Vibranium and Chrome 2 (MCU/Cyberpunk 2077)

The brute came at him with all the grace of an avalanche and the skill of an amateur boxer. His cybernetic fists were massive, each one the size of Bucky's head, and they swung with the kind of momentum that would shatter bone and concrete alike. Could he match strength with the brute? Probably, but Bucky didn't try to match the power. Instead, he slipped to the side.

The first punch sailed past his shoulder, the wind from its passage making his long hair whip back. He pivoted on his back foot and drove his right arm up in a sharp uppercut, hitting the brute square in the ribs. The impact was solid, clinical, and only partially wasted. The man's augmentations had reinforced his torso as well, but not enough to completely disperse the force of the superhuman blow. He felt bones creak beneath his fist as well as a grunt from the man.

Bucky cataloged this without emotion and adjusted his strategy.

The brute's second punch came in a haymaker, wide and powerful. Bucky ducked under it, feeling the heat of the passing fist. He swept low with his right leg, but the man's enhancement must have stretched down to his feet. Alongside his massive frame and low center of gravity, it all accumulated into making him as stable as a tree. Another adjustment. The brute was laughing, a booming sound that echoed even over the emergency sirens.

"Is that all you can do? What about the scary metal arm? Show me what it can do!"

Bucky didn't answer the taunt. Instead he ignored it as he took a step backward, breathed, assessed, and calculated. The man's defense was predictable. Telegraphed. Powerful but lacking in finesse. He wore his augmentations like armor, and he had learned to trust them absolutely. That was a weakness.

The brute threw a combination, right-left-right, each punch a sledgehammer. Bucky wove through them with an economy of motion, his movements precise and efficient. He didn't waste energy. He didn't posture. He simply moved, and finally after the last dodge, he struck.

His left arm came up, and he juked to the side, then took a step forward before he drove the vibranium-edged elbow directly into the man's extended arm during the third punch. The brute's augmented limb was strong, but vibranium was something else entirely. The connection was clinical and the result clear.

The man's arm bent the wrong way.

For a moment, there was silence. Then the brute screamed, a sound of raw pain that cut through even his augmentation-fueled confidence. He tried to pull back, but Bucky was already moving. He drove forward, hooked the man's other arm, and using the brute's own weight against him, spun in a picture perfect judo movement before throwing him hard onto his back.

The impact drove the air from the man's lungs. Bucky followed, straddling him, and with methodical precision, he drove his vibranium fist down three times.

"If you want to change, if you want to heal, then you need to discard the personality that you built. You would need to discard the Winter Soldier and become the White Wolf. And the first step to doing that is to avoid killing if it is not necessary." The vague words of the elderly woman, a sage of Wakanda, slipped into his ears, and he hesitated, bloodied vibranium fist hung in the air and shook.

The man twitched, his right hand moving, and all the hesitation slipped out of Bucky's frame as his hand lost the shake and stilled instead. The fourth time his hand lashed out, the brute's head proved it was no longer capable of taking the impact. His fist tore through the man's head and cratered the ground beneath it.

Crusher, it seemed, would not be enjoying anything ever again.

Bucky slowly moved to his feet, his breathing pattern steady despite the exertion.

In. Out. In. Out.

His muscles ached, and he could feel the micro-tears screaming, but he was functional. He turned to where the smaller man should have been, already knowing what he would find.

Gone.

He had noted it sometime during the brawl. The missing man was hurt; the force of the body thrown at him had to have bruised something. He had to have crawled away when escaping. Bucky had considered it for a second, stopping the fight midway to focus on the escaping man, but considering the strangely fast way the man had reacted the first time, Bucky refused to spread his attention haphazardly.

The dull gleam of yellow under the red emergency light drew his attention. The SMG was still there, abandoned on the ground. Bucky's eyes swept the room, cataloguing the exit, assessing the damage. The sound of the emergency alarm was still wailing, mixing with something else. A cough.

It was a familiar kind of cough, wet and pained, but most importantly, it was close.

He turned on the spot, blood still dripping from his fist, and he found the man with the bat, still sprawled on the floor, his body riddled with bullets. The man's breathing was labored, coming in ragged gasps interspersed with coughing fits that brought up blood.

"You still alive?" Bucky asked, not moving from where he stood. If he was not so in the zone, he would have been surprised. Instead his focus shifted. The tactical part of his brain was already considering whether the man posed any further threat. It did not take it very long to come to a conclusion. He was not a threat.

The man coughed again, a horrible wet sound. Multiple lungs punctured. The man died with every breath he took as blood slowly filled the perforated organ. His augmented eye began to flicker, cycling through colors as if trying to process the damage. "The bos, boss put a bio-monitor in me," he managed, each word requiring effort. "Low grade. Keeps me, keeps me functional. Long enough..."

"For him to escape," Bucky finished, his tone clinical. He filed this information away with the detached admiration of a professional appreciating good tradecraft. The man that led the group had ensured his own survival, sacrificing the others as needed. It was efficient. Pragmatic. The Winter Soldier found himself impressed, but Bucky found himself disgusted in equal measure.

He could feel the edge slipping, adrenaline reducing as his body realised there was no danger anymore. It allowed him to realise he was still naked, and had his junk exposed in the wind.

He crossed the room and sat down against the bank of terminals, where he pulled the man up, propping his back against the cold metal as he turned to rest his own back. The duo sat in silence for a short while as the emergency lights continued their rhythmic pulsing, casting everything in shades of red and shadow. He needed answers, and this man, dying as he was, might provide some before the bio-monitor failed completely.

"What is your name?" Bucky asked. He had done enough interrogation to know how to play this. He had a limited time frame, considering the man was dying, but rushing him would make him clamp up. So Bucky decided to go another way, building the bare frame of a relationship.

"V, Viktor," the man gasped. "Just, Viktor."

"My name is Bucky," he replied to the man, then continued. "How long was I in cryo, Viktor?"

"Sure it is not Johnny?"

The man let out a wet laugh at what seemed like an inside joke, one that was broken by coughing that sent blood to the ground. Finally he answered his question after Bucky gave him a look. "Don... don't know choom. Facility was already, abandoned when she found it and gave us the gig. Three weeks ago. Maybe more. It all gets lost in the haze."

"She?"

"The Lady of Westbrook, Wakako Okada."

Bucky's jaw tightened as he processed the information. Someone had found out about this facility, then had given the job to a group of people that seemed like mercenaries. The name and title were unfamiliar, but Bucky ignored that and shifted gears. He had been in cryo for three weeks minimum, and the facility had been in a state of abandonment before that. He pressed on.

"What year is it?"

Viktor's eye flickered again, struggling to focus. "Dates, 2075, December 31st, 2075. Why? How long were you, asleep, metal man?"

2075.

The number hung in the air between them, heavy and impossible, and for a second, Bucky nearly slipped back into the comfort of being the Winter Soldier once more. But he recognized it as a crutch and discarded the thought. The reveal was one he was going to have to figure out alone. So for a few seconds, Bucky sat very still, processing. 2075. That meant...

He had been asleep for decades. He had laid frozen in cyro for approximately over fifty years, which was more than he ever had to sleep at a stretch while in service to Hydra. No wonder it had taken so long for him to thaw.

His hands curled into fists, vibranium fingers digging into his palms. His eyes shifted to them. The dull gray and black of vibranium, not the painted black and gold he remembered. Was that due to his prolonged stay in cryo?

He forced his arms to relax and untense as he compartmentalized the shock, then filed it away. He could process the existential weight of that information later. Right now, there was still the matter of survival and understanding where he was.

"Where is this facility?" Bucky asked, his voice steady despite the revelation.

Viktor coughed, and more blood spilled from his lips. "Night City, Westbrook, site in the sewers. A very old one. They did not, did not think anyone would..." His eye dimmed, the cycling colors slowing. His breathing became more shallow. "We were just, runners. Not even proper Solos. Just wanted the tech..." The man was slipping, fast.

"The logo. Three dots. What is it?"

"Arasaka," Viktor whispered, his voice so low the only reason Bucky heard it was because of his enhanced physiology. "Corpo. They own, everything now. Everything..."

His optics finally blinked white one last time, then went dark. His ragged breathing slowed to a gurgling stop, as did his heart.

Bucky waited a full minute before standing, ensuring there would be no final surprises. He moved to the terminals, studying the unfamiliar technology. The interface was sleek, integrated, nothing like what he remembered. He found a system log, partially corrupted by whatever power failure had triggered his thaw. He guessed it had something to do with the mercs. What had Viktor called them? Edgerunners?

They must have looted the power source. He glanced at the three bodies in the room, but none of them carried what seemed like a power source, so he rightfully guessed it was with the man who had escaped. He turned his attention back to the terminal. It was still on, seemingly running on some other alternative battery supply. He doubted it would last long, considering how long this place had been abandoned.

He looked at the dates, and if he had assumed Viktor was wrong, these were more reliable and, most importantly, unmistakable.

1st of January, 2076. It seemed like it was the new year already, but Viktor had not known that. Bucky's blue eyes burned a hole through the terminal as he stared at the date. Fifty-eight years. He had been frozen for fifty-eight years.

He stood in the center of the facility, red emergency lights casting long shadows across the bodies on the floor, and for a moment, just a moment, he allowed himself to feel the weight of it all. The crushing weight of losing decades once more. Then he locked it away.

He had survived the ice before. He would survive this, too.

However, he needed answers. He needed information. Then he needed resources. He needed to understand what had become of the world while he slept. And most importantly, he needed to find out if Steve Rogers was still alive. The locations that Viktor had mentioned were not ones he was familiar with, nor was the company that had seemingly put him on ice. Arasaka, not Hydra.

The terminal winked out before he could do more than look at the date. So he shifted his attention to the bodies around him. Before he could go hunting for information, first he was going to need pants. He looked around at the bodies, then shrugged his shoulders. It was a good thing he was not very picky.