Logs:Operation:S.P.I.C.E.

Operation:S.P.I.C.E.
Suffering Physicist Impelled into Chaotic Exfiltration
Dramatis Personae Clint, Natasha	2023-09-10 (Part of Avengers TP.
Location Hotel Zimmerbrau, St. Wolfgang, Austria
It's a pleasant little 5-story hotel located in the center of St. Wolfgang, just a few blocks away from the docks. The first two floors are comprised of a restaurant and brewery, with the entrance facing a small courtyard complete with benches and tables, and stone-paved roads extending out in every direction -- forming narrow, winding, branching paths tucked between dozens of colorful buildings. The three floors above the restaurant are reserved for compact, affordable hotel rooms -- each with their own wood balcony. Business is slow -- not a lot of hustle and bustle this late in the evening. The sun's dipping down, casting a metallic tangerine glow across the sky and southern lake. Just a few staff linger downstairs, cleaning up the restaurant for closing time. Only a handful of residents and tourists are on the streets. Most of them are coming back from the docks. Room 401 in Hotel Zimmerbau is sparsely decorated with maple-wood paneling and a sliding glass door (currently closed) that leads out to the 4th floor balcony overlooking the courtyard below. Its sole resident -- Niklas Klaus, a lean man in his 50s -- is frantically shoving as many articles of clothing as he can inside an open suitcase on the bed. He is balding, white, and has a salted beard in desperate need of a trim. He's wearing one of those obnoxiously loud orange-to-blue shirts peppered with palm-tree silhouettes. It practically screams his status as a tourist. Up until a few hours ago, he has been living under an assumed identity -- but just one nervous phone-call to SHIELD has changed all of that. Now? Niklas is ready to come in and tell them everything he knows about Project DEEPWELL. First, though... he needs to find that damned extra pair of clean underwear. Probably, that fourth-floor balcony does not have a staircase leading to or from it. Probably Niklas did not abandon a tall redhead out there. In his current situation, though, maybe it's not all that unexpected that there is a woman out there now, in black pants with an RPG character's abundance of belt-hangings, black boots and a leather jacket, hair sensibly braided behind her back. She's hopping light and agile up over the railing from below and -- was the door locked, it doesn't seem to be much barrier as she's fiddling with the handle and letting herself in like she belongs. "Usually," Natasha says by way of greeting, "it's best to have your go-bag ready before you have to. Go." Her eyes are ticking appraisingly around the room first, then the scientist himself. "And you do have to go. Took us about three point five seconds after you called us to pinpoint your location and trust me when I say, SHIELD are not the only people who are sniffing after you." Niklas, who was just in the process of turning to empty the contents of a dresser, spins his head around in time to find himself faced with a red-head who looks like she's geared out for a raid boss. His first reaction is a reflexive: "{Oh shit!}" -- German. His second reaction is to fumble, rather clumsily, for something he's got tucked behind his back... it takes nearly half a second, and by the time he's gotten it out, it's clear that it's some sort of stun-gun -- minus the cartridge. When he presses down on the trigger, it produces a rather unintimidating bzzzt, a wisp of white-hot electricity arching between the two prods. But then, the words she's saying seems to sink in, and... the stun-gun drops a few inches. His eyes go wide. "{Do you usually--}" He shifts languages, recognizing she's speaking in English -- he has a distinct Bavarian-Austro inflection: "Do you people not use... doors?" He's already reaching for his suitcase, though -- the stun-gun is still out, held in his other hand, watching Natasha... warily. She is absolutely not what he was expecting; he's still on edge. "Do you... have... some ID?" He seems uncertain about precisely what kind of ID he's asking for, here. Then -- as if right on cue -- there's a knock on the room's actual door. "{Herr Klaus? We're here to pick you up.}" This is German, too; spoken by a woman by the sound of it. Not a native German speaker -- British, maybe? Niklas's gaze sweeps from the red-head to the door, then back to the red-head. His grip on the stun-gun tightens; he freezes in place, like a deer caught in the headlights. Nat's eyes flick down to the stun gun. Back up to Niklas. In the next moment she's over on the other side of him -- he's barely been shifted in space but the stun gun is in her hand, now, and in its place in his hand, an yellow and white badge with a barcode at the bottom and SHIELD's eagle stamped slightly holographic over the face. It's not her ID; it has Klaus's name already printed there together with GUEST. "{We use the door when the doors are safer,}" comes back smoothly, her accent in the German quite similar to his own, "{but when --}" But then there's that knock at the door. "{You should tell them you're packing,}" comes firm but much softer. The stun gun is switched off and tucked into Niklaus's own pocket as Nat steers him toward the window she came in from. Things happen... very quickly. Far too quickly for Niklas to even really understand them. One moment, he was holding a stun-gun, looking in Nat's direction, terrified -- in the next, she's -- wait, when did she --?! He lifts the ID, staring at it obliviously, as if trying to figure out the exact process by which his stun-gun transmuted into an ID card... one with his name on it -- but as he swings around to regard her, that expression of stunned shock on his expression -- he seems to 'catch on'. He swallows, nervously fidgeting with the card, forgetting the luggage as Natasha steers him toward the window. He barely even registers the stun-gun as he calls out, voice cracking: "{J - just a minute, I'm... still packing...}" The tension in his voice is nearly palpable. On the other side of the door, Nat might make out the woman briefly muttering an unintelligible question to someone else. Whatever answer comes, she and Niklas are already slipping out the window when there's a soft keening sound at the door -- like an electric drill powering up. bzzzzzzn... All three interior hinges of the door are suddenly vaporized with a sharp popping sound -- k-SCHT! -- as they vanish in an erupting cloud of dust and splinters. The entire door drops flat as a heavy black steel-toed boot shoves it down... and then, alongside its partner, proceeds to march right in across it. The woman stepping inside is 6 feet of anger issues. Stocky build, pale skin -- hair buzzed down to peach-fuzz. Maybe in her mid-30s. She's wearing a bulky, heavy black coat -- by the way it lays on her, she's likely got some sort of body-armor on underneath it. She takes one look at Nat and Niklas, already out on the balcony, and immediately growls: "Mother fuckers--" She breaks out into a sprint. By the look of it, she has no intention of stopping once she reaches the balcony -- at this speed, it's not even clear whether she could. Clint is perched on the roof of a taller building nearby, dressed in no-nonsense tactical black with an even-less-nonsense compound bow and a rather overengineered quiver. He has a commanding view of the area, though right now his attention is fixed on one particular balcony of one particular hotel. "Need a line?" he asks conversationally. Probably rhetorically, too, as he's already thumbing a dial on his bow and reaching back to pluck the first of the two arrows his quiver (maybe just the right amount engineered, after all) dutifully dispenses in response. It's got a hefty shaft and an even heftier head, which is perhaps why, after drawing a bead on the balcony he raises the line of his aim and fires it up at the empty air above the hotel. Was there supposed to be a line unspooling from the arrow as it flies? That probably isn't helping its already dicey aerodynamics, but it thunks unerringly into the concrete lip of the balcony--thoughtfully placed in Nat's peripheral vision. A tiny charge inside the arrowhead goes off and splits it into three prongs that anchor solidly in place with a second, deeper 'thunk'. The second arrow--attached to the other end of the line with its own clever spool--was in Clint's hand before the first one even hit. Though he'd be too far away to hear the grapple arrow's anchor charge even if he could hear, he still fires the second arrow the very moment the first one is secured. This time he actually looks kind of like he's aiming at the balcony, but the unwieldy arrow is destined for an alleyway across the street down the block, right above a sleek black motorcycle parked out of easy view from the street. As arrow the second thunk-'thunks' into place, the line between it and the first winds taut and locks--an unnervingly thin impromptu zip-line. Even as that buzzing begins from behind the door, Natasha -- with Niklas firmly in tow -- is bolting swift for the balcony. She doesn't evince any sign of stopping, either, not at the balcony door and not when she scoops her quarry up under an arm as if she were a linebacker. With no outward sign of difficulty she's hopping up onto the balcony and then straight off it, flicking one wrist out behind her as she leaps. A small flat disk shoots out from one of her wristcuffs; the taser disk launches itself straight towards the charging woman as Natasha and her hapless cargo -- -- don't fall to a painful heap of broken bones, actually. "Might need a second exit." Natasha is probably not talking to Niklas but the tiny earpiece tucked in her ear. She has latched a descender onto the zip line Clint has so-neatly aimed for her, and there's a rapid whrrr as they hurtle -- still alarmingly fast -- on the diagonal far across the street. Her arm jerks hard with the force of braking juuuust before they slam into the building at the other end, but Niklas, at least, is dropped the last harmless few inches to the ground just a heartbeat ahead of Nat. "Hang on," she's only telling him just now, as she hops onto the thoughtfully waiting motorcycle. Niklas manages an anguished cry of panic, but -- besides a bit of flailing -- does not resist as he is scooped up and carried by the woman. Behind Natasha, there is a frustrated roar of disapproval -- along with a sharp bzzzt as her taser-disk strikes the charging attacker's chest, and is promptly yanked off (amidst a series of blinding sparks) and crumpled like an empty aluminum can mid-way through her sprint. Niklas tumbles forward gracelessly as he does his best to clamber up and grab ahold of whatever he can of Natasha (and the motorcycle). Meanwhile, 4 stories up, the woman rushes off the balcony with none of the grace or agility that Natasha has demonstrated. But what she lacks for grace, she makes up for in sheer force -- body-slamming through the closed side of the window (arms up to cover her face, erupting in a surge of shattering glass) right before her momentum shatters the wooden railing and sends her careening forward and down... straight down four stories. She slams down hard into the pavement -- stones crack beneath her weight. She crumples down to her knees. Not a perfect superhero landing... but when she gets up, she's relatively unharmed. There's a distinctive whirring noise coming from underneath her heavy coat. She grimaces, staring down at Natasha and Niklas... hand lifting to her ear-piece as her eyes trace the line they took, zigging up to the balcony, then across -- to Clint's position. "Salt, on your six -- some sort of... arrow guy on the roof. Cover me." Three floors up -- on a completely different balcony that's facing the hotel -- a tawny-skinned man pretending to enjoy a cocktail on the table beside him has already tossed aside the newspaper covering his (very large, very unusual) customized rifle, peering through the scope at... "Holy shit," Salt says, grinning. "He is an arrow guy. That's some old-school shit. Mad respect." There is a loud krack-kow -- as he opens fire. The bullets are rubber, and largely aimed to give his Sergeant the cover she needs -- though he's not going to shy away from pelting Clint hard. Meanwhile... Pepper is on her feet, rushing toward Nat, Niklas, and the bike. That whirring sound around her is getting louder, and... her feet are stomping harder and harder. Clnk. Clnk. Clnk. She's picking up speed -- a lot of speed. More than she ought to be able to, in fact. Nat's words appear in text beside her icon on the inside of Clint's goggles. "Have a little faith, I've--" He's nocked another arrow (its long conical head only slightly absurd-looking) and is drawing on the woman who just cratered the street when she sights him. "--been made." He rolls out of the way of the first barrage from above and comes up onto one knee, aiming instead at the man with the rifle. He's off at a dead run across the rooftop the moment his arrow takes flight. "Working on it." This one is light and swift and its head breaks open on impact to eject a highly compressed net to entangle the target--or whatever it hits. Clint, meanwhile, is leaping the gap to the next building, another arrow readied, much of his focus on the situation developing below. When he looks up it's past the building the shooter is in, to the curve of the highway beyond. "Head for the autobahn," he says, and takes off again. The motorcycle is thrumming quietly to life as Niklas climbs on, and leaping into a smooth motion the moment he's settled and holding on. That Natasha's vehicle picks up speed fast is unsurprising, although even for a motorcycle this one is unusually swift. "Faith only gets so far." Natasha is glancing into the rear-view as she guns it down the street, swinging wide around a couple parked cars to cut it close past two parked cars to cut off a short open-backed lorry full of crates of fresh vegetables as she shots for the autobahn. Somewhere in the wake of her slaloming maneuver a thin wire has been strung half across the road in her wake, cutting around shin-height; innocuous in its unobtrusive profile but charged and ready to fry any microelectronics that it intercepts. "Now we gotta make us some miracles." The streets below erupt in pandemonium at the sound of gunfire. High above -- three flights, to be precise -- Salt is peering through his rifle's scope at Clint, brows crumpling together in perplexion as he sees him swing around to take aim at -- "The fuck is..." he whispers, right before the arrow expands. He is instantly snapped back and netted to his chair, wobbling. His rifle's barrel pokes out at a comically high angle. He grimaces, writhing, before: "--fired a goddamn... net at me!" The exclamation is accompanied with breathless laughter. "Goddamn. Pepper--" "On it." Pepper is full-on charging, rushing past the parked cars, picking up momentum. She lifts her arms and jumps through several vegetable crates unloaded from the lorry, erupting on the other side in an explosion of cabbage. But when she lands -- still sprinting, now far faster than any human ought to be moving -- her shin hits that wire. The whirring sound coming from under her coat immediately intensifies to a high-pitched screeching; she tumbles, head over legs, slamming into the wall of a café. When she rolls over, her legs make a screeching sound, and... stop working. "Fuck," she snarls. "I'm out. Garlic--" "Already there. Leave Lara Croft to me," comes the response, as -- over Nat's head (and briefly in view of Clint), a man with the physique of a gymnast swoops down between buildings. He is suspended by a delicate line of neon purple light that extends from his left wrist-bracer. He's clad in all black -- some sort of tight, lightly armored friction suit -- with a matching motorbike helmet to protect his head. Visor down. At this moment, Garlic is about twenty feet above Nat, and fifteen feet back... but both those distances are closing rapidly. He swoops down and flies past the motorbike, extending a whip of curling purple light from his right bracer. It snatches and coils around Niklas' back; the physicist panics and clings to Nat as the upward arc of Garlic's swing starts to lift him up -- The next gap Clint jumps drops him down half a story, and he uses the hang time time to loose his next arrow (weirdly, just a standard broadhead point) at Garlic's left bracer. He hits the next rooftop, rolls back to his feet and keeps going. His next arrow is another grapple; he anchors it high up on a building across the street, puts on an extra burst of speed before he hits the edge of the rooftop and leaps, swinging wide around the building and toward a tall building still under construction, its upper levels skeletal. Garlic's right bracer is struck by the broad-head -- the bracer is plated, but the impact is enough to disrupt the device for just an instant. And that's all it takes -- the whip-cord he's swinging by flickers out of existence with a dull bzzt. But it terminates just as his momentum is carrying him back up in his swing... and rather than panicking, he gracefully twirls into an impromptu back-flip to bleed some of the momentum off and shift his center of gravity -- landing on his knees atop of pavement, spreading them for extra friction as his pads scrape over stones with a skkkkkrrcchh. His right hand snaps down to the left wrist, bracing himself. He meant to pull Niklas up, and forward -- but now, positioned squarely behind Natasha, his speed rapidly slowing as he loses his forward speed and skids across the ground, down the alleyway -- he's pulling back and away. The act buys maybe half a second of extra hang-time for Natasha to react, but unless she does -- Niklas is getting straight-up yanked off that bike. "-- Damn, Discount Spidey's got moves." Natasha's bike is whipping back around, half a fishtail before she's swinging back towards Garlic on his descent; it keeps the energy-lasso slack, for the moment at least, in its hold on the hapless Niklas. She's veering in towards Garlic with an outward snap of one of her electrified batons towards the bracer that is trying to steal her captive. Niklas is not very happy. He is gibbering and yelling frantically in German while Natasha veers her bike around, the energy-wire going slack; meanwhile, Garlic is kicking back to his feet just in time for -- Natasha to be rushing toward him at high speed. "--merde!" he manages, right before that baton impacts his bracer with a solid THWK, the whip-cord instantly flickering out of existence... and snapping Garlic's arm back as he spins to the side, right into an exterior store display of ceramic gnomes. As the gnomes crash and Garlic goes down, his right hand flicks out in a last-bid desperation move -- snapping out a short-range energy whip right for the back of Natasha's bike. This has the unfortunate consequence of... well. "--MERDE--" Natasha is now dragging Discount Spidey behind her, his chest and legs scraping pavement. "--need some -- backup, here--!" "Tough market these days." Clint is actually using the telescopic function of his goggles, taking advantage of his long, leisurely arc to get a close look at Garlic's bracer. Then he zooms back out again, dialing up a plain bullet-point arrow as though he were merely at target practice. "Off-brand mooks gotta work twice as hard to afford name-brand gear." Just before the edge of the building from which he's swinging cuts off his sightline to the ground-level showdown, he fires at the latch that releases the bracer--or releases its wearer, anyway, on the off chance the item itself might stay attached to Nat's bike. Salt -- over four blocks away, still partially wrapped in netting, and at an angle that completely obstructs his view of the action -- peers through Clementine's digital scope. He responds to Garlic with a breathless whisper: "I got you." He exhales, and squeezes. Clk. A thin orange line zips out of the barrel... straight toward a balcony. A balcony where a small drone -- no larger than a laptop -- has landed and mounted itself to a railing. Unlike Salt, it does have a pretty good view of the action... and it's been focusing firmly on Clint, broadcasting its view back to Clementine's viewfinder while making adjustments with a tiny mirror on its back. The mirror is precisely what Salt is aiming at -- the streak hits it, and is reflected with a delicate ping, sending it to its final destination-- Clint's arrow. One instant after it's been released, mid-swing -- cutting it in twain. "Rock beats scissors," Salt whispers. "Gun beats bow." Meanwhile, Garlic is still struggling to stand up as he's dragged behind Natasha -- and in the distance, at the end of the road Natasha is now riding down, she hears the distinct clnk clnk clnk of heavy, metal footsteps... sounds like somebody got the backup legs working. With Niklas himself not in immediate danger of being Yanked Away, Natasha swings rapidly back to pivot once more. Away from the clnk-clnk-clnk sounds, now -- swinging her leashed cargo sharp along with it as she blasts through an intersection, the sudden careening path of the bike aiming Garlic out between two cars approaching from opposite directions on the cross streets. She's making her way towards the widest road at some speed. "-- so," her voice is calm but a little intent, "about that second exit --" Clint nocks his final grapple arrow and disconnects the line he's currently swinging from, sailing through the air as though he could fly. But he can't fly, and falling with momentum is still falling, which he does for what looks like an alarmingly long several seconds before firing his grapple and swinging through a gap in the still-developing walls. The line does not spool out quite far enough to reach the highest currently-completed floor where they'd parked the Quinjet earlier. Oh well, close enough. He disengages his line again and drops the last dozen feet. "Working on it." The intonation is almost identical to the first time he said this, though it's followed by a muffled "oof" as he hits the floor hard and rolls several times. He's limping a little when he picks himself up, but that is shortly irrelevant when he boards the jet, firing up the engines and lifting off much faster than the operating manual or their ground crew would have liked. The Quinjet curves away toward the highway, outstripping Pepper and Nat alike before shedding altitude precipitously as if Clint were planning to land it, which he does not, in fact, do. He skims the aircraft along just above the road surface, slowing to the speed of traffic though he's rudely taking up two whole lanes. The ramp at the rear of the jet lowers--by aviation standards, it's practically scraping the ground, but that's still higher up than the handlebar of Nat's earthbound bike. "I'm guessing you didn't bring enough for the toll," he asks, not very hypothetically, as he sights the rapidly shrinking distance to the toll plaza ahead. Garlic -- who remains completely oblivious to the fight over-head -- manages a yelp right before the swerve of Nat's bike brings him in direct contact with incoming traffic. With no other choice presented to him, he de-activates his whip; he scrapes by on one knee between both cars, tumbling past them in a roll that starts ambitiously, but rapidly escalates out of control. Pepper, meanwhile, roars out from the side-street, charging out from behind -- a single leap taking her over both cars, landing in a full-out sprint. Unlike Garlic, she's not relying on Natasha -- or any buildings -- for momentum. She's generating her own, charging forward at high speed, a streak of blood across her forehead -- leaving one eye squinted. "They got a fucking jet!" she bellows through the comm. "Why don't we have a fucking jet?!" Then: "Garlic, slingshot--" Salt squints and makes an adjustment; the drone on the balcony swivels its mirror wide, trying to get a bead on the Quinjet. It's going to take him a moment, though. Meanwhile, Garlic, still tumbling, snaps out a line in front of him toward Pepper... who grabs it, then yanks it hard over her shoulder -- heaving Garlic up into a graceful twirl right behind her -- Natasha is gunning it straight down the road. She doesn't appear to be looking back, just heading straight for where the Quinjet is lowering itself off ahead. She isn't slowing as she nears the Quinjet, in fact speeding up as she veers into alarmingly close proximity. The roar of the jet now has far eclipsed the traffic noises or the thrum of her own motorcycle and she's pulling closer -- closer -- it's looking like a sure impact when instead the hatch opens up and -- wait, no, it still looks like a sure impact, a considerable gap between the road and the hatch that puts the entryway poised just about right to decapitate her and her passenger both. She's hitting the throttle, though, and yanking the front wheel up-up-up and over the threshhold. "Think they take barter? This ride's gotta be worth --" The bike takes a spill, of course it does, though she's angling to bear the hardest force of the drop, her passenger spilled ungainly but safe across the cargo bay of the jet. She's landed on her shoulder, sliding fast and hard where the bike has dumped her; as she skids, though, she's now turning her attention Behind Them, eyes narrowed as she draws her own pistols and aims a neatly fired shot towards the gymnast's fancy bracer. The bike itself is rapidly sliding back out, now, teetering on the verge of falling back into the road. "... less than it used to be," is what Nat finishes. Niklas manages a squawk as he's thrown into the interior of the shuttle, his brightly colored shirt fluttering. Meanwhile, Natasha's shot clanks against Garlic's bracer -- his incoming whip flickers out of existence moments before he can launch it toward the rising Quinjet, leaving him with nothing to pull himself up with. He hits the ground in a roll. Pepper immediately launches over him, landing in a crouch and skidding -- arms raised to cover her face, shielding Garlic from any additional gunfire: "Garlic! Status!" "Ngh -- she hit my bracer --" Garlic manages, voice garbled as he skids and rolls behind Pepper, coming to a stop by bracing his leg against her back. "Bruised, but fine." Pepper's eyes narrow at Natasha as the Quinjet continues rocketing forward: "Salt?" Salt peers through the scope, chewing on his lip: "Even if I could -- pretty sure dropping a jet on a freeway's a breach of contract, Sarg. But --" He squeezes the trigger. The beam pings off the mirror again; it flashes over Pepper's head, into the open hatch. The back wheel of Natasha's motorcycle suddenly sizzles with the scent of burning rubber -- a nickel-sized hole burnt through it. "--I'll send 'em your thoughts and prayers." Pepper remains silent, arms raised in the middle of the road -- glaring at Natasha and the Quinjet as they swoop toward the toll. Clint sucks in a deep breath and switches to fully manual controls, keeping the Quinjet lower than the computer would (for safety reasons) allow. Though his reaction time is objectively slower than the computer's, the perilous ground effect flight actually steadies just in time for Nat to stick her landing. So to speak. The moment his passengers are aboard he starts to close the ramp, which (also for safety reasons) will only move so fast, and slower still with a motorcycle balanced on it. He's pulling up after--not nose-first like an otherwise sensible pilot who doesn't have unsecured passengers in his still-open cargo bay, but by engaging the vertical thrusters and lifting the entire craft straight up. The sudden motion starts to tip the motorcycle inward, until Salt's indirect shot hits its rear wheel and it see-saws on the edge of the still-rising ramp...and slips over to plummet down toward the Spice Mooks below. Unobstructed now, the ramp finishes closing--just narrowly missing some signage above the toll booths--and seals the cargo bay against the whistling wind, the traffic noise, and Niklas's colorful pursuers. "Add that to your bike tally" Clint says dryly into the sudden quiet. "At least it was for a good cause. They probably don't have enough for the toll, either."