章 22: MEGALOMANIA

Stray helps Morgan with his shoulder. Using him as a crutch, the two proceeds forward not facing any resistance of any sort.

Did SHIELD give up on them?

Morgan doubts that. She looks at Stray with suspicion. This very man has been responsible for a lot of things lately.

"What did you do?" With her hoarse voice thanks to her still recovering throat, she asks Stray.

But Stray is innocent or at least that's what he wants Morgan to believe.

"To be honest, I don't like SHIELD, but would I really do they harm?"

"Yes," Morgan state that fact so obviously Stray is doubting his Acting (F) skill. Well, it is F for a reason.

Morgan mercilessly disassembles Stray's lie in a heartbeat. "When you start by 'to be honest,' chances are you are lying. I don't like to admit it but you are the closest friend I had since high school."

"We are still and technically high school students though?"

"Don't change the subject..."

Morgan cooly returns the conversation back on track all too aware of Stray's tactics.

"It is plain and simple, it is an inside job..." With a proud smile, Stray boasts another conspiracy casually withdrawing it from his pocket.

Dropping off from a vent is Clint Barton, the Hawkeye, aiming his bow at the two of them.

Morgan is already battle ready, and she'd only need a thought to turn her nanotech into a repulsor weapon.

Contrary to Morgan's battle readiness, Hawkeye disengages his bow which arouses an eye-brow from Morgan.

"This way." The man with the bow leads the way.

Rather than Hawkeye, what Morgan is seeing is a Clint Barton instead.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Stray feels Morgan pinching his side, and it hurts. Knowing Morgan for how petty she is, she attaches a nanotech to her fingers and makes this complicated seismic feedback that seems to overcome Stray's Extremis physiology.

Stray relishes her cuteness.

"You didn't kidnap and threaten him with his family, did you not?"

"Of course, I didn't! What do you think of me, a monster?"

Clint has good senses. Clint's superior eyesight isn't the only thing he has. His other senses might not be as good but it is better among his peers who are equally as dangerous as him... maybe unarmed, they would be as dangerous as him.

The point is he hears Morgan's and Stray's exchange of dialogues which he finds irksome.

Clint Barton's specialty lies in weapons and the bow is the most friendly weapon in his arsenal. Morgan who has a lot in the know is aware of just how vindictive Clint Barton can be if it involves his family.

Stray who only knows Hawkeye through the limited movies he was able to watch, and the Marvel Wiki (S) skill also knows lots of things about Clint Barton.

However, Stray didn't really use anything that specifically involves Clint Barton.

Clint as aloof and reticent he may look from a distance is actually a very chill person. A total opposite of Natasha who seems friendly on the outside but is actually cold and bitter on the inside.

"Maguna, is it? To think you know my family too. Stray, do you know of this too?" Clint coldly asks.

"I do, but I don't want to use it to blackmail your or seem to do so. I don't want our relationship to go sour. Moreover, though I know that you have a family, I don't know where they live. That's different for Morgan though."

Morgan kicks Stray in his shin for throwing her under the bus.

The information that Hawkeye actually has a family is a great secret to his colleagues in SHIELD except for the director himself. So it was already a surprise to him that someone knows that he has a family. Moreover, that someone knows where his family is...

"Don't worry about that, Clint, I sent an email to Director Fury last week ago and threatened him to kill your family if he doesn't give me the Tesseract.

"What the fuck!?" Morgan who likes to appear prim and proper is getting more and more out of character lately.

"What is a tesseract?" And Clint is still clueless about lots of stuff in this timeline emphasizing his unique innocence before SHIELD's more intimate involvement with the world.

As subtle as possible, Clint has his hands draw his arrows in a microsecond loads it in his bow and aims it at Stray's skull.

Stray with a calm face explains the reasoning for his 'blackmail' of Nick Fury. "Just think of the tesseract as an infinite source of energy that Nick Fury cannot give up. Now, this is the story. You said something like you do not trust me, but you will heed my words. You see, I know there are people who know your wife's location such as Morgan here. If I suggested to you to your face to move your family, you'd find me suspicious and even might go an extra length to put an arrow in my skull. So what I did is to contact Fury. We don't really know each other, so I can only resort to such an explosive method as 'threatening' him. It is funny actually, I framed the entire thing to Hammer Industries... poor bastards... currently, SHIELD agents are monitoring your house, and some of my agents were able to confirm this. What you are about to do after all would warrant that much security."

Clint's eyes tremble at the ridiculousness of Stray's logic, yet his words perfectly fit the big picture in a rational manner.

Morgan is similarly speechless. Take note, it is only two months and maybe a few days, yet Stray's reach was able to reach this part.

The party of three comes to a frail door. Clint opens it and ushers Stray and Morgan to go.

The two comply. Apparently, it was an underground tunnel. Stray thanks Clint with a silly smile. "Thanks, pal... I wouldn't know what I should do if I didn't have you."

Clint didn't like the sound of that.

In the dark tunnel, Stray holds the nanotech-based flashlight, the possibly most expensive flashlight in the world.

Morgan still clinging to Stray for support asks the very thing that has been bothering her. "How did you do it?"

Stray smiles mysteriously and declares. "I was planning on creating an 'origin story' for Hawkeye..."

Morgan feels a shiver down her spine because, at the back of her mind, there might be more of what stray is not letting up.

"What did you do?" Morgan fearfully asks.

"I tipped him on the Winter Soldier. I managed to acquire information about his past missions and manages to get a connection from the Winter Soldier with him..."

That confirms it. Stray is a bigger troublemaker than Morgan. Stray continues on a monologue.

"Natasha had a past connection with WW, so I thought Clint might also have... The mystery question is what does it takes for him to do this entire thing solo?

"I reckon if it involves the destruction of shield, he'd gladly do it. I only need to tell him some things and have him work the kinks by himself.

"If he learns that the Hydra is rising up again, I am sure he wouldn't hesitate twice to share this information with Nick Fury, but he wouldn't do that.

"It is because Nick Fury won't listen to him as I have snitched on Hawkeye already of his covert actions of digging dirt of his fellow colleagues.

"He would be that desperate after all as the lead is only accessible through a former merc now a SHIELD agent that would become the future Crossbones, a villain!

"Guess what is this villain's affiliation? I am thinking you are already thinking of it and you are right, it is Hydra. Realizing that Hydra is parasitic to SHIELD, he will then go fucking crazy!

"Who wouldn't be? SHIELD is literally on his family's fucking doorstep! At that moment of despair, who can he turn to? The answer is me!

"With my sponsorship, I will turn him into an independent hero whose mantle shall strike fear in his enemies.

"To be honest, Morgan, the only reason I was insistent on stopping you of not creating Ironman besides not being able to shake his ironman's hands is also so that I can turn you into a hero. My proposition is interesting, isn't it? Imagine Ironman and the Gravity Girl fighting side by side!"

Morgan has a poker face this whole time, but when she hears the 'to be honest,' again, she cannot help but give Stray a funny look. "I don't like the name Gravity Girl... You better think of a better name."

And this spells the end of the most ghostly escape from the SHIELD facility.

Stray prepares for Hawkeye's future appearance, but as to how it will come to be, he cannot be sure.

He just has to be content for being able to reconnect with Morgan... but truthfully, and truthfully so in Stray's heart, he just wants to regain the relationships he had.

He isn't in the groove with Peter yet, but Morgan is a great start!

Thus, his megalomaniac's heart rests a bit as a shred of his goody two shoes showcases itself to the world.