TV stars

Disclaimer: all the characters belong to Marvel™, here.

Across the multiverse…

"Greetings, everyone!" said the TV host. "We're in the southern U.S." – a wide-angle shot was cued – "where two types of water snake live. One is venomous, one is not. If your life depended on it, could you tell us which was which? Stick around to find out!"

Gaudy theme music was played. The camera's P.O.V. shifted away from the host, giving the audience a wide-angle shot of a cypress swamp, with sunlight cutting through the trees. The host moved with a visible purpose, looking for something.

"What are you looking for?" one of the host's crew asked, on cue, once again.

"Snakes," was the host's professional answer. "Now, most people try to avoid the snakes, but sometimes it can't be helped. What's more, sometimes non-venomous snakes resemble venomous ones, and are killed on sight. Today, we're trying to find one venomous snake and one non-venomous one, so we can show our viewers as to which snake is which." He got back onto his feet and began to walk through the swamp once more, (still staying on camera, of course). He walked around through the tangles of cypress roots, until he resolutely jumped forwards, with a cry – "It's a snake!" – and grabbed her by the tail.

Skye, or perhaps – Daisy, hated it.

Several hours earlier…

The hacker known as Skye, Daisy, Mary-Sue (Poots) and a number of other names was sitting…not in her van, actually. Normally, she would be, doing her hacking, or activism, or even hacktivism, but right now, she was running low on cash, which meant that she needed more money not just for the above-mentioned activities, but for maintaining her van, too.

…Again, she normally acquired money by, well, hacking, (or activism, though not hacktivism, because she still hadn't figured out how to do that), but Miles did recommend these people, Skye-slash-Daisy needed the money, so why not try them? And so, here she was, away from the comforts and the (relative) safety of her van, waiting for her contacts to arrive – and then they did arrive, several murky characters that the young woman's gut immediately told that they shouldn't be trusted.

"So," the leader of the three spoke, as he and his compatriots shook hands with Skye, (or Daisy). "You're the unregistered shifter?"

That put everything into a perspective, immediately. Being a shifter was no crime exactly, but S.H.I.E.L.D. demanded that every person with the power to shift into animal would be registered, (ever since the Great Shifting Event that occurred many years before Skye was born), and Skye…she did not really want that, this really went against her spirit.

That said, this was all right and good, but Skye did not really want to go to high ground here. She just looked the spokesperson of the three right in the eye and said:

"I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"Then show us your registration and we'll go from there," came the reply, not entirely unexpected, so Skye just shook her head, said that this conversation was finished, and turned around to leave.

The dart with the revealing agent hit her from behind, and for the first time in many months, (if not several years – Skye is trying to find that silver lining here), she is unable to control her transformation, doesn't welcome it as the pavement rushes to meet her as she shifts into her other body – that of a snake.

It does not bother her exactly that her alter ego is a snake – most of the shifters are snakes, or frogs, or insects of some sort: there are other creatures, but they are rarer than the 'big three' mentioned above. Skye had made peace with that a long time ago, regardless of what she had told the nuns. Rather, what bothers her is that she is shanghaied for all purposes into the TV show, and even though the host and his cohorts do promise that she will be paid, she still is not happy. What if S.H.I.E.L.D. finds her? Being registered by them would be the icing on the entire miserable cake, and anything else coming from them would be worse…

Of course, her tail, like some mundane reptile, was swinging around right now her and even though she had bit the host, it did not really matter – she was the nonvenomous snake here. Consequently, she just squirmed a bit, and even bit the host's thumb – if she is nonvenomous, let him suck on this – but did not do anything else, not even shift back. If S.H.I.E.L.D. was watching the show, she did not need to make this sort of a personal declaration…or revelation. Whatever.

As Skye, or Daisy, just hanged loosely in the grip of the show crew, the host moved on looking for the other snake, the venomous one. Skye genuinely wondered, just how they made the poor guy – or girl – go along with them. The shifters, whose alter ego did have venom, (or poison, she neither knew nor cared as to which was which), usually were not shy in regards to using it…

Several hours earlier…

Grant Douglas Ward, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and Hydra, though perhaps – to neither, not fully), sat there, listening to the proposition of starring – in his alternate form – on the nature TV show. Fury and the rest of the old guard generally did not like it when any of their 'special' agents – shifters or otherwise – would appear in public, (especially in their human guises), and so he could refuse, but still…

But still he did not. John was dying, all of their efforts, combined with Hydra's resources, only delayed the inevitable, and Ward could not do anything. As John had…'requested', (cough), he learned medicine, field medicine, (the advanced version), and he knew now enough, more than enough, to know that John was dying, and there was nothing that Grant could think of that could fix it.

And now there were these three idiots, making all sorts of noises and clamors regarding…what? A job on TV. Somehow, they knew that Grant's alter ego was a snake, and a venomous one as well – 'just what they needed it'. Some other poor soul would be the non-venomous reptile in this equation. Okay. Well, probably not for that other poor soul, but Grant was about done caring – he was failing John here, and somehow he couldn't do anything to make it right…and now he had to make 'the right choice' and refuse the offer? Especially since there was nothing about 'the right choice' that was official, that was direct and straight and pure and good… Grant was tired. He was possibly making the wrong choice here, the stupid choice – these three idiots did not have the slightest idea of how to handle shifters whose alter ego could hurt you – but he did not care. Gifted agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. did not star on TV, Grant was so straight an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that it hurt…, he wanted the hurt to ease, for however little or small, and so he agreed.

This was then, and now Ward was curled in his alternate form, waiting for the show's host to approach him with a hooked pole. Against a real snake, this would work fine, but against a Gifted human shifter? Whose human mind was combined with the strength and venom, of a large snake? This was something else, Ward could inflict plenty of damage on the new three stooges, for when the power of human thought is coupled with ill will and brute strength, anything is possible – and Ward had signed no paper, was here voluntarily, and could do whatever he wanted…and instead he complied, and not because compliance was rewarded, but because he didn't know why.

Well, no, he sort of did – these men did nothing to him, not unlike Christian and his friends, and one day, when John wasn't dying, there would be a reckoning, but for the moment, right now, Grant did what he was told to do – make a half-hearted escape, be handled around, albeit respectfully, show off his mouth, shake his tail, (though his snake-self wasn't a rattlesnake either), and then-

Now

Skye never considered herself to be the kind of a young woman to lose her head to any man, especially while they both were in their alternate shapes, though chemistry was actually made more powerful in an animal form, especially when the two animals matched, however poorly. The other poor soul in the equation here was of a male gender, and even as a snake, he was more powerful than just handsome – not that Skye cared. As far as she was concerned, the greatest power ever was freedom, though she would admit that there were plenty of other powers that mattered too. Well, she would not challenge that statement, but right now-

Right now Skye was, admittedly, not thinking about the philosophy, her childhood with nuns be damned more than ever. Rather, she was watching her counterpart, who just placidly did his part, even though he would rather not be here at all.

Oh sure, he was much more stable than Skye was, much less energetic, he just complied, but…firstly, even though Skye's knowledge of registration was faulty, she was sure that as a venomous entity, he would be registered and monitored by S.H.I.E.L.D., if not working for them; one misdemeanor, just one, and he would lose his shifting abilities for a long time, if not for ever; and being trapped in just one shape, when you actually have two, would suck. Skye just knew it, and did not criticize the other person while they were being filmed. Not that they could, because otherwise they would be revealed as shifters, and not as 'just' animals, which was another ball of messy.

She did 'musk' (that is what it called in snakes) on the host person's hand though, regardless of whether or not she was paid. (Or would be paid. Whatever). Being held next to her, um, 'venomous counterpart' made Skye feel kind of flighty and petite, and she did not want to appear that to him, not because she cared about how he felt about her, but because of reasons. Given how he stoically endured being handled somehow had lent gravity and solemnness to her, and so she did not repeat her 'musking' incident again – but no, it was not about the money.

/ / /

There was something odd about the girl, Grant mused. Possibly, she was supposed to be 'the other girl', but there was no 'other girl' here, just her, and Grant, and their hosts, all of whom were male as well. Bully! This made her 'just the girl', maybe, but there was no 'just' about her, she was – special. Grant did not know how, only that that she was.

She probably was not John's type, even as a human, (and John's alter-ego wasn't a snake either), for John tended to go for big blondes – and not just in brothels, (mostly in Montreal, but John loved that city in and off itself, not just for its' women), but even when Whitehall began to push his own Hydra agenda, he got John with his Hydra counterpart, a rather robust and powerful woman named Catherine Hale, who actually was the Hydra mole in the U.S. Air Force – and she was blonde-haired as well.

So was their daughter, and John clearly doted on her – but he never discarded Ward either, for that Ward would move mountains to pay John back, but…this girl, the other shifter, (Grant being the first one), there was something special about her, Grant just couldn't figure out what. Consequently, then, he did what he usually did – he just put everything on hold and waited, thinking it over and watching… no, looking at her. Somehow, with her around, things were different, maybe even better…at least until the idiots holding onto them didn't shift their grips and exposed their bellies, something that all the shifters hate, so this time, the idiots received a dose of 'musk' from both of them. That was humiliating, even more so than the realization that they were being paid for this – but all things come to an end, and so Grant and the other – shifter got 'released into the wild', where they crawled off as snakes tend to do, and once off the cameras they hid and shifted back (at their designated spots), got dressed, removed all hints of being shifters, and went back to get their payments.

Nick Fury and some high level agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were waiting for them.

/ / /

Nick Fury was not having a good time either, as both Grant and Skye could see: his only functional eye was glaring holes in them both. "Well?" he finally grouted out. "What can you say for yourselves?"

"Um, I'm not a part of your super-secret S.H.I.E.L.D. organisation, so can I just take my money and go?" Skye glared back.

"You have a permit?" Fury was not impressed. "If you don't, you want to hear the options?"

Skye backed down. She did not have a permit, that was the issue, so she had to either a) lose one aspect of her self forever, b) actually get registered with S.H.I.E.L.D., or c) work for S.H.I.E.L.D. properly and fully and for real. None of the options really appealed to her, so she just kept quiet and waited for something else to come along.

For his own part, Fury seemed to be satisfied with Skye's new submissiveness, as he switched his attention back to Ward. "And you?" he said flatly. "What were you thinking?"

"I've no idea," Ward admitted. "I just – went with the flow."

Ward wasn't lying, he was just bending the truth by not admitting that he was bending the rules here – he should've refused, or at least brought to their attention that he was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. did bend the rules, but Grant Ward didn't, not regularly, and not in his S.H.I.E.L.D. persona. When John had him doing missions for Hydra it was different. Hydra wasn't better than S.H.I.E.L.D., in fact it had its own flaws, the biggest being that regardless of the Heads' denial all Hydra wanted was to hurt other people; everything else was secondary, really – but this wasn't the time nor the place to discuss it, and Fury wasn't the man to discuss it with either, so Grant just kept silent too.

"…What am I to do with you – both of you?" Fury re-asked his question after it became obvious that neither of them would speak. Not surprisingly, more silence followed, and Fury got increasingly upset.

"Fine. Both of you – go to the containment unit for unruly shifters; Ward, take your new friend and show her the way."

Ward bit-off another argument: on one hand, he could not shake away the feeling that Fury knew…something about his double-life, but he did not care. He cared about John, but this was not about John right now, but about his new friend. Well, no, not a friend – Ward did not really have friends, but she was his new someone, so he cooperated and led her away. Not that she resisted much either.

As Fury looked at the retreating youngsters, something resembling both sadness and exhaustion at the same time diluted his anger. "What am I going to do?" he asked no one in particular.

To be continued…