2014-01-25 - SDR: Escape from Atlantis

Natasha is waiting, impatiently, in their 'quarters'. It's not that she didn't trust Aquaman and his people, its that, to be truthful, she didn't trust anyone-- so as soon as their communication devices had been repaired, she had been doing what any good Deputy Director of SHIELD would have.

She arranged for an extraction.

The plan? Using the Silencer Clint had in his gear to negate the effects of the Atlantean serum-- at least until someone could reverse it entirely. Natasha was sick of being under the water, knew she had at least a mountain of paperwork to deal with that was only growing, and she knew Clint was getting antsy about his foster kid-- he may have better control over his telepathy than she did, but he couldn't help broadcast /that/ when they were actually around each other.

Which had been more and more rare, because the other reason Natasha was frothing at the bit to leave? That damned telepathy. She and Clint were on a similar enough wavelength most of the time, and adding this? She didn't know from one moment to the next what they were going to do with or to each other. She wanted him out of her head, because there were reasons they didn't address those thoughts. Lots of reasons.

Where in the hell is he?

Clint is well... lost. Though he eventually thinks to ask one of the Atlantean guards who like everyone else in the city under the sea, is unfailingly polite and shows him the way. So about 20 minutes later he swims into their quarters, pauses by the door, then peeks out of the door to make sure he's gone. "Okay, kind of got lost on the way, but got a pretty good handle on the way back," he leans forward and his brow furrows as he focuses his thoughts to avoid seepage. "I think I found a way out of this place."

Natasha rolls her eyes. "Well, that's actually a good thing. We need to get out, so we can go up." She almost winces, the 'up' is flashed with a telepathic twinge of expecting pain-- lots of pain. "When we get within... say, twenty feet of the surface... we'll swallow the Silencer, and by the time we've hit the surface," more pain, and a memory of decompression slams into Clint.

She's really not good at this telepathy thing. Blithely, she continues, "we should be back to normal. Temporarily, but I have faith Hank or someone can fix it. SHIELD has a team in the area waiting for us, we'll signal them when we hit air."

Absolutely nothing could go wrong with this plan. Really.

Clint flinches and scrunches his eyes closed. "Nat if we can't shake this telepathy thing, you're so taking a trip down to Xaviers," he says with a shake of his head. "Anyhow I'm game, let me grab my gear and my armour and we're gone," he moves to do just that. "I found an unguarded hatch in one of the old salt processing plants, re-wired the alarm too. We should be long gone before anyone realizes it."

Widow already has her gear-- in fact, she is in the bodysuit Aquaman had gifted her. Waste not, want not. Her gear, otherwise, is bagged and strapped to her.

"Good," she replies, ignoring his crack about her inability to control her TP as effectively as he could. "Lead on."

"One sec," Clint says and yanks on the armour. It's light enough not to hinder his swimming and the body suit he's currently wearing is skin tight and almost just as thin. It's an easy fit. When he's tugged on the cowl he slings his bow and arrow on his back and nods. "Let's go," he says and kicks for the corridor. He pauses at the door checks both ways then kicks on down the way he came. Glancing back over his shoulder to Nat, he uses the SHIELD hand sign for radio silence.

Natasha follows behind, silently-- or as silently as she can manage, at least. When they reach the hatch, she gestures for him to wait, moving behind him, her hands slipping into one of his side pouches, withdrawing two of the vials. She slips one into his hand, pointedly, gesturing for him to keep a hold on it.

Then she opens the hatch and slips out into the open sea.

Clint leads the way and true to his word he doesn't get them lost. When the vial is pressed into his hand he takes it in a tight grip and nods once. Then, when Nat goes, he kicks off after her, rising towards the surface. His eagerness only tempered by the flashes of pain Nat had sent him earlier. This was going to be unfun.

They are pretty far down, and Natasha keeps checking her holoID for a depth marker. At the twenty foot mark-- moonlight visible from above, though not much, she glances over at Clint, coming to a halt.

"Bottoms up?" she asks, then lifts the vial to her lips, making a firm seal and tilting her head back so the liquid slides down her throat, not risking a drop being lost into the ocean around her.

And she begins kicking up towards the surface. The closer she gets, the tighter her lungs feel-- painful, burning sensation. The water in them feels wrong. And her legs and arms feel almost leaden, though she forces herself to swim upwards.

Clint nods. Makes the seal and drinks. "Gawd this tastes disgusting," he comments through their telepathic link before he starts kicking to the surface. Suddenly the bad taste in his mouth is the last thing on his mind as the pain starts. He keeps himself going, using the circus built, superhero trained muscles in his legs to keep moving upwards towards the faint glimmer of moonlight above his head.

Natasha surfaces, coughing and vomiting out the seawater as she hits the air. Exhaustion sinks over her body, and it is only the sheer force of her will that brings out her holoID with shaking hands and sends the precoded message to the nearby (wherever that is) SHIELD retrieval team and the decompression chamber.

The world is pain. Her muscles are on fire. The moonlight above is blinding, her skull pounding as if her head might explode. So long that deep beneath the waves-- the last touch of telepathy before the Silencer finishes its work completely is a mental touch, reaching for Clint blindly, reassuring herself that he is still with her.

Can she tread water? Swim? She thrusts the ID into the top of her bodysuit between her breasts, unable to manage to remember how to work it into a pouch. The empty vial falls into the waves and sinks, as she might soon, if the extraction team doesn't arrive.

"Maybe..." she coughs and spits up more water, "..this was not so good idea..."

Clint feels that psychic touch and he tries his best to respond. Sending confirmation he was alive and relief that she was too. He'd long since dropped his vial and he keeps his legs and arms moving by willpower alone. It was just like at the end of a work out. A few more reps, just a few more reps. "Yeah," he croaks as more water pours out of his mouth. "Not our best idea."

The whirr of helicopter blades sound in the distance, and a pair of dark blots are visible against the starry sky-- this far from land and light pollution, a gorgeous sight, but one neither SHIELD agent could appreciate.

The blots get closer-- a helicopter, carrying beneath it a white sphere. The sphere drops into the water, floating near Natasha and Clint. "Decompression chamber," she sputters, weakly flailing her way over to it. She clings to the side of it, reaching for the door handle and missing.

Clint flails towards the chamber in what could only be called swimming in the loosest sense of the word. Clinging to the chamber he tries for the door as well. He hits the handle and jars it open but can't quite pull it open. "Help," he says to Nat.

Natasha reaches out again, grabbing the handle and /hanging/ on it, her weight pulling the door open before she slips off, crashing back into the water with a splash. She forces herselff to surface again, gasping in air hungrily, reaching for the door of the chamber, and for Clint.

Clint grabs the edge of the chamber and pulls himself up. Part way up Nat grabs him and he grabs her arm. "C'mon!' he groans as he pulls himself up kicking madly off the side. His foot slips and he falls but he tumbles forward as he does crashing into the chamber.

Natasha is dragged up and in by Clint as he falls into the chamber, crashing down heavily on top of the archer. The two lay in a pile of sea-water dripping arms and legs as the door swings shut behind them and then locks automatically. Suddenly, the pressure... rather, the /lack/ of pressure... is relieved from them both, and the pain begins to subside.

The sphere begins moving, lifted into the air by the helicopter. Nat shivers, simply focusing on breathing, not moving from where she had landed.

Clint's is in no hurry to move either. The previous awkwardness has evaporated they're fully in mission mode. Where all the other crap gets shoved aside and they focus on surviving. "Nnng," Clint groans as the chamber takes off though as the pressure builds the pain begins to subside and his muscles relax.

"I think..." Natasha mutters in Clint's ear, either unwilling or unable to move for now, "...I am going to pass out now."

"Ugngh" Clint replies succinctly before his eyes close and he's dead to the world.