Chapter 213: Titan Pilot: Black Widow
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
Several kilometers from the blast site, hovering above the street, Tony watched the small mushroom cloud climbing into the sky and muttered to JARVIS, mostly to himself. "Didn't peg Soldier Boy as the type with a hair-trigger temper, the kind who just decides to blow himself up the second he realizes he's outmatched."
"Although, since he's already gone and done it, that shouldn't affect what Steve and the others are doing right now, should it?"
Even so, he glanced once more at the district still burning in the distance and didn't rush over to back up Steve's group right away. Instead, he turned his attention to clearing the surrounding crowds and getting the fire under control.
Meanwhile, thanks to the Titan mech's help, Steve and the others were making unusually good time.
A trip that should have taken several hours had been compressed down to thirty minutes.
By the time they reached the outskirts of SHIELD headquarters, the building, already under famously tight security on an ordinary day, now had an even heavier deployment of guards patrolling the perimeter, and no small number of snipers positioned on the roof.
Faced with a defensive setup that airtight, the group fell silent together.
"We're here. So how exactly are we supposed to get in?" Hill was the first to break the silence.
"...What do you all think about infiltrating?" Steve looked at the others.
Listening to the two of them, Carter kept scanning the perimeter of the SHIELD building through the tree line. Given a security presence this dense, sneaking in seemed like the only real option left.
Not far off, Natasha, watching the others' grim expressions, suddenly raised a hand. "Everyone, given that we've already got this big guy with us, why exactly are we still considering the conventional route?"
She turned and looked over at the Titan beside her. The mech seemed to understand, its camera lens swiveling to face her, and then it raised a thumbs-up in agreement.
"...Fair point. In that case, let's just smash our way in."
"Yeah! Good idea."
"Before we do that, though—" Natasha's gaze settled back on the Titan. "Big guy, mind walking me through your controls?"
"Sure thing." The Titan's camera bobbed up and down, looking distinctly like a nod.
The Titan's controls turned out to be simple, boiling down to a handful of lines: "This is the shield. This is the attack. This is the jump. This is movement. This is your ability..."
Sure enough, Tony had designed the Titan's control scheme to work like a video game's keyboard-and-mouse layout.
That made it remarkably easy for Natasha, who had zero mech-piloting experience, to pick up. Once she'd gotten a feel for the basics, she drove the Titan straight into an assault on SHIELD headquarters.
Steve and Carter, thanks to their super-soldier physiques, crouched low on the Titan's shoulders, and when the mech launched into a massive leap, the two of them used the momentum to smash through a window and drop straight into the building.
Agent Hill, without that kind of physical durability, played it safe and infiltrated the old-fashioned way, through the ductwork.
Inside SHIELD, the security personnel on patrol froze in shock at the sight of a six or seven meter tall mech suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
Their first instinct was that aliens were invading again, and they reflexively raised their rifles, training the muzzles on the massive shape in front of them.
But before anyone could pull the trigger, a broadcast crackled out from the mech's cockpit.
"This is SHIELD Agent Natasha Romanoff, currently on a classified mission. All non-essential personnel, clear the area immediately."
"...Natasha Romanoff? A SHIELD agent?" The guards who'd heard it exchanged looks.
Before they could process whether that was even true, Pierce's voice came through their earpieces.
"We've received reliable intelligence that Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, and Peggy Carter have betrayed their country. Shoot on sight on contact."
"...Shoot on sight?"
The guards repeated it under their breath, disbelief thick in their voices.
While the name Natasha Romanoff didn't mean much to most of them, the names Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter were ones they'd practically grown up hearing stories about.
Being told now that Captain America and Captain Carter had betrayed their own country was more than a little hard to swallow.
For exactly that reason, the guards hearing the order didn't immediately open fire on Natasha. Instead, hesitation spread through the ranks.
"Isn't there some kind of misunderstanding here? How could Captain America and Captain Carter possibly betray their country?"
Just as the crowd wavered, a HYDRA plant among the guards stepped forward first.
"There's no misunderstanding here!"
"People change. Their principles were never guaranteed to stay right forever, either."
"Trusting some outdated legend over the chain of command is exactly the kind of thinking that gets people killed. Follow orders!"
Say what you will, HYDRA's brainwashing rhetoric worked as effectively as ever, and it only took a few lines to pull the still-wavering guards over.
...That's right. People change.
"So..." The guard standing closest tightened his expression, drew a slow breath, and the muzzle of his weapon abruptly spat fire.
Seeing that, the rest of the guards opened fire too, and in an instant the plaza dissolved into chaos.
Inside the Titan's cockpit, Natasha watched through the display as the guards below poured fire up at her, let out a quiet sigh, and pulled the massive grenade launcher, modeled after a real bomb-launching design, off her back.
Looking at that muzzle, easily the size of a human head, and then glancing down at the standard-issue rifles in their own hands, the guards understood the gap between the two almost instantly.
Taking a hit from that thing, they wouldn't just die, they'd end up scattered in pieces.
Fight? Fight what? Run.
Wherever the massive launcher's barrel pointed, the guards there scattered like startled birds, the whole process not even requiring a single shot fired.
Of course, a handful still held their ground stubbornly.
For those, Natasha simply swung the mech's fist, sending them flying with one punch apiece.
Piloting the Titan, Natasha carved through the building almost like walking through an empty room.
Steve and Carter, on the other side, weren't having nearly as easy a time.
Since they'd gone for a direct frontal assault instead of stealth, HYDRA's response had been fast. A large force assembled within just a few minutes and moved to surround the two of them.
Even facing that kind of overwhelming firepower, though, Steve and Carter still displayed the full terrifying capability of super soldiers...
Every shield throw dropped several people out of the fight at once, and rifles knocked loose from fallen hands were snatched up and turned into improvised weapons in an instant.
Listening to the battle reports pouring in through his earpiece, Pierce's expression turned darkly grim.
"Release the Winter Soldier."
"And—"
"There's no more time to hesitate. Activate Project Insight, now."
The operator on the other end of the line didn't hesitate for a second.
"Copy that—"
Not long after the order went out, Steve and Carter, still pushing forward and closing in on capturing Pierce to stop Project Insight, finally ran into their first real resistance.
"Him again..." Steve looked toward the masked figure that had suddenly appeared in the distance, a flicker of wariness crossing his eyes.
Having genuinely crossed swords with the Winter Soldier before, he understood exactly how dangerous the man was, better than anyone else there.
While there was no way the Winter Soldier alone could stop both him and Carter working together, if all the man wanted to do was buy time, he was more than capable of that.
The moment the Winter Soldier appeared, the reinforcing guards around them gradually stopped firing, ceding the battlefield to him instead.
It made sense. Not everyone on a battlefield could be a marksman, and with the Winter Soldier in play now, continuing to fire risked hitting their own people.
The instant he appeared, the whole scene went quiet.
The guards, as if following some silent order, lowered their weapons together and fell back.
The Winter Soldier turned toward a guard retreating beside him, raised his metal arm, and held it out silently in front of the man.
The guard froze for a second, then understood immediately, fumbling to unclip the M4 he'd just reloaded and pressing it into that cold metal palm with both hands.
The Winter Soldier took the rifle, racked the bolt in one crisp, efficient motion, and with a sharp metallic clack, those flat, colorless eyes locked back onto Steve and Carter, standing side by side in the distance.
Steve dropped into a low stance, his eyes fixed unblinking on the Winter Soldier's every movement, his lips barely moving. "Carter, we can't afford to waste too much time here..."
"I'll find a way to hold him off during the next stretch of the fight."
"You use the opening to find Pierce and stop Project Insight."
Carter said nothing further, only gave a simple nod, but in that brief exchange of glances, more passed between them than words could have carried.
Looking at the Winter Soldier's rifle rising in the distance, Steve moved first, the very next instant.
Without any warning, his whole body blurred into a streak, driving straight at the Winter Soldier.
At the same moment, Carter broke off at an angle from Steve's side, her target clear...
Seeing this, the Winter Soldier's brow drew together slightly.
His tactical instincts were razor sharp.
He ignored Steve's direct charge entirely. His arm snapped up, the muzzle locking onto Carter's trajectory first, and the instant the trigger pulled, muzzle flash spat out in a burst.
Carter's pupils contracted sharply. She dropped low in an instant, curling tight, the Vibranium shield angled up over her head.
The bullets hammered against the shield's surface in a dense hail, but fortunately the Vibranium absorbed the kinetic force, letting her keep moving without breaking stride, pushing forward along the flank under the shield's cover.
It was in that same instant that Steve closed the distance and reached the Winter Soldier.
He brought the shield up in front of him and drove his entire body forward like a bull building toward full momentum, slamming straight into the Winter Soldier's chest!
A heavy, dull crack, like a sledgehammer landing on a sandbag.
The Winter Soldier's body was thrown clean off the ground, launched backward through the air.
But even as his body spun out of control, he twisted hard at the waist in midair and slammed his metal arm down toward the ground.
Five metal fingers dug into the concrete, gouging five deep furrows, sparks and debris flying, and using that leverage he flipped himself around, landing solidly on both feet, one knee bent slightly, the rifle already coming back up.
The whole sequence flowed together seamlessly, as if being knocked airborne had been part of the calculation all along.
But in the same instant he steadied himself, Carter had already slipped past his left flank, the distance between them opening up to nearly thirty meters almost instantly.
The Winter Soldier made his call immediately. His metal arm slammed into the wall beside him, and as the concrete shattered, he used the recoil to launch himself sideways, closing in on Carter's escape route in just a few bounds.
The M4 he'd just picked up got tossed aside without a second thought.
In close-quarters combat, a rifle was just dead weight...
In its place came that cold, silver-grey metal arm.
Fingers spread wide, driving straight for Carter's throat.
Carter's reaction was lightning fast. She swept the shield up from below, meeting the metal hand head-on in midair.
The clash of metal on metal rang out through the corridor like a thunderclap, the shockwave rippling outward, and the guards close enough felt it hit their ears hard enough to wince and clap their hands over them.
Neither of them gave ground.
The struggle between metal arm and Vibranium shield produced a teeth-grinding shriek, the Winter Soldier's blank expression a stark contrast to Carter's gritted teeth.
The next instant, the Winter Soldier switched tactics, driving his metal arm sharply downward while his other hand drove a fist straight into Carter's ribs.
Carter twisted to bleed off the force, but the punch came too fast, too precise, the edge of his fist grazing her tactical vest, tearing a strip of fabric loose, the impact carrying straight through her armor into her ribs.
Carter let out a stifled grunt but pressed forward instead of retreating, the edge of her shield sweeping out and catching the Winter Soldier square across the face.
Blood sprayed.
The blow snapped the Winter Soldier's head to one side, blood seeping from beneath his mask and dripping down his chin.
But he seemed not to register the pain at all. In the same instant he was hit, his metal arm had already whipped around and seized Carter's shield wrist.
The strength of that grip was staggering.
The metal fingers closed tight, and Carter's wrist bones let out a series of sharp, brittle cracks.
Even so, she didn't cry out, though the cold sweat beading on her forehead made it clear this wasn't easy for her.
Just as the Winter Soldier was about to finish crushing her wrist, a figure dropped out of the sky.
Steve came falling from above, shield raised high overhead, and brought the full weight of his body down between the Winter Soldier and Carter!
The shield slammed down hard, directly onto the elbow joint of the Winter Soldier's metal arm!
In that instant, the joint took the full force of the blow!
The grip strength of the metal arm faltered, just slightly.
Carter took the opening to wrench free, rolling backward to open up distance.
Steve didn't pause after landing. He spun and delivered a heavy, sweeping roundhouse kick, his boot connecting square with the Winter Soldier's chest and driving him back several staggering steps.
Steve closed the distance in an instant, grabbing hold of the Winter Soldier's non-metal arm, intending to throw him over his shoulder.
The Winter Soldier's counter came almost in the same breath, his metal fist swinging in from the side toward Steve's skull.
Seeing it, Steve had no choice but to abandon the throw.
Thump!
He snapped his hand up, catching the punch with his Vibranium shield.
The shockwave from the collision sent a ripple of dust rising around the two of them.
And in the same instant he absorbed that punch, Steve drove his legs forward, his other hand locking onto the Winter Soldier's shoulder, shoving him backward with everything he had.
Locked together, the two of them slammed through the glass curtain wall at the end of the corridor like a fired cannon shell.
The shattered glass came down like a sudden blizzard, glittering cold in the sunlight, falling alongside the two of them from dozens of meters up the outer wall of the building.
Wind shrieked past their ears.
As they fell, the Winter Soldier tried to twist and pin Steve, his metal arm swinging down toward his face.
Facing an attack with intent that obvious, Steve simply tilted his head and let it pass.
The hand that had been gripping the Winter Soldier's shoulder suddenly released, and in the same motion landed instead on the Winter Soldier's mask.
"Getting in our way, again and again..."
"Since that's how it is, let's see exactly who you are."
With that, Steve tore the mask straight off the Winter Soldier's face.
But the instant he saw what was underneath, the fury that had been burning in him a moment ago vanished, as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over his head.
The expression on his face froze completely, his pupils trembling without his meaning them to.
The wind kept rushing past. The Winter Soldier's fists kept landing, one after another, against Steve's chest.
But this time, Steve didn't fight back.
He wasn't sure how long passed before he finally forced two words out, staring at that painfully familiar face.
"Bucky...?!"