I do not own Supergirl or any Marvel characters. All right go to the CW and Marvel.
Supergirl lost
Chapter Twenty-One: The Doors We Open
Cruising at forty-five thousand feet, Kara sat down in the far back, meditating while Coulson, Skye, and Hunter came up with a plan. Her eyes flew open however, when they were considering the worst possible option.
"Absolutely not." Kara aid without opening her eyes.
"Supergirl, we need him and his knowledge of HYDRA." Coulson was firm in his belief, but Kara wasn't so sure.
"I disagree. Ward is not the kind of man to owe favors to." Kara slowly opened her eyes and stood up, walking to the small screen Coulson was studying. "I get it, I do. But…Ward is dangerous, smart, conniving, and manipulative. I know you know this. You do not need to worry about if he's going to stab you in the back and whatever this 'Gozalez' is doing at the same time."
"I know. Let's just shelve this conversation for now and head to the temporary safe house." Coulson pulled up some co-ordinates and handed them to Skye.
That had been an interesting discovery. Turns out May had been teaching Skye how to fly.
"Why are we in Mexico again?" Skye held up her hand to block out the sun as Hunter put a key into the door lock.
"Because Hunter wouldn't stop whining about going to his Mexican safe house." Kara smirked as Hunter turned around dramatically.
"I was not whining. I was simply suggesting repeatedly that we go to someplace nobody would ever suggest."
Kara laughed and Skye grinned as she moved to sit down on the couch, putting her feet up once she was comfortable.
"Is there anything to eat around here besides old canned food and cheap beer?" Kara asked. Skye chuckled.
"Leave it to you to eat first, ask questions later." Skye joked. Kara sighed as she looked at the afternoon sun and Hunter shook his head.
"Well, I guess I could just go sunbathe on the roof." Kara quirked her head as she took off her jacket and boots. Opening the back door, she floated up the roof and discreetly took off her pants, allowing her to get as much sun as possible.
She was still outside a half hour later when Coulson joined her.
"Can we talk?" He was hesitant, which was rare on Coulson.
"I'm sorry for disagreeing like that…I have no desire to get anywhere near people like Grant, like List or Strucker. And I heavily believe that getting SHIELD back together should be the priority." Kara admitted.
"I know. Fury told me about your universe's version of HYDRA. Doesn't sound pretty. But SHIELD…that can wait while HYDRA is still out there." Coulson said sympathetically. Kara nodded.
"I worked with CADMUS' leader during the Daxamite invasion. She developed a weapon based on her son's anti-Kryptonian weaponry. It's…scary…thinking that people are capable of such great atrocities." Phil looked at Kara and climbed up difficulty onto the roof.
"Yeah, humans are the worst." He joked. Kara gave a slight laugh before quieting down.
"I agree that HYDRA needs to be taken down once and for all, but I don't think we need Ward to do it." Kara looked Coulson in the eye, and he saw the determination there.
"What did you have in mind then?"
"Honestly, it's not much. But we need Fury's toolbox first." Kara chewed on her lip when Coulson looked at her with that disapproving stare.
"Fury told me about it, said it was safe with you, but that I should find it and destroy it if it fell into the wrong hands." Kara said, remembering when Fury had charged her with the task. Coulson sighed next to her.
"I guess that's fair. What's in the toolbox you might need?"
"It's not what I need, but it's a few cases Fury told me about before HYDRA came out. It was Fury's warning story of why I needed to hide even though nothing could really hurt me. He told me that several people on the index had been going missing only to be found in shallow graves, butchered beyond recognition. I didn't put much thought into it, and the investigations went nowhere because HYDRA was tampering with them…but it got me thinking. What if we can find HYDRA through the bodies…what if we can find them through their experiments? I could have my version of JARVIS run some kind of algorithm." Kara laid out her full plan for Coulson, explaining all her theories and connections.
An hour later, Coulson sat impressed.
"It's ambitious, I'll give you that," He said simply.
"I know, but I think it will work."
"Hey guys, I think you'll wanna hear this!" Skye shouted form down below. Coulson and Kara got off the roof and headed into the small safehouse. Kara saw Hunter on Coulson's pad talking to someone and walked over.
"Hey Fitz!" She said loudly. He smiled when he heard his name being called.
"Supergirl, good to see you. Glad you're helping us, that's for sure." He ran a hand through his hair.
"You used the toolbox didn't you? That's why you're calling Coulson's pad even though you shouldn't know how to reach him through this." Kara asked. Fitz nodded.
Talk about good timing." Coulson muttered under his breath.
"Yeah, but I'm gonna need some super help. I'm trapped in a bathroom with two guys from 'Real SHIELD' tailing me." He looked at the bathroom door as someone banged on it.
"I'll be there in a minute. Are you in a restaurant by the way?" As if on que, Kara's stomach growled.
"I am, yes. Why?" Fitz asked curiously. Kara smiled and looked around the room until stopping on Coulson. He sighed with a smile on his face and pulled out his wallet.
"Get me some fries or something?" He handed her fifteen dollars and Kara beamed, got Fitz's location, and rushed out the door, Coulson, Skye, and Hunter packing everything up behind them.
Landing in a small restaurant parking lot in California, Kara looked over and her eyes widened.
Back in her universe, this was the building for her second favorite burger joint! Smiling from ear to ear, she practically skipped in. Pushing open the door, she inhaled deeply and savored the smells of a good burger.
The same guy was even working here!
It was weird, back in her universe, this place had closed for some reason, and she had mourned for weeks before moving on.
This place was still her favorite though. Strolling further into the building, she didn't notice the 'C' rating for the health and safety code in the window. She saw Fitz easily, staying well within public view while he surfed the internet on his laptop. It was smart, that way the tails couldn't grab him and arouse suspicion.
"Man, I was flying up above and I just caught a whiff of this place. I knew I had to come here." Kara called a little bit loudly as she walked to the counter. The mans eyes widened as he recognized the symbol on her jacket. Pulling out her wallet, he quickly shoved it back at her.
"No. You helped us during that earthquake. Well, not this building personally, but you did help. This burgers on us," He said. Kara was shocked, she hadn't come in here expecting that. She nodded gratefully and thanked him over and over again. She got it in a to go bag and waited for Fitz to walk out before heading for the door. She was in front of the agents and stopped right in front of the door, blocking them from view.
"Oh cool, they gave me fries to!" She cheered casually. Fitz had disappeared around the corner, and she used her speed to practically vanish in front of the 'Real SHIELD' agents' eyes.
Floating a hundred feet above the store, Fitz and food in either arm, she chuckled at Fitz's reaction to flying. His eyes were wide, and his heartrate was up, but otherwise he seemed fine. Taking a last look at the now angry agents, she floated off to where Coulson had said he would land the quinjet.
She landed on top of a parking garage, the coordinates Coulson had given her, and walked up to the 'invisible to everyone but her' quinjet.
"One day I'm gonna laugh if we manage to get you to run into this thing." Coulson voice floated down the ramp as it opened. Kara gave a deep laugh.
"You wouldn't, not when there's a Supergirl sized hole in it!" Skye laughed with her at the thought. Kara had told her of the many times she he had tripped into a wall and hadn't been able to catch herself, simply going through said wall like a bullet through papier Mache.
In the air, Kara laid out her ideas, but also left room for options. She wasn't part of SHIELD, the other four in the quinjet were, they had to decide what they wanted to do.
"I think we should fix SHIELD first. Both sides are vulnerable right now." Skye's voice echoed from the cockpit, and everyone agreed with her except Coulson
"Coulson, I know you wanted to go after HYDRA, so let me offer you a compromise. I let my version of JARVIS, CALLI, sift through the toolbox files and pull anything relevant. While she does that, we'll fix SHIELD." Kara was sincere in her offer. She wasn't sure if CALLI was ready, but she could do this.
"CALLI?" Skye looked back to Kara with the question in her eyes.
"Oh right! CALLI. Cool and Awesome Life Like Intelligence. CALLI. I designed her based off JARVIS' code but she functions much smoother, like AI that could be found on Krypton. She's definitely not a level five, she's barely a level three, but she gets the job done," Kara said proudly, smiling just thinking about her creation. She hadn't told Tony yet, not wanting him to see what he could do with Kryptonian based code. Sure, she had slipped a little bit into the ULTRON program, but not enough to really be significant.
"CALLI, she's safe to use?" Coulson's expression told her he was very nervous about letting an AI roam through the toolbox, but Kara rushed to assure the man.
"She's perfectly safe. Level three AI's only do the task you ask them. Once they've been given an order, they do everything to the best of their abilities to fulfill it. They have personalities, but orders take precedence." Coulson still looked hesitant.
"Please Phil. Trust me on this. I know what I'm doing." She looked him dead in the eye, and he eventually nodded. Fishing around in her pocket, she brought out a fancy flash drive that looked far better than anything earth had.
It had much more than looks.
"This has twenty terabytes of space," Kara heard Skye's jaw drop. "CALLI will interface with the toolbox and download any information required to track down HYDRA. She'll look through files of appearances, disappearances, murders, and compare that to real world data. People who have no possible way to disappear, or reason why, things of that nature."
Coulson nodded, and she seat the drive on the toolbox. It immediately went to work, the toolbox projecting as files were moved around, downloaded, and sorted before their very eyes. Skye watched in wonder as something she couldn't even begin to describe happened, Fitz studying as much as he could.
"Now that that's out of the way, we can focus on SHIELD." Coulson said as he looked away from the toolbox. Kara focused on him again and looked around the quinjet.
"What's the plan DC?" Skye shouted from the cockpit.
"Just send me in and I'll take out anyone you need me too." Kara said. Coulson shook his head.
"No. These are SHIELD agents. I want to take back SHIELD with as little injuries and blood shed as possible, with as little force as possible, find out why Gonzalez is doing this, and fix it."
"Can someone remind me why this Gonzalez guy is even doing this?" Skye asked.
"Gonzalez believes secrets are what led to SHIELDs fall. Before I escaped, he wanted me to open the toolbox so he could lay all of SHIELDs secrets on the table…specifically THETA protocol." Coulson's quiet admission came as a shock. She had been in contact with Fury recently, he had mentioned THETA protocol and its purpose, but she was hesitant to agree with it.
"Phil," She warned.
"No, it's okay. THETA protocol was a secret directive Fury requested of me. Rebuild a Heli-carrier with limited armaments in case of emergency, it could fight back, but wasn't powerful enough to do any real damage. Besides, Supergirl here is the contingency if it ever fell into the wrong hands." Coulson chuckled at his own joke, everyone remembering what they had seen on the TV, Supergirl taking down three Heli-carriers single handedly. Kara chuckled as well because Fury didn't mention that she was the contingency.
She liked THETA protocol a lot more now.
"Secrets aside, why invade the base now? What was the purpose of it?" Fitz looked between a mixture of curious and furious.
Coulson looked slowly at Skye, who was watching them intenty.
"What?" She questioned. Coulson sighed heavily, opening and closing his mouth multiple times, trying to decide on how best to answer her.
"He mentioned you a lot. That I was becoming too much like Fury, hiding powered people and objects, allying myself with them. Supergirl was the start, but Skye and the toolbox seemed to be the tipping point."
"That's crazy. I mean, yeah you were hiding a heli-carrier, but it was for a good reason. Same with the powered people and objects." Skye was always the voice of motivation and optimism…mostly.
"To you and me it might seem crazy, but for people like Gonzalez, it makes perfect sense after the things they've been through. Their intentions are good, a better SHIELD, but the actions and steps they've taken to get there are troublesome. His plan for powered people is even more so. He says he wants to find them, and make sure they can't destroy the world SHIELD works so hard to protect…but the way he said it…made it seem like they would do it by any means necessary." Coulson's voice was grim, and Kara was worried about what might happen if these ideas came to pass.
"You catch far more flies with honey…tagging powered people, rounding them up and tracking them? Far better way to create a wedge between them and SHIELD than being nice to them if that's his intent." Kara sneered. She saw Skye with an angry expression on her face in the reflection of the quinjet glass.
"I know you're angry Supergirl, but right now, I need you to remain calm. With you by our side, nice and calm, I believe we can negotiate for a peaceful sit down with Gonzalez. He's a good man who's made some not so good choices recently," Coulson said, his voice cutting through the anger Kara was feeling. She nodded.
"How much longer for CALLI until she's done?" Fitz's voice was full of wonder, the geek in him going nuts.
"A few hours. Like I said, she's based off JARVIS with some slight improvements so she's only about twenty percent faster." Kara shrugged as she reviewed the data CALLI was pulling. Frowning, she pulled up a file on the 'monolith.'
"Phil…what is this?" Kara was nervous as she watched short videos on the monolith, it's liquid form and solid form.
"That's the monolith…the Iliad was carrying it…that's where Gonzalez and his council made their base." Coulson muttered.
"Promise me something Phil." Kara whispered with fear, forcing Coulson to look at her with concerned eyes. "Promise me…promise me you will put this thing at the bottom of the ocean. No studying it, no experimenting except to figure out how to destroy it, just get rid of it."
Coulson looked alarmed.
"Why? What's the problem with it?" his alarm was almost palpable.
"Centuries ago, Krypton experimented with something of a similar nature. They weren't monoliths, but they acted in the same way. They were wildly unpredictable in where they deposited their victims, but some were…similar, sometimes depositing them hundreds of lightyears away with no hope of rescue. We lost dozens of scientists before the high council determined they were no longer worth the risk and ordered that every monolith be destroyed upon discovery. By the time Krypton was destroyed, all known monoliths were destroyed, and any new ones with them." Kara forced herself out of the nightmarish story her father had told her as a child. The stories of the sentient stones had given her nightmares for weeks. Logically, she knew they were gone, but their power was undeniable and felt throughout the cosmos, boomtube's from Apokolips, Braniacs transmatter teleporter, Krypton's FTL drives.
All based off teleporter rocks, but far safer and predictable.
"Trust me Phil. That thing is far safer in the Marianas trench than it will ever be in SHIELD hands." She cautioned and could only hope that he took it to heart.
"I'll keep it in mind."
Landing quietly outside of the radar range, Kara stepped out of the quinjet and into the night air, Skye behind her.
"You're going in with me…I don't know if it's the best idea, but with two powered people behind Coulson…and Hunter and Fitz, we might be able to settle on a peaceful resolution." Kara rolled her eyes. "Based on what Coulson's told me about Gonzalez, he'll be the type of man to see this as a negotiation at gunpoint. It's not ideal, but it's the best peaceful resolution we've got."
Skye nodded as they began to walk forward.
"Wait…why are we walking?" Kara asked rhetorically. Suddenly everyone was right in front of the door to the base.
Fitz threw up right as the door opened, revealing Gonzalez's council. Kara sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck.
"So uhh…lovely weather huh?"
"Give me one good reason I shouldn't lock all of you up!" Gonzalez shouted as soon as the council was present. Kara stepped forward.
"Because I won't let you. So, here's our proposal, I wait outside that door, you hear Coulson out. If I hear anything I don't like, threats, arguments that go nowhere, name calling of any kind, I will be back in here." Kara moved towards the door. Gonzalez growled before looking to his council, they all glared at Kara before nodding. She walked out the door and leaned against the wall, staring at the guards who shifted nervously under her gaze.
"So…you two know any games to pass the time?" Kara's voice and question were of pure curiosity, and it threw the guards off.
"Twenty questions?" the guard on the left suggested. Kara shrugged.
"Why not, though, I am a superhero and you two work with spies. I say we at least have the right to deny answering some questions." Kara suggested. The two guards looked at each other and shrugged.
"Seems fair."
A full hour and half later, well over twenty questions for the three, and the door opened. Coulson and Gonzalez with straight faces ass they walked through the door.
"So, how did it go?" Kara asked, hope in her voice.
"Well, all things considered. I'll be directing with Gonzalez's council acting as council for me. The monolith will be sent to an undisclosed location at the bottom of the ocean if we can't find a way to destroy it. Anyone with powers will be left alone or indexed after an evaluation that is fair and reasonable." Coulson summed it up perfectly.
Kara had secretly been listening the entire time.
"We'll also be hitting HYDRA with everything we've got." Gonzalez was calm, his gruff voice determined as he declared his intentions.
"Oh, speaking of HYDRA, CALLI finished compiling the data together about a half hour ago. If you want, I can go over it with you. She's not exactly great at organizational skills just yet…" Kara admitted with an awkward smile. Coulson chuckled.
"That would be great. We'll go over it all after something to eat. Debating sure makes people hungry." Kara nodded frantically as she ran to the kitchen, hearing Skye and Coulson chuckling behind her.
Hope you enjoyed the little homage to into the spiderverse...if you spotted it that is. :)