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Chapter 16
Heroes on the run
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STEVE WAS HAVING A BAD DAY.
First, there was an enhanced, evil assassin on the loose. Second, Fury had been shot and killed by said assassin. Three, his apartment has been destroyed. Four, SHIELD has been infiltrated overun by terrorists, that's the best word Steve could come up with as of right now. Five, he had been attacked by said terrorists, traitors if you will not long ago, which he was lucky to escape alive from. And to top it all off, he hadn't had a wink of sleep in the last 24 hours. . .
Now, you could probably guess that Steve wasn't in the best of moods currently. Who would be?
The enhanced super soldier finds himself strolling through the same hospital hallway he was in earlier. However, this time he was alone and under much different circumstances.
He attempted to blend in with everything and everyone around him by ditching his prestigious Captain America suit and choosing to wear grey sweats with a navy blue hooded jacket; with the hood up - he didn't look suspicious at all. Now that SHIELD had been taken over and he was a wanted man, like Nick's last words, he couldn't trust anyone.
Steve came to a stop in front of the same vending machine he was stood in front of earlier. It was a risky move, but before he left for SHIELD's headquarters for questioning alone, he acted on impulse and hid the flash drive Fury had given him, and hid it in one of the machines slots, behind some strawberry hubba bubba bubblegum.
However, now that he had returned for his flash drive, he was shocked to find it wasn't there.
Quickly going into panic mode, Steve frantically began to spin on the spot and look around for someone who appeared suspicious of taking his flash drive. His blue eyes eventually found someone.
A familiar red head steps out from behind Steve, blowing an impressively large pink bubble out of gum. Natasha stares up at Steve through big eyes, a smirk on her thick lips that soon disappeared when Steve harshly grabs her and pushes her into an empty room.
It seemed Steve didn't want to play any of her usual games today.
Natasha tried her best not to wince or appear shocked when her back meets the wall, Steve's hands still gripping on to her upper arms and keeping her there. The assassin never would've guessed Steve to be so rough, never in a million years.
"Where is it?" Steve demands an answer.
"Safe," Natasha answers.
Steve's jaw clenched as he says through clenched teeth, "Do better,"
"Where did you get it?" It was Natasha's turn to ask the questions.
"Why would I tell you?" Steve retorts.
Natasha shrugged, " Fury gave it to you. Not Tessa. Not Jungkook - why?"
Steve narrows his eyes at her. "What's on it?"
"I don't know," Natasha said.
Steve shakes her body, growing frustrated with her lack of answers. "Stop lying!" He seethed.
"I only act like I know everything, Rodgers." Natasha snaps at him.
Steve was at a loss for words. He didn't know what to say, Natasha had gotten the best of him in this argument and he was reaching his boiling point. He wanted, no, needed answers and he wasn't leaving until he got them. He looked over his shoulder, making sure they weren't at risk of someone walking in, before speaking again.
"I bet you know Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?" Steve accuses her.
Natasha's mouth hung open for a few seconds, but no words came out until she figured out what the best thing to say to try and calm Steve down was, scared he might crush her body with his hands alone. "Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in."
"I'm not gonna ask you again," Steve's grip on her arms tightened.
"I know who killed Fury," Natasha admits. The weight of her words makes Steve release his strong grip on her, taken aback. "Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do, call him, the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."
The alias rang a bell in Steve's head - the name sounded familiar. It took him a moment to remember, remember that it was Tessa and Jungkook who had first told him about the so-called 'Winter Soldier'. He didn't expect Natasha to know of him as well.
"I've heard of him before," Steve tells her. "He attacked Tessa yesterday."
"She was lucky to escape with her life," Natasha said making Steve frown, so she went on to explain. "Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa, We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer so he shot him straight through me," she pulls up her shirt to reveal a nasty looking scar on her stomach, to the right of her belly button. "Soviet slug. No rifling. Bye-bye, bikinis."
"Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now," Steve says to her
sarcastically. Natasha gives him a small smile, before continuing.
"Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried. Tessa and Jungkook will tell you the same thing," Natasha explains to him as she holds up the flash drive. "He's a ghost story."
A smile tugged at Steve's lips, "Well, it's lucky we've got a ghost of our own." Natasha returns his smile at his words, although Steve's quickly turned into a frown. "Where are those two delinquents anyway?" He asked, no need to clarify who he meant. Natasha's smile grew.
"They're waiting in the car for us."
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"I'm not doing it."
Tessa rolled her brown eyes. A whole hour, a whole hour she has spent trying to convince Jungkook to play along with her plan. Granted, her plan made him look like an idiot, but still she persisted.
"Come on, Jungkook," she ran her hands down her face. "It's the best disguise!"
The man in question only scoffed and kept his eyes on the surroundings that passed them in a blur outside of the cars windows. He has his arms folded tightly across his chest, refusing to look at the girl sat beside him in the back of the car. Meanwhile, Steve and Natasha, the former driving and the latter sat in the passenger seat, listen on, amused.
"She's not wrong, Jungkook," the boy could basically hear the smirk in Natasha's voice without even having to see it.
"Thankyou, Natasha!" Tessa exclaimed. "Yourself and Steve pretend to be lovers, me your daughter who you happily allowed to adopt a puppy, and that is where you, Jungkook, come in."
The four teammates were currently making their way to a nearby mall, where they would access a computer there to retrieve information they needed that was on the hard drive. However, since SHIELD has collapsed and they were now wanted heroes, it wouldn't be so easy. They needed to blend in with the crowd and not draw attention to themselves, no doubt they were being hunted as they speak.
"If I was to turn into a dog, hypothetically," he quickly added. "I would turn into a German Shepard or another impressive dog breed. Not some little thing that yaps, not barks, and is so small it can be carried around in a carrier. No chance." He laughed, but he didn't find any of it funny.
Tessa sucked in her bottom lip and closed her eyes, repressing the urge to strangle Jungkook and murder him right now in the back of the car - she was certain Steve nor Natasha would miss him all that much. If he wasn't willing to go along with her plan, she'd be forced to come up with compromises that appealed to Jungkook - much to Tessa's dismay.
"What about a German Shepard puppy then?" She proposed the idea to him.
At the proposition, for the first time since Tessa voiced her, what she deemed to be brilliant idea, Jungkook turned his head until his narrowed doe eyes met her wide ones. He was the only one in the team that could shape shift, if you didn't count Bruce, yet you would think Tessa could as she stared at him with eyes cuter than any puppy's. . . no matter how badly he wanted to, how could he possibly say no? He knew very well she'd pester him until she got the answer she wanted - she was a brat like that.
Jungkook groaned loudly, admitting defeat and giving in to her once again. Tessa clapped her hands in victory.
"Fine, I'll do it."
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"First rule of going on the run is don't run, walk," Natasha says to her teammates as they made their way through the busy mall.
"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off," Steve replies to the redhead.
Tessa rolled her eyes. "The most important rule, is to not dress in hoodies and sunglasses, especially inside when it's hot outside. That doesn't make you as invisible as you think. I thought you were meant to be a spy, Natasha."
They were now dressed in more normal clothing, after listening to Tessa and making a quick pit stop at a clothes store.
Tessa now wore a white, cropped long sleeved shirt, with ripped denim mom jeans and white trainers. Her brown hair was left falling over her shoulder and she had a baseball cap over her head.
Jungkook was wearing a dark flannel underneath an oversized, black denim jacket. He had on black cargo pants, the cuffs hovering just above a pair of stylish trainers. However, now, he was a naked puppy with four legs instead of two, had paws instead of hands and had the cutest set of ears. . . no one would recognise him.
Jungkook lounged lazily in puppy form inside of the carrier Tessa was holding. She knew Jungkook too well, to know he most likely had a face on him, puppy or man. She had to refrain herself from laughing at the mental image of Jungkook pouting like a sulking child.
The four fugitives continue making their way through the mall until they found themselves in their desired location, the Apple store. They find themselves a laptop that was free and get to work. Tessa stands on guard with her ferocious guard puppy, who was locked up in his cage. . . so maybe not the most useful form of defence.
"The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot up, S.H.I.E.L.D will know exactly where we are," Natasha explains as she types on the device, inserting the drive.
"How much time do we have?" Tessa asks her.
"About nine minutes from now," Natasha answers rather precisely as she continues typing away. "Fury was right about that ship. Somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of Artificial Intelligence. It keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."
"Can you override it?" Steve asks her as he rests his hand on the table casually, looking down at the laptops screen.
"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly," Natasha boasts her own ego. "I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that S.H.I.E.L.D. developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."
Tessa glances over towards the computer and watches as a map appears, red circles and points jumping around the map.
"Can I help you guys with anything?" One of the Apple employees suddenly comes over and asks the group.
Tessa glances over towards the employee before she looks back down at the computer, uninterested. Natasha looks up and gives the man a smile, before looking over towards Steve and hooking her arm through his.
"Oh, no. My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations." The lies spill effortlessly from her mouth.
"Right. We're getting married." Steve declares rather awkwardly, making Tessa let out a small laugh.
"I'm the maid of honour!" Tessa exclaimed. She just couldn't help herself.
"Congratulations! Where are you guys thinking about going then?" The man asks them.
Steve looks over his shoulder at the computer screen to see what location had miraculously popped up, before answering the man. "New Jersey."
"Oh, cool," The man replies.
Tessa looks over towards her Captain when the employee fell strangely quiet. Steve stares at the man, uncomfortable, and Tessa watches as the man points a finger at him. For a brief moment, she was worried he perhaps recognised Steve. That was until she heard what the employee then said to him.
"I have the exact same glasses," he pointed out, sounding proud.
"Wow, you two are practically twins," Natasha claims dryly, her eyes not having left the laptop's screen as she types rapidly - some would mistake her for an experienced hacker. Tessa scoffed at her absurd comment.
"Yeah, I wish, " The man states with a laugh before turning serious. He seemed to admire Steve as he claimed he was a, "Specimen."
Tessa and the long-haired man then suddenly met eyes. The kind employee smiles at her, before his eyes stray from her own to what she was holding in her hand. She cringed, waiting for the man to scold her for bringing an animal inside of the store, but instead. . .
"Oh, wow, what a cute little puppy!" He exclaimed, his voice growing higher in tone as he stepped closer to Tessa and the puppy, Jungkook, who's head was peaking out of the cage door. "What's it's name?"
"Uhm, K-Kookie," Tessa smiled as she revealed the name, pretending she didn't hear the growl of protest that came from within the carrier.
"Can I stroke it?" The man didn't wait for an answer as his hand was already reaching towards the cage door, wanting to stroke the quiet puppy through it.
What the employee, nor the canine's three companions, were expecting, was for puppy to bark loudly then growl viciously. The man screamed and retracted his hand, all while drawing attention to themselves - which was the last thing they wanted, nor needed.
Tessa chuckled nervously. "Please don't mind my dog, he can be very grumpy at times."
The employee laughed off his fear. "Well, If you guys need anything, I've been Aaron."
"Thank you," Steve says to him before the employee walks away. He turns back towards the two of them, before looking down at the puppy in the carrier still. "So much for not making a scene, Jeon."
He merely growled in response and Tessa was struggling greatly to hold back her laugh.
"You said nine minutes. Come on." Steve ignored the two of them and instead chose to hurry Natasha along. It was clear he was beginning to panic.
"Relax," Natasha assured him she was almost done. "Got it." Natasha says with a small, but proud, smirk.
They watch as the computer narrows in on a final location and the two females feel Steve tense up from beside them. Tessa glances up at him, before back to the computer. "You know it?"
"I used to." Steve replies.
"Let's go then," Natasha says to them as she snatches the drive out of the computer. Time really was running out now.
The three of them walk out of the Apple store and make their way over towards the escalators. They scan their surroundings, now realising they weren't alone anymore - they had company.
"Standard tac team. Two behind, two across, and two coming straight at us." Steve warns the girls, and puppy Jungkook, as the three of them walked through the patrons of the mall.
Tessa had her head down, trying to keep her eyes out of view, because if they started to randomly glow purple, which was unlikely but not impossible, they were royally screwed.
"If they make us, I'll engage, you guy's hit the south escalator to the metro-"
"Shut up and put your arm around me. Laugh at something I said. Tessa, check on Jungkook." Natasha orders the two of them. The teenager immediately does as she's told, keeping her head low, unlike Steve.
"What?" He looked at Natasha as if she had suddenly grown two heads.
"Do it." Natasha encouraged him.
Steve obeys and Tessa tried not to laugh at how awkward he was being. The two S.H.I.E.L.D men walked past them, without sparing a second glance. Only when they were clear did Steve and Natasha break away from one another.
They made their way over towards the escalator and Tessa stood infront of the two of them. Her eyes scanned the floor below them, trying to see if she could spot any more agents on the hunt. There was. Her eyes landed on Rumlow, and she couldn't believe that bastard had betrayed them. Despite this, she quickly placed the carrier containing Jungkook down on the step she was stood on, before crouching down and pretending to tie her shoelace.
Natasha must've noticed Rumlow too because all Tessa heard from behind her was Natasha say, "Kiss me," to Steve. Tessa almost choked on her own saliva.
"What?" Steve and Tessa whispered in unison, both shocked.
"Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable," Natasha explained.
"Yes, they do," Steve agreed.
Natasha rolls her eyes at his shy and awkward behaviour, before putting her hands on Steve's face and pressing her lips to his. Tessa inhaled deeply, stopping herself from squealing as she stared up at the two locking lips. Although he couldn't see, Tessa still used one of her hands to cover the front of the puppy carrier, shielding Jungkook's line of sight.
The two of them continued to kiss as they finally passed Rumlow, who looked away upon seeing what the 'couple' were up to, on the neighboring escalator.
"You still uncomfortable?" Natasha asks Steve as she turns around and starts walking away from the escalator.
"It's not exactly the word I would use," Steve mumbled.
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authors note:
i is back from my holiday and
currently dying lol. it's not
covid, I've been testing myself
daily and even went for a test
done by professionals lol i think
it's just holiday germs or the
common winter cold here in
england.
but on a brighter note, I've
submitted all assignments
for uni so now i'm finished
until after new years, yay!
so when i'm not working,
I'll be working on my published
and unpublished stories hehehe.
christmas is also days away ahhh
and I haven't even done all
my shopping lol talk about
last minute...