It was always a surprising and equally dangerous thing whenever something new crept up in mutant circles. The worst would be if no one knew what it was.
Mutants as a whole was already a shifty topic regardless of what stance you took towards them, and they were somewhat of a secluded community given that they tended to deal with their own issues themselves without allowing it to escalate publicly, so it was already a problem and a half to get direct news on what was happening between them.
Their secrecy and introverted nature were not the only things that made them a thorny topic, instead it was the specific cast of characters that holstered up the banner of mutantkind on their shoulders.
The most infamous was without doubt Magneto, the Master of Magnetism, a mutant of the highest tier who led his Brotherhood of Mutants— a rather extroverted group of local, international and global terrorists with a frankly worrisome powerbase.
There were other coalition of mutants across the globe but none of these groups worried the council of world leaders more than Magneto's Brotherhood for the simple fact that they had the means to render the strongest military forces in the world useless.
It came as no surprise that getting concise information of what was happening within these groups of people was a task and a half. It also came with the job hazard of them quickly figuring out who and who was snooping around for information.
Now, all these were bad but what was truly worse was finding out that no one knew anything about something huge that had happened or was happening in the mutant community.
That was the first indicator that things were about to go to shit on an epic scale.
Honestly, ventures like these were ones where it was wise for outside parties – governments, military forces, ghost organizations, blacksite ops – to watch from the sidelines and only swoop down when the carrion was putrid enough — at least that was what Clinton Francis 'Clint' Barton thought.
Unfortunately for him, he was a handful of promotions away from managerial— which he had absolutely zero interest in—so his opinions remained in his head whenever his boss made decisions.
Again, to his misfortune, he was too good at his job that he became his boss' favorite problem solver, and hence why he was saddled with this… unfortunate task of finding out what was going on within the mutant sphere.
How would he even begin to tackle it? 'What kind of circular problem is this?' He constantly asked himself given the lack of starting points to the mission.
This was his punishment for being too competent. His boss just assumes that he'll solve any problem he was given even if there was practically zero intel.
All this—impossible missions and suicidal tasks—and there was not a single column of scheduled vacation or weekend breaks in his itinerary. The pay was good, way better than the average civil servant, but he practically never has a chance to spend it. Thankfully, someone else was doing the spending for him.
His pessimistic musings were cut short as his burner rang.
"Yeah?"
"Just got back. Coulson said Fury put you on scavenging for some mutant slip. How's it going?"
He groaned, making Natasha laugh from her end.
"That bad huh?"
"It's not the worst I've been on but it's still too early to judge." He said as he took a bite from his cracker and savored the sour taste. "It's like that time in Québec. Boring and pointless is what it is. For now at least."
"At least your boring comes with a view and fresh air." The way she said it made him wince. Yeah, those types he hated the most.
"Bhutan?"
"Myanmar." She replied in a surly drawl. "I'm unassigned for now. How about it? Need a hand?"
He smacked his lips together as the line went silent for a few seconds and looked at the six cracker wrappers on the ground.
"Bring enough crackers." He said. "Sour cream and onion."
She chuckled, and he could picture her shaking her head in disbelief. "That all?"
Clint shrugged. "It's boredom, Nat. Maybe bring a few jokes and a board game."
"I'll see what I can do." The call ended there, drawing Clint back to the familiar silence and his pessimistic thoughts. And his leftover crackers.
Now where was he? Yeah, trying to spot an invisible trail that would lead him to the newest mutant conspiracy.
Given the whispers of said conspiracy, Clint understood just how important it was, regardless of how true it might be. Fury's call was right, Clint agreed, because the two times a mutant cure was spoken out loud, America almost lost every member of its executive branch, including the President. Magneto had threatened to uproot Washington when the truth of said cure was exposed.
He understood that this was a priority red mission, and he agreed with its importance, but why did he have to be the one to do it? Coulson could have sent his squad of infil-agents to do this instead of him(yeah right. They would have been found out on day 2).
"About damn time." He raised his head as he spotted his target walking out a decrepit warehouse. He mentally mapped out every possible route they would take and nodded to himself as a semblance simulation played out in his mind.
Two days. Two days of shadowing a possible dead-end and he was just now getting a routine break.
As for how he managed to string out some targets so soon? He traded a few favors, three to be exact, all to get a random direction where he proceeded to gamble his luck on it and hoped for a solid lead. From the few targets he had gathered, this was the first movement that didn't fit into the routine he'd mapped out for them.
"Better hurry up, Nat." He chuckled to himself. He made himself comfortable as he started tracking his mark. The nature of the mission meant that he couldn't dismiss the smallest clues. Depending on how it went—if it got worse than this— the mission could stretch out for weeks, or if he was truly unfortunate, months.
.
… ....
8 hours. That was how long he spent watching three mutants as they lazed around the boroughs.
Something poked at his back which made him sigh under his breath.
"Are you getting rusty?" He snorted at Natasha's words and pointed at the ground where she was standing.
She was standing on a very thin wire that had its other end trapped under his boot.
She removed her hand from his back and stepped back with a smirk.
"What does that do?" She asked as she stared at the inconspicuous wire she had stepped on. Knowing Clint, it could be an electric buzz or a mini bomb.
Clint turned to face her with a shit-eating grin on his face. "How would I know? It's a normal wire as far as I can tell." He kicked the wire to show that it was just a normal cut wire he had found lying around.
Natasha rolled her eyes and hit him on the shoulder, quietly accepting that she lost this one.
"So," she gestured with her head towards the window Clint was watching, "how is it going?"
Clint scooted to the side to allow her an unobstructed view. "Nothing really suspicious so far. I would have written them off if not for one little suspicious thing. There was this pawnshop they entered."
"How suspicious are we talking about?"
There was a small smirk on Clint's face. "For some reason I couldn't listen to any conversation that happened inside the shop."
Natasha frowned slightly, not quite understanding what he was getting at.
Clint tapped on the 'hearing aid' lobbed around his ears. "How many pawnshops do you know that can block out the R&D boy's special hearing aid?"
"I see."
Clint shrugged at the three mutants in the street across. "It could be something else but it's still worth checking out. The only thing left is to 'question' them and move on."
"Then what are you waiting for?" his best friend asked with folded arms as she leaned against the window.
Clint regarded her with a raised brow. "For you obviously." His watch beeped twice at that moment. "And the time is up. Come on, let's go."
She said nothing and followed after him. Their first stop was the trio of mutants from across the street who Clint easily put to sleep with darts and they both discreetly relocated them back to the building across the street.
Clint has strict orders not to involve himself with any altercations between whatever mutant groups he came across, and this was already toeing that line somewhat.
A dark setting, a little deliriousness, a threatening posture — that was all that was needed to get most information out of people. It worked on the three young men but Clint and Natasha were quick to notice the rather obvious disparity.
No matter what, they never answered any question that concerned other mutants and they even denied knowing anything relating to a mutant cure—both spymasters clearly saw the lie— and the only thing they let slip was the pawnshop they went to.
"Oh, Isaac sells all types of stuff. Anything you want, Isaac got it." Was what they said when Clint asked about the pawnshop they visited.
"Selling out a capable handyman so quickly? Now why would you do that?" Natasha had asked after their easy admission.
The three of them had looked at each other and shrugged casually. "Heh, he always tells us to refer people to his shop."
They let the mutants go, not having a reason to detain them, and turned themselves towards the pawnshop. Clint was already writing off this entire endeavor as a waste of time, while Natasha remained highly amused at his misfortune.
"Is that a pun?" Natasha pointed at the name hanging over the door of the shop. She was slowly developing a silent distaste of puns and other similar forms of humor because of a certain billionaire.
"Heh. I think it's funny." Clint said with an amused snort.
They were both dressed in everyday civilian attire, with an array of small weapons discreetly hidden under their flaps and sleeves.
"What kind of pawnshop is this?" Natasha asked as soon as they entered the shop and instantly spotted a huge fire-breathing dinosaur head hung on a wall.
"Hmm. Interesting." Clint hummed with a semi-serious look on his face. Natasha looked at him and he redirected her gaze with a tilt of his head.
"Those are real katanas. Same with the glowing axe."
They both shared a look, having known each other well enough to not need words to convey simple thoughts, and immediately marked this place down as a point of interest.
To spies and assassins like them, caution wasn't a state they put themselves in but was instead the very air they breathed.
They turned at the corner and once again heightened their caution. The shop owner, Isaac, stood behind his counter with a welcoming smile but it was the way he was dressed that pressed their buttons.
No one, absolutely no one, would dress up in crisp semi-formal wear to man a pawnshop in some no-name neighborhood smack dab between Queens and Brooklyn.
"Lovely day, isn't it?" The man started with a friendly conversation starter. "Is there anything I can help you guys with?"
Now what would be the best way to go about this? To slowly prod or to be blunt were the only two available options.
Clint leaned against the counter, putting himself in Isaac's range to watch him for any suspicious movement, while Natasha mirrored him and leaned on the other end of the counter.
Blunt was the best option to put him on the back foot.
"I've got a question for you. It would be in your best interest if you answered truthfully." Clint said, staring straight at Isaac's eyes while the latter remained calm and smiling.
"Sure." Isaac accepted with a nonchalant half shrug. "If I have the answers then I don't mind answering. Ask away."
Natasha and Clint watched his expressions and every micro twitch of his body as Clint opened his mouth to speak.
"Word is that there is some sort of mutant cure being passed around without anyone knowing anything. What do you know about it?"
Their laser focus was pinpointed at Isaac as he opened his mouth to speak.
"I've got no idea about no mutant cure. I don't really keep up with that sort of news." The reply came, easy and genuine, but neither of them were sold. And besides, Isaac hadn't finished speaking.
"But if you're looking for something that can destabilize or neutralize the X-gene then I believe I have a few things that you might be interested in."
…..
"Huh?"
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