You Don't Know Me Yet
“The girl’s name was Ariel and she had a purple dragon thing that flew at my face,” Torres explained with slight embarrassment.
“And what’d she do to you?” Fontaine asked, now looking at Walker.
Walker looked incredibly irritated. His nose had been broken and then relocated, now having a splint over it, “She hit me with a tray. Twice.”
“So no overt use of powers on her part?” Fontaine put a hand on her hip and raised a brow.
“Other than the dragon, no,” Torres replied, shaking his head.
“Interesting. So we’ve got Claws, Paws, and Ariel. Sounds like the strangest Disney Princess trio ever,” Fontaine chuckled and added to the file and then looked at Bucky and Sam, “Alright boys, we’ve got a bit of an issue on our hands. All surveillance footage of our favorite trio has seemingly been deleted.”
“There’s nothing? How is that even possible?” Sam crossed his arms.
“Looks like Ariel is a better hacker than we thought and removed all footage of herself and her friends,” Fontaine shook her head, “And she kicked Walker and Torres’s asses in order to make sure she could.”
“And what about the watch?” Bucky asked.
“Our hackers in the CIA and in SHIELD haven’t been able get in,” She shook her head again.
“Ya’ll have the best hackers on the planet and you can’t get into a broken watch?” Sam questioned, “At least tell me we have some kind of backup plan.”
“Luckily for you boys, there’s a lovely little hacker at MIT. I’m sure she’d help you if you asked,” de Fontaine pulled up a file on a certain Riri Williams. From what he could see, Sam could read that she’d created something called a vibranium detector. That might have really annoyed the Wakandans.
“Because of this girl, we butted heads with the Wakandans and I had to arrest my ex-husband,” She rambled off, confirming his suspicions, “Which was definitely a yikes.”
“That sounds like she won’t help us,” Walker crossed his arms.
“Well. Maybe not you or Torres, but maybe,” She theatrically gestured to Sam, “She’d help Captain America and his right hand man.”
“So we’re going to ask this girl to hack a piece of stolen tech that even the best technicians at SHIELD can’t break,” Bucky asked rhetorically. He didn’t seem amused by this plan.
“Basically,” She nodded and placed a hand on her hip, “So are we up for this or do you want to handle this on your own?”
Sam hesitated before giving in, “We’ll go with that plan.”
“Sam,” Bucky looked at him, with slight apprehension.
“We don’t have a better plan, Buck,” Sam tried to reassure him by placing a hand on his metal shoulder.
“Fantastic, it’s about a half hour flight. I’ll have you two flown out at once,” She smiled and then picked up her phone, dialing somebody’s number.
“And us?” Torres looked at the other confused as he referred to himself and Walker.
“You two stay back and rest up. We’re already dealing with a kid. We don’t want to overwhelm her,” Sam removed his hand from Bucky’s shoulder and then patted Torres on the back.
“Yes sir,” Torres cracked a smile and left, followed by Walker who gave them a quick look of suspicion back.
^^^
The flight was fine. The private plane was fine. It was all fine. The two men stepped off the plane and both put on sunglasses. Quite possibly the worst disguises ever, but Bucky digressed.
The two men strolled up to the dorm building. As they stepped into the elevator, they quietly bickered over which floor Williams’s dorm was on. They agreed on four and they lucked out when the door opened and a very frazzled Riri Williams, stood there, completely shocked at the sight of the two men.
“You’re-”
“Yup, we need to talk,” Sam interjected.
“Yeah- yeah, my dorm is over there,” She was still shocked and paused before realizing she had to lead them there.
They followed Riri down the hall and into her dorm room. It was as if she had that look of surprise painted permanently on her face. She couldn’t fathom why Captain America was in her dorm room.
Sam and Bucky stood there, not really sure what to do now that they were there.
Riri shut her door and then took a second to take a deep breath and compose herself. This was definitely not something she’d expected to happen today.
“So how can I, uh, help you today, Mr. America- Captain, sir?” She asked, looking visibly shaken.
“Call me Sam,” He chuckled a little before trying to ease her into it, “Our friends at SHIELD say you’re quite the genius.”
“Look if this is about the suit- the Wakandans said I could-” She rambled off, jumping to about a million conclusions at once.
“This isn’t about the suit,” Sam shook his head and cracked another smile.
Riri’s expression turned from concern to confusion, “It’s not?”
“We need your help hacking into.. A thing,” He glanced back at Bucky who held out the device for her to take.
She took it from his hand and held it close to her face and she examined it, “Looks like some kind of comms device mixed with an apple watch.”
“That’s what we think it is, but we haven’t been able to crack it or get any information out of it,” Sam continued to explain. Bucky stood next to him with his arms crossed.
Riri grabbed a tool from off her desk and began to fiddle with it. She managed to turn on the thing as the little screen flickered orange. She continued to tinker with the little watch, but a black X kept flashing on the screen.
“Sheesh, whoever made this thing was not messing around,” She scratched her neck with the tool, “Where’d you even get this from?”
“A few of the bad guys,” Sam spoke vaguely.
“Like a supervillain or something?” Riri looked a tad bit excited now.
“No,” Bucky spoke for the first time during this entire interaction, gaining a look of surprise from Riri and an eye roll from Sam.
“Buck, they were trying to kill us. You don’t consider that villainous?” He looked at him judgmentally.
“They weren’t trying to kill us, they were just trying to throw us off long enough for them to find a clear method of escape,” Bucky explained calmly, trying not to bicker with Sam again.
Sam clearly wasn’t having it, “That guy was trying to stab you and that girl somehow took down Walker and Torres within seconds. You don’t call that attempted murder?”
“I don’t actually. If they’d wanted to kill us, they could have easily done it,” Bucky scowled at him. Riri watched the back and forth between the two men, intrigued by the description of these supposed bad guys. She decided to just listen in instead of interfering and went back to fidgeting with the device.
“So you’re defending them now?” Sam turned to face Bucky, sounding slightly irritated.
“I’m not defending them, I’m just saying they’re not villains. Sam, they’ve never killed anyone,” Bucky replied, matching his annoyance.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Sam added skeptically.
“We know that every time they’ve had a run in with SHIELD-”
“Which was twice,” Sam put a hand on his hip and used his other hand to lean against the table.
“They’ve left everyone they’ve encountered alive,” Bucky finished his statement sharply, now facing Sam.
“And seriously injured,” Sam added.
“Just the ones that encountered Claws,” Bucky argued, “We don’t know if Paws and Ariel are the same when it comes to those things.”
“They still work with him, which either means they don’t care or they are just allowing it to happen. Probably both,” Sam asserted.
Bucky opened his mouth to argue with him but was interrupted by Riri as she walked past them with the device and out the door.
They exchanged a glance and then followed her out into the hall.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Sam lightly shouted at her.
She perked up, “Oh right- yeah sorry my friend has the tools I need to properly pull this thing apart.”
“We need to keep this confidential,” Bucky spoke like he was scolding her.
“I’ll just say I need the tools for a project. I do this all the time,” She shrugged it off and then knocked on the door.
There was no response. Bucky took the moment to assess the surrounding hallway and the door. He noticed this door was the only one that had a mezuzah with carvings nailed to the door post.
After a few more seconds without an answer, Riri reached into her pocket and pulled out a key, plugging it into the keyhole, unlocking the door and opening it. She stepped inside, placed the device on a desk and then knelt down, looking through the drawers of this girl’s desk.
Sam and Bucky stood in the doorway. It seemed like this would take a while. Bucky and Sam took the moment to look into the little dorm room. It was somewhat messy with computer parts scattered along the floor as well as various papers.
On the wall above the desk were a few pictures hung on a string. The first picture was of three people at a graduation. There was a boy with light eyes and black hair in a graduation robe and cap, holding up his diploma with a wide grin while the girl next to him, who donned a light pink dress, had curly brown hair, and hazel eyes, seemed to be laughing at him. The second picture had the roles swapped, with the girl now dressed in a graduation robe and cap, holding her diploma while the boy, now in a white dress shirt and black dress pants as he showed her off and grinned. The third picture depicted two people, on the left was the girl from before and on the right was a different girl with pale skin, long blonde hair with blunt bangs, and blue eyes. Both girls held boba cups towards the camera while a third person, who presumably was holding the camera, held their boba cup in the center of the image. The fourth image showed the girl posing with Riri and a few other people wearing MIT shirts. There were a few other pictures, but they were covered by the main four images.
Riri was victorious in seeking out the box of little tools. She pulled it out from under the girl’s bed, causing a corner of a cardboard box to be slightly pulled out as well with the sleeve of a black leather jacket sticking out. Bucky took note of it as Riri lifted up the tool box and held it with one arm while she gestured for them to move so she could get out of the room. Before she shut the door behind her, Bucky noticed a pile of trash consisting of Chinese takeout boxes and two Starbucks cups in the corner near a floor-to-ceiling window.