Chapter 32- A Taste of Freedom

Special Region- Nazi base, March 16 or 17, 2008 (Unknown)

Clint ‘Hawkeye’ Barton

He had ordered Alder to ditch his uniform, and the man had complained, but once Clint had explained that Magneto was the leader of the men attacking the Nazis and that the odds were good that he would kill the man on sight. Well, self-preservation was a hell of a motivator for the man.

So as the man striped anything that showed ties to the base, Nelson was convinced to get dressed so that they could get moving. However, she refused to wear most of the clothes, despite them not being soaked in blood, as she said they 'smelled' too much. So she only wore the underwear and the lab coat. With the building in the state it was, Clint decided survival was more important than some ancient documents, so the moved back towards the stairs.

In the dark common room, the robot was waiting. While two women sat in near terror in the dark. One was a mature woman, and the other was a young girl no older than five or six. Both women had red hair, which kind of surprised the archer, but what was more surprising to him was that the mother had a malformed left hand. It looked to him to be a chemical burn that fused her fingers together. While the little girl was fine, she also looked rather cute to him. Nelson even made the noise women make when they see a cute kid for the first time.

The officer introduced them as his wife Bethany, and his daughter Magda. They both nodded and returned a greeting. While they too understood English, they seemed simple to Clint.

Even Nelson noticed as she asked Adler in a whisper. "What's wrong with them?"

The officer didn’t even try to hide it and answered her in a normal tone. “Zey are being effected by the poison zat persists here in the Savage Land. It attaches to every type of food, plants or meats. Everything is stained by it. Only the Blessed and the Cat People are immune to it. Although children do seem to have somezing of a resistance, but zey too vill become more affected once puberty sets in… I could not afford to keep them fed on outside rations alone.”

Magda smiled and waved, as she seemed to understand that they were talking about her. Meanwhile, his wife seemed more afraid than when they had first found her sitting in the dark.

"We need to keep moving," Clint said, before putting words to action and heading towards the other hallway. He didn't want to admit, that he longed to see his own daughter.

He glanced back and saw that Nelson had more or less followed him, while the family were preparing to leave. Each had a bag, even the little girl had a small backpack. Lastly, Alder spoke to the robot in German and it moved to be a barrier between them and the door.

Once in the hall, they moved slower, because of the extra people. But still, they pressed on.

As they moved, the archer asked. “Do we have any idea how many soldiers are between us and Magneto?”

“Not many, over half of the base’s forces vere sent to your air plane to loot it.” Alder admitted over the clunky steps of the robot.

They came upon the intersection that led them upstairs, to be met with a part feline Nazi soldier holding an MP40 aimed at them. However, before he could fire, Moonstar came forward and touched his arm. She shook her head at the Nazi, and the soldier nodded.

“Something I should know about?” Clint asked her.

Instead of answering she stated. “You have my bow.”

“I couldn’t find mine. Now what’s up with lassie?” the commander replied.

“Lassie was actually a dog.” Parker corrected. As he stepped into view of the light, he added. “He is actually part feline.”

"I was able to talk to his animal side, and apparently I reminded him of a girl he had a thing for. Add to that all of the shaking and he was willing to join us for a free pass like Captain Smith here." His co-pilot explained.

“And what is he bringing to the party? Because Fury isn't going to just smile and nod at us taking in a former Nazi storm-trooper." Clint pointed out.

Again it wasn't Moonstar who answered, but Agent Parker. "He has apparently offered himself for study, so we can either learn to make our own versions of him. Or find a way to fight them, if we need to."

"You vould need to harvest the material from a Cat Person to make more," Adler stated. While they had been talking, the officer had been whispering in German with his apparent fellow turncoat.

The archer shrugged, he should have expected that. Oh yeah, the egg heads back home would love to see another type of Enhanced alright, even if his only really useful trait was his immunity to the special region's poison.

“Is that Agent Nelson?” Moonstar asked suddenly.

Nelson for her part waved back and in a rather chipper tone stated. “I got the mark two version of the treatment that Lassie got.”

"Lassie was a dog," Parker repeated his correction, as he rubbed his temple with his left hand. His other hand was occupied with the pistol that Adler had given to Moonstar.

"As great as all this is, we need to get moving. I think the shaking we felt was Magneto." Clint said before he moved to the base of the stairs.

"How it's a concrete building?" Parker asked.

“But I am willing to bet that there are steel bars reinforcing the concrete though.” Moonstar guessed.

That gave their scientist a moment to think about it. The archer didn't wait. He started heading up the stairs. He heard others follow, and judging by the steps it was the robot that brought up the rear. As he hit the first landing he heard Parker ask. "He isn't going to crush the building with us in it is he?"

“I doubt it.” their mutant answered.

"Doubt, but don't you know," Nelson pointed out a moment later. She seemed more outspoken since she woke up part cat.

“Well, judging by the way this place had power, until a little while ago, I assume that we were getting power from somewhere.” Moonstar guessed.

“Correct, zis base vas built primarily to provide power via the dam we built next to it. We added za labs and other rooms as needed.” Adler explained.

"How far to our jet?" the archer asked as he saw the end of the stairwell.

"Not far, it is only rough because of za terrain. But we shouldn't go there, as I have said most of our troops vere sent zere to gather your weapons and supplies." The officer answered. Then as Clint reached for the doorknob, the Nazi added. "Wait!"

The archer grabbed the knob but didn't open the door. However, it was too late. A mark suddenly appeared written into the wood of the door, and a second later it burst into flames. The metal knob heated up rapidly and melted and burned the flesh of his hand.

When he fell back away from the flames, part of the melted knob came with him. He heard people move and shuffle around him, but it was taking all of his willpower not to scream and cry out. He just stared at his ruined hand.

He felt someone take the bow from his other hand, and someone was talking to him, but Clint didn't respond. He then saw someone with bandages in their hands standing in front of him. The archer wanted to cry, not just because of the pain, but because he knew he would never fire a bow again.

The person began to wrap his hand, melted metal and all. Then Clint felt someone else press a cold wet cloth onto his forehead. When they were done wrapping his hand, they pressed something under his nose. The smell of ammonia made him jerk and wake from the shock of the explosion.

Clint then saw that it was Moonstar and Parker in front of him. He heard the sound of a machine gun and a pair of men yelling in German. The sudden growl of a tiger made the yelling stop.

“What happened?” he asked.

"They booby-trapped the door, you must have set it off when you touched the doorknob," Parker explained. The scientist was moving his finger in front of the archer's face, and Clint followed it out of habit.

Clint replayed the scene over in his head. He was blinded by his fear of the unknown, so much so that he didn't even stop to think about looking for traps. Now he really had really stepped into it. As he was pondering what had happened and how he had messed up, he suddenly felt a small hand hold his.

The archer looked down at the child Magda, who was rubbing his non-hurt hand and trying not to cry as she attempted to cheer him up. The sound of fighting continued. ‘Her dad is fighting for her. What kind of dad will I be for my own daughter?’ he thought.

Then he reached into this waistband and pulled the Lugar that he had stashed there. Using his mouth he readied a round, before ordering. “Parker.”

“Sir?” the nervous man answered.

Clint pointed with his bandaged hand at the little girl and scared mom, he then continued giving orders. "Nothing happens to them, you understand me? We are SHIELD, we are the line between them and harm."

“Understood, sir.” Agent Parker muttered before checking his own weapon.

He shifted and then added. "Dani, take the quiver off of my back." As she struggled to get it off him he warned him. "Mind the arrows with green feathers, they're explosives."

Moonstar almost dropped the quiver, as she noticed the next arrow sticking out had green feathers. There were two others she could grab, but of the three sticking out, the most pushed out was the green feathered one.

Clint didn’t wait for the other archer, he moved up to the still-burning door frame and leaped into the room.

The room had been set up as a defensive holdout, with desks and other furniture flipped to be used as shields towards a set of double doors. There had been four soldiers and another odd officer. Lassie was standing over a restrained soldier, while he exchanged fire with two other men. The man was held by the odd cuffs of light that Alder had used on the cyborg.

Meanwhile, the enemy officer held a sword of fire in one hand and a Lugar in the other. Nelson was jumping between attacking him and the last soldier, while the two Nazi officers cursed each other out in German.

Clint was surprised to see that the fire sword didn’t seem to affect Nelson any more than a baseball bat would. The few times he enemy officer managed to land a blow on her. She didn't catch on fire, but did get shoved around by it. Meanwhile, the light things Alder launched at the man were cut to ribbons from the damn thing.

He wasn’t sure how accurate this antique of a pistol was, but Clint trusted his own aim over the unknown of Agent Moonstar. So he ordered. “Help Lassie.”

She wasted a second to shake her head and chuckle, but she moved to comply.

Clint then moved to cover behind an overturned sofa, used it as a brace to support his aim, and took a shot at the other lone soldier. Nelson had just backflipped off of the desk the man was using for cover when the bullet he fired tore into his left ear and the side of his face. So the poor man completely fell as both his legs and face were injured at once.

The commander, then reset up his aim at the real threat in the room, the man conjuring and throwing fire about. He thought about going for a less lethal shot, as they would clearly have this fight in the bag, but then a shard of molten metal fired from the enemy officer's pistol and impaled Adler in the leg, so Clint lined up a headshot and fired.

However, the man didn't go down. Instead, the bullet just stopped. Right in front of the man's right eyeball.

Then the door knobs on the double doors twisted and opened on their own, and standing in the wide opening was a trio of men. Two that Clint was happy to see, but the third made him want to turn around and flee.

In the middle stood Magneto, his armor pristine, his cloak flowing behind him, and orbiting around his head, half dozen steel ball bearings. On his right was Agent Garrett, half of his spare ammo missing as he had clearly spent what he had prepared. On Magneto’s left the young and bold Agent Triplett, his M16 replaced with a German assault rifle of some kind.

The Brotherhood leader glared at the still-fighting men before him. He gestured casually and the two soldiers' weapons shifted and aimed at each other, they clearly tried to move them, but didn't have the strength to resist the powerful mutant. The officer moved to turn, but the bullet that the mutant held moved ever so slightly and pressed up against the man's exposed eyeball.

“Du wirst kapitulieren. Oder es macht mir Spaß, dich auseinanderzunehmen, Nazi.” Magneto barked in German at the men in the room.

“What he said.” Agent Trip muttered and nodded in agreement.

The seriousness of the situation was broken when Agent Nelson suddenly blurted out. “He is so shiny.”

The fiery blade of the enemy officer's sword shrank, till he held only a silver carving, then the officer released that. However, instead of falling towards the floor, it hovered halfway there before moving towards Magneto's outstretched hand.

Then the officer barked something in German. “Lassen Sie Ihre Waffen los und entfernen Sie sich von ihnen.”

All the remaining loyal Nazi forces let go of their guns, which floated in the air and still followed the men they were pointed at. Even the officer's gun floated closer, while it remained pointed at Adler.

Clint surveyed the room. Moonstar had fired a trio of arrows. Only one hit its mark, the other two were buried in the wall. He thought about scolding her, but then he remembered that her hands were wrapped in bandages from when the Nazis had barraged their cockpit.

He watched as Garrett and Trip walked into the room to cuff those still alive. Garrett started with the enemy officer, while Trip moved towards the pair of soldiers that were still standing. All the while Magneto watched them all from the doors.

Moonstar moved closer to talk to the mutant leader. "Hello, Magneto."

The only Brotherhood member nodded at her and muttered. “Mirage.”

"What do you plan to do with us, sir?" She asked him. Clint was happy to see her hand touch, but not draw the explosive trick arrow in her quiver as she spoke to the possible treat.

Magento crossed his arms as he stood in thought for a moment. The steel bearings increased their pace as they continued to orbit him. "I will not be the one to decide if you and the other spies get punished, Mirage. As for the Nazis have only two options. Leave as your prisoners to face trial at the UN, or be punished for the crimes they have committed down here."

Clint had to tip his hat at the man's bravado. Yeah, he had managed to end the fight in an instant, but with Adler here, it was six versus him. That wasn't including Lassie, since the archer didn't think the man would add much to a fight against the mutant. Not that he felt that it really needed to come to that, and was about to suggest as much, but Nelson opened her mouth first.

“Oh yeah? You think you got us beat, all by your lonesome. Well, news flash old man, I don't got any metal on me for you to manipulate, and I bet my claws can do a number on you.” The feline Enhanced woman declared.

The mutant leader nodded as he agreed. “You are right, I do not detect any metal on you, and I can feel that your cyborg is ready to aid you in the fight. Should one get started?" Then he asked. "But before that might I ask how you might fair with a sudden twenty-five-meter drop?"

As the other agents all looked at the Magneto in confusion, Agent Trip swore. “Shit.”

“Agent Trip, explain.” Clint demanded.

"He lifted the base up so the packs of feral dogs that were following us couldn't overwhelm the place." the young black man replied.

The mutant leader wasn't done dropping bombshells on them, as he added. "Not only is this building up in the air, it is already part of the way towards the Citadel. In another two hours, you will be all guests of the Magi."

Adler walked over and leaned in to whisper to the SHIELD commander. "We should not anger za Magi.”

“Why?” Clint asked back in a whisper.

The turncoat answered. “Well for one, they were the ones that built the Saber robot. On top of that, zey vere the first peoples to settle za Savage Lands, we had thought them extinct. But if they are now on za move, it would be vise to know vhat zey are up. Additionally, I do not think this building will survive zat fall.”

Clint thought for a moment, before tossing his pistol on the ground, and asked while lifting his bandaged hand. "Don't suppose you got any painkillers."