ohcptnmycptn (ohcptnmycptn) wrote in newalliance, @ 2016-08-06 16:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | captain america, red hood |
Who: Captain America and Red Hood
Where: Safe House, Gotham
When: 8/10/16 (forward)
What: Cap is doing some legwork while waiting for word on Bucky, seeing if he can find some clue on him in safe houses. He's not expecting who this safehouse really belongs to.
Rating: PG-13 at most
It was frustrating, not being able to do anything to help find Bucky. The Black Widow was looking into avenues, and even he could acknowledge that he would be in the way on the search. He was too noticeable, making it a liability, and was assured he would be contacted when there was knowledge of where Bucky went.
He was getting used to that, being told he'd be more of a burden on an operation than a help. He understood it. It didn't help him feel better at times like these.
But it wasn't in his nature to do nothing, so he set out to do what he could. He wasn't good at computers, but he wasn't as helpless with them as people assumed. He wasn't good at going undercover, not with his earnest character and popular face. But he was good at putting his boots to the ground, and so he started investigating, asking himself questions, digging for information. There were a few operations only SHIELD were aware had possible HYDRA ties that had been hit, and the brutal thoroughness of the operations' dismantling made him feel like it was Bucky's handiwork.
So he had ended up in Gotham. A haunt for the Batman, for which there was very little information on in the files. He wasn't worried about running into Gotham's mysterious vigilante and his avian-named sidekicks. That was a bridge to cross if he came to it, so all he could do was read the little intel available before going into the territory.
The feel was very different from Brooklyn. Brooklyn was bricks and asphalt and a mishmash of rectangular, blocky buildings of all sizes, where people liked to chew on their vowels and hang out on stoops and play games in the streets at all hours. Gotham... wasn't. It had the same old feel, was surrounded by bays and water just the same, and many areas had the familiar 'city stink', but there was something much more stark and dark about its buildings and alleyways. The towers of many office buildings tapered upward into domes or sharp points, buildings often shrugged close at angles that made the streets harder to guess, the stone and concrete was darker and smoother, few being rosy or tan in color.
And there were many more streets where pedestrians didn't walk. Brooklyn had those. Every city did. Yet Gotham had whole districts where people just retreated inside and locked their doors after a certain time, an unspoken curfew where they knew an uglier shift took over to prey on those who didn't heed it. There were more chain link fences, chains, bars, and places where even cars didn't drive in this area. Graffiti gave praise to the colorful villains, the working women stayed in large groups on corners, and the thugs had their own patrols, like bullies in a school hall looking for easy lunch change.
Yeah, not a nice neighborhood, but one where authorities definitely didn't prod too much. Especially at apartments where the utilities were hardly used and were paid for well in advance. SHIELD at least did come in handy for tracking that down for him.
So he showed up outside the building in plain ball cap, plain jeans, T-shirt the old leather jacket he'd become fond of, pulled the old motorbike up the stairs with him, down a hall with cracked walls and a smell of urine, and found the apartment with its door, the number hanging off at an odd angle. Sighing, he pulled the picks out of his gloves. It wasn't his best skill set, but he had the know-how all the same.
The small toothpick dropping wouldn't have caught anyone else's eye, but he was looking for it. He let it stay on the carpet, checking the doorframe. If this was Bucky's there would be... He pulled the glove off and slid his bare hand on the wood... Paused. There it was. Slightly cooler metal covered in wood stain to blend in. Something to alert of the breach. But seeing as Bucky wasn't here, he wouldn't show up. So Steve moved on into the room, not even locking the door behind himself as he set the bike against the wall and briefly explored the apartment's contents. Sparse and neglected smelling, but there was trash that didn't look completely rotten and a familiar smell that tickled at his nose till he recognized it for gun cleaning fumes.
"So, you were here pretty recently before this," he mused aloud, exploring the room more thoroughly. He found something else of interest hidden in the underside of the couch (because it was pretty easy to lift for him). "And it was you who bust up the dockside operation." He looked at the case with its faint stainless steel snake head marking etched on the surface and pulled it free. Steve looked at the other arsenal lurking in the couch frame, eyebrow raised, then lowered the couch gently and took a seat on it.
There was no reason to be in a hurry to leave. So he opened the case, looking at all the paperwork inside and the zipdrive, a small vial of clear, yellow fluid in a protective lining. He looked at the paper. Of course. German and in code.
So Steve was sitting there for some time, ballcap on the arm of the couch with his notepad and pencil, writing down words and puzzling through the code steadily by the time company showed up.