Day of the Valentine's Day Festival
It was planned out proficiently, if not perfectly. For both Natasha Romanoff's team and Monica Rappaccini and her partner.
Rose was up on stage, singing songs of romance to the crowd into the mic. She had a handheld radio attached to her hip and as she sang, she kept switching channels, essential to how to draw in large crowds of people to the stage. She was singing the song, Stay, and the crowd was starting to fall in love with her voice. She sang like a princess with a voice that could dazzle any man. When she switched songs, she didn't miss any beat on switching channels on the radio.
"Don't be shy," Rappaccini spoke as she jumped in front of a crowd of kids, wearing face paint and had her hair dyed pink. "My name is Bonkers the Clown!" And what a clown she was with white face paint, red lines down her eyes, a big red nose that looked like a baseball painted red, and those giant yellow shoes that didn't look like they could fit even Bigfoot. She was wearing a striped shirt along with suspenders to keep her yellow pants from falling. She stood in front of a food cart that was selling ice cream. "Who wants a balloon?" she deadpanned unintentionally. She pulls out a red balloon and makes a wiener dog out of it, horribly. "I never did go to clown college so this will do." She hands it to a nonchalant four-year-old girl before turning to the ice cream cart.
Without even asking them, she hands out scoops of ice cream to the children and waves them goodbye. "Nobody is innocent," she mumbled under her breath. "Not even children."
If they live for this hellhole of a country, then they will die in this hellhole of a country.
Rose switched to another song and sent subconscious signals into the crowd's brains, telling them to come closer and not worry about the smoke that was evaporating from the sewer grates beneath them. That's not Midnight Oil, yet.
"I have a visual on Rose, how copy?"
Nat wore an oversized trench coat with earplugs in to prevent her from hearing the music. Even with earplugs in, she could still hear the music but it sounded like music playing against a pillow. She zips her trenchcoat up to prevent her catsuit from being spotted. She holds up her hand with the wristwatch and speaks into the hidden mic underneath the watch. "I copy, T. I see her."
"Can I shoot her?" Tony asked almost impatiently. "We could end everybody's trance right here."
"You're more than welcome to but it won't snap people out of their trances." She tried counting how many people were in the large crowd but quickly lost count. She hid behind a hot dog food cart and stalked Rose as she sang her next song. "Are you sure the woman on the stage is the one who hypnotized me?"
"She said she was my biggest fan and I will never forget the face of my biggest fan."
Your biggest fan is about to poison Washington D.C. and she hypnotized me. Why can't fans just ask for autographs nowadays? "Do not engage because we need her to snap these people out of the trances."
"How did you snap out of your trance?"
"I was electrocuted and you brought me back to life with CPR. We won't have enough time to kill and then bring back everybody. We need Rose alive at all costs, Rappaccini on the other hand, she's lost the right to live."
"I'll take Rose, you look for Rappaccini."
"You don't have to tell me twice."
Nat looks around the festival, passing through small groups of people and takes out a camera that photographers use for photographing nature and takes pictures. She didn't know what Rappaccini truly looked like but if the false file was true, then she was a five-foot-one Hispanic woman with dark silky hair. Chances are she'll be handing out food to spread the virus. She took pictures of all the food carts that she saw before she spoke into her watch mic.
"Mercedes, how're the sewers smelling down there?"
"Shit, shit, and shit."
Mercedes Mason-Masters had volunteered for this mission to seek out the Midnight Oil in the sewer system as the waterline underneath the festival seemed like the most feasible place to dump a chemical part to a biochemical weapon. She lit up a flashlight and poked a hole in one of the pipes. She took a sample of water and crushed the sample in the same vial. The vial in the liquid was green, indicating that this water had traces of Midnight Oil within. "It's confirmed, the Midnight Oil is in the water supply system."
"Can you get it out?"
"Negative. The fumes in here are rising out the sewer system but not fumes from Midnight Oil. My guess is they probably spent weeks dumping Midnight Oil into the water system."
"If that's the case, then they must have some kind of weapon to vaporize the water supply. A detonator but we're going to need to trace the detonator's signal."
"Fitz is working on the cure, call Simmons and have her trace the signal."
Nat looked over at Nat as she sat down at a small cafe table. She holds up her camera and starts taking pictures of Rose. After zooming in, she spots something attached to her hip. At first, it looked like a device used on microphones but a closer look showed that it appeared to be a small handheld radio from the 1980s. She was constantly pushing buttons as she sang like she was playing the guitar with one hand. "Interesting," Nat smirks. "I was wondering how you would've hypnotized so many people at once." She called in Tony and alerted him to the radio.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"She must be sending special frequencies through the music, which would widen and expand her range of hypnotism. That pale girl that hypnotized me at Baskin Robbins, it was indeed Rose. She must've sent out silent frequencies to hypnotize me without saying the words. Whatever you do, do not listen to her singing voice or you'll fall in a trance. That goes double for the frequency."
Rappaccini pulled out a 1990s cellular phone and punched in a few numbers. Looking inside the food cart to find that she is out of ice cream, she abandons the cart and sheds out of her clown clothing. She wipes the facepaint off and gets rid of her clothes. Underneath her clown outfit were black cargo pants, desert combat boots, a blue buttoned-up shirt, and green flannel. She went into the bathroom to wash the dye out of her hair and came out after dying it white blonde.
Probably unnecessary but no chances can be taken.
She walks into the crowd, unworried of the risk of being hypnotized. Before the show, Rose had hypnotized Rappaccini into not being hypnotized and to refuse to follow any orders that she gives.
"I see her!" Nat almost yelled into her wristwatch as she spotted Rappaccini walking through the crowd after coming out of the bathroom.
I know it's her, it has to be. Who goes into the bathroom with pink hair before coming out with white-blonde hair that doesn't even look natural?
She takes as many pictures as she could before reviewing one of them. Her photographic memory aided her in confirming that this woman had the same face as the one in the A.I.M. files. She spots her target again before alerting Tony on her wristwatch. "I see Rappaccini." She jumps out of her seat and pursues Rappaccini.
The music became louder like the volume dial was being turned as she got closer and her vision was starting to blur up. "Oh shit," she curses before backing away. She realized that the closer she got to the stage, the louder the music got and broke through her earplugs. "I can't get close without getting hypnotized."
She heads back to her original position before she called in Simmons. "Jemma, I found Rappaccini!"
"That's good news dear," Simmons replied. "What do you need? Can you take her out?"
"I can't," Nat said. "Not without the risk of being hypnotized."
"Can Tony take him out?"
"It doesn't matter, I need you to trace a signal. Rose is sending hidden frequencies through the music via radio on her hip. I need to know where the source is coming from. I got to prevent more people from being hypnotized."
"I'm tracing it right now."
Rose's latest song finally came to an end and Rappaccini saw her chance to begin Project: Flower.
Rose took the mic and spoke just moments after the last song ended.
Her voice booms in the mic as she speaks. "And now, folks, it's time for the moment we've all been waiting for." She paused to scan the crowd as it calmed down. The crowd had their eyes emotionless and had hollow looks on their faces. Some of them were even drooling. How sad it was that all these people were infected with the Carrion Virus and about to be crazed. "How many of you came to this festival because you were in love with someone? A few people. You know why people cherish this day because this is the day when we get stuck with Cupid's arrow. But one thing I don't understand is where is Cupid if he's supposed to be the god of love?" She drops her cheerful expression to an emotionless one. She restored her cheerful face when she answered with hysterical laughter: "He's at home, smoking his pot!"
Like robots, they laughed along with her but remained standing still.
Rappaccini even cracked a smile before she spotted something very eye-opening in the crowd.
Natasha Romanoff.
That...little...bitch. It took all her willpower to just say that in her head as she clenched her knuckles. That fire crotch bitch ruined everything. That three-dollar slut! She grabbed Rose by the shoulder and whispered her newfound knowledge. Rose spotted Nat at the cafe table and was more ecstatic then angered.
"That means Tony is here!"
"It means we have to move ahead on schedule." She grabbed the mic from Rose. "Hello, ladies, gentlemen, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, lovers. I know what you're thinking, 'who is this woman'? I'm no one special, just a lady with a microphone in hand."
Nat saw her chance and made a run for it, knowing that Rappaccini had seen her as well.
"But I'm also a woman of vision." Rappaccini grabbed Rose's radio and pushed a few buttons before yanking the antenna to its full length. She wraps Rose's hands tight around the radio. "You see, my name is Natalie Rushman."
The real 'Natalie Rusman' froze upon hearing her name echo throughout the mic but didn't stay frozen for too long.
"I used to work for Advanced Idea Mechanics but what most people don't seem to realize is that A.I.M stands for much more than that. There is a deeper meaning behind the acronym and we did promise a reward for anyone to correctly answer it. So far, we've had no answers and that's just fine with me. But it is time for us to rehabilitate America at its core with a taste of its own medicine. As a wise man once said, 'You better leave while you still can because, like the acronym for A.I.M. stands for, America Is Mad.'"
She laughs with puffs of air in between before patting Rose on the back. "Mist it up, Rose."
Rose holds up the radio and presses-
It shoots out of her hand from gunfire from an unknown location. She ducks down and puts her hands over her head.
Tony was positioned in a tree and had an M21 sniper rifle aimed at the detonator. "Consider yourself lucky, Rose."
Rappaccini thought two steps ahead and pushed the button on the detonator behind her back and put on a gas mask.
America Is Mad.