1181/The Asgardian and The Assassin

The Asgardian and The Assassin
Date of Scene:	28 June 2017
Location:	West Harlem and then outskirts of NYC
Synopsis:	Loki and Winter Soldier team up to save Claire and Mercy. They, however, fall a little short in saving them.
Cast of Characters:	Mercy Thompson, Loki, Winter Soldier

---

Mercy Thompson has posed:
It's late night and somewhere outside of the city two women can be found. Both are upon the grassy ground their bodies unnaturally still. The only movement from both is the shallow rise and fall of their chests; their breathing and heartbeats currently synced.

Within the city two men can be found, a son of Asgard and a forgotten son of America.

It's now up to them to find Claire Temple and Mercy Thompson.

Loki has posed:
The younger son of Asgard stands in the lee of the open garage home to Ms. Thompson, respectable lady mechanic and smith for wheeled death-bombs. Any who might happen by at that precise sundown moment might wonder what bender he missed, or what violence came with imbibing a whole whiskey bottle by himself. Not that such a bottle is present; the beer cans attest to a more modest afternoon. They would surely question someone wielding a longsword tempered within a halo of ghostly flames, much less someone nearly seven feet tall in a sheen of sylvan leather and gold.

Without the necessity of restraint on himself, Loki has little difficulty focusing the sigils of his art through the blade. It acts as a prism, splitting the energy into neater wavelengths he can hone with precious little difficult. A name is spat into the void. The casing of a bullet conjured to the palm envelops two of the beams. He inclines his head and simply allows his will to seize hold of the world, overlapping two points of space to align.

Careless backhand swiping Laevateinn, he cuts a space for himself and steps directly through the void. Harlem evaporates behind him, the damage done to the building falling once more into a hush.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The man known to Claire and Mercy as 'Yasha' first became aware of their plight when he stole onto Claire's fire escape, hours ago, and found no one at home. He waited a while, pensive, before he turned away and slunk off to Metro-Gen Hospital. There he found no trace of Claire either. Not yet ready to declare something amiss, he turned his steps towards another place he has come to think of as a refuge: Mercy's garage.

Careful as he usual, he surveils it from a nearby rooftop before trying to enter. The scene he discerns within the garage's environs brings his mouth to thin.

The Winter Soldier is not a creature characterized by anger. Like his namesake, he is a cold force of nature, an indifferent killing machine that mows down its assigned prey as dispassionately as the scythe cuts down wheat. But anger flames up in the back of his mind now: an emotion he has not felt in decades, and one which feels as strangely familiar as an old, well-worn glove.

He cannot imagine why. He can't recall, in all his admittedly-questionable memory, being a personality prone to anger.

Loki has posed:
One moment the empty space exists in a certain uniform distribution of gaseous atoms.

The next a man occupies it, banishing the sword back to silent observation on a mantle very, very far away. No need to give the trained skills of an assassin a further personal blow given the precise teleportation offers no warning whatsoever of Loki's presence. Professional boundaries must be respected.

Mostly. Liam Serrure, latte-wielding expert on antiquities restoration and purchase from the black market, is once more in place for the most part. The dark hair is a little wilder around his collar. The eyes are unnaturally vibrant. Of course, the Winter Soldier might be somewhat more impressed by the fact he's empty handed. No latte.

"Do you have every gun you need right now? Time is rather of the essence. I put the medic's captor on notice it's about to face the most delightful evening tonight, and I //do// so hate disappointing people."

Winter Soldier has posed:
One moment there is nothing and no one but the Winter Soldier on the rooftop. The next moment, there is a man behind him.

The next moment after that, there's a .45 pointed at Liam Serrure's face.

Swiveled around sharply the instant he hears he is not alone, the Winter Soldier-- holds fire, because he thinks he recognizes this man. A friend of Mercy's. Time is of the essence, he says. He speaks of the women's captor.

"...You," he says eventually. His voice rasps in clear indication of how little it is used, but his words come through clearly enough. His blue eyes search Liam's features: the differences, the similarities. The distinct lack of latte. "You know where they went."

The gun slowly and warily lowers, and its owner straightens from his crouch. The rattle of weaponry as he moves answers Liam's question before the man does-- if the high-caliber rifle slung across his back weren't already an indication. "It's your lucky day," he says dryly, and an echo of James Buchanan Barnes' reckless, wild rages comes and goes in his eyes. "I'm dressed for work."

Loki has posed:
A .45 might be fetching as an intimidation piece for nigh on anyone else. However, the person wielding it is not the original physicist who messed about with gamma ray radiation and earned himself a reputation for crankiness.

"Adequate reflexes. Steady aim, demonstratable balance on bipedal limbs and low centre of gravity to compensate for kick." Yes, it's ABC's Life on Midgard and the calculated, dispassionated measure of the reactions turned on him satisfies for something. His features are about the same as Loki ever looks. A few distinct differences other than the eyes. A rather nice watch under the cuff of his coat. He carries a paper bag too with a generous slice of cake from a reputable steakhouse, non-chain. And he radiates a palpable sense of wrongness to the hindbrain that probably starts it screaming in protest, dull and muffled, at the bottom of a red, red room.

The gesture made to touch Mr. Barnes' shoulder, damn the consequences, is light and assured. "No. Yours, you have the pleasure of levelling the scales. Mind you don't hit the ladies. Hitting ladies is rather uncouth, really." The mesmerizing hum of laughter under the bastard's voice is wild and limitless as a cosmic storm, riding the currents light years long within a dusty nebulae nursery for stars. He collapses space around them, and that is a singularly upsetting experience for anyone unprepared for it.

Imagine falling into a waterfall defining the description of green, until every language fails to capture the diversity superimposed around one's blind, deaf senses. Chartreuse to jade and sylvan to neon green, apple, celadon, tones almost indistinguishable from the blue-shifted end of the spectrum become a melody of sight and texture. They jerk sideways through the rainbow and end up racing at the speed of near light along a thread of magic tethered to glass, following to its terminal end.

And //that// is where the echo of a pissed off Brooklyner ends up spat out in the flesh.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
Teleportation.

The bane of a muggle's existence, yes?

Yes.
When the teleportation is complete the world will resolve itself into a far less urban setting. In fact, the area that meets the gaze can be described as wooded, almost a forest really. It's a remote location that holds a single small house set against the darkness of trees. While the evening is late and the light is low there's a bright enough moon to allow those with more enhanced senses, especially eyesight, the ability to see what's ahead. And in front of that small house is a clearing and within that clearing two forms can be seen; seemingly tossed so casually aside, as both Mercy Thompson and Claire Temple lay exactly how they fell.

Everything seems relatively quiet and empty, even the house. There's no welcoming shine of a front porch light, or any warm glow from the windows. Both the shades and curtain are drawn tight and very little movement can be seen behind those blinds; even if people are inside.

Four magical constructs and a person much like Mercy - though their power is much more bright, flickering wildly in such a remote location.

Now, the question remains, do you walk into the clearing.

Depending upon a person's eyesight they may, or may not be able to tell the grass in that clearing is withered, brown, limp, slowly dying in a rough circle. Beneath that circle of sickly plant-life is a web of power. Blood and death intermixed to allow for the whole area to read heavily of magic, tangled, bright and rolling.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The Winter Soldier stares blankly through Loki's assessment of his reaction. Then, oddly enough, his narrowed blue eyes twitch a little, as if something about the clinical and dispassionately medical terminology bothered him on some visceral level. A tremor runs down his arm. A brief snarl flashes across his mouth.

Then it's gone, and the assassin looks much as he ever does, albeit with the addition of being severely pissed off. Not necessarily at Loki, though.

He tenses again when Loki moves to touch him, though the desire to find Claire outweighs his wariness at the entire situation. "I never hit a lady that didn't deserve it," is about all he has time to quip, however, before SUDDEN TELEPORTATION. It's almost enough to make Yasha rethink his choices in life.

It's really only the gift of the serum that keeps him from landing almost literally on his head. As it is he tumbles, skids, and finds himself rolling back into a crouch, looking about wildly with a distinct 'what in the goddamn fuck' expression on his face. "You need to give people a SEATBELT for that shit," he grumps, picking himself up, looking around--

--and spying Mercy and Claire, laying in the clearing up ahead.

He takes a step forward before he can stop himself. His head turns, wary, the assassin almost sniffing cagily as if he could somehow scent a trap. "You got any more crazy acid trip tricks?" he asks, as he moves to skirt the edges of the clearing. He unslings his rifle, checking it, cycling the bolt, chambering a round. "Cause this is all /I/ got." He seems pretty at ease with 'all he's got,' though.

Loki has posed:
"I should hope so." The words come without distinguishable form, the veil wrapped around Loki giving no indication for his whereabouts. Just in case he needs to turn into something better suited to the story at hand, like a very charming bear of five months' growth, he reserves that option for himself.

Nonetheless, let it never be said Yasha is wholly without conscious allies. The unconscious ones don't count for the odds he's facing. One moment later, he might see a rune burning midair in front of him where certainly no rune has business being. It hangs in sparkling dimensions, and if he stares at it, the crackling fire in gold emerges from the three dimensional plane to expose hints of //other// axes one can experience. Betewen the range of taste and sight and scent are other forms of perception: an awareness of time acutely levelled on the unsuspecting, a sensitivity for magic in all its forms, the sight of auras coming into focus.

The living are unique: muzzy glows best interpreted as rainbows patterned by specific qualities that probably mean nothing. It does help in the lowlight to establish their whereabouts. Magic things, rather than beings, stand in duller shades relative to their strength and signature and pattern. And spells, those emanations neither object or subject or sentient, have another presence that for the Winter Soldier shows a range of frosty overtones that range from snowflakes on the air to brilliant, stark blue-purple ephemeral flames as his mind is bound to interpret such.

It's an elementary divide for Loki but probably a bit fundamentally life-altering if applied lazily.

"On the contrary, you have far more than that." Loki is a jerk.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
An enhanced sense of smell will bring the usual scents in such a place; plant life, animal life and dirt. The unusual, however, is the scent of blood, decay and death. Things have died here, mostly animal, but it's more than should be typical for such a small spot of humanity. It goes beyond what an avid hunter would ensure, that's for certain.

Whether one has an inherit magical sight, or something that's been borrowed, the area before the two will be lit from within. Both Mercy and Claire shine that flickering rainbow of color; with only a few spots of bright angry red upon their forms. That red perhaps denoting some injuries? Likely.

And while the two hold some minor injuries, it's what's below and around them that is far more concerning. Harsh ropes of malevolent purples can be seen shining mutedly through the ground and where the women lay those tendrils of power have fastened upon them. For the experienced eye an exchange of energy might likewise be seen, though it's by far an equal exchange, instead it's wholly the women feeding the spells held within the web that sits below the dirt.

While the house has four solid walls the magic within does shine through. The magical constructs offer their flat shades, the edges sharp and strong, and their shape distinctly human. The fifth person within is again that rainbow, depicting a person, however, that rainbow is liberally dosed with a bright golden shine. It shimmers along the edges of the man's outline, warping this way and that, almost seemingly seeking a way beyond the mortal coil it resides within.

And while neither Loki, nor Bucky, really take a step onto the clearing that doesn't stop the spells from suddenly reaching out. Like some sinister creeping vine that web beneath the ground sends out fingers of sharp energy; the magic burrowing quickly through the dirt and lashing out towards the two men. A stab at the foot, or a leg, or if not quick enough a torso. Those grasping strands of powers will happily fasten onto anything that shines with the vibrancy of life.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The Winter Soldier startles a little when that rune appears, though he quickly recognizes its effect. He reassesses the location with the new depth of sight he has been afforded, his mind quick to interpret the new source of information in his own violent terms. Hazards, cover, paths in, paths out, soft targets, hard targets.

"Neat trick," he has to admit, his blue gaze settling on the fifth person within. The magical constructs he is not certain about, but he knows what to do with an (apparent) human body.

He lifts his rifle. It's about that same time that the spells beneath the ground come to life. He doesn't hesitate to try to get clear, making a game attempt to race straight up the trunk of the nearest tree to try to outpace the grasping magic. Yet there's only so far up a tree goes, and it would be better to try to put a stop to this--

Pausing on a branch, he swivels, braces, lifts his rifle, sights, and fires for center mass at the man: the perceived head of this odd serpent. The necessary calculations to account for perceived wind speed, bullet drop, and wall penetration are done in his head, in the space of seconds.

Of course, there's no guarantee the pursuing magic will wait politely for him to take his shot.

Loki has posed:
Of course, there's no guarantee the pursuing chaos god will wait patiently for the magic to take a parting shot. It wants to come up after him, a sorcerer?

Loki almost laughs, the veil shredded to pieces as the initial torrent of movement springing out licks against the general activity. He has certain advantages: speed, for one, and those tailored pants are simply an effigy of an actual suit in some ways. Shapeshifters get all the breaks, at least when it comes to having aces up the sleeve to shift their attire. He can really run rather than tearing a hemline or being constricted from climbing, though it means sacrificing something of the illusion.

Springing like a particularly cheerful lamb through the edges of the field, he might well one day -- in retrospect -- thank Thor for hurling hammers and spears at him for decades. The entire purpose of the man is springing around, moving between different points to force the spell to reorient in an attempt to catch him. Maybe he'll pull a card from that other great trickster, Maui, flipping through bird to fish to man to shark to goat. Maybe. There's first the need to pull attention off the sniper, the whole point of having ground forces. Mostly ground forces.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
Whether the magic is polite or not (it's really not) the shot that Bucky prepares is completed, and sent on its way.

Does the bullet strike the man within? No.

His senses and own agility are much above a human and so, when the recoil of that shot is heard, he moves. And so, the bullet pierces the wall, moves through the living area, before burying itself into the opposite wall.

If the people inside weren't aware of the would-be heroes arrival, they certainly are now. Their outlines move, though it's hardly a scramble. It's much more methodical, which might possibly be worrisome in the end, but both Bucky and Loki have other more pressing matters to attend to.

Those grasping lines of power -

- For Bucky, when he scurries up that tree, he'll find that tendril of power following. It encircles the trunk and follows nimbly upward, to whatever branch the assassin finds himself upon. Where the spell touches the trunk all but withers, turning a sickly brown and black. And while this particular spell isn't as sentient as a person, there's something within it that acts quite animalistic. As such, when it nears the perched Bucky, the ley-line will rear back like some hungry snake, ready to coil around its prey, before it pounces, however, there's a pause. Its attention is caught by the mad-dash of a certain Asgardian. Ensnared by the life force so close to the main web of power, Bucky is possibly afforded a window to make his escape, as the coiled strand near him just hangs there.

As for Loki -

- The web reacts to something so close. A half of dozen strands of power will erupt from the ground below, each tendril stabbing towards the man. Whether it tries to stab or coil, it goes after the oddly cheerful Loki; because who in their right mind is cheerful during something like this? Who. Really.

As the spell expends energy to try and capture both men (though primarily its focus is on Loki) the energy between fallen women and web increases. It's not enough to be detrimental to either woman, but sooner rather than later it will be.

But that isn't their only current worry not when the door finally opens from the house and the four magical constructs appear. All four look a cross between human and anima; a crow, a wolf-coyote, a fox and a lone female who looks reptilian in nature. The woman is perhaps the most arresting, her skin pale against the darkness and her eyes a liquid mercury silver.

And it's those eyes that are the most dangerous. They entreat on a subliminal level; Look. At. Me.

Winter Soldier has posed:
A faint curse escapes the Winter Soldier as his target swings adroitly out of the way. Dodged a chest shot, and not at a great range, either. This man is not human in the least.

The information is filed, because the pursuing magic is a far more pressing matter. It comes within hairbreadths of him, and having chosen to spend time on that failed shot, Yasha knows he cannot dodge it. He braces--

--and it pauses. The Soldier's blue eyes track over towards whatever is distracting it, to find that he probably need not worry about Loki. Dude looks like he's having a ball over there.

Savvy enough to know what Loki is actually doing, however, the Winter Soldier is quick to try to make use of the diversion. He slips away from the tendril while it's distracted, an agile leap taking him to the next tree. Closer, with a better angle on the front door as it opens. He can tell, with the benefit of the sight granted him by the Asgardian god, that the efforts of this magic to kill them are increasing the rate at which the life force of the two women is being stolen.

His gaze falls on Claire and Mercy. Shackled down, drained, /used/. The fury tides so high in his chest he briefly sees red.

He swings his rifle around, his approach altering instantly. If he cannot strike hard and fast enough to cut off the head immediately, then he will hit the soft targets to whittle down the playing field. He fires another shot, this one aimed dead center at the crow construct. He gauges his success or failure, starts to turn his rifle...

...but something keeps tugging at his periphery. Something keeps beckoning him, and his fractured mind is already so fragile. Almost involuntarily, his eye wanders from the scope, towards the quicksand pull of that gaze.

Loki has posed:
Sacrifice plays are not what Loki does. Not what he's ever done, come to think of it. Some men and gods earn their place on trees for giving up their mortal life and their immortal grace for others. He is not one of them.

This spell, though, is most decidedly forcing his hand in a direction unexpected for one of his ilk to tread. The more so when he bolts past, nimbly springing a casual leap that an Olympian long jumper at the height of their career and arc might not be able to achieve.

Choices played by gods and mortals tend to have a nasty consequence for the latter, and so it's with an almost cheerful determination he seizes on the unexpected narrative unfolding. That means a backhanded swing around one of the trees, intersecting the tendrils' paths for no purpose other than to knot at stymie them. He's literally got many options and alternatives where others were not present from this new frame of thinking.

Float up; tethers will follow without an adequate force severing it. Fight without regard for the others. Vanish and hit with a salvo from four directions at once. Dodge that, feast of legends. "I //did// promise. Oh, this is /fun/."

The little lamb to the altar, he doesn't broadcast his intentions in form or words until the first of the blistering presences sidles just too close to his tastes. He can practically feel the blight trying to eat that awful wellspring. Downsides to true immortality: right here. But he throws his head back and laughs, a coursing sound of pure joy that wreaks havoc with anything trying to plot what he's up to and whether he is actually afraid.

Right about the time he hurls out all the ambient energy in his aura as pure chaos shields upon the two mortals lying as batteries to a spell that isn't theirs. The careening detonations streak with a cosmic green fire through the dim, blighted forest. No telling at all what that will do in the narrative, as likely to corrupt the roots back to withered emptiness as hang them in the air singing lullabies particularly obnoxious to the crow in particular. It tastes like chocolate cake. It smells like a clean woodland, antiseptic perfection of a room, the oiled gun and the spell-strike of meteors wiping out a contingent of frost giants. Go, go, go.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
The tendril that was designated for Bucky quickly unwraps from the tree, sliding back down to the ground and burrowing deep within the ground. Like a cat beginning a lazy hunt, that lone tendril moves slowly along the web that stretches across the clearing.
The shot hits the crow dead center and down goes the construct.

While the crow goes down it isn't necessarily dead. Or, at least, not yet. It's moving weakly, but it-he is not yet getting up. What that means is hard to say, but it's something of a reprieve from one construct's potential attacks.

And while the Winter Soldier readies a third bullet to fire that shot never comes. Not when blue eyes meet the bright argent light of the Snake's. When their eyes meet the woman can't help the curve of a smile that tips her lips upward. Her slitted pupils will widen ever so slightly, as her inherit magic reaches outward, across the clearing and to Bucky. It wraps itself around the man, bidding his broken mind to quiet, his body to still. Violence isn't needed. There's only lassitude now. A languor within the Soldier's limbs; within the soldier's mind. All senses except sight become muted now; his hearing dampens, his sense of smell deadening, even his sense of touch alters. The tree he perches upon? The rough bite of the bark is barely felt.

As to that laughing God ... normal circumstances would call for some serious side-eye. Serious side-eye.

Sadly, no one is really there to send that type of look Loki's way.

Instead, the tendrils follow after the God, as quick as they can. While they don't necessarily knot they do find themselves lagging behind. There's a zig, versus a zag, and Loki escapes their grasping reach and before the creeping strands of energy can offer a second attack, that Prince of Asgard unleashes all that energy from within.

It's like a flash-pan-fire, bright, quick, burning. Around Mercy and Claire the energy encapsulates, offering protection against the web's pull and when the web finds itself without a source of energy, the strands begin to dim. They don't yet crumble, or die out, as they still have enough of a reserve to withstand a few more minutes before falling inert.

Not that it will matter soon. Not when a large shadow finally darkens the doorway. From within the last player joins the game. From the living area to the door the man changes from bipedal to four-footed as an inhumanly sized coyote steps outside. Golden-yellow eyes sweep the area before the Snake, the Coyote-Wolf, the Fox and the downed Crow. The muzzle of the animal crinkles back, exposing the sharpest of teeth and with a gaze that unerringly looks to Loki, the coyote growls.

Oh, it knows who's causing all this chaos. Like knows like, after all.

And while normally skinwalkers don't reek of so much power, this one does. There's something off about it. Something that's possibly familiar to Loki; a mote of godliness held within the body of a man. Something that should never really be, not the undiluted power of a god, but somehow is. Would that cause Loki worry? It's hard to say, but whether it does, or it doesn't, the coyote will tilt its head back and call an ear-splitting howl. With that unearthly bay the harsh notes of a spell reach out with greedy powerful fingers. It's not necessarily a pretty spell, but what it lacks in polish it makes up for with the raw-brute-strength behind it. It strikes at those nearest first; Claire and Mercy, though perhaps the shield Loki has wrapped around the two gives them a few seconds of resistance from the spell. Then it reaches for Loki and Bucky. The spell itself is a simple thing really; yank each of the person's astral self from their body and pull it into the mind of the Coyote.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The Soldier assesses his effect quickly and efficiently. Downed, not dead, but not about to interfere again anytime soon. The assassin lifts his rifle again and lowers his eye back to the scope-- possibly for a kill shot on the crow construct, possibly to target another one. It will forever be an unanswered question, because that is when the serpent's eyes meet his.

It is not dissimilar to the trance he is conditioned to enter at sight of his handlers and conditioning machine. The Winter Soldier goes quiet and quiescent. Yet there is something different about this forced stillness, versus that which is programmed. This magic silences the conscious mind.

It does not account for the fact there is something buried beneath the fabricated consciousness that holds sway. That something opens an eye, after a sleep of eighty years.

It is emphatically not unhappy.

Not that this has an immediate bearing on the situation. Self-awareness cannot always translate to action. Especially not when something so much stronger than the serpent steps forward. Something which exerts a pull he has no resistance against...

Loki has posed:
Skinwalkers with the embodiment of a god, and the very real thing sometimes called alien, sometimes called myth, are two parallels on a spectrum in many, many colours. Worry is beyond Loki.

His laughter radiates to the highest vaults of being and some part of him, the one that knows the shades of what mortals might feel, grumps. There is no latte here. There is no witty banter and /why/ worry so hard? Teleporting away was much more convenient. And more tasty. The cake could have been his and he could eat it too.

Instead he ends up tossed into a familiar place, at least in prospects of recognizing immediately the nature of the astral realm. He has a solidity there, of a kind, silver etched against the dim luminescence. It of course means his body is physically separated from the soul, but then someone literally just pulled a sorcerer out of physical peril to do some battle. As long as a giant flaming bird isn't flapping around, he can do this. At least the brutal, overconfident well of identity means that.

Dreams coil around him in shades and glows.

And the figure in the astral is //not// the Liam they know, if they are already awake. No, this is a man of no little purpose revealed as the self sees him: tall, crowned, indolently amused, and unequivocally masculine Asgardian. The smirk is all the same. For a second, anyways.

Take a walk on the wild side....

Mercy Thompson has posed:
The others aren't near. They reside elsewhere within the Coyote's mind. A maze of partitions can be seen within this Godling's mind.

Loki, for the moment, finds himself alone.

As to the great beast upon the mortal plane, he'll turn his head to the injured crow and with an efficient snap of jaws, the crow's neck is broken; the spell within ceasing to beat.

A look is then given to the remaining three, a silent message to put all the bodies on the web.

Then the Coyote retreats back inside to deal with the guests within.