[Through the Eyes of You]

I'm sorry.

The person you are trying to reach is unavailable at the moment.

Please leave a message at the sound of the beep.

Beep.

You set the phone down, ending the call, while contemplating what you had even phoned the person for. It was a long process, one which surprised you, and in your head you attempted to sort out the events taking place before the call.
But everything was blurry, and you frowned in disgust.

Of course, that was when you realised a very frightening thing.
You didn't even know who'd been phoning.

Fearing the worst, you spun on you heels to see a darkness rising up behind you, eyes piercing the black with a deep blood red along with a malicious grin. It's hands reached out for your chest, and you came to conclude it was reaching for your soul.

Diving away, you rolled and stood, panting. What was going on?

A deafening roar shook the room you were in, the shadow creature coming around for you once more. And while the eyes held a menace, there was a happy glint, as if the creature was finally free of something or just enjoyed the thrill of the hunt.

You grimaced, deciding to run. You dashed forward and out a door, continuing to race anywhere where the evil phantom wasn't. Past other houses, through a spurt of traffic.

Yet, after your every attempt, it kept pace. It never relented, it's demonic face always near yours as a reminder of your failed, and failing, escape from its presence.

Closer and closer. Your heart was pounding, the blood had rushed to your ears. It thumped inside, the noise persisting like your breathing which was becoming ragged.

And then...it was gone.

Just...gone.

Everything. Not just the demon mist, everything. The cars, the roads. The sky, the ground.

Nothing remained; just you.

Listen.

Out of the nothing a voice spoke.

Listen.

This time a piece of chalk rolled your direction and you hesitantly picked it up, turning to find a blackboard to your left. Quietly you set down the piece of chalk and called out to the nothing.

"Hello?"

Listen.

"Is, is somebody out there? Out there...in the nothing?"

LISTEN!

"I...I thought I was alone...?"

No words spoke out to you now, it was dead silent. If you were to listen, there was nothing to listen to.

At least, until you turned back to the blackboard.

The very word was written: Listen.

Shaking, you jumped back a pace, your foot crushing the piece of chalk you'd set down only moments ago.

Hairs stood up on the back of your neck, and for the last moment a voice breathed down your back and a smiling, dark presence whispered in your ear.

Liiiisssstttteeeennnn

***

[Back in the Present]

"I don't know why I let you drag me into this."

Parking the car as crookedly as possible just to annoy him, you turned to Caster with your complaint. Here you sat, in his uncle's car, a frustrated look in your eyes.

But Caster only grinned. "Because we need to loosen up before we get to work on catching that villain."

"Loosen up?" The words sputtered out your mouth and your frustrated look changed to one of disbelief.

"You need you quit being a thinker for once and use more flipping oomph," your friend said this while hauling you from the driver seat.

"Oomph." You mumbled, closing the car door behind you as he continued to drag you down the sidewalk. "Right. Oomph, oomph, oomph, oomph."

Caster laughed. "Just come on!"

Indeed he did drag you around. Past people and cars, down sidewalks and across streets. When you reached your destination, he grinned up at you again.

"An air-soft place? Hahahahaha, no." Raising a hand, you were two seconds from dragging him to the car. "I don't play the game where you shoot people with demon dots."

"You do now." Flashing out a wallet, Caster pointed to the name on a specific card. "My uncle works here, I have money, and I already set us up to play a game from online. Now get your arse over here."

Once inside your group lined up, the referee gathering a few strays and sorting you into two teams.

That's when your real problems began.

Five, six-foot tall, professional air-soft players waltz right up to the ref and asked if they could play.

"So, d'you wanna do, just, these five, against all the rest of ya?" The ref wondered, making all these little happy gestures.

"Play? Freaking play?" You hissed, your eyes widening. You wanted to have a fun filled few hours of air-soft, not go up against seal team six!

But before you could express your discomfort out loud to everyone, this ten year old birthday boy, (you could tell with your deduction skills because of the hat he was wearing that literally said happy 10th birthday), raised his hand above the crowd. "WHOO HOO LETS DO IT!"

And so your troubles began.

The first course was called Area 51. And before you could even get off a shot, you were double tapped. Once in the mask and one in the neck. The freaking mask...which gave a nice painful vibe to the whole game. You groaned. Within minutes after that, everyone was annihilated. Gone!

Second course was called the Jungle. And after five minutes of happy pain and anguish, it was just you and Caster. Both of you were about to cross this small inside river that separated you from their base, when this jet stream of water shot from the stream.

It was one of players! They rose up, unplugged the barrel of their gun and lit you and Caster up.

"Hit the freaking ground!" Caster almost screamed, just as surprised as you.

"HOW LONG?!" You whisper-yelled at your comrade, feeling the spray of demon dots as you dropped to the floor. "How long was he waiting in that body of water?!"

No reply, but you were heated. This guy hasn't stopped shooting because he had a semi automatic and it burned. Not like a real bullet of course, but it burned. "Dude!" Was your shout. "You're not supposed to shoot someone thirty to thirty-five times!"

The man, almost through his mask, smiled. "If you can't handle the pain," he said, "don't. Play."

"Well it's not!" Caster fumed. "And it's gonna come back, and it's gonna bite you in the butt!" And because he didn't seem to have anything to finish that off, you used one of your mom's.

"Mister!" You finished. It was always your mom's thing back when she was alive, and she always had to put 'mister' at the end of it.

Our opponent snickered.
What a tool box! What a tool bench!

Then the last round. Place called Hamburger Hill. Caster and you cared about no one but that guy: Tool bench.

After army crawling your way up a dirt hill, you faced Caster. "If use my ice powers, we could...but that's not legal, is it?" He shook his head. "Okay then. The guy is on the other side. On three, we shoot."

"One..."
"Two..."
"THREE!!!"

Dropping to one knee, you held the trigger and didn't let go and just sprayed the guy.

Turning around, you knew if you didn't hit him, Caster could! So you turned, expecting to see Caster, and he wasn't there! "Caster!" You hissed, "shoot him!" Caster, unfortunately, fumbled with his gun and dropped it.

Sighing, you turned back around...only to find something celestial had taken place.

Because you had dropped to one knee, in proper Rambo stance, and because the guy had been facing away with his back to you, you had managed to shoot him maybe thirty to thirty-five times in the butt.

Grabbing Caster's gun, you got in his face and whisper-yelled to him. "We gotta go!"

So both of you barrel rolled down the hill and raced as fast as possible to the post where the players waited.

Not long after, Tool Bench crashed through and glared at each player. "WHO DID THIS?! SOMEONE SHOT ME! Thirty to thirty-five times!"

You and Caster simply smiled.

***

"Hydra."

Nodding to Caster, you pointed to the very tiny skull with tentacles residing on the edge of a doorframe.

"That's their symbol?" Caster asked, also nodding. "Seems kinda stupid to me."

"Same." You muttered. "Well, this is stop number five after loosening up. Let's see what we can find."

Entering the pawn shop, (or, at least, that was the cover), you rang the bell at the counter for assistance.

A man, in his late forties, came to the front with an annoyed expression; one that immediately changed to a smile when he spotted the two of you.

"How can I help?" He asked, a slight Russian accent mixed in his English.

You did you best to smile as well and flashed a quick glance to something on the corner of the counter, next to the bell.

"Is this you business card?"

You picked up the square piece of paper and waved it in the man's face, lipping it between your fingers like a coin. "I can see so because it says so on the front!"

His response was a groan. "Yes. Now, if you would mind leaving, I was about to go into a conference call."

"Oh no." You shook your head and beckoned to your companion behind you. "I'll just get going, and, you know, get out of the way." Caster have you a disbelieving look and you winked.

"Thank-" the man started.

"OH!" You grinned, pretending to be apologetic. "I didn't introduce myself. Sorry, I always forget that part. Well, I don't always forget...I just never remember." Cas snickered.

The owner grimaced and frowned, really acting like he needed to go when in reality he probably was going to report you. "O-Kay. Alright. Go ahead. Introduce yourself."

You smirked, not any bit apologetic now. You couldn't help yourself. "I'm Batman."

"OUT!"

***

Later, in the attic of Caster's house, he sat and shook his head in laughter. It was the only noise there, and it seemed he couldn't stop.

"Ice, that was great. I cannot believe you actually pissed him off. I mean, who does that?" Caster paused. "On another note, he was definitely suspicious. I don't know know what to make of his 'conference call' or what've it really was that he going to do."

You said nothing, sitting in the rafters after clearing out all the bugs and spiderwebs, waiting for him to continue. He continued.

"So, what do you think? You think he was connected with the Demon in my wall?"

Once again you left him in silence. You wanted to hear his thoughts on everything. It wasn't often you had someone else's opinion on this matter, much less someone on your side to talk about it.

"I bet he was. You explained it to me - everything - and if Converse has been involved and invoking Hydra, why should he stop?"

"Exactly." You whispered, just quiet enough that Caster still didn't hear you. What was he planning? He'd provoked you, had Loki basically torture your soul; what was the Devil after?

"How should we get to the bottom of this then? You have any ideas?" His voice echoed. "Ice?"

"Hellllllllooooooo?" He called, staring into the rafters and seeing nothing. "Ice, are you asleep? I need you ASAP!"

"Iiiiiiiicccccccceeeeeee!" Caster flailed, falling face-first.

Lifting his face up slowly and moaning, he sniffed and then sneezed, dust filling his nose.

"Achoo!"

You laughed and hung upside-down, swinging in his face. "Gesundheit."

Caster threw up his hands.
"I'm so done with you."

And as he stood and walked away, dragging his sweatshirt with him, you dropping from the rafters and following his form, something seemed to whisper from behind.

You didn't hear it, but it was there. Another noise, even more feint.

And as your shadow passed over a wall and you exited the attic through the door, another shadow followed:

A floating triangle with arms and legs.

***

Dark clouds hovered.

Wind whistled in the alley.

It howled with a deep menace, and the clouds remained, warning intruders to stay away.

'BEWARE!' they said.

It made lose papers become ripped away from staples on telephone poles and eerie sounds rode through ghost town on the same breeze.

And in the deepest part, on a street with no name, stood a figure. They stood alone, casually at that, and silently hummed.

More lose advertisements floated around, one catching on the leg of the strange person. They didn't even bother to shake it off, letting it wrap around their ankle before the wind caught it once more and sent it flying away.

Surrounding this strange, casual person was something to only make it stranger.

Bodies, lying flat on the ground. Some were bent at odd angles, and still others laid upon another. Corpses, they were. Dead, bloody, corpses.

Blood seeped from what looked like bullet wounds all over and the red stains dripping from those same wounds matched the figures red clothing.

The figure itself held a gun listlessly at their side, as if it had been nothing.

And maybe...maybe it had. Their casual stance seemed to prove that it had, in fact, been nothing. As if to say, 'Why, yes, I actually am better and faster than all of you'.

And now there was no mechanical laughter; there was no smile. If they took pride in these deaths there wasn't anything to prove it, unlike the stance They just stood there, as if contemplating.

Finally, after another breeze had blown through, they spoke.

The manor they said the words in weren't evil, nor were they haughty.

"They told me to check and see if my gun worked." They said, spinning the barrel with their free hand. They shrugged, stopping the barrel.

Then there was the small smile.

It was small, and yet it was the most obvious thing in the world.

The smile grew slightly wider.

"I checked."

"It worked."

_______
A/N:

It

Has been

So goddamn long (I'm sorry I swear I'm sorry I love you guys thank you for being here)

I'm real sorry, though. school hasn't made it any easier and I almost tossed this story under the bus before realizing I couldn't do that so here's a new update and please don't murder me I have anxiety

Anyways, I thought you guys would like some small bonding with Caster and well...yourself...and so I gave you guys some time to warm up to the two of you. Don't worry, I won't kill him off.
Yet.

I know you're probably wondering where everyone else has gone, like Loki, Coulson and the twins. No worries: I know what I'm doing- they'll be back, haha.

And now, time for me to take my leave but if you enjoyed please vote and comment!

no Satan I don't want your drugs I want the hours of sleep I willingly threw away for this fanfic no what did you say come back here you little shi-,
Styx