9150/Loki Update

Loki Update
Date of Scene:	11 September 2019
Location:	Triskelion
Synopsis:	Bucky speaks with May about Loki, they agree to let Barnes be the primary and sole point of contact with the sorcerer.
Cast of Characters:	Exile, Melinda May, Winter Soldier

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Exile has posed:
Another of those 'Barnes wants to get ahold of you' moments. Another little urgent message. And there's the man himself, with Lili at his side. She's pressed close, and his human hand is buried in her ruff. He's got that flat expression on that means he's hiding some kind of distress.

Melinda May has posed:
That sort of message does not go unacknowledged. May clears time and her office as quickly as possible, and by the time Barnes arrives with Lili at his side she's got tea brewing -- something that smells floral and fruity.

She closes the door to her office, gestures for the man to sit on the sofa wedged into the back of the small room, and activates her small handheld scrambler. "Let me guess, this is about Loki." More and more, she's wanting to find the Asgard-raised sorcerer and shove a knife into the base of his skull.

Exile has posed:
"Yes," he says, quietly. Buck settles down, and the Shepherd's instantly up beside him. That's not a good sign. Especially that's she's promptly bunting her head against him, and making urgent noises. He's using both hands to pet her, ruffle her ears, smoothe her ruff.

He glances up. "Yes. I no longer owe him favors.....but it's kind of understood that he's still got the ability to wake Winter right back up. He's hurt. He's doing something to bring back Asgard, I think he said. And he summoned this....blue cube thing." Buck isn't familiar with the Tesseract, as such, but even a dullard like him knows something that overtly powerful.

Melinda May has posed:
May is in the middle of pouring the aromatic red-colored tea over a glass of ice when Bucky mentions the 'blue cube thing'. She stops pouring and looks at him intensely for a moment, then finishes filling the glass before reaching for her computer. After a moment of tapping at the device, she turns it to reveal a still image of the Tesseract. "This blue cube."

Without waiting for a reply, she brings Bucky the iced tea and puts it in his hand whether he wants it or not, at the same time shutting off the scrambler and tapping at her commlink. "Ops, get in contact with Captain Rogers. Have him come to my office as quickly as possible." She taps her comm again and reactivates the scrambler.

"That cube is identified in SHIELD's databases as the Tesseract."

Exile has posed:
HE accepts it without hesitating....doesn't see it, at first. Too busy looking at the image she presents him with. "Yeah," he says. "That's it. What is it?" He hasn't run across it, it seems.

Lili drapes herself across his lap, and he continues to stroke her ruff. Then he'd diverted by the taste of the tea. "What is this?" he asks, bemused. "It's really good."

Melinda May has posed:
May addresses the tea first. "Rote Grutze, and I'm likely butchering the name. An herbal tea I first had in a German town near the border to Denmark." She then indicates the image.

"The Tesseract is an artifact of immense power, hidden on Earth by the Asgardians thousands of years ago. HYDRA found it in the late 30s and were experimenting with it. If you remember their weapons that shot blue bolts of light that vaporized people, those were powered by siphoning energy from the Tesseract."

At this point she moves to pour the rest of the red tea into a second ice-filled glass for herself, though mostly to give Bucky time to process that small bombshell of information.

Winter Soldier has posed:
His head comes up, at that, blue eyes blazing, lips thinned out. "I remember those. They used those at Azzano."

Where all his troubles began. His hands are shaking, and he uses both, letting go of his grip on Lili. That's okay, she's in his lap, just about. That memory is still too, too sharp. HYDRA left that one.

Melinda May has posed:
No, May doesn't miss that this information is doing anything but helping Bucky calm down. "The last intel we had on it until you entered this office was that Thor had returned it to the royal vault on Asgard. I had /hoped/ we'd never see it again." So much for that thought.

"I'm going to talk with R&D and see what progress they've made in trying to overcome the programming." The HYDRA programming.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Barnes tries a smile. It never makes it much past 'rictus', and he gives it up after a little. Lili licks his hand, gently, and he goes back to burying his fingers in her ruff. "No," he says. "And it turns out.....there was an incident earlier in the year with what I thought was Thor. It was Loki in disguise, getting the Orbs we have. He offered....he offered to let me take them back to SHIELD." His brow furrows, and he looks up. "It has to be a trap."

Melinda May has posed:
"Likely," May agrees. "I'm beginning to think I need to go have a conversation with Loki myself." She sips at her tea. "He could be a potentially highly valuable asset, but not if we can't trust him to so much as tells us the correct time of day."

She reaches over and turns the computer back so the image of the Tesseract is no longer visible. "Right now, though, I think there are more important matters." She looks at Bucky for a moment over her tea, indicating clearly without saying it aloud that she's more concerned with making sure he's okay than dealing with Loki.

Winter Soldier has posed:
"No, don't. Don't come within his sphere of influence," Buck sounds genuinely alarmed, at that. "I'm serious. I....I can deal with this. Though if you want me to do anything in particular where he's concerned, I'm at your orders. I don't think we can ever really trust him, though, save as we're going along with his agenda."

Melinda May has posed:
With genuine alarm like that in Bucky's voice and expression, May isn't about to run off to confront Loki. The former Winter Soldier wouldn't be alarmed without a TRULY good reason or eight. "All right. You'll be official liaison as long as we have to deal with Loki, but you have to be careful too. Would it be possible to have you carry a tracker of some sort any time you go to speak with him, just in case?" She's taking the 'don't trust Loki' seriously.

"I want to be able to find you if something doesn't go as expected."

Winter Soldier has posed:
"I'm not carrying one already?" he asks, utterly guileless. Like they might've just jammed one in there when he wasn't looking. "But yeah, sure. You'll have to put it in the arm, I can't carry it on the body, the serum rejects it."

Melinda May has posed:
May raises an eyebrow at Bucky. "Of course you're not carrying one already. Didn't you already spend enough decades being tracked against your will? I refused to let anyone from Medical or R&D try to push through a recommendation to hide a tracker in your arm. But if you're willing to accept one, I'll see that it happens. And then only Rogers, Simmons, Skye, and I will have access to the frequency. Fair?"