A Boy Scout lands in Derleth's zombie apocalypse and runs into something who is familiar and yet....
not.
⚠
Zombie gore!
He didn’t tap his ear comm on, not yet. Instinct was an operative’s best friend, especially in the case of sudden changes to the environment. Which was an understatement, Bucky thought, as he let instinct’s laser focus take over. The environment had more than changed, but that was an assessment left for later.
Out in the open? Cover first. The rubble of a partially-downed building served just fine. He crouched into a recess and checked his pockets to take stock of what he had on his person. Considering that his fingers grazed both custom handguns concealed under his arms, that lowered the odds that someone had drugged and dumped him. No smart captor would let their hostage loose with their weapons intact.
Unless there was some sort of game going on, anyway. That wasn’t unheard of. Bucky’s brow furrowed. He removed one handgun and checked it. Loaded. Alright.
Next: unfamiliar location that he couldn’t recall ever being transported to? A glance around marked a few signs. Street signs weren’t always helpful. Every town had a Main, a Park, a First, Second, and Third. He peered again and caught a placard for what must have been an attorney’s office at one point. Dunwich, MA. It wasn’t anywhere near where he expected to be.
His hand hovered over the ear comm, but he dropped it. Motion in his peripheral made him whip around with a tenacity that betrayed his otherwise calm state. His left arm snatched something out of the air and crushed it. It crumpled easily, but realization dawned that it did so only because it was a paper airplane and no match against a bionic fist.
He was nearly about to release his grip and take a look when a noise -- something shuffling -- piqued his attention. The natural conclusion was that it had to be the sound of whoever threw the paper airplane turning heel or repositioning. The gun was steadied and he breathed in…
It was a smooth pivot out of cover and his aim was squared right over the figure that was moving toward him. He was about to tell them to stand down and stay put, but instead all he could do was cut loose a heavy sigh. The broken-limbed amble was telling enough, but if that required any back-up, then the entirely-missing jaw sold Bucky on at least the immediate question of what was going on.
“Are you shitting me right now?” Zombies. Zombies. Was it worth wasting a bullet?
Are you shitting me right now?
When you were sifting through broken buildings for supplies to leave survivors with, any noise felt like a siren going off in Natasha's head. She quietly set her bag of goods down and ventured down the voice. A quick scan of the area saw a few walkers hobbling around. One was crawling, having lost its legs somewhere along the way. Then she saw the owner of the voice, and his gun pointed at one of the zombies.
She wore her Widow's costume, because the fabric had been made by Tony Stark and that meant it was a lot more impervious to regular damage than anything else she owned at the moment. And if she needed to, she had one more suit that would cover it: the white quantum suit with the helmet. It was meant for time travel, but it would also put an extra layer of projection if needed. Her hair was also braided the way it had been on Vormir. It seemed pointless to take it out at this point when there was nowhere to bathe.
There was a flash of red and black as she moved as quickly as she could toward the man's side. Sometimes those super powers came in spurts, and she was grateful the speed had worked in her face. Her hand closed over the top of the weapon, but she was able to note that it was custom work easily. Maybe even Russian, but she hadn't gotten that close an inspection.
"Unless you want to alert every single one of them within hearing range, I suggest you holster that." Natasha's voice was quiet, low enough not to be heard above the wind, but just enough that he could hear. Of course, being close enough to see the earpiece helped with that.
Maybe it was for the best that some of his more impulsive urges were currently being tamped down by a level head. That wasn’t always the case for Bucky, but… sometimes it was. Sometimes. And right now it kept him steady in the spot and barely flinching as someone darted right to his side at inhuman speed.
His mouth tugged into a taut line, but he held his gun out even as the woman laid some pressure on it. Not a disarm, then. Interesting choice on her part. His eyes darted to close range to try and make out something to identify her, only to be met with at best an overview: red hair and a black bodysuit. Given that he wasn’t completely pulling his attention from the undead walking, he wasn’t getting a face.
Still. Red hair always played at his memories in a certain way. If not for her speaking, he would have thought for a split second that it was Natasha. Wrong voice. And that, summarily, ended that whiff of hope.
“That you telling me you got a read on how many there are?” he asked, voice low. If she was lying, then she was lying. He could look like a fool for it. If she was being honest, then he actually wasn’t trying to attract a hoard of walking dead to deal with before he figured out the first thing about how he’d come to here. “Wasn’t gonna waste a bullet on one, but I need some quick math, Red.”
"There's seven within easy walking distance. Three of them are in a group. They can already smell us. Taking them would be easy." Natasha's grip on the gun stayed firm. This way she could see how determined this man was to take the shot. His stance suggested active military service of some kind. His clothing did not.
Her Widow's bite lit up at her wrist. She was willing to shock him if necessary.
"But you and I are in the middle of a small city. There's zombies everywhere, and a gunshot is loud enough to bring all of them toward the sound. We're too close to our campus for me to let that happen." The voltage turned up. "So make your choice."
He listened, quiet and focused. The thing that broke his focus was the powering up a device around the woman’s wrist. There was a small inhale as Bucky’s eyes fell on what looked like a Widow’s Bite. And if it was truly that, then he knew where the next moment would go if he didn’t stand down.
A fight, probably.
Maybe an EMP.
He could fend it off, but was that a smart choice now that new information had surfaced?
Bucky’s arm lowered. “Silencer would cut the worst of it, but point taken.” He hadn’t gotten a look at her face -- she snuck up, and then she was too close, and he was keeping the walker in his sight. Maybe that was a mercy because he wasn’t sure what he’d do if it was a face he knew and yet again belonging to someone who didn’t know who he was. He wasn’t in a rush to turn, but it was getting to the point where it was unavoidable.
“What’s the play? Cut and run?”
"I've got a bag and some supplies in that building. Been scavenging to help some of the survivors." Not many people would notice the way her muscles relaxed just the slightest in the situation. She was glad she didn't have to argue with someone in the middle of town. He clearly wasn't one of the survivors in the area; he would know not to use a gun. Even one with a silencer. There was a crumpled piece of paper into his hand which she would bet was Eliot's letter.
Natasha powered down the Bite, but kept her thumb near the power in case she needed it again. She'd left her spear against the outside wall across the alley from where he was. "I'm going to go get them. You can come with me, or you can stick around here. If you come with me, I can at least fill you on what's going on."
Bucky was quiet for a second. Inside his mind he was trying to file all the inputs into some semblance of order. For one, that invitation was either because she was trusting him or because she was not and wanted to keep an eye on him. He caught that the Widow’s Bite was dormant again, which meant in the immediate present he was not going to be shocked into submission. Maybe that was a point towards trust. Or, maybe she had been through this before. It did sound like a routine.
He steeled himself and forced his gaze to fall on her face. Either way, it was going to be a punch to the gut. It wasn’t her. He could see the ghost of someone else in her face, but it wasn’t her. Alright. Time to move on. He couldn’t spend any more time on wishful thinking.
“Guess we’re a team now.” It was the smartest call. You didn’t let someone walk away if they were remotely a threat or if they had information. He could assess things as they carried on, which seemed like a good idea as the one zombie started to slowly… slowly close in. “I’m sure it’s a great story how things ended up like this.”
"The zombies are just the current problem in a whole line of problems," she answered softly, but there was a hint of weariness to her voice. A timber in her tone that seemed haunted, but you had to really listen to hear it. "The big problem is — hang on."
That slow lingering zombie was going to raise noise soon. Natasha swiftly pulled a set of knives from her belt. She didn't use them most of the time, preferring a more hands on approach, but these could be used for short distances. Say, the distance it would take for her to throw into a zombie's eye socket and into its brain. She calculated the risk to retrieve it. The knife would reset with her, but those supplies with not.
"How quiet can you be?"
’A whole line of problems’ resonated in Bucky’s ears. Of course it was more than just zombies. It always was some convoluted mess. At least years of this exact thing had given him a calm outlook on being told there was more bad news. Achieving an unflappable core was really just a matter of being flapped over and over until it stopped working.
He noted her knives and raised a brow. It wasn’t surprising for a woman wearing something kitted like Natasha’s Widow Suit was. He was sure there were a few more tricks hidden that she hadn’t revealed yet.
“Very,” he replied, voice still low. “Former boy scout. Mastered it.”
"Alright, Boy Scout. Follow me. And bring the paper airplane."
Natasha was on the short side, at least compared with the alternative universe version of herself that Bucky knew, so ducking low for her wasn't a big deal. The alley was littered with overgrown weeds and plants that had decided to flourish in the aftermath of whatever caused the zombie outbreak. Probably a virus. It always seemed to be a virus or infection in the movies, didn't it?
She wondered how long it had taken for the cities to fall. The Red Room has its projections for biochemical or biological warfare. Cities always fell first because there were too many so close together. Rural areas would be hit later, but still ultimately fall. Especially when you considered that those who hadn't been affected — either through luck or denial — would attempt to flee.
She snagged the spear and headed inside the building. There were two bags with supplies leaning against an interior wall. The paint on the walls was flaked and peeling. In the corner was an unlucky zombie who had come up against Natasha's spear when she'd found him.
He gave the woman a nod of understanding, then glanced briefly at the crumpled paper in his hand. Unsure why it mattered, but trying to oblige the request, he folded it in half, then again and pocketed it.
It wasn’t too hard to keep up with her. Beyond the terrain not being too difficult, he had cut his teeth as Captain America’s scout. Being quiet and nimble was a skill set that evolved with him, but it never got lost.
Inside the building he crept up to the edge of a shattered window and peered out. It was more of the same: destruction, demise. A few zombies were wandering around in the distance, but they didn’t seem to be targeting anything given the varied directions of their paths. Satisfied that no one was going to ambush,, he returned to where the bags were. A fast glance was all it took to pick out which was heavier, and he immediately reached out to shoulder it.
“That your friend over there? The skewered one?” The spear was a dead giveaway, but he was still assessing the situation. And also assessing his company.
There was no way this man could know that she'd lost one of her friends to this infection, and the slightest twitch of her eyebrow may have given away that something wasn't right with her. Just a few more days, Natasha told herself. She pursed her lips and frowned at the bag he'd just lugged over his shoulder. It shouldn't have bothered her — almost anyone would have offered to carry a bag — but she could see him assessing everything.
More than military then. Special ops?
"Brother, actually. Can't you see the resemblance?" She pulled her mouth into a grimace that resembled the one on the corpse.
That earned a fleeting smirk. He wasn’t known for handing them out much, but the woman wouldn’t know that at all. It was the humor. Dark, sarcastic. He knew the sound of someone leaning back on the gallows humor when they were cleaning up after the deceased. Her composure was giving him more than a hint that she wasn’t new to this.
He adjusted the bag on his shoulder and scanned the room. If only he’d packed his knife in this jacket, but something else would have to do in the meanwhile if it came down to needing something quieter to defend with. There was an upended stool with a broken leg. He leveraged the seat with a foot and tore the splintered wood free with maybe more ease than a normal person would.
“How long has this line of problems been going on for?” He asked. “I get a feeling if I tell you that I woke up here a few minutes ago that you wouldn’t flinch at that.”
Natasha pulled the other bag off the ground and threw it over her shoulder. Her super strength lingered, though it wasn't as effective as she liked. There was one more cabinet to check before vacating the area, and as she pulled open the door, a cloud of dust rained down. She turned her head away from it.
She paused to make sure that she wasn't going to cough and give their location away. When she was sure of it, she glanced up at him. There was something familiar about him, but she didn't recognize him so who knew why that was? "About a year? Some of us longer, some of us less. Time sort of… blurs together. Everything happens in weeks."
Natasha gestured toward his pocket. "The letter might be a good starting place before we head out."
The letter? Since she was pointing at his pocket, he was able to put one and one together. The stool leg was leaned against his leg as he pulled the paper out and unfolded it. He only paused to give her a look that suggested he was going to entertain the party trick but didn’t believe it would be worth the time. It was his baseline cynicism. Paper planes didn’t carry letters that nicely tied up what the plot was.
He cast his eyes on the letter and started to read.
Maybe paper planes did nicely tie up what the plot was.
“Pocket dimension,” he muttered, as he continued to read the letter. His other hand grazed his ear comm and tapped it on. Static. As expected for a pocket dimension. He tapped it off and let his gaze rest on the words for a lingering few more seconds. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any high grade magic types or tech geniuses around to help find the door out?”
So he knew about pocket dimensions. Most people knew about them in theory, but didn't immediately jump to ideas of magic or tech for ways out of them. Half the people here hadn't even heard of pocket dimensions before getting here. Natasha filed that fact away.
"We do. We've been working on it for a year."
She headed toward the door, resting her back against the wall before she peaked around to take a gander at the immediate surroundings. A couple of them were wandering. She watched their shambling to see if they were aimlessly wandering or if they had gotten their scent. Aimless, she decided after a few seconds of studying them.
"Derleth doesn't like to be messed with, so it's an ongoing process."
She tightened her grip on the spear as she headed out of the doorway and toward the two lazy zombies. She quietly dispatched one with the spear from behind.
This was… conversational. Not exactly the way he figured this day would go: in a pocket dimension with zombies, following someone who reminded him of Natasha, shooting the shit about all of the aforementioned. Well, not shooting the shit, but at least trading answers for questions in a strategic way.
Emotions weren’t helpful. Freaking out wasn’t his thing. He could be thoroughly frustrated about everything later. In safety. Alone.
Bucky stepped forward as the first zombie was taken down without more than a wet, soft noise from the spear’s puncture. He gave the stool leg a quick survey, then turned it over in his hand so that the metal-sheathed pointy end was facing out. The noise of it breaking through skull and into whatever remained of gray matter was layered and dense. Thud, crunch, squick. It was the force behind the blow that made it both quiet and quick. He held the zombie upright as it stopped moving, then he lowered it gingerly to avoid any other noise.
“Why’s Derleth sound like it's sentient?” He whispered back. He planted a boot on the zombie’s neck and pulled the stool leg free, unfazed.
It might have looked funny from the outside, the pair of them both jabbing a zombie in the head and then slowly lowering it so that it didn't make much of a sound. To Natasha, it just told her the things she needed to know: zombies didn't phase him, he was resourceful, killed with ease, and knew how to leave a crime scene. Definitely wetworks, but from where?
"It feels that way. Maybe it is."
She shrugged a shoulder before wiping the end of the spear on what clothing was left on the zombie. How many days did they have left of this shit? Whatever it was, it was one too many. At least when they were dealing with the monsters with super sensitive hearing, Butler Hall was safe. They could just stay inside if they wanted to. There were supplies built up in people's rooms. Magic and powers worked, even if they couldn't kill the damn things.
"Sometimes when we poke at it, it likes to mess with us."
“Great.” His tone was derisive -- a man admiring how shitty his luck was to end up here and merely resolving it as par for the course.
“Would hate anything to be easy,” he added in hushed tones, maybe not to his current field partner so much as to the world at large. Possibly even to Derleth, if it was listening.
He adjusted the bag on his shoulder again and gave her a nod. He could walk and process. Besides, every field operative knew that reducing time away from base was a good tactic. Complete a mission, then get back. Back to whatever this supposed campus was. It felt uncomfortable being the one without intel, but so far he hadn’t seen a single trick. Well, beyond the ever-growing suspicion that whoever this was, she had to be somehow affiliated with the Widows and he couldn’t grasp how.
He could ask.
But asking was also telling. Not about her, but about himself. He kept his mouth shut for now.
Anyone worth their salt could tell that she was creating a winding maze back to the campus. It might be more difficult for this guy to figure out where he'd been and how he'd gotten to campus, but it was more important not to lure any of those creatures — or rogue survivors — after them. She let him chew on that information in silence as she led them back.
The campus itself was in its original state, or at least as close to its original state in the universe that the alternative Julia had created the network in. Here, it was crumbled and desolate. A relic to a time when education was somehow more important than survival skills. They walked past boarded up doors and windows. They walked past blood streaks on the sidewalks. They walked past no one.
Once they came upon the Greenhouse — just as shattered and overgrown as theirs — they were near Butler. She'd had to make another pass around the Green, currently an overlarge lawn than the oversmall forest, to make sure there were no stragglers around. A pair on patrol could take it from there.
On the steps of Butler, she gestured to a ladder. The doors and windows downstairs were boarded up to prevent anyone from coming in. "I'll bet you your name that you've got a key in your pocket that you've never seen before."
It was a lot to take in purely because in the midst of this wasteland was what looked like a genuine college campus. Bucky didn’t know what he expected, but he assumed campus to be less… scholastic. To his credit, he sat on a quip about being a school drop-out. Information that wasn’t necessary and information that was personal were both best left unsaid. Still, the fact stood that he was a drop-out standing on the grounds of what must have been an Ivy League type of institution.
Go figure.
He stood beside the redhead and gave her a sidelong look. “That means you could have planted it and you just want my name,” he told her. But, in the wake of everything, he shrugged and nodded a vague agreement. The bag against his back shifted as he dug into one pocket. Nope, not there. Then, the other.
His fingers touched something small and metallic. The serrated edge of a key was easy to detect. He withdrew it and held it up. “What if I told you ‘Boy Scout’ suits fine for now?”
"I could have, but I didn't. Derleth gives people rooms. Does it have a number on it?" Sometimes they had numbers, sometimes they didn't. It all depended on whether Derleth wanted them to find their room easily or not. Natasha gave a chuckle under her breath, the corner of her lip curling up. "If you wanna stay Boy Scout, that's up to you, but most of us have been here long enough not to care about hiding who we are."
Besides, a lot of people didn't need codenames, but she'd bet he had one that wasn't Boy Scout. Maybe it had something to do with the military.
"You can call me Natasha. Natasha Romanoff."
Bucky had been in the middle of inspecting the key, which did have a number, but what that number was fell clear out of his mind at the mere sound of a name. His brow furrowed as he stared, unfocused, at the object in his hands.
Pocket dimension? It probably made sense that people from other worlds were tossed in, even if he hadn’t unpacked that particular thought much. Reality-hopping wasn’t his thing, but he knew it was out there. And he knew that there were plenty of other Buckies out in the multi-verse, which implied that there were also Natasha Romanovs. Or Romanoffs, as it were.
He looked at her. Really looked at her as he tried to wrap his mind around every previous thought he’d had that she was familiar somehow.
“James,” he offered. It was a concession. Part of one anyway. “Yeah, it’s got a number.”
"That'll make it easier to find your room. Sometimes the campus likes to play jokes. Leave off the room number. At least all the doors are accessible this time. Two weeks ago, you'd have to climb rolling library ladders for every single door. They also liked to swap locations and heights."
Clint Barton hadn't been all that covert when he found out that she was her world's Natasha, and judging from the slightly unfocusing of his eyes when she said her name, he might know her too. From what Barton said, though, there were a whole lot of superheroes, and James was as common as Steves. He had one up on her, it seemed.
She climbed the ladder and dropped onto the second floor hallway. She did not wait for him to follow, assuming that he would regardless of an express invitation here. She'd already invited him back to the campus; he didn't really need one to get into Butler anymore.
As she ascended the ladder, he had taken to turning the key around in his fingers. It bought few seconds of processing to deal with how, once again, there was a Natasha who looked at him without seeing him. Maybe it was blunted by the fact that she was different enough -- physically, appearance-wise -- that he could distance from that sting. But this ride had been taken before, and he still hated what it made him feel. It was an old wound that kept getting clawed at.
No use standing around like an idiot. He grabbed onto the ladder and followed her up. Before he let himself get too caught up in emotions, he should get a better lay of the land. Figure out who was around. There were tactical things to take care of before he would let himself sit and plan.
He jumped from the ladder and gave a quick survey of the hallway. He didn’t try to meet her eyes, if she was even looking at him. “Where do you want this bag? Figure I can drop it, and then get out of your hair to find where 526 is.”
The silence didn't bother her. She assumed that landing in a pocket dimension with someone who had the same name as someone you knew — however well that was — had to be disconcerting. With infinite universes, there was a Natasha for everyone. Hopefully this one wasn't still with the Red Room and serving them as Taskmaster. Or something worse.
Natasha held out her hand. "I can take it from here. Tomorrow night is going to be your first reset. About 1:30 in the morning, we all end up back in our dorm rooms in the exact same condition we arrived in. Clothes, hygiene, injuries. That means if you die here, you come back as you were the next week."
Then because she wanted to judge what side of the fence he was on, she added, "Two of ours will be back next week. Rose Wilson and Steve Rogers are usually here, but they were bitten by zombies a few days ago. They had to be…" She swallowed, and that wasn't for show. "...taken care of."
That answered a question. Steve Rogers -- or at least one of them -- was here. Then, the context sunk in. It meant Natasha’s hand lingered, open and waiting, for two seconds longer than she should have to. His expression was inscrutable, but that was only from the grace of taking some time during his climb up the ladder to steel himself once more.
Bucky shook himself. He lifted the bag and let the straps transition to Natasha’s grip.
“That’s grim. I hear guys named Rogers bounce back pretty damn well, resets or not.” He looked down for a moment, just a brief reprieve. “Doesn’t mean losing one of the team isn’t tough. Sorry,” he continued, but that was spoken in concert with a pivot. Clearly he was trying to extract from the conversation, and perhaps that was for both their sakes.
"Sounds like we both know how stubborn guys named Rogers are, too."
She took the bag and tossed it over her shoulder. She'd have to sort through it one more time to make sure all the items could be used by the survivors. Natasha planned on leaving her guns and all the ammo she had, as well as all the other weapons she had on her person. That included her grappling line and hook among other things. She just needed it for another day. Just in case.
Thankfully, it would all reset with her, including that ammo.
"Five-twenty six will be the fifth floor, but you probably already figured that out."
That one-armed toss of the bag that he caught out of the corner of his eye earned a brow raise, but Bucky didn’t actually say anything. It wasn’t her. She wasn’t the same person. Not really. Comparing wasn’t fair.
“Copy that,” he replied, now over his shoulder. Only when she couldn’t see his face anymore did he exhale. “Shit.”