[Virginia AU] we rose up from the falling waters

[nerves_of_ice]

A little over a week goes by, and as it does Bucky falls into a pattern, slow but sure. He wakes with Sharon in the mornings, shares coffee and something that suffices for breakfast, then works a little on searches and checking contacts and sources from other time zones and locations. Mid-morning finds him at the Task Force offices with Riley and his team. Early afternoon finds him meeting with Ross, if there's any reason to; mid-afternoon he checks in with Steve, with Tony, or with Natasha before he goes back to tracing rumors and hints.

Today's different, though. Today is Sharon's first day back at work after her suspension, and Bucky's determined not to do a single damn thing that might possibly make it difficult for her.

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[from_the_outside]

She hears Ross's exasperated sigh at approximately the same moment as she locks eyes with Nakia.

"Not just the king," Sharon says, low. Their glances meet, then slide away from each other, and Nakia murmurs something of her own. "An old colleague of mine from Wakanda is here, too."

And it's probably not just the two of them, either. Somehow, they got wind of this deal, and she has the sinking suspicion they're not here to play nice about their stolen vibranium. "Eyes open. This might get messy."

Coming up to the bar, she smiles at the tender and orders a martini. Only then does she allow her glance to return to the woman in green sitting a seat away.

"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" she asks, keeping her voice to a low murmur. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Prince – no, King T'Challa making his way toward Ross.

Nakia smiles. "I could ask you the same thing."

[marvel_npc]

He casts a dismissive glance over the table and the betting line as he moves up beside the other man. "Agent Ross."

"Your highness." Ross has the sense to keep it low, which he had figured; they are drawing no untoward attention. "What are you doing here?"

"You are buying from Klaue," T'Challa starts, only for Ross to interrupt him sharply.

"What I'm doing on behalf of the U.S. government is none of your concern. Now do me a favor and stay the hell out of my way."

[from_the_outside]

She doesn't let herself wince as Ross argues with the King – to her credit, Nakia doesn't, either, although her expression turns just a little wry. I heard good things about this place," she says, thanking the bartender with a smile and taking a sip of her drink. "But I think the tables are getting cold. You might have better luck somewhere else tonight."

"Oh, no, here is exactly where we need to be," Nakia tells her, lightly, and tips her head toward T'Challa. "But if the tables are not to your liking perhaps you should go. We could even meet later, to catch up."

"We do have a lot to catch up on," Sharon murmurs, listening as Ross and T'Challa argue. "But I really think you and your date would have a better night somewhere else."

[nerves_of_ice]

He listens silently as Ross warns them all of the presence of Wakanda's king - T'Challa, he remembers, that's the guy's name - and reiterates that he can't be allowed to leave with Klaue. From what he can hear, which he'd bet is more than the Task Force can with their more-standard earpieces, it doesn't sound like T'Challa's inclined to cooperate.

"I am not here to make a deal," comes through clear as day, and Bucky sighs. "On it," he murmurs. "If they come out with him, I'll pick Klaue up then."

[from_the_outside]

Things are going really well, she can tell. Even Nakia's gorgeous smile looks a little fixed. Sharon keeps her glance off Ross and the king – there's just nothing she can do about it right this second - and gives Nakia a slightly wry smile instead.

"But I have to say," she murmurs. "It's nice to see you again."

[nerves_of_ice]

He stops paying attention to the argument inside as multiple SUVs pull up outside the casino. "Heads-up," Bucky warns, as Klaue steps out of one of them and is instantly surrounded by the muscle he's brought.

"Target on the move. Eight secondary targets assisting. Thirty seconds to entry."

[from_the_outside]

The Wakandans must not have anyone on the outside, because the Task Force personnel glance towards the entrance before they do. Subsequently, Sharon views Klaue strolling into the casino, heavily armed thugs behind him as he pauses and looks out over the crowd with a genial expression on his face.

"Klaue," Nakia murmurs, presumably to the king. "Plus eight."

She and Sharon exchange a glance before each abandons her drink to begin drifting through the crowd – Nakia to the outside of the room, Sharon towards Ross. "That's a lot of muscle," she murmurs, to the team. "They're ready for a fight."

[nerves_of_ice]

This could get messy as hell, and Sharon and Ross are right in the middle of it. Bucky's jaw sets hard as another SUV arrives. "Six more," he warns.

Over Ross's earpiece, he hears Klaue babbling something about music and a cloud, blustering. Bucky starts to tell them he's going to make his way inside but goes silent, his focus turning blade-sharp when Ross comments on his thugs and Klaue laughs. "Oh, you think they're here for you?"

[from_the_outside]

He knows. Somehow, Klaue must have known the Wakandans would show up. As Ross gestures for the agent with the briefcase to come forward, Sharon tenses.

She doesn't see how what happens next starts, only the effect. There's a shout and a flurry of movement on the balcony, and then Klaue grabs the vibranium back and pulls a gun as Ross lifts the briefcase in front of his face to take the shots Klaue squeezes off.

Sharon drops and reaches for her Kahr in its hidden thigh holster, then takes aim at Klaue's men on the balcony, trying to keep them from picking off the agents and Wakandans in the crowd.

"Nakia!" she yells. It's too late now to worry about rumbling their cover. "Get T'Challa out of here!"

They can't have the king of Wakanda injured or dead in a shootout in Busan, they can't.

[marvel_npc]

He kicks the table up on its side to create cover, then drops into it beside Ross. The man does not seem injured, which is just as well. On the level above, Okoye is laying about her with her spear to great effect, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Nakia fighting two of Klaue's people.

T'Challa keeps his attention on his own battle, and leaps from the top of the table, tearing his way through the thugs who try to stop him, his sights set on Klaue as the man tries to flee up the stairs. He leaps after him, using the Black Panther's speed and strength to reach the balcony in time to confront him.

"Umbulali!" he snarls. Something in Klaue's prosthetic arm shifts as the man grins at him. "You know, you look just like your old man," he remarks, and then the world explodes around T'Challa as a sonic blast sends him falling through the air to crash into the table below.

[from_the_outside]

"The hell was that?" yells Ross, as T'Challa goes soaring off the balcony and into a table below, but Sharon's too busy tangling with Klaue's men on the floor to answer him, or even to begin to guess. She puts a foot into the side of one's knee, tearing tendons and ligaments and dropping him to the floor, then whirls to grab another by the wrist and send him flying face-first into the craps table.

It's chaos. Klaue's men pour up the stairs to the upper level, and Klaue himself levels the weapon he'd just used – is that his arm? – at the wall and blasts through.

"Bucky!" she shouts. "Klaue's escaping, he's got some kind of sonic weapon – "

[nerves_of_ice]

"On him," Bucky confirms, cool and sure, even as relief surges through him on hearing her voice and knowing she's okay. "He's exiting now. Four black SUVs, divided group."

He's already on the move as he pulls a set of the trackers Tony had provided from a hidden pocket. Bucky flips one to each vehicle before they can pull out, and leaps from above to land on the rear-most, destroying the hood and the engine within with a shattering punch from his left fist.

[marvel_npc]

T'Challa sprints from the casino into the muggy night air, trusting that Okoye has chosen the right car.

"Shuri!" he shouts. She had better be in her lab, in range of the sand table. In his ear, Nakia gasps, and he feels his heart seize. "What?" he demands, even as Shuri responds on the other channel.

"Someone else is on the hunt," Nakia tells him, sounding astonished. "He has demolished one of the SUVs."

In his other ear, Shuri wonders which side of the road she should drive on, and his impatience gets the better of him. "For Bast's sake, just drive!" he orders.

He hears the car coming behind him and thinks the Panther habit into existence. As his suit frays off his body and the vibranium habit takes its place, he executes an arcing backwards flip and lands on the roof, claws digging in for purchase. "I'm coming," he tells Nakia. "Who is the other hunter?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Trackers in place," Bucky reports, as he sprints after Klaue's SUV, leaving the wreckage of the other for the rest of the agents on the outside team to mop up. "I have Klaue in sight."

It won't be for long if he can't get in reach before they hit an open stretch of road. Bucky pulls a machine pistol from behind his back and lets out two controlled bursts, trying to take out the tires - and swears as the bullets hit and have no real effect. "Run-flat tires," he reports. "Bulletproof glass. Going in."

He picks up his pace, preparing for another leap, and then glances at the car that pulls up to the side of him, clearly also in pursuit for some reason. With an inward shrug, Bucky leaps to land on its trunk. "Faster!" he yells. "You'll lose him!"

[marvel_npc]

Nakia yelps as the man lands on the trunk of their car, and Okoye twists in her seat to glare at him. "Andimazi ukuba ungubani, kodwa kungcono angangeni endleleni," she informs her king, coldly, as Nakia steps on the gas and accelerates down the narrow street.

Ahead of them, the three SUVs left begin splitting off from the main road, and Okoye curses beneath her breath. "They're trying to lose us," she tells her king, and Nakia spins the wheel to the right, sending them slewing after the middle vehicle.

[marvel_npc]

"Get rid of him if you have to," T'Challa orders, as the remote car accelerates, giving chase. "Don't let him get in the way."

He hears Okoye's acknowledgment, but his attention is caught by the intersection the car barrels towards, and by Shuri's voice in his ear telling him they won't make it. "Keep going!" he orders, and leaps to the side of the car to lean towards the street, tilting the whole thing up onto its two side wheels as his claws dig into the pavement. They arrow through the intersection, and Shuri whoops in his ear as he sets the car aright once more, his gaze locked on the SUVs ahead.

[nerves_of_ice]

At least they're not screaming. He'd explain, but he doesn't have time, as he sees one of Klaue's men lean out the window with gun in hand. Bucky pushes himself from the trunk into a controlled slide over the roof of the car to the hood, left hand out to try to prevent any bullets from crashing through the windshield to hurt the women behind them.

"What the hell?" he mutters, as those he doesn't deflect just hit the hood and ping away without even leaving so much as a dent.

[marvel_npc]

"Guns," Okoye mutters, as bullets reflect from the vibranium car like raindrops. "So primitive."

Nakia leans forward to rap on the windshield, trying to get the attention of the man on the hood. "Hey!" she calls. "Get out of the way, I can't see."

Okoye shakes her head – this is no time for talking. She rolls the passenger side window down and starts pulling herself through, as Nakia gives her a surprised glance. The gown she's wearing billows in the wind as she stabs her shortened spear into the roof and pulls herself up to stand on the sedan, shifting easily with the motion of the car. "What are you doing?" Nakia calls from below, but Nakia ignores both her and the man on the hood.

"Just drive," she orders, then gives the man a flat glance as she extends her spear to its full length. "And you, duck."

That's the only warning she gives before she lets fly with the spear, sending it piercing through the back window and windshield of one of the SUVs like a javelin.

[nerves_of_ice]

The car slams to an instant stop, crumpling around the weapon as though it'd just crashed into a telephone pole. Bucky reassesses the two women in an instant. There's no way in hell any normal spear could do that, but there's time enough later to figure that out.

"Impressive," Bucky calls. Timing it carefully, he leaps into the air, landing on the roof beside the spear-wielding woman and clearing the driver's field of vision as they race after the remaining car.

"Klaue's in that one. I have a tracker on it," he tells her. "Get me close enough and I can take it apart like a can opener, if you don't want to smash it like the other."

[marvel_npc]

Okoye ignores him for the second it takes for her to lean to the side and collect her spear as Nakia drives by the crumpled mass of the SUV, then turns a cool, assessing gaze on him. "We do not require your assistance," she says, and bites the head of her spear through the roof of the car, dropping to hang onto it as Nakia sends the sedan leaping over the top of a hill and onto a long downward slope.

[nerves_of_ice]

He drops into a crouch, bracing his left hand against the car's roof to keep from skidding off - and noticing in the process that he can't dent it with his fingers.

"Ever hear of teamwork?" he demands, exasperated. "Look, neither of us wants this мудак to get away--"

[marvel_npc]

Okoye does not deign to reply to this – she has a team, and it certainly does not require the addition of this annoyed white man with a metal arm. Some sort of steel alloy, she thinks, and sniffs, derisively.

Unfortunately, that's when Nakia leaps the car over another rise and the whole thing simply disintegrates beneath her booted feet. The car peels open like a pomegranate, sheets of vibranium scattering, the whole thing deconstructing down to the bolts.

[nerves_of_ice]

He catches a glimpse of what looks kind of like a blast from one of Iron Man's disruptors as the car clears a rise and responds automatically, pushing off against the roof in a leap forward. The momentum as the car's hit by whatever-the-fuck weapon Klaue's using flings him into a long falling arc. Bucky hits rolling, shoves his left hand against the asphalt to come up on his feet running.

A glance over his shoulder's enough to see that the two women are okay - that's one hell of a car - and he accelerates to his full speed in pursuit, looking for another vehicle he can commandeer as he runs.

[marvel_npc]

She wastes no time, only leaps at the last second, gracefully describing an arc through the air until she lands on what was once a car door and bears down on it, skidding to a halt.

A grinding sound of metal on blacktop announces Nakia's arrival next to her: the War Dog looks lightly shell-shocked as they both gaze at the SUV driving away and the man hanging out the door, grinning at them. The man who had joined them for a short while is in pursuit, and Okoye's glance narrows as she watches him: he moves nearly with the speed of the Black Panther.

In the next second, her vision is blocked as another SUV screeches to a halt in front of them and Everett Ross leans out the window. Okoye can see the blonde woman in white who had been speaking with Nakia next to him. "Hop in," he invites, and glances at Okoye's spear. "Put that spear in the trunk."

She exchanges a glance with Nakia, and they both move to do as Ross says. What other choice do they have?

[nerves_of_ice]

The SUV skids into the entryway of the bridge ahead and Bucky curses - it's too straight a line, too little traffic, no buildings he can use to grab an angle and come in from another side. The second it gets a clear spot, Klaue will pull away, and--

He spots the motorcycle almost at the same moment and swerves, using the lane divider to launch himself at the rider. He sends the helmeted figure rolling over the pavement as he flings himself onto the bike and hits the gas, weaving his way between oncoming traffic as he parallels Klaue's flight.