In addition to Scott and Logan, Clint and Natasha had been nearby when Fury called the mansion to give the two X-Men the news of their missing teammates. They'd both just returned from fending off yet another raid on the Cube, and honestly, it had just been good luck that they were around for backup when the mansion was hit again. Most of the X-Men were pretty well spread out at that point, defending hometowns or taking to space where they could, and Natasha had learned from her interrogation of one of the Kree who tried to take the Cube that the mansion and Avengers Tower were the highest priority targets — which got her moving pretty quick when she knew it was just Scott and her dyaden'ka defending the place.
After all, Noh's security measures were good, but still, she didn't think even he and Forge could design a system that could hold off an invasion indefinitely. Not on such short notice anyhow.
Now, after all of that effort helping the X-Men to defend their home, the call had come in for Fury that they needed to rescue their teammates. Of course, Clint and Natasha didn't hesitate to jump in to help with that too.
"One of the agents at the Cube figured out how to help me jerry-rig one of the Skrull weapons, and those things do some pretty good damage to Kree tech," Clint said, gesturing at the Quinjet. "We can give you a lift — and blast anybody between us and them."
"We can't leave the mansion undefended," Scott said with a small frown, though it was clear from his tone and body language that he was itching to rush off after their captured friends instead of thinking strategically.
"You won't be," Natasha assured him. "We'll send Thor down here — it sounds like he could use some time to recover, and playing defense would be exactly the right job."
Clint waved one hand with the comm in it before he had already started to make the call without even waiting for Scott to agree with Natasha. That was pretty usual for him, though — he was of the opinion that everyone should just always agree with Natasha. And since it was a way for them to make sure the mansion was guarded and give both Scott and Logan a chance to go after the captured X-Men... there wasn't much in the way of argument anyway.
"You wanna fly, Cyclops?" Clint offered when he'd finished talking with Thor and the group of them quickly climbed into the Quinjet. "I'm manning the Skrull gun. Takes a while to learn it, and Nat and I have logged some serious hours on it the past few days."
Scott raised an eyebrow as he looked over at the jerry-rigged weapon and simply reached over to pop open part of the weapon that neither of the other two had even known about. "Charges faster if you vent it first," he explained with a dry smirk before he headed to the cockpit.
Clint blinked a couple times before he shook his head. "Figures," he muttered out as he slid into position. "Never trust SHIELD to give you the full workup of something like this, even in an invasion."
"Likely they didn't know how to work the damn thing," Logan grumbled.
"Well, give the baby agents some credit for what they had," Clint remarked philosophically as Natasha climbed into copilot and rolled her eyes at the men in the jet with a whispered comment about 'posturing' that had Logan biting back a laugh in spite of the severity of the situation.
"Thor's on his way — let's get moving," Natasha said. She was already reaching over to get the preflight started; it was clear the delay with the weapon was too long for her tastes when they could be fighting Kree. In a matter of moments, she and Scott had them in the air — and rushing to the helicarrier as fast as they could.
When they got to the helicarrier, as promised, Fury's assembled rescue team was there to meet them — though it was easy to see the looks of trepidation on a few faces the closer they got to leaving for the moon, the more obvious it was that Logan was getting ready to simply start bashing in alien skulls. And heaven help anyone who got in his way.
The lead agent gave Scott the coordinates and was ushering his men into jets of their own when a proximity alarm went off to signal the approach of several Kree warships for yet another attack against the helicarrier.
"They just don't give up, do they?" Clint said, annoyed, as everyone on the helicarrier scrambled to switch from loading up to defensive positions.
"We'll bloody their noses and send them running fast enough," Natasha said, looking toward Logan, who looked as if the delay was a personal insult to him. "If we can punch a hole through them, we'll let SHIELD deal with the rest."
"Good thing I've got a new weapon that fires faster than last time I used it," Clint said with a grin over at Scott, who shrugged and smirked in response as the four of them climbed back in the Quinjet to meet the Kree in the air.
"You'd have better sights if the way you rigged it hadn't locked up the center of it," Scott said over his shoulder.
"Fountain of knowledge today," Clint said, shaking his head, though he was grinning wide. "Next time we come play exchange students at the mansion, I formally request an alien tech remedial course."
"I'll see what I can do to get Kitty to walk you through it slow," Scott said distractedly.
A few other SHIELD jets scrambled around them as they headed out to meet the huge Kree warships before they could get to the helicarrier, and Clint announced their annoyance with the invaders with the first shot fired in that battle — a direct hit to one of their weapons ports that had him grinning. "Don't need sights," he laughed to himself. "I saw that one easy enough."
"Mind stowin' the commentary and just gettin' with the damage?" Logan growled out.
"C'mon, Logan. You've known me how long now?" came the chuckled response over the low whine of the gun charging back up.
"Long enough for you to know I'm not in the damn mood," he replied half under his breath, knowing that Clint wouldn't hear him.
Natasha reached over and squeezed his arm. "Would you prefer we simply threw you at the nearest ship and let you do all the work?" she asked, one eyebrow raised and her tone light and teasing.
"Yes," he shot back, looking dead serious.
"Next time, then," she promised before a shot from the Kree ship went screaming past, barely missing them as Scott yanked hard on the stick to get them away from it.
"That Skrull thing's taking too long to recharge, even with the vents open," Scott muttered Logan's way. "Think you could man something a little more earthly in the meantime? Pretty sure there's some Stark weapons systems in this thing you could play with."
"Might as well," he muttered before he set himself up with the targeting system that fired plasma beams that simply sliced through the Kree ships. Natasha had to smirk to herself when she noticed right away that he wasn't aiming for engines or wings — but the cockpits.
It was an effective strategy. The first time Logan blasted through a cockpit, the Kree ship listed heavily to the side and very nearly crashed into one of its sister ships before the second one course-corrected — right into Clint's sights for a debilitating blast that took out its engine and had the second warship spinning out of control as well.
The remaining warships very quickly decided to concentrate their fire on the Quinjet, making it difficult for either Logan or Clint to get a good shot when Scott was forced into more and more complicated maneuvers to try to keep from getting blasted out of the sky.
The Kree were returning the favor in targeting the cockpit as well, and while Scott was a great pilot, it was not possible for him to keep it up when three different warships had fired from different locations — and it was really more a miracle that it hit the starboard wing than anything more immediately fatal, even though it did send them into a tight spin.
There was no way it was going to end in anything but a crash landing as the Quinjet kept spinning despite Scott's best attempts to right the ship — even with the navigational equipment all but shot. The Quinjet plowed into the ground heavily on one side, and to Scott's annoyance, it was the side where Logan had been stationed.
He and Natasha had been lucky — not too badly shaken up in the crash, bumped around but nothing worse — and they shared a glance for all of a second before they both climbed back into the wrecked Quinjet to find their teammates.
Scott got to where he knew Logan had been and had to cut away the metal that surrounded the weapons station, using a fine beam to peel back the layers until he found Logan amid the twisted up Quinjet remains. For his part, Logan was starting to rouse, and once Scott had peeled back some of the metal around his arm, Logan expedited things by cutting through what was left.
Natasha, meanwhile, had gone back to find Clint, and she somehow wasn't surprised to see that he was slightly pinned in what was left of the rigged-up weapon, both Skrull and Stark tech in a mess around him as he hung upside down, a very obvious purple mark on his forehead as he just sort of grinned at her. "Hey, Nat. I'm stuck," he said matter-of-factly. "Gimmie a hand?"
She had to roll her eyes at him but climbed up to help him try to wriggle free from the mess he'd gotten himself in, letting him use her shoulder as a support to hold up his upper body as he tried to disentangle his legs.
"Think we can hurry things along? Blood's rushing to my head," Clint said, and Natasha looked up at him with a small smirk.
"You do look redder than usual." She smirked a bit wider. "Maybe your head could use the circulation, get your brain the blood it needs to think."
"So mean, Nat." But Clint was just grinning at her, still upside down, until they finally got the metal to shift and he went tumbling to the ground, taking her with him as he did so.
He popped back up almost immediately and grinned that much wider at her. "So — we going to keep hanging out?" he asked, and she gave him the look she reserved for his stupid puns. "Or are we gonna find the others?"
She rolled her eyes at him and climbed to her feet, though when he followed suit, he was quick enough to get past her defenses and very, very quickly kiss her cheek. "Thanks for saving me from the ceiling," he teased.
"I'll put you back there if you don't quit it," she threatened despite the widening grin as he followed after her, looking for the best way out of the scrap pile that used to be a Quinjet.
Clint climbed out first when they found a door that would open for them, and he turned to give Natasha a hand out before they surveyed the damage. Clint saw the telltale red that meant Scott was on the other side and likely cutting through, and he tipped his head that way.
"Shall we?" he asked, sweeping out his arms — which just made him a much bigger target to whatever Kree soldiers had been waiting for any survivors to get out of the Quinjet.
The energy weapon hit him hard in the left shoulder, and Natasha let out a cry of her own when the shot had Clint screaming like he was. She moved toward him to help, but she was pinned down by the Kree weapons and couldn't get to the obviously injured Hawkeye.
Clint's shoulder was damaged enough that he simply couldn't use his left arm — and while he was decent with his right, it was difficult for him to make the shots he was used to making with the sidearm he kept in case of emergencies for missions like this. And he was well pinned down to boot. But it was when one of the Kree got close enough to grab his left arm that he knew he was in serious trouble — about a split second before the guy cranked it behind him. Clint was swearing and yelling as loud as his lungs would let him, white light exploding in his vision. He barely had the wherewithal to plunge a knife into the nearest Kree — though he had no idea what he hit — before he blacked out from a blow to the head.
On the other side of the Quinjet, Scott and Logan could hear the shots being fired as they finished cutting their way out of the wreckage even before they were out of the Quinjet — and once they hit the open air, they could hear the rest of it, too: a very loud string of Russian swear words that included everything from creative bodily harm to questioning the parentage of the Kree soldiers.
They'd made it around the corner in time to see Natasha make the rush into the line of fire, guns ablazing. Before Scott could tell him to stop, Logan had rushed in, hot on her heels, to block her progress bodily — taking hits from the Kree weapons and a bullet or two from Natasha as he got in front of her and picked her up to run back toward Scott. He was frowning hard at both of them as he covered their exit, blasting Kree back and detonating their weapons for them.
Natasha was clearly not pleased in the least and pushing back against Logan with a look of pure fury. "Derzhat'sya podal'she ot moyego puti!" she shouted urgently.
"I'm not going to let you get shot up right now," Logan growled back at her, holding her back while Scott kept up the cover fire.
"I won't be — I'll destroy them," she insisted. "They took Hawkeye."
"You wanna take a look at the rounds I took just now that weren't yours?" Logan looked half concerned and half pissed off. "Ask Scott how many would have been fatal — then who would be taking care of your Hawk?"
"We know where they're taking him anyway — we were headed there in the first place," Scott broke in. "We'll get him back when we get Noh and K — as soon as we can get another jet."
Natasha shot the full force of a glare Scott's way for a second and spit out, "Ya ne to, chto patsiyent," before she finally relaxed a bit in Logan's grip. "We need a jet. Now."
Scott nodded and turned to his comm to let the SHIELD forces they had been fighting alongside know their current coordinates and to request a pickup — and a new jet — while Natasha was still very quietly muttering curses under her breath. When Scott looked back at them again, he gave them both a single nod. "We'll go in one of the jets the rescue team was going to take anyway. They've lost a few personnel in the attack as well, but we're going ahead as planned as soon as we get up there and as soon as we've got the jet ready to go."
"The SHIELD agents can follow us. But we — we are going as soon as we're fueled," Natasha insisted, and the expression on her face left absolutely no room for debate.
The Kree hadn't waited at all before they got started interrogating Clint for everything he knew on how to get into Avengers Tower and get past the security systems in place there — and he was seeing the cells they'd set up for their prisoners for the first time as he was half clinging to consciousness after about an hour or two of telling the Kree just where they could shove their questions.
He picked his head up as much as he could to see who was there with him — after all, he had been part of what was supposed to be a rescue team. So he wasn't too surprised when he saw Noh behind one of the energy-laced doors, looking like he was in fairly rough shape as well. And Clint could see that the walls as well as the doors were shimmering with the slightest of energies — probably to keep anyone with super strength from punching or slicing through.
Further down, he could see K as well — who was flat out glaring and growling at anyone that got too close, pacing in her cell and flexing her hands.
They dropped Clint in a cell nearby, and as soon as his knees hit the floor, they simply let him fall, and he awkwardly caught himself on his right arm. He didn't even make it to the cot before he passed out again.
Clint woke up again with a shout as the Kree came back — he didn't know how much later it was — and dragged him up by both arms. His left shoulder needed some serious attention; it was so screwed up, Clint was half-sure it would be permanent by the time they were done if they were going to insist on dragging him like this every time they wanted something. "Whatever happened to coffee as a wakeup call?" he grumbled out, but the prison guard ignored him as the Kree hauled him off down the hall to whatever new interrogation they had in mind.
Clint was apparently last to the party. He saw when he arrived that the other two, K and Noh, were already tied in, and the evidence of a few fresh wounds told Clint that they'd started without him too.
"Didn't realize this was a group gathering," he said, a bit louder so he could be sure both of them could hear him too. He broke into a small smile and looked K's way in particular, since she was closer to him. "Came to find you, actually. Turns out I suck at rescues. Oops."
One of the Kree twisted Clint's damaged shoulder until he cried out, and the Kree waited until Clint was breathing hard before he said, "Be silent unless you are addressed, Terran."
"Why don't you back the hell off of him, jackass," K growled out low.
"I'd like nothing more than to get this loud-mouth Terran out of my sights and leave him as someone else's problem," the Kree replied. "It's really so simple — a few codes and security information in exchange for an end to your suffering. Why is this such a hard concept for you and your ilk to understand?"
"Untie my hands and I'll walk you through the signals," K said easily.
The Kree sneered and walked over to where she was, glaring at her. "I don't need your help to do the job I've done for decades," he said as he moved to tip her chin up with one finger.
As soon as he touched her, she twisted her head in a flash and simply bit the offending finger off, crunched it hard in her teeth, and spit it across the room. "No touching."
The Kree cried out, holding his bleeding hand as a couple of the other guards moved in where he had backed off to retaliate for her defiance. The guards were careful to keep their distance, though, as one of them drew a long blade and simply drove it through K's chest, piercing her diaphragm. Until she could heal from it, she was simply unable to draw breath.
"Hey, back off!" Clint shouted as Noh said more or less the same thing, but in the Kree's own language so the message was doubly repeated.
K tried to gasp out a breath, but without the proper muscles working to do the job, she soon passed out. Clint watched her for a moment with a concerned look until he realized that she was, in fact very shallowly breathing.
But it seemed the Kree had figured out the cards to play now — keeping the three prisoners in the same room, forcing them to see and hear the other two being interrogated... It was far more effective than anything they had done individually, and it clearly had the friends upset on each other's behalf more than anything else.
The real change happened, though, when Noh finally slumped into unconsciousness from all the abuse he'd taken. He hadn't been as effective as a tool against the others when he was rerouting pain and couldn't feel it when they hit him. But even when he was being quiet except for his protests on the others' behalfs, his body could only take so much. And, finally, he sagged.
The Kree likely thought they'd finally broken K, too, as she simply started to cry when she saw Noh's head drop down to his chest. And as K broke down, Clint stared at her openly — he'd never heard her cry before. Ever.
But K didn't stop there either. She had gone straight into trembling, sobbing and calling as clearly as she could for Noh, all but begging for him to answer her.
"He'll be okay — K, it's fine. They're not gonna let him die right now," Clint tried to tell her, fairly concerned now.
But that seemed to bring on a fresh wave of deep sobs that looked as if they shook her right down to her bones. She slumped deeply, her shoulders nearly to her ears as she sunk in on herself as much as she could.
"There's no reason to prolong his suffering," the Kree interrogator said in a smooth, would-be soothing tone if the glee wasn't clearly evident in his stride as he headed over to her. "You know what we want. Tell me, and we won't touch him again."
She half cringed away from him, shaking clearly even to Clint halfway across the room. The Kree interrogator smirked to himself and took another step closer, even going so far as to tip his head to the side as he watched her tremble.
He'd just opened his mouth to say something else when she rushed him. It was soundless from her end — except of course for the echoing wet crunch as she bit through his throat, barely having gotten her teeth around his windpipe as she'd wanted to before she hit the end of the energy restraints. There was a gentle tug that showed she'd reached her limit, and the interrogator gurgled and tried to push her away — though she refused to let go of him, finally growling low as a warning to the others once it was clear the damage was done.
The other guards in the room rushed to the Kree's aid, but by the time they'd shot K — it was too late for their interrogator, who crumpled to the ground as soon as she had been hit. He had a long and jagged hole in his throat now.
It was clear the interrogation was over, with not only the interrogator killed but two of the three of the prisoners unconscious now, and in a rush, all three were dragged off to their separate cells. Clint tried to see over his shoulder to keep track of the other two, but a sharp blow to the back of his head put an end to that attempt and rendered the last of the group of them unconscious too.
It was clear the Kree had to regroup if they wanted the information they were looking for.
....
Translations from Russian:
Dyaden'ka - "little uncle"
Derzhat'sya podal'she ot moyego puti - "Stay out of my way"
Ya ne to, chto patsiyent - "I'm not that patient"