that cleared up we vanished from the warehouse, popping out at the same landing pad we had used to rescue Bucky, Ema following behind us a moment later. Not long after that we were driving across DC in the super truck. It was the first time I had driven it in a long while, having transitioned almost entirely to traveling and flying to my destinations.

"Dammit, that's not good," I said, shaking my head. "If he was a unwilling puppet then we could rely on anyone he mind fucks-"

"Can we not call it that?" Steve asked, wincing as everyone turned to him.

"...We could rely on any one he whammied just being a meat puppet," I continued after a short pause. "Sounds like we are going to be dealing with them at the top of their game though."

"You know an awful lot about mind control," Fury said, once again looking suspicious.

"For fucks sake Fury, stop being such a paranoid ass for half a second. I know you have your lie detector on and you know it works on me," I said, rolling my eyes. "I'm extrapolating from examples from popular media, happy?"

"No. But I'll drop it." He said, the "For now" heavily implied. "After Agent Barton shot me they took the Tesseract and left. I played dead in the hopes Loki would pass over me, which he did. Not long after that Loki's portal triggered some sort of energy meltdown and destroyed the entire facility, killing thirty Shield scientists, agents and NASA specialists. That number is going to go up as we recover more bodies."

"What's the plan then Director?" Steve asked, leaning in.

"I can track Clint anywhere on earth," I said confidently. "If you have a blood sample, some personal effects, maybe a hair sample I could pick him out down to a foot or two. If not I should be able to track his general location, assuming he doesn't ditch his expanded quiver."

"You have a way to track our equipment?" Fury asked, with a tone that suggested he expected I could but was still annoyed by it.

"Yup, everything I make. It's a tablet just like all of my tracking stuff. But I don't watch it and take notes on you Fury. It's an insurance policy, not a way to gather blackmail."

Fury didn't respond, instead he pulled out his phone and sent a single text message, before putting it down on the table.

"A hair and blood sample will be here soon," Fury said. "Can you track the Tesseract as well? In case they aren't together?"

"Does your energy tracker follow it?"

"No, we already checked."

"Damn. Do you still have the machine that Tony's father used to track its energy signature?"

"No. When we had the Tesseract secured and he had given up finding Steve he scrapped the scanner and started being much more secretive with his designs. Tony might have something stored away but it is unlikely we will find them in any reasonable amount of time."

"In that case, probably not, but we can give it a shot," I said, shrugging. "How much data do you have on it? Physical data, on paper. It tends to work better."

"Not much, most of our physical data was on site in Nevada," Fury admitted. "Does it matter if it's newly printed?"

"No. Get me as much as you can and I'll see what I can do, but I'm not hopeful." I explained. "Have some people start working on something to track it specifically. When it's done I can use that to track it but until then"

"Fine, then I'm green lighting a mission to track Agent Barton down. With any luck Loki and the Tesseract will be with him, if not then the primary objective will be to extract our Agents," Fury said, getting nods from Peggy, Bucky and Steve. "Maker, I would like you to go with them. I want you all gone the minute the tracker is done."

The next twenty minutes were a blur. I set up a UCM, tied to myself, to print out anti mind control cuffs. The machine could make one every twenty minutes, which was not optimal but would have to do. I kept a dozen of the cuffs from my cabinet and gave Fury the rest, after getting him to swear he would give one to Natasha. After that I whipped up a tablet to track Clint.

His pointer was slowly moving around near a small town in Connecticut, where a Shield analyst quickly figured out there was an abandoned cold war era bunker.

"That's where they've got to be, Clint, Loki and the Tesseract." I said. "If the Tesseract is throwing off any sort of radiation they would need somewhere that could block it."

"And a bunker designed to keep radiation out would do just as good a job keeping it in," Peggy finished, looking at the tracker over my shoulder. "Good catch."

"Then the plan is a go. Suit up and get out there." Fury said, nodding to Steve. "Your squad is already prepped and ready, they are just waiting for you three."

We made our way quickly to the flight deck of the Helicarrier, Steve and Bucky deploying their armor as they climbed into a quinjet, which was already half full with the eight equipment enhanced soldiers. Bucky started explaining the mission plan and what to look out for while Steve walked further into the jet, stopping by the pilot.

"Take us out," He said simply, the pilot nodding and tapping buttons, the quinjet slowly ramping up. "Push it to the redline, I want us there yesterday."

A few minutes later we were flying through the sky, on our way to crash whatever kind of party Loki was trying to start.