A quick 5x19 fixer - Because we all know Melinda May wouldn't have just stood there and let Phil Coulson be taken away from her again.
I shove my baton forward and deflect a long, dagger-like claw, while simultaneously watching the alien to my immediate right lunge, claw raised in an attempt to impale me with it. As the first alien takes a step back, I am twisting my body towards the other and striking the extended claw down and away from me. I lean back to avoid the upward slashing rebound he aims at my torso. Then, using my already off-center weight, I lift my leg and kick him square in the gut just at the tip of his jagged claw misses its mark. As he staggers back, I return my attention to the first alien, now recovered to my left. I crouch down and duck under his swiping dagger and deliver a couple blows to his ribs with my baton. He hardly seems to notice.
This fight seems endless, useless. We are almost out of ammunition, Fitz and Deke being the only two still with loaded weapons as the rest of us have now resorted to hand to hand combat. Not that our bullets seemed to do anything anyway. The bullets only to ricochet off their bodies hardly even making them pause before continuing towards us. These aliens are either wearing thick armor or have a naturally impenetrable exterior. Nothing we do seems to be pushing them back. We're only serving to slow down the rapid rate of their attack, but we will soon be overcome.
Beside me, I see Phil collapse to the floor, eyes squeezed shut in pain. Without thinking, I turn and strike the alien poised above him, claw extended and ready to spear him. The masked alien isn't expecting the strike, and I easily get in a heavy blow to his head before he notices me. Suddenly, I am reminded that I had my own hands full as I feel a swiping claw drag across my back, slicing through the leather of my jacket and into my skin. Just as I retreat forward and turn to deflect the next attack, the room begins to shake and all the fighting stops. The aliens turn away and step towards the large blast door that is now groaning and bending under an unseen pressure.
Grateful for their diverted attention, I take the moment of respite to look down and check on Phil. He thankfully looks unharmed as he too looks towards the blast door in anticipation.
My attention is brought back up as the door finally lifts open. Expecting to see Daisy, I am shocked to instead see Talbot step calmly inside. My mind doesn't want to comprehend what my gut already knows, but it becomes undeniable as Talbot raises his hand simultaneously raising the aliens off the ground with the force of the Gravitonium now infused in his veins. This wasn't happening.
With the simple clench of his fist, the deafening cracking and snapping of bones made me flinch as the massive aliens were crushed into dense, unidentifiable, dripping balls of flesh and bone and blood. They dropped to the floor with a resonating thud as the shaking stopped and everything went quiet.
We all watched with baited breath as Talbot walked forward and stopped directly in front of Phil, who was still laying stunned on the floor. Talbot smiled down at him. "I told you I could fix this," He said, his voice even and satisfied.
Without warning, the room began to shake again, and I had to take a staggering step back to catch my balance. I widened my stance to keep steady and naturally fell into a shallow crouch readying myself for whatever was coming next. Cracks soon started to form in the stone floor and ceiling, but I quickly noticed that they weren't random faults forming due to the unstable pressure of the Gravitonium. No, they were intentionally forming around Phil and Talbot as the section of floor they occupied began to rise lifting them into the air. At the same time, the stone in the ceiling above them was twisting and morphing away to create a vertical tunnel up and out of the Lighthouse to the ground above.
My stomach jumped up into my throat as I realized what was happening; Talbot was taking Phil and the Gravitonium back to Hale. Hydra still had his mind. My heart seized. No, I just got him back. I wasn't going to lose him again.
"Phil!" I called out. Within a breath, I was launching myself onto the rising stone platform that was now almost four feet in the air. I landed in a deep crouch beside Phil and moved to grab on to his arm as Talbot turned away from his focus on the ceiling above him and down to me. All my breath was suddenly being forced out of my lungs, and I could feel the pressure in my bones as they began to quiver as his eyes narrowed at me. As my fingertips grazed the fabric of Phil's jacket, my body was thrown backwards with crushing force. The last thing I saw before my body impacted the wall behind me was Phil as he disappeared into the ceiling and out of the safety of my protection.
