"Got a plan?" Hawkeye asked Ward through the microphone.
"Distract and Conquer" Ward's voice came back loud and clear in the room.
"I'm into the system, so when you're ready"
The group was watching the feed from the atrium. They couldn't see Ward, so they all turned to watch his feed. From what they could see he was stood on the side of the atrium looking at the flag.
"Fire" the group in the room heard a guard shout as he ran over to the blazing banner in the atrium.
"Watch Ward's feed" Coulson whispered to his team as the rest of the room turned back to watch the atrium feed.
They saw Ward grab the flag, fold it up and put it in his pocket. No one else did. After the drama was over the atrium was exactly the way it was before the fire until one of the guards noticed something not quite right.
"The flag! It's gone!" he shouted and started mobilising his team to find Ward. There was a murmuring starting in the room as people whispering to the people next to them. They had not seen the flag vanish. As a group they turned back to Ward's feed and all they saw was blackness. They heard bangs and thwacks as he hit various knobbly bits but after around 30 seconds they saw daylight as he hit the ground, landing cat like on his feet.
"Target acquired" he said as he set off for the arena.
"Copy that. Take the third door to your left and it will lead you to a corridor that will lead you to the stairs."
Ward ran for the door that Hawkeye had pointed out to him. Hawkeye had managed to unlock it and Ward sailed down the corridor to the next door. It was still locked.
"Hey! Princess! Open the door!" Ward demanded, taking a step back and looking directly at the camera.
"You'll have to hold on twinkle toes! I can't find the lock on the computer!"
Ward heard a faint noise a couple of corridors away.
"Huston, we have a problem. Multiple bogies closing in."
"I see them, six bogies. Copy that. Six bogies. Will be with you in 30 seconds. You'll have to do a Romanov special on them"
Ward looked into the camera again before turning around and replying "Are you kidding me?"
Ward took pellets out of his pocket and threw them down the corridor, just as the first guard entered. There was a flash and smoke filled all of the cameras in Mission Control.
They could only hear the blows of fists and grunts of pain.
"How's that lock coming?" Ward asked him.
"Unlike you I did NOT get sent to Sci Acc for 6 months. I'm working as fast as I can"
Suddenly Ward's camera cleared and he was in a different corridor.
"What did you do?"
"Opened the door!"
"How?"
"One of the guards succumbed to my way of thinking" was all Ward would say.
The smoke in the corridor cleared and the room saw one of the guards strung up to the ceiling by his ankles, hands bound to his waist, the second guard was also strung up to the ceiling and trying to loosen the noose that had appeared around his neck. The other four were all in varying degrees of consciousness on the floor. The guard nearest the door was completely out of it and slumped up against the wall, left eye propped open with a weapon they could not see.
Ward kept running. He was at the stairs and up them in no time. He got to the door of the hall he would need to cross to get towards the Arena and Colosseum
"There are four more bogies in the hall."
"Copy that. I see them" Ward replied peeping around the door. They came closer to the door, Ward waited, and he waited. Suddenly they were close enough.
Smack! The door hit the guard right on the nose. Ward was halfway across the hall before the other three realised what had happened. When they did they raised their guns and started firing at him. The bullets hit the ground around him. He made it through the door, closed it and used the automatic machine gun he had acquired to rig it. The second anyone opened it they would be shot.
He carried on running.
"Five more bogies, ahead on the right" Hawkeye told him consulting the cameras.
"Other than a knife, I'm out!"
"You didn't set off with a knife?"
Ward's camera panned down to his leg where there was a small blade sticking out of it. He pulled it out and put it into his weapons belt.
"Ok then. Next left, right, right, left and straight on to home-base"
"Crap. Busted" Ward said and started running.
He made it to the arena without getting caught by his pursuers. He stuck the knife in the door in a way that would slow them down opening it.
"This is too easy!" He said, standing in the large open space, that had no obvious dangers.
"I agree. Proceed with caution."
Ward too two steps forward when the door rattled behind him.
"Hawkeye. Switch to infrared and tell me what you see."
"Crap!"
"What?" asked Ward, taking his headset off and pointing his camera directly at his face. The effect, in infrared was disturbing.
"Laser grid between you and home-base. Put your set on back on and I will guide you through it." Ward put his set back on and the laser grid was in full view.
By the time the guards had made it through the door they could see Ward doing some pretty astonishing gymnastics in the middle of the room. Not actually thinking about it they ran straight across the room, setting off the laser grid (which, upon touching, gives a shock that is enough to incapacitate you for up to five minutes!). The guards dropped where they stood.
Ward lost his balance on the next flip and landed on one leg and the other nearly touched the laser. There was a collective gasp in the room as Ward came perilously close to losing the exercise. When he had both feet on the floor he breathed a sigh of relief.
"Nearly there buddy! Handspring about 3 feet in front of you and about the same high and you're out."
"Copy that"
After the handspring he only had to contend with a smooth flat wall more than twice his height and the rest of the Colosseum.
"How exactly do you expect to get to the top of the wall?" Hawkeye asked him.
"This is why I am running and you are tech, peaches"
"Of course."
Ward ran as fast as he could manage towards, not the Colosseum, but the side wall of the arena, jumped into the air, planted his foot on the wall and used all of the momentum to push him to the top edge of the smooth wall. He managed to get his fingertips onto the ledge and hoist himself up. He wasn't one of only five people to have got to the top for nothing!
He climbed the handholds in double time and started on the narrow ledge. More guards had arrived and were trying to shoot him down. Realising that their weapons were not powerful enough some tried to run through the unseen laser grid and mate the same fate as their colleagues. The rest could only watch in disbelief as Ward scaled the cargo net, took out the flag, connected one end to the Colosseum and then the other before punching the big red circle.
The big red circle was a sensor that set off an alarm right the way through the building (It went off so rarely that this was seen as a special occasion). It signalled that someone had made it to the top. Today, however, it signalled the end of the exercise. Two men versus the world and they won!