12396/A Very Dangerous Vignette

A Very Dangerous Vignette
Date of Scene:	11 August 2022
Location:	...Remote Corner of the Otherworld...
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	James Barnes, Wanda Maximoff

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James Barnes has posed:
Bucky Barnes has done a lot of things; many of them bad, many of them good, many of them completely unbelievable. He has also _not_ done many things, but they're harder to quantify. However, today, he gets to add something to the first list that he honestly never thought about, although given his situation, he really should have: he gets to add 'dragon riding' to his list.

This would normally be a fun time had by all, likely, but at the moment, Wanda's hands are tied (not literally, but figuratively) as the rules of this _particular_ part of the Otherworld are a bit... _sharp_, when it comes to wording, and she can't interfere. At least not until Bucky is done.

If the dragon riding just entailed flying around and not falling off, Bucky would feel like Atreyu on Fuchur and be having a grand ol' time.

Unfortunately, this dragonriding is more the local equivalent of BULL riding and Bucky is doing everything he possibly can not to be tossed off this behemoth at 10 thousand feet.

Could he survive the fall? Maybe.

Does he want to find out? Asbolutely not.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Earlier...
Dragon riding must be a throwback to a different time, an RPG that Bucky spotted or some book that he read a million years ago when he and Steve were young.

"Is this because we saw a dragon in Latveria?" Wanda doesn't have the tone of a competitive person, more amused with a lick of sadness behind that all. "Dragons ravaging the countryside were not a happy time for anyone. No matter what I think of their leader, they did not deserve that."

Now...
The red witch probably doesn't like that particular rule gagging her in the Otherworld, but the laws of fae are strange and varied. The real danger isn't to her, not really. It's everyone else if she really decides to push back. Reality squishes like a malleable jelly, stretching and distorting into a new form shaped by a pair of gifted hands. The dragon bucking around has the problem of, say, no front legs. It's technically more of a lindwurm, inspired by the darkest forests in Germany and the Frisian lore that presumed dragons were more serpentine than hulking monsters on four legs with great big wings. Flappity flappity!

The wurm's long and dangerous wings are ragged things with flappy tines more along the lines of thin, long digits like a bat. The flappery up there makes awful sounds, especially because the worm pushes itself through the air by coiling up and springing forward like some demented kind of flying snake. The ragged 'spines' of its fringe of scales, something like an ugly furry fringe running down its back, give handholds but also threaten impaling Bucky everywhere his bionic billion-dollar-man arm isn't. The sawtooth scales on the sides of the beast are equally great at shearing clothing as well as bushes, trees, limbs and other things.

A saw back forest worm of horrors indeed gives an ungainly approach to the world, as the bystanders with their spiny 'hair' and fine clothing look on, laughing madly. Merchants, most of them, the occasional mercenary, bear witness to the local way of taunting tourists.

"Bet you tenner strond he falls off," shouts one.

"Twenty that Alund eats him. Not much but gristle, but there y'are!" Another doesn't know that red eyes are boring holes in the back of his head.

Wanda mostly keeps that under control. Mostly.

James Barnes has posed:
"Easy, eaaaaasy!" Bucky holds onto one of those spines for dear life, his stronger-than-average muscles (not even including the mechanical ones) keeping him more or less fast on the wurm's back. But now it's starting to sidewind across the air, flicking him side to side and ma,king the very tight grip he has with his legs a little less useful.

He knows that he loses if he hits the ground before the dragon does. (Or if he dies.)

He's trying to figure out a way to get the dragon to head back down, taking a brief moment of the wurm sailing straight to rise up a bit and spy its head, several yards ahead --

-- and just then, the dragon bucks, flicking its body up and sending the Winter Soldier into the air.

Up... up... up...

The cheer from the crowd rises, but quick starts to quiet as Bucky angles his descent, heading straight for the incoming worm's head.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Whatever uncanny laws say Wanda can't interfere hold her flat to the ground, staring up into the sky as the demented lindwurm wiggles in anticipation. Freedom means it can go harass some livestock or possibly devour an ungodly amount of trees, though you don't want to know the boggy stench of death that comes out the other end after it consumes a tasty meal. No one said Otherworld beasts were sustainable or logical after any fashion.

She can't even shout for him to get his arms to the side, rather than forward, or look out for that lashing tail with back legs well suited for gripping logs or rendering enormous carp it pulls out of said stench bog.

"You want to bet?" she asks the beings on the ground. They look her up and down. No harm, no foul, right?

"Witchbreed, we don't need your paper," hisses one in an oily guttural laugh. "He's doing plenty well at losing on his own!"

Lindwurms may not have the best sight, but their hearing and scent are phenomenal, so Bucky aiming for its head /seems/ effective...

Until it does the dramatic 'dead hognose snake' thing, flopping onto its back and plummeting. A fallen slinky of horrors, except this one and twist around and try to tail smack the soldier.

James Barnes has posed:
It's true that anyone who _hasn't_ seen Captain America run along the length of a winding Chitauri lizard-mech would probably be a little more impressed than usual by what happens next, but even those that have have to a admit it's pretty fucking great:

Bucky twists, pulling his legs and arms in into a ball and cutting through the air just a fraction faster than he was before, wooshing past the swinging tail. He stretches his legs out and hits the underside of the lindwurm's belly, breaking into a downwards sprint that takes him across the body of the thing, and then it twists, sending him off so that it can turn and snap its jaws at him, it finds the Winter Soldier far closer than it expected.

Bucky Barnes slams his vibranium arm right into the lindwurm's nose with all the strength of a Super Soldier backed by the momentum of the giant snake-like dragon's own coiling body. The crunching and snapping is not only surpremely satisfying, it's also LOUD.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
"You could have won. Your loss," Wanda says. She shrugs her shoulders as the lindwurm's defensive stench comes into play, a reeking oily cloud spilled out between its sawtoothed scales that makes breathing or holding onto something that's now unpleasantly oily -- and corpse plant adjacent -- swerves around.

Angry cries come from the lindwurm's owners, who cannot be happy their money cow is now an injured money cow. It snaps and roils in the air, preparing to go right through those trees and brush Bucky off -- like you do -- while heaving and bucking like a maddened bull dragon.

The witch taps her fingers impatiently against her upper arm, the only sign of anxiety in play. Clearly the rules to stay put are hard indeed to live by.

James Barnes has posed:
As the dragon dives for the forest, Bucky punches it in the nose _again_, hanging from one of its fleshy whisker-like appendages on its snout. Just as it's about to crash into the woods, the super soldier swings himself on that flesh whisker and into the wurm's mouth, pulling a knife out from his belt and ramming it into the roof of the giant beast's mouth. He dodges the lashing tongue as trees are demolished by the giant creature, and as the lindwurm basically knocks itself out by repeatedly ramming into the trees, Bucky holfds his breath, trying not to die from the stench.

The wurm drops to the ground, skidding along the dirt and stopping just yards away from the assembled crowd.

There's a pause.

And then the monster's mouth opens, and Bucky climbs out, gooey and smelling foul.

"That means I win, right?"

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
The grumbles become shouts. Knives? Punches! Fury unleashed in rousing choruses of shouts and jeers roll out of the angry group, mostly because they've lost their wagers to one another and worse. Fists are raised. Shields are shaken. Spears are broken.

Forth, Eorlinga--

"That wasn't the terms! You can't do that to--"

"--it still only counts as a fall!"

"Make 'im take a bath, he smells like a dungheap!"

The witch's nose wrinkles. Her eyes water. She turns on the Otherworlders and gestures. "He won. His prize?"

A bar of soap.

James Barnes has posed:
It takes a bit for Bucky to get clean, but once he does -- and he's changed into something that doesn't reek, with his clothing in a bag -- he approaches wanda, bag in one hand, soap in the other, holding it up so she can see it. "It's unending soap! It never runs out." He looks at it, and then looks at her, looking so _absolutely pleased with himself_ that it might be hard for her to be grumpy about him, you know, almost _dying_.