Robbie looked up to see the same van that had been outside his workplace for three days straight now. In this neighbourhood, any vehicle outside one place for every a day was bad news. But the fact it was here, not long after he'd transformed in front of that chica with the strange vibration powers that he assumed were from the devil, like his own, was setting off proverbial warning bells of all kinds in his head.
Taking a crowbar, he quietly made his way around to the driver's side and opened the door quickly, the makeshift weapon at the ready. There was no one in it. Even more bells going off now.
He made his way back to the shop, and was going over to take a seat and think it over when he heard a familiar voice. One he'd heard not even a week ago.
"Robbie Reyes."
No doubt about it.
He turned to see the same chica in the same clothes with a mug in her hands. She had a grin on her face that was almost threatening yet sweet and innocent. One that really did not sit well with him.
"Hi." He started simply.
The girl gestured to his co-worker as she spoke next. "I was just telling Canelo here how tight we used to be back at Garfield High."
"Sorry, I can't quite place you." He played evasive. "So many faces, you know?"
"Daisy. I'm Daisy Johnson, the girl with the black beanie? Regular rebel, obeyed no rules, ran away not long after you left in the eleventh grade? Ringing any bells Rob?"
"Ah, yeah I remember you now." He played along, so that he could get this girl away from Canelo. But if she wanted to play mind games with him, he'd play too. "You fought so much at school, almost like you had a death wish."
She moved closer, taking a sip from her cup. "Oh yeah. You kept telling me not to go starting them on our dates and at school, everywhere.
"Last fight I remember was the one with you. You know, the one where I was mad because you drove off one night, and we broke up when things heated up not too long after that. Well I've felt bad for when I hit you because of the way you let that other guy push you around since then. If I remember right, I gave you a gash… right here."
She traced where she'd broken his skin in their fight with a finger. It was a light, gentle touch that sparked up phantom pain from the unmarred flesh of his cheek. He still felt that wound despite it being healed when he reverted to his human body. It was almost like she was teasing him, pushing him.
Canelo caught his attention with a wave and asked him, "This girl used to be tu novia Robbie?"
"Yeah. We dated back in the eleventh grade, she was the last girlfriend I had. I've stuck to cars since." He replied with a deliberate smile, forcing himself to put his arm around her shoulders.
He turned his head to face Daisy, and found her with that same sweet, too -good-to-be-true smile, leaning her head against shoulder. She really was trying to push his limits. Just how much did she know about him? It was really unsettling that she was alluding to their battle in the junkyard as a breakup fight.
"So… why'd you pop in?" He asked.
"Well yesterday I was having trouble with my van and it literally went up in flames. I remembered you loved cars ever since you got to ride shotgun in your uncle Eli's Charger, and I heard you'd become a mechanic so I thought I'd stop by, reconnect given we last saw each other at a bit of a bad time in our lives."
She was really doing his restraint in. The Spirit of Vengeance inside him was indifferent to her, so she wasn't deserving of punishment. But, she was dangerous, having both knowledge and powers to contest his own.
"Sure." He consented after a pause. "I'll take a look."
"Great! Come on Rob!" She replied in a very chirpy tone. She grabbed his hand and pulled him out front, half skipping.
He got the van into the garage, which took a while, then set about looking to see if anything was actually wrong with it. As he did, Daisy continued to push and prod him with tidbits of information about himself that she'd apparently found out.
"You really think it was a good idea, us being in a room together again?" He asked her honestly. "I mean, with what happened last time we were together and all."
"Well given you were gentle despite the fight up until I cut your cheek and you ran off, yeah." She replied.
She said these things knowing Canelo could still hear her. He was the other side of the garage, and could heard some things she said if they were slightly louder than normal speaking volume. This whole deal was really grating on his nerves, and the fact the demon in him only seemed curious about her as far as he could tell was unnerving.
The moment Canelo told him he wanted him to lock up given he was taking a car back to its owner, then left, he dropped the charade. "What do you want with me girl?"
"What I wanna know is why. Why kill those people, even though the kills I've looked into check out?" She asked him plainly, stopping her happy go lucky act.
"Because they deserved punishment for what they did. Sure, death might be a little extreme in some cases, but they committed bad enough sins that the other guy thought they deserved to die. The level of brutality is the scale of what they did." He told her firmly. "He's the one who decides, and carries out vengeance. I'm just a passenger at best."
"Dissociative identity because of your power, that's a new one." She commented, almost to herself. "Never met one like us who had that."
"One like us?" Robbie questioned.
"Inhumans."
He shook his head. "That's not what I am."
"Look. I know the whole life changing when you got stuck in a cocoon for a bit during terrigenesis was scary, I still have claustrophobia from that, but it doesn't mean it's that bad. You have an amazing gift, although yeah you looked scary when you use it. Don't waste it."
He stared her dead in the eyes. "I was never in any cocoon, I got my powers when I prayed for vengeance . Seriously girl, if you're trying to save my soul, don't bother, I already sold it."
"To the devil?" She guessed, a bit incredulously.
"He was the only one buying, you know?"
The solemn tone of his voice seemed to wipe away the doubt in her that he'd made a deal with the devil. So, she was an Inhuman, she'd pretty much just told him that.
"What'd you get in return? What did the devil promise you other than revenge?"
"Something to fight for." He replied. "Why do you care so much?"
"Because those guys you killed the first time I saw you were associated a group called the Watchdogs, and they hunt Inhumans like me. I wanted to interrogate them, find out something that would help me take them down." She confessed.
"You against the world, huh Quake?"
"Yeah. Wait, what did you just call me?"
He repeated himself. "Quake, that what they call you right? Because you can cause vibrations that rumble the ground?"
"How'd you guess?" She asked with a sigh.
"When you pinned me, I felt my entire skeleton vibrating."
"You mean, the skeleton you can set on fire and use to go all William Tell on people who have blood on their hands?" Daisy inquired.
"Yeah that skeleton." He acknowledged. "Why? Got a problem with that? Even if you do something about it, I've got nothing to lose."
"Well, there's your decent job here, your legal freedom, civilian identity. Not to mention Gabe. I'm pretty sure he'd be pretty upset to lose his brother." She listed.
This chica had stepped over the line, and that line was Gabe, his little brother. He took a wrench from the box of tools and set it ablaze. The same resigned look took over the brown eyes of the girl as she back away. His eyes seemed to have fire in them for a moment when he spoke angrily.
"You should've left my brother out of this."
"Robbie, it doesn't have to go this way. We can talk this out." She tried.
He advanced. "No, this is how it has to be."
Using her powers, she dropped the lifted car from the ceiling. He jumped back as it fell, avoiding it landing on him. In doing so, he dropped the wrench.
Instead of the wrench, he pulled off the free exhaust of the fallen car and set it on fire like he had the wrench. She next sent the waist height tool cabinet at him, but he sidestepped it and swung. The first attempt missed, but his second swing struck her left forearm, causing her immense pain as she fell down.
Before she could recover, he knocked her out with a clean cross to the face. It wouldn't leave a mark.
Crouching down, he examined her arm critically. It was fractured, but her arm bones were unnaturally brittle. That was why the single hit had fractured her arm and not just bruised it. Her powers could be the cause given she primarily used them from her arms.
He picked her up and took her to the small office, putting her on a chair. He didn't tie her up, it would only make her arm worse than it was. Then he put the shop back to how it was before the fight. After that, he opened her van and checked out the inside properly.
Grabbing her stuff, he cleared a space on the desk and set it down, mere moments after she raised her head. An apology couldn't do any harm.
"I hope I didn't hit you too hard. Your arm is fractured, not broken, I've seen a lot of breaks so I know it isn't."
"Well that's spectacular." She groaned.
He commented as he sifted through the contents of her van.
"Your bones are unnaturally weak. Why is that?"
"My powers. My body can only take so much vibration before my bones start getting damaged. I guess using then so much recently did my arms in."
He found a bottle of pill that were labelled to aid with bone healing. Walking over to her, he held them in her field of vision.
"How many of these do you need to recover from this kind of injury?" He asked.
"I take two before I go out ready to use my powers, so probably three every 6 hours is my safest bet if I don't want to overdose on them. I'm not sure, I've never had to deal with it this bad before."
Robbie checked the time as he got three of the pills out of the bottle and put them in her uninjured hand. It was so he'd know when it'd be safe to give her more since he seemed to be keeping her around so she couldn't do any damage. Plus, he did fracture her arm, it was only right he take care of her.
"Why are you even keeping me alive?"
The question threw him. Putting down her stuff, he turned to face her. She looked far more vulnerable now, cradling her fractured arm, that weary look in her eyes.
"The night we fought, the other guy looked into your soul and found you to be innocent of any crime of any sort that warranted him even hurting you. For the first time ever, he fought to subdue instead of kill. He had mercy on you, he's never ever even given a hint of anything but vengeance.
"I get the memories of what he does as it happens. Thing is, for some reason he blocked me out that night, shut me off after he got you on the ground the second time. I don't know what happened."
"So you want to know what happened?" She asked.
He glanced down at her arm then back up at her face. "No, I want to find out why he spared you. Thing is, the demon inside me's be quiet since he left you there."
Finding a file that looked like something resembling a case file from a detective's work, he opened it. It was about the guys she'd been after that he'd killed. The Aryan Brotherhood, they stole things for money, being pretty much a hit crew for hire. So far, she'd been pretty thorough with how she dealt with them.
"What was your plan for when you got one of the guys I killed?"
"Interrogate him, find out what he was doing, who for, the works. Why did you kill them?"
"They spilled innocent blood." He told her.
Daisy whistled. "Wow, take yourself seriously much?"
He stopped reading the file and looked at her with a serious expression. "Look Daisy, if that's your name. When I made the deal with the devil, and I begged for vengeance in return for the loss of my soul, I swore to hunt down those who spilled innocent blood, who committed wrongs against people who'd never intentionally done anything to hurt them in their lives. That was the deal I made, my soul and my service for my vengeance."
He took a breath. "Why'd you get curious about them?"
"They were working with the Chinese, which is practically unthinkable if you know their agendas, and they were outfitted with RPG's, as you found out when they shot one at your car." She put it plainly. "You're not interesting in how these things are connected?
"Look, I know that you've got your own crusade and the big picture is kinda lost on you but someone is arming them, uniting them and that should bother both of us. Plus, I still haven't found out what they stole from the energy lab in Pasadena."
"What lab?" He interrupted.
"Momentum Alternative Energy Lab, but its been shut down for years."
He knew that name well. He threw the papers back into the box he got them from and grabbed his jacket from the wall. He'd changed mostly when she'd been unconscious. He threw the black leather on, zipping it up and pulling on his gloves.
"Does that name mean something to you?" Daisy asked, getting up.
"Yeah, trouble." He replied, beckoning her with his hand as he strode out. "Come on. You may have sat there nicely but I don't trust you out of my sight."
"Charming." He heard her mumble.
Unlocking the Hell Charger, Robbie jumped straight into the driver's seat, barely waiting for Daisy to be in with the door closed until he sped off. Knowing they had to go fast, he put the Rider's power into the car and it shot like a bat out of hell along the roads. His eyes were fiery with the amount he was pouring into the vehicle.
He traced the route he'd heard his uncle recite so many times when talking to him and Gabe about his job there. Within what seemed to be a blur of time, they were there and he was kicking in the door with his enhanced strength.
Daisy was barely able to keep up as he raced through the building. He could sense a malicious presence in the reactor room. Breaking into the room, he found one man, a large dark skinned and bald guy in the reactor chamber, and another against the wall with nowhere to run from what seemed to be a ghost that reeked of malice. He caught the spectre by the arm and pulled it away from the man against the wall.
It was a ghostly man, and he seemed shocked that he could be touched. Robbie seized the seeming ghost by the throat and let his eyes blaze.
"What are you?" It demanded fearfully.
With a cry of agony, he let out the Spirit of Vengeance and became the Ghost Rider once more. He faintly hear the formerly trapped man agree with the question across the gap between him and the Spirit.
"Yeah, what are you?"
"Fitz, get me out of here!" The bald man yelled from the chamber. The other man moved around and tried to open the valve lock but to no avail.
"Ah, it's stuck!"
"I really wish our roles were reverse right now." The tall man griped.
The Ghost Rider lit a flame in its gloved hand as Daisy finally found the reactor room. She called out to this 'Fitz', and opened the chamber door with her quake powers, freeing the trapped man inside.
It then thrust the flame upon the malicious spectre, burning it into nothingness. The reactor was shut down by the man called Fitz. Stalking over to the board in the corner, the Rider spied and grabbed a picture that contained the team that Robbie's uncle had worked with here, including the one it had just burned. It stowed the picture in its pocket and approached Daisy.
Without missing a beat, it bent down and slung her over its shoulder, locking its arm around her legs and standing up. It then strode out the door, slamming it in the face of the large man who attempted to follow it, stunning him.
Stalking through the corridors, it made it back into the sunlight and made straight for the Hell Charger.
Fitz and Mack burst out the doors of Momentum Lab to find the man-turned-burning-skeleton having just deposited Daisy in the passenger seat of his car.
"Hey Matchstick, let her go!" Mack yelled.
The demonic figure glanced up at him and shut the door of the passenger side. He then strode round to the driver's side and got in despite them running straight at him with guns raised. Before they could even touch the car, the engine in the hood and wheels set ablaze and it pulled away. The pair were unable to make out the license plate.
"This does not bode well." Fitz realised. He immediately called Coulson as he put his gun away, and the former director answered almost as soon as it rang.
"Fitz, what's going on?"
"Daisy's resurfaced, and she's been kidnapped."
"So what now?" Daisy asked as Robbie's flesh reformed over his skeleton in the car whilst he drove, the car reverting too.
The host of the Spirit of Vengeance kept his eyes on the road but for when he checked the rearview mirror to see if they were being pursued. "You wanted to know what was connecting these things, what was the common link?"
"Yeah."
He pulled to a stop and looked to her. "I think it might be me, or at least something to do with me."
"Where to next then?" She asked tiredly, gingerly holding her fractured left arm.
"First I'm taking you to the hospital to get that arm sorted, then… who knows, but I know one this for sure about what we're going to do about this." Robbie put his hand carefully on her shoulder so not to aggravate her arm.
Daisy met his gaze. "What's that?"
"We're not doing this separately anymore. I hurt you, it's my responsibility to at least make sure you heal from the pain I caused."
"And you thought penance was my thing."