Chapter Thirty-Six - An Unbalanced Mind
'Go ahead,' Bucky said to Sam as they reached the location Sharon had sent. 'We'll be on the ground right behind you.'
Sam nodded, his jetpacks lifting him towards the roof, the wings guiding him out of view. 'Plan?' Clara asked, searching the building for any signs of moment, none of which she could find.
'Side door,' Bucky pointed to the alley running beside the building. 'We'll go in quiet until we know exactly what's going on.'
'Got it.' Clara took a step closer to the alley, but a hand on her arm stopped her. 'What?'
'Do me a favour?' He asked her, genuine concern in his expression. 'Stay with me, stay in sight, and stay out of any fights you can otherwise avoid.'
'Got it.'
'I'm serious, Clara,' he pressed.
'So am I,' she reassured him. 'We should probably go now, right?'
'Come on.' He let go of her arm, jogging across the road with long strides, making it feel more like a sprint to Clara. Still aching, she had to focus on moving her legs, hoping they'd wake up soon enough.
Reaching a metal door, Bucky spoke again. 'By the way, about what you said back in the apartment - about the electrical impulses in the body. Can you really do that?'
'No clue,' Clara said, watching him press his hands first at the top of the door, then the bottom. Seeing it give slightly in both place, he knew the lock was in the centre. 'I don't see why I couldn't - the theory's there, but I don't exactly feel like testing it out.'
Pacing back a step, Bucky braced his non-dominant leg. 'You don't feel like it, or you don't want to know the answer?'
'What's the difference?' She asked, watching as he lifted his other foot and slammed it into the door beside the handle. 'And why are you opening the door like that when you can just use your arm?'
'One means you'd be up to trying it at some point or another, and the other means you'd only ever use it as a last resort,' he told her, stepping into the building and looking down the hallway to his left, then up the stairs to his right. 'This way.' He started up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He stopped when a purple glow caught the corner of his eyes. 'What the-?'
'What?' Clara shrugged. 'You said not to be invisible.'
Bucky looked her up and down, not seeing her, exactly, but her silhouette. Like a human-shaped cloud of purple energy. Almost like a ghost. 'Yeah, I guess,' he narrowed his eyes at her. 'As long as we can see you.'
'Exactly, and no one will know it's me, so let's- Watch out!' Clara braced as a body flew over the handrail and into Bucky, the conversation distracting them both enough to miss any signs the Flag Smasher was approaching.
The masked man threw a fist into Bucky's face, Bucky taken off-guard and falling into the wall. The man grabbed Bucky, holding him in a choke-hold. Bucky kicked a foot against the wall, forcing the Flag Smasher to stumble back into a pillar on the opposite side of the stairwell.
With Bucky free of his hold, the man punched out again. This time, Bucky gripped his wrist, tugging him towards him slightly as he kicked the man in the ribs.
Clara folded her arms, waiting for Bucky to stop playing around as he tossed the other man over the railing. He jumped down after him, Bucky punching him in the chest and launching him into a brick wall, the man subsequently flying straight through it.
Clara jumped over the railing, seeing the man now unconscious with Bucky standing over him, making sure he wouldn't rise again. 'Stay there,' he said, pointing at the Flag Smasher. Clara frowned.
'What was that?'
'What?' Bucky strode past and back to the stairs.
'Did you just tell him to... stay there?' Clara giggled, not able to help herself.
'Shut it,' Bucky grumbled, once again taking the stairs two at a time.
'Only if you slow down!' Clara called after him. They reached the sound of fighting after not many more flights of stairs, heading into a well-lit room with Sam, Walker, and four Flag Smashers. 'Well, at least it's even.'
Clara watched as two of the Flag Smashers broke away from the fight against Sam and Walker. They both started towards her and Bucky with hands lifting, holding the handles of knives. The threw the knives towards the pair almost as though they were throwing spears rather than knives.
Still, their technique of doing so didn't hamper the power behind the blades' trajectory, and they moved across the room in less than a second, stopping only amidst two small clouds of purple energy. 'You want just the one?' Clara asked Bucky, letting the one she had stopped a foot from his nose drop into his palm. 'Or do you not trust me enough to let me keep mine?'
To answer her question, Bucky snatched the other from where it was suspended mind air. Giving both a quick twirl between his fingers, testing the differing weight of each before adjusting his grip ever-so-slightly on one of the two.
He took on both of the Flag Smashers at once, leaving Clara standing a little way back from him. She was somewhat glad to see another of the group rush into the room behind Lemar, and even more glad to see the woman change course to fight Clara instead. Clara wasn't sure why, maybe the woman just saw the glowing purple thing as more of a challenge.
That probably made it that bit more embarrassing for her when she fell over a neon purple tripwire, and was sent sprawling across the floor. Clara sniggered a tad, seeing the anger flare in the Flag Smasher as she scrambled to her feet.
'Clara, stop messing around!' Bucky yelled over the din of the fight. She pouted, thinking it wasn't exactly fair that he was allowed to and she wasn't.
She mumbled a curse under her breath, letting the Flag Smasher, now riled and her head clouded with a new wave of rage, charge towards her. Clara focused now, because this was something she knew how to defend against, even without using her gifts. If it was a normal human being, anyway.
In this case, she tuned into the energy surrounding the woman, feeling the thermal energy, the kinetic energy, and most notably, the gravitational potential energy. All the things you create during movement, and things that, if adjusted from what they should be, might just slow the Flag Smasher down enough to give Clara the ability to do what she had been shown in her training.
When things started feeling heavy for the woman, Clara could see her being dragged into a slower pace. When the woman reached her, bent double in her charge, her shoulder pushed into Clara's torso, her head under her arm. Clara hooked that arm around the woman's neck.
Squeezing tight with the woman in a headlock, Clara fell back, using the momentum to throw the woman over her before rolling backwards to straddle her chest. Lifting a hand as the Flag Smasher tried to rise, she sent a blast of energy down towards her, slamming her back into the hard floor.
The blast was just enough to have the woman's head striking the floor, knocking her unconscious without any major damage. 'And stay down,' Clara said, pointing down at her as she got to her feet. When Bucky raised an eyebrow at her, having just thrown both knives either side of his opponents head, she shrugged. 'I thought that was a thing we were doing now?'
'On your six,' he nodded behind her, and she turned to see another Flag Smasher run into the room a little too deftly for Clara's liking.
'Well, she's healed up nicely,' she mumbled, watching Karli run towards Walker with a knife raised over her head. Another was holding him back, arms wrapped around the new Captain America. Karli yelled as her legs propelled her closer, then yelled again when Lemar ran at her from the side, knocking her off her feet. 'Help Sam, I've got-'
She cut herself off as Karli punched a fist into Lemar's chest, a silence dropping over the room as everyone turned to see what had caused such a loud cracking sound.
Walker broke free of the other man's hold, and ran to his partner's side. Lemar sat upright against a pillar, the crack having come from from the stone splitting in two. A red smear spread along the beige stone, it didn't look as though Lemar was going to be getting back up again.
'Hey, hey, hey,' Walker said softly, lowering himself beside his friend. 'Lemar? Lemar, come on.'
When he didn't respond, and when no pulse was found, he slowly rose to stand. Clara looked from him to Karli, seeing she had removed her mask, her eyes wide at what she had done. Then, Clara looked to Sam and Bucky, a scowl deep in her brow.
'Clara, no,' Bucky warned.
A few pairs of footsteps ran from the room as Clara pressed her lips into a thin line, wanting to disobey orders, but knowing she should at least try to do as told. She should at least try to trust in the two men.
Sam nodded, heading past her to the doorway, Bucky in tow. 'Not without us.'
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