"Sodium pentothal," Coulson stated clearly. He disposed of the syringe, "Truth serum to you and I."

He placed some music on, a deep bassy tune. "Plus, a little something to distract your brain waves from interfering with the questioning techniques." He sat back down opposite the black haired weaponless ninja.

Cole was currently dressed in black paraboots, STRIKE team combats and a tight black shirt with the SHIELD logo over his right breast. He didn't mind, it was his colour after all. He evidently had the physique of STRIKE team members too because the clothes were snug and comfortable.

"This tactic is far more humane than waterboarding too."

"What?"

"Agent Rollins seems to favour that particular way of getting people to speak, I guess you can blame that on his extensive Navy SEAL training."

None of what Coulson was saying had any effect on Cole so the middle aged agent tried another technique, "Perhaps as extensive as your own training?"

"Mmmm, training." The master of earth was grinning, slowly and steadily slumping on the plastic chair. He felt like it was molding to his body or he was melting into it. The chair itself looked and felt like it had the least amount of padding...It was the type of uncomfortable chair you'd expect to see in a school setting or canteen. It was hardly comfortable, but there was a reason for it. It was to prevent him from falling asleep.

Then there was the room he'd been put in. It was clinical in appearance with stainless steel cupboards and a solid metal table in the middle of the room. A large mirror took up the majority of the opposite wall and Cole through his time of being interrogated, he knew it was a two sided contraption. Similar to the one in the wardens office at Kryptarium. This room was closer in style to Cyrus Borg's inventing lab, minus the various inventions the genius, billionaire, innovative creator had made.

"Wh-why are you doing this?" Cole mumbled woozily, "What was th-that, and where the hell am I?"

Coulson was smirking, "It's used to weaken the resolve of a subject, thereby making them more compliant to the pressure of interrogation."

"And, this is SHIELD HQ, the Triskelion, Washington DC...you don't remember?"

"N-no..." Cole so wanted to wipe the smug grin of Coulson's face but his arms felt heavy, "I'm so...tired."

"That, I guess, is to be expected. Considering how you arrived on this planet."

It was all insinuation, SHIELD had no direct evidence except for the huge light show and large burst of unexplained energy. This was followed by power outages in their direct area at the time of their arrival. It was rumoured that this team of oriental inspired warriors had arrived through some type of portal or an intergalactic anomaly similar to how Loki had arrived, thus explaining their sickly gray pallor and hollow eyes.

It was also how Jay had arrived almost two weeks before hand...but he arrived just before lunchtime...mid week, in Times Square. When he had arrived he looked like death, sweating and stumbling, the blue ninja looked like he was the main starter of some hideous pandemic.

"Wh-what are you talking about?" Cole grunted out loud. "What makes you think we're from anywhere else?" The mention of Washington bore no semblance to any places he had ever heard of with that name.

Still, Cole was getting used to the definition here. It was surreal, everything was, textures were softer, lights were brighter. Even his skin felt dry and callous in areas, he knew he needed a shave too. He seemed to have three days worth of stubble on his face and now felt like he resembled a better looking Ronin.

Again, he used his hands, passing them in front of him, drifting them through the air. He watched with unrelenting fascination, it was like he could see each molecule hovering and leaving a starlit trail as he moved his hands through the screen and in front of his face. "Nngh, wh-what did you do to me?"

"Spoilers, and that is largely classified..." He said with an annoying vagueness until his ear piece alerted him to proceed and give the information required to avoid the same issue they faced last time. "Sorry, your unique gifts and the way you arrived here attest to the fact that you are most definitely not from earth, this is just a precautionary measure, Cole!"

"The effects are temporary and we gave you a lower dose than normal based on how well your vascular system reacted to it earlier."

"What?" Cole frowned in confusion. He was not happy at the fact that they had obviously been testing him whilst he was unable to fend them off. "What unique gifts, you mean our elements right?" he was mesmerised by his own glowing hands.

Normally, if he concentrated, Cole would be able to focus and keep the fists under control. But whatever he'd been injected with was revealing his power to everyone in the vicinity. The room was lit yellow because his hands were glowing.

"Indeed-" he nodded, "-not that we don't have our own supply of enhanced elementals here...on earth." He said quietly and heaved his black briefcase onto the table. The combination locks were hidden from Cole's view.

"Urth?" Cole repeated the word slowly. "Not Ninjago then?" He giggled.

The agent shook his head, "Earth," Coulson corrected gently, "-with an E.a.r.t and h. The third rock from the sun? You really don't know where you are do you?"

Cole shook his head miserably, "No, I guess I don't."

The suited agent, whom identified himself as Phil Coulson was quick to explain because the medication in Cole's system wouldn't last long and could wear off at any given moment. "Earth is the third planet from the Sun and is the largest of the terrestrial planets in our solar system." He stated calmly.

The screen in front of Cole changed again and revealed exactly what Coulson had just uttered with some impressive in-depth detailed visual representations of the solar system. A system that bore no resemblance to his own realm.

"The Earth was formed approximately 4.54 billion years ago and was, up until recently, the only known planet known, to support life." He was scanning both index fingers on either side of the briefcase, enough of a security feature to open it.

"Uh, okay!" Cole thought how typical of this international conglomerate to have finger print tech on their briefcases too. It looked like everything had finger print tech. Even the room they had found themselves in required some form of retinal scan, a level six clearance card and the ubiquitous finger print scanner.

"Unless you'e had some form of head injury, all of you...this gives at least some concrete evidence that you are not of this planet?" Coulson took a deep breath in and released it slowly. "It's not the first time either, you'd be surprised to know..."

"Would I be surprised?" Cole asked himself.

"And, it makes it a little easier to give you an identity. Tie you in to the SHIELD accords and keep an eye on all of you whilst you're here." He removed a smallish folder with tabs sticking out.

"And, as you're likely to be staying here for a while..." he didn't elaborate on that either. "-it may be beneficial to enrol you all in some basic 101 lessons of our humanoid society. Otherwise you'll never leave the confines of the Triskelion."

Cole was still staring wide eyed at the solar system,"Wait, what?"

"You don't want to be kept in solitary confinement do you or indefinite quarantine?"

Cole shook his head, "I don't understand...We just want to get Jay back and go home."

"The only way to do that is to sign the accords," He said, pushing the paperwork to a dazed and confused Cole. "And, to agree to bring the blue elemental back here for further questioning...for his involvement in atrocities committed overseas."

The way he said that made Cole question Coulson's questionable morals. Exactly what did he want with Jay, other than the fact that he'd heard downwind that Jay had killed now double figures since being here...The three were unstoppable.

"Elementals, you call them elementals?" Cole grumbled as he felt his own finger prints being taken.

Coulson had taken to opening a large manilla folder, whilst Cole struggled to look over the documentation in front of him. "We have many elementals here, some are deceased because the power consumed them."

"Such as?"

"Elements of what we would call chaos," Coulson offered but said no more.

"Chaos? Wh-what?"

"I'll get back to that-" he smiled weakly and took out a few photos, "-These, we define as having the power of cryokinesis. Your robot life form too, no less?"

"He has a name," Cole hissed and stiffened his posture as he looked through the sparse photos he had been given.

"I am sure he does but as he is offline whilst we work to repair him he is incapable of telling us. His power source is deeply fascinating though."

"Don't you dare touch him, you leave him alone," Cole was trying his hardest to be forthright and intimidating but the sodium pentathol had him slurring like he'd been partying far too hard.

"Easy there Cole-" Coulson soothed, "-we aren't doing anything untoward, tracking devices mainly. Of course we've had no choice but to call in a specialist in the field of robotics, if only to get him back online...robots rarely lie...they all follow basic programming."

Cole frowned at Coulson, "He's not a fucking robot...What specialist?" He slurred.

"Classified to you, you lack the relevant security clearance."

Coulson continued to flick through the folder, "He's fine and in relation to your earlier question; Yes, we refer to individuals with abilities as 'Enhanced,' mind you the last electro element we had, he brought New York to a complete standstill."

"Had? What do you mean had?" Cole was getting irate at the tone and questioning.

He didn't answer, just gave more pictures. Ones that were no longer classified because they were in the public domain. It was damned hard to classify such images when the fights that had happened had put such human life in peril. The general public put their own opinions out there and had come up with various conspiracies of government tampering with human genes and cloning. "Of course we don't always have a say in how we come by these powers do we? Some may be born with mutated genes, rapidly healing cells. Some may have been altered by others." Again he didn't clarify further.

"I uh, I don't understand." Cole knew that his elemental power came from his blood line and likely from his mother. His father, as far as he was aware, shared no earthly attributes except for the fact that he didn't like to be anywhere other than grounded. "Who is that?"

"His name was Maxwell Dillon," Agent Coulson replied.

He revealed a picture of a man who was just glowing blue. Nothing to identify the man he had once been, he was just a man of pure energy. With the very clear stamped label of 'Deceased' across the picture, evidently someone had been stamp happy on that day. "He was the last man to wield electrical energy as his own, until your blue ninja came along."

Cole's eye's narrowed. Finally, someone was mentioning Jay, actually talking about him. Although it left a sour taste in his mouth for the tone in which Jay's appearance was being spoken of. It was anything but friendly. "En...enhanced?" Cole repeated with difficulty, "Jay doesn't just wield electricity; he controls it. He's the lightning ninja," he grinned, "-he can control it to his whim, take it in and direct it, hack into things and stuff."

"What the fu-. what am I saying?"

Coulson was still smiling, "Hmmm, fascinating skill set he has then... We only touched on the basics of what he could do when he was under our control..." Coulson mused and procured another picture for Cole to look at.

"Under your control, are you fricking kidding me? If I can't control zaptrap, you've got no chance...idiots!" Cole laughed out and simultaneously turned beet red when he realised he'd just said that out loud.

"Internal monologue may be subdued too." Coulson smiled, "Sorry I forgot to mention that."

"Shit!"

"-So then there is Kai. His physiology and reactions to heat indicates he is a fire elemental. He can manipulate fire, pyrokinesis?" He questioned Cole with a gentle look upon his normally stoic face. "He was reluctant to talk even with this same serum. Seems his own elevated body temperature and enhanced physiology can burn it off faster, similarly so with Lloyd."

Coulson turned another few pages and offered Cole a picture of a man who was fully alight, head to toe on fire.

Cole wasn't sure if what he was seeing was made up or truth. The photos looked pretty real to him and he continued to stare at them. "What did you do to Kai, who is that?"

"Kai was running a temperature. Fan therapy did nothing to calm his fever, if anything it made it worse. So, we tried a new tactic...heat, and I'm happy to report that he's fitting in well. He's been signed up to take part in PT tomorrow."

"You however, your element is most intriguing...your fists precisely."

"Uhm, right..." Cole looked nervous, "So err, who is th-this?"

"Mr Johnny Storm, he's in the public domain. He has nothing to hide and likewise, neither does SHIELD."

"Pfft, that his actual name?" Cole asked, but then kept his mouth shut. He didn't want to divulge Jay's full name nor his own. He didn't want to tell them anything but the more he tried to keep it in, the more it came spilling from his mouth.

"It is normal to feel like you've been hit by a truck...They say it's a similar feeling to extreme G force or prolonged jetlag," Coulson offered with a half shrug.

"Urgh, what was in that needle?"

"Should be at it's most potent now. The barbiturates within the serum decrease higher cortical brain functioning." The agent stated, "Potentially, psychiatrists state that lying is more complex than telling the truth. So suppression of the higher cortical functions may lead to the uncovering of said truth."

"I feel like utter shit," Cole groaned. He could already feel the effects that this drug was having on him and it was by sheer luck that he hadn't flat out hurled all over himself nor the table. His stomach was still empty because he hadn't taken any food in, it would have only been bile anyway.

"The drug tends to make subjects loquacious and cooperative with interrogators." Coulson added.

"Besides, you've had plenty of rest...you've been out of it for two days. I'm guessing by however you travelled here, it must have taken a toll on your specific physiology?"

"Uh, I guess...two days?" Cole repeated, dumbstruck.

Coulson simply nodded, "So let's begin again...we believe that you and your team are hiding some rather important information from us."

"I don't think so. I told you everything I know...everything I knew."

Coulson tapped his ear piece, "Why don't you start from the beginning, how did you get here?"

Cole shook his head, his mind was going fuzzy. It felt like one too many hits from the bo staff, "I uh, I..."

The agent pressed a device on the table, "take your time Cole, we have all day, 72 hours to be precise and after that we'll be releasing you to the US government to do as they wish."

Undeterred by the threat; Cole eased into the second round of questioning, "we found a blue cube..." he uttered.

He was aware that he was whispering but he was so relaxed there was no reason to shout out.

"Similar to this?" Coulson queried and the laser screen depicted an exact replica of the cube in question.

Cole nodded, "That's the one, we found it...during a mission." His words slurring slightly.

"Impossible, sources say there is only the one tesseract," he didn't divulge further.

"So it has a name then?"

"It does-" Agent Coulson replied calmly. "The tesseract is the four-dimensional version of the energy filled cube."

"But what does it do?"

"That's classified!"

Cole sighed, exasperation clear to see, "classified, hilarious. We got here using it, right?"

"The tesseract is to the cube; as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eight cubical cells. It's one of the six convex regular 4-polytopes."

"Nerd..."

Phil Coulson's eyebrow rose, "where did you find the energy stone known as the tesseract, Cole?"

"Uhm you sound just like Jay and Zane, haaha," Cole's eyes were glazed over, "Well, we found the thing almost 200ft down. It was on a reef bed-" his grin was wide, he'd been mildly excited by the find, at the time. But as time passed he grew dubious of it and even more so when Jay vanished because of his insistence to tinker with it, against Zane's better judgement.

"-Jay tried to understand it, sent him here though. Zane went on the fritz and stuff, we...were almost contemplating switching him off. Funny but serious. Sent Jay here ya know.'"

"Cole, was the cube exactly the same as this one?"

"The exact same...cool." he ran his hands through the image, trying to grasp at the energy filled device. "Yeah it sent Jay here. We came to bring him home. To get him back."

Coulson rubbed his face, "So what happened when you touched the twin of this cube?"

'The twin, so he's admitting there are two?' Cole thought back. The cube was still in the device the last time he checked.

Jay's homemade device. His pride and joy. The one piece of equipment that as yet, hadn't blown up with all of Jay's adaptations of it.

The cube had remained there since Jay had touched it because no one had dared mess with it since his disappearance. Zane couldn't physically grasp it because each time he did, the cube created anomalies. His system recognised exponential increases in power each time he neared the alien device. It was so apparent, the power transference interfered with his own element.

Upon trying to understand the cube, Zane had taken watch of it overnight. And the following morning he had woken up on the deck of the Bounty partially buried in snow drifts. It would have looked normal had it been winter but this was mid spring and they were still on the warm coast. The Bounty looked like a winter wonderland.

Then, after numerous discussions, it was decided that the cube of unknown energy would be safer if it remained in that containment device. Least that way, it remained safe and they knew that Jay was somewhere on the other side of it. Another universe.

For the time being, it had been thoroughly covered and secured. Enough for it not to affect the Destiny's Bounty and the relevant flying and sensitive radar equipment on board.

Cole had only glanced at the thing, along with Lloyd. Both had been trying to understand it further and furthermore; both had felt a little guilty after leaving Jay to do it but their tinkering of it had revealed nothing out of the ordinary. All Cole saw was a glowing blue cube, awash with unnatural energy signatures. The swirling mass within the cube continued to move, it manipulated everything with electrical signatures within the vicinity.

"When we touched it?" Cole repeated slowly, "No, I didn't touch it, Jay did."

Agent Coulson, was a middle aged man. Very smartly dressed and exceptionally fit for his age, "You opened a portal?"

Cole shook his head vehemently, "No, I...I didn't."

"An interdimensional portal, linking worlds to those believed hidden or lost?"

"I-I guess. Zane did it really." Cole was smiling, "but it was the only way to get Jay back."

"Why don't you tell me what happened before you got here."

"The morning was just like any other-" Cole said. His angered voice was subdued by the serum, "-Sunrise exercise as usual. Up on deck at 5am. Breakfast and plans of rescue."

"What happened Cole?"

He closed his eyes and leaned back on the chair, "We didn't know what happened. We knew, well, we assumed Jay was okay."

"We have a device you see, one that lets everyone on our ship know...locations, health, status and stuff.

"Most companies who value their employees have the same, nowadays-" Coulson nodded, "-You were saying?"

"We noticed that Jay's coloured beacon had changed. But it was weeks after he'd vanished. We saw his beacon, we thought he was sort of safe and trying to find a way back. After a few weeks, we didn't hear back, the cube wasn't sending a signal from our end. It was barely blue, so we waited. It took nine weeks for it to activate again and as soon as it did...like the very day it activated again, Jay's beacon changed colour to purple."

"The day he was taken," Coulson admitted, looking down.

"Come on guys, we need to go now!" Lloyd said as they all surrounded the thing, "-Zane, just push the button, we need to get him back."

"Whatever happens, do not let go." Zane warned.

That was the last thing he said. Arms all interlinked tightly until the power of the infinity stone pulled at them faster than they could anticipate.

It was so powerful, they got a taste of the energy that Jay would have felt and consumed. The power ripped them apart, altering their appearances without the slightest realisation. Eventually, their embraces were torn asunder by the power within the cube. It slowed their descent enough for them to see where they had been and where they were heading.

A planet, green and blue, not too dissimilar to Ninjago. Although this planet seemed much larger than their home world there was considerably more landmass to it.

If Cole had been capable of speech he would have mumbled something along the lines of more earth. But he found that his voice wouldn't come. None of their voices would come.

They could barely breathe.


Thanks for the reviews:

Yes, Randomdragon, SHIELD are trying to make a better impression. Considering how much they messed up with Jay.

Thanks Willow