9 more chapters left, ladies and gentlemen. There's going to be a lot more Marvel from here on out.

Episode 21: What They Become:

San Juan, Puerto Rico – April 12, 2015

3 Months before Kingdom Hearts 3

Calvin Johnson smiled as he stalked towards Hydra head Daniel Whitehall. Once he'd learned the identity of the man responsible for butchering his wife twenty-five years ago, he had made it his goal to get close enough to Whitehall to exact his revenge. His knowledge of the Diviner helped him get worm his way into Whitehall's inner circle. He created a bullshit story about how his daughter had been stolen from him to fool Ward into bringing Daisy close enough to Whitehall so S.H.I.E.L.D. could wipe out the German scientist's branch of Hydra in a single strike.

The deluded psychopath's obsession with Daisy was creepy but predictable. When asked to retrieve Raina, who'd delivered Whitehalls' Diviner, an object the Inhumans used to trigger their transformations, to Jiaying as part of her plea deal with the elders of Lai Shi, from S.H.I.E.L.D. , he'd threatened to blow up the plane they were on if Daisy didn't come along. Thankfully, the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents aboard the Bus escaped unharmed. Once Daisy was inside the abandoned theater where Whitehall had set up shop as he dug down into the Kree city beneath San Juan, she let loose with her powers, cutting down Hydra goons left and right.

Ward had attempted to bargain with her, but she'd silence him for good with a bullet in the head. That was one threat down, and nearly a hundred more to go. Coulson, Bobbi, FitzSimmons, and Mack had gone to the site of another shaft a few hours ago to inspect the structural integrity of the ancient city, only for Mack to become possessed by the city itself and used as a guardian. His fate was currently unknown, and Bobbi Morse, Lance Hunter, Phil Coulson, and Melinda Garner had begun fighting their way through Hydra troops from the roof while Daisy and and her father worked their way through them from the inside.

In the year since the Hydra uprising, so much had changed for S.H.I.E.L.D. Simmons and Morse had gone undercover at a Hydra laboratory in Washington. Fitz had suffered brain damage from Ward dumping him and Simmons into the ocean the previous year. Coulson and his girlfriend Audrey had broken up. Lance Hunter had been recruited part-time at his ex-wife's recommendation. Isabelle Hartley and Idaho had been killed defending a S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house when a Hydra-allied superhuman named Carl Creel raided it to retrieve the Diviner recovered from Whitehall's Hydra base in the 1940s.

While Whitehall attempted to experiment with samples of the Diviner to create a weapon, Coulson had been suffering hypergraphia attacks that compelled him to write out Kree symbols. After recovering his memories of the T.A.H.I.T.I. project to track down a patient who'd turned into a serial killer, he'd realized that the markings in his head were a map to the city. He'd consulted with Cal to learn the location of the temple and lead a team there to destroy it. But all of that was in the past. What mattered to Cal right now was making Dr. Whitehall suffer for what the man had done to his wife.

As Cal stalked down the hallway towards the seemingly ageless Nazi, Whitehall turned around and was about to when a hot rang out. Whitehall crumpled to the ground from a gunshot in the back. Cal stood there, stunned as he looked across the hall towards Deputy Director Phil Coulson.

"You're welcome," Phil said. "Sorry for the kill steal Cal, but walking towards Whitehall unarmed wasn't the best idea. It was either let you try and get your revenge on your own or keep Daisy's father alive. I figured the latter would be more important." Dr. Johnson's anger at the man dissipated as he realized that Coulson had a point. He sheepishly apologized for not thinking his revenge plan through, and Coulson offered to let him put a few extra bullets into Whitehall's corpse to blow of his anger.

Meanwhile Raina was making her way through the labyrinthine tunnels of the ancient Kree city, guided by the brainwashed agent Mackenzie. Daisy John followed behind in hot pursuit. Upon hearing that Daisy had gone into the tunnels, Antione Triplett raced through the maze deactivating the explosive charges he and FitzSimmons had set to ensure that his friend wouldn't be buried and killed. He raced into the temple in the center of the city just as the massive heavy doors slid into place. As he dusted himself off, he found Daisy facing down Raina with the Diviner on a pedestal in the center of the room.

"What are you doing here?" Daisy asked frantically. The Terrigen gas was harmless to normal humans but the metal of the Diviner metal was not.

"I came to get you," he replied as the last door sealed behind him. Once it did, the Diviner opened up, revealing a mass of blue crystals inside. "How do we stop it?" Trip asked.

"We can't," Daisy answered as she stepped forward, putting herself between her friend and the Diviner. As the crystals hovered over their metal contained, they emitted a large burst of gas. Since she had already gone through Terrigenesis years ago, the crystal gas had no effect on Daisy, and Trip was unharmed. But a cocoon of stone began to form around Raina. Unwilling to let Raina die (not that she would have but he didn't know that), Triplett fired his gun at the mass of crystals, shattering them and sending an explosion of gas and metal shards flying out from the pedestal.

Daisy shielded him with her body, protecting him from the Diviner metal. But a large chunk of it stabbed her in the back. Stunned by the pain, Daisy inadvertently let loose with her powers, triggering an earthquake that rocked the temple and the island above.

"What's causing this?" Agent Triplett asked as he helped Daisy stay upright.

"Me," she whispered back and she tried to stop the earthquake. Realizing that part of the ceiling might collapse on top of them, and Trip got on the ground and she stood above him, ready to deflect any debris with her powers. Across the room, Raina's sealed cocoon began to crack open revealing her transformation. Yellow eyes, clawed hands, and sharp thorns peaked out through the crumbling stone as the Kree city cracked and crumbled around them.

So yeah, Ward is dead. Since his canon death doesn't happen in this fic, I decided to move it forward to during the first half of Season 2. Don't get me wrong, he's a fantastic villain, but he's a hate sink, and I don't want him to still be alive during the Acolytes of Chaos story, so I decided to kill him off now so I wouldn't have to do it later.

Other changes to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2:

-Agent 33 never got captured and brainwashed by Hydra, so no Ward/33 pairing in this universe.

Next chapter: With Trip still alive, the aftermath of the battle for the Kree Temple turns out a lot differently than in canon.