So for those of you who decided to stay and watch the story unfold, here is the first chapter and I hope you enjoy.
But before we start; Reponses to Reviews!
LisaMichelle25: I'm glad you like the prologue. I hope you like this chapter just as much.
CaskettOlicityJeca: I'm glad you're excited. I hope you enjoy!
Guest: I'm more of a Skyeward shipper, so I don't know if the amount of Philinda will satisfy your needs, but I'll try.
Thank you to the 3 people who have favorited this story and to the 10 who have followed it.
ENJOY!
THE CHRISTMAS CAPER
9:36 a.m., Somewhere Over the Atlantic Ocean
"Adhesive Agent!" Biochemist Agent Jemma Simmons demanded as she held out her hand to her partner, Engineer Agent Leo Fitz.
"Adhesive Agent!" Fitz quickly handed her the item.
"Tweezers!" Simmons asked for.
Fitz looked at her with a confused look. "Why tweezers?"
"Fitz, this is a delicate matter that must be attended to with the upmost care."
"Okay, tweezers."
Simmons took them and continued working. After a minute or so, she put down the tweezers.
"Is it done?" Fitz asked with curiosity.
"Almost, I just need one more thing… Bow!"
"Bow!" Fitz handed Jemma a red, white and blue bow with silver stars on it.
Simmons took the bow and placed it on a box that had been wrapped in Captain America's Shield wrapping paper. "And Agent Coulson's gift is complete. Now, take it to the hiding spot so we can start working on May's."
"Alrighty." Fitz took the gift from Jemma and left the room.
Now, the scientific part of the team was wrapping gifts for one very special reason.
Tomorrow was Christmas Day.
The team would finally have a week to themselves to spend with their family and friends outside of S.H.I.E.L.D.
All of them were looking forward to midnight when they were officially off-duty.
But until then, they were still on call until they're dropped off.
While FitzSimmons wrapped gifts downstairs, Specialists Agent Melinda May and Agent Phillip Coulson were in the kitchen upstairs, making some Christmas cookies.
This May seem uncharacteristic of the usually stoic Agent May. An unknown fact to many was that, she actually quite enjoyed baking.
"Coulson, you know that you're doing it wrong, right?" May questioned Phil as he tried to whisk the frosting for the cookies. But, it just ended up looking like a lumpy mess.
"Hey, baking isn't part of my skill set." Coulson retorted.
"Oh, I can tell." May smirked as she continued to decorate her half of the cookies.
"It always amazes me how this time of year always bring out the old sarcastic you."
"Well, Christmas is the only time of year; I can truly feel that I forget the past. I can focus on the present. Also, it's my brother and I's annual jujitsu match and I'm defending my title." May smirked as she thought of the last time she and her brother fought it out.
"That's true; you two can get pretty rough."
"Who can get pretty rough?" Black Ops Specialist Agent Grant Ward asked as he entered the room. He sat down at the counter and reached for one of May's finished cookies, only to have his hand slapped away by the said agent. "Ow!"
"One, those are for later. Two, we're talking about me and my brother."
"Spending Christmas with your family?"
"Aren't you, Agent Ward?" Coulson questioned as he started to put some of his poorly made frosting in a bag.
"Yah, I'm going to visit my little brother. He's says he wants to introduce me to this new girlfriend he's getting serious about. He wants me to 'read her' per say."
"Read her?"
"Yah, see if she's a good fit or not. He says that I'm really good at finding out the truth about people."
"So lemme guess, you use your S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to find out more about his girlfriends."
"Well if you want to put it simply, AC."
Coulson looked up surprised. "AC? I see you've picking up your rookie's habits."
Ward realized what he just said. "It seems I have, are S.O.s and their rookies supposed to do that?"
"Well, in most cases, an S.O. will just think of his rookie as just that. But, you and Skye are definitely way more than that."
"Yah…wait, what are you implying, sir?"
"Nothing, but speaking about her, where is Skye?"
Ward wonders about it. "I don't know; I actually haven't seen her all day."
Not surprisingly, the resident hacker, Skye, was in her bunk.
She had been spending the whole day looking at videos on YouTube of little kids opening their presents on Christmas. Something she had never done as a child. Growing up as an orphan was hard, especially around Christmas.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on her bunk door.
"If this is FitzSimmons, I already told you ten times I'm not going to be the test subject for your new shock ray." Skye yelled as she closed down her laptop.
The door opened to reveal none other than her S.O. "Should've known you were in here."
"Yah well, is there something you wanted?"
"Not really, just wanted to see where you were. Coulson and May are making some cookies, you wanna help?"
"No thanks, I'm good right here."
Ward looked at his rookie in confusion. Normally, Skye loved anything that deals with sugar. Most of the time, in his efforts to get Skye to follow a healthier diet, he'd have to hide the international sweets that the team had collected all over the Bus, even though that didn't help because Skye always seemed to find them.
"Are you okay?"
"Yah, I'm fine." Skye insisted, but even she could hear the lie in her voice.
"Are you…"
Ward was interrupted by an alarm. Both turned to the screen in the command center to see an alert from HQ on the screen.
"Duty calls." Skye quickly stood up and brushed pass Ward to get to the room.
Ward followed, insisting in his mind that they would continue this later.
THE CHRISTMAS CAPER
In the command center, the team gathered around the table to be informed by Coulson of what HQ wanted.
"It seems we've got an 0-8-4 that we've got to investigate."
"What?!" FitzSimmons yelped with obvious disappointment in their voices. "But, we thought…"
"Remember, we're still on call until midnight." Coulson replied morbidly as he brought images up on the screen.
"And what time should we be done around." May inquired.
"Unknown. We're to report to the North Pole. Apparently, one of our teams up there had a flyby with the 0-8-4 and shot it down but because an impending storm and their lack of new technology up there, they were unable to follow. We need to go and finish what they started. May, set our course to the North Pole Base, and the rest of you go downstairs and get loaded up with winter time gear."
The pilot left the room to go the cockpit, while the younger half of the team went downstairs into the lab.
"Well, this bites." Fitz complained as he pulled out a briefcase from under the examination table.
"Yah, it looks like I'll have to tell my parents that I'll be home later than expected." Simmons took out another case from the closet.
"And I'll have to tell my brother that we need to postpone the interrogation." Ward sighed as he and Skye stood by the table, watching the scientists open the cases.
"So, what are we working with?" Skye questioned them.
"We've got the Heat-Signature Ski Goggles." Fitz brings out the goggles.
"And we have Heated Winter Jackets, because it is going to be cold." Simmons takes out the jackets.
"Wow, those are…big." Skye picks one of the said jackets up.
"I agree," Ward comments. "I don't think we need this much protection from the cold."
THE CHRISTMAS CAPER
11:20 a.m., North Pole Base
Coulson opens the cargo hold, when they reach the North Pole. As it opens, snow starts blowing into the Bus.
"You were saying, Ward?" Simmons screamed over the howling winds.
"Yah, we need the jackets." Ward replied as they all walked down the ramp.
"Okay," Coulson started. "Here's the plan. FitzSimmons, you go northeast and look for the 0-8-4. May and I will go North. Ward and Skye, go northwest. Got it?"
"Got it, AC." Skye started walking away from the Bus.
"Skye! That's southeast!" Ward yelled after her.
Skye quickly turned around and started walking in the opposite direction. "I knew that I was just testing you."
"Sure, you were." Ward followed after her.
The rest of the team went off in their designated directions. After 23 minutes, they decided to check in with each other.
"Anybody got anything?" May asked.
"We can't see anything, literally." Simmons informed over the comms.
"Yah, the blizzard is making finding anything up here a wild goose chase." Fitz added.
"We're coming up dry too. Ward?" Coulson hoped that the last team had something.
"Sorry sir, but…" Ward was interrupted by Skye saying.
"Wait, I'm getting a heat signature over there." Skye quickly ran in the direction and Ward followed.
"We're all heading your way. What do you see?" Coulson as he and May turned west.
"Um, something pretty unbelievable." Skye commented.
"I'll second that." Ward added.
Right in front of their faces was a reindeer. They know that wasn't strange because reindeer are indigenous to this area. What made this particular one stand out was the fact that it had a glowing bright red nose.
"Rudolph?!" They exclaimed at the same time.
THE CHRISTMAS CAPER
Soon enough, the whole team was over there.
"This is amazing." Simmons cheered as she examined the reindeer's nose. "The reindeer's nose is by far, the most amazing mutation I have ever seen."
"Well, I think his friends think the same thing." May commented as she, Coulson, Ward and Fitz came over with more reindeer. Each of them were bringing two over.
"Is anybody else thinking…?" Fitz started only to be interrupted by Ward.
"No, come on you have to have some theory about how no one person can travel around the whole world in one night, get in and out of chimneys and deliver one present to every boy and girl in the entire world."
"Well, of course, we do. But, these seem to be Santa's reindeer, I'm wondering where the sleigh is?"
"It's over here!"
The team walked over to see Skye standing by a red sleigh that has a large red sac, sitting in the back of it. "And there's someone in here."
Indeed inside the sleigh was an old man with a white beard and wearing a red suit.
Jemma quickly checked over him. "He's unconscious and his temperature is dropping. We need to get him back to the Bus immediately."
They started gathering up the 0-8-4 and heading back.
THE CHRISTMAS CAPER
And that was the first chapter. Please review and tell me what you think of it so far.
The next chapter will hopefully be up by tomorrow.
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE!
