A/N: This one came to me while reading Philosophize's Batgirl/HP fic, with the exotically named 'Amarylis Potter.' For some reason, probably due to the fact both can be shortened to Amy, it put me in mind of another character. Took me a while to polish this one up, but I've been busy.
This one's all Marvel, folks, and it would probably do you good to know of Agents of SHIELD before reading. Oh, and I own nothing; as usual.
Wolfgang
The second that the alarm sounded, the brunette's eyes snapped open and her body started to move into action. One hand immediately found the jacket that she had discarded before slumping on her bed, while the other made a grab for her phone, and then stalled. With wide eyes, the agent stared at the fast scrolling white text on a black background.
"Shit," Daisy muttered, immediately snatching the device and holding the power button down. When that failed to do anything, she deftly ripped off the back cover and removed the battery, which finally did the turn the phone off. At the sound of her door opening, the woman's head whipped up to see her mentor hanging past the doorframe.
"Daisy, we need you in Coulson's office, now," ordered the voice of Melinda May, and being as well trained as Daisy had been by said same person, she immediately jumped up and moved to follow her old SO.
"Please tell me the servers aren't currently being hacked," she queried pleadingly as they approached the Director's office, which was thankfully not far from her living quarters.
"'Fraid so," May replied as they entered the room to find Fitz already on a laptop in the corner furiously typing while the large wall screen had sections of constantly scrolling programming commands. "How did you know?"
"They got in through my phone," Daisy replied, throwing the offending piece of technology on Coulson's desk as the man himself moved out of the way so she could use the keyboard there.
"Your phone?" Fitz replied incredulously, looking up from his work. "I couldn't even get past one layer of the protections on that thing in under an hour; how did anyone even manage that without you noticing?"
"I'll be sure to find out once we're not being attacked by hackers," the woman replied as she watched the large screen for a moment, deciphering the lines of code and the blood draining from her face when she reached a conclusion. "Shit. Fitz, they're going for the encrypted communications channels." Sitting down, Daisy joined the tech genius in attempting to block off the hacker now she knew where to start.
"Secure comms? Why is that…oh, yeah that's not good," he stated after it dawned on him.
"What's so bad about that?" Coulson inquired with a concerned look upon his face as he stood to the side in his own office.
"They could potentially be used to backtrack to find every Agent across the world's location when they communicated with here. This could expose our every secret base or group," Fitz answered.
"Why are they backtracking off to-," Daisy's confused question faltered as the keyboard set into the desk suddenly stopped working. "Took out my hardware so I can't do anything," she declared angrily, before she was distracted by the larger text box that then took over a portion of the screen.
'Nice try, cub,' it typed out before the entire screen went black, and the alarm stopped its blaring.
"Oh shit; I know who this is," Daisy stated with wide eyes.
"Who?" Coulson immediately demanded, to no reply as the inhuman stared across to the other wall as white lines formed together to show the visage of a stylised wolf looking out at them, with a long bar at the bottom of the screen that sparked outwards as the voice started speaking.
"Sorry for the intrusion; I needed a secure line with a direct connection to you," came the modulated, gravelly voice that sounded close to a growl. "And sorry for using your phone, cub."
"Saying sorry doesn't make up for hacking the living daylights out of us," Daisy replied angrily. "And I told you not to call me that, Wolf!"
"The day you can keep me out of your systems is the day you'll no longer be a cub," the voice – now christened 'Wolf' – returned.
"I'm sorry; you know who this is?" Coulson interjected, looking at the ex-hacker expectantly.
"Yes, well, no," Daisy rubbed the back of her head while staring at the wolf head as it occasionally flickered glitchily. "Wolf is a hacker, one of the leading members of the Rising Tide."
"Is that all I am to you?" came the reply, conveying false hurt despite the monotone modulation. "What she's leaving out is that I'm the one who taught her everything that she knows about computers and hacking."
"Not everything," the woman protested.
"I found her as a kid trying to trawl the deep net, and decided she could use a hand learning things," Wolf continued. "This left a debt which I'm now calling in. Skye, I need your help."
"You never ask anyone for help, ever," Daisy said while standing up to look confusedly at the picture's eyes.
"Well, I'm asking now. I might have pissed off Hydra, and some of theirs are closing on my location. They've been after me for years, and it would be better for all of us if they didn't manage to capture me."
"You hacked into SHIELD's secure servers to ask me to pull you out of the fire?" the brunette replied incredulously.
"I needed a secure line; they would have been able to track me from anything else."
"Hang on; why are Hydra after you?" Coulson asked, his expression neutral.
"I've been a thorn in their side for a while, Director Coulson. However more recently, I may have… acquired some things from the remains of Cybertek that they were not happy about me having. If they find me, they will kill me, or, more likely, they will try to force me to work for them. I would rather neither of those possibilities occur."
"Where are you?" Daisy asked, concern showing on her visage.
"On the move, currently. However I will be at these co-ordinates at 10am, local time, tomorrow," a set of longitude and latitude appeared on screen in bold. "Come to the coffee shop and I'll meet you there. I'd prefer it to be just you, and perhaps Agent May; you're less likely to stick out here, and this needs to be as inconspicuous as possible. See you then, Cub."
The image of a wolf winked once, and then the screen blanked before everything returned to normal, the SHIELD logo spinning in front of them.
"Sir, permission to go?" the inhuman addressed the Director firmly.
"What, just like that?" the man replied incredulously, "they just hacked into SHIELD, remember."
"Yes, sir, and that's why I'd ask you to trust me when I say Hydra getting ahold of him would be bad," Daisy replied seriously, "that guy, is the king of the hackers. Literally, if he wanted nuclear launch codes, he'd stand an actual chance of getting to them. I'm handy with a keyboard but Wolf is something else entirely. We need to get to him before they do."
"You're thinking we can recruit him," Coulson deduced.
"I'm thinking it's a possibility. He at least knows SHIELD is the right side, or he wouldn't have contacted us, and he's a good person. I've known him since I was about twelve, and I think he could maybe be swayed to joining us," she stated. The Director sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose as he considered it.
"Why did he just ask for you and then May?" he eventually asked.
"Probably since those co-ordinates were fairly Eastern, I think," Daisy mused.
"Kuala Lumpur," Fitz interjected, spinning his laptop to show a map program with a locator dot flashing red.
"Sir?" the woman said towards the Director, who paused a moment in thought.
"Alright, but take Mack with you as backup. Fitz, I want you monitoring all our systems while they're away in case this is a ruse," Coulson ordered.
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As the pair walked into the Coffee Shop, Daisy couldn't help but compare herself to May and wonder if her mentor hadn't rubbed off on her more than she knew. Once, she had worn a leather jacket and a pair of aviators to impersonate May, but now the only difference between them was Daisy's jacket was brown, and she wore no sunglasses. Still, she put such thoughts out of her mind as she scanned the interior of the little shop.
The pair shared a glance, before Daisy moved to a window seat that offered her a good view of the room and of the street beyond, while May moved to buy some coffee so they wouldn't look suspicious. She hadn't been sitting down for more than ten seconds when a voice spoke up from behind her.
"Now this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky, and the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die." Hesitantly, Daisy turned around to look at the source of the voice; a young Asian woman, with brown hair tied in a bun on her head aside from two bangs either side of her face, sitting down with a silver laptop in front of her, and staring Daisy in the eyes. "As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back," she continued casually, "for the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack." Daisy stared at her, somewhat disbelievingly before the final nail was slammed into the coffin. "Hello, cub."
Hesitantly, the SHIELD agent moved from her own table to sit down opposite the woman, still staring at her. She was too young, and female! How was this even possible?
"Is there any reason you let me believe for eight years that you were a guy? And how old are you?" Daisy questioned.
"I'm the one who gave you that voice modulator software; and you knew I used the same one. Besides, I never claimed to be male, I just never corrected you when you made the mistake," she replied with a slight smile. "Oh, and I'm seventeen if you must know, though I don't see how that's important."
"You're three years younger than me," Daisy stated slowly, "that's… that would make you nine when we first talked!"
"Physically? Yeah. But we both know that age isn't everything."
"No, experience is," interjected May as she arrived with a pair of coffees, sliding one to Daisy. "This is your contact?"
"Wolf-Pack, at your service, Agent May," the woman tipped her head, "though if we get out of this safely, you can call me Amy."
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"May, we're loaded up, get us in the air!" Mack yelled from the back of the Quinjet as he took cover behind one of the large wooden crates stacked there as some bullets got through the open door.
"Mind the goods!" Amy admonished back from where she threw something out the rapidly closing door.
"What was that?" the man replied warily.
"Improvised," the woman was cut off by a muffled explosion from below as they took off, "explosive device." Her explanation given, the young Asian moved over to where the remaining member of their group was nursing a bleeding wound in her bare arm, having removed her jacket. "How you doing, cub?"
"Thought I told you not to call me that," Daisy stated through gritted teeth. "Amy," she added with a slight smile, "still can't believe your name is really Amelia. I always figured you for a Zack, or a Hector."
"My name isn't Amelia," Amy absently replied while prying the agent's hand from the wound to smear a blue gel from a squeezable tube produced from somewhere. "That should numb you a bit, but this is still going to hurt."
"What's your name then?" Daisy inquired while watching confusedly as the woman pulled what looked like a Gameboy Pocket from her coat, pressing it to the wound.
"Deep breath," she ordered instead of answering, before pressing a button on the gaming device and ripping a muffled scream of agony from the other woman's lips. The gaming system was tossed away with a bloody bullet clinging to its magnetised underside, and quickly replaced by white bandages wrapping around her arm. "Amadeus," she stated after a few moments of silence, "Amadeus Cho."
"That's a guy's name isn't it?" Mack asked as he came over, seeing to his companion.
"My mother was a fan of Mozart," Amy replied, sitting down on one of the seats nearby, "and she was convinced I was going to be male. When I wasn't, she decided if a man could be called Artemis, I could be called Amadeus. It's where I got my username; Wolfgang, gang of wolves, pack of wolves, Wolf-Pack."
"That's… original," Daisy commented with a groan.
"He was a fine musician, which I'm definitely not. Though he was a genius from a young age, so I suppose I take after him in that respect."
"Bit full of yourself, there," Mack replied.
"I rank as the seventh smartest person on the planet," Amy stated, "just between Bruce Banner and Hank McCoy. It's not arrogance, it's just a fact."
"Seriously?" the man stated incredulously.
"No, Remus-ly," she deadpanned, wringing a laugh from Daisy. "Yes, I was being serious. Why do you think Hydra wanted me so badly?"
"The crates of stuff we loaded up?"
"They were after me before I stole a bunch of loot from them," Amy replied, moving over to one of the smaller crates to open it up.
"What is all that stuff, anyway?" Daisy inquired.
"Oh, this and that," Amy answered, pulling out an odd half-built silver helmet with red eye lenses and what looked like mandibles. She paused in her perusal as a thought struck her. "I just realised I didn't tell you where I need you to take me."
"I thought it would be to SHIELD?" Daisy stated more than asked.
"No, no, I need to get all this stuff home," she shot a side along look at the Agent as she did so, "I suppose I should invite you to see where I live."
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"When you said 'invite you to see where I live' I didn't expect the Hong Kong sewer system," Daisy said with a wrinkled nose as she descended down a manhole to join Amy and May – Mack staying with the Quinjet once more.
"Well, we could get in through the emergency exit in the restaurant above," the Chinese woman replied as she walked down the large tunnel along a sidewalk, raised above the stagnant water, "but the guys renting the place don't know about it, and I'd rather keep it that way."
"You are excessively paranoid."
"It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you," she countered as she stopped halfway down the tunnel in front of a blank bit of wall. "Open up, Herc."
There were a few moments where nothing happened, and she looked crazy for talking at a wall before a section swung inwards to display a room beyond.
Following the woman into the space revealed a large space on two levels, with old sofas, a coffee table strewn with bits of electronics, screens on the walls, a snack machine, a fridge, numerous posters and blueprints covering the walls, a workstation with no less than ten different monitors and a host of other chaotic things strewn about. It was very much what Daisy imagined Tony Stark's sanctum would look like.
"Welcome home, madam," declared a slightly synthesized voice seemingly from nowhere, with an accent reminiscent of Northern England.
…Complete with an AI.
"Thank-you, Herc," Amy replied nonchalantly as she settled in the wheelie chair by her workstation. "Anything new?"
"The Brain Trust group has had numerous messages since you left," the voice, identified as 'Herc' answered. "Richards is still trying to get past your firewalls and find out who you are."
"You'd think he'd learn, wouldn't you," Amy muttered, before turning to her guests. "I guess, welcome to my humble abode! Former MI7 base that they abandoned when they gave up Hong Kong. I wiped it from the records and took it over; goes on for a while back there," she gestured to a doorway half hidden behind a stack of books, "plenty of lab space for experiments and stuff. Oh, and Hercules – my AI, since they're all the rage amongst super genii these days."
"This is quite…something," Daisy replied, still looking around the eclectic space.
"Well, it's home," the young woman stated fondly. "Now, why don't I pre-empt you on your attempt at persuading me to join SHIELD." She waved them off as they both attempted to speak. "I know what you're going to say, and I'm going to admit I'm tempted. I didn't like the old SHIELD, that's why I helped the Rising Tide and all. The new SHIELD? That's actually impressing me a bit. Not enough to fully join up, but still getting there. So, I decided I'd be willing to sign up as a consultant. I'll help you out if you ask for it, but for the rest of the time I want to be left alone. I'm not interested in playing the espionage game really."
"We're not spies," Daisy started, but stopped as a single hand was held up.
"Non-negotiable, cub."
"And don't call me that! Amadeus."
A/N: And that's where I got to; didn't know how to continue it, so into PBP it goes with other rabid plot bunnies.