"So you're telling me that a twenty-three year old woman, who has lived off of IV fluids and catheter bags for the last two decades, managed to singlehandedly evade capture from the Avengers?"
"Oh, uh-uh." Tony took a bite from his apple, waving his hands. "You're the one who exponentially downplayed her abilities. I thought she might splash us with water, maybe send a few light winds our way, but that woman could be her own hurricane category. Are you kidding me?"
Agent Haze pinched the bridge of her nose. They had been standing around the table in Tony's office, slinging insults back and forth, for nearly an hour now.
"I am under orders here, Mr. Stark. Besides, we had no way of comprehending just how strong she was. She didn't have abilities like that when she went under in 1990, so there was no way to guess that they would grow so much after so much time unused."
"Who's orders?" Steve growled, his arms crossed over his chest. "Why are we left cleaning up yet another mess that SHIELD started? She nearly killed Natasha."
"I'm-" Natasha waved them off, her face slightly pink. "I'm fine. More embarrassed than anything. She didn't blow me off the face of the earth, she just stuck me in a hole."
"Look," Tony leaned over the table, pulling up the footage from the flood. Screams, people holding onto poles for dear life, cars and buildings being swept away in the rushing water. "We are so lucky that nobody died today. But if this is what she can do in a backwater, then I can't even imagine the possibilities in New York. So I need you, Agent Haze, to throw all of your hesitations about clearance and orders out of the window, and start telling us everything you know about what she might possibly be after."
Agent Hazes' jaw was locked. She sunk down into a chair, folding her hands on the table in front of her.
"None of this leaves this room. Are we clear?"
Tony pressed a button, and the room went into lockdown. Metal grates slid over the doors and windows, and a soft buzzing entered the room, showcasing that it had been made soundproof. Haze nodded.
"We know that August woke up on accident," The blonde woman was as still as stone. "But very little information is out there in regards to her past. It was all lost in the SHIELD collapse. No recorded last name, no records of her combat training, and no knowledge of her personality or temperament-"
"She used gale-force winds to throw me out of a corner-store," Natasha blinked. "She's an asshole."
The agent elected to ignore that.
"Before she was decommissioned, August had been assigned to case file 49372-WS, investigating HYDRA assassins. We know she found one of her marks, we just don't know who, or where, or how. I suppose, that as of right now, it's entirely possible that August is looking for answers. But she's not going to trust SHIELD or any variation of it, at least not easily. In our sweep of her hotel room back in Roanoke, our operatives found a bug that would suggest that August may be being manipulated by the Rising Tide."
"Oh, for fu-" Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. "Those guys tried to steal copies of my taxes last year."
"What do hacktivists want with a superhuman?" Natasha asked, leaning forward at the table.
"What's a hacktivist?" Steve muttered.
They ignored him.
"We have no idea," Haze sighed. In that moment, she looked much older than her age. Her shoulders sagged, and Tony took note of the deep, purple bags under her eyes. "Just that they're probably helping her. Knowing August, she's likely headed out of the country. She's going to try to go somewhere with no treaty of extradition."
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SURVIVE ➤ BUCKY BARNES
Fanfiction"i think of you-" "think of me?" August had never identified as a hero. She had never chosen to do what she did. Spending her entire life as a pawn in somebody else's wretched game. She was whatever they made her - a hero, a...
