Intertwine

27 - This Is Basically Role Play

ALINA

We were all in the meeting room waiting for Loki, Roara, and Peter. They burst into the room, Alina's eyes glowing yellow, thin ribbons of fire snaking around her, intertwined with ropes of tree branches and dark green vines, the lines of her war markings across her face matching the brown and green.

"Where is that bitch?" She asked. The entire room cowered at her presence, apart from four people. Thor, Vision, and Wanda were all unaffected by her power. But Loki? He was by her side, anger and pride etched onto his face. Together they looked unstoppable. It reminded me of how they had walked into battle together, side by side for Roara to fight Axel, with Loki letting her take the lead.

"London." Steve replied after a moment to come back to himself. "She went into a meeting with a man named Rodrick Penny. He owns a series of prisons here in the US. He's started construction on one in between Salisbury and Trowbridge in the South of England at the request of the government. Prisons aren't privatised over there, but they like his designs only he's patented them."

"What's so special about them?" Bruce asked from beside me.

"Completely eco-friendly." Tony explained. "The inmates power the building themselves through different tasks, recycling their waste into energy, managing solar panels, even cycling on dynamo bikes. If they don't work together and do their chores, the power goes out. The building isn't complete, and has no inmates, but it's already generating large amounts of power."

"How do we know this isn't a trap?" Wanda asked.

"Because she doesn't know that we know they met. The only reason we know about it is because we have an agent working with the British government who saw a file that had been left out." Nat explained.

"So that's where Bucky is." Steve finished.

Roara rolled her head around her neck. "When do we leave?"

Most people were left to keep watch over New York. Thor really fought to come with us, but Roara pulled him aside and had a quiet word with him. Nobody knew what he said, but he nodded and left. Her eyes had gone back to their usual blue, and she was no longer surrounded by elements of her power or had her markings, but she still seemed terrifying. She'd gone from being feisty but unsure of herself, to having such command over herself and her surroundings that I couldn't help but think her gaining the ability to control fire must have done something to her confidence.

"Are we sure about leaving Barton and Nat?" I asked Steve as we walked to the chopper.

"We don't want too many people to come with us, we can't give them any possibility of finding out that we're coming." Steve replied.

"What about Tony?"

"He's not the biggest fan of Bucky." Steve informed me. "But we've got you, Wanda, Falcon, and of course those two." He motioned with his head at Roara and Loki who were already sat in the aircraft.

Roara kept accidentally 'spiking up' as Steve called it. Every so often a wooden spike would suddenly be whizzing across the room and Steve would have to throw his shield to stop it from possibly going through the wall. Of course, we didn't know if it actually could, but it wasn't worth testing. The little ring of wood Ro had given me was still around my neck, and for some reason the fact that I realised vibranium was one of the few things that it couldn't penetrate was a comforting fact. It had gotten to the point that Roara and Loki had moved to the other end of the craft so she didn't accidentally spike any of us in the face.

"Sorry." She muttered the fourth time Steve had to leap through the air. "I'm a bit... on edge."

"You might want to get that under control before we land." The agent who was flying the plane shouted to her.