8456/The Raid

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The Raid
Date of Scene: 27 October 2021
Location: Abandoned Warehouse
Synopsis: No description
Cast of Characters: James Barnes, Wanda Maximoff




James Barnes has posed:
HYDRA.

The enemy of the world, one that seeks to place it back under the thumb of fascism and dark mysticism and cultist mentality. Bucky had been waiting to be called upon by SHIELD, by the Avengers, by both....and the time finally came when SHIELD intelligence found an Abandoned Warehouse in the Bronx where HYDRA was attempting to indoctrinate the youth into their ranks and train the next generation.

Alas, it wouldn't go as planned.

Bucky had gotten his assignment via text, and he immediately went to Wanda. There may be an operative there who knows the programmed codewords, and while Bucky has managed to find resistance against a few...but she was the only one he could trust to overwhelm the code, both because of their romantic connection, and because of her powerful magic. She can get in where others can't.

The time came. Bucky was geared up in black kevlar and tactical gear, leaving his left arm exposed because...well, he can't really feel cold with it, so he doesn't need to cover it up. A mask covers the lower half of his face and on his back is a modified machine gun it looks like.

HYDRA is weak to bullets.

<< I'm moving in. >>

The shadow moves along the ground, making his way towards the abandoned warehouse, putting old skills to use. He's headed for altitude.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
HYDRA. Cause of such misery that they have singularly screwed the reputation of cephalopods everywhere, the organization that undermined SHIELD and shaped the Winter Soldier gives even a sorcerer the shivers.

Not that she shows signs of it, wrapped up in a forgettable green hoodie over a pair of jeans and a sweater. The kind of streetwear favoured by teens in Eastern Europe to ooze through demolished urban centres isn't going to gather much attention in the Bronx. A knit hat pulled low over her hair gives her a look of a slightly gaunt street kid, even if she and Pietro aren't kids anymore. Even if the wartorn world they know hasn't changed, apparently. It figures she has to be on the lookout, ghosting an alley not far from the warehouse. Well within range of comms.

Telepathy makes for quite another matter, giving a nudge to the man sneaking through shadows in pursuit of an entrance, a mark. <<I have your back.>> Good luck if HYDRA can break through that mental link, even if they might know what to look for in her. <<Expect me on the roof in five after a surveillance sweep.>>

He proceeds into the unknown and she first checks for the obvious security, and then that which isn't. Steve and Nat have taught her tasks well, after all. The question of Steve lingers, but she shakes her head. Not the time to distract him.

The rooftops around are ugly places of trash and bird droppings, broken bottles and years' of debris. If the air conditioning untis work, she has to find a way up there. Old fire escapes are too loud, so cheating it is.

James Barnes has posed:
<< Take your time. >> Though the nudge is given, and Bucky seems to nod softly to her before he disappears into the shadows of the night.

It's not arrogance from Bucky to believe he can do this on his own, at least the breaching aspect. He wants these motherfuckers to die. Die for everything they've done to ruin everybody's lives, what they've done to be the centerpiece of every failure in human history, of every dark period. For everything they've ever done to him. He wants to kill every last one of them.

Screw leaving any alive.

With some manner of ease, The Winter Soldier manages to get to the rooftop, his gun is not drawn, but he gently opens up one of the skylights, sliding in and finding his way onto the rafters with little more than a sound to announce him. The HYDRA soldiers and agents inside seem to be completely unaware of his presence.

He gets a good read of the area, looks like they have weapons caches, advanced tech, more than a few guards in the place.

<<Wanda, I count 27. HYDRA and their damned odd numbers.>>

Bucky didn't like this and she could -feel- it. It felt too easy. Normally they have to beat multiple security systems, not just the laser grid. << Watch your approach. Levitate, or you'll trip their sensors. Light work.>> Bucky advises.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Perhaps the death-dealing assassin reserved for the most important or demanding missions where even a Widow's seductive skills won't do would strike at multiple targets so easily. Do they give him the least amount of pause?

Her pathway up to the rooftop of an adjacent building scorns convention. Hands facing down propel her up, force pushing against the cracked pavement to lift her airborne. Another hop and she casts a quick look around, since women midair tend to attract attention even without the advantages of a fancy cape or boob window in their too clingy costumes. Not helpful, as she skids out of the way behind an oblong compressor mounted on the roof and going to rust. Ample places to hide present themselves below, but not so much above. Sweeping the rooflines gives a hint of movement here or there; a snapping flag tattered in the wind, the oscillation of a fan, a dim bulb burning in what probably amounts to an illegal grow-op or the only place someone poor has to go. Wanda doesn't judge much. She pulls her hood further over her face.

The warehouse teems with signatures of life under augmented glasses or scans, and it's not like they lack the tech from the Avengers or his contacts in SHIELD. Most of the time, she relies on her own instincts and ability to spot auras. Figures slip-slide through corrugated steel and reinforced brick. <<Looks awfully shabby for that kind of fancy party. It feels like a front, doesn't it?>>

His confidence and the bitter rage directed at them colours his thoughts, giving an unpleasant aftertaste. Her jaw works, and she skids across the ground at a height of around two feet. Not much betrays the movement, since detecting magic is plenty harder than scientific disruptions like antigrav boots. Best practices don't much apply when dealing with HYDRA. <<You just march in and shoot the place up, I'm going to be picking bullets out of you. Any evidence of a subbasement?>>

James Barnes has posed:
It was his intention to kill everyone in that building. If even one HYDRA agent escaped, they will continue to plague this community and the old HYDRA adage would just once again be true: cut off one head, two more shall take it's place. That being said, Bucky is going in with immediate hostility as he manages to get to his good sniper's nest and draws his weapon, not bothering with a red dot sight.

HYDRA are not typically cowards and that's what makes them dangerous and blackmailing them unreliable. So they need to be eliminated with extreme prejudice. << It is a front. They're trying to indoctrinate children through this, the same way that gangs take up troubled youths, HYDRA seeks to train a new generation. They're de-centralizing themselves. It's smart, makes them harder to track down."

He aims his weapon down sight, knowing full well how he's going to do this. <<I won't get shot.>> Bucky reports back, though Wanda doesn't pick up any normal mystic readings, there does seem to be a weapon of mystic origin in one of the weapon caches.

<<Go.>>

Bucky suddenly drops down from his place in the rafters, shooting four armed men in quick succession before they even hear the bullets start flying. He lands on his feet, shoots two more immediately, while another is punched in the chest hard enough to cave it in with the metal arm. Just like that, several men are dead.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Avengers do not play by the rules of Batman... often. But they share with the Dark Knight a habit of seeking solutions without terminal ends. Maybe this explains Wanda's caution once she sinks down into a crouch, still hovering above the ground. Cool air stings her cheeks, and the smell leaves little to desire. Incalculable dangers stretch out from every bullet spent, but are there not unfathomable risks to mercy?

Bucky, as her brother, seems to prefer a direct assault. A sharp, overpowered retort to the suppurating offense brought by HYDRA isn't unreasonable. She, too, was once in the Brotherhood. Her father has acted harshly enough when called for.

<<Cell operations. Make sure the rest don't know what they do, or you cannot follow the crumbs back.>> A confirmation across their link wavers for a moment when she weaves her magic, threading a protective shield around herself that briefly flares up in a scarlet net. Then it vanishes, barely detectable even to other mystics. Sort of the point. HYDRA possesses occult lore as much as high tech science, and she's not underestimating them as she advances, closing on the roof of the warehouse.

Go, he said. <<In position.>> Mostly. A gun in her hands is a wasted firearm. It's not as if she can hear the volley released beneath her feet, or the crunch of fist to ribs. Too quiet for that, though the impressions from him might pepper her awareness if Bucky's on 'loud' thoughts. Convention would have her go through the fire door or a hatch in the top of the warehouse, but they probably expect that. A better option is the ugly one, as the team teleporter. A door opens where brick and fly-paper might have been before, and reappears at the range of her sight about halfway along the building. The benefit of teleporting is /seeing/ what's on the other side, to make sure she isn't about to collide with a guard removing the safety from his revolver to aim at her.

No, he's busy pulling a machine pistol from his gear and preparing to advance right into her. Black snubbed barrel rising causes her a moment of hissing dismay, her arm whipped defensively to the side. Elegant? Not a chance. Her eyes turn ruby as the crack resonates, and HYDRA Goon #24 goes sailing with prejudice across the warehouse while scarlet tendrils rip into him enraged, and she topples back. Well, at least there was that shielding spell...

James Barnes has posed:
A shot. Another. A third. A fourth.

Four more go down before they can even draw their guns, then Bucky is throwing his gun across the room, impaling a fifth against a wall. Gunshots ring out towards Bucky and he moves his arm to block the shots, lead striking against the cacophony of metal alloy that easily withstands the kinetic energy, the bullet shells falling harmlessly to the ground. Bucky makes the advance on the man who was shooting at him, blocking the bullets with his hand as he approached him.

The hand grips around the barrel of the gun, sharply turning it upwards when the man pulls the trigger again, unintentionally shooting himself. Bucky then rolls out of the way.

The number of hostiles were quickly dwindling, though now they've had times to take defensive positions. Two gunmen are moving for Wanda while the majority remains on Bucky. Bullets are flying, and Bucky moves into cover, even as he immediately begins to move to cover. He notices the red tendrils across the room, as well as the poor soul who seems to have earned Wanda's wrath be sent sailing through the skies.

He gets tackled by a brave goon, who's neck is immediately shattered with a single twist.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Impact force from a hail of bullets do not a happy sorceress make, for it only takes a trigger squeeze to send her reeling across the ground. Bruises will follow in the morning, supposing Wanda makes it that far. Her backward catapult sends her straight into gathered boxes and containers like a neophyte, an embarrassment if there was any.

HYDRA has to know by now that trouble arose somewhere above, and now they have two points to focus on. Any supposing stealth might be useful is killed by the man flailing his way across the open warehouse space, being pre-emptively ripped apart by her unconscious desire to survive, not be shot.

There's the trouble when the witch operates on sheer instinct. Shit breaks.

Bucky's lyrical dance of death has all the subtleties of a violin solo. She is a bit more like the brass section in the 1812 Overture, proven when three crates wobble and rise. Comms-wired agents hiss warning, cracked sounds that only become more frantic between recipients not responding to check-ins. And, you know, the flying boxes hurled one after the other in a violent stream. Two hostiles firing at her have to get through the spinning containers and several pieces of metal scaffolding ripped out to pin them down. A cage pinwheeling like a tumbleweed is no one's idea of fun when it has sharp edges, but wrapping around someone emerging through a door is one way of handling things.

James Barnes has posed:
The Winter Soldier is thankfully not too deaf.

He can hear the boxes and other metal monsterosities that Wanda throws with each wave of her hand, somehow keeping the HYDRA agents on the backfoot. The two men who were shooting at her? They both end up wrapped around the metal trappings that Wanda established, pushed forth with the momentum as they scream, metal digging into flesh that only pushes deeper when they finally hit a wall, their screams cut short to weak groans as they lie still.

Bucky begins to move.

His violin solo reaching a steady crescendo as his feet rise, eyes searching for his love, and Bucky's one moment of hesitation means a bullet skids across his masked cheek, bursting the tough material in the first shot as he narrowly avoids the other, drawing a pistol and firing twice as two bodies hit the ground.

With a leap and no small amount of parkour, he manages to leap off a few walls to make it to Wanda's level, firing three shots as he moves to drag her back behind cover. Their voices are calling out, asking where the pair of them are as confusion sets into the survivors, who are most certainly thinking about running.

Bucky takes a moment to check Wanda for damage.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Not too deaf, like a certain archer of familiar acquaintance?

Bucky won't have trouble surely locating the boxes lifted off the ground and slammed on opponents, shoving them across the floor with anyone behind or beneath them taken right along.

Scarlet energy enfolding the witch bleeds off her hands her hair, giving no quarter. She doesn't advance so much as play dodgeball with the containers of her own making, curling her fingrs, flinging the hurtled plastic and metal contraptions in every direction. Dents leave marks and gouge the floor, rebounding and falling apart. Small arms splash around, spilling out from holes, and if they get swept up into a wave she beats the other HYDRA goons with in a whirlwind.

Two by two, four by four, what's all the trouble for?

Where are the survivors? If there are any, wisely running. She turns to catch another target -- and Bucky isn't one, making the retreat into a defensive wall that much easier, not without its faults.

"Still too easy?"