World Tree MUSH

  This early in the morning, a heavy layer of mist is still rising from the valley floor. The southwest end of Khoro's Howl is mostly uninhabited, too far south for the boundaries of the national park. Birdsong echoes through the mist, eerily distorted. Sunlight filters through the rising fog. It's all really quite peaceful, if a bit uncomfortably cool still.

  A black government-issue sedan is parked off the side of the road, here, with sun shades placed in its windshield. Perched on the closed trunk is one Agent Anneka Stojespal, elbows resting on her knees, an open newspaper in her hands. It's the local paper from Polyuchyn, the blocky and angular forms of its Cyrillic printing unmistakable even from a distance. At present, the front page headline appears to be the bust against the HYDRA base hidden in Khoro's Howl, and the photo shows police tape surrounding a hollowed-out and burnt-out bunker. Standing in front of it is Agent Philip Coulson in government-issue suit and government-issue aviators. Beside him but slightly out of focus is Anneka, smoking a cigarette. Even an indirect image shows the animosity in her eye as she glares at the ruins.

  There's a crisp snap of paper as she fluffs the page out and turns it, calmly smoking as she reads the day's headlines.

  Oh, hey. Weather report. Nice. The summer has been mild, all told. Mornings and nights are still pleasant, even if the day does get a little warm.

  She'd sent word to Steve that she wanted to talk, and had a few things to show him. That probably explains the closed manila folder sitting next to her, with a few other documents almost but not quite poking out of it. There's an ashtray on the other side of her. A butt or two are in there already.

  Holy smokes, this woman's got a habit and a half, doesn't she?

    Early morning sees more than just the Feathergrass Airbase cadets up early for training. The poor beleaguered squad That got up before the crack of dawn for their morning run has to compete with...
    "On your left."
    Steve Rogers outpaces the cadets easily, the super enhanced super soldier blitzes by the exhausted, sleepy cadets...
    Repeatedly. For every lap around the base they manage, he's ahead of them, running at double the pace and passing them--
    "On your left."
    This goes on for most of the early morning before the sun rises.
    By the time his run is done and he starts jogging his way to the meeting point, Steve's shirt is barely damp with sweat, a towel thrown over his neck anyway was he comes to a halt.
    "You know, I hear they say those things kill you, now." He says, motioning to the ashtray with a casual tone.
    "You wanted to see me?"

  Anneka allows herself the luxury of a deep drag on her cigarette as Steve's voice warns her about her habit. Exhaling a wreath of smoke with her words, she grins into the mist.

  "Probably my fucking job will kill me before these ever do." Her laugh is a gallows-humour cackle, but more restrained than her cackling in the HYDRA bunker. She taps the end into the ashtray before looking him over more directly. Jogging attire. Towel around the neck. Just a casual jaunt up the highway to the hinterlands of Khoro's Howl, huh?

  Most normal people wouldn't be able to make it, let alone both ways, but it's all in a day's exercise regiment for Captain America.

  Another draw; another smoky sigh.

  "Here."

  Folding the newspaper and setting it aside, she reaches for the manila folder, tossing it his way. It's decently accurate for someone without depth perception.

  Inside are some of the papers she had grabbed from the HYDRA file cabinet. At first, they don't look like anything terribly important; a scattered invoice here, a piece of greater schematics there. All of it is undeniably the real thing. All of it has also been copied by SHIELD and is already being processed by its analysts.

  "We found an interesting thing or two Saturday."

    It wasn't so much a jog as much as it was... Well it was faster than that. And prolonged. And Steve has only just begun to sweat from it all.
    Though that cackling in the HYDRA base... That certainly was something. It's something Steve opts to not comment on at the moment, as the folder is tossed his way, catching it one-handed and slowly flipping it open to start rifling through the contents. He spends a long moment ruffling the pages, blue eys darting over numbers here and a drawing there.
    "These are designs."
    He's not exactly the most technologically savvy member of The Avengers, but Steve Rogers isn't exactly a dumb musclebound jarhead, either. "Looks like you did find something interesting, huh."

  "Those sons of bitches are building a prototype. Agent Philip Coulson has had the analysts look at it, and they have come to the same conclusion. We do not yet know how far they have gotten with it; whether there is a prototype, or whether it is only in the design phase."

  Anneka exhales smoke.

  At the very bottom of the stack are a series of old documents from the Soviet Union. They're photocopies of older documents. The first is a dossier of some kind, but rather than the Ukrainian that Sokovia uses, it's a Russian governmental document. It paints the picture of a good and honest worker; a confident and genuine woman with a knack for playing liaison between the media, the military, and the people. The name printed on it is Raisa Ivanovna Yakovleva, but the photo shows a younger and unscarred Anneka Stojespal.

  The next are a series of newspaper clippings, of Raisa Ivanovna explaining some technological innovation or another and how it benefits the State. She certainly seemed loved by the press; smiling and waving from the cockpit of various prototype supersonic fighters in their media debuts. They're older, but still more advanced than the aircraft Steve remembers.

  If he should look up, her expression is stone dead neutral. Her scarred face gives nothing away.

  After those, there's a headline that claims in bold, block letters a spectacular crash in which Raisa Ivanovna lost control of her prototype and it came to ground in Siberia. The wreckage went on for kilometers. The damage to the pilot was horrifying; she wasn't expected to live, and officially, she never flew again.

  Raisa Ivanovna never appears in the press again after the accident.

  "We think, after the analysts had a nice overnight acquaintance with the data, that they are building something that can rival those superheroes who can fly." Anneka stubs her cigarette in the ashtray, regarding it with hood-eyed disinterest. "I think they are recruiting pilots. And if they cannot recruit them... then I think they are taking them by force." Her expression hardens. "We are still looking for the killer of a cold case some years ago in this area. Valentina Maximova Stojespal vanished from Polyuchyn's flight academy. Considering her sterling attendance and her performance level, it was odd, to say the least."

  The end of her cigarette is ground savagely into the ashtray.

  "HYDRA is responsible. What I intend to find out is how, and for what reason, but that is incidental. I will gladly do anything I can to do as much damage as I can to them in the meantime."

    Steve gets to the bottom of the stack, and that's where his brow quirks. While he may not understand the Russian language, a picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say. And he glances up from said photo to the scarred visage of the pilot in front of him for a good beat.
    That stone neutral expression also says a lot.
    But he returns to the file.
    Even without an understanding of the language he's getting an idea of what Anneka is showing him, here.
    "That's why you hate HYDRA so much. That crash wasn't a fluke. Was it." It's not a question.
    "Taking pilots by force... That would explain the missing Feathergrass cadets we found in HYDRA's holding cells. And probably explains any number of missing pilots, let alone Valentina."

  That crash wasn't a fluke. Was it.

  "Nyet." Steve doesn't have to know the language to understand the intonation of the word. No.

  "That is not the half of why I hate HYDRA," Anneka intones, softly. "I hate HYDRA because they have taken every person I have ever loved and engineered their murder in cold blood. I hate HYDRA because they did not succeed in killing me, and I have had to awaken from a personal hell of drugs and comas to a life that is not my life any more. My father. My mother. Their friends. My friends. My grandfather, maybe. My lover." She ticks each victim off, tone angrier and more dangerously soft with each consecutive victim.

  "I hate HYDRA because they took everything from me." Her tone is soft, so soft; so venomous. That blue eye glitters in hatred. Her fleeting grin looks more a savage baring of teeth. "I will hold them accountable for all of it if it is the very last thing I do."

  She reaches into her jacket for another cigarette, lighting it in a single swift, efficient movement. Steve is observant. He might notice that not once does she ever look anywhere directly at the flame, and once she pockets the lighter, she takes another drag and huffs an angry wreath of smoke.