Fall of the Mighty ★ [4] ✔

Winter Is Here

⏳ 2016   

It was absolute carnage when we arrived on the fifth floor. The red emergency lights flashed, lighting the darkness in a strobing ruby light. The bodies of guards were strewn around the place, all unconscious and bleeding. Whatever happened here was brutal. Bucky had been brutal.

I stepped over the bodies, checking every few to see if they were breathing. Some were. Some weren't. Some were bleeding from smashed noses and lips. Some had their necks twisted like an owl's would.

"What the hell?' I whispered.

"Help me." We turned to a voice in the room ahead of us. "Help."

The U.N.'s fantastic shrink lay before Bucky's cage, now very empty, the opening smashed with glass sprinkled around.

Steve stormed over to the shrew man, quite angry by the look of his determined stride. "Get up," he ordered, his voice low and growling as he whisked the man up and shoved him to the wall, holding him there. "Who are you? What do you want?"

The man smiled, and, as he spoke, it was then that I recognised his voice. "To see an empire fall." I couldn't put my finger on where I'd heard it. I knew it. I didn't know where, but I definitely recognised it. The accent was familiar.

The familiar metal grinding of a well-acquainted arm squealed, and I turned to see Sam duck just in time for Bucky's swing to smash the concrete frame of the threshold. Sam punched him, but his forearm was blocked, followed by a direct hit to the chest. Bucky grasped Sam's chin and tossed him at the cage, the crunch of Sam hitting it making me wince.

I leaned back when Bucky swung at me and a golden shield protected me from another in the nick of time, it smashing upon impact and knocking me off balance. I threw an energy ball at him as I backed up, it hitting him and him deflecting each I hurled at him again and again as he advanced on me. He backhanded me and I flew into the wall, the wind ripping from me upon collision. My vision swam as I slid to the floor and rolled onto my knees craving for breath.

The grunts and metal grinding of Bucky and Steve fighting became distant as I continue to heave. I honestly forgot how much getting clobbered by that godforsaken metal appendage hurt.