The Nowhere King | First Contact
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xp_logsClint Barton and Susan Storm are joined by a third as the cyrotube opens. He's not happy at all.
The silence continued to echo with the faint plip plop, plip plop of vaguely gelatinous liquid. "Well, shit," Clint muttered, the silence almost eerie. Then the backup generators kicked on and every screen in the room connected to modern technology flickered to life — only to display depressingly familiar blue screens of death.
It was all emergency lighting, though, mostly red save for the mildly florescent blue coming off the computers and the now-steady (if faint) light from the tube. "This is the part of the horror movies where the smart people decide to try to get out of the building before whatever was in the tube eats their faces." He said it dryly, but he'd already pulled another arrow from his quiver and nocked it, unsure whether the force field, which hadn't actually been necessary in the end, would let anything pass through it from this side, since it hadn't allowed the first arrow he'd shot to penetrate.
Sue pushed herself away from Clint and glanced around the room. "That was... anti-climactic," she stated in a whisper. "I mean, if this were a horror movie wouldn't there be a scratch on the wall or a light hanging from a wire right now? Or at least an ominously opening tube... or worse, an empty one." Almost against her will the blonde's eyes flicked over to the tube.
Clint's eyes moved immediately to the tube, as well. His night vision was far superior to a normal person's — he could see quite clearly that the tube was, in fact, empty. "So you know that first contact protocol you mentioned? We've got one. It involves vacating the premises and contacting HQ to officially quarantine the building. We're gonna be quarantined, too." His mind was rushing through all the different variables. "We have no idea what was in that tube and whether or not it's some sort of advanced bio-weapon. Just — we'll say you... repelled in here to surprise me and we were making out or something. Otherwise you're going to disappear into a SWORD holding facility and it doesn't matter how rich your family is, they won't let you out. Not for breaking into a secure, government building."
The tube still glowed — Clint could see that the glass of tube's front was now more of a translucent barrier similar to Susan's forcefield in texture — and as if in response to the woman's query, it pulsed. New glyphs were illuminated on the frosty pseudo-glass one at a time as if synced to a heartbeat. Each revealed symbol appeared faster than the last until the entire front was lit up in an adrenaline fueled crescendo, but the mystery of the new particular rhythm had been spoiled as a silhouette of a muscular, near-naked man picked himself up off the floor with the aid of what looked to be a staff.
"You've still got the force field up, right?" Clint asked. "Cause I think we're gonna need it."
The air around the two of them shimmered. "I do now," Sue replied looking up at Clint. "Don't worry, I'll protect you," she told him with a grin.
"Pretty sure that point's moot now," Clint said, eyeing the man with equal parts scientific interest and general worry.
The figure, still heaving, growled angrily and arched his back to let loose a roar. This was joined by the sharp squeal of twisting metal as a good number of pipes in the warehouse pulled toward the tube; ripping through the walls as if the new man had a gravitational pull.
Clint carefully put the arrow he'd initially drawn and nocked back in his quiver, pulling a completely different one free slowly. It was obvious they were dealing with a powered person, possibly some type of electromagnetic-based power, but there was no way to be completely sure. As he nudged Sue carefully toward the door, making sure to stay inside the shimmering barrier she was, apparently, creating, he said, "Hello?"
The stranger's attention snapped toward the two immediately.
The stranger attacks Clint and Sue. They defend themselves, but are quickly overwhelmed.
The man's features were sharp and tightly drawn — lightly colored eyes sat in stark contrast against olive skin and dark hair, all framed by a widow's peak, but in a way that wasn't easily peggable by ethnicity or geography — and the predatory glare he was giving was practically palpable. He straightened, raising what could now be clearly be identified as a golden trident that glowed with the same sigils from the tube, and something suddenly wasn't right as he was suddenly too tall.
Or, more correctly, his feet were no longer planted on the floor. He didn't leave much more time to process the wings on his ankles or the strange toga he was wrapped in because the foreigner's next move was to raise his weapon defiantly and rush at the two.
This was not good. "You know that arrow — now would be a really good time to use it," Sue declared as she rolled behind Clint to free up his line of fire and dropped her force field temporarily. "Just be quick and don't miss!"
Missing wasn't the problem, so far as Clint was concerned. The now-damp air, complete with wisps of steam, hit him full in the face but his nictating membranes closed briefly before flicking back open. Mostly, he was trying to figure the order in which he was going to fire his arrows. Everything seemed to slow down for just a moment as his mind clicked through various scenarios but really, there was only one sequence of events that could play out here.
Releasing the blunted arrow, he nailed the on-coming, toga-wearing man in the elbow, hitting it just right to strike the nerve there. Then the foam-tipped arrow hit the man in the forehead. Last, but certainly not least, the slightly-blunted arrow with the mechanized arms and the pressure-triggered taser hit the man square in the chest.
The three arrows hit true. The first did little to stop their assailant's oncoming charge, bouncing like it hit a brick wall. The second prompted another roar. The world took a breath as the third hit and its tiny robotic arms found purchase in the man's chest. He spasmed in midair as the taser triggered and sent arcs of electricity down the aggressor's limbs. The rules of physics were still in play, however, and the winged man flew past Clint and Susan to crash ungracefully through a wall of freestanding shelves with the force of a freight train.
Sue glanced at the wreckage around them, the water pooling as it dripped from the shattered pipes and the destroyed shelving before her gaze slid across to glance at Clint. "Remind me not to get on your bad side anytime soon," she noted. "Though all the times I got smart in class probably don't help." It used to be a game with her to try and show-up the teachers but then she'd never known one who could cause this much destruction. The blonde was very glad she and Clint hadn't ended up fighting. "So you think he's okay?" She asked cautiously nodding in the direction of the shelving.
"Keep the force field up," Clint instructed, ignoring most of what she was saying because his arrows hadn't caused nearly the amount of damage that they should have. The first hadn't even registered with the guy. The second had only pissed him off. The third had done some damage but he had a feeling that was more due to electricity than impact. "I don't think he's finished." The crashing he could hear from the fallen shelving, the way it shifted and moved like whatever had settled beneath it was getting up for another round, didn't bode well for them. "If this gets any worse, you hit that rope and head up, get out and away from here as fast as you can. I've got backup I can call." Admittedly, his backup was Reggie, who was more interested in How I Met Your Mother reruns than sparring, but the alternative was... really not appealing.
Just then, the collapsed shelving and its many varied items, most dusty from disuse, practically exploded upward, detritus raining toward them. Clint was thankful for the force field — he'd need to figure out Sue's abilities where it was concerned. Later. Definitely later. He already had an arrow knocked, another taser, though if this kept up he was probably going to have to start going for the more lethal varieties he carried.
The stranger stood in the eye of the suspended detritus, all rage and seething anger. Closer inspection proved that the debris was held aloft by water that was drawing toward the nexus at an alarming rate. The man held the glowing trident aloft, and the tide of suspended water shifted in accordance to his breathing. The runoff now flooded the warehouse up to ankle-deep.
A barked command broke the spell of the moment. It was in a language unfamiliar to Clint or Susan, but that barely mattered as the water and its content violently surged outward in all directions.
Sue pushed in front of Clint her hands coming up to form a force field in front of her, not a moment too soon as the surging wave of water washed passed them, the wave breaking against he force field and flowing to either side of the pair. The sheer pressure of the wave elicited a hiss from the girl and she slid backwards into Clint, "That was...more powerful than I thought, lets not do that again. You don't happen to have an arrow in that quiver which is an instant knock out do you?"
"Maybe, but I dunno if it'll work — the first two just. They fucking pinged off him," Clint muttered, grabbing one of his arrows with the pressure-released sedative. Probably invulnerable. Or partially invulnerable, the taser did take him down, if only for a few seconds. "I don't want to kill him. On my count, drop the force field." He had a total of four sedation arrows. If those didn't work... he didn't want to think about the other options. Not right then. "And — now."
They didn't work.
The conflict and property damage escalates before the fight ends dramatically.
Well, okay. They certainly got the stranger's attention. He had pulled back down out of his outburst when the first arrow hit; glancing off his shoulder. As he turned, however, the second and third arrow hit his chest below the right shoulder to deliver their toxin.
The stranger blinked and pulled the two arrows from his chest while simultaneously using the trident to block the forth. At this point he was already closing the distance, a snarl coloring his features, across the warehouse like a charging bull.
"Okay so, arrows don't really work then," Sue noted as she wrapped her arms around Clint, waving at the stranger with a cheeky grin as the air around the two of them shimmered and they vanished from sight. "Please tell me you have a plan," Sue asked her ex-teacher as she pulled him slowly to the side.
The dark-haired man slowed a little in mid-air, confused, but still landed where they had been with a crash that split the concrete floor.
"Right, gimme your taser," Clint said, watching the man hit the spot where they'd been with an amazing amount of speed — not to mention power. "Electricity took him down - briefly. I'll hit him with the taser, then two of my electro-charged arrows, and then we're going to — wait. Wait, can you put him in a bubble? Like, you keep stuff out, can you keep stuff in?"
The blonde slipped her taser out of the holster at her back and passed it over to Clint. "You get him to hold still and I'll scoop him up," she confirmed.
A few seconds passed before he began smashing expensive lab equipment in random retaliation. This was accompanied by a monologue in that strange other language, but money could easily be bet that it was all curses.
"Not my laptop, you fucking psycho," Clint hissed. "Goddammit. Sue, on my count — I'll use your taser, hit him with my last two charged arrows, and you enclose him in that bubble. Hold it for as long as you can." There was blood seeping from the shallow wounds his previous arrows had made, so the guy wasn't completely invulnerable. Only mostly invulnerable. "Three, two, now."
Sue's invisibility dropped. The taser ricocheted off a piece of equipment behind the man, its prongs embedded in an oddly neat line down his spine, and then Clint fired two arrows at once. Both hit the man's front, visibly pumping more electricity into him.
As the stranger convulsed, Sue rushed forward, her hands spreading in a forward, waving motion that sent a force field washing up over the man in the toga and swept him off his feet, into the air. "He's a lot heavier than he looks," Sue told Clint through clenched teeth. "Do you have anything that can hold him?"
Then the pounding began. The foreigner was starting to show signs of wear and tear from all of this abuse, but he was still high on adrenaline and the concept of being boxed in again focused his remaining energy into a pin-pricked point: get out. Slowly, but aided by super strength, the monstrous man in the bubble hammered between spasms against Susan's willpower as hard as he could manage.
The young woman groaned and sank to her knees clutching at her head, "He... really wants... to get out." she told Clint through clenched teeth. She was going to feel this in the morning, whoever they had managed to wake up was strong, away stronger than anyone she'd ever come across.
Clint had thrown the hand-held portion of the taser as soon as Sue started moving forward, having seen how quickly she could put up her force field. He was just glad she'd scooped in time — even as it was, he'd gotten a bit of a jolt through the water around them, which had come up to his ankles. "Right, time for you to get out of here," he said, leaning down so he could pick Sue up. "Hold that for as long as you can, but don't break your brain or whatever. I'll get you to your exit, then go." He knew the warehouse, if the guy didn't stay down after all that tasing — and it didn't seem like he was going to go down, it'd just be time for a bit of hide and seek.
The pressure only increased against Sue's barrier as the electricity faded. The stranger — more enraged, eyes locked with wide-eyed fury— was not giving up. But as his protests only built, suddenly the invisible walls confining him disappeared as the blonde's hold was pressed to its limit.
The dark-haired man, head held high and back arched as he hovered in the air, let loose a scream of triumph as the walls were broken and he was free once again. The last word in his victory cry, however, wasn't totally unknown. "Atlantis."
Silence lingered for a long moment before Clint asked, "Did he just say Atlantis?" When he didn't get an immediate answer, he took his eyes off the man for a split second to check on Sue - only Sue was out. Or almost out. Near enough to unconscious to make her mostly a liability at the moment, though it bothered Clint to think of her that way. Still, he needed to figure out how to put this man down. Possibly permanently. Powered individuals could be problematic, he knew that first hand, but that wasn't how Clint wanted this to happen. That was SHIELD's way of operating.
He stashed Sue behind a fallen shelf, then moved upward, climbing other shelves in an attempt to get a better vantage.
By this point, the dark hair brute had enough time to recover and, after an initial bit of confusion, stalk toward his prey. His eyes however, were still wide and immediately focused not on Clint, but on his bow. The man snarled and began pulling down shelves.
Clint saw that look despite still trying to scale the shelving units. And then he was trying to climb faster because getting squished by boxes and crates labeled 0-8-4 wasn't exactly the way he pictured himself dying. Also, there was no way in hell he was letting the crazy psycho who'd popped out of what was apparently some kind of cryogenic storage tube anywhere near his bow. He'd rather be squished.
There was a grunt of effort and then a slow, creaky moan of inevitability as the shelving units in Clint's row began to topple upon each other like dominoes. Looking satisfied, the crazy psycho was in the air again and closing fast. Clint might get his wish.
Letting his instincts take over, Clint half-fell, half-hopped from collapsing shelf to collapsing shelf as everything went over sideways, barely keeping himself from sliding straight through the gaps between them. So, the strength, the near invulnerability, the flight, the apparent control of water. Clint was outmatched. He knew that. It didn't keep him from landing and pushing his bow over his shoulder so he could face the oncoming man head-on.
Then he decided that was a bad idea.
This epiphany, however, came far too late as the flying man hit him full tilt in the chest. The force of the impact pushed the archer straight back into the nearest wall, but there was no follow through from his aggressor - only the silhouette of the man standing over him. The psycho was breathing heavily and had multiple puncture wounds, but the most shocking thing was that the rage in his eyes had been replaced by curiosity.
Clint just sat there on the floor, the air knocked out of his lungs and metaphorical stars dancing before his eyes as his brain tried to cope with the fact that he wasn't getting as much oxygen as it would've liked. That didn't stop him from noticing details, though, small things. Despite the stars, his eyes were still better than pretty much anyone else's, foggy or not. At least it didn't look like the rage-filled cryo-monkey was going to finish him off at the moment. He might have a change to get to a computer terminal to key in the emergency lockdown code. Maybe.
Above him, said cyro-monkey loomed imperiously as he studied the fallen agent. Clint got a first real good look at the stranger's particular oddities: four tiny dove-gray wings attached to each ankle, pointed ears, and clothing straight out of a history museum. In particular, the foreigner's cape and clasp had symbols that were stylized renderings of the sigils that had been on the cyrotube.
Then the man reached down for Clint's bow.
"No." Clint, despite the pain in his chest, pushed the man's hand away with a quick snap of his arm, then folded in on himself so, bow and all, he could drop through the shelving he'd landed on. With a couple sharp twists, he managed to drop through a series of three shelves, putting a total of about three meters between himself and the man, but then he didn't have anywhere else to go, not immediately.
The man's eyes dilated as the anger returned, and the world slowed down as the sequence of events played out slowly: the winged man snarled a command, lept into the air for a final strike, and there was little Clint could do as his death came from above except watch from under his cover of debris.
Everything changed right before the crescendo of the blow. The stranger, suspended in the gravity of the moment, suddenly froze. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he dropped like a stone; the sound of his body and discarded trident hitting the wreckage with an echoing thud.
The silence continued to echo with the faint plip plop, plip plop of vaguely gelatinous liquid. "Well, shit," Clint muttered, the silence almost eerie. Then the backup generators kicked on and every screen in the room connected to modern technology flickered to life — only to display depressingly familiar blue screens of death.
It was all emergency lighting, though, mostly red save for the mildly florescent blue coming off the computers and the now-steady (if faint) light from the tube. "This is the part of the horror movies where the smart people decide to try to get out of the building before whatever was in the tube eats their faces." He said it dryly, but he'd already pulled another arrow from his quiver and nocked it, unsure whether the force field, which hadn't actually been necessary in the end, would let anything pass through it from this side, since it hadn't allowed the first arrow he'd shot to penetrate.
Sue pushed herself away from Clint and glanced around the room. "That was... anti-climactic," she stated in a whisper. "I mean, if this were a horror movie wouldn't there be a scratch on the wall or a light hanging from a wire right now? Or at least an ominously opening tube... or worse, an empty one." Almost against her will the blonde's eyes flicked over to the tube.
Clint's eyes moved immediately to the tube, as well. His night vision was far superior to a normal person's — he could see quite clearly that the tube was, in fact, empty. "So you know that first contact protocol you mentioned? We've got one. It involves vacating the premises and contacting HQ to officially quarantine the building. We're gonna be quarantined, too." His mind was rushing through all the different variables. "We have no idea what was in that tube and whether or not it's some sort of advanced bio-weapon. Just — we'll say you... repelled in here to surprise me and we were making out or something. Otherwise you're going to disappear into a SWORD holding facility and it doesn't matter how rich your family is, they won't let you out. Not for breaking into a secure, government building."
The tube still glowed — Clint could see that the glass of tube's front was now more of a translucent barrier similar to Susan's forcefield in texture — and as if in response to the woman's query, it pulsed. New glyphs were illuminated on the frosty pseudo-glass one at a time as if synced to a heartbeat. Each revealed symbol appeared faster than the last until the entire front was lit up in an adrenaline fueled crescendo, but the mystery of the new particular rhythm had been spoiled as a silhouette of a muscular, near-naked man picked himself up off the floor with the aid of what looked to be a staff.
"You've still got the force field up, right?" Clint asked. "Cause I think we're gonna need it."
The air around the two of them shimmered. "I do now," Sue replied looking up at Clint. "Don't worry, I'll protect you," she told him with a grin.
"Pretty sure that point's moot now," Clint said, eyeing the man with equal parts scientific interest and general worry.
The figure, still heaving, growled angrily and arched his back to let loose a roar. This was joined by the sharp squeal of twisting metal as a good number of pipes in the warehouse pulled toward the tube; ripping through the walls as if the new man had a gravitational pull.
Clint carefully put the arrow he'd initially drawn and nocked back in his quiver, pulling a completely different one free slowly. It was obvious they were dealing with a powered person, possibly some type of electromagnetic-based power, but there was no way to be completely sure. As he nudged Sue carefully toward the door, making sure to stay inside the shimmering barrier she was, apparently, creating, he said, "Hello?"
The stranger's attention snapped toward the two immediately.
The stranger attacks Clint and Sue. They defend themselves, but are quickly overwhelmed.
The man's features were sharp and tightly drawn — lightly colored eyes sat in stark contrast against olive skin and dark hair, all framed by a widow's peak, but in a way that wasn't easily peggable by ethnicity or geography — and the predatory glare he was giving was practically palpable. He straightened, raising what could now be clearly be identified as a golden trident that glowed with the same sigils from the tube, and something suddenly wasn't right as he was suddenly too tall.
Or, more correctly, his feet were no longer planted on the floor. He didn't leave much more time to process the wings on his ankles or the strange toga he was wrapped in because the foreigner's next move was to raise his weapon defiantly and rush at the two.
This was not good. "You know that arrow — now would be a really good time to use it," Sue declared as she rolled behind Clint to free up his line of fire and dropped her force field temporarily. "Just be quick and don't miss!"
Missing wasn't the problem, so far as Clint was concerned. The now-damp air, complete with wisps of steam, hit him full in the face but his nictating membranes closed briefly before flicking back open. Mostly, he was trying to figure the order in which he was going to fire his arrows. Everything seemed to slow down for just a moment as his mind clicked through various scenarios but really, there was only one sequence of events that could play out here.
Releasing the blunted arrow, he nailed the on-coming, toga-wearing man in the elbow, hitting it just right to strike the nerve there. Then the foam-tipped arrow hit the man in the forehead. Last, but certainly not least, the slightly-blunted arrow with the mechanized arms and the pressure-triggered taser hit the man square in the chest.
The three arrows hit true. The first did little to stop their assailant's oncoming charge, bouncing like it hit a brick wall. The second prompted another roar. The world took a breath as the third hit and its tiny robotic arms found purchase in the man's chest. He spasmed in midair as the taser triggered and sent arcs of electricity down the aggressor's limbs. The rules of physics were still in play, however, and the winged man flew past Clint and Susan to crash ungracefully through a wall of freestanding shelves with the force of a freight train.
Sue glanced at the wreckage around them, the water pooling as it dripped from the shattered pipes and the destroyed shelving before her gaze slid across to glance at Clint. "Remind me not to get on your bad side anytime soon," she noted. "Though all the times I got smart in class probably don't help." It used to be a game with her to try and show-up the teachers but then she'd never known one who could cause this much destruction. The blonde was very glad she and Clint hadn't ended up fighting. "So you think he's okay?" She asked cautiously nodding in the direction of the shelving.
"Keep the force field up," Clint instructed, ignoring most of what she was saying because his arrows hadn't caused nearly the amount of damage that they should have. The first hadn't even registered with the guy. The second had only pissed him off. The third had done some damage but he had a feeling that was more due to electricity than impact. "I don't think he's finished." The crashing he could hear from the fallen shelving, the way it shifted and moved like whatever had settled beneath it was getting up for another round, didn't bode well for them. "If this gets any worse, you hit that rope and head up, get out and away from here as fast as you can. I've got backup I can call." Admittedly, his backup was Reggie, who was more interested in How I Met Your Mother reruns than sparring, but the alternative was... really not appealing.
Just then, the collapsed shelving and its many varied items, most dusty from disuse, practically exploded upward, detritus raining toward them. Clint was thankful for the force field — he'd need to figure out Sue's abilities where it was concerned. Later. Definitely later. He already had an arrow knocked, another taser, though if this kept up he was probably going to have to start going for the more lethal varieties he carried.
The stranger stood in the eye of the suspended detritus, all rage and seething anger. Closer inspection proved that the debris was held aloft by water that was drawing toward the nexus at an alarming rate. The man held the glowing trident aloft, and the tide of suspended water shifted in accordance to his breathing. The runoff now flooded the warehouse up to ankle-deep.
A barked command broke the spell of the moment. It was in a language unfamiliar to Clint or Susan, but that barely mattered as the water and its content violently surged outward in all directions.
Sue pushed in front of Clint her hands coming up to form a force field in front of her, not a moment too soon as the surging wave of water washed passed them, the wave breaking against he force field and flowing to either side of the pair. The sheer pressure of the wave elicited a hiss from the girl and she slid backwards into Clint, "That was...more powerful than I thought, lets not do that again. You don't happen to have an arrow in that quiver which is an instant knock out do you?"
"Maybe, but I dunno if it'll work — the first two just. They fucking pinged off him," Clint muttered, grabbing one of his arrows with the pressure-released sedative. Probably invulnerable. Or partially invulnerable, the taser did take him down, if only for a few seconds. "I don't want to kill him. On my count, drop the force field." He had a total of four sedation arrows. If those didn't work... he didn't want to think about the other options. Not right then. "And — now."
They didn't work.
The conflict and property damage escalates before the fight ends dramatically.
Well, okay. They certainly got the stranger's attention. He had pulled back down out of his outburst when the first arrow hit; glancing off his shoulder. As he turned, however, the second and third arrow hit his chest below the right shoulder to deliver their toxin.
The stranger blinked and pulled the two arrows from his chest while simultaneously using the trident to block the forth. At this point he was already closing the distance, a snarl coloring his features, across the warehouse like a charging bull.
"Okay so, arrows don't really work then," Sue noted as she wrapped her arms around Clint, waving at the stranger with a cheeky grin as the air around the two of them shimmered and they vanished from sight. "Please tell me you have a plan," Sue asked her ex-teacher as she pulled him slowly to the side.
The dark-haired man slowed a little in mid-air, confused, but still landed where they had been with a crash that split the concrete floor.
"Right, gimme your taser," Clint said, watching the man hit the spot where they'd been with an amazing amount of speed — not to mention power. "Electricity took him down - briefly. I'll hit him with the taser, then two of my electro-charged arrows, and then we're going to — wait. Wait, can you put him in a bubble? Like, you keep stuff out, can you keep stuff in?"
The blonde slipped her taser out of the holster at her back and passed it over to Clint. "You get him to hold still and I'll scoop him up," she confirmed.
A few seconds passed before he began smashing expensive lab equipment in random retaliation. This was accompanied by a monologue in that strange other language, but money could easily be bet that it was all curses.
"Not my laptop, you fucking psycho," Clint hissed. "Goddammit. Sue, on my count — I'll use your taser, hit him with my last two charged arrows, and you enclose him in that bubble. Hold it for as long as you can." There was blood seeping from the shallow wounds his previous arrows had made, so the guy wasn't completely invulnerable. Only mostly invulnerable. "Three, two, now."
Sue's invisibility dropped. The taser ricocheted off a piece of equipment behind the man, its prongs embedded in an oddly neat line down his spine, and then Clint fired two arrows at once. Both hit the man's front, visibly pumping more electricity into him.
As the stranger convulsed, Sue rushed forward, her hands spreading in a forward, waving motion that sent a force field washing up over the man in the toga and swept him off his feet, into the air. "He's a lot heavier than he looks," Sue told Clint through clenched teeth. "Do you have anything that can hold him?"
Then the pounding began. The foreigner was starting to show signs of wear and tear from all of this abuse, but he was still high on adrenaline and the concept of being boxed in again focused his remaining energy into a pin-pricked point: get out. Slowly, but aided by super strength, the monstrous man in the bubble hammered between spasms against Susan's willpower as hard as he could manage.
The young woman groaned and sank to her knees clutching at her head, "He... really wants... to get out." she told Clint through clenched teeth. She was going to feel this in the morning, whoever they had managed to wake up was strong, away stronger than anyone she'd ever come across.
Clint had thrown the hand-held portion of the taser as soon as Sue started moving forward, having seen how quickly she could put up her force field. He was just glad she'd scooped in time — even as it was, he'd gotten a bit of a jolt through the water around them, which had come up to his ankles. "Right, time for you to get out of here," he said, leaning down so he could pick Sue up. "Hold that for as long as you can, but don't break your brain or whatever. I'll get you to your exit, then go." He knew the warehouse, if the guy didn't stay down after all that tasing — and it didn't seem like he was going to go down, it'd just be time for a bit of hide and seek.
The pressure only increased against Sue's barrier as the electricity faded. The stranger — more enraged, eyes locked with wide-eyed fury— was not giving up. But as his protests only built, suddenly the invisible walls confining him disappeared as the blonde's hold was pressed to its limit.
The dark-haired man, head held high and back arched as he hovered in the air, let loose a scream of triumph as the walls were broken and he was free once again. The last word in his victory cry, however, wasn't totally unknown. "Atlantis."
Silence lingered for a long moment before Clint asked, "Did he just say Atlantis?" When he didn't get an immediate answer, he took his eyes off the man for a split second to check on Sue - only Sue was out. Or almost out. Near enough to unconscious to make her mostly a liability at the moment, though it bothered Clint to think of her that way. Still, he needed to figure out how to put this man down. Possibly permanently. Powered individuals could be problematic, he knew that first hand, but that wasn't how Clint wanted this to happen. That was SHIELD's way of operating.
He stashed Sue behind a fallen shelf, then moved upward, climbing other shelves in an attempt to get a better vantage.
By this point, the dark hair brute had enough time to recover and, after an initial bit of confusion, stalk toward his prey. His eyes however, were still wide and immediately focused not on Clint, but on his bow. The man snarled and began pulling down shelves.
Clint saw that look despite still trying to scale the shelving units. And then he was trying to climb faster because getting squished by boxes and crates labeled 0-8-4 wasn't exactly the way he pictured himself dying. Also, there was no way in hell he was letting the crazy psycho who'd popped out of what was apparently some kind of cryogenic storage tube anywhere near his bow. He'd rather be squished.
There was a grunt of effort and then a slow, creaky moan of inevitability as the shelving units in Clint's row began to topple upon each other like dominoes. Looking satisfied, the crazy psycho was in the air again and closing fast. Clint might get his wish.
Letting his instincts take over, Clint half-fell, half-hopped from collapsing shelf to collapsing shelf as everything went over sideways, barely keeping himself from sliding straight through the gaps between them. So, the strength, the near invulnerability, the flight, the apparent control of water. Clint was outmatched. He knew that. It didn't keep him from landing and pushing his bow over his shoulder so he could face the oncoming man head-on.
Then he decided that was a bad idea.
This epiphany, however, came far too late as the flying man hit him full tilt in the chest. The force of the impact pushed the archer straight back into the nearest wall, but there was no follow through from his aggressor - only the silhouette of the man standing over him. The psycho was breathing heavily and had multiple puncture wounds, but the most shocking thing was that the rage in his eyes had been replaced by curiosity.
Clint just sat there on the floor, the air knocked out of his lungs and metaphorical stars dancing before his eyes as his brain tried to cope with the fact that he wasn't getting as much oxygen as it would've liked. That didn't stop him from noticing details, though, small things. Despite the stars, his eyes were still better than pretty much anyone else's, foggy or not. At least it didn't look like the rage-filled cryo-monkey was going to finish him off at the moment. He might have a change to get to a computer terminal to key in the emergency lockdown code. Maybe.
Above him, said cyro-monkey loomed imperiously as he studied the fallen agent. Clint got a first real good look at the stranger's particular oddities: four tiny dove-gray wings attached to each ankle, pointed ears, and clothing straight out of a history museum. In particular, the foreigner's cape and clasp had symbols that were stylized renderings of the sigils that had been on the cyrotube.
Then the man reached down for Clint's bow.
"No." Clint, despite the pain in his chest, pushed the man's hand away with a quick snap of his arm, then folded in on himself so, bow and all, he could drop through the shelving he'd landed on. With a couple sharp twists, he managed to drop through a series of three shelves, putting a total of about three meters between himself and the man, but then he didn't have anywhere else to go, not immediately.
The man's eyes dilated as the anger returned, and the world slowed down as the sequence of events played out slowly: the winged man snarled a command, lept into the air for a final strike, and there was little Clint could do as his death came from above except watch from under his cover of debris.
Everything changed right before the crescendo of the blow. The stranger, suspended in the gravity of the moment, suddenly froze. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he dropped like a stone; the sound of his body and discarded trident hitting the wreckage with an echoing thud.
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