Chapter 55: CHAPTER 54
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The following day went by with Draul, Steve and Bucky clearing all the bases of HYDRA in the Russian capital without being able to find any trace of Trask except for that of the so-called 'Quenial Conference'.
"Do we have a plan for when we apprehend Trask?" Steve asked after that got back to their hotel room.
"We do, but we are not apprehending Trask." Draul said while keeping the bag in which he carried his three axes to the side before corking open a bottle of whiskey.
Steve's brows furrowed at the statement but he didn't need to ask before Draul gave an explanation to him and the silent, yet inquisitive Bucky.
"Acting against Trask from the get-go is a sure way to be labeled a terrorist and given the mark of rogue operatives, which we don't want obviously. The plan is to trail him to wherever his hide hole is before acting on him away from viewing eyes. And like I said before, there is no apprehending involved; if Trask is in some shady dealings like we suspect then I'd be lopping his head off."
Steve grimaced at that while Bucky, to his credit, just raised an eyebrow at what was said.
"You know, you are resembling a awful lot like a vigilante." Bucky said in his own pace which caused Draul to pause and shoot him a disbelieving look.
"You are not seriously insinuating that I have a hero complex or god forbid a 'for the greater good' type mentality now are you?" Draul continued his stare at Bucky who just shrugged it off.
"I'm just saying, that's all."
"And what's with that look Steve?" Draul directed at Steve who had an… expression difficult to read.
"I'm just wondering if you could tone it down a bit on the whole butcher thing with the axe and decapitated heads." Steve said with an awkward smile, at least he found it in him to be awkward because of the nature of the request.
"Huh?"
"I'm just saying that it's too… unsettling that's all." Steve said and now even Draul and Bucky could tell how awkward he was feeling talking about something like this.
"Well I'm sorry for the inconvenience but not every one of us could use a physics defying shield with such mastery that would make a Frisbee look cool. You don't see me complaining about your shields bullshit every time you throw it at an enemy now do you?" Draul questioned sarcastically.
"At least it doesn't make someone look like a bloodthirsty barbarian." Bucky commented quietly to the side, which Draul heard because if his enhanced senses.
"You've got a problem with my working aesthetics Bucks?" I asked him with a challenging tone.
"I don't, but that doesn't mean it isn't unsettling." Bucky took the stare coolly and answered, clearly unfazed.
"Well unlike you guys, guns and shields don't just do it for me anymore. It doesn't also help that most weapons aren't to my taste except for that romantic beauty of an axe." Draul said as he down his glass of whiskey and strayed unpacking his axe to clean them.
"Which one are you talking about?" Steve asked in an uncertain tone.
"I'm talking of Alice and her sisters of course." Draul said in a matter-of-factly tone. The name he mentioned were what he called the three axes he wielded; Alice the First to Alice the Third.
"God you are going more crazy by the day." Bucky sighed and walked to his room to get a good rest before the D-day that was tomorrow.
"I don't know what's his problems nowadays. He looks like he is getting crankier as the day goes on." Draul said before he went ahead and stated cleaning the three axes.
Unlike the first axe he used, these three were specially commissioned by him from a metallurgist back in New York but even then, it was still a more highly durable iron. That was why he took care of it and didn't use them every time since he didn't know when their durability would give out.
"So what's on your mind, I doubt it's the weapons." Draul said to Steve without taking his eyes of the little task of wiping his weapon that he was doing.
"I was just wondering why you started taking the initiative to hunt them after HYDRA was destroyed by you yourself no less." He said.
"Oh that? I was always going to hunt them sooner or later down the line but I figured that it was time I got off my ass and started doing it than letting them grow comfortable enough to fight back." Draul explained.
"is that why you don't want to take any form of prisoners and just kill them all off? You are afraid HYDRA would come back?" Steve asked which prompted a chuckle from Draul.
"First of all, I don't believe in granting my foes any type of clemency except death and the fact about me being afraid of HYDRA coming back is a half truth, reason being that I don't think I could ever truly wipe out HYDRA since it would require an ungodly amount of dedication and I'm not about to use my new leach of time to start chasing old wounds since I would just be stressing myself until I fall into paranoia because of an unnecessary ideal." Draul said as he finished cleaning the weapons and set the aside.
"So you are saying that unless you make it your life goal, you won't be able to stamp out every ink of HYDRA from the world?" Steve asked.
"In a nutshell, yes." He got up and left for his bedroom since it was getting late and they had Trask as their target and he had to be in top shape to deal with whatever situation may arise.
He still didn't know where Trask was with the SENTINEL project but he was hoping it wasn't yet functional because that would suck bad for everyone, mostly the mutant race since it'll have to wipe them all out first before it focuses on the humans.
'Stupid crazy ego-driven scientists.' He gritted his teeth as he thought of what kind of calamity would fall on an entire race just because of a jealous racist bastard. Or in this case a group of jealous racist bastards.
….
The next day.
Draul and his team went to the site of the Quenial conference but unlike Bucky and Steve who stood wait outside, Draul got himself put in a nice suit and went inside the venue. He was able to hack into their servers and then added an extra 'Mr. Colleen Koff' to the reservations list.
There weren't using invitation cards since it was outdated and it could easily be forged.
The reason for Draul's actions were that he wanted to see who would be able to recognize him, stir up the rats nest a little to see who were rattled, and then he'd make headway on the number of people who knew about him.
He walked into the conference room which seemed like a lecture hall with a little podium at the end of it, a projector to the side with a screen. The room could fit it in up to 200 seats so it wasn't crowded as these kind of people were few and far across the globe and they were likely to be of the questionable ilk.
His senses were spread to take in every shift in posture as he walk to the front seats so people could get a good look at him, every sharp intake of breath, every increase in heartbeats, he was listening to all of them.
He talked to some of the people at the front, acting like he was some unknown name and they were his idols while also asking them about insights from some papers of theirs he had skimmed through by the course of the week.
The act worked as he had expected, the scientists and doctors were quick to take on a superior air of authority while others didn't deign it to themselves to listen or even talk to this gold digging nobody.
After some back and forths he went back to the back of the room and took a seat where he could see most of the people from his elevated position.
His gamble had paid off and he identified 4 people who reacted to his presence; one shifted to hide himself, the other two acted casual since they were likely betting on the fact that there was no way he could know them, and the last was Trask – the man seemed like he wanted to be anywhere but here at the moment.
He already knew their faces, so there was no way they were escaping him. He already knew Trask and also identified 2 of them but he didn't know the last one which wasn't a problem. Even on the off chance the he wasn't on HYDRA's servers then all he needed to do was draw a picture of his face and have Fury run a facial ID on him. His enhance musculature ensured control over every single bone and muscle fibers in his body so things like drawing and playing the violin came very easy to him, and that to his eidetic and photographic memory and he could very well draw a perfect replica of the 'Mona Lisa' after a study glance.
The Conference was halfway before Steve informed him that they had armed men securing the perimeter around the conference site.
His suspect to that were Trask and the fidgety guy who he remembered as one of Ernst's lab partners but he didn't act. It was also during the lectures that he was able to know that the gathering he was at wasn't some sort of villains league where all the mutant-hate people gathered and plotted their downfall but rather he was something he could only call a secret society like the Illuminati.
There were rules that the people here seemed to follow by, which ranged front the way they welcomed someone onto the stage or some chants they did. He saw some people he could only identify as the Hellfire Club since he had at some point researched them and even though they were low-key, so low in fact that they weren't on anyone's radar, he was able to find out some information about Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost – the White King and Queen of said club respectively. The former because he was known to frequent some high level parties and they later since she had some kind of academy or was it some company back in Massachusetts.
His focus didn't stay on them for more than a few seconds before he rested his gaze elsewhere.
He stayed like that as Steve kept of telling him of the situation outside and since their attackers went into his range, he was able to observe them with his senses while the X-rayed the ones that were at his front.
He couldn't help but smile as the two likely men to have ordered such a strike immediately calmed down and fully focused on the lectured, although their heart was still beating at an accelerated pace.
The two noticed his smile and to make it more worse, he turned to them and waved and he almost burst into laughter as their heartbeats went through the roof in sheer panic. The funny part was that they didn't know who he was waving at since they noticed themselves which prompted his smile to widen as they both gained a 'fuck!' expression.
I wanted to tease them further but had to stop when I saw some snipers aiming at me with my X-ray vision.
'This never gets old does it?'
Honestly speaking, why do I always find myself at gunpoint? I was waiting for the snipers call to shoot and the moment I got it, immediately steam poured out of my body in massive amounts and very soon the entire hall was covered in panicked screams and steam. I got up and started walking leisurely to Trask's location even as the dwarf of a man struggled to run away.
Bucky and Steve had already engaged the hostiles outside while the snipers still couldn't get a shot at me. They may have infrared and hear sensors but there would never be able to catch me with that unless I'm actively releasing from my body in an amount that was humanly impossible.
With a light tap of my leg on the floor, a freezing beam made it's way across the floor to where Ernst's lab partner was and froze him solid in seconds before ice spikes drilled into him turning him into an iron maiden, while I finally got to Trask and yanked up the short man and let out a chuckle as his legs wiggled due to the lack of solid contact with the ground.
"C'mon now. Why run from me when I'm one of your hardcore fans? That breaks my heart you know?" I said in mock hurt to the Peter Dinklage lookalike.
"Mutant." He hissed out.
'Wow, just wow! This guy is seriously corrupting my image of the Tyrion. Well they did say you never want to meet your heroes.'
"Bingo! I'm the big bad of this episode and you, my good friend, just got on the execution block… once again."
I knocked him out before he started protesting and made my way to where I could safely escape from with this baggage with me.
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