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xp_logs2016-04-01 12:29 pm
x-hawkeye.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2016-04-01 12:29 pm
Entry tags:
Are We Ourselves? - Reconnoitering
Clint and Kyle meet up for lunch in Barrow to discuss what they've found so far.
Clint sat at the corner table at the far end of the bar, not quite out of direct sight, but close enough for government work. Meeting up with Kyle for lunch might've been a bit too obvious under normal circumstances, but with half the town mysteriously out of commission or straight up missing, there was no one but the worried bartender in the place. Said bartender was definitely not paying attention to him, half-hiding in the back room as she almost compulsively checked her phone. He assumed she was hoping for texts or voicemails, maybe even an update from that Facebook group Topaz had found. From her continued look of concern and periodic expressions of disappointment, Clint knew she hadn't gotten anything at all.
The bar was also the only place that was heated despite being almost entirely empty. So Clint had weighed his options and gone with 'warm' over 'frostbitten.' He was nursing a pint, a bowl of nuts at his elbow, as he waited.
Kyle stamped his way in, all his usual grace eliminated by a pair of boots that would've looked comically large on anyone else. He shook himself, not entirely unlike a bear, and made his way around empty tables to Clint, shedding hat and gloves and parka as he did. "I put gas in your snow ski, you buy me a beer, right?" He said, grinning around a half-frozen beard.
Leaning sideways so he could reach over the bar, Clint checked on the bartender and then grabbed a glass sitting on the other side. "Yup," he said. It took a little finagling, but he managed to pour a full pint without falling over or spilling anything. Sliding it over to Kyle as he settled back down at the table, he said, "I got an interesting bit of gossip about a new mechanic, but I dunno how useful it is. You get anything?"
"Couple hundred bucks in cash, which is about two thirds of what I should've got, but I'm a filthy mudblood." Kyle said, grumbling a little. "I busted my ass for this dude, and man, he is like, so two-faced because he's all, 'well, you work hard, but...' and then can't stop looking at my hands." He pawed at his face, clearing ice from his beard. "Pretty sure I wouldn't have the job but he is hella strapped for people who can hack the work and weather, and I'm built for both."
Wrinkling his nose, Clint nudged the bowl of nuts in Kyle's direction, too. "Assholes gonna asshole," he said with a shake of his head. "New mechanic showed up outta the blue. They hired him at the airport to help with deicing the private planes. Only then the whole place shut down. Something's wonky with the radios up here - nobody can get anything to go in or out. Makes sense, given what we saw with the weather reports from here versus what's actually going on. Somebody's up to something."
Kyle made the nuts disappear. The cold wasn't really taxing his healing factor, but his protein needs were pretty high, and he didn't think at all about his ex-girlfriend and how there probably still were a dozen packages of peanuts all over his apartment. "Seriously, that's pretty damn coincidental. New mechanic shows up, shit breaks down? I mean that's like screaming for someone to get suspicious."
"Right? I'm betting things would've been way more apparent if it was easier to communicate with Barrow. But Barrow being Barrow, it's pretty much impossible most of the time. Sat phones are all well and good, but not everybody has those. In fact, if SWORD hadn't managed to 'lose' a team up here," Clint said, using finger quotes. "Probably nobody'd even have noticed. The fake weather reports pretty much put the kibosh on everything. And nobody in town knows the mechanic's name - everybody who was around when he got to town's disappeared. I couldn't even get an actual description of him, just a fourth-hand, small town account of his arrival."
"So like..." Kyle rubbed his hand against his nose and mouth, itching at tingly skin just warming up. "Like, what's your theory? Ice monster? Cults? Abominable snowman?" Finally not totally distracted by cold itch and the tingle of his healing factor, he took a long drink of his very free, somewhat terrible beer. "Cause, your g-man bro wouldn't have sent you up here unless someone had a theory, right?"
Man, it was like nobody understood 'plausible deniability' these days. Clint quirked a grin and said, "My contact had a feeling. And when this particular contact has a feeling, shit usually hits the fan in a big way. So here we are." Pulling his beanie off of his head so he could scrub a hand through his hair a couple times, Clint continued, "I haven't been able to pin down a whole lot, but at this point, I'm leaning toward something in the warehouse malfunctioning. SHIELD and SWORD have acquired some pretty tetchy things throughout the decades. Last time I was up here, we wound up with Namor. So. The mechanic could be totally irrelevant. Or he could have triggered something in the warehouse. Whatever this winds up being, I'm thinking it's definitely got something to do with SHIELD's mothballed toys."
That wasn't nearly as cool of a theory as ice monsters. Kyle frowned at that. He'd kind of been looking forward to the chance to punch something made of ice. "Can we put Namor back while we're up here? No? Damn." Not that he'd waited for Clint's actual answer. "So, what now? I mean, I can keep hauling fish, but I don't know that's gonna get us any more answers."
Before Clint could actually reply, the door to the bar opened. A gust of below-zero air was quickly followed by three men with beards icier than Kyle's had been. They very obviously scanned the place before their eyes latched onto Kyle.
"Ah, fuckin' Christ," one in a blue parka hissed.
"The goddamn freak," the second muttered, glaring.
Clint's eyes slid to the side to check on Kyle, then back to the captains.
Kyle was, improbably, grinning like he'd been given a brand new shiny toy to play with. "That's right, I'm getting my mutie cooties all over the beer and the peanuts." He had been hunched over the table with his shoulders slumped. Now, he was practically lounging in his chair, long legs stretched out so far that his over-sized winter boots almost stuck out the other side. He finished his beer and picked at his teeth with an extended claw.
Clint stayed still, watching as the first and second captains blustered at one another. He'd leaned back a bit, himself, keeping everyone in line-of-sight, which is why he caught the third captain's eyeroll.
"Oughta run you outta town," one captain growled, shedding ice pellets like glass.
"You can try." Kyle cracked one set of knuckles. "Pretty sure you wanna leave here with a face, though, and I got two hands full of knives, so even if you each have two, I got six more than the two of you put together." He wasn't even counting his feet or his teeth. "And y'all saw me heal off a rope burn, so ain't nothing you can do to me that I'm not gonna get up from, so you leave me alone and I won't give you a whole new mouth to talk bigoted shit out of."
Clint cleared his throat and buried his nose in his beer to keep his unabashed grin hidden.
The silence that echoed through the bar, interrupted only by the unhappy tone of the bartender's conversation from the back, lengthened for a moment before the third captain shrugged. "Be at work on time tomorrow," he said, walking behind the bar to grab himself a bottle. "I'll pay you double. Just lost two more guys and I got no idea if we'll be ready to head out on time or not."
"Aw yeah." Kyle gave his 'boss' a thumbs up. "I like money, and you know I'm good for the work." His grin was genuine - even if this work was crap, it was crap that actually paid pretty well, if he considered that he wasn't going to be paying for overpriced food and lodging and ten dollar orange juice for very long. "Bro, I'm gonna be flush, we should get eleven calzones for dinner," he said to Clint. "I bet I could eat all eleven too. Man, dealing with jerks and fish all day makes me hungry."
"Calzones tonight it is," Clint said, tipping his beer toward Kyle so they could clink glasses. Things were looking up.
Clint sat at the corner table at the far end of the bar, not quite out of direct sight, but close enough for government work. Meeting up with Kyle for lunch might've been a bit too obvious under normal circumstances, but with half the town mysteriously out of commission or straight up missing, there was no one but the worried bartender in the place. Said bartender was definitely not paying attention to him, half-hiding in the back room as she almost compulsively checked her phone. He assumed she was hoping for texts or voicemails, maybe even an update from that Facebook group Topaz had found. From her continued look of concern and periodic expressions of disappointment, Clint knew she hadn't gotten anything at all.
The bar was also the only place that was heated despite being almost entirely empty. So Clint had weighed his options and gone with 'warm' over 'frostbitten.' He was nursing a pint, a bowl of nuts at his elbow, as he waited.
Kyle stamped his way in, all his usual grace eliminated by a pair of boots that would've looked comically large on anyone else. He shook himself, not entirely unlike a bear, and made his way around empty tables to Clint, shedding hat and gloves and parka as he did. "I put gas in your snow ski, you buy me a beer, right?" He said, grinning around a half-frozen beard.
Leaning sideways so he could reach over the bar, Clint checked on the bartender and then grabbed a glass sitting on the other side. "Yup," he said. It took a little finagling, but he managed to pour a full pint without falling over or spilling anything. Sliding it over to Kyle as he settled back down at the table, he said, "I got an interesting bit of gossip about a new mechanic, but I dunno how useful it is. You get anything?"
"Couple hundred bucks in cash, which is about two thirds of what I should've got, but I'm a filthy mudblood." Kyle said, grumbling a little. "I busted my ass for this dude, and man, he is like, so two-faced because he's all, 'well, you work hard, but...' and then can't stop looking at my hands." He pawed at his face, clearing ice from his beard. "Pretty sure I wouldn't have the job but he is hella strapped for people who can hack the work and weather, and I'm built for both."
Wrinkling his nose, Clint nudged the bowl of nuts in Kyle's direction, too. "Assholes gonna asshole," he said with a shake of his head. "New mechanic showed up outta the blue. They hired him at the airport to help with deicing the private planes. Only then the whole place shut down. Something's wonky with the radios up here - nobody can get anything to go in or out. Makes sense, given what we saw with the weather reports from here versus what's actually going on. Somebody's up to something."
Kyle made the nuts disappear. The cold wasn't really taxing his healing factor, but his protein needs were pretty high, and he didn't think at all about his ex-girlfriend and how there probably still were a dozen packages of peanuts all over his apartment. "Seriously, that's pretty damn coincidental. New mechanic shows up, shit breaks down? I mean that's like screaming for someone to get suspicious."
"Right? I'm betting things would've been way more apparent if it was easier to communicate with Barrow. But Barrow being Barrow, it's pretty much impossible most of the time. Sat phones are all well and good, but not everybody has those. In fact, if SWORD hadn't managed to 'lose' a team up here," Clint said, using finger quotes. "Probably nobody'd even have noticed. The fake weather reports pretty much put the kibosh on everything. And nobody in town knows the mechanic's name - everybody who was around when he got to town's disappeared. I couldn't even get an actual description of him, just a fourth-hand, small town account of his arrival."
"So like..." Kyle rubbed his hand against his nose and mouth, itching at tingly skin just warming up. "Like, what's your theory? Ice monster? Cults? Abominable snowman?" Finally not totally distracted by cold itch and the tingle of his healing factor, he took a long drink of his very free, somewhat terrible beer. "Cause, your g-man bro wouldn't have sent you up here unless someone had a theory, right?"
Man, it was like nobody understood 'plausible deniability' these days. Clint quirked a grin and said, "My contact had a feeling. And when this particular contact has a feeling, shit usually hits the fan in a big way. So here we are." Pulling his beanie off of his head so he could scrub a hand through his hair a couple times, Clint continued, "I haven't been able to pin down a whole lot, but at this point, I'm leaning toward something in the warehouse malfunctioning. SHIELD and SWORD have acquired some pretty tetchy things throughout the decades. Last time I was up here, we wound up with Namor. So. The mechanic could be totally irrelevant. Or he could have triggered something in the warehouse. Whatever this winds up being, I'm thinking it's definitely got something to do with SHIELD's mothballed toys."
That wasn't nearly as cool of a theory as ice monsters. Kyle frowned at that. He'd kind of been looking forward to the chance to punch something made of ice. "Can we put Namor back while we're up here? No? Damn." Not that he'd waited for Clint's actual answer. "So, what now? I mean, I can keep hauling fish, but I don't know that's gonna get us any more answers."
Before Clint could actually reply, the door to the bar opened. A gust of below-zero air was quickly followed by three men with beards icier than Kyle's had been. They very obviously scanned the place before their eyes latched onto Kyle.
"Ah, fuckin' Christ," one in a blue parka hissed.
"The goddamn freak," the second muttered, glaring.
Clint's eyes slid to the side to check on Kyle, then back to the captains.
Kyle was, improbably, grinning like he'd been given a brand new shiny toy to play with. "That's right, I'm getting my mutie cooties all over the beer and the peanuts." He had been hunched over the table with his shoulders slumped. Now, he was practically lounging in his chair, long legs stretched out so far that his over-sized winter boots almost stuck out the other side. He finished his beer and picked at his teeth with an extended claw.
Clint stayed still, watching as the first and second captains blustered at one another. He'd leaned back a bit, himself, keeping everyone in line-of-sight, which is why he caught the third captain's eyeroll.
"Oughta run you outta town," one captain growled, shedding ice pellets like glass.
"You can try." Kyle cracked one set of knuckles. "Pretty sure you wanna leave here with a face, though, and I got two hands full of knives, so even if you each have two, I got six more than the two of you put together." He wasn't even counting his feet or his teeth. "And y'all saw me heal off a rope burn, so ain't nothing you can do to me that I'm not gonna get up from, so you leave me alone and I won't give you a whole new mouth to talk bigoted shit out of."
Clint cleared his throat and buried his nose in his beer to keep his unabashed grin hidden.
The silence that echoed through the bar, interrupted only by the unhappy tone of the bartender's conversation from the back, lengthened for a moment before the third captain shrugged. "Be at work on time tomorrow," he said, walking behind the bar to grab himself a bottle. "I'll pay you double. Just lost two more guys and I got no idea if we'll be ready to head out on time or not."
"Aw yeah." Kyle gave his 'boss' a thumbs up. "I like money, and you know I'm good for the work." His grin was genuine - even if this work was crap, it was crap that actually paid pretty well, if he considered that he wasn't going to be paying for overpriced food and lodging and ten dollar orange juice for very long. "Bro, I'm gonna be flush, we should get eleven calzones for dinner," he said to Clint. "I bet I could eat all eleven too. Man, dealing with jerks and fish all day makes me hungry."
"Calzones tonight it is," Clint said, tipping his beer toward Kyle so they could clink glasses. Things were looking up.