∆ {1²} {NO REST FOR THE WICKED} ∆
ROXI WASN'T SURE how long she'd been out when she woke up. She did know that the plane would be landing soon because she had that funny feeling in her ears that you get whenever you descend from a high altitude. She also knew that she felt a lot better than she had before because her head no longer felt faint and her vision was clear. She reached up to her right shoulder to assess the wound but was relieved when she found minimal pain in each shoulder. S.H.I.E.L.D must've applied some kind of painkiller and disinfectant while she was out.
She sat up properly, glancing around the cargo hold of the Quinjet, making sure nothing was out of place. A few low-level agents scurrying around, completing the tasks they were set, but other than that, everything was quiet and normal. Roxi quickly grabbed her bag and went through it, making sure nothing had been removed and that the bag hadn't been searched. To her relief, everything was exactly as she left it. She stood up, the bag in her hand, and peered out of the cockpit to see an aircraft carrier a few hundred feet away that would no doubt be their destination.
She pulled her brown hair up into a ponytail as the helicarrier drew closer, a hand shooting out for balance as the jet stopped and slowly lowered onto the flight deck. Roxi let out a slight breath of relief as she felt the wheels come into contact with the tarmac because although she wasn't scared of heights, she preferred to have both feet on the ground. She walked down the ramp onto the deck, breathing in the fresh air, smelling salt from the ocean around them, waiting for someone to tell her what to do.
She'd been on the helicarrier before, but not for a year and a half as she had been operating in Spain semi-independently, with Fury's knowledge of course. She remembered mostly where things were, but a quick refresh wouldn't go amiss either. Roxi made her way across the deck and down below the surface of the ship, looking for someone to show her to her room. She quickly found an Agent who she knew, and who made very nice cups of tea. She preferred tea to coffee, as she found coffee too bitter to drink, though if it was an option, she'd go for a shot of vodka. Once she'd thanked the Agent and been shown to her assigned room, she immediately scouted the place for bugs and cameras. She found a few of each, but she expected nothing less of S.H.I.E.L.D, in fact, it comforted her slightly that they were there. She set her bag down next to her bed, but not before tucking the black notebook and her photo album underneath the mattress and picking up the wolf keyring to mess around with in case she got bored.
Roxi headed back up onto the flight deck, where the Agent said Phil Coulson's jet would be landing shortly, eager to see her friend after more than two years. She emerged onto the deck just in time to see a Quinjet land, though there was now another one there as well that must've landed while she was downstairs. She walked forwards as the ramp lowered, smiling as she heard Coulson's voice, watching him walk down the ramp with none other than Captain America. A few paces in front of her, a redhead was making her way to the same place as she was. The redhead drew to a stop as Phil introduced them.
"Agent Romanoff, Captain Rogers." Romanoff? She was the agent from the phone and she'd heard Fury mention her a few times in praise (or as close as the Director could get to it).
"Ma'am," the Captain greeted.
"Hi," she responded. Romanoff looked like she was going to say something else, but Roxi wanted to say hi to Coulson before he was sent off somewhere.
"Phil, it's been a while," she said, walking up to the side of the redhead who turned to look at her.
"Agent Ryder! It's good to see you again!" He addressed her, but before he could say anything else, Romanoff completed her sentence.
"They need you on the bridge. They're starting the face-trace." Coulson nodded.
"We'll, uh, have to catch up sometime," he told Roxi, before walking in-between Rogers and Romanoff with a short
"See you there." Roxi decided to stick with the pair. She had nothing better to do at the moment. She picked the other side of the Captain as they began to walk across the deck. Agent Romanoff began speaking again.
"It was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice. I thought Coulson was gonna swoon." Roxi smiled at that. She knew he had always admired Captain Rogers and seeing him in person must've been a big deal for him. She decided to join the conversation while making fun of Phil a bit.
"Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet? He loves those things." Rogers looked at her with a slightly confused look on his face.
"They're vintage, he's very proud." Romanoff finished. They drew close to a man who was wandering around near a plane trying not to crash into anyone.
"Dr. Banner," the Captain greeted, causing Roxi's interest to spike. So this was Dr. Bruce Banner; the scientist with a very strong alter-ego also known as the hulk. She surveyed him carefully, reading his body language. He seemed to be unsure of himself, and for lack of a better word, lost. Rogers held his hand, which Banner shook as he began speaking.
"Oh yeah, hi. They told me you would be coming." Roxi quietly wondered how many more people had been called in for this. She'd assumed it would be a solo mission for her, but more and more people seemed to be being brought in on it. She personally thought that she wasn't the best with teams. She was better at being told what to do, taking that, and improvising. Banner looked around nervously.
"Is that the only word on me?" He asked, obviously mindful of any word the Captain may have received of the hulk.
"Only word I care about," Rogers reassured him. It seemed to do the trick, as the scientist seemed more comfortable. He nodded, before looking around at all the planes and high-tech items around them, gesturing to them
"It must be strange of you, all of this." Steve glanced around, squinting slightly from the bright sun.
"Well, this is actually kind of familiar." He replied, his mind taking him back to his army days. Agent Romanoff interrupted their conversation.
"Gentlemen, you might want to step inside in a minute. It's going to get a little hard to breathe." Roxi smiled slightly as the men looked at her slightly confused. The flight crew scurried over the deck as the engine began to fire up.
"I forgot how much I loved this ship," Roxi said quietly, looking around her. Romanoff looked at her curiously and continued to watch her, and Roxi knew the redhead was trying to figure her out. She heard learned years ago that allowing people to read you and assess your character could give them information that could cost you your life, and consequentially, she had learned to keep her body language minuscule and managed to make it incredibly hard for people to learn about her by the way she held herself, other than what she wanted them to see.
"Is this a submarine?" The Captain asked, causing Roxi to smile slightly, Romanoff's gaze still on her, trying to suss her out. As the two men approached the edge of the ship, Banner asked no-one in general
"Really? They want me in a submerged, pressurized, metal container?" Roxi opened her left fist as she watched them, causing the keyring in her hand to fall before she caught the metal ring on her finger, then swinging it back up into her palm, closing her fist and repeating the action. It was a habit she'd fallen into doing when she was complacent, and it also served as a reminder to her head to stay aware of her surroundings, no matter where she was or who she was with. She saw Romanoff's eyes flick down to her hand to see what she was doing, but she didn't mind the assassin seeing that. The turbines rose above the water, and over the noise, she just heard Banner say
"No no, this is much worse," with a faintly annoyed smile on his face. Roxi smiled at that, before turning around and heading back into the carrier. Banner and Rogers followed her and Romanoff to the bridge, where Fury was waiting. Just as they arrived there, Roxi slipped the wolf keyring into the pocket of her leather jacket. It was at that point that she realized that her t-shirt below was still soaked in blood. She'd have to fix that later. Romanoff, who was slightly in front of her, glanced back at the three of them as they grew closer to Fury. The two men looked around in wonder at all the screens and tech located in one room before coming back to the area behind Fury as Romanoff crouched down at a computer screen. Roxi glanced over her shoulder and frowned slightly. Agent Barton had been compromised? She supposed the reason that she hadn't been told anything was because she'd been out for most of the journey when the information would've been explained to the others.
Rogers walked up to Fury and handed him a $10 note as Roxi turned around and made her way back to the small group. The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D took it with a rather satisfied look on his face. Fury walked up to Banner and held out a hand for him to shake.
"Doctor, thank you for coming."
"Thanks for asking nicely," the Doctor replied, and Roxi wasn't quite sure if he was being sarcastic or not.
"So, how long am I staying?" Banner continued, obviously eager to get out of the thick of it. Roxi still didn't know what she'd been called in for, but luckily, she was good at picking things up as she went along.
"Once we get our hands on the tesseract, you're in the wind." The tesseract? That was new as well. Other than that the tesseract was a powerful, glowing space stone, she didn't know much about it at all. She decided that later, when she had the time, she would sit down and read up on everything to do with the mission.
"Where are you with that?" Banner asked, obviously hoping to get out before the fighting started.
"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops, if it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us." Coulson's voice chimed in, as Romanoff once again crouches down beside a computer with Clint's face on it.
"That's still not gonna find them in time," Romanoff reprimanded, obviously concerned for Clint.
"You have to narrow the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Banner asked.
"A lot," Roxi said, just as Fury inquired
"How many are there?"
"Call every lab you know. Tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm, basic cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places." Roxi thought through it and it made sense, in theory at least.
"Do you have somewhere for me to work?" He asked, and Roxi was immediately reminded of the huge labs that lay aboard the carrier, that she spent a surprising amount of time in. She had a knack for weapons design and it had turned into somewhat of a hobby, all theoretical though, nothing physical, as she was certainly not an engineer or mechanic or a factory machine.
"Agent Romanoff, could you show Dr. Banner to his laboratory please?" Romanoff did as asked, walking past Fury and Banner, throwing one last sentence over her shoulder before use disappeared from view.
"You're gonna love it Doc, we got all the toys." Roxi followed the woman with her eyes, watching the way she held herself.
"She's an interesting person, Romanoff," Fury said, following her line of sight.
"I'm sure she is. I must be important if she's the one who called me yesterday." Roxi said, turning to Fury, raising an eyebrow playfully, and she could see Coulson and Rogers talking put of the corner of her eye.
"Oh, I wouldn't say important, more of a.. liability." Fury walked up to her and pulled the jacket off her shoulders to reveal the still-healing gunshot wounds.
"You should be resting, Agent Ryder," He scolded her.
"We've got a hit, 67% match. Wait, cross match, 79%." Sitwell exclaimed as Fury turned away and walked over towards Sitwell slightly.
"Location?" Coulson asked, going right up to the man.
"Stuttgart, Germany. 28 Königstraße. He's not exactly hiding." Sitwell continued. Fury turned to Rogers.
"Captain, you're up." As Rogers began to leave, Roxi gave a playful sigh, causing Fury to turn to her.
"No rest for the wicked, I suppose," she offered, before following Captain Rogers' retreating form out of the bridge.
{A/N:} I'm very happy with this chapter as well. Please comment and let me know about anything I can improve and I'll do my best. I hope y'all are doing fine and that you'll all be okay throughout everything that's going on.
JabberJay11
2285 words
Written: 26 /05 / 2020
Published: 28 /05 /2020