6727/Code 084: 1943 pt.2

Code 084: 1943 pt.2
Date of Scene:	03 July 2021
Location:	1943: New York
Synopsis:	They think they have it figured out, but a roadblock causes things to go south in a hurry. Someone needs to tell these guys that there are other directions.
Cast of Characters:	James Barnes, Sam Wilson, Shuri, Jethro Glass, Cael Becker, Clint Barton, Daniel Sousa, Steve Rogers

---

James Barnes has posed:
    It seems everyone just sort of did their own thing for the one night they had in 1943 before making the attempt to get back home. For Bucky's part, he spent the bulk of the night ghosting in his old hometown. Really Buck, not healthy. He even slept for a bit in his old bedroom - it's not like he didn't know the 'this time' occupant would be out until near dawn.

    Eventually he found his way back to the Branston house, got a few hours of sleep, had a Talk with Sam... and slipped back out again.

    It's approximately 9 AM when he makes his return. His return is likely announced by the sound of his voice outside before he's actually inside.

    "No, it's fine Mrs. O'Rourke, I'm just here to take measurements, potential recruiting office. Need to be where the people are now-a-days, with the need what it is."

    Oh... no, is that nowBucky or thenBucky? It has to be nowBuck, right? Certainly he would have remembered the military having an interest in this property?

    Anyone who looks out or goes outside will see... Bucky, in full uniform, clean shaven, hair cut and looking *almost* like he did this day in 1943, almost. But close inspection, a really good look at his face, those eyes, it's just a hollow shell of that confident, clueless kid. He's also managed to secure an army transport for the trip to Flushing Meadows. It wasn't hard, he had access to his home, to his clothes... to his uniforms and IDs - well, all those things that used to be his.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    9AM and Sam is really regretting doing his own thing last night. For a multitude of reasons. He's on edge as he gets dressed that morning, and also more than a little hungover, which is absolutely not helping him. But if there's one thing Sam can do right now it's project a veneer of calm, so at least outwardly he looks fine.

    Maybe winces at the sunlight a bit as it comes streaming in through the windows, but otherwise... fine!

    At least until he can hear voices outside, and well obviously everyone knows the identity of one of the speakers, but Sam takes a quick peek through the curtains to confirm which Bucky they're dealing with, here. Which, by the way, has Sam mentioned how much he hates time travel yet this morning? Oh boy, does he hate time travel.

    "Shit," he hisses, because the nature of 'taking a quick peek' doesn't really give him a chance to notice fine details. Just Bucky with short hair in an Army uniform, and to Sam that means it's 1943-Bucky. "We have a problem."

Shuri has posed:
    Shuri opens her eyes. "If it is not a serious one, it's about to be." She's squinting a bit like she's light-sensitive, and looks to be in more than a bit of discomfort, as she stumbles a bit over towards Sam. "What is going on?"

Jethro Glass has posed:
     Jethro wasn't the type for things like air conditioning or modern amenities no he much preferred roughing it in the countryside living life on a simple cot out under the stars. This place was far too comfortable for him. Far too civilized for his tastes.

     So it's no small wonder that he spent the night sleeping on the floor in that simple cloth sleeping bag of his, and took every opportunity to take watch on the old place. For most other people this was city living in a time when things were simpler and safer. For him it was any other place of danger when a man could come bursting in looking for a fight.

     He's in the midst of shaving with a straight razor when he sees that truck pull its way up, the bathroom of the place turned out to have the best view of the street level after all, so that was his watch tower, the bathtub, his bed.

     He flicks off the shaving cream down into the sink as he narrows eyes down on the figure of bucky hair filling the wastebin sat to one side of the sink. The man looks completely different, clean shaven, but he's got his own hollowed out ghost of an expression to his eyes that he recognizes in young bucks. Short marine core cut, a shave that makes his face smooth as it could get he could pass for an officer, and to be fair when he came from he was one.

     He walks into the main room stepping with a smooth confidence of the worst kind of person, a morning person. He makes his way for the main room where the rest of the folks are staying just to meet back up with the group. "Looks like Bucks out front" He says with a firm confidence as he adjusts his belt back into place clattering about his revolver lightly on his hip. He's already going towards the main door ready to open it and great the fellow agent.

Cael Becker has posed:
    Cael mutters under her breath as she pulls on just enough of her 1943 era dress to be decent. "It's too early for problems, Sam, tell it to come back later," she complains. "I haven't had coffee yet." At least they have coffee in 1943. If they ever time travel back to a time before coffee- no. Just no.
    "What's going-"
    She peeks out the window as well. "...shit." Just shit. "Out the back door?" she suggests.

Clint Barton has posed:
Clint looks over at Sam's statement, then pushes himself to his feet and pads over to peek out the window, taking a moment to give Bucky a good look. After a few second's observation, he claps Sam on the shoulder, "We're good, that's our Bucky. Look at his face, that's no teenager like the real one would be in this year." Hooray for SHIELD training, he knows what to look for when observing people.

Raising his voice a little, he says, "We're good, no need to bail. But Jethro, let him come to us, he's talking to a neighbor who might know you don't belong in here if you go out. Gather your things, make sure we haven't left behind anything that isn't from this time, he's gotten hold of transportation for all of us, looks like."

Daniel Sousa has posed:
Daniel is up early, as usual, and dressed for the day. His billet as it turned out was just down the street from Bucky's home and with word coming down that the 107th would soon be shipping out for Europe, he makes his way down towards the Barnes residence, looking like he just stepped out of a recruitment poster, except for the bruise on his chin and the scuffed knuckles from the night before.

Spotting Bucky, he calls out, "Sgt. Barnes, they picking you up to go already?" he asks nodding towards the truck.

James Barnes has posed:
    It's true, that's no teen-ager. He really doesn't look all that much different than he did back then, not that much. It's the eyes, that crease between his brow, just the world weariness of seventy years of hell. That he now tries to play off as a hangover.

    "Lt. Sousa!" he greets with that wide smile of his youth, it doesn't reach his eyes anymore. "Hey, what are you doin' all the way out here?" His left eye twitches a little. Something's niggling, filling a hole in that Swiss cheese brain of his.

    *BLIP* - There it is. "Sorry about last night. Those boys aren't really bad sorts, they just don't know better yet. Glad it didn't get no worse than it did." Shit, he remembers that? He glances at the truck and back to Daniel. "Uhhhhh, yeah, well... I had some free time. This house is for sale and they're looking to maybe put a recruiting office in these parts." It's a lie, but he sells it completely unless Daniel would know, from other sources, that it wasn't true.

    Shit, shit, how to get RID of the guy?

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Sam's already peeled himself away from the window so that he could grab his bag--the one he's got his wings and the rest of his modern day getup in--but thankfully Clint's here to be the voice of reason. The clap to his shoulder makes Sam sway a little bit, but he recovers and steps back to look out the window again.

    Sure enough, Clint is right. And for a few seconds Sam looks like he's seen a ghost, or a... something. Premonition? Except the pre- prefix doesn't exactly work, because time travel. He really, really hates time travel.

    As Shuri comes stumbling thisaway, Sam's going thataway, and he just gestures her towards the window before he drops down into a chair. "This isn't--." Sam's having some issues formulating his thoughts into words, here. So he sits with them for a bit, rubbing his forehead, and then finally he sighs.

    "I hate time travel."

Shuri has posed:
    Shuri looks around at the people they have there. "Maybe we should make a distraction outside? Give him a chance to get away?" She looks to Clint. "Do you have something like a flashbang arrow there? Something you could maybe shoot a block away and make a big noise?" She's not really concerned about it too much, but delays might endanger the process.

Jethro Glass has posed:
     Jethro pauses at Clints assertion nodding his head before something catches his ear. He closes his eyes and presses his ear against the door for a long moment listening intently into the conversation on the other side as he tries to think things through.

     He pauses before motioning to the others in the room, taking in a deep breath of air before he can be stopped to shout at the top of his lungs. "Sergeant Barnes, what in God's blessed green earth is taking your sorry behind so long out there, you have exactly three seconds to move your feet or so help me father almighty I will ensure that you are going to lose your feet do I make myself clear."

     His voice booms and thrums with all the force of will of a true drill instructor echoing out with a deep gravel of that lifetime of hard smoking and drinking he'd left behind himself. He's got the intimidation factor down pat as the windows shake lightly and he brings down the hellfire and damnation with each word hoping beyond hope that it's enough to give bucky the chance to make a break for it. "The Army is not paying you to stand around with your thumb on your hand it is paying you to march lock step in line."

Cael Becker has posed:
    "Oh for the love of-" Cael covers her eyes as Jethro begins to shout out his 'orders.' She has Not. Had. Coffee. Yet.
    Which is probably why it takes her that long to worry about what happens if that door opens - and they're all spotted standing in the home's living room. She nods her head towards the rear of the home, silently urging Clint, Sam, and Shuri to accompany her as she retreats out of sight of the door.
    "Fucking time travel," she agrees with Sam in a quiet, angry mutter.

Clint Barton has posed:
"No arrows, actually. With SHIELD illegal, Hawkeye can't be seen doing stuff with them, so I switched to the ninja outfit and throwing knives. Besides, something like that will draw cops to the area and make it worse, not better." He pulls his ICER from it's holster, then a silencer out of one of the pouches from his ninja outfit that's lying nearby and threads it onto the barrel.

"If the other guy comes in with him, I'll just knock him out and we'll be long gone before he wakes up. Nice and quiet, no attention pulled into the area. We still have to make it to the Expo, we don't need police looking for us."

He moves to take up position to the side of the door so that if Sousa comes in after Bucky, the man will be asleep seconds later before he can really see the people in the house.

Daniel Sousa has posed:
"My billet's down the road," Daniel says, jerking his head back the way he came. "You doing alright?" he asks cocking his head to the side. He'd mentioned where he was staying last night, but then Bucky had been drinking and fighting and that was hard on the memory. Though his attention is still on the man's face. "You look like hell, anything I can do to help you set up? Your CO must be a real slave-driver sticking you with this right before you ship out."

James Barnes has posed:
    Bucky's head snaps toward the sound of Jethro's voice. His eyes narrow ever so slightly. He fuckin' had this. But he barks out a, "Sir, yes sir!" and moves around to the back of the transport to retrieve two, large army issue duffels.

    An apologetic little shrug, helpless is offered along with, "Sorry, Sir... duty calls, wish I could chat more," to Daniel.

    "Yeah, I'm okay," he calls over his shoulder. He's already heading for the front door. "Just stayed out too late, had a little too much fun. Guess this is my punishment?" He offers a lopsided grin that just really doesn't fit. "I got it, might be in more trouble if it looks like I need help."

    Please don't follow, please don't follow, it's a mantra in Bucky's head as he pushes through the front door, promptly locks it behind him and tosses down the duffels.

    "Anyone that can pass as military in 1943, there's a uniform in there for you," he's announcing quietly, even if he sees no one in the immediate vicinity but Clint. "Anyone that can't, out the back door, through the back yard and the one behind, down the alley across the street, I'll pick you up there. Anyone seen Cap?" Because he hasn't... and he's thinking that doesn't bode well. If there's ANYONE in this group that would risk changing all of time to save Buck? It's Steven Rogers.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Just Shuri's mention of a 'big noise' is enough for Sam's shoulders to start bunching up towards his ears, but even braced as he is, he's not ready for what's about to happen. Nothing really could have prepared him. The reverberation of Jethro's shouting bounces around Sam's skull and he visibly flinches, one hand coming up to cover his face as stars burst behind his closed eyelids.

    He just about rolls of the chair he's sitting in, but it gets him up onto his feet, bag in hand as he follows Cael into a backroom.

    Where he promptly puts both hands and his forehead against a wall and mutters some very unkind things before doing a 10-count in his head. By the time he's done and opens his eyes, Sam doesn't quite feel like his brain's about to start leaking out anymore. More or less.

    Which means he might not be the first to reappear, but eventually he does. A bit more twitchy than maybe he was before, but recovered enough that he nods once to Bucky. "We good?" he asks, which isn't what he really means, but the closest to it he's going to do with a bunch of people around. And then he drops his bag to start rifling through one of the duffels Bucky's brought instead.

Shuri has posed:
    Shuri looks over to Jethro in surprise at the...well, massive amount of sound he manages to produce. "Or...we could do that." She frowns a little and looks for somewhere...anywhere...to hide. No furniture. Screw it. She activates the Panther Habit. If Bucky gets followed, it MAY be a CF factor. Best to be ready for trouble, so that's what she goes with.

Steve Rogers has posed:
There is a low trilling noise as a bird flies past the house. It sounds a lot like a red-legged partridge. This is a fact possibly of interest to Sam and his amateur ornithology, but of particular interest to Bucky-- mostly because the distinctive bird cry is unique to the Iberian peninsula, Italy, and France.

The noise comes once more and there's a little movement shifting at the back entrance. Steve leans into view, peeking in carefully. He looks the most ragged out of the bunch, having climbed into a poorly fitting old suit and wearing a ragged trenchcoat. A newsboy cap is pulled low over his brow to hide his features from view.

For a sterling silver poster boy, Steve's tradecraft really isn't terrible.

Once he's sure Sousa's not going to come inside, he reaches for the door latch and pointedly rattles it so someone can unlock it and let him in.

James Barnes has posed:
    Bucky's waiting, still hoping Dan doesn't follow him. He likes the guy, he really does. Knocking him out isn't the top of his *fun things to do list*. But he takes a pause in holding his breath when he hears that whistle. "...Steve's here, unlock the back door," quietly, barely loud enough to carry in the room let alone through the door and outside.

Jethro Glass has posed:
     Jethro throws on a uniform in a jiffy. Hardly the master of the quick change. But as he's shifting uniforms it's clear that the man looks as if he's been through a blender. He's covered from his neck down to his legs in horrific scars of all kinds bullet holes, sword gashes cuts and slices enough to kill a normal man. He's far from a stable looking man medically speaking with a vast collection of markings and a big brand on his upper chest where it looks like someone took a branding iron for cattle and burned a symbol into place.

     Once he's in uniform he turns back to the rest of the group adjusting himself into place asking. "This is what a uniform is these days?" Obviously a little bit confused still as to how far things are really. He's not sure if he feels comfortable in it quite yet.

Cael Becker has posed:
    "...is there anything in there for ladies? Or am I in the 'down the alley' camp?" Cael asks, her tone uncertain as she asks the question. "I mean, getting into the Expo on the arm of one of you fine gents seems an easy enough feat."
    She looks towards Sam as she adds, "Maybe we don't reprise last night, however," she remarks, blowing the man a kiss, while glancing towards Bucky out of the corner of her eyes. Yes. Yes, Cael is //the worst// sometimes. Imagine if she weren't also hung over?
    "Can we stop somewhere on the way for coffee?" she asks in a quiet lament - leaving someone else to head towards the door, as she waits to see if her comment to Sam shakes anything loose in Bucky Barnes' head. Instead, she helps with sorting out the various uniforms.

Clint Barton has posed:
Once Bucky locks the front door, the ICER goes back into it's holster after the silencer is removed. He moves over to the duffel bags and opens one, starting to pull uniforms out. "Well, I know all the guys can pass for military, depending on what you've got in here Cael may be able to manage also. I'm sorry Princess, but I think you're the only one who won't be able to masquerade as military."

He finds a uniform that will fit him and ducks into one of the other rooms to change clothes after moving over to open the door for Steve. When he comes back out he transfers some things to pockets and pouches on the fatigues. Looking over at Shuri, he asks, "Leaving off how stupid things are in this country right now, what are your general thoughts about being in a duffel bag to get to the truck? It's not preferable, but it'll get you out of here."

Daniel Sousa has posed:
"Cruel and unusual punishment if you ask me," Daniel says with a grin about the extra duty. "I think my CO was just glad I loosened up enough to get into a fight," he says shaking his head and extends a hand to the man. "Good luck, and if we don't run into each other before you ship out, give 'em hell."

Then he's off to go track down a cab and catch up with the other officers of his company, a glance and a frown thrown over his shoulder at the truck waiting outside the recruitment center to be. Wandering up the street a block, he knocks a Lucky out of his pack and lights it up, loitering by the empty cab stand a moment to humour his gut feeling. "Been reading too many dime detective novels..." he mutters to himself.

James Barnes has posed:
    When it seems Daniel isn't going to wind up waking up three hours from now with a headache like no other, Bucky lets out the breath he hand gone back to holding.

    The response Bucky gives Sam is a little bit of a mixed bag; a slight shake of his head, a little shrug. It translates to - what choice do I have but to be good?

    A huff of a breath, exhale, inhale. He rounds on Shuri. "Shuri, you stick close to Clint or Sam, got it? If the shit hits the fan in anyway between now and Flushing Meadows, you follow their lead, you keep your head down." He holds up one hand as if to stave off any protest. "Not because I think you can't handle yourself but..." A pause to gather his thoughts. "...look, I know you can handle yourself, but anyone can get knocked out of the game at any time and we need you at the end of this game, in case that clock thing doesn't work, okay? Keep your head down."

    Outwardly, he really seems like he's holding it all together, he's got them a ride, covers, he's laying out plans - and they're good plans. Inside, he's falling the fuck apart. Here they stand on the day before the moment in time that would set him on a collision course with HYDRA and the Winter Soldier. He is not okay, at all.

     He's just tucking all the rest of the shit away because he has to, ignoring it, letting it fester until it bubbles over in ways that might be unpredictable and downright dangerous.

    The uniforms, there's one close enough for everyone that can pass even with Bucky guessing at sizes.

    Something Cael says, something she does, snaps his attention that way. His brow furrows, there's that thousand yard stare, DANGER, PAUSE, RESET. He's having a hard enough time with all this already and now his brain is being forced to wrap itself around the fact that a memory he's thought he had forever might have just been formed last night, how... what? How much of the rest of his memories of here... aren't what he thought they were?

    He makes a little sound in the back of his throat, maybe he's trying to say something? Maybe it's a fucking hairball? He's obviously in *trouble* to at least two people in the room, will he be able to snap himself out of it?

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Is that a bird? Sam's head snaps up and his expression narrows into honed focus, but he supposes now is not the time to reveal his stunning (or maybe startling) amount of bird-related knowledge. Except that bird isn't native to the Americas, and--oh. In hindsight it seems a little obvious. "I'm not sure what the opposite of 'you clean up real nice' would be in this instance," he tells Steve after a quick one-over. "But it applies."

    There's one uniform for him in the bag, and the way Sam eyes it is pretty damn critical. He looks up, to Bucky and then to Steve before deciding the later of the two is to blame, though he holds his comments for another time. He's in a side room to change and back just as quickly, though he's still doing up buckets and such as is appropriate.

    "Yeah, you get a pass for last night but it was a one-time use only," he tells Cael as he tugs on the bottom of his uniform jacket to straighten it. The kiss she blows at him, and then the follow-up question, has Sam shaking his head as he looks away. He's about to co-opt one of the duffels to transfer his wings and tac gear into, but then he pauses, looks up at Bucky, and frowns.

    They, or at least Sam, seems to have an innate understanding of the need to just shelf things for the time being. Tried and true method for Avoiding Your Problems. Except they've moved on past that and into something else, and it takes Sam's hungover brain to make the connection with what Cael's just hinted at. "Hey, Buck, you got a minute?" he asks. Time to hit the mental fire alarm and evacuate to the pre-established rendezvous point, which, uh, in this instance is maybe the kitchen?

Shuri has posed:
    "I /know/ I'm in the down-the-alley group." Shuri says, adding to Cael's sentiment. "Or at least the "on the roof" group." Because there's no way in hell a black teenage female is going to be a U.S. soldier in the 40's.

    She nods to Bucky's analysis of it similarly. "I could always fly." She suggests back to him. "If I have to...be in a bag. Well. We'll just put that in a "Shuri is owed" column for later." She's willing to? SOMETHING is up if she's replying like that to Bucky's suggestion without any insult or attitude. (Damn Cael.) But hey, maybe it's enough out of character for her to snap Bucky out of his insane-o-clock cycle. One can hope.

Steve Rogers has posed:
"Thank you, /sir/," Steve says, and gives Sam a passing salute so crisp that it's very clearly teasing him. It might have something to do with the shiny officer's bars pinned to Sam's uniform epaulets. Never one to make a big deal about rank, Steve also knows how to needle the non-commissioned officers like Sam and Bucky over it.

Steve walks to the front of the house and carefully looks out a gap in the curtains to watch Sousa walking away. He only sighs in relief after Dan finishes lighting up and continues. "Dan almost made me," Steve mutters under his breath. "I'm still not sure how this time travel stuff works but that would make for some *really* awkward conversation in about eighty years." Steve's been busy, it seems; a bag's pulled out from under his jacket and he lays down Expo tickets, a map with exits and oversight lines drawn in, era-appropriate cash, and the last few items for uniforms and disguises that they weren't able to pilfer earlier.

He looks at Bucky, then does a subtle double-take. Something's Up with Bucky. Steve looks back at Sam. Sam's got his Something's Up face on, and doing his We Should Talk thing at Bucky.

"There a problem I don't know about?" Steve says, looking to Bucky and Sam. There's something a little curt about the Captain, as if the near-encounter with Sousa set him more on edge that he'd care to admit.

Jethro Glass has posed:
     Jethro looks up towards the rest of the group as he notices folks heading off towards the back rooms to get changed and realizes that he'd had a distinct lack of shame in his changing in the open. Still he plays it off and gives a quick look about the place securing his revolver down into the holster just for the time being.

     The man cleans up well all things considered. He looks like he fits in perfectly fine in this time period once he's in uniform, then again a change of uniform and he would look perfectly normal in modern day to boot at this point. Shame he never thought to just give a quick shave and a haircut to blend in.

     "So" He clasps his hands together rubbing them in place as he eyes his baby, that scoped rifle of his. "Take it I can't bring my baby along for the ride huh?"

Cael Becker has posed:
    Cael finds and eyes the WAC uniform, rolling her eyes at the notion of military uniforms with skirts. Fine. It's //fine//.
    Amusingly, as many of the boys retreat to other rooms to change - she seems content to simply turn her back to the room - changing quickly and efficiently. Her blouse and jacket come off - mementarily revealing a scar to one arm and shoulder caused by her skin being rubbed raw by the asephalt after a motorcycling accident. The moment passes, though, and she quickly replaces the blouse with the shirt and jacket from the uniform. And the new skirt is slipped into place - before she unzips and shimmies out of the old skirt. It seems like someone has had to deal with getting changed in front of others a few times before.
    She turns back - taking in Sam, Bucky, and the Captain, before her expression does a momentary '...oh shit.' "Nope. Not a problem," she supplies promptly. She hopes.
    At least she has the decency to shoot Sam an apologetic look.

Clint Barton has posed:
Packing his stuff into the duffel bag the uniforms came out of, he answers Jethro with, "Oh, you'll have it along, not like we're leaving anything here. It'll just have to be in the back of the truck. We need to have everything with us when we find the clock, because nothing says it won't send us back as quickly and without warning as it sent us here. I think we should have Bucky and Steve in the cab of the truck, they're the two most likely to be able to say the right things to anyone we encounter, the rest of us ride in the back."

He glances over at the little group around Bucky, but lets them handle it for now. That's part of training too... if a problem is being handled, no need to poke it unless things get worse. Taking a few moments to stash some of his special throwing knives in various places on his person, he slips the ICER into the sidearm holster where it is basically hidden from view with the flap closed, then looks around. "Ok, let's do this. We need to get back where we belong before anything happens."

James Barnes has posed:
    Pale blues refocus on Sam. "What?" One word, snapped and clipped off, short. "I'm fine." He turns away from his friend and brings his fingers to his lips to let out a whistle. "We're out of here in five!" he announces. "If we want to be sure we have time to get in and get out before..." Hiccup, little brain blip as he tries to process the heavy meaning of what he's about to say. "... before me and Steve show up there," his voice distant and detached from that one. "...we need make it to Flushing Meadows ASAP." In and out way before dark, it's a must.

    "No," it's when he takes that tone with *Steve*, that snappy, clipped, short tone? Well that's a real clue that he's so incredibly not 'fine' or 'okay' or anything remotely resembling anything but totally fucked up. "Something I need to know?" he asks, pointedly. "Huh? Where you been all day?" He holds up a hand to stave off an actual answer. "Never mind, we don't have time for it."

    He pulls away from both of his friends, arguably his *best* friends and calls out, "Four minutes!"

    Shuri, she ends up with the full weight of contemplative BuckyStare(TM) and finally a quick, "Thanks..." For not giving him a hard time right now, he can't handle hard times right now. "I'll make the bag up to you later, but no flying. You need to stick close."

    "...stick it in a duffel or up your ass, yeah?" Oh man, that was uncalled for. "It's not a baby, it's damned rifle." This is my rifle, this is my gun or some such.

    "I'll be outside with Barton," the one dude that seems to not be hungover enough to have forgotten his training. "Anyone that doesn't want left in 1943, three and a half minutes."

Sam Wilson has posed:
    The salute only gets a flat stare leveled at Steve before Sam steadies his breathing in an attempt to reign in the instinctive urge to reply with something snappy. No doubt Bucky (when the world isn't falling around their shoulders) brings the worst of it out in Sam, but Steve's a real close second. Eventually he settles on a, "This isn't over," because it isn't, but there are also more pressing things that need his attention.

    Speaking of. Sam eyes Bucky for a long few seconds, imminent countdown be damned, before he nods. "Later," he says to the resident super soldiers, a promise *and* a threat to both of them, probably.

    And then he gets back to packing the Falcon EXO suit and his gear into one of the duffels. The one that Shuri isn't apparently destined for.

    There's room in his pack for Jethro's rifle, as well as anyone else's gear that needs stowing. He checks his own kit before he swings the bag up onto his shoulder and spends some time adjusting it so the weight isn't dragging him down. "Buck," he says, and there's a note of warning in his voice, but then they're moving out. All the interpersonal conflict just needs to be set aside for now, and so Sam only nods at Cael once before he's on the move.

Shuri has posed:
    Shuri gives a sigh, and will head over to one of the duffle bags. She slowly starts to contort as needed to get herself inside the bag. Hopefully at least it doesn't smell of soldier undies. "If anyone ever tells T'Challa I did this, I /will/ kill you." she says, before letting herself be zipped up.

Steve Rogers has posed:
Steve and Bucky glare at each other, feet shifting. Steve doesn't get mad often. Steve gets a bit pink around the neck and ears but his expression grows cold and flinty, emotion draining away into an intense edge of superhuman focus.

Lips curl in anger and a frustrated moment of contempt at Bucky's curt dismissal. But Bucky's moving, and for soldiers, movement provokes a mimicry that is almost instinctual. Bucky is first out the door; his privilege as the senior soldier. Steve is last out the door; his privilege as the officer in charge. Patterns set in stone eighty years ago.

Steve reflexively counts heads while people pass. While they load the truck he makes one last sweep of the area.

The house quickly cools around the emptiness in it, and the flinty expression on Steve's face fades to something close to grief. He'd spent a lot of years here; a refuge, a place away from suffering and loss. Warm meals and the sort of parental affection Steve lost early on in his life. Even after Bucky's parents passed, it was more a home to him than his own apartment was down the block.

He starts towards the door and pauses. A picture of Bucky and Steve, young men-- teens, really-- Bucky with Steve in a good-natured headlock. Both laughing. Care free. Before the world took more from them than either had thought they could give.

His blood boils over and Steve's hand drives through the picture and the wall behind it, with enough force to dent the wetwall. Glass glitters on his hand, his obdurate hide making the cuts look more like scratches.

Steve stares at the mangled picture, then swats the glass from his knuckles and pulls on his gloves. He turns off the light and with a halting sort of finality, locks the door behind him and tucks the key into the hiding spot over the stoop.

Captain America gets into the truck's cab once Sam indicates everyone's loaded in, and pulls the door shut hard behind him.

"Let's roll," Steve says, staring straight forward, and claps a hand twice to the cab to let the people in the back know the train is leaving the station.

Jethro Glass has posed:
     Jethro takes a long moment to look at Bucky. He narrows those eyes at him realizing very well that he's dealing with a killing machine that could take his head off with a single swing. He rolls his tongue around in his mouth.

     He's weighing his options before he just pulls out a matchbook and a hand rolled cigarette to stick into the corner of his mouth. "When I'm in uniform it's usually 'shove it up your ass captain,' or 'sir shove it up your ass sir'.'"

     He takes his rifle with care in both hands looking down across its surface with love and affection. He runs his hand across the gold damascened surface of the rifle pausing for a long moment before he finally sets the scoped rifle down into the bag. "Getcha back soon Lucille."

     He bobbs that hand rolled cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other coming back to a stand as he readies himself for the trip to go. Already he's got his gear loaded up for the trip. Nothing gets left behind in the 40's, not even the bag with Shuri in it.

     He collects that on his way out the door as he bounds his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other taking care not to jostle or tussle the bag any more than absolutely nescicary.

Cael Becker has posed:
    "So now I feel tempted to blackmail a Princess," Cael remarks. "And this is not even the weirdest thing about today by... about a light year or so." She shakes her head, making sure her uniform is straightened out and in place, and getting a pistol tucked into a holster under her jacket. It seems that a sidearm is not part of the WAC uniform. Sexist little- It's fine. This is fine.
    She runs a finger through her hair, wondering if she should try bobby pinning things into place while they travel. Just to get everything tucked up under the cap and appearing neat. What a joke.
    Falling into step behind Sam to head towards the truck she adds a small, almost contrite sounding, "Sorry."
    ...so there's that, at least.

Clint Barton has posed:
Clint does a quick policing of the house before he heads out, making sure nothing from the future was overlooked to be left behind. That done, he heads for the truck, empty handed since Sam and Jethro have claimed the duffels. He waits for everyone else to be in the truck, including Steve in the cab, before swinging up into the rear of the truck himself and pulling the back shut. Once it is, he opens Shuri's duffle and helps the princess out of it. "Thanks for that, I know it's not nearly what you're used to dealing with. But it could be worse, I had to ride in an empty big rig gas tank to cross a border once." He shrugs, these are the things agents have to do, but it's usually different for princesses.

He looks around, looking over the appearance of each person before nodding. "Ok, so it looks like Bucky is kind of brittle right now, which I can understand. This is where a lot of pain starts for him, and he can't even do anything to avoid it, so let's give him a little room and a little slack if he stays snappy for the rest of this. Concentrate on the goal, which is getting home, then we can worry about anything else."

Daniel Sousa has posed:
Daniel watches as the strange group from the house pile into the truck, he stubs out his cigarette and tosses the butt in the trashcan before he hails a cab and gets in the back. "Hey, just sit tight for a moment, when that truck takes off, follow it, my buddies are in there and I want to surprise them," he tells the driver sliding him a bit of money for the extra trouble. He'd settle the rest when they got where they were going.

James Barnes has posed:
    Probably much to Cael's dismay, Bucky is in the driver's seat when they all finally make it outside. With no one in need of a pick up around the block, there's nowhere to go but straight to the highway that'll lead them to their destination, hopefully to their way home again.

    Bucky's quiet once they're on the way, lost in his own thoughts, a private little hell really. This is the last night. Tomorrow his fate is sealed. ...and there's nothing he can do to change any of it without risking the lives of everyone he cares about in the process. So, he's just silently going from point a to point b.

    That is until, on one particularly quiet stretch of highway, they hit a roadblock.

    "Steve..." There's something in the way Bucky's voice rises at the end of his friend's name that will certainl get Steve's attention. It could be Steve and anyone else that's watching the road in front of them already sees what has James Buchanan Barnes sounding so... scared?

    This is 1943, the tech isn't anywhere near what it will be in 2021, but that isn't to say there isn't any tech. The four muscle-bound meatheads strapped into exoskeleton type mech suits are proof of that. But those men aren't even what's making Buck's voice do that. No, it's the little man standing behind them smiling like he's Sylvester and he just caught Tweety. That man's name is...

    Doctor Arnim Zola.

    How in the FUCK? "STEVE!" more decisive, less... terrified. "Cael, take the wheel, get them there! We'll meet up! If we're not there by seven....!" Go with out them? And she better be climbing up from the back fast, because? Bucky's already bailing out to deal with the roadblock and expecting, it seems, Steve to follow.

    He hits the ground in a controlled roll and springs to his feet. If he feels anything 'tear' in his midsection, he ignores it. Firearms in each hand, he's pulling off shots before he's even completely up. Two shots, two hits... but, nothing, both blocked much like he blocks bullets with his own hand.

    "It'll be nice to have two of you, Soldat," Zola calls out before he turns around, takes a step and just vanishes. Is that how it would work? If they get nowBucky and 1943-Bucky a few years from now? Would they have two... Winter Soldiers? Real deal ones, not those fake ass lame 'others'?

    He can't be seen, whatever tomfoolery is afoot, hides Zola from view, but he can be heard, loudly and clearly.

    "Longing," in Russian of course, it's all in Russian. "Don't worry, I'll take my time getting to the last one, Zimniy Soldat... so you can play with my toys."

Steve Rogers has posed:
"Oh shit," Steve agrees.

He's out the door as fast as Bucky, the shield uncovered from the wrapping that protects it. He pitches and rolls, the shield taking the hit with the ground and giving him momentum to come up fast on his feet and already in motion.

"GET CLEAR!" Steve bellows at the truck. He doesn't put on that Captain America voice casually, or often, but there's a whipcrack of unimpeachable command there that was honed on the blood-stained fields of Europe. A voice that spurred America's most valiant men to march straight into the maw of Hell itself for no other reason than Steve asking them to do it.

This is a dance Bucky and Steve know well. They move to converge, Bucky laying down fire and Steve providing mobile coverage. When Bucky stops to reload, Steve's own gun comes up from behind the shield with gunfire fast as a machine gun and worlds more accurate.

Zola vanishes and Steve cocks his head to one side, listening with instant and intense focus. At 'play' he breaks left, spins for some momentum, and hurls the shield with a grunt of effort at where his gut tells him Zola is sneak-footing around.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    The headcount Sam does before giving Steve the go-ahead absolutely includes Shuri in her duffel bag, which he has to stop and just... let that sink in a little bit. "All good?" he asks of Jethro, while his eye shift from the other man's face down to the bag. Obviously he's also asking about their resident royal baggage.

    He hops in the back second-to-last and lays the duffel with their gear down, adjusting his uniform once he's settled. "Yeah," is all the acknowledgment Cael's apology gets at first, but a few beats and Sam nods to her, his mouth twisted into a rather humorless smile. What Clint says only has Sam blinking hard once and looking away, up towards the front of the truck.

    Which means he sees the roadblock up ahead too, and he goes abruptly tense. Then, somehow, it gets worse.

    "This was a trap," he realizes. The clock. HYDRA? Some sort of time-travel power play. "Barton, think this means the op is yours. Good luck at the Expo." He'd glance over at the senior SHIELD agent but he's too busy unzipping his duffel. Most of his tac gear gets left behind by necessity; bare bones he needs to fly is the wingpack and its harness, his goggles, and his gauntlets. The rest gets left behind as he tumbles out of the back of the truck and immediately ducks into the nearest cover he can find, behind another stopped car.

    Sam's hoping he hasn't been spotted so he has a chance to suit up, which he starts doing immediately.

Cael Becker has posed:
    "Yeah, no, I get that," Cael, who seems to have finally decided that Best Behavior is a valid life choice, answers Clint. She settles in for the riding - giving Shuri a grin after her 'blackmail' comment earlier, and then gestures the other girl over. "Do you - or hell, anyone back here - know how to use these things?" she asks, holding up a package of bobby pins. "I need to get my hair up under the cap." Cael is not skilled in the art of bobby pin - let alone in the back of a moving truck. Without a mirror.
    As Shuri agrees to help, she shifts her position to give the other woman better access to her hair - holding skill until something in Bucky's voice has her attention shifting in his direction.
    The way he shouts Steve's name a moment later has her moving before he even has time to summon her. When something has the driver that alarmed - and that driver is James Buchannan Barnes? Yes. There's a chance they'll need a new driver soon.
    "I've got the wheel," she says - almost in unison to Bucky's words towards her - as she pulls herself through the cab, sliding into position and putting a hand on the wheel to hold them steady. Shit. //Shit//. Mechasuits in the 40s?! "What is this shit even?!" she exclaims. Shifting down slows the truck abruptly - which gives her much-needed maneuverability in the large truck to swerve around one of the mech suits. Once she's clear, she floors the gas pedal, quickly shifting up through the gears once more, as the truck picks up speed. Just... not as quickly as she'd like.
    "I want my C6," she complains quietly, as the truck roars out of sight - a quick glance over her shoulder giving her one last glance of Bucky, Cap, and Sam. ...please be alright.

Clint Barton has posed:
Clint doesn't have much he can do in this situation. About all he can contribute is that upon hearing Zola and what he's saying, he pulls the ICER and aims out the back of the truck as they go past the roadblock. If Steve's shield throw or anything else gives away the doctor's position, he'll try to drop him with an ICER round. Past that, all he can do is prepare for what awaits them at the Expo.

James Barnes has posed:
    The moment that Bucky kinda thinks that they're well and royally screwed, is the moment that one of those exoskeleton wearing Zola freakmonsters... intercepts Steve's thrown shield. He isn't about to give up though. How many times have the two of them had the odds stacked against them and come out the other side? Too many to count. And now they've added Sam to the mix, although Bucky didn't see the man bail as well.

     But still, the shield, losing it, it's disheartening this early in the battle.

    But then... Bucky's arm? It's moving when he's not moving it? At first his eyes widen in shock. Oh GOD, it's Zola! Wait. The firearm in his left hand gets tossed into the air. WHAT? A single, high power, focused, taser shot blasts from his open palm, hits the Freakshow hand holding the shield, causes the shield to drop to the ground and... Bucky catches his tossed firearm before it hits the ground and starts firing again.

    A beat, one, two... three... what the fuck just happened? WHAT THE FUCK? He doesn't shoot tasers out of his hand? How in the...

    *BINGBINGBING*

    He makes the connection. "Thanks Shuri," he murmurs even though he's pretty sure the girl can't hear him. Or can she?

    Then he's laying down cover fire so Cap can get that iconic shield back again.

Steve Rogers has posed:
It's not that Steve's really strong. Or fast. It's not the fact he can do a quadruple backflip from a standstill or hear a mouse squeak at thirty yards in a fresh winter snow.

Really, when it comes down to it, Steve's best advantage on the battlefield is that he is just so damn graceful. Perfect economy of motion. Flawless balance. His center of gravity moves under his torso in ways most people couldn't do on demand, let alone while sprinting fast enough to chase down a wild animal. He flies under bullets, vaults and twists between two grasping arms, and then shifts abruptly to a rock-steady posture and drives his boot into one of the cybernetic joints with a blow of perfect precision that snaps struts with a screech of metal and spraying hydraulic fluid.

Steve stomps on the edge of the shield to flip it into the air and kicks it at one of the mechs. It strikes hard, flies off at an angle back towards Bucky. Captain America charges into the mech trooper with a leonine roar and lifts the exosuit off the ground with one hand, emptying his pistol's magazine into a vulnerable gap in the armor and charging at another mech-trooper using the body of the first one as a ballistic shield.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Here's to hoping that exoskeletons are technologically advanced enough that Sam in the EXO suit is just a drop in the bucket of things-that-might-disrupt-the-timeline. Man, he doesn't know! It's been a little bit so Sam would like to reiterate how much he hates time travel.

    Strapped into his harness, Sam pares down his pre-flight checklist into its barest bones, basically what he needs to know is functioning to ensure he's not going to immediately drop out of the sky. The wings are deployed and he's up in the air almost before the final system check lights up green.

    There's no point being stealthy, here. It's mid-morning in New York and Sam is a dude flying through the sky, someone's bound to notice. He's just banking on the HYDRA cyborg squad being too focused on the threat presented by two super soldiers to pay him much attention. And to be perfectly honest it's not even like Sam's going after them--he gets enough vertical distance to get a lay of the land and hopefully a bead on Zola before he redlines the thrusters on his wingpack, diving down at the HYDRA scientist.

    The amount of velocity he's gaining means Sam's probably not coming out of this without at least a few bruises himself if he makes direct contact.

James Barnes has posed:
    "Rusted, furnace.." Zola's voice booms out from all directions. It seems he's seen the end of the battle between the three heroes and his freaks and he's no longer taking his time.

    Bucky catches the shield in his left hand, it's just reflexive, so quick that it looks like the damned thing is magnetized and drawn into his palm.

    He's not a slouch with the hand to hand by ANY means, but Bucky's thing, where he's always really and truly shined, especially when he was fighting side by side with Steve, is shooting the shit out of things.

    It takes him a second to figure out the 'where' of it all, but once he does, every single shot he fires hits a weak point on one of those things, every single shot counts. With that iconic shield, he also blocks return fire, even laser fire, from mech eyes, easily. He's fighting, fighting like hell, but there's still that problem, the one that's looms over his head constantly, his Sword of Damocles, his Achilles Heel.

    Steve, Sam," because now he knows his other friend is in the fray, "...we gotta take these things down and then... you have take me down!" Because...

    "Daybreak, seventeen..."

    He would just run, just turn and run as far from Steve and Sam as he could get. But what if Zola just follows? Follows and triggers him anyway, sends him back to his friends?

    Whatever the Mad Doctor is using to cloak himself, that's some bad ass shit... Because there is no Zola visible on anything.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    What he thinks is Zola turns out not to be, and Sam has to pull himself up into a steep climb before he splatters himself like a bug against the asphalt, his voice echoing with a groan of effort at the sudden G force. Flying hungover is never pleasant.

    He drops somewhat more gracefully out of the sky and back into cover, one of his SMGs mechanically deployed into his hand. "Man, shut the hell up!" he calls out, and in the chaos of the fight it's hard to tell if he's yelling at Zola or Bucky. Sometimes all he wants to do is yell at Bucky, so maybe it's a little bit of both. "Just get out of here, we'll cover you!"

    Him and Steve have faced worse odds before, after all. So Sam just gives a little shake of his head and shifts into game-mode; seconds later he's popping up out of cover to provide suppressive fire so that Bucky can bail. Hopefully that's actually what he does!

Steve Rogers has posed:
The last mech gets layed out. It's just the Three Musketeers, and an invisible Zola. Steve cuts the air near his throat with the edge of his hand, an urgent gesture at Sam for silence. He's listening. Listening very carefully. Eyes widen at Zola's crisp pronunciation.

"Bucky. Fight it," he urges. "You have to fight it. This is just like that bar in Tblisi, you can beat this." He backs up until he's near Sam and Bucky, the three of them forming a fighting wedge. Covering all directions and each other's backs.

"Don't do it, Zola. Don't do it!" Tension grips Steve's voice and his fingers curl around the pistol in his hand, heat and vaporizing oil rising from the barrel.

"<Benign>." Russian, disjointed and bodiless.

The words continue. "Bucky, please, fight it-- don't do it. Don't make me do it." Steve's voice trembles. He raises his pistol and puts the muzzle against the back of Bucky's collar. At the base of his neck.

James Barnes has posed:
    "Just do it, Steve, I forgive you. It's okay, it'll be okay," Bucky replies softly, his voice intense and sincere. He just wants it over. In fact, he almost looks content in the fact that, well, it's about to be over.

    The mechs are mostly down, crippled but still coming with weak, pathetic attempts to separate the trio and dispatch with the Winter Soldier's Allies.

    Zola doesn't say another trigger word. Not yet. Could be he isn't sure how to proceed. Will Steve REALLY do it?

    "Sam, you make sure he doesn't hate himself, you make sure he knows it's what had to be done." OH GOD!

Sam Wilson has posed:
    Reading you loud and clear, Cap, says the nod Sam gives from where he remains, halfway out of cover with his weapon raised. His bullets mostly pinged off of armor--he doesn't have the pinpoint accuracy Bucky does, after all, and he's not actively trying anyway--but he still wasted those bullets anyway, hoping to buy them some time.

    Thing is, though? Sam absolutely did not read this loud and clear. Nothing about the signal Steve gave him prepared Sam for this. He checks their six and then looks back to find the muzzle of Steve's gun against Bucky's neck. "What the--"

    His breath catches in his lungs, and he swallows, body frozen in place as he looks back and forth between Steve and Bucky like somehow it's just a trick of the light, some leftover fog in his eyes from the alcohol last night, something that isn't what's actually playing out in front of his eyes right now.

    "Steve, man, you can't--that's not--" Sam's usually the voice of reason, or at least someone who doesn't get caught up in the chaos that routinely invades their lives despite being the baseline human amidst super soldiers, Asgardians, genius inventors, whatever. But right now Sam doesn't even know where to start. "Put the gun down, please." That last word comes out straight pleading, just the edge of frantic, even as he tries to make some kind of eye contact with Steve, like Sam's hoping that will provide him some kind of insight into what the hell is happening right now.

Steve Rogers has posed:
Steve shakes his head at Sam. "You know what will happen," he tells Sam, voice surprisingly tense with rigidly controlled despair. "You know what he'll /become/. We can't let him loose on 1943. Not like this. This is the entire future at stake, here."

Zola laughs, an evil and amused sound, and keeps that sibilant whispering up. The words roll on, gaining a crisp pronounciation.

"<Nine.>"

The pistol rests against the back of Bucky's head. "I'm gonna kill you, Zola," Steve whispers.

"<Homecoming>".

"Bucky, I'm... I'm sorry, man. I am," Steve says, voice breaking.

Steve's gun is custom built. Modernized version of the old GI M1911A1. 10mm, 23 round capacity, electronic optic. A trigger weight of 3.5lbs, perfectly tuned by the grandson of the Howling Commando's own weapons expert. Steve's finger rests on the trigger.

"<One>."

"Get ready, Buck," Steve says, and closes his eyes. He looks away, as if in shame, face wracked with grief. Like he can't keep looking.

Zola laughs. "<Freight c-->" Two gunshots ring out. Twenty four feet away and eight to the left, there's a sound of someone choking in shock and then stumbling with a scrape of leather and metal on asphalt. Steve leans past the still-standing Bucky, head still tilted. Eyes shut. Tracking the sound of movement with those superhuman senses of his. He fires five rounds, like a machine gun walking fire on a target. Asphalt chips fly in eight-inch intervals. One, two, three, four-- and the last one disappears from sight and a spurt of blood leaps into view. Zola's camoflague fails and he appears mid-fall, hitting the ground hard.

"<Freight car! FREIGHT CAR!>" he screams at Bucky.

Steve shakes his head and holsters his gun. "They never armor the boots," he muses. He gives the back of Bucky's shoulder a friendly punch. Fingers lift and he forms some words with his fingertips, speaking aloud for Sam's sake. Their particular brand of sign language isn't particularly standardized like ASL. The gunsmoke still lingering near Bucky's ears probably explains why.

"'It'll be okay'?" He gives Bucky a head toss of resigned exasperation. "You used to be a better actor. I was hoping for, like, 'I love you man', or something," he says.

Steve looks at Zola, who is on the ground holding his foot and squealing like a pig-- or a rotund little boy who's smacked his hand in a cabinet door.

Steve looks at Wilson. "Sam though, that was great. You should pull a gun on me next time."

His grin of accomplishment fades, confused by Sam's expresson. " 'Tblisi?' " he echoes. Hands are still signing. "Bar fight in Georgia with those three Armenian guys, and their sister, uh..." fingers snap in Bucky's direction. Steve looks at the Winter Soldier, fingers curling in sign language again. "Farrah? Is this not--" Steve looks at Bucky, points a finger at Sam. "Bucky said you were laughing your butt off when he told you that story."

James Barnes has posed:
    What Bucky did the second that Steve said 'get ready' and fired those two shots? Well, he spun and grabbed Sam with his left hand. Oh shit! Did Zola get to the last word in? It might seem so! Wait, No, no! It's all good, he was just jerking his friend down so Steve could have at it without risk of hitting a friendly.

    Then he's standing like nothing ever happen, but... still a little deaf. His finger in one ear, wiggling it around like he's trying to clear the clog, he says, "It was *two* dudes, man. And two girls and if they were brothers and sisters? They got some loose incest laws in 'Tblisi." He might be yelling a little because he CAN'T hear a thing!

    It's why he misses it, when Zola stops whining and whimpering. When the dart gun he takes from his coat is clicked into 'go mode' and when that little dart sails toward Steve's neck. He does see it hit though.

    His eyes widen in shock and his hand, the one in his ear, shoots out to swat the offending thing away from his best friend's neck as quickly as possible. "Steve?!" He's already there, one hand shoots to Cap's back, the other one his friend's shoulder. Just in case he goes down.

    "Zola! What did you do?!" But Zola? He's vanished again and this time, he won't make the same mistake.

    ...the tell tale crunch of a pill between molars marks the end of the Freakshows in the exoskeletons. Cyanide.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    The thing about Sam is that he has a sort of quiet, unshakeable faith in people. He isn't the kind of icon Steve is, probably couldn't come up with a rousing speech that inspires the goodness inherent in a person off the top of his head, but Sam still honestly believes that people *are* good. Ignoring HYDRA, of course.

    And Captain America is kind of at the top of that list. Sam wouldn't have followed him out of retirement if not for that very salient fact, which is why he can't really make himself believe Steve is going to take that shot. Until he does.

    "Come on, Steve. We can figure this out, there's gotta be some other way." Sam barely gets the last word out before Steve pulls the trigger, once, twice, and then Sam's on the ground. Part of him is convinced his legs have somehow gone out from underneath him which somehow feels oddly appropriate because it feels like his entire worldview has been turned on its side, in the only way upsetting something bedrock like Steve shooting Bucky would do.

    Yeah, it takes him a little bit to realize that he's been knocked onto his knees because Bucky dragged him down there. He blinks hard once, the next exhale coming out of him in a spasm as he stares at Bucky, then looks up to stare at Steve, and then, yep, back to Bucky again.

    Nothing. Cap chatters about bad acting and Tblisi and Sam shifts to plant himself on the ground, the clatter of his gun dropping to the asphalt next to him as his back hits the car he'd just been crouched behind, a few moments previously. "Bucky said that happened in Batumi," he answers, and he's gone flat, no affect to his voice or his expression. He blinks again. "On the, uh." Pause. Blink. "Coast of the Black Sea."

    Sam drags a hand over his face and tries to take a shaky inhale, but there's no real time to process, because Bucky's yelling at Zola, Steve's been hit by... something, and Sam? Sam needs a fucking vacation. He's up on his feet and at Steve's side in an instant, trying to swat Bucky's hand away to see the wound.

Steve Rogers has posed:
It's turning into a pretty good row between the three of them; Steve absolutely certain that it was Tblisi, Sam is insisting it was closer to Cypress, and Bucky loudly shouting about Georgian incest laws in the middle of New York City.

In 1943.

Steve blinks in shock at the impact to his neck. It stings, more than hurts, and his hand flies up a half-second after Bucky's does with that human reflex of 'what the hell is on me'. It just ends up swatting at Sam's hands. "What the-- Sam, get off me, I'm fine. Zola, what the hell was that?" He keeps jerking his head away from Sam, to little avail; the authority medics have in the military ignores rank and is second only to the Chaplain corps.

"Bucky, go get Zola. Don't let him get loose." He sniffs the air with an expression of deep puzzlement. "Why do I smell Janet's hair dryer?"

James Barnes has posed:
    "Hair dryer?" Bucky asks. "Sam, Zola... you see him anywhere with that bird vision shit of yours?" Because even the Winter Soldier can't go after what he can't see.

    "Hair dryer? "Steve, you mean like... something burning? Wet, like a thunderstorm?" He does step back to Sam move in, but the wound isn't really one. It's just a little... red dot.

    It's the dart that Buck's interested in. He's holding it gingerly in his left hand now that it's not in Steve's neck. He actually lifts it to smell the tip and wrinkles his nose. "Fuck... fuck... I know what this is." Oh, wait... Steve is RIGHT there, let's not sound panicked! "I mean, it's gonna be okay, because I know what this is."

Sam Wilson has posed:
    It feels a little bit like there's a cloud of angry killer bees between Sam's ears right now, both in the sense of the noise that would bring and also the, y'know, stinging pain. Hungover and now possibly with a heart condition thanks to his stupid insistence on being friends with these two super soldier jerks.

    Jerks is not the word Sam actually thinks, though.

    Yes, Sam is the medic. No, there's not really anything Sam can do to counteract whatever Zola's just hit Steve with, now that he can see the puncture wound and surmise--oh no, no need to assume, Sam can see the dart in Bucky's hand--what's just happened. "You want to share with the class, Buck?" Sam asks, like he's trying to make an attempt at levity here, but he's still sounding pretty off.

Steve Rogers has posed:
"That doesn't /sound/ okay, Bucky. You've got a terrible bedside manner." Steve looks around. Zola's gone. Mostly because Steve can't hear him whimpering, and the scent of an awful German cologne is vanishing fairly fast.

"And I think Zola's gone. I swear, it's like Janet's standing right next to me and blowing her hair out. Except it's just the..." he grimaces, rubbing fingertips near his nose. "It's just the hair dryer part instead of her shampoo."

Steve looks around. "Anyway we've got more important things to do. Let's get the evidence off the street and clear out before the cops show up. Sam, find a bottle or something for this," he says, and-- very, very--- carefully he transfers the dart to Sam for safekeeping. "Be careful. And then find me some incendiaries. We need to start a fire in the dumpster so there's nothing left of these, uh." He kicks one of the mechanods. "Robot-borg electronics in these."

"Bucky, I took down these three, and you only got the one, so I'll get the legs and you get the head? Fair?" Steve suggests, and hunkers down to start hauling the mechanoids towards an industrial dumpster.

James Barnes has posed:
    "When I was with Ruby and Horace, this... this is what Zola got me with back then," Bucky explains. He lived through it though, right? ... sure, but there's a catch. Isn't there always a catch? "..."

    "Yeah, well I was a little distracted by the fact that Carmin Lola was trying to whisper sweet controlling nothings in my fucking ear, Steve," is quipped back in regards to... I took three, you got one. He rubs his face with one hand and takes a breath, before, "We gotta fuckin' do something about that, man." BuckyStare(tm) is being evenly distributed between both Same and Steve.

    Seriously, he cannot keep living like this. But he grabs a head anyway and continues his explanation. "Ruby kept me alive through it with some shit Horace concocted. ...and it still sucked. You'll be okay for a few days, but in about a week, you're gonna wish you were dead." His voice is soft at the end, so quiet and... "I'm sorry, Steve." ... guilt ridden, go figure, everyone should have known where that was going.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    This conversation is rapidly moving beyond what Sam is willing or even capable of dealing with. Everything he gets off of a brief examination of Steve tells him 'not dying right this instance' and since they're still stuck in 1943, without access to medical aid, Sam's just gonna call it as being fine for now. He stows the empty dart in a small compartment in his wingpack. Which is empty because he passes off some of the aforementioned requested incendiaries. In this instance, decoy flares. Not their intended use but they'll definitely burn bright enough to suit.

    Since Steve and Bucky are "negotiating" who has to carry what, Sam's just gonna go ahead and assume that they're probably too heavy for him to carry. Which works. Sam does a quick sweep for any other obvious signs of modern-day tech that need to be removed, instead.

    Which reminds him: Sam *hates* time travel.