Zemo: Moscow in Spring

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

In Moscow, they meet yet another of Kane's former companions, and confirm their worst suspicions.



"Capitalism hasn't made this city any less grey." Christian Kane noted as they walked through the streets in the evening light. They had arrived in Moscow and landed in a rare private airfield that the elder man had known of. No one asked how, and his son seemed to take it as a matter of course that his father would have some kind of connection. With the Blackbird safely stowed away, they had taken old black taxis, dinged and scraped, into the heart of what had once been the Soviet Union and now was the centre of the much smaller but no less dangerous Russian Federation.

They had quickly left the more populous areas, until finding themselves in a forest of grey buildings, each as unique as a dockside warehouse. Through the occasional window or briefly opened door, they could hear snatches of music. Obviously the club scene in Moscow took the idea of 'industrial' very seriously. Kane ignored all of it, coming to a door and knocking. There was a brief exchange in Russian, a folded stack of bills passed through a slot, and the door opened for them.

Inside was an opulent club, looking like something from the in scene during the 80s in New York, and full of a mix of models, escourts, rich old men, and carefully groomed large men in suits, with dangerous bulges in their coats. In the centre of the club was a caged off boxing ring, and inside, two men hammered at each other with bare knuckles, spotting the canvas and occasionally the crowd with blood. Kane ushered them through until he could slip into a large table, and send a waitress with a note for the man standing at the outside corner of the ring, scowling. "I see Alexei is consulting again."

Shostakov squinted disgustedly as Stepan tried a trick obviously learned in the John Woo's dojo. Not even bothering to watch the inevitable result, he turned around looking for the nearest drink.

"Sir?" The waitress offered him the a glass and a folded message, pointing toward the back of the room. "From the gentleman."

"Sweetheart," Alexei grunted stuffing the note into his chest pocket unread, "Ya really gotta start working on your people-reading skills."

Behind him the heavy thump indicated that Stepan was down for the count, and Shostakov now had enough money to finally pay the tab. Making his way through the reluctant crowd, Alexei stopped in front of the table and assessed the group slowly, with pale shrewd eyes.

"Chris." The Russian smiled. "It's been a while."

The large fist lashed out with the speed belied by the wrinkled face and they greying hair, smashing into Kane's jaw with meaty, unpleasant sound. "The answer's no."

"I take it buyin' one a drink rather loses something in the translation," Marius remarked, looking askance at the Englishman. He was mildly impressed that Kane hadn't fallen out of the chair. From the look of Alexi, Marius had to assume it was because the newcomer liked him.

Christian worked his jaw around. "Well, one thing hasn't changed. You still hit like a girl." He rubbed the bruise tenderly. "And work for peanuts. We've got unfinished business, Alexei. Business we thought was completed in 1972. You know what I'm talking about."

Christian worked his jaw around. "Well, one thing hasn't changed. You still hit like a girl." He rubbed the bruise tenderly. "And work for peanuts. We've got unfinished business, Alexei. Business we thought was completed in 1972. You know what I'm talking about."

Shostakov scratched his stubble contemplatively, the sandpaper sound almost lost in the bar's background noise. "Fucking Germans never know when to quit... " He shrugged. "What do you want me for, you old bastard? Get some bright-eyes and busy tailed American to walk point for you and take care of the Baghead. It's their fucking world now."

"I need to be sure that Zemo is back, Comrade. Montoya and Batroc have been following the same lines I have, but none of us have concrete proof. Since I know that you haven't just been spending all your time badly training fighters, I was hoping between alcoholic comas, you'd have dug up something."

"Well..." Alexei scratched himself, looking over the X-Men with frank lack of regard. "You are smarter than you used to look, I guess." The Russian turned around slightly and gestured cryptically toward a couple of bull-necked youths in badly fitting leather jackets standing by the door. One of them nodded back and disappeared.

"Or maybe just lucky." Shostakov continued as he turned back toward the table. "There was some hinky shit that went down at a Kazakhstan depot a while back. It basically flew under the radar. Just another gop-stop on a bunch of leftover hardwear, mostly obsolete. Palms got greased, everybody looked the other way..."

His eyes flickered slightly toward Kane. "Almost everybody. I still have a few friends and I asked them to look into it. Besides the usual crap a couple of things went missing that you might recognize." The thuggish-looking man materialized by Alexei's shoulder and the old man plucked the briefcase out of his hands without looking, dismissing him without words.

"Here..."

Kane grabbed at the blueprints proffered by Alexei, his eyes squinting in concentration.

"And here." A small, black, slightly charred object landed on the table, sliding until it hit Adrienne's glass with a faint tinkling sound. "They used that to tie make the security system go bug-fuck."

Adrienne pulled off a glove and picked up the scrambler-type-object, keying in immediately to see the man she knew was Baron Zemo using it to enter the facility. She dropped the piece of charred electronics and shrugged. "Guy with a bag over his head? That's him, right?" she asked anxiously, hoping to provide the 'concrete proof' Kane wanted.

"That's him. Damn." Christian shook his head.

"So what does that mean, Dad?"

"That's the entire world is in danger and they don't even know it yet." Kane got up. "We have no time to lose."

On the way out, they discover one last surprise waiting for them in Moscow.



Moscow looked even greyer leaving it. The meeting with Alexei Shostokov, a man old and miserable enough to look like a stereotype of a Soviet chairman in movies from the 60s had been a depressing experience, more so because he, along with Georges Batroc in France and Alejandro Montoya in Spain had be able to help confirm the suspicions of Christian Kane; somehow, Baron Zemo was back, and with him, the rest of the Masters of Evil. The elder Kane was uncharacteristically silent in the back of the car, gazing sightlessly out the window as his son pulled it through the gates of the small private airstrip they'd used to land the Blackbird.

Garrison killed the engine, and the mixed group of X-Men stepped out on to the windswept tarmac. Garrison knuckled the small of his back and stretched for a moment. "Fly half-way around the world to determine that a lunatic with a purple bag on his head is likely building a device out of a Buck Rogers comic to blackmail the world for its supply of zinc or something. Too late to transfer to the West Coast Annex, boss?" Kane said half jokingly to Ororo. Before she could reply, a sharp sound of alarm from Adrienne froze them. From all corners of the airfield, men in orange and purple uniforms, but holding much less ridiculous automatic weapons closed on them. At the head of them walked an ice-blonde woman so achingly beautiful as to freeze ones breath in their lungs.

"Oh, fuck me." Shiro raised his hands defensively and took a step back. He had half a mind to just fly away as fast he could carry himself, and would have if it hadn't been for gunmen who'd kill everyone else if he fled. He was actually shaking in his boots. "Amora. Kane, I am going to kill you for this."

"That a name or untranslated profanity?" Marius inquired warily. He assumed there was a reason for Shiro to have gone white, but he wasn't getting a single read of mutancy from any of the assembled. This might have been some comfort had they not been bearing firearms. Whilst Marius would have liked nothing more than to scrutinize the blonde which seemed to be causing his teammate so much distress, he felt unable to justify the attention when she was also the only one without a weapon.

Shiro raised his head to meet the woman's gaze, the only act of defiance he could muster. "She is Amora the Enchantress of Asgard. We've met." He would have spat in disgust if his mouth weren't suddenly dry. "She abducted Sefton and then tried to kill us all. Dragons were involved."

The smile that curved the blonde woman's lips was beautifully cruel. "Ah, the messenger of the Norns," she said in a slightly-accented but otherwise flawless English. "How well you remember." She laughed lightly then, and the men around her stirred as if the sound had run electricity down their spines.

"Do not move," Ororo said quietly, able to see Shiro's fear from where she was standing at the side of the group. "Everybody, stay where you are." It was obvious there was no way they were going to be able to resist the heavily-armed men; especially with a civilian and Christian Kane along - though formidable in his own right, she was sure, he would not fit into the X-Men's formation if they did try to react.

Adrienne snorted to mask her fear. "How stupid do you think we are?" she muttered in response to Ororo under her breath. With a glare for Garrison, she added "if dragons are involved, I vote for the guy who got us all into this to be the first snack."

"Who ever this chick is, I'm not impressed yet." Garrison muttered, only to feel his father's warning hand on his shoulder.

"Don't give her a reason to prove it to you." Kane said, and stepped forward. "I see that you've coming running to the call of your master, Enchantress. Didn't take long for you to appear once he came scurrying out of whatever hole he's been hiding in for thirty-five years. Seems that you've aged well." He smiled thinly at the blonde woman. "You know that I'm going to find him, and put him back under for another three decades."

"This is no game for old men," the Enchantress said dismissively, "or children." She looked at Marius, Shiro, and Adrienne and smirked. At a flick of her fingers, the men moved in, keeping their weapons trained on the X-Men. This was no game at all.