The Acquisitions
10th June 2012
09:10 AM
“Agent Grey, you are not authorised to be here.”
I wave a hand casually and grin. “Move along, move along, nothing to see here. This is not the agent you are looking for.”
The newbie scowls. Cute.
I continue on my way. My destination is the other end of this supposedly deserted hallway, after all, not this particular spot.
An ominous metallic clicking sound echoes from behind me, much louder than my footfalls. A nearly transparent shield snaps into place behind me, and my steps never falter.
Not even when the clicking sound is followed by the very familiar deafening noise of a gunshot in close quarters.
A little handwave over my shoulder creates a small breeze. It carries the pieces of the bullet that has just struck my shield back to its shooter, gently.
And here I am ….
The man seated beyond the glass divider of the pretty cage looks totally hale and healthy. He appears bored, unconcerned, even somewhat unaware of his general surroundings.
However, akin to the pretty cage, his pretty appearance is also fake. I know this much, from projecting it myself practically my whole life.
“Hello, little one,” I murmur, just for his ears.
And just so, both pretenses shatter.
The man snarls. A ball of blue light strikes the glass divider.
The hatch below the pretty cage opens. The said cage drops down the hole.
The air above my arms, which are set loosely crossed before me, shimmers. It is the only warning for any peeping toms that must be watching through that not-so-hidden camera above the former cage. And then a naked infant with black hair and green eyes literally materialises there, replacing the shimmering spot, dropping neatly into my embrace.
“Hello, little one,” I repeat, smiling.
The answer to the kind greeting is an angry wail. Rude.
09:12 AM
“Agent Grey, is that … Is that … my brother? What did he do now? Why is he naked?”
The huge blondy in the room gapes uncomprehendingly at the wailing, flailing bundle of bony limbs wrapped tightly and rocked from side to side in my arms.
I give him a winsome grin when he at last looks at me.
“Hello, bigger one,” I croon. “Would you like to say hello to the littler one?”
He jumps to his feet. I choose to interpret it as eagerness and agreement.
An arial shimmer later, a ferocious ankle biter rushes to me and collides with my shins.
“Hello, bigger one,” I greet him again, smiling down at the enthusiastic wacker of my legs.
09:15 AM
The man seated in the lab – the prison – assigned to him matches his inner look all too perfectly. I smile sadly at his hunched back from the open door, with the bigger kid wrapped round the littler kid in my arms, both asleep by a subtle application of Sleeping Spell.
The same spell got applied to this latest acquisition from the back, after a two-second-long consideration.
“Hello, baby,” quietly, I greet the result of the second spell, applied after I have made sure that he is safely deposited on the floor, unable to roll off any height. The poor little one looks too stunned to react in any way. He is added into the pile in my arms with just a little careful shifting and juggling. And even then, he just sits quietly, regarding me with one green eye and one brown eye, both radiating caution.
“I mean you no harm,” I tell him kindly, sincerely. “I just want you to be happy. I hope we can be happy together.”
He gives me no answer; not a verbal nor a gestural one, at any rate. But then again, silence speaks a thousand words on its own, does it not?
09:20 AM
With three noodle-limp babies in my arms, it is a little bit hard to dodge an irate, skilled, tenacious opponent possessed of an implacable determination. Attacking back is out of the question, all the same; because, for this type of person, it means death or mostly permanent decommission, for either or both of us, and it is the farthest goal from mine.
Well, it leaves just one way out, in my semi-frazzled opinion.
“Behave, little one.”
And she shrinks, rapidly, in the middle of a flying kick.
Something in me loosens up a little bit. – She no longer looks so much like my mum.
But then, a pulse of uncontrollable, clearly unplanned power bursts out from her, and all thoughts similarly explode away from me.
We are flying, away from each other, and the corridor we are in is totally a wreck. This is not good, not good at all. Worse, the accidental shield she is putting all round her bars me from netting her before she can fly out into open air, via the hole in the hull of this flying monstrocity that she has also punched into existence with her accidental magic.
And worst, the three little ones in my arms have been woken up by that electrifying snatch of my red-haired, green-eyed new acquisition’s unexpected power, and they – especially the middle, littlest one – are now yowling in chorus with the one I am yet to bag… maybe literally, in this case.
Hmm. Bag. All right. Bag. I can do it.
With a put-upon sigh, I glare at the spot of open air before me, squinting against the rush of stinging wind, willing a large, sturdy bag to pop up.
It comes out lumpy and a little bit holy, coloured a mottled puke green for some reason.
Well, I have never been good with conjuration, anyway. At least the bag does the job.
Just in time, at that! Three more seconds and my baby girl would be a small red splatter on the scraggly field below. That wouldn’t do, at all!
“Hello, little one,” I greet her, as her head pops out of the rim of the bag that keeps hovering a foot away from my face. “Would you like to join your new siblings, now?”
My. That glare and those ranting words, they are all suspiciously familiar.
Oh well. If she refuses to join her siblings, then her siblings will join her instead. There is a very convenient, large, sturdy – if puke-green and hole-ridden – bag to make use of, after all.
09:27 AM
Harry Potter, AKA Grey. – Checked.
Natalia Romanova, AKA Black Widow. – Checked.
Bruce Banner, AKA Hulk. – Checked.
Thor. – A bonus.
Loki. – Even more of a bonus.
Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye. – Now, where is he? A newish addition, at that.
Anthony Stark, AKA Iron Man. – Well, this is easier to get… maybe.
Steven Rogers, AKA Captain America. – Hmm, isn’t he still missing and presumed dead?
The list is still… incomplete. What can I do to remedy it? Who should I collect first?
Collecting stationary things and beings are never as easy as people might assume. I know that much from five years of increasingly interesting Herbology lessons. So, following that logic, collecting a probably iced-over, probably dead Steven Rogers will not be any easier than collecting the probably highly mobile Anthony Stark and Clint Barton.
Still, there is one advantage to collecting a stationary thing or being: The said thing or being is going nowhere else at present.
All right, then. To the northern part of our beloved humongous ball of sodden dirt we go! After I’ve kitted out my little ones with appropriate supplies, that is, of course. I’m not a Dursley!
11:20 AM
Well, how embarrassing it is, and how time-consuming, and how irritating, and how bothersome, to have gone to such a length to carry myself and my little tagalongs safely to a very remote, very cold, very inhospitable place, only to find that the person I had been trying to find there had moved.
How rude!
And worse, both for my pride and for the timing, my target turns out to have been where we were for the whole time.
And worst, Director Fury seems to have caught up with what I have been doing to members of his precious Avengers Initiative, with how he is sicking agents after me with not-so-positive intent.
Well. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and perhaps won’t be the last, either. I can’t say I don’t mind it, but… well… what can I do? And there are little ones to get and keep!
One of them is my current pursuer, in fact. Talk about irony….
“Hello, little one,” I smile at an incensed Steven Rogers, who is clad in a slim-fit, funny getup and armed with only a painted-on shield.
A bullet wizzes past his shrinking self, right towards me, but his presently discarded shield is already there to block it.
Oopsie. The thing ricochets back to the sender…
…Who is Director Fury himself. Hmm.
I give the even-more-incensed one-eye, trench-coated pirate a winsome grin, even as a couple tendrals of magic see the shrunken “Captain America” and his purportedly special shield safely into my arms. “See you later, Director! I’ll give you a report when they’re all with me,” I chirp, before Disapparating to the storeroom where I’ve stashed my other little ones away.
His thwarted look is the last thing that I see, and it’s priceless.
11:24 AM
A Point-Me spell would have served me better than blind hopping to any maybe place, I’ve learnt that from the embarrassing search for steven Rogers. So, hoping to avoid further hassle and embarrassment, and also a further confrontation with Director Fury, however amusing and entertaining it must be if judging from the last one, this time I employ that to find my next quarry.
It proves to be a good decision to take.
Anthony Edward Stark is on the huge aircraft, too.
Sadly, as I’m finding out now while under my Invisibility Cloak combined with my usual array of stealth spells, the glowing blue circle on his chest proves problematic and potentially dangerous for my usual de-aging shtick.
I have burnt too many bridges back in the country where I was born to ask a favour from anyone there; and many people there will just look down on their potential patient, anyway, if I bring this case to them. But there are also those who will look the other way and help at the same time, in other places, as long as I do not bother them otherwise, keep them anonymous at all times, and give them a good enough insentive to help me and keep their mouths shut about it.
So, one Stunning Spell later, followed by a Disillusionment Charm, capped off by a Levitation Spell, I Disapparate with my latest charge to a person belonging to the latter category.
02:30 PM
Dark-haired, dark-eyed, fair-skinned, the androgynous not-quite-human I know simply as “Sasha” is a rather non-descript, unassuming anybody despite their awesome, wandless – and rather frightening, to be honest – powers, despite their mysterious nature and origin, and despite the one – SHIELD-opposite – association of theirs that I know. Regardless, they’re a go-to person for anything and everything related to water and ice, including blood, and I can’t fault their integrity when it comes to the deals we strike.
And, for getting the shrapnel pieces out of the chest of the still-unconscious Anthony Stark and reconstructing the said chest plus its surrounding bones and muscles and skin, the price is… well….
“That blogue is alive, Shay?” I goggle at the icy… coffin? Cage?… Horizontal display refrigerator? Sasha shows me, after smuggling me into a very remote, very cold, very well-defended, very hostile-feeling bunker… somewhere – probably in either Siberia or Antarctica, given how freezing the air feels through my magically enforced arctic outfit.
They glare at me; maybe for that despised nickname, maybe for the doubt and suspicion I’m holding towards the object of the barter and what they might want me to do with it. “You are very cosy with death,” they point out ironically in response. “You should know the answer to that question.”
It’s my turn to glare back at them. – I am not pleased whenever anybody reminds me about that “Master of Death” business, of which Sasha could somehow sense from the first go, and the disclosure of which to the magical world at large – prior to meeting them, and thankfully not where they’d gotten their info – has had me either hunted or shunned in magical enclaves for years.
But the prat doesn’t deign my silent rebuke with any reaction, not even the sort of comeback that got me riled up in the first place. They just begin the tour right away.
And what a macabre tour it is! All centred on the not-dead, not-alive blogue frozen in the coffin-refrigerator-cage combo.
In fact, this whole hall, partitioned just so that the blogue can’t escape, is a special place designed specifically to carve out his original identity and unwanted memories from him, do it again whenever necessary or wanted, study him – and that includes invasive medical examinations without any anaesthesia – for any reason, train him for various stealthy, lethal jobs, prep him for such jobs, and store him in-between missions. – The electric chair and memory wiper, the hose for cleaning him before and after missions, the glorified icebox that stores him whenever he is not used, the training simulators and memory downloader machine whose single purpose is to forge him as a weapon – not even a human weapon, but just a thing…!
No wonder, when Sasha asks me to spirit the husk away and try to return… it? Him?… into some semblance of normal human being, I agree without any reservations – the reservations which have actually grown into the usual thing instead of the exception, by now, after years of disappointments, disasters and betrayals, the last of which can actually sum up the first two.
Go figure. Apparently, some remnants of that bold, reckless, beaten, slavish boy with a hero complex still lingers in the body of this jaded nobody.
05:40 PM
It’s…. – Well, I don’t know what to think, now, or what to do. Anthony Edward Stark is now safely sleeping in a little nest with his new brothers and sister… or maybe brothers and sisters, given Loki’s apparently hermaphroditic nature, which I found by accident when I bathed the little ones in turns just now, but….
Well, but the price for this little, healthy, shrapnel-free version is….
My eyes, yet again, flicker towards the ice box that is still switched on, that still contains him, that Sasha dumped on me alongside a tome of macabre details about what has been done to him thus far, how to activate him, and what-not, that has been parked beside the nest of blankets and pillows and boulsters and stuffed animals and little ones all this while.
I’m yet to fetch my last little one. But what should I do with… this… in the meantime? Leave it all here – in one of my boltholes – and risk exposure to a lucky and tenacious somebody breaking in? Cart the whole ice box – or just the not-quite-a-person-yet inside – with me and risk accidental harm on my little ones in relation to him or his previous… owners?
Or… use the weapon as the manual says?
My stomach churns on the very thought of it. – Weapon. I was one, myself. I was similarly moulded. I was similarly stored. I was similarly constricted. I was similarly brainwashed. I was similarly aimed. I was similarly used. Am I going to do so to a living being, if not quite a person yet?
I could have shared this fate, if I were less… lucky.
Nevertheless, it still doesn’t answer the problem, and I’m fast running out of time, if I’m to bag Clint Barton and complete the set.
Well, maybe, I could trade another favour with Sasha for baby-sitting the little ones while I go hunting alongside this latest, most unexpected addition to my little family?
But I did spy them looking oddly – rather unnervingly, in my considered opinion – at Loki, once, while we were arguing about the favour trading for Anthony Edward Stark’s heart operation….
Come to think of it again, Sasha does know this particular bolthole of mine, given how we accidentally met each other a few years back, so I can’t even leave the little ones here while I go hunting, in case they’d like to act on whatever they’re thinking when looking at Loki so weirdly that time.
Damn. Shite. Fuck. Hell.
07:14 PM
“Longing.”
The blue eyes, bleary and blank, turn more attentive, as though some switch has been tweaked on. The tall, wiry body, previously boneless with remnants of the forced cryosleep and still nude from the same cause, shifts into alertness.
“Rusted.”
The blue eyes focus on me, and the body… tenses.
“Furnace.”
A vague something enters the blue eyes, vanishing just as quickly and silently. The body tenses even further, as if fighting against an invisible restrain.
“Daybreak.”
Desperation. It’s desperation. The something comes back again into those blue eyes, and it’s desperation.
“Seventeen.”
My breath catches and stutters in my throat, mixing with bile.
This is wrong.
But the little ones need me. They need me to be there. Acquiring Clint Barton will be dangerous, and I can’t bring them with me, so I must assign somebody else in my stead to acquire the target.
But this is wrong!
“Benign.”
There’s nothing ‘benign’ in this… this… dehumanisation, depersonalisation, deconstruction, degradation, and I’m now part of it.
“Nine.”
My breath clogs in my throat. The next word won’t come out.
The blue eyes is empty, but there’s something lurking in it now – something dangerous because of how desperate he feels.
But the children need me….
“Homecoming.”
My heart pounds in my chest, as though I were the one more and more trapped by each intonation of these words – seemingly harmless, neutral, even nice.
The blue eyes flash. The tall, wiry body shifts into readiness to strike. The desperation is written on every ferocious line of his body, on his every inhale of ragged, panted breath.
`For the children. For the children. For the children.` The mantra runs on and on and on and on in my mind; a weak conviction, a slimy justification.
“One.”
One trembling hand reaches out, as if to grab me – to grab my neck, maybe, judging from the direction and the intent in those blue eyes.
I don’t make any effort to evade him.
Let him. Let him. Let him punish me.
One more. One more. One more. I can’t stop. Too far gone. Just one more. Come on, mouth, speak.
“Freight cars.”
The blue eyes turn entirely blank all of a sudden. The tall, wiry body snaps into a rigid ‘parade rest’ position, despite its nudity. The internal slate is wiped clean.
The weapon is ready.
And, “Reporting for mission,” it drones; truly just a robot, just a thing.
I feel slimy. I feel sick.
No wonder, then, that instead of the “mission details” I am supposed to spout forth, what comes out of my mouth is instead the half-digested contents of my hurried supper.
10:18 PM
A tiny, sleeping Clint Barton is curled up in my arms, having just been delivered by… the weapon. The Spell Sphere Hermione invented half a decade ago to store “directed power” and spells and wards, which I gave… him… for this mission, is nowhere to be seen, having been used.
Probably after a fierce fight, given how battered my… agent… is.
But despite the blood and the bruises and the ripped clothes and the way he doesn’t put any weight on his left leg, he stands silently, placidly on an easily defendable corner of the bedroom we’re in; a puppet, for all intents and purposes.
And seeing that, despite the fact that I haven’t eaten or drunk anything since he went on his mission, despite the fact that I’ve figuratively heaved my guts out those hours ago, and despite the fact that I’ve seen far worse injuries these long decade and a half, I go into yet another series of heaves.
I did this. I made this.
I fix this. I must.
These strangers – the “Avengers,” Director Fury named them – can be my family; have been adopted into my family, having been claimed by my soul and power and mind and deed when I turned them little. He, too, can be my family, then. Just… not little.
He has been much abused, in nearly all senses of the word, from what Sasha told me, and I was even one of the contributors to the abuse, for however short a time. – No, he shan’t be turned little. He shan’t be abused anymore, including by me, if I have anything to say or do about it.
And I do have a say in this, don’t I?
And if anybody complains about it?
Well….