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Misery loves company. Roaming zombies usually hunt in packs, though they strenuously avoid the area around the Met thanks to the twins steadily decimating their numbers. Nothing like a speedster and a sorceress herding and taking down the dead lost of soul and mind. The black-eyed, soulless businessmen are a bit different. Financiers in their expensive suits and even a few activists still wearing their protest shirts with handwritten statements like 'Love for all' and 'Mutant Rights Now' adding an odd element to the situation. In the south end of the park, closest to the street, the police have been called and a mail carrier tramps around, trying to steal hopes and dreams from everyone. A tree has vanished. Four yappy dogs have disappeared. And the mayhem on pedestrians throwing down everything but their precious coffee count, too. Someone probably called SHIELD from the police, and got stuck in the endless switchboard.
But this is why a brunette in a red coat stationed on sight always wears combat ready clothes, fresh off the Eastern Front. Her knife is already in hand, and a spiral of charms jingles at her waist. She's been using them almost as fast as she can make them, and the fact she floats over the ground by a few inches speaks to being actively engaged in tracking.
*
Carol did get the call, and having bullied one of the analysts into doing some lipreading takes of the footage with Bucky, Loki, and Wanda… did put two and two together, at least as far as what happened is concerned. So, she did a quick change and flew over to Central Park as Warbird, thinking the less the public knew about SHIELD operatives with superpowers, the better.
Spotting Wanda from a vantage above the park, she flies down to meet the witch, saying in a low tone (mainly not to be distracting), "Okay, so what happened?" Because well, neither of them are much for small talk when there's work to do.
*
Composed features give away no sign of anger or excitement. This is business in the truest form, the type for which she was raised and endlessly taught, drilled, and refined on. The lessons of childhood were brutal, and thus, Wanda is not the sort of person who responds with great delight or fear to black-eyed beasts. Her gate slows slightly as she follows after the mailman gone rogue, though he's currently throwing down black holes to eat dogs more than caring about humans. Mostly. If a human gets in the way, a beam of dark energy comes trickling through the wall or thrown on the ground in hopes they'll just vanish.
Convenient, isn't it?
The brunette isn't unprepared for someone coming in, though that it should be a blonde incognito is slightly less concerning or likely to end up with a curse flung at someone. And given the curse holds no energy, no bueno for living or unliving creatures. Instead, she points the knife in a complex series of patterns to narrow the orb of her shield. "People scream. He makes them go into the darkness."
*
Warbird frowns, "Okay, is there a way to get the darkness out of him? I mean, he was just a mailman…" She hrms, "I could probably just hold him down, but I don't know how effective that's going to be." There's a faint hint of tension in her voice. Sure, she's fought aliens and evil mutants and enemy agents… but this is a whole new level of weird.
*
It would be so much easier to conduct the conversation in German with its detailed technicality, but English is the law of the land and preferential to avoid screams of 'Nazis' or worse from the surrounding populace. Wanda's eyes narrow a fraction, and the unholy glow to them assures she most certainly has a grip on some kind of spell or other mojo no one in the agency much understands. Not even the one person who probably knows it. "I look at the darkness to see a kind," she says, halting both in the need for concentration and because telling a lay person what she does has consequences for them both. "It is not from here, this world. It feels like decay, death."
*
Warbird frowns, "Alright, well, I /can/ go pin him down without hurting him, I think. I have to tell you though, this whole park has been giving me bad vibes lately." For obvious reasons, she can sense that dark energy crawling around, even if she can't quite figure out /what/ it is, given a lack of mystical training.
And with that, she flies off, moving behind the mailman in an attempt to pin him somewhat-gently to the ground, considering her strength.
*
"It should. Reality and space are broken." Those words carry all the blunt fact of a sledgehammer to the knee, delivered by someone who has no need or means to embellish things. Pretty words belong to director sorts spinning around in office chairs, dictating notes, far away from danger. It's not to the field agents, and least of all to someone tapped into a river of power begging to be touched. Her battle cry is not poetry, it's the bleed of amaranth tendrils frosting her irises and pupils equally. "Someone I killed has come back. Or a shadow came back and made this. I will end it again." Not even a gender assigned.
The mailman is more dangerous for the black energy rippling around him and his solid black demonic eyes than actual size. Oh, there's something odd in the way he moves, like he isn't quite used to walking like a human. Or more importantly, he is forgetting how. Synapses go poof when it comes to alien energy. The man utters a grunt when Warbird takes him down and flails around, causing those tiny bubbles of antimatter blackness to come surging up.
*
Carol doesn't even try to absorb that energy, because, well… frankly, who knows where it's been? But right now she's not desperate enough to try, instead just keeping the mailman pinned down while she looks around for others. Though she does notice when a few bubbles pop against her invulnerable skin, blinking in surprise, "Alright…" She instinctively glows a bit, warding off some of that dark energy with a bit of her own.
*
It would be nice, to say the least, to have some distance from those tiny black bubbles. Nothing comes out of them, and everything goes in: at their current size, specks of dust and not much else. Inescapable pulls drag in everything around, and true to being black holes, they probably grow with the matter they eat. Energy indeed: it's all light swirling down a drain.
Wanda tosses a penny at one of the holes and that copper sluices away into nothing with an altogether concerning pop. Her gaze rises immediately to the grappling pair, and her head shakes sharply, the vision aligning up with what her senses shout at her. "Not much of him left in there. Careful, he is empty!"
*
Warbird grits her teeth, the bubbles feeling decidedly unpleasant at this point as she glances over at Wanda, "Well, if there's something left, can we try to save him at least?" Okay, maybe she's been hanging out too much with Superman, since that's a far cry from how practical Carol normally is in these matters.
*
ROLL: Wanda +rolls 1d100 for a result of: 96
*
And she is the beloved of a man firmly committed to a hippocractic oath when none of his enemies are. Wanda's eyes narrow and she tries to suss out the situation. "I am not made to save souls," she mutters in German, damn it all to the ninth layer of Hell. "Maybe I can shut off his mental functions. The black balls remain." Oh, do they ever, and she holds out her hands. This is not the way she prefers to use spells, but knocking someone out is feasibly easier than other spells. A sweep of her wrist and her dagger drives down into the vacant space, simulating the partition of upper consciousness from lower autonomous functions. Mustn't slay the poor fellow by trying to make him sleep. She murmurs a crackling succession of syllables that sound nothing at all like German, and the spark of a thorny plum halo appears around the fellow, vanishing inwards. No trace of what happened, there.
*
Warbird drops the unconscious man, flying back a bit as she looks over at Wanda, "Well, one down… however many hundreds to go? There has got to be an easier way." She pauses, then eyes Wanda, "And who was the punk that broke Bucky out, anyway? Did he have something to do with this?" It's not a suspicious eye so much as it's a 'I know you know more' eye.
*
Unfortunately those little black holes still remain, and the dogs who went in them aren't coming back. Rather like lost mail, the mailman has proved he will come through the dark of night, as the dark of night. Her mouth tight, the witch assesses the damage done, and her own capacity to fix it. To say that's rather limited with breaking several laws is an understatement. "Too many. We need to make the source go away." There are some words she has to parse through when Warbird barrages her with reasonable questions.
"Not part of this, I think," she waves a hand. The poor man is left where he is, she's not helping him more than she has to. "The one who took him is bad. My problem first, not SHIELD. People inside can be hurt and have no protection. I know where Bucky is." That much she says, moodily staring out at the trees, such as mood ever afflicts her. It's the posture in sharp lines, narrowed eyes, thinned mouth. The girl can deliver a dark glare rather like the Winter Soldier, in fact. "Other one is very powerful but not looking. Too much on Bucky, not on everything else. So I have a way to see our lost friend. The cranky man with a pout wanted to take him home. You know where is home, for the soldier?"
*
Warbird thinks a moment, "If it's Bucky… James, we're talking about, that'd be Brooklyn." She frowns, "For the Winter Soldier, somewhere in the middle of Russia I'd imagine. So I would hope it's truly Brooklyn as my Russian is a tad rusty." Well, it isn't really, but some quips are hard to pass up.
She looks at Wanda, and smiles a little then, "And if you think I'm going to let you have /all/ the fun with beating the daylights out of that punk that took him, you're crazy. When do we go?"
*
Vesper has left.
*
"He said he knows no home." True fact that analysis of any lipreading or, eventually, Bucky himself might prove. Wanda flicks her fingers loosely. "I never say no. I say not all of SHIELD. SHIELD is a hammer. I am a knife." Her dagger wobbles for emphasis, and she slides it back into a sheath in her boot. "They did see, yes, he did not want to leave? It was not his wish. He did right thing to make less harm. I stopped as I know where he goes."
Blood sing to blood, and she knows how to follow a road few others follow. "But the man who takes him is not only a man. I want to talk to the Doctor. It is his right, too, if this is how I think it is. So four to punch him! Five, if Mr. James can punch."
*
Warbird grins, "Hey, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned. Considering this guy seems to be all magic and stuff, well, I'll trust your judgment in how we deal with him." She pauses, then chuckles, "As long as I can get a few good licks in."
*
More the merrier indeed, all things considered. If that had a meaning for Wanda, she would thoroughly agree. "Thank you." A nod gives way to a rarity: a smile. Wanda isn't someone who often delves into such shows, and she rubs her hand up her opposite arm, the sleeve bunched. "You hit very well. I am bothered by this. Why was he taken?"
*
Warbird shakes her head, "I don't know why someone with weird powers like that guy had took him. I mean, I can see where the KGB or HYDRA would want him back, but for them to do something like that seems a bit beyond their capabilities." She frowns, "As far as anyone else goes… I honestly couldn't say. It's strange, even by Bucky standards."
*
"He said a name. I think a name? Maybe he does this for someone else." Imagine, if the story of Loki Odinson doing something nice for another person got out! Scandals would surely ensue. "The soldier did not want to go. He had no idea who that man was. SHIELD was a future." Her frown follows, and that is something worth concerning herself over, since two of them frowning probably means an evil plot is about to hatch.
*
Carol hmms, "What was the name that he said?" She wrinkles her brow a bit, thinking about this whole situation and what they know so far, "I know this much, we need to get him back or Pegs is going to be pretty irate."
*
"Kai? Kay?" The pronunciation isn't perfect, but something which she can nonetheless manage. Wanda nods, and she runs her fingers through her hair, pulling back the tousled locks. "We need to get him. We need to stop this," she adds, waving at the black holes. "I am not sure what causes this. It will be a problem."
*
Warbird nods, "Well, one thing at a time. We definitely should get some extra support to stop what's happening here in the Park, but getting Bucky back… that's not going to be a problem, I think. At least, compared to this."