A Hotel of Two Tales

[ngm_hydra]

The decrepit-looking hotel near a waterfall in Colombia was a case of the facade not quite matching the interior. Early 20th century grandeur fought against years of disuse and nature's reclamation. While the first floor retained some of it's moldy and waterlogged appearance, it was a deception to keep the local guerillas uninterested in the goings on inside the building. With late night experiments leading to flashing lights in some of the windows, the locals, gun-toting or not, spoke about the old hotel as a haunted location.

The head of that nest was counting on interlopers of the goody-two-shoe variety. Though the planned team wasn't the ones in blue and white. Either way, Huntress 19 had called in assistance from extra nests.

Comments

[lilbrownspyder]

She yelped as she fell, hitting at his head with the shield. She was not letting him take her back to SHIELD.

"Hard to knock me out if you're unconscious."

[the_next_avenger]

Joe's vision swam as she smacked him in the head with the shield. If not for his helmet, he'd probably be out cold right now.

Now he was annoyed.

"Sorry, Short Stuff, but I've got a team to back up."

So he tried to punch her in the throat.

[lilbrownspyder]

The punch to her throat caught her off guard and she let go of the shield to block any further damage to her trachea. He hit harder than anyone she'd fought before. He shouldn't have been able to hit that hard after how hard she brought the shield down on his head. For the first time in a long time, she was actually scared. She was struggling just to breathe. She knew she would heal by the end of the day unless he killed her but she couldn't fight when she couldn't breathe.

[the_next_avenger]

Joe's head was still ringing from that shield shot, but she let go of the shield when he hit her. A part of felt bad for resorting to those tactics, but a fight was a fight. His helmet wasn't sitting right on his head.

She cracked it. I bet she freaking cracked it.

She was struggling to breathe. Joe could see a lot of the fight had gone out of her, which was the point. He needed her to stop fighting and hear him.

"Look," he said, panting. She'd taken him a lot further than most people he'd tussled with before.

"Whatever HYDRA tells you they can do for you, whatever they can say they're giving you...they're lying. I don't know you. I don't know your story. But I know that these people will use you up and toss you in the trash when you have no more value.

You can do better than all this. You can be better. If you come along quietly, I'll help you." Joe said, offering a hand.

"This isn't a SHIELD agent talking to a HYDRA agent. This is one person talking to another person."

[lilbrownspyder]

She grabbed an empty clip and threw it at his head, rasping out something in Russian. She wasn't going anywhere with him if she had a choice in the matter. She belonged here where she'd always been.

[the_next_avenger]

Joe dodged the clip and aimed a poweful kick at the girl's face. The sooner she was out, the sooner he could get her out of here. Something in him said that she, alone among the number of people here, needed to be saved.

Or maybe that was just his hero complex talking.

Either way, Joe Rogers is going to do his best to take her down so she can't hurt any of his teammates.

[lilbrownspyder]

Or maybe it was her youth. She didn't look like she could be more than a child, after all.

She was too distracted, trying to breathe to dodge his kick. When she regained consciousness, she'd have to practice so this wouldn't happen again. The glare she gave him just before everything went black should have been enough to kill the Hulk.