The Road Home (Mild Language)

Summary:
June 09 2014: Partisan and Aspect move to safer quarters after one of their missions and discuss her past on the open road.

Outskirts of the New York Metro Area

Nondescript homes, shops and an open highway, not really the sort of place one would stop unless one has business.


Characters

NPCs
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Mood Music:
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It's raining, and lets be straight up here. It's a perfect storm, not in the 90 mph winds sort either. The storm's just enough to darken the skies, bring a truly refreshing breeze and scatter enough raindrops to eat up some of that sticky humidity. Not that this stops Partisan activities of course, even if she has a wounded comrade. No the whole morning has been pretty fucking productive, not that this is much of an issue. Most of these little errands seem to rely around Aspect staying in the car anyway. First stop was to an ancient looking grandma, who in thirty minutes had minted flawless passports, drivers licenses, social security cards and produced fresh credit cards to match the name. Then on to an outdoor store, where she furnishes clothing and the odd bit've gear or two (socks, proper fucking keens thankyou very much and a few basic first aid kits), the gun store which apparently does -not- actually require her to use any of that new plastic (especially considering she returns with four full auto P90s, a handful of acogs, WMLs, a few 5.56 suppressors, a silencero osprey for her .45 and oodles of ammo and spare mags), and most recently? A private seller, to buy a car. It doesn't take long, of course.

People tend not to blink twice when you pay in cash, and that's been sufficient to source a pristine R-32 it would seem. She sweeps the hot hatch into the parking space next to the car she'd acquired from…somewhere, an aging crown vic that had once been a Police cruiser and then a Taxi cab before she'd gotten ahold of it apparently. "Alright you shot up son of a bitch."Pausing to light her cigarette, before popping open the passenger side door and offering a hand. "Lets get you moved, then we start our drive back to the City alright?"

*

A few things have been bothering Jericho since the end of the last op. Like, for example, how the hell did Pepper Potts know to ask about his e-mail. He's not a man who believes in coincidences and her turning up at Partisan's hideout is really stretching credulity. Fortunately it ended well enough. No one dead, no one shot, that's all good. In any case, he's been using the brief times Parti's been out of the car to do what he usually does: hack, troll and datamine the info-grid for answers. Today they're in short supply.

He's also been refining the targeting list he keeps Parti updated on. After their last four hits, all of the targets he'd ID'd in the Primary Hydra networks were exhausted and it was going to take him time to locate more. That left going after the secondary networks, which is to say, the groups of people the organization manipulates, supplies or pays to do most of their dirty work. They're not Hydra per se, but they are an important part of how the damned snakes make themselves felt. Sometimes its as simple as paying a criminal syndicate a lot of money to get something done and not ask questions. And he has all kinds of lines on that. Prioritizing is going to take him a bit. That train of thought is interrupted when Parti rolls them to a stop and opens his door. He takes the offered hand because, damn it, his chest and back still hurt like hell and he lost enough blood to make him the slightest bit light headed when he stands quickly. If he face planted… well, at best he'd never hear the end of it. "Sounds like a plan, Parti. Anything you need on my end?" Other than, you know, just generally recovering? That seems to go without saying.

*

"Don't call me that without my mask on, please. My name is Bianca Greene, alright?"Whatever her name on, the werewolf formally known as "The Partisan" has little trouble helping Jericho to his feet. Pausing to pop the VW's passenger door open, before helping to ease him into the passenger seat. See, shit has leather and heated fucking bunwarmers yo. Bunwarmers make everything okidoke, everyone knows this. Scientists all drive Volvos and Saabs for this reason alone, of course. "Once we get back in town, your coming to a safe house of mine and you're staying there until I clear you to be doing anything else but loafing around alright?" Pausing to ash her cigarette, before moving to empty the Crown Vic. Pausing to set a pair of P90s in Jericho's lap, before she gets going. "I trust you because I don't think you'd betray me, and because I don't think you're going to be captured. When your fucked up, your a liability to me and my protege. Fair?"

*

"Alright. Bianca, then." He does pause to wonder if maybe that's a name she likes. She seems like the type that would use a new alias every time but… you never know. Jericho doesn't mention that he'd put a bullet in his own head if he were going to be captured. It's not really necessary to say stuff like that. But he would. And why? Because it's preferable to a lingering and invasive surgery to extract his polymorpher suite that would likely double as his post mortem. Out of reflex he checks the P90's to make sure the weapons are on safe and have nothing chambered. "Yes ma'am." He chuckles a bit. "That's entirely fair. Were the situation reversed I think I'd probably feel about the same way."

He pauses, wincing a bit at the pain the chuckle produces. As he turns his head a little that green glimmer on his skin shows itself again. It's been going like that off and on ever since he regained consciousness before Pepper Potts showed up. "Got a lot of hardware here." He notes, indicating the weaponry.

*

"Different body, requires different equipment. Ingrid had like eight inches on Tabitha, broader shoulders, longer arms. My center of balance is different, my strength, speed, dexterity you name it. It changes every time, and with it comes the need to adapt at times. My Suchka would work ok, but I really need something more accurate as things proceed."She pauses with a roll of her shoulders, before the Raven haired Partisan gives the Crown vic one final check. Then, casually she produces a cheap screwdriver and pops the crown vic's steering column and pops the screwdriver into the ignition. She adds a kicked in window, before stepping away with the door left ajar. Yep, it looks pretty stolen right?

"I haven't used anything 5.56 since Vietnam, right when the Colt Commando came out. I had been using a FAL, which was still pretty hot shit back then. I was also a dude at the time, so the weight wasn't such a big deal. Nothing against the platform or the caliber, I killed pretty well with it. Just found AKs easier to keep supplied when I was tooling around South America post Vietnam, was the first time I really started to use them hardcore actually. I mean during the first and second world wars, it was all subguns for resistance types."Casually, Part flicks that cigarette away before slumping into the R-32 and cranking the motor over. "The reputation the M16 got was pretty undeserved though, even at the height of the problem."

*

That draws another chuckle from the hacker. For him, that stuff is history. It's a bit odd to hear someone speak of it as if they were there. And she was, he has no doubt. Hell, he didn't doubt that before he saw her transformation. "Well that SiG I saw you with at the mine would probably suit, I'd think. How many… hmmmm…" He pauses looking for the right word, and because he needs a moment's concentration to decrypt a low priority municipal server to use as a relay. "… Incarnations have you had in a hundred odd years?"

*

Out of the parking lot, and into the light traffic with a yawn. There's no hard driving hysterics here, she just sort've lets the four door hatchback blend right into the line of cars. "Oh I haven't kept track, hundreds I suppose. Been young, old, man, woman, husband, wife yadda yadda. You have to remember starting in WW2, I was never really on my own. I was contracting out for the OSS first, then later the CIA. I was doing my own shit sure, but almost all was agency related at the end of the day. They thought there was a whole network of me, so they didn't hesitate to ask me to do things where I'd need to be a man or a woman or who knows. Black, White, Asian, whatever. It's a little funky the first few days every time, and then it's no big deal. Swapping genders is more difficult, lots of little social and movement nuances to fret over."

*

Swapping genders sound pretty damn difficult to Jericho. Hell, picking up on the socio-cultural cues for people of your own gender in a foreign culture is pretty hard. "And the fact that you could only gave them more reason to think there's more than one of you." Which they still do. He checked when her name first came up. For a few long minutes he just watches as the traffic slides by, too deep in thought to even multitask and code. Then after a few moments he shakes himself and opens up one of his special projects, something new for the polymorpher that he seems to have been missing. "That was a hell of a thing to see. Does it hurt much? The transformation I mean, not the getting shot that goes before it."

*

Partisan Shrugs quite casually really "Well what your seeing is me die, honestly. My soul isn't attached to my body in the conventional way, because I've got this funny mixture of wolf and girl stitched together in an odd way."Girl, not woman. Girl. "So when this body dies, or I just need to put my fur on the soul manifests and boom wolf. The manifestation no, the death part of course. Time slows down, I feel myself drift out of my body. I see the gateway to the next world, and then I roll back in and it's like I just blinked my eyes. If anything it's vastly more comfortable, it's my native shape after all. This is just a disguise."

*

Jericho grimaces a bit. The notion of having to die to do something like that… it sounds pretty unpleasant. "You seemed to be… I don't know, more or less yourself with the fur on though." He pauses, considering. The 'girl' reference didn't slip by him. How old must she have been when this first happened? "Which I guess makes sense if this…" He gestures to the new raven haired, younger looking Partisan, "Is just a meat-suit."

Aspect is not a man given to waxing philosophical. He's really a very intensely practical man, but stuff like this does make you think. "I'm not quite sure why I expected differently. Maybe just… still used to Hollywood when thinking about werewolves." He gives her a sidelong wry smile as he wrestles a particularly cumbersome piece of code.

*

"Well there's a bunch of different kinds of werewolf, just like there are different kinds of vampire and so fourth. As far as I know, there hadn't been a wolf like me in maybe three hundred years. Another form, the virus was always more widespread. They're bigger, but -way- more fragile and they're stupid. What you saw was me being, myself. There's much more powerful instincts at play, but I'm still me and stuff."Part rolls down the window as she produces a cigarette, and sparks it to life with a flash from her bic. "It's not a Meat suit, it's an anchor and I killed someone to take it. I ate the poor girl and stole her identity, the least we can do is be respectful. Even if she had it coming."

*

Jericho doesn't ask. He knows enough about Partisan by this point though to know that she doesn't choose any target lightly, especially not if, as seems to be the case here, she's going to literally steal her life. "Fair enough." He considers what he's heard, seen and read about werewolves. You can find a lot on the internet, especially if you dig through dark places, but the reality is that this is not the sort of thing you can just dredge up reliable information on. Oh, he's sure it's out there, somewhere, but he's got no way to know if what he's looking at is the real deal or utter BS. Shrugging, just a bit he sparks his left arm for just a moment, testing the shape of a new construct. "How'd you find her?"

*

"Bianca Greene was a very high dollar call girl, I lucked out and she had a clean record but usually I want a few prostitution charges on the target's name or at least a few drug charges in their past. Cops tend to see a very minor or non-violent criminal history, and dismiss me as a suspect if there's something hyper violent. Most whores are not dangerous, and a minor drug charge would keep me out of the military which complicates the usual narrative as to who I am."She seems casual enough about the whole thing, considering the topic especially. "I'll stalk her, and size her up physically. Then try my best to make a determination on relative guilt in regards to harming society through their behavior, if I can't decide either way I just abort and keep looking. Follow them home usually, make sure they don't have kids or anything. Then I'll break in, and eat them. Gives me a safe place to change, and it gives me access immediately to clothes that fit."

*

It's really all very cold and calculating. Thorough. Predatory, which doesn't escape Jericho's notice. Enough to give most people chills… but then Jericho's ex-SOAR an black ops aren't just called black because people aren't allowed to see them. He's very much a subscriber to a 'total' definition of warfare and there are very few lines he won't cross if he's riled enough. "And they're less likely to be immediately noticed missing. Nor is the follow up work likely to be very… thorough." He nods. It all makes sense. A virtual gauntlet flickers around his arm, with a jagged protrusion running about 18 inches along the edge of it, extending beyond his fist. Then he dismisses it, apparently satisfied with the shape and goes back to silently and invisibly coding. "Must be a bit difficult though with fur on. Seems like it might be the sort of thing that's apt to get someone like Detective Pezzini called out."

*

Partisan glances yonder "If I'm seen, maybe? I was a man eating wolf before I became a werewolf, the wolf I was bonded with was not random. It wasn't some throw of the dice, the selection though not made by me was intentional and intelligent. The two souls need to be resonating on the same wavelength or the combination spins wildly out of control, and the result is madness. It's why they stopped making wolves like me well before I was born, and why they haven't made any since me. The combination was one in a billion, if you think about it."Smiling gently, as she grabs fourth and pulls smoothly onto the highway. "If I wanted to get super paranoid, it wouldn't be hard to presume the Wolf and the girl were manufactured intentionally so as to produce a matched pair explicitly so I could be created so some shadow actor could pull my strings."

*

Now there's a disturbing thought. Jericho doesn't need any ancient magical conspiracies complicating things. He's got as much as he can handle with modern, relatively non magical ones. Still, that's something to file away for later consumption. He's finding that, yes, he rather likes Partisan. So he'd rather not see her strings pulled. Especially since, knowing his luck, they'd end up being pulled at him. "It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you." He mutters intentionally loud enough to be heard quite easily. It's a joke. Well, a half joke. The possibility is there, is it not? "May I ask why you became a werewolf? Or was that not a choice you made?"

*

Partisan inhales softly, before lifting a hand to rub at her cheek. "I suppose you can know, you took a bullet in an action I led and you've been a good comrade. So yes, I suppose I don't mind telling you my story. I presume you understand that this is, potentially dangerous information in the wrong hands yes? I'm putting trust in you, because I feel you deserve it."

*

"Thanks." He means it. Trust is hard to come by when you're being hunted by people like this. And distrusting people becomes a habit, he understands that only too well. And yes, the compliment of having been a good comrade isn't lost on him either. "You know I won't let that information out. At all." See previous sentiment about bullet before capture. This is just another reason to do so.

*

Partisan clears her throat "I was born in the very late 1800s just outside of Widdin Bulgaria. My father was a son of privilege and rank, he was very well scholarly for an army officer in those days. He met a farm girl, and gave up everything to marry her. I was named for my mother, who died in child birth which was the custom back then. Anyway We had a farm, and my father worked -very- hard to keep us fed and to teach me to read and write but I was still very small. There was a bit of a recession going on, and so I picked up a job at the local bakery. Wake up very early, walk about six miles and work. By the time I was done, my father would be done drinking and we'd walk home together."Pausing to glance over. "Drinking was pretty much the standard male past time back then, we didn't have running water remember. So everyone was a little bit of an alcoholic, anyway he was a little too political and the Ottomans were a little too sensitive. So eventually they arrested both of us for treason, they thought bringing a twelve year old girl along would soften him up."

*

Third world police tactics haven't changed much, the hacker notes. He's stopped coding now to listen, head turned to watch Partisan talk. "That seems like that might possibly backfire, even in the Nineteenth Century." Sure, the media was different back then and empires like the Ottoman Empire had a lot more latitude to just do what they want, but if you're an unpopular regime you still have to justify what you do somehow. People - any people, anywhere - will only put up with so much abuse before they become dangerous.

*

Partisan hmms "So they tortured the shit out him and made me watch, and he decided not to give them the satisfaction of crying out. So they worked him over for about a week, and he wouldn't confess. So then they started on me, and I wanted to be brave like my father. So I didn't cry out either, and they did every horrible thing you can imagine to me. They made him watch, but I held together. So they forged the confession anyway."Glancing over as she sweeps past a slow moving minivan, before easing back into her lane. "So they dragged us outside, tied us to posts, stripped us naked and executed us. Then they dumped our bodies in a mass grave in the woods, and I wasn't quite dead just yet. They'd struck my spine, but my heart was still beating. So I couldn't really move, I couldn't cry out. I spent a little while being scared, then a little while being sad. Then I got angry, like righteous fury. I mean I felt like I was going to burst into flames, and that's when someone reached across from beyond the border. They'd tell me the secret to gaining my reckoning, but it'd cost much of my immortal soul. I didn't hesitate, and so I ripped Widden apart and slaughtered those guilty."She rolls the window down, if only to ash. "The wolf's side is much simpler, but well wolves don't have memories like ours so it's a little fragmented."

*

"Two sets of memories then?" Interesting thought, even if one does come from an animal. His jaw is set in a hard ish line as he turns and looks out his window for a minute or two. "Can't say that it doesn't sound like they got what they deserved, though." Back when he was deployed, he'd seen exactly kind of brutality from the local nationals. It's just a way of life in some parts of the world. Doesn't make it right. It simply is. "Sorry you had to go through that, for what it's worth. That's hell for anyone. I can only imagine what it's like when you're twelve."

*

"I'm a well blended wolf with some innocent girl thrown in, so yes." She doesn't seem upset, or even sad really. Then again, this was more than a hundred years ago. "She'd just given birth to a litter, off from the rest of the pack with newborns. People poured oil in the den and lit the flame, burned her and the cubs. She lived, they didn't. She became utterly deranged, the pain was fairly incredible and utterly without end. Couldn't sleep, couldn't sit, couldn't lay down. So she just started killing anything on two legs, I don't know how many she killed but it was a lot. Eventually infection set in after a few years, and that hurt even worse. She got weak, and then she died. When I was first, I dunno reborn? I was mostly animal, I was just slaughtering anyone who wore a uniform. I was just straight up blood thirsty, took the first world war to temper me a little. Got a purpose, had a cause to channel my energy. Then between the world wars I got my name, started becoming me. By the second world war, I was pretty recognizable but I was too violent even by my standards. Killed any Fascist or socialist, went to work on their families and friends. It wasn't even really like a decision I ever made, it was still just instinct. I mellowed out a lot, got more practical and logical by the end."

*

Jericho mentally goes through everything she's told him about herself. She met a man. Married. Settled down. Hell, retired, it sounds like. She must have mellowed out quite a bit indeed. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm glad I didn't meet you back then. Doubt we'd be talking now." Mostly because he'd be dead. He's not sure what sort of weight class the Partisan is in when she's wolfed out, but he doubts very much that he could put her away for good even if the polymorpher did put them on equal footing. "Sounds like, I dunno, you found yourself. Knew your purpose all along perhaps but… needed time to figure it all out."

*

Partisan shrugs "Even war wolves get sick of war eventually, I mean for like eighty years the only time I was not in the field actively engaged with the enemy was when I was moving between wars. Europe, Africa, Asia, South America you name it. Vietnam was the first time I worked with the US side by side, not just getting supplies and targets and stuff. Did two tours with SOG, before I was running deep nasty shit in Laos and North Vietnam. CIA was pretty good at inching me away from ok, by the time I left I wasn't just yaknow going a little too far. I was doing full on evil, then Vietnam ended so they shuttled me over to South America where the tempo and the violence was tenfold. Burning people alive, torturing folks to death, just wiping out whole villages, setting up schools to teach guys to do the same. I started doing coke around that time, but I think I already told you that story."

*

He nods. "You mentioned yeah. You seem a lot more balanced now, though." Well, balanced is a relative term but Jericho can't claim Olympic level life balance himself. Not after some of the things he's done to people just for knowing they were Hydra. "What brought you back this way? Last dossier I read on you still had you pegged in South America. Looks like pretty much everyone lost track of you."

*

Partisan smirks "Well my deal starting with the OSS, was that I'd retire to America with a clean slate. I'd do whatever I was gonna do, and that was the price for citizenship and a fresh start. Me and Ed were going to move here, that was our plan really. Then yaknow the CIA turned on us, tortured us and shot him. I came here originally to avenge him, to take down the whole fucking government."Flicking out that cigarette butt. "Made some rather serious plans about using VX on New York, and felt like I had a line on getting a nuke. Was going to nuke DC, and then start taking apart whatever was left. I figured I'd do to America what it did to me, and then I met my protege. Had someone who needed me, an American I'd have killed who I think of like a daughter. So I got my shit together, was just killing Narcos to keep myself busy because frankly after all that I had no fucking clue what to do with myself."

*

"Ever considered just retiring again?" It's a serious question even though he's fairly sure he knows what the answer will be. That also explains rather nicely why she reacted the way she did when he asked about Nancy during their conversation in the parking structure.

*

Partisan shrugs "I think about it yes, but I probably won't until I'm ready to settle down. I really don't think retiring single is a smart move for me, I'll get bored and then get right back into it. I mean I might get married, take maybe thirty or forty years off to have kids and be a proper mother but then I'd just go right back to it. Not like anyone else can do what I do, ya know? So if I stopped now, I mean I know people who might have lived won't because I'm off somewhere getting knocked up."

*

Jericho nods. "That's fair, I suppose." He'd just wondered, really. He's in this until he finds a way to keep Hydra off his back for good, which doesn't look even possible right now, or something kills him. Which is looking a lot more likely. He'd wanted to know what kept her in the game since she, ostensibly, had a choice.

*

Partisan reaches across to punch Jericho, somewhat firmly in the shoulder. It's a fucking war crime, she punched a guy recovering from gunshot wounds! That bitch! "From now on, You need to use the P90s alright? You need something with a larger magazine, and that'll fit under a jacket right? That silly Kriss thing, oh Jesus that thing is like a fucking gyrojet. All hat and no cowboy, as they say. Also, how many of our more recent targets have had armor or hidden inside armored cars?"

*

Jericho had actually been thinking about that since slightly before this last mission, but he'd not gotten around to finding a solution that fit his needs. "Waaaay to many of them, really." Which is true. Hell, even the Taliban didn't wear body armor. Ever since getting tangled with his current targets though, it seems like it must be available at 7-11. "And if I don't want to deal with that with this…" He raises his arm, letting the circuitry pulse. "And I don't, most of the time… gonna have to figure that one out."

*

Partisan nods "P90, use it for what it was designed for. A PDW for attackers in body armor, Let me handle the offense alright? I don't need backup, I need a support structure who can anticipate my needs and who can adapt in the face of an intelligent and dynamic threat. I may get back up after a head shot, you won't."

*

"I think that's a role I can handle. Certainly, I like not getting shot in the head." Jericho sighs. "I'll source a P90 from my usual venues. I occasionally have infiltration needs, so I prefer composite or polycarb frames. Expensive stuff… but I don't pay for it so it's all the same to me." He makes a mental note to put together a new gear list… and find a good chemist. He needs a good grenade replacement. Or a source for them that won't get noticed and end up in the wrong hands.

*

Partisan smirks. "I got four, and I don't need four of them. You're taking two of them, Nancy is getting one and I'll keep one for myself just in case I find a need. Do I need to find you a 1911 too, and no you're not building a 1911 out of plastic or fiberglass or whatever. It's a fucking 1911, it's supposed to be steel god damn it."

*

"I can get one. I actually think I still have one, I just haven't wanted to use something that could be traced to me." He chuckles and relaxes back in the seat, wincing again. He needs to stop laughing until his lung is fixed. "Regardless it would be easy enough to build in the same places I build my other things. Boeing is so accommodating sometimes." He settles for a smirk. "So… safe house, then?"

*

Partisan drags that gear knob back to 5th as she settles in for the slog back into the city. "Yeah, safe house. You can actually stay there as long as you want, I'd like to have someone there just to keep the place up. Anyway, why don't you lay the seat down and take a nap." She smirks, flicking on that radio after a minute and finally relaxing if only a little tiny bit.


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