Who Am I? » [Stucky]

171. Danse Macabre

Budapest, Hungary

The city was tremendous, built of stone carved into spiny soot stained spires at gravity defying heights that made your neck ache if you attempted to steal a look, ballooning roofs with red moss mucky tiles and crumbling cobbled streets tented by archways that split like bark off at tangents: winding skinny alleys and dense market squares haunted by the masses. By the night it lit up like a Christmas tree, each building ignited with individual pearly lights that shone out into the darkness, chiselling pockets of light into the darkness in limited sanctums that faded as you strayed, and the city owned that golden radiance that it owed to its streetlamps and sky scraping buildings.

The river carved a passage way through the city, bulldozing through valiantly and chopping the city into two separate banks, banks that paid homage to the river with its bridges built to convenience the body of water ripping through.

The team swathed into the packed masquerade ballroom, just as faceless with their masks that provided that oh-so-precious anonymity. Great plumes of feathers flanked the china masks that covered their faces: painted in gold leaf, rich indigo and royal red.

Ludicrously lavished dresses swirled as women were tossed and swung about by their male partners, ruching, ribbons and gaping tresses of fabric flowed about as they twirled: all the luxurious and ostentatious colours of a rainbow with all the graceful seduction of the masked theme.

The ballroom echoed with the grandiosity of the orchestra situated in one small fraction of the infinitum of the room. Strings filled the room with their legato and rich resonance, woodwind swirled around with its sharp tunefulness and the brass honked out its bold overture, accompanied by the thump and tinkle of percussion. The rumble of voices created a dissonance over the rehearsed perfection of the music and fought to drown it out and the clack of heels added a syncopated rhythm to the atonal musical pulse of the song.

The roof was painted as the heavens, saints grafted onto the twenty foot high arching ceiling, chipped and fading old paint still remaining; having been rarely scrubbed and refurbished. Mirrors panelled one of longest edges of the rectangular room, reflecting the crowd and effectively visually doubling the dwarfing room in size.

“You all know the drill. We’ve been over this a thousand times. Whitehall is here this evening making a deal. If possible, get him. The client is a S.H.I.E.L.D agent trying to sell us out, capture him and as a last reserve, you’re permitted to take him out. Remember, there’s a room on the fifth floor with a safe, and within that safe is the latest information you’re needed to grab before Whitehall does, that’s the very information the S.H.I.E.L.D agent has been hoarding from a previous base hidden in the ex-USSR region. The most important thing is not to blow your cover, and not to make a scene. But a masquerade lends to the protection of your identity: but it also does Whitehall... Take him if you can. Good luck,” Coulson authorised over their mask implanted communicators.

“Good luck guys!” Jemma and Leo chimed in sync.

“Wishing you luck, but I’m going to be here to guide you if you need it,” Bruce interceded.

Natasha fondly fondled the choker on her neck, in which the glass-bead resembling capsule contained a small amount of cyanide. Her dress was scarlet silk, backless and a risqué low neckline that dipped right down to her cleavage. She was utterly exposed, but Clint hadn’t too many complaints with his mouth watering like a dog and he was still struggling to scrape his jaw off the floor. His gloved hand guided her at the small of her alabaster pale skinned back as he captained the squad ushered into the room.

“Do you know, Clint, I think this is going to be fun... It’s been too long,” she smirked at him, her full red painted lips curled into a vengeful and villainous smile. Memories of a similar scenario drifted to the front of her mind.