AN: Holy shit y'all. Been a while. First of all, i'm really goddamn sorry. Secondly, a bit of advice. If you value your free time above all other things, never go back to school. Seriously, if you have a full time job as well, it sucks all your free time. I hope that some of you all are still reading, and have been looking forward to this update.

Chapter 7

Peter, Felicia, and Nick sat in a hotel room a few blocks from the Zodiac Safehouse watching the surveillance footage that they had collected over the past day and a half. Thanks to the earlier break in of the hotel network, Peter had a computer up and running decryptions on various bits of data and information that the Zodiac were passing through the hotel. Nick had been drawing lines on maps and blueprints that he had been pulling from hiding places out of table legs and light fixtures. Felicia was laid out on the bed eating strawberries.

"My god, this is booooring." Felicia groaned and commented. "Can I go follow them around again? Seriously. Don't we need to follow them to other places just in case they change plans?" She asked.

Fury looked up from the map on the table in front of him. "Have you heard, seen, or otherwise suspects that they have changed their plans since last night?"

Peter had intercepted a report last night that the Zodiac had sent up to their bosses. They had set a meeting with the Chinese Ministry of State Security in the hotel that he and Nick had conned their way into. It was then that the Zodiac were going to sell the HATE plans to the MSS. "Nothing since then." Peter confirmed as he typed away.

Nick looked over to Felicia. "Clandestine meetings are kinda like weddings in the sense that once the date is set, unless it's canceled, you don't change it." he explained.

Felicia looked confounded. "Sooooo….."

"So…" Fury started. "We know they will be in their hotel tonight for a sale with the HATE plans. They will be there, unless the Zodiac call it off. The only reason why they would call if off if they think the operation is compromised. The only reason why they think it would be compromised, is if they saw us tailing them."

Felicia laid her head back on the pillow. "What about finding what the Chinese are up to?"

"Chinese are only bringing money. Not really of any intelligence value, aside from putting a monetary value to a very specific piece of black market technology. Which isn't any great secret, it's just more than anything else that any other buyer was willing to pay." He justified.

Felicia rolled over onto her stomach and ate another strawberry. She then ate the small red fruit in two deliberate bites. "So...we're just gonna hang out here?"

"Yep."

Peter looked up from his laptop. "So what is the plan?"

Nick rolled up his map and walked over to a table. He rotated the leg of the table revealing a hidden storage compartment. He pulled out a map from the hidey-hole and put the old one inside. He closed up the leg. "Well it's quite simple. Based off our walkthrough of the rooms, the meeting room is one the 32nd floor, east side of the building. I'll watch the meeting go down from the outside. You two will be ready to follow the Chinese in a car on the street. If they leave on foot, then you follow them. Find a good point to take the HATE plans from them and then...well either cover your faces, or leave no witnesses." Nick said as he unrolled the new map. "Something tells me you'll do the former."

Peter just looked with his mouth agape.

Felicia ate the last strawberry in her bowl.

"Well I would suggest getting some sleep. It may be a long night." Nick finished.

Peter sat in the car listening to a french rock station. According to a music finding app on his phone the band was called Sidilarsen. Peter wasn't really paying attention to the radio in the car, more so the radio in his ear. Fury was on a rooftop with a view of the face of the hotel and a computer with a view of the inside of the meet location. His voice had been giving brief updates as the meeting progressed.

Fury's voice came over the earpiece. "Meeting wrapped up. The MSS are going to the back stairwell. Monkey, meet Rat at the back entrance."

Monkey was Peter's call sign on the radio, and Rat was Felicia's. Fury was Snake. When she asked why, she had done it with great mirth. Fury explained that if there were support team monitoring the radio, the use of Chinese Zodiac would likely cause the MSS and the Zodiac Cartel to think that they were double crossed, and not compromised.

"Got it." Peter said. He got out of the car and moved around to the back entrance of the hotel. Once he got there he saw Felicia walking out of the back door following a Chinese man with a briefcase. Peter waited at the corner for a second as the MSS agent turned the opposite direction on the street. Felicia followed him, and Peter followed her.

What followed was a long walk through a series of magnificent, narrow, cobblestone streets. The MSS man was clearly trying to make it look like a scenic walk through the town. He was sticking to well lit areas with lots of people to avoid being ambushed. Eventually he made his mistake and turned down an alleyway. He probably thought that it would have been a good way to spot a tail. Unfortunately, Peter and Felicia had made the agreement to attack him as soon as they were able, because who knows if they would get another.

Felicia pulled a scarf out of her coat pocket and tied it in a fashion that, while conservative, did cover her hair and forehead, and a pair of sunglasses covered her eyes. Peter put on a baseball hat and a pair of sunglasses as well as he entered the alley. Once he did, he snapped his fingers once, their signal to attack.

The MSS Agent turned his head and that was when he knew that he was in trouble. He pulled a suppressed QSZ-92. Not that it was gonna help him. Felicia pulled out two bolos and threw them with practiced accuracy. The agent got two shots off, but they went wide around the femme fatale. A split second later the bolos wrapped around his legs and arms, and then he fell to the ground.

Felicia walked up and Peter ran up to her. Felicia pulled another scarf out and used it as a makeshift gag and Peter pulled out a bag and slipped it over.

"Rat, watch him. Gotta make sure the HATE plans are legit." Peter said.

"Got it. Make it quick Monkey." Felicia said.

Peter grabbed the briefcase and pulled the laptop out and did a quick scan of the schematics as well as math of the satellite. When it worked out he closed the laptop and put it back in the briefcase.

"It's good. Let's go Rat!" he exclaimed victoriously.

The two heroes left the MSS man bound, gagged and bagged in a dark alley.

Fury drove his car West from Monaco towards Nice. He had been following the So-Cal and Rush Hour for the past half hour. He was making a plan for the timing of his next move when Peter came over the radio.

"Snake, this is Monkey. Rat and I have acquired the office supplies."

Fury smiled. "Good work. Get back to the office and drop it on my desk. Invoice for accounts payable is in the drawer."

"Okay, got it. See you at the next work function."

Nick had explained as soon as they dropped off the laptop, they were to get out of the country. He had plans though. It was all in hand now.

Another mile later and the Zodiac turned off onto Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. This was where they would try to catch anyone who was following them. But Fury wasn't here to follow. The Zodiac sedan pulled over to the side of the road. Nick slows down a little bit as he pulls past them, pulls out a suppressed USP .45 and dumps a magazine into the side of the vehicle through their window. He then pulls forward in front of the Zodiac car.

He did a quick check around and saw that this late a night, there wasn't anyone on the road. So he walked over to the Zodiac, and rolled down the drivers side window to limit the visible exposure of the gun fight. Eventually someone making a return trip on this route would call a stalled car in with two guys, and then all that would happen was the police would discover two dead international businessmen. The Zodiac would clean it up, and the world would be none the wiser to the near sale of a space laser to the Chinese. Fury was most satisfied with his work.

As he drove back to the hotel in Monaco, Fury got a call.

"Yes?" he asked confidently.

"Snake this is Dog." Came a calm voice. "The two assets you recruited just finished up their end. I've secured the party favors. I'll meet you at the RV."

"I'll see you there." Fury responded. Dog was a howling commando that he had brought onto the operation as a compartmentalized support element. Easiest call sign for him to assign because he normally went as Canine.

All he had to do now was meet up on the boat he had ready to go, and drive out to the seaplane in the Mediterranean.

AN: So i used to have more grand ambitions for this story, but after so much time and work in my real life, the passion has mostly extinguished. I'm wrapping this up in the next chapter. I had this whole desire for Fury and Canine to have this whole shoot out, but at this point I want to get into the next arc which is something that I am more excited for because the idea is fresh. Well, relative. I've wanted to write the next planned arc for a while now, but it needed a little set up and planning.