Summary:A routine briefing turns into a Wolf wrangling session Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
      |
Steve Rogers has a job with normal duties and paperwork and such. Sure, he's one of SHIELD's foremost operatives and sure he is kept busy by the Avengers but there's always things to do. Paperwork to fill. Meetings to attend. Many of them on very serious topics, some of them with such luminaries as Clint Barton, Melinda May, Jemma Simmons and Laynia Petrovna but do enough meetings on very serious topics and they CAN become somewhat routine.
This is one such meeting. It's a regional threat briefing. Intel is updating people on the latest in the world's worst hot spots. It's relevant people like Clint, Melinda, Jemma and Laynia, (and Steve) because any or all of them might be called upon to get into a 'Bus' and go deal with it at a moment's notice. Fortunately there is no emergency right this second. Just information.
Well. Until…
Poof! Mew. Mew.
"The threat of a civil war remains fairly high and…" The presenter falters and looks at the table in front of Steve. "Um. Is that a two headed cat?"
It is. And one of it's heads has a little sprig of a flower that it drops into Steve's lap. Monkshood. Also known as Aconitum Napellus. Also known as wolfsbane.
Poof. The cat is gone. But just that little sprig of purple flower starts to BURN in Steve's nostrils. And then just burn in general.
|ROLL| Steve Rogers +rolls 1d10 for: 4
Those meetings do tend to have one zoning out, at least for Clint Barton. Not so much boring, but the repetition and the steady feed of intel that one is already privy to. It tends to overlap and only when there are small variations or changes does he look up from his phone.
But when there's a small 'poof' and that mew that the archer looks up, one eyebrow quirking curiously. He looks to Cat. To Cat. To sprig. To Steve. Back to Cat.
There's just time enough for him to say, "What?" Before the situation starts to shift. Clint's chair slides back with a scrape of its wooden legs, the front two dropping and hitting the ground with a thump as he straightens up in his chair.
It is routine and as such, Steve's in a simple button-down shirt in white and thin grey lines along with his jeans and combat boots. He frowns at the presenter's latest bit of information regarding a site in the mountains of central Europe possibly containing lost weaponry infused with radiation when —
That. Damn. Cat.
The Captain flinches slightly to see it suddenly appear on the table before him and he stops chewing on the eraser of his pencil. Yes, Steve Rogers still prefers pencils for his notes. But what is in the cat's mouth?
Oh god.
He immediately flings himself backwards from the table and the sprig of wolfsbane; it drops to the floor, ignored, as the man goes into a violent sneezing fit. His rolling chair tips to one side and the wheels can be heard to rattle after it hits the floor.
"God — *sneeze* — wait — *sneeze* — get out — *sneeze sneeze* — "
Anyone familiar with the Captain's current state is probably scrambling by now.
Steve hunches over on himself and lets out a pained cry deepening rapidly to a snarl. It's quick, fierce, and the clothing is all but shredded off him by his own nails gone talons.
Oh joy. Seven feet of blond bipedal werewolf weighing about half a kilo. Backed against the wall of the meeting room, the creature then lets out a roar at the group, true-blue eyes gone pinpoint and ears flicked back.
Jemma Simmons attends a number of meetings. Most she would rather not, she's enough work to keep her busy three times over and she's late to this one. Something about a test that ran longer than it should.
Because she's late, the only seat available is next to Steve - one that the biochem took a little reluctantly. A fact that Steve won't be able to miss.
At all.
"Besas!!" Jemma says in surprise when the cat appears. When the blonde werewolf appears, she 'yelps' a little and tries to scoot back, sending her own chair toppling.
Laynia doesn't actually mind meetings too much, nobody generally gets shot at in meetings.
Then again one doesn't often seen teleporting two headed cats either. She blinks. And then all hell starts to break looks. Laynia's first instinct is to swat it, but STEVE'S reaction is violent. And his transformation…
"Bozhe moi…"
She stumbles back, her chair tumbling and the first thing Laynia can think of to do is create a series of darkforce bars in a ring about the area Steve-Wolf is in, she's not sure how strong he is, but she wants to at least buy people some time and slow him down in case he attacks. "Captain Rogers…?"
Conducting meetings like this is no more interesting than attending them except that May doesn't get the luxury of letting her attention drift. The instant the two-headed cat appears, May is on the alert, and Steve's reaction has her lunging across the room to get at that flower the damned feline brought in with it. She's so pulling her ICER at the same time, because that growling sounds very not good.
Petrovna's quick thinking with the darkforce bars will earn her a nod of gratitude, because it's a fast and less harmful way of giving Steve a chance to regain control.
Many of the remaining people in the room are indeed making a quick and panicked exit. If they didn't know about Steve's condition they do now. Unfortunately this is no ordinary werewolf curse. Steve is, at the moment, a Loup Garou. A serum enhanced one at that. Are those bars going to last?
Clint had better hope they do. Because there's another pair of stereo meow's all of a sudden on his shoulder. The cat is back. Purring and rubbing a formaldehyde soaked cheek against his neck.
To reiterate. Clint has a cat on his shoulder. In full view of a werewolf.
Hopefully Jemma isn't wearing her lilac scent?
|ROLL| Steve Rogers +rolls 1d20 for: 19
Barton's chair rocks back and clatters to the floor, skittering across it for a moment as the archer goes for his regulation sidearm, but doesn't brandish it. He just palms it out of the holster and into the back of his pants for a hidden quick draw if needs be. But he backs up towards the wall directly opposite of CapWolf, though his position he sees… he's actually not the first and closest to the man.
"Hey! Boy Scout!" Clint's voice lashes out sharply, "You with the ugly hair and the scrawny pipsqueak body! I'm talkin' ta you!" He tries to wave to get the critter's attention even as he moves over toward the flank further into the room, hopefully creating a line of retreat for the others to make it to the door.
"Yeah, that's right. Oh boohoo, I fought in the war and then froze into a popsicle so when I came back everyone felt sorry for me. You screwed up everyone's 401Ks, you know that? They had to budget for your crazy ass interest of investments. That's right."
He tries to keep an eye on Cap, but then also to sort of gesture for people to… get the heck out.
But then… suddenly there's a cat on his shoulder. It's a shock of course, a sudden surprise and he reacts to it as anyone likely would in such a situation. He tries to grab the thing by the closest limb he can grab and tries to /throw/ it at Cap.
Jemma's not wearing lilac. She *is* wearing lavender though and she showered not a couple of hours ago. The fear, the adrenaline, the lavendar all mix together to give the Super Soldier Were Wolf a good whiff of her.
"Besas!" Scrambling to her feet, Jemma cries out as Clint tries to toss the thing. "No…." Drawing her ICER, the biochem takes aim. Not firing just yet. "Control it, Steve. You know you can …"
Of course Steve can.
The sudden appearance of the Darkforce bars has the werewolf's first padding step towards the group suddenly stopping. With a literal 'urf?!', Steve-wolf jerks himself backwards against the wall. What is this…? It's blocking out the scent of lavender and the fear sweat and…
Ferality swells.
Clint draws attention to himself with his dialogue despite English no longer being clearly recognized by the Captain gone into bloodlust. With another yowling snarl, the werewolf janks hard to one side. The locker standing beside him on the wall doesn't resist the force of his shove.
With a crashing tumble, it allows him to leap through the temporary break in Darkforce rings to get outside of them.
However, the sudden vision of drawn ICER guns by multiple agents has the werewolf slamming again short of committing to a leap. His lips peel fully back to reveal all of the ivory teeth, primordial and strung with virus-hot saliva. On all fours, he slowly retreats, the ruff of his fur writhing from skull to spine like something alive.
Death is promised by the empty glow of his eyes to anyone coming any closer. Someone spare Bezas!
It seems he at least recognizes the guns.
"I was not aware that Captain America was a lycanthrope." Laynia murmurs to nobody in particular, that the archer is about to throw the (admittedly bratty) cat at the were draws a frown, and then she moves up to stand next to Clint — despite him having waved everyone back, a corona of Darkforce sheathing her body in a defensive barrier when she sees the were slip around her bars.
"Do you plan to shoot him, or should I blast him?" She's never encountered a werewolf before. And though she's no expert, she's pretty sure that a werewolf using Steve Rogers as the 'base' form? Yeah, probably a bit scary.
Snatching up the flower from where it fell on the floor, May stuffs the aconite into her jacket pocket as she backs up to put herself between were-Steve and Jemma then levels her ICER at him. "Rogers, think and calm yourself or I will sedate you." She's got that special formulation of dendrotoxin in her pistol as well, which very likely isn't helping matters. But she'd rather have it than not.
"Simmons, can you think of any other way to get this situation under control?" She's pretty sure they don't have time to call Barnes in.
Clint DOES get the cat and flings it hard at Patriot Wolf. The cat mews loudly - twice - and poofs out of the room half a second before striking. That removes one potential source of irritation for the wolf, anyway.
But then another arrives. Something shoots up through the floor - phasing through it - and the table to hover in the air in the center of the room. It's glowing blue-white, slightly transparent and looks something like a cross between a man, a shark and a dog.
Some people in the room will know who it is.
"What the actual hell?" The figure growls. The figure is of course an Agent but not all may know that.
"Rogers! Do we need to break out the Angel-muppet for you again?"
If there was death in his eyes before…
The ICER is drawn now as Clint tries to keep the things attention with another wave and a shout, but nothing going. He grimces and takes aim, one-eye squinting shut as he targets the side of CapWolf's neck, hopefully enough to get the knockout juice into the bloodstream as quickly as possible. But he doesn't fire yet.
"I was about to ask you the same thing, but different." Clint says sidelong toward Laynia. He takes a deep breath and murmurs, "I'll take a shot, gimme some cover." He lifts his voice, "Folks, takin' the shot…"
Then his finger starts to squeeze on the trigger, unless… of course, he's stopped.
"Koa… " Jemma breathes as the large agent walks in. "Besas is being a troll." She seems acquainted the shark wolf thing AND the cat.
"I … " beat "He needs to control this on his own. I could try and get near him. But those are awfully big teeth he has."
"Steve, please. We don't want to shoot you again." She takes a breath and uses a sharper tone. Just like another Brit, Steve had known "Get a hold of yourself, Captain Rogers!"
Yet another ICER comes into view. Steve-wolf's snarling increases by another few decibels yet until it might begin to vibrate in ribcages. It's a horrid sound heard long ago where the fire was the only thing that kept the boogieman way.
Agent Turner's appearance has the growl then surging up ANOTHER few decibels. The werewolf rises up onto his hind legs slowly and his gaze is entirely narrowed in on the ghostly figure hovering above the meeting table now.
Surprisingly, Jemma's tone cuts through the thunderous threatening like a knife through butter.
The werewolf falls abruptly silent and stares at her, ears perked forwards. Then there's a soft whine which surges into a frustrated yowl!
And with that, there goes Steve, smashing through the door and out into the hallway on full supernatural gallop, walls be damned. The Captain's trying to go AWOL!
You know, somedays it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. Like this one, for Koa. "What the /hell/ is that?" As the shark wolf flows upwards through the floor, Layni's reaction is fairly primal. After all there's a werewolf, there was a two-headed teleporting Siamese and now a shark-wolf monster in the room. She's had it!
Intolerable darkness forms about Laynia's hand, and then she gestures…just as Jemma identifies the Shark-Wolf a Koa.
Alas, too late…she fires a half-strength bolt at the apparent monster, it hits with roughly the impact power of an eighteen wheeler, the force concentrated into a beam about a food wide.
"Wait…that thing is Agent Turner?" Her horror is genuine, and altogether too late.
The Darkforce bolt startles May, but she doesn't relax or look away to check on Koa when Steve-wolf abruptly stops growling and focuses on Jemma. But then he bolts, and May instantly sprints off after him with a curse.
"Operations, lock down all access to this floor, now," she calls into her commlink as she bolts out the door after Rogers. If she manages to catch up enough to take a shot at him with her ICER, she'll take it and deal with the repercussions later. She's not hopeful, he's scary fast.
Clint may regret listening to Jemma on that but hey! At least the Red White and Aroo doesn't have super speed? So he'll get another chance to take that shot. And Jemma and May better hope he does because this is about to get messy.
"Oh for fucks sa-" Koa starts to give chance and then he's blasted into - and then through - a wall. Which means he misses Laynia's too-late realization that she's just conducted a bit of friendly fire.
"Ow." The thing floats back into the room and gives Darkstar a red-eyed glare before taking off, again phasing through the ceiling, to try to get in front of Steve.
The others will have to chase more conventionally. Hopefully they can tranq him.
Immediately outside this conference area is the Intel Analysis area which is full mostly of high walled cubicles which Wolf Steve barrels through, upsetting desks and sending paperwork EVERYWHERE. Thankfully there are few people here but beyond that is an engineering space.
Used for developing high energy weaponry.
And Steve's about to slam right into it.
As CapWolf makes the break for it, Clint's tracking and firing with the icer, impacting along the wall as the man-beast busts out into the hallway and rounds the corner fast as the devil. The archer advances as he fires a few more times, going for the ricochet shots and might hit, might not. But he's rushing out into the hall a few steps behind the others.
Once he's out there he likely doesn't have line of sight otherwise he'd keep firing, but then he grimaces and lifts a hand to his earpiece, keying in on the comms.
« Give me something, otherwise I'm hitting the pantry and wrangling up all the Kibbles and Bits I can find. » Though as he says that he breaks into a run to follow in the wake of FurrySteve.
Jemma holds her breath as Steve seems to calm. Drawing in a slow breath to say something. All that comes out is an "ack!" as CapWolf leaps past her, then she's hurrying out the room after him.
"Captain Rogers!" Her voice is like a whip crack in the corridor. No one has ever heard her raise it. "Stand down, now!" It worked, sort of the last time didn't it?
Hey. She doesn't tell him to 'heel'.
It's a blizzard of paperwork as the blur of blond werewolf threads the cubicles and ignores the people probably ducking and yelling as if he had gone deaf. Fight has turned to flight now, especially after he heard the subtle shots of ICERS being fired.
Surely the ghost of someone long-dead haunting his horrified human subconscious counts as another reason to run.
He enters the engineering space with only a second's worth of a pause, wide-eyed and whining, before he makes a dart for the testing area in particular. There's light filtering in from outside given there are windows lining the walls.
It's for one of these that Steve-wolf barrels at top speed, an impressive nearly eighty miles an hour, and aims all roughly five-hundred pounds of muscled force at.
Laynia is more than a little horrified that she just shot Koa…fortunately he's only irked, not horribly injured.
As the building is being locked down and the others run in hot pursuit, she looks to Jemma. "You do the computers magic, yes? Can you show me live feed so I can get teleport fix to where he's going?" If Jemma can do this, Laynia will open a portal to the room, and Jemma is welcome to come with her.
May is still chasing after Steve-wolf at a full run with her ICER in hand, but there is no way she's keeping up with him. She's not even taken a shot at him as she's not had a clean line of sight since he bolted. She sees him head straight into the engineering area and …
"He's heading for the windows!" Crap crap crap crap. "Simmons, get in touch with Barnes. Now!" Not good, not good.
It's less that he's not injured and more that injuries manifest differently in the Astral. Still. It hasn't impaired him though it's also true he hasn't emerged again either.
Steve makes the window and crashes through it just as Koa emerges from the wall a story above him. The WAND agent makes a dive at him but misses by inches. By the time he's stopped his own momentum and reoriented Steve-Wolf will have landed. Hopefully Barton can line up another shot. Or Jemma can get Laynia a teleport fix.
Otherwise they're going to need everyone present, plus Banres and the Bus.
"Koa, are you ok." Jemma saw Steve's response to her voice. That's something they can use - if she uses it wisely. "Agent Petrovna, feed incoming. Get us to him." Jemma's already dialling Bucky, hopefully the teleport won't affect them.
"Steve. Please don't go. Come back." It's still very, very, British but nowhere near as authoritarian.
Glass flexes to shatter upon the focused curling of shoulder. There's a shocking hangtime before the werewolf tumbles to the luckily grassy surface of one of the few sections of landscaped ground. Shards wink in his fur as he then takes off towards the river at a flat-out dead run, leaving up-torn clots of dirt in his wake. The few agents out on the grounds make way for him in increasing numbers of yards.
Luckily, it's a fairly straight line of a flat-out run. Someone with expectionally good aim might be able to tag the Captain before he jumps into the river to escape!
Laynia tries not be impatient, waiting in mounting tension until the feed is provided. Eyes dripping darkling smoke, she looks to the image, fixes key features of the destination and then makes a tearing motion with both hands as she rips a hole in reality, not her usual method. This portal is a bit faster. She offers Jemma a hand, and then will steps through.
Jemma will have the distinct 'pleasure' of moving through the Darkforce Dimension. It is cold, inky darkness ebbing and flowing about them as Laynia guides them through it, and behind her, is a SECOND laynia, though this second Laynia has long hair still, and is composed of the same stuff as the rest of the place, joining them are lines of energy from normal and darkforce Laynia as they travel. Voices, whispers, flickers of movement at the edge of sight…this is a realm of madness.
And then it isn't.
They emerge after what seemed a long time into the room as Were-Steve makes that leap through the window and to the ground.
May makes it into the room just a second after Jemma and Laynia do and rushes straight through to the now-broken window, skidding to a stop just short of falling out herself. Her aim with a firearm is above average, but not THAT good. She fires once after Steve-wolf, but doesn't waste any more rounds when it's clear she can't hit him.
"Ops, prep the Bus." She looks at the other two women for a moment, then heads back out of the room.
Koa couldn't hear Jemma, which is why he didn't answer. As Steve makes it out he comes back up, floating in the air in front of the broken window from which Steve escaped.
"Contact Barnes if you haven't already." He growls. "I'll go find Barton. You're going to need him."
And with that he dives back into the building. He's got to recover his body or he's going to have such a headache.
Well, he's probably going to have that anyway.
It's cold as Laynia takes through that hole. Jemma tries not to think about it too much. If she does, she'll start thinking about effects on atoms and what it's doing to their bodies. Besides, she just lost contact with her network … and then it's back.
"Captain Rogers!!" Jemma sets her feet and fires. Six times.
|ROLL| Jemma Simmons +rolls 1d20 for: 18
|ROLL| Steve Rogers +rolls 1d6 for: 5
Six times the ICER fires.
Five times the shots land, just as Steve's getting near to clearing the final barrier surrounding the island. The yelps of impact will be heard well enough: they're nearly screams of terror and pain.
Scrunching himself to all fours, he leaps out into a daring arc and hits the surface of the river in something far less graceful by sight. Can werewolves do bellyflops?
In a panic, apparently, yes.
Blond fur disappears.
The waters go nearly smooth again as they were before.
Someone's going to have to go look for him but the Hudson isn't just any river. It's murky and it DOES definitely have a current. Jemma's hits were good but at the moment Steve is out of reach. Divers will be scrambled. But what they'll find? That remains to be seen.
The Bus should still probably get in the air. And Jemma's going to want to be on it.
It's too bad Clint and Koa weren't around to see that. But that's the way of these things.
Outside the ruined engineering lab the waters of the Hudson lap quietly on the shores of Governor's Island. Unconcerned by the doings of werewolves and cyborgs.