Part three of the series, here we go! Enjoy!
S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters
It had been awhile since Nick Fury had been this angry at one of his agents, and this kid – Blaine freaking Barton – wasn't even technically one of his agents. The sixteen year old son of Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov was a sort of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in training with the small, secretive Junior Initiative Division, as well as the unofficial ward of Fury and Agent Maria Hill.
Truth be told, Fury hadn't had much to do with the upbringing of Blaine and the five – unofficially six – other kids in JID. He had treated them just like he would his best agents and had left the mothering up to Maria. He was their boss, not their father, and he was going to keep it that way.
Either way, he didn't know whether to be upset with Blaine or excited for what his actions meant in the director's eyes.
The boy had been given the assignment – his first real assignment – of hunting the most useless of the JID's, Dakota Stark. Yet, here Agent Hill was, standing in his office and telling him that Blaine hadn't, in fact, killed Dakota, but simply found her in the mountains where she had been abandoned to her death by Agent Hill and "made a different call," bringing her back to the JID building in Vermillion, South Dakota.
On one hand, Blaine's actions showed a blatant disregard for Fury's authority, but on the other hand, it undeniably showed his ability to think like Agent Barton, the father that Blaine had never met. And in the end, that was the entire point of JID.
In the end, Fury turned from the window of his office, going back to looking at Agent Hill as a spark of excitement lit inside him.
"I think that we may have taught them too well," he mused.
Agent Hill looked at him with those wide, mild eyes, but Nick didn't miss the relief behind them at the fact that Dakota was still alive as she asked, "What are you going to do about this?"
"We're going to pull 'the little American' off of the ice and get these kids training in earnest. Their ready to start missions now and I know just where to send them."
Junior Initiative Division building, Vermillion, South Dakota
Sixteen year old Andrew "Andy" Stark's internalized Iron Man suit almost melted with his relief as he saw his thirteen year old half-sister, Dakota, walk into the training room behind Blaine Barton. He practically gasped her name, scrambling to hug her tightly.
"Are you two okay?" Scarlet – Blaine's fourteen year old sister – asked her brother, speaking up from her place in front of a punching bag on the opposite side of Hayne Ross while giving Andy a strange look for his display of affection towards his sister.
"Yeah," Blaine answered weakly, falling down onto a chair at Andy's tech station and putting his head in his hands.
"Have either of you talked to Fury or Maria yet?" Andy asked, looking between Dakota and Blaine.
Both shook their head and Dakota asked, "Why?"
"You have to know that you're in trouble here, Blaine; you don't just randomly disobey Fury's orders and get away with it like that. None of us have. Heck, none of us have ever fought against him before."
"We've never been given a chance to," fifteen year old Hayne's twin sister, Hazel, spoke up, climbing out of the fighting ring where she had just been going a round with Andy.
"I think that's about to change," Andy admitted solemnly. "I talked to Blaine about it a little bit yesterday-"
"And while we were in the mountains, I told Dakota what you told me," Blaine broke in.
Hazel cocked her head, stepping closer to Andy as she asked, "What do you mean 'that's about to change'? What are you even talking about, Andy? What did we miss?"
"Fury tried to order me to kill Koty," Blaine said softly.
"To make him more like Hawkeye," Andy added.
Blaine finished with, "But I didn't."
"Like Hawkeye," Andy repeated. "And the Black Widow, too, I guess, but the Black Widow's not really the point here, I don't think."
"Then what is the point?" Scarlet asked, easily moving beyond what her brother had just revealed. "I'm sorry that it doesn't really surprise me that Fury asked that of him, but it doesn't. If the point is to make Blaine more like Hawkeye, why would Fury be upset that he refused a mark?"
"Because we're supposed to be the perfected version of the Avengers – the second generation and all that jazz – and in Fury's book that includes explicit obedience to orders, which he didn't get today."
"So he's going to be ticked off," Blaine shrugged. "Oh well; that's too bad."
"You don't mean that," Scarlet said, calling her brother out on the stress scrawled across his face.
Blaine snapped at her, "Well, I can't go back and change it now, can I? Even if I could, I wouldn't; Dakota's one of our own and we protect each other, even from Fury himself." He looked to Andy, requesting, "Moving beyond my failed hunting trip, tell them what you told me yesterday."
Andy hesitated before clapping his hands together and gesturing for them all to gather around him and Blaine at the tech station. "Okay, kiddies, time for class."
A few keystrokes later, and Andy was into one of the numerous files that he had saved from S.H.I.E.L.D. With twin flicks of his wrist, he blew the file up onto holograms and allowed the others a moment to take it all in.
Hazel asked, "What is all of this?"
"This is JID in a glance, including Fury's plans for us in the near future."
"There's more then that stunt he tried to get Blaine to pull?" Scarlet asked, the mixture of feelings in her tone equating those in Andy's own emotions.
"Much more," Andy assured. "He's even got a whole other person coming to us before long – and until that boy gets here, he's all I'm going to tell you about."
"Is that the 'secret friend' of Fury's that you told me about?" Dakota asked Blaine.
Andy's eyebrow twitched as Blaine nodded and put an arm around Dakota's waist, pulling the redhead closer to him.
Hayne finally spoke up, asking, "What's this 'secret friend's' name?"
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