159. Conversion Regime

                                    

                                          
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
                          
"This would probably be romantic if we weren't about to leap out of a plane and bomb the shit out of the place..." Bucky sighed downheartedly, fingers twiddling and looping with Steve's.
                          
They were all clinging onto the metal safety railings by the mouth of the bus, rattled by the hurricane speed winds blustering in the heavens and preparing to make their jump.
                          
Rio looked stunning by night. The abundance of lights were blazing pinpricks, torching the night as proud beacons. Each speck of light and colour made up a sequinned cloth over the contours of the shadow bathed land, twinkling into the night sky. It was an ocean of light that climbed the hillsides and reflected off the mirrored sea below.
                          
More masses of land were scattered across the sweeping arm of the sea: mountains emerging from the depths disfigured into a haze by the froth of the sea and the darkness. They were dotted out along the curve of the earth, as far as the ocean reached, the trail of islands followed.
                          
The land swooped down deep into angular bays and arched up into spine-like peaks. A ridge of mountains enclosed the bay on one side and Christ the Redeemer had his arms wide open like a windbreak on his pedestal way above the city of rags and riches.
                          
The lights died and became more sparse as they crept back into the decrepit favelas crumbling at the back end of the city. The shacks constructed of waste materials were left to rot away along with the people who suffered the fate of living inside of them.
                          
Steve took a deep breath and shook his head at the illusion shining before his disillusioned eyes. "It's a different world out here, y'know? Children turn to drug running at a young age and teenagers to gang warfare. It's what they need to survive. It's sad, really, that it's twenty-fifteen and that's still happening. I'd kind hoped that in the seventy years I'd missed that the world had for its shit together..." Steve clawed a hand through his hair before slipping his cowl down over the top half of his face.
                          
"But that's why we're doing this..." Bucky reminded him, crushing their hands together with a squeeze. "For the kids. So they don't have to grow up in shitty neighbourhoods and go to sleep with one eye open - fearing that they might get a knife to the back of their neck. If we put an end to Hydra, we put an end to corruption." Bucky scraped back his brunet tresses into his palm and twisted the elastic band binding his wrist over the small cluster of hair.
                          
"You try'na say that democracy isn't corrupt these days?" Steve suggested insightfully, his raised eyebrow unseen beneath the mask.
                          
"Since when hasn't democracy been corrupt in one way or another? But let me tell you, as political systems go, it's far better than a dictatorship. And capitalism, though it may benefit the rich more than the poor, is far more logical and beneficial in practice than communism. Communism means everyone is a marionette to the war pigs and everyone suffers in equal measure. That's coming from someone who's lived under the rule of both..." Bucky tried to execute some of the lesser pleasant thoughts of his KGB days from his mind.
                          
"Ready?" Steve turned to Bucky, baby blues glowing with adoration and mirroring the glinting beams of colour down below.
                          
"Whenever you call, Captain..." Bucky stood at the edge of the hangar door with Steve and as the green light indicated the go, they jumped hand in hand and plunged into the night.
                          
Amazon Rainforest, Colombia 
                          
They waded through the underbrush, slicing vines down with machetes as they struggled forth. They were attacked by the stray appendages dangling from every highly constructed branch. The canopy formed a roof over the humid jungle, containing the hot dense air similarly to a lid. The soupy moist air was thick like sludge in their lungs as they hiked, making them all wheeze and struggle.