Author note: a feeble attempt to keep my writing accounts in sync.
Chapter 1: Mission HG-BP-0928-2: Russian embassy infiltration
Agent Skye reporting from Budapest.
You're probably wondering about her – yes, she's here with me, for… some reason. Look, I kind of don't know what happened, or most importantly, how it happened. What I know is that I was in my hotel room, studying the floor plan, and she appeared out of the blue (this is sounding like a bad porn…). Anyway, word of warning, AC: you might want to keep that between us, because the porn sounding part is not nearly the worst one. Trust me on this.
The first conversation went like 'Simmons, what the fuck are you doing here? You're supposed to be resting, on the Bus'. She ignored me. Seriously, it was like she didn't even hear it… and then she went like 'Agent Skye, right?', and I was like, 'yea, but's not like you don't know that since, well, forever…'. She didn't even bother smiling properly, she just lifted one corner of her lips briefly and extended her hand (this is the best part, wait for it…): 'Agent Grey, nice to meet you'.
I really think that lab explosion's loosen a few screws in her head, AC. I mean, she seems pretty convinced that she's 'Agent Grey' and that would be a very elaborate prank for Simmons – she's too goody-two shoes to pull it off, and frankly, she doesn't have the lying skills. I'd tell in a second. I was confused for a minute or two, then decided to play along (I have to admit that I have a soft spot for girls that role play) – 'nice to meet you, Agent Grey'.
'Have you finished reviewing the floor plans? I wanted to skim them before we go', she sat down besides me and started frowning at the computer screen. Meanwhile, I was busy frowning at her, for thinking that she would be tagging along.
2013/09/28, 1900 hours, Budapest.
"Just finished reviewing the floor plans, thank you", Agent Grey says from her sitting place on the bed. Skye keeps frowning lightly at her, "are you going to scowl at me all night? It's going to look very suspicious", she adds, a bit too emotionless. When Skye doesn't change her expression, Grey lightly purse her lips and glances at her watch, "we have to get ready, have you checked the equipment?"
"What equipment?", she earns an eye roll.
"Are you a real agent, or did you just parachute into S.H.I.E.L.D. last week and they had no other choice?", it's hard to picture someone that looks just like Jemma Simmons saying those harsh words. That's why Skye's merely staring at her – mouth open –, instead of grabbing her by the collar and demanding some respect. Skye's formulating an answer, but it all goes out the window when the girl casually unbuttons her shirt, and takes it off – totally no big deal.
This can't be Simmons.
"We have exactly seventeen minutes until we leave, so you better hurry, otherwise this will transform into an international affair, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid", Agent Grey clearly notices Skye's eyes all over her figure, but she doesn't react to it, she just proceeds with removing her pencil skirt and her business woman shoes. When she noticed Skye's still in the same position, staring flabbergasted at her, she pulls the corner of her lip in exasperation, "I'm not stripping for you to watch, you know?", this snaps Skye out of her shock, and she reaches for her own dress on the chair.
"Good", Grey finally says when they're both dressed, "We have seven minutes for the equipment review. Do you have your icer with you?", she says as if she's running through a much seasoned mental checklist.
"No, why would I want a gun?"
"If things go south, you will need one – here, I have a spare", and she tosses it to Skye.
"Utility knife?"
"Err… no", Grey raises her eyebrows, but lowered them as soon as she remembered the rookie she was dealing with. She got her own knife and gave it to Skye.
"A comm?", she continues her checklist.
"I was doing this mission alone, as far as I was concerned until twenty minutes ago!", her protests didn't provoke much of a reaction – in fact, it provoked no reaction at all. A completely catatonic Jemma Simmons.
"This is not an excuse, you always need a comm, unless you're going in a suicide mission. What equipment do you actually have?", Skye can hear the frustration in her voice, but she's certain the girl didn't try to hide.
"A pocket tablet capable at hacking everything", Grey looks unimpressed. In fact, Skye's sure she didn't even blink.
"Be sure to hide it well, then. We still have four minutes, so let's go over the plan"
Apparently not only she was tagging along, she had an entire plan in her mind, perfectly scripted. It started out with transportation, surprisingly. She was watching time closely because she knew there was a chauffeur picking up Nina Arany, a fairly new invite to the embassy's circle, and her sister, Izabella Herczog, which was conveniently adopted. She also 'took care' – she used those words exactly – of the pair before, so it was a matter of getting to the Arany residence before 2000 hours.
When she mentioned what part of town that was, I thought it to be impossible – it was literally on the other side. Then I hopped in the loaner BMW (is S.H.I.E.L.D. always this generous with mission resources?), spent twenty minutes scared for my dear life, and unbelievably, we made it without dying horribly. I'm still impressed at this. Or maybe I did die and I'm stuck in a nightmare. That'd make much more sense.
She parked on an alley, from which there was no direct access to the Arany manor (though we could see it from there) – ten minutes to the arrival of the chauffer. 'There's no way in hell we're going to reach it in time', I breathed out and she merely gave me an amused, almost cocky look – I was mildly irritated in this point.
Never hated Simmons so fucking much – you can't blame me, right, AC? Bitchy Simmons kind of sucks. Not that you know that, but I guess you'll find out.
But she's crafty, I give her that: she produced grappling gun, pulled me by the waist without even asking for permission (I like bold girls and all, that take their clothes off and grab me all dominant, but a dinner first would be nice, you know?). We were in the roof in no time, and she motioned for me to follow her, grappling gun easy in her right hand, kneeled in the shadows. It was like watching Simmons as the next Bond girl – super weirdly hot.
We finally grapple our way into the house. She lights a dim lantern, smooths her dress and mine, grabs my wrist (still no dinner – this alter ego girls…) and makes her way to the front door, just in time to prevent the old dude from knock. I have to admit: Simmons 2.0, Agent Grey, or whatever her fucking real name is, rocks at this.
I was all like 'not bad'.
Then she starts speaking bloody Russian to the driver. AC, what the fuck! Simmons' super smart, I get it, but did you how she knew Russian? For me, she was a native English and proficient science speaker, and nothing else. And why Russian, for goodness' sake! It's not like she goes there a lot!
2013/09/28, 2020 hours, Budapest.
"Since when do you speak fucking Hungarian?", Skye whispers in the pathway to the Embassy.
"It's Russian, and stop speaking to me", right, the plan was for Skye to smile, wave and go upstairs as soon as she had the chance.
Grey walks up to the ambassador, and thanks him for the invitation to the reception. She compliments the Russian embassy's driver who, according to her, 'was impeccable in his timing and training'. It makes the ambassador visibly proud. She smiles sweetly and asks trivial questions, yet personal enough to form a circle of attentive listeners to his stories. Skye's bored out of her mind, but she takes the cues and laughs at the right places. So far no one seems suspicious.
In the middle of a particularly funny story – at least she presumes it is, Grey is laughing enthusiastically (though never losing her elegance), along with everyone else –, she pretends to whisper something in Grey's ear, heads to the toilet, takes the wrong turn and goes upstairs.
She finds an empty room and hacks into the embassy's CCTV. Super easy. She flips through the multiple rooms of the building, trying to find the documents' office. And here it is, with two guards at the door, pointing their AK-47s down. Fuck.
Skye's distracted when she hears the static in her ear, and Grey's surprisingly lighthearted voice, with an even more surprising broken, Russian accented English: "Mr. Rosenov, I would love to accept your invitation to go to Sofia. I heard wonders about Sofia", she talks slowly, and it sounds like a bad Bond movie from the seventies – from Hungary, with love, "I'm sad to have to go to Croatia with my sister before", Croatia! Right! Skye begins typing in her tablet as fast as she can think. Then she hears the door – oh no, that wasn't part of the plan. She whispers 'help' into her comm and turn to face the man.
It's a guard. An armed one.
He walks towards her and says something in Russian. She puts her tablet face down and stands up, coy smile on her face. She gets near and the guy is suspicious, but when she addresses the first button of his uniform, he catches on and smirks, hoarsely saying something else in Russian. So her plan is working, but how she can prevent him to either fire his gun or raise the alarm is unclear. Or how she can keep it up without feeling nauseous – nothing against men in general, but this one's nasty. She caresses his chest, trying her best to keep her flirtatious smile, looks at him.
What she doesn't expect is for him to boldly pull her into a terrible, sloppy kiss. Disgusted is a completely understatement, now. Suddenly the man stops, and falls slowly – she notices Agent Grey's behind him, holding his unconscious body. She places him under the sofa while Skye is comically wiping her mouth – priorities.
"Who knew you had a thing for hairy, overweight Russian guards. I certainly wouldn't guess", Grey raises her eyebrows in a flawless deadpan.
"Ha, funny!", Skye replies annoyed, but she's got to admit that she's perplexed at the girl's sudden humour.
"What's the situation in the documents' room?"
"Two armed guards with assault rifles",
"Have you disabled the alarm?"
"Yes"
"Good, guide me in", she rushes out of the door, icer gun in hand, and closes it softly behind her.
"There are two guards patrolling the corridor you're about to go into, coming from your right", Skye informs, and watches the girl press herself against the right wall, "oh, no, they'll turn into the corridor you are", she watches Grey toss a smoke bomb, shoot both guards perfectly in the head, and avoid the lasers from the next corridor, "that was cool", Skye finds herself saying, she hears Grey release a light chuckle in her way to the door
"It's locked. Are you sure the alarm is disabled?", she gets her lockpicking tools from an other inner thigh pouch and puts them in the lock.
"Very sure. Stay still, though!", Grey freezes in position and waits for further orders, "the electronic lock is clearly not disabled, and I recognise this pattern – it's an extra alarm just for this door, in case someone tries to naively lockpick it without disabling the software lock first. It triggers if you remove the key without opening the door too", Skye frowns into the screen, "That's smart. Hang on, I'll try to overcome this", Grey breathes sharply, not liking the fact that she had to have a hand on her lockpicking kit to make it pressure the lock like a real key. She looks at the empty corridor – they have approximately five minutes to get in.
"Gotcha!", the girl turns the key and the door clicks open. Four minutes.
"Skye, help me get these bodies in the documents' room", the girl rushed out to meet Grey, and she dragged the first guard's body while Grey put him in the room – three minutes. The last guard almost got stuck in the carpet – damn it – but they push him in and close the door with one minute left to the next round of guards notice the two bodies. Phew.
The mission itself went well, I disabled the alarm, Agent Grey and I got in the documents' room unspotted and we erased the files. Impressively enough, we went back to the party after it, and I swear it was like the stealthiest thing ever. She engaged into a good conversation with the Polish ambassador – luckily for me, it was in English this time –, we spent more than half an hour with foreign relations affairs people and no one suspected that were three guards passed out on the second floor and plenty of documents missing. Finally, Grey arranged for the Russian embassy driver to take us to 'our house' (so we could grapple our way to the car) – talk about undercover.
This time I insisted on driving to the hotel. No more mach three experiences for me, thank you very much.
Overall, this was a great mission. The only mistake I've made, I'd say I recovered quite well (a bit thanks to Agent Grey – okay, a lot thanks to her). I was kind of pissed at her, but I have to say she was very handy – she and her perfect Russian (still can't get over this fact).
Update: ugh, just when I started to like her, 'you know that's a mission report, not your journal, right?'. Agent Skye asking permission to hit superior officer. Hard.
And signing off.
Coulson drops the sheets of paper on the table and scowls at May, "this is the craziest report I've ever read"
"Skye's really bad at bookkeeping", she says matter of factly, and shrugs it off. He's about to contest, but he receives another report, neatly written, and much shorter. May frowns, "what's that, the report's post scriptum?"
He holds the new piece of paper on his hands and reads it out loud:
Mission report for the Russian embassy infiltration, code HG-BP-0929-2
Agent Elizabeth Grey, from Budapest, 2013/09/28
I am pleased to inform tonight's mission went successful, with no civilian casualties and only one incident, relating to a Russian patrol officer and a slight mistake in the plan's execution. I would also like to request further training for Agent Skye, should she need to go back on field. In particular, I am convinced that planning training, as well as CQC, would benefit her the most.
Agent Grey signing off.
May's frowning even harder: "who's Elizabeth Grey?", Coulson stares blankly ahead.
"I have no idea, but I'm guessing we'll find out soon enough"
2013/09/28, 2200 hours, Budapest.
"Should've kicked in on the groin, then hit the back of the neck. It's almost certainly lights out. It was good improv, anyway", Grey says randomly.
"Thanks", Skye sorts of smile, a bit confused. She's still mildly irritated from the journal line. She looks at the girl, now dressed ready for bed, and closing her laptop. She still can't believe it isn't Jemma. She sighs. Then she notices she moved to the opposite side of the bed.
"You're sharing the bed with me?", Skye looks at her, a tad of incredulity.
"Do you have a problem with it?"
"I do if you aren't a cuddler", Skye deadpans and faces her computer, but she still catches a glimpse of the girl's almost smile, and that leaves her a bit too pleased with herself.
She then notices she has one new email: 'Mission assignment - GL-0928-0: Dr. Simmons and Agent Grey'. Nice title, AC.