Chapter 62- Full Debriefing

New York- SHIELD Headquarters, Director’s Office March 24, 2008 (17:15)

Clint ‘Hawkeye’ Barton

Clint stood at attention as he waited for Agent Hill and Director Fury to read the compiled report from his and the team's time in the Savage Lands. Fury had a paper copy, while Hill read from her tablet. It had already been ten minutes, and they hadn't moved. They just kept reading and rereading his after-action report on the battle for the Sun temple. His, not Trip’s, nor Moonstar’s, his.

Fury cleared his throat before he asked. "You ever actually see this Frey character fight?"

Barton stood a little stiffer before answering. "No, but I did hear about his warrior women. They apparently had a sparing match with Psylocke and Shanna. I heard Basilisk mention how she didn't want to fight them after watching the spar."

The director had an immediate follow-up question. "This report says that they had swords, shields, and spears. Any other weapons you see them use?"

“They may have had a dagger or two.” The archer answered seriously.

Hill had the follow-up question this time. "And yet, the nine-foot-tall bone monstrosity was afraid of them?"

“Nath’aniel seemed to believe it was the numbers of people as well as some of the gathered people’s personal strengths that made the creature passive.” Clint reminded them was in the report.

“Your assessment of this ‘bone horror’ creature was that it would take an army to kill it, you still stand by that?” After Fury asked that question, he flipped to the section on his medical treatment.

"No sir, I said it would take an army to stall it. Not kill it. Far as I could tell, it was already dead, and anything we did to it would just piss it off… the thing wasn't some kind of skeleton, its limbs were made of hundreds if not thousands of bodies fused together. Maybe if you could get an explosive inside of the thing it would do some damage, but short of that, I don't see us beating it." Clint corrected his boss and explained his reasoning.

“Too bad you were the only one that saw it. Would have liked to hear Dum Dum’s opinion on the thing. How's the hand?" Fury asked after pulling a Post-it note from the file.

Clint guessed it was the base’s medical report. The one saying they couldn’t find anything wrong with his hand when he was asked to check in with them. The archer showed them the limb in question when he answered. “Better than new.”

“Would you say that the ‘mage’ is a compliant doctor then?” Hill then asked him.

Clint hesitated, as a thought dawned on him. When he didn’t answer right away, Fury looked up at him. When he and his boss shared a look the archer asked. “Permission to go dark, sir?”

“Hill.” It wasn’t a question, but rather an order.

She tapped a command on her tablet, before closing it. A second later the blinds on the director's windows closed on their own. The locks on his door clicked, and the lights in the rooms went out. Another second later a pair of black lights clicked on.

Barton waited for her to report. "We are dark, no recording devices are active, and no one outside of this room can hear us."

"Spill," Fury ordered.

“It’s not in the report. I honestly didn’t think to include it till she asked.” Clint admitted.

“What?” the director pressed.

Clint sighed because he knew how crazy what he was about to say was going to sound, but they asked. So he reported. "We had a casualty at the temple."

Fury punched his own desk when he asked. “How does your report lack such an important detail?”

“Because she sat right beside me on the alien aircraft, during our ride back to the mage’s tower.” He answered immediately.

The director actually blinked when the archer added that detail. “Come again?”

“I didn’t see it happen. I was holding the temple entrance. But when the robed guy saw a signal flare in the sky we fell back into the temple proper.” Barton began to explain.

Fury’s good eye drilled at the archers face as he asked. “Your point?”

"Nath'aniel insisted and carried out her dead body when we left. I didn't think about it much, because she was still there and alive with the rest of us. Maybe it's like his base, what he did makes you overlook it or something.”

Fury asked for clarification as he recapped. “Yet now you clearly recall him carrying a dead woman’s body back to their Citadel, all the while she was still alive and with the rest of you?” the archer nodded that was correct.

“Are you saying a woman died, and then he, what? Brought her back?” Hill summarized.

Clint nodded again, before cementing the theory, as he said. “It also explains away the mercenaries’ inconsistency in their reports. The Captain, Benjamin Smith, aka Slice, reported having landed a clean hit on Psylocke with his Heat-caster. Everyone just chalked it up to battlefield confusion, but what if he did? And Nath’aniel did the same for her too.”

Fury sat back in his chair, as he muttered. “And why aliens posing as gods would ally with them, because who would say no to an extra chance at life?”

“I don’t think the WSC will accept ‘magical’ as his level of skill.” Hill said after a moment of silence.

“They are going to have to accept it at some point. Not only is magic real, but we have a potential magic user on our doorstep if we want to recruit him.” Clint pointed out to them.

"I think I liked the world better when we just had Mutants and Enhanced." Fury muttered and then leaned forward again before he asked the archer. "Anything else you leave out of this report?"

“Yes.” Barton admitted. As the Director squinted and stared at him he added. “Two things, that I had no proof or evidence to support them, besides a gut feeling so I left them out. And a third that would be very controversial if admitted.”

“Spill.” Fury ordered again.

“I think Garrett was flipped and he was a double agent for Hydra.” Clint said the easiest thing to prove first.

Hill looked at her tablet, but since they were still in dark mode, she didn't open it or use it. Instead, she just reminded Fury. "Nath'aniel did send us some transmission data that back up his claim, that Garrett's implants were set to self-destruct remotely."

Fury sighed before he stated. "And we have three other agents with Cybertek implants and are supposed to have another eight by the end of the year. Great. Get a file started on them in the morning"

When the director gave him the look, Clint reported his next theory. "I think only Nath'aniel is the only living mage. That the other three are, I don't know, fakes or simulations."

"Your report states that there are four of them. That you ate and spoke with them several times during your time with them. You want us to believe that it was what, an act?” Hill snaps at him.

Before the archer could answer her Fury asked. “And you base this off of?”

“Afghanistan, back in oh-two.” Clint answered.

Fury nodded before he recalled. “I was negotiating with some terrorists, and you took out a sniper and saved my life.”

“It wasn’t you. Don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a person.” the archer corrected.

The director swiveled in his chair, to look Agent Hill in the eye and order her. "Read him in on the LMD’s, after his vacation." Then he turned back and waited for the last and possibly worse thing Clint and Moonstar had uncovered while in the Savage Lands.

However, before the archer could reveal, the 'Great Truth' and that mutants were in fact, human. The black lights switched off, and a siren went off, both from the director's desk and Hill's tablet. "Alpha alert," Hill stated in surprise.

She was quicker than the director as while he was trying to boot up his system, hers was not only on, but was logged into the system and she reported. “We have an intruder. The alert was sent from the sub-basement, level three. Medical wing.”

Hearing that Fury leapt to his feet. Before he pressed a button on his desk activating the building's intercom. "Lock this building down. Nobody leaves. I want that intruder alive!"

Once he released the button, Fury pulled a pistol from a drawer and threw it to Clint. Then he flipped a switch in said drawer. Causing part of the wall to move and reveal an elevator.

Barton looked over the gun he had been given and was unfamiliar with it. "What is this?"

"That's an experimental firearm, called an ICER, works like a regular nine millimeter, but is completely non-lethal." Hill answered as she pulled out one of her own.

The three of them then entered the elevator. Once inside, Clint saw that it had only one button on the panel. ‘Must be an emergency escape route or something.’ Clint thought. Then he started to look over the weapon that he was given. Checking the sights view, and the number of rounds in the clip, the location of the safety, anything that he needed to know about the new weapon.

As he did, Fury pulled his own weapon, a regular forty-five, and then moved to press the button. He waited enough to tell them. "Brace yourself."

Hill holstered her weapon and then grabbed a hanging leather strap. The archer didn’t have a holster, but he frowned and grabbed another of the hanging straps, just to be safe. As soon as he did, the director pressed the button. Then the g-forces hit him, as the elevator dropped. After a dozen or so seconds he felt the floor start to push him the other way. That was before he heard the sound of rocket engines slowing their fall.

When all of the pressure against him vanished, Clint released the breath that he was holding.

“We got to move.” Fury said before the doors opened.

The archer was about to say he doubted the intruder would have gotten far, given the amount of security in the sub-levels. Then he heard the sound of fighting, and bit his tongue, and got his head in the game.

“What’s in the medical wing that someone would blow their cover for?” Clint asked as he followed his boss out of the elevator. Hill took a bit more time to gather her wits, and they were in a rush.

"We uncovered the remains of Captain America. He was being thawed out in the medical wing that the alert originated from." Fury said as they moved down a short narrow hallway to a simple door. The sound of fighting was coming from the other side of the door.

"Right, the original super soldier serum." The archer muttered as he took the side opposite of Fury on the door. The director held up three fingers, and he nodded. ‘One, two…’ Clint thought before Fury turned the knob of the door, and he burst out into the lobby of headquarters.

A group of seven agents had formed a firing line and were shooting at something or someone from the restricted access stairwell. Clint moved to support them. Until he saw a pair of them suddenly drop. The sound of metal being struck hung in the air. Causing the archer to duck. Then as he looked up and saw a surgical tray imbedded into the wall above him.

‘He took out two guys with a tray? Who is this guy?’ Clint wondered.

Then he saw him.

A man just over six feet tall wearing a torn and damaged bomber jacket and aviator's hat from the forties or fifties, was suddenly standing in the hole created by the two fallen agents. A kick from the man took another agent's knee out, and down went agent number three, while at the same time, the man elbowed and floored a forth. All the while Clint took aim and fired.

However, the falling downed agent number four was then kicked upward before he could finish falling to the floor. And as agent number five tried to butt strike the stranger, said stranger spun and dodged the strike grabbed the now rising agent before he was thrown at the archer, his ICER round hitting the already unconscious agent in the gut. Clint rolled out of the way of the agent sailing towards the spot where he had been standing.

In the time the archer stood back up, agents five, six, and seven were next to be downed.

Five got fed his own gun mussel, before being kicked into Agent Six, whose shot went wide and clipped seven in the shoulder. Seven's wounded arm dropped numb, so he went for his sidearm with the wrong arm. All while six was head-butted into the wall behind him. The stranger grabbed the now falling rifle from six, as seven raised his left hand to fire. Cling took the time to shoot twice, once generally and the other aimed. The stranger removed and threw his hat into the face of seven, before pulling the trigger on the rifle. Then the stranger blocked Clint's two shots with his stolen rifle before swinging the weapon wildly like a baseball bat.

The archer thought that maybe the stranger had lost it. Because there was nothing where he swung. But then the sound of an optical camouflage powering down could be heard, and a downed director Fury was lying at the stranger's feet.

“Holy shit, you’re Captain America!” Clint said once the man stopped long enough for the archer to see him clearly.

“Language.” The Captain said sternly, before hurling the broken rifle at him.

Too stunned to think clearly, at the realization of who it was he had been shooting at. Clint took the rifle butt to the face, before too falling down unconscious.

Location Unknown, Possible Hydra Base, (Date Unknown)- (Afternoon, possibly)

Steven Rogers (Captain America)

Steve gazed around the room. He had realized that he had awoken underground from the lack of windows and the lazy air current that roamed the stairwells. He could hear more personnel on their way, but he had already beaten down thirty guards on his way here, so he hoped their forces would be dwindling soon.

He heard the hammer of a pistol cock, and his instincts told him to move, so he did. As he was beginning his second step, a bullet passed where had been standing. He glanced and saw a woman reading her next shot. He didn't want to hit a woman, but he couldn't lose his life over a decision like proper etiquette. Steve let his body fall forward into a cartwheel.

Her next shoot would have hit him in the chest if not for his current horizontal spin. So the round hit nothing but air. During the flip, he snatched up a pen off the floor, and as he landed he threw it. As the woman readied her next shoot the pen filled her barrel.

“Steven Grant Rogers?! Are you pulling your punches just because she is a woman?!"

Everyone flinched at the sudden female voice over a loudspeaker. Well everyone but Steve. Who snapped to attention and saluted the empty air.

“No ma’am. I was about to capture and interrogate her.” Steve answered the voice, a part of him expecting her to be able to hear him.

"Then what do you think you are doing?" The very familiar voice asked him.

“Escaping a Hydra base ma’am.” He answered her honestly. His mind finally placed her voice. Steve was kicking himself that he couldn't have placed it right away, he had just been talking to her over the radio.

“Do you honestly think I would stoop so low as to join Hydra?” Peggy asked him over the loudspeaker.

“No, ma’am.” Steve honestly believed that this woman would never fall to their deceptions.

Then he saw her, and his heart broke. He could see his Peggy in the woman before him, but she wasn't the same. Her black hair was now almost snow white. Her beautiful face was tainted with wrinkles and crow's feet, and her once athletic form was now weaker and frail.

Before she could say anything else or hand the handheld device to the soldier standing beside her, Steve apologized. "Sorry, I missed our dance, Peggy."

“You were busy saving the free world.” She countered.

He smirked and then admitted. "I am going to pass out now." Then he let the fatigue and the exhaustion from the last two battles wash over him. First in the super bomber, and just now in his attempts to escape.