13768/SHIELD shorts: Cabin in the woods

SHIELD shorts: Cabin in the woods
Date of Scene:	25 August 2021
Location:	Cabin in the Woods - Adirondack mountains - NY
Synopsis:	A clean up reveals a HYDRA plot, forcing James Barnes to do things the hard way... by the book.
Cast of Characters:	Winter Soldier, 10070, Quake
Tinyplot:	Digging Up The Past

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Winter Soldier has posed:
    Tree. Tree. Tree. Shrub. Tree. Tree.

    The scenery around the SUV isn't great. One might call it repetitive, even, the kind of scenery that tourists pay a lot of money to see and then leave behind for more 'civilised' environs when it starts to pall. But at the least the dirt road the car is traveling on indicates that people do live here, away from civilisation, away from society... away from prying eyes.

    Which is exactly why James Buchanan Barnes had a safehouse here. Had. Past tense. A safehouse is not longer safe once its location is known.

    And oh my, did it become unsafe.

    This is probably why he asked a few discreet people to accompany him all the way out here to deal with a problem. A problem whose solution appears to involve several large cans of gas, plastic sheets and pyrotechnic charges, if the cargo in the trunk of the SUV is anything to go by.

    And of course, the man himself is driving, with the window rolled down 'to enjoy the fresh air'.

    "Nearly there." he announces to his passengers, a peaceful smile on his face, as if at one with the world right now.

Wendell Vaughn (10070) has posed:
    Discrete. Yes, Wendell can do discrete. I mean his usual golden glowy lightshow of an entrance notwithstanding, he isn't -required- by contract to be over the top visible. Sure, if a distraction is needed, he's your guy. For today, he is in normal attire. His costume of spandex red, blue, and gold has been abandoned for the time being. He can't exactly take -off- the Quantum Bands, but he can bend light around them so that they appear invisible. Best he has. Plus, they are sensors like no other.

    In fact, he has them scanning for energy sources the whole way up here. One of the fourteen gems is locked into a SHIELD frequency just in case, and another is tasked to keep him in contact with Eon. All in all, it is looking to be a long day.

    "Haven't been camping in a while. I always did like to rough it as a kid. But.. to a kid, roughing it means sleeping in a tent with all the tech you'd find back home." he says.

Quake has posed:
Skye was.. well, Skye. Complete with her laptop, having a good old time reading on reddit, and laughing to herself at the jokes.

"The last time I went in a tent it wasn't a good time." Sure the company was good, but everything else was shitty, including several tickets that had to be paid. She looked up. "Where are we going again?"

Winter Soldier has posed:
    "I was using a place here for a while. Lay low." No more needs to be said about that, surely? There have been times when Bucky had been impossible to find, and an off the grid location like this would be ideal for a safe haven. "Very calming, close to nature, nobody to bother me for miles."

    And then he turns the car into a side road that is nearly impossible to spot from the roadside, no more than a dirt track. The suspension is being sorely tested in the ruts and potholes, but Bucky drives as if he knows the road like the back of his hand. "Some people came to pay a visit, uninvited. Had to be firm with them."

    A short distance from the turning to the road, two more SUV's are parked, seemingly abandoned. They still have their doors open, as if the former occupants were looking to make a quick getaway... or afraid of disturbing someone nearby with the sound of doors slamming. Nature has started to creep in, and various small woodland creatures have started to use the seats as comfortable nests. About two hundred yards beyond the track opens up to a clearing, containing a log cabin and little else.

    "I'm going to miss the place." Bucky comments as he parks the SUV and kills the engine. "Right, we're here."

Wendell Vaughn (10070) has posed:
    Sure, Wendell had excellent scores at the SHIELD Academy. But he is not sure about burning such a nice place to the ground just because it's not useful anymore. "You sure you want to destroy this place? I mean you could just sell it... or let it go unused for now. Destroying it seems awfully wasteful."

    He glances back to Skye and adds, "Hey. If you need a hotspot, lemme know. I can do a flawless wireless comm system with these babies." he says.... indicating his apparently bare wrists.

Quake has posed:
"I know what you mean. When I first changed we spent some time in the Canadian Wilderness. In fact, you might remember that, James." Bucky tried to kill Captain, who happened to be there, and Skye freaked out with her newborn powers and everyone got hurt for some reason or another.

Bucky ran off, though.

Skye lifts up one brow at Wendell's offer. "Really? Cool. I just may take you up on that."

Winter Soldier has posed:
    "Too many people know where it is now." Bucky mentions as he opens the trunk and slings a few rolls of plastic sheeting over his shoulder and retrieves a large saw. "Invaders are like roaches. Once you see one, there's hundreds more on the way. Best to get rid of it."

    The reason why? Well, that might become obvious when he opens the door and drops the plastic sheets. "I remember. Thanks for helping out, both of you. Didn't have a lot of time to clean up before I left."

    The interior of the cabin is a mess. Four bodies are piled up on the rug in the middle of the living space, one of which is impaled on a floor lamp. The combined effluvia of the deceased didn't do the rug much good, and at some point it seems a large wolf has gotten in and taken a few bites out of the corpses. A deep sigh as Bucky shakes his head, surveying the carnage. "That rug really tied the room together. Ah well..."

    With infinite but weary patience, he crouches by the bodies and starts to rifle through their pockets for identifying documents. Considering these bodies have been here for what looks like three or four days, it might be the only way to identify them. Between the violence of their demise, the wild animals making a light snack of them and the decomposition, it's not a pretty sight. "Hopefully we can figure out who these jokers are before we get rid of them."

    A pile of weapons has been piled up near the corpses, an odd mix of handguns, PDW's and tranquilizer guns. Adding to the drag marks on the wooden floor, it looks like not all of them died in here.

Wendell Vaughn (10070) has posed:
    Clambering out of the SUV, Wendell follows calmly, hands in his pockets until the front door is opened. There, he freezes like a deer in the headlights.

    Lack of a killer instinct. That is what his SHIELD dossier says. Also his US Army dossier. He just stares at the death, and it's like he is somewhere else entirely. That is, until the rug is mentioned.

    "Seriously?!" he exclaims, "What in the name of God makes you think any of this is okay?!" he asks.

    He shakes his head and backs out of the door. "By all that is holy... what is -wrong- with you?" he asks.

Quake has posed:
Skye followed them to the house..

"Ugh.." Skye crinkles up her nose. "Wow. They stink. Please tell me you aren't responsible for them?"

Not that she'd be shaking her fingers at him. Just, it would be better if /he/ weren't directly responsible. (Think of the paperwork!)

"No, maybe it's better I don't know. I can't make up what I am not lying for."

Winter Soldier has posed:
    For a moment, Bucky gives Skye that 'don't ask and I won't have to lie to you' glance. And then he goes back to rifling through pockets, tossing ID wallets and cards to the side to be perused later, until he's certain that there's nothing left in any of their pockets. This presents some problem with the man that has a floor lamp sticking through him, but he eventually just leaves that one where it is. "Mind having a look at those things, Skye? I'd like to know who came to kill me."

    Picking up the saw, he heads back out, and motions for Wendell to follow him. "Heard of the phrase 'to heaven and back', agent? Well I've been there. I know, surprised me to, but I did. Didn't like the place, so I came back." It's all delivered deadpan, as if he's being /entirely/ serious. About sixty feet from the cabin, he comes to a stop by a tree and looks up.

    Up there, fifteen feet up, another man hangs with a branch impaled through his chest.

    Without looking away, and without a word, Bucky hands the saw over to Wendell.

Wendell Vaughn (10070) has posed:
    Shaking his head still, Wendell isn't really -following- James at this point. He's just sort of backed away from everything. But then James starts speaking, and Wendell moves that way as if thinking it's an escape from the depravity, the brutality.

    "If this was a kill team, I doubt they'd be carrying ID's on them." he says, trying to force his brain into working once more. Then as James points upwards, Wednell's blue eyes make out the hanging body, "Oh for the love of..." And then he turns to stare at James. "Heaven and back, is just a turn of phrase. I mean I've been out in the heavens, and back myself. So what makes -this- okay?" he asks, gesturing up to the body. As he does, his wrists flare with golden light. "Thanks, but I brought my own saw." he mutters before he turns and forms a golden coffin which lifts up, envelops the hanging guy, and neatly slices the section of tree that was suspending him.

    "We need to be better than the killers we oppose. Not be better than them at their own game. That makes us just as bad as them." he mutters, likely trying to assuage his own conscience.

Quake has posed:
"Oh.. gods." Skye held up her hand. "You could have started off with that little tidbit, James. But I'm still guessing this is off the books as far as SHIELD goes." Hell, her records were peppered with 'not on the record' for herself. Though she wasn't quite as murderous as Bucky.

She prefers to have things she could watch and listen to as opposed to murder.

In the long term they carried the same weight of penalty though: Federal prisoner in super lock down mode.

"Sure. Give me about.. hrm.. Fifteen minutes give or take."

Okay.. it took longer.

"Holy shit, no wonder I had to look behind some curtains." Bad Skye; she went trolling along with the official government (just a hint).. and she was right. "Hey James, was this in any way tangled up with that thing you wanted me to do?"

Winter Soldier has posed:
    When the man comes down from the tree, Bucky squints at him, and an eyebrow goes up slowly. It's as if he's seeing him clearly for the first time, and he doesn't like what he sees. Not one bit. "Hey, you're the one who brought up God. Just saying, been to actual heaven, saw the angels, came back." It's going to be hard explaining that one. He's still not too sure about it himself. "But you're right. We do need to be better than our own enemies, especially when our enemies hide in plain sight."

    That's all he's going to say on the matter, it seems, and during the fifteen minutes Skye is trawling through identity records, he can be seen ripping up floor boards and retrieving kit bags full of... well, somethings. Knowing Bucky, those are probably weapons.

    Some time is spent removing the lamp from the poor unfortunate, and wrapping the bodies into plastic sheets. Almost as an aside, he occasionally packs some personal items that are lying around... a book bag, bottles of medicine, drum sticks...

    "Hmm? I'd hope not." he responds, looking up from his packing when Skye speaks up. "Only ones who could have traced me here are HYDRA, and the other thing doesn't involve them. No evidence for it anyway."

    Except that one corpse he took down from the tree. He's clearly not happy about that one. "Tree man over there is DeAngelo Santan, know that much, seen him before. Figured he might have been dirty, but ... gimme the bad news."

Wendell Vaughn (10070) has posed:
    "Something tells me your trip up there was some part of a hallucination while the brain was being deprived of oxygen." mutters Wendell as he shakes his head and positions the body in repose in that coffin.

    "Still a shame to destroy this place." he adds to himself. Nope, he's not going inside. He'll work to make more 'disposal boxes' (coffins) when they are needed, and he'll maintain a perimeter watch.

    Yeah, he's freaked out. He really shouldn't be here, not if you ask him. It's just a good thing his coffins are translucent so they can be seen into.

    Yep, Wendell's brain is basically doing its best to disassociate with all of this death and destruction. But eventually he calls out, "Rather than risking a forest fire, I could demolish the place like it was done with a construction crew if you want!"

Quake has posed:
"Weird, because they're all government agents." And Skye listed them:

Dexter Magee. Agent for the DHS. Handler in Atlanta for a mission, codename Groundbreaker.
Garret Daniels. Agent for the DHS. Handler in Detroit for a mission, codename Groundbreaker.
Fred Givans, Agent for the DHS.
and
Isaias Evernhan.. and if you said.. Agent for the DHS.. you'd be right.

"I don't think they all were here when they died." Counting the claws and teeth marks..

Winter Soldier has posed:
    At the mention of 'government agents', Bucky starts to listen closely, zipping up the bag he'd been packing with some haste. And when the names are mentioned...

    It's as if he's been slapped, rushing outside to the corpses and unwrapping the plastic sheets from around their faces. "Son of a... No!" Hmmm. That is one /very/ unhappy Bucky.

    A Bucky, moreover, that's just produced a multi tool from a pocket and pulling the jaws of the nearest corpse open, unfolding a set of pliers. Yup. That looks very much like he's doing some unscheduled dentistry. Is he desecrating the dead now?

    "That sack of shit. His ass is mine!"

Wendell Vaughn (10070) has posed:
    Ah, what a view of pristine wilderness. Yep, that's what Wendell is looking at. THough he -has- upgraded the urgency of the scanning done by his bands. At this point, they'll pick up on things like.. cellphone batteries, gasoline ignition in automobile engines. That sort of thing.

    Really, he is just trying to keep up on the perimeter so he doesn't have to look at the bodies. Maybe if he can ignore them long enough, they'll just go away, right? Even so, he is still doing what he can of his duty. But he isn't listening to the conversation between the two jaded agents.

Quake has posed:
"Why don't you begin at the beginning, huh?" Skye was certain it would make more sense then getting bits and pieces the way they were now. She casts a sidelong gaze at Wendell.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    There is a crack, a grunt, and Bucky retrieves his pliers. In the jaws is what at first glance appears to be a tooth, but on closer inspection... not so much. "See this?" he demands, fairly loudly, turning first to Wendell and then to Skye. "If this thing could talk, it'd be saying 'Hail HYDRA' by now." And clawing back self control with some difficulty, he drops the thing on the plastic sheet next to the corpse it came from. "Cyanide capsule. Best way to identify sleeper agents."

    And yes, he then holds up a hand, takes a deep breath, and starts at the beginning. "A few months ago, I took on a mission for a friend. Someone had tried to kill him during a raid on his place, a raid by DHS looking to arrest the Punisher. Officially. Just so happens the Punisher was actually there, looking into the murder of this friend's mother, now nearly a decade or so ago."

    He points to the corpse that was impaled on a tree. "DeAngelo Santan was the agent in charge of that team. Givans and Evernham..." he points out those two unfortunates as well. "... were part of the team, but the actual attempt was made by an agent called Colby Schmirler. Long story short, these guys were ordered by the Deputy Director of Operations for DHS, one Alonso Stuck, to attempt to kill my friend. And a few days ago, I finally got enough dirt on Stuck to bring him in. During the arrest, Stuck sent out a message to his kill teams to get rid of witnesses. One of those witnesses was, in fact, Agent Schmirler. The others were my friend's aunt, and my friend's therapist. All over a project named 'Groundbreaker' that I have reason to suspect has gone dirty."

    A hand through his hair, as he looks at what appear to now be dead HYDRA agents. "I suspected embezzlement, some drug running maybe, along with conspiracy to commit murder. Never expected to find a HYDRA operation. That's a whole different rat's nest..."

Wendell Vaughn (10070) has posed:
    "Okay. So.. this wasn't you killing everyone here. You're just cleaning up the mess." states Wendell as he mentally commands his Quantum Aura to remain invisible, but to filter out the stench of the death.

    "You know... if you want, I could X-Ray some dental fixtures.. might save you from having your hands in these mouths." he adds to James. "In all seriousness, how can I assist now that I've had a moment to process all of this?"

Winter Soldier has posed:
    "Essentially." Bucky admits, now calmed down enough that he can find a seat on an upturned log. "I knew Stuck's arrest was going to be tricky, especially because we were hoping to bag Clayton, the actual Director of Ops for DHS on the same day. I suspected they'd try something desperate, so..." he indicates the cabin. "I stashed someone here who was going to be in great danger if things went wrong. Turns out we missed one of the kill teams, and... yeah. Also turns out the person I stashed here has anger issues."

    Well, that's an understatement.

    "Problem is, I knew HYDRA had a good idea where this place was, ever since they'd tried to kill me after a drinking session with Thor." He glances at Wendell for a moment, and his expression is entirely serious. "If I'd known HYDRA was mixed in with Groundbreaker, this would never have happened."

    "I need evidence. Finger prints, dental scans, identifying marks, anything to prove that these guys here were HYDRA, and were actually here. Because tomorrow I'm having a chat with Alonso Stuck. Had him in custody for a few days now... off the books."

    And at that mention he glances at Skye, as if asking to retroactively make sure that that particular arrest suddenly appears /on/ the books.

Wendell Vaughn (10070) has posed:
    Rolling his eyes, Wendel lifts a hand to stomach level. His Quantum Band reappears on that wrist, and he inclines his head as tendrils of energy seep out from the gems. Each tendril ending in what appears to be an old fashioned Nikon 35mm camera.

    The cameras begin moving about, snapping shots and storing them in the memory on his bands. Some normal, some X-Rays. Documenting everything he can get from every angle. "I don't have much of a database of HYDRA agents. Maybe Eon can figure it out, but if it's not important on a cosmic scale, he'll tell me it's beneath him."

    "But I can send these images anywhere you want... either of you. And Agent Johnson, do you want a communication channel for your computer?"

Quake has posed:
Skye frowns. In SHIELD they had a number of Hydra agents in their midst, and they had to work hard to get rid of them. But what about the numerous government agencies that ignored the threat?

Apparently, they were reaping their 'rewards' at ignoring them now.

"It's James' decision, ultimately?" She looked over and waited

Winter Soldier has posed:
    "I never thought I was going to say this..." Bucky begins, looking more than a bit uneasy. Mostly because he's about to do something that doesn't come naturally to him.

    "We'll do this officially. I's dotted, t's crossed, boxes ticked. And that means..." he glances around, shrugging "... that I can't burn the place down. Get a team over here to take custody of the dead agents, comb those SUV's for clues, run the numbers on those weapons. Document, detail and report. The whole shebang."

    Damn. Paperwork after all!