Thank you, Epic, for letting me run around Fortnite as Jennifer Walters.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, District of Columbia, December 17, 2012

"Mister Stark? He'll see you now."

Anthony Edward 'Tony' Stark stood up from the couch of the waiting area of the Roosevelt Room, completely and utterly aware of the two uniformed members of the United States Marine Corps dressed in Class A's and armed with Colt M-16 Assault Rifles. Considering what happened the past couple of days, security had tightened considerably. With several members of the West Wing having been arrested or relieved of duties considering their actions or knowledge, things were a bit of a mess especially it being so close to Christmas when usually the staff was at a minimum and their boss usually taking a small vacation somewhere. No one was taking a vacation now; not with the upheaval that had occurred upon Air Force One and Washington, D.C.

Tony righted his David Edward suit unconsciously under the scrutiny of two Marines as he looked to the older woman who had announced his meeting, and followed her from the Roosevelt and into the office that sat right across the hall.

The Oval Office; the office of the President of the United States of America.

"Mister President." Stark spoke as he stood in that iconic office where true American patriots and legends had once led a country, the decor a blend of a traditional office along steeped in heritage and taste. Unlike the Kings of old, the office wasn't a throne room or decked out in glitz and glamor. Whoever decided to make the office of the President an office had made something that a person could believe in; an oak desk known as Resolute that had been made from the timbers of a British vessel in front of a gorgeous view of the White House lawn with tasteful drapes, a pair of comfortable couches with a lacquered coffee table between them, a Navy Blue carpet with the Seal of the Executive Office in front of the large oak desk, a few paintings of Americana set upon white walls with a touch of Romanesque thought put into its design. One wouldn't find statues or gold, technological marvels or modern-day distractions. It was the office for the leader of the Western World, and it looked like the office of a powerful man; rich in tradition and taste, not wealth and pandering. Even he felt that certain giddiness of standing within its presence that marked the will and direction of a nation that had changed the world several times over.

"Mister Stark, take a seat." The President smile as he offered towards one of the couches that was a part of the sitting area for the Oval Office, where semi-formal state meetings and impromptu discussions probably solved more issues than Congressional inquests and lobbying. "Refreshments?"

"Water will be fine." Tony was nursing more than a few aches and pains from both Miami and the Triskhelion, the Iron Man suit great at protecting his fragile body, but even it couldn't ward the worst of the shocks of being struck by explosives or being hit with heavy objects. Thankfully, he long ago had gotten a few more 'cosmetic' Doctors on retainer to not only help him heal, but also make whatever wounds he received discrete. Ivan Vanko really did have a point when he said that when one made God bleed, the sharks would come. One of the attending manservants discretely stepped out of the Office as Tony returned his attention to the man whose life he had saved from a potential televised modern burning-at-the-stake four days prior on the Roxxon Norco with the help of Colonel James Rupert Rhodes. "Thank you for seeing me on short notice. I know you're a very busy man with what's going on, not to mention the spring cleaning that's going on in all three Branches." That was a mild understatement; it looked to be that HYDRA had something like eighteen percent of various individuals in positions of authority or in strategic locations within the higher echelons of the American Government either under their sway or in their pocket. The Vice President had already been given his walking papers and told to expect an Impeachment. Tony didn't doubt that it was 'softly' suggested the man contemplate taking the quieter way out to avoid the public thrashing he would receive if knowledge of his involvement in an assassination plot was revealed.

"It's been a hell of a year for all of us." The President replied, looking a few years older than he had back on the Norco. The full weight of everything revealed was no doubt stressful as hell. The West Wing hadn't been spared HYDRA's tentacles; the Vice President, the Chief of Staff, the Press Secretary, one of the Senior Advisers, and the National Security Adviser were all given the axe. Everyone was scrambling doing someone else's job… and wondering who to trust. Three Secretaries, two Directors, two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, several Congressional Sub-Committee members, both the Majority Leader and the Pro Tempe… and that was just the top positions. Some were deputies of those positions who had expected their bosses to be rubbed out and them taking over. No one was having a good Christmas this year. "And I find myself indebted to you personally, the Avengers on top of that, and then our entire nation and our way of life because of your act of defense when I'm discovering I can't even trust the members of my own Cabinet or my staff. I knew taking this job would be a hell of a wild ride before I announced my potential nomination for candidacy back in 2007, but this was well beyond anything anyone could expected."

"You and me both, Mister President." Tony replied. He had been the premiere weapons manufacture for the American Military and various other government components back then, making everything from bombs, to high-performance airplane parts, to even medical devices for the common soldier to carry to aid in their fight. "I'm still reeling from the fact this was the same organization that my father thought destroyed back in the 40's, living all under our noses. I'm still not sure if I should be pissed or frightened at the fact that they were able to hide so well and corrupt so much with us so blithely unaware. Make no mistake, Mister President, we got off very cheap considering how much damage could have been done."

"Agreed." The manservant came back with a silver tray with two glasses of water and a glass carafe filled with clear fluids. "As angered as I am about the whole fiasco, I've had time to reflect on some of the details that we probably haven't investigated yet. It just wasn't my staff that HYDRA had their hands in; it had to have been in past Administrations as well. It could have been that members or positions had been tainted for years or longer, and we're now just bringing to light what had been growing in the shadows. It doesn't please me at all."

"Then look to the men that never caved or swayed." Tony replied, having survived his own form of spring cleaning following Obadiah Stane's attempt on is life when he pulled the Arc Reactor out of his chest. Several members of the Board of Directors in Stark Industries had been in the know of Stane's actions involving illegal arms sales, compliant and profiting. "The American Public will be shaken, they'll be scared. But highlight those who stood above that fear, fill the ranks with those who stood for the people and this nation in its time of need. This isn't about politics, parties, pandering, or promotion. This is about getting back up and into the fight again, to show that we can take a hit but come back strong. We weren't the only government with HYDRA Agents in it, and no doubt there's some foreign world power looking at us right now with that question mark wondering if it might be a worthwhile endeavor. Find those men and women, give them a year to clean out the filth and return things to something worth writing about, and then hold a mid-term election so we're fixing the immediate problems and then returning the power back into the peoples' hands. This country's survived such things before."

"True." Things would be a mess for a while, but no nation had ever been without its tribulations. "I've been looking at people to fill in the vital positions, getting them vetted as quickly and as accurately as I can, and get them marching orders to get things going in the right direction." The President looked over to a painting of President Abraham Lincoln, remaining silent for a moment. "I wonder how he felt following the 1860 election, when his name wasn't even on every ballot and the country tore itself apart before he ever made it to office." The President mused out loud, looking at the portrait of a man whose stance on change was so profound that America split itself apart with his election. Tony remembered how the swearing in of the President had been moved from March to January because of that particular event; Lincoln had to sit and watch the country tear itself apart for four months, completely and utterly incapable to do anything to halt it while the Lame Duck President, Franklin Pierce, had hardly stemmed the tide of separation. "You know he forgave them, right? He had a plan that would not only help put the country back together, but help heal the wounds that four years of brutal war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans had caused. The most hated man in America during his day, and yet we venerate him for his resolve. He truly was a believer."

"Men and women like that still exist, Mister President." Stark reminded the man, getting the President to look at him. "Change things up a bit, go for some younger faces and hard-hitting talent, something a little less partisan and a little more proactive. All we need to do is get the ball rolling in a good direction, get people to believe in that change, and you'll be surprise how far you can go." That had been exactly what Jenn had done; made a promise, sold it to the public, got them to believe in it, and then delivered it time and time again. "We don't have to fix every problem this year, and I doubt we'll fix every problem during this Administration. But put the pieces back together, make a picture that works, and get people to take a look at it and see if they like what they see and vote for it."

"Now we can do that, thanks to the Avengers." The President replied, his voice solemn. "We owe a debt that knows no measure, both in saving my life, and sparing this country a time of woe and despair. Thousands were targeted for extermination, and who knows if they would have stopped at that? When I say 'whatever you want'? I mean every word."

That was a hell of a promise to make. Thankfully, Tony actually had something in mind.

"There is something, nothing bad." The billionaire did what he did best; went off-the-cuff and made it work. "Probably not difficult, but red tape plus publicity can make it more than a hassle than it needs to be.

"But it's concerning an adoption." Tony leveled. The President looked a little surprised, obviously not expecting that as a response.

"Whose?"

"Kamala Khan's." He wasn't exactly up-to-snuff on adoption law or whatnot, but Tony was pretty certain that it could take anywhere from six months to a year of bureaucratic hell involving a lot of silly check-the-box things that could be handled in ten minutes but took weeks. There would be the hunt for next-of-kin (who were likely in Pakistan), therapists and social workers, 'finding' Kamala a home thanks to the government as oppose to letting her stay with the people that had already been watching over her and likely would have had approval of her parents if anyone had ever thought about the worst-case scenario. The last thing Kamala needed was to be whisked away by the government and put into some foster home (or worse) with people that knew nothing about her, vulnerable and unprotected. And though it shouldn't be an issue, Kamala was also an active practicing Muslim while living in America; Tony didn't imagine that whatever location some thumbsucking office worker sent her to without ever meeting her would look to those needs as well.

"Who's looking to adopt her?" The President asked.

"Jenn Walters. She's already taken on three girls, all doing well in school, the oldest having gone to Berkeley on an academic scholarship before being picked up by the CIA to be an Intelligence Officer." Stark wasn't going to mention the rest of what happened to Jessica Drew. Likely the President already knew. "Kamala was instrumental in that fight, Mister President. Lives were saved by her, the enemy was thwarted by her, and if you ever needed evidence of how this country can produce some of the greatest in the world? Kamala." That wasn't a sell; every word Tony said, he believed. "She was there when our country needed her. In a rather big fashion, at that." Tony had watched the portion where the young woman had 'grown' to monstrous proportions and punched a ship. He had laughed so hard the first time he saw it he had a pinch in his side afterwards. "Does she have next-of-kin? Yes. In Pakistan. But Kamala was born in America, Mister President, and she fought for her home. What kind of reward would it be to bundle her up and send her to a country she's never been to after she gave everything, nearly including her life, to fight for our freedom? And do we really want Pakistan having her? They'll use her for their little gripes against India over Kashmir or whatever else is the fancy at the time, turned into a weapon of war while forced to live in a culture that probably will treat her like a second-class citizen due to her gender."

Actually, Tony had no idea how Pakistan treated their women, but it was no mystery that some of the other Middle Eastern nations suppressed their ladies in some fashion, and a few of those countries suppressed them hard. Tony got hit with the thought of Pepper being forced to live in one of those nations, told what to wear, never walking alone without an escort (husband, usually), not allowed to drive a car whenever she wanted, not allowed to live how she wanted. The thought had Tony shudder a little as that thought went and turned Pepper into Kamala, that joyous young woman who always showed up to the Tower with a smile on her face and the absolute thirst to learn and grow. She had earned her way into one of the best magnet schools in New Jersey of her own accord, showing skills and talents that her parents thankfully encouraged. She had won a major science competition against brilliant students her own age, judged by her efforts, not her heritage, religion, or gender. Kamala was born in America, immersed in its diverse culture and beliefs, a mixture of her own faith and the country she loved and making it work. There was only a couple places in the world where that would happen.

Tony watched as the President nodded slowly, stood up from his place on the couch, and went to the phone on his desk and pressed a button.

"Get me the Attorney General, please."

Stark didn't bother hiding the grin that grew on his face.


Triskhelion, Theodore Roosevelt Island, District of Columbia, December 17, 2012

Major Maria Jacoba Hill was looking through interrogation and intelligence reports printed on paper from the various interviews and and conversations pertaining to both SHIELD Agents and HYDRA Operatives to better collate who was who, whom did what, figure out what missing faces might be one side or the other, who had rabbited, and a potential list of suspects to fact-check between the HYDRA database that Edward Snowden had cracked open and the word-of-mouth of various persons either incarcerated or incarcerating. Her field desk was loaded with hundreds of reports, each being scanned into a computer database for both evidence and archive while she looked through each, barely able to do more than skim through them if she wanted to complete the task sometime in the next year. SHIELD use to have hundreds of data analysts to do just this but now with the potential of compromised Agents as well as compromising evidence (real or not), the Avengers and what was left of SHIELD was limiting the amount of people handled the intelligence so as to say it wasn't tainted despite having a clear chain-of-custody and legal line-of-authority. She had learned a great deal of the legal world from Jennifer Walters of the nuances of tricks and subtle ways of winning a case by looking for the little things to make evidence work in ones' favor or getting something tossed out, the SHIELD Liaison for the Avengers never actually having to do any actual legal work before. Most of the time she had been handed completed reports and files by those whose job it was to do just that, but now they didn't know who exactly to trust.

It was so much easier when HYDRA had been shooting at her and she had been flaying them in the Whiplash suit. Sad but true.

"Maria. We've got two more unfettered awake and aware." Colonel James Rupert Rhodes walked over to her section of the Command Tent that Captain Steven Grant Rogers ran with the remnants of SHIELD, having picked a few people to help him organize the chaos of the captured members of HYDRA, the medical needs and necessities, the sad duty of taking care of those who fell in battle, and the logistics and support of the hundreds of people who occupied the area in front of the Trisk. Even now, only a few people were allowed in the building to preserve as much evidence as possible as well as keeping anything potentially dangerous or damning out of unnecessary hands. The last thing anyone needed was someone from the media grabbing a scrap of paper and parading it around with little collaboration or verification as if they were spouting the truth to damage reputations and careers of people in the name of ratings. No, this needed to be done legally and properly; not exactly in the SHIELD lexicon. But as Steve said (and Maria agreed with him), HYDRA feared having the truth discovered and displayed, more use to burying the facts and keeping their activities in the shadows. Nailing them for moral violations, illegal activities, and unethical practices would bury the organization as an ideal better than just capturing the people. "Both are talking, and Agents Carter and Bishop are taking down every word with both physical recording devices as well as pen and paper. I don't think they saw that much, none of the juicy stuff, but they certainly got names and faces."

"Names and faces is just a good as the juicy stuff. Especially heavy hitters." Maria replied, pleased with that front. Doctor Maya Rebecca Hansen, a botanist and a biochemist that Tony Stark had rescued from the clutches of a scientific think tank corporation known as Advanced Idea Mechanics, had been working on various compounds to be used in the hopes of freeing people who had fallen under the influence of the Scepter. The big issue with that was people who knocking out would be problematic for a normal man (such as people who had undergone PROJECT: ARGUS), so a successful compound could double as a weaponized delivery system. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a 'universal' compound that did the trick, but a cocktail of of muscle relaxants, neuromuscular inhibitors, and the general 'night-night' compound that was given to put people under seemed to at least work well enough to slip someone into a safe, temporary chemical coma to where the ability to slip them loose from HYDRA's control was less invasive than if they were conscious. Already over two dozen people had been 'woken up' from the Scepters' grasp, recovering from their ordeals and receiving 'good' interviews of all they saw and heard while under HYDRA's grasp. Most everyone released were very eager to do just that when they were told that anything and everything done while under the Specter would be unprosecutable; it was the very definition of 'duress', after all. Those interviews were more successful than HYDRA members who were willing to spill the beans; half of them cried for immunity from prosecution, and the other half reported 'facts' that had no evidence to substantiate such as names concerning membership that didn't have digital evidence or even validation from other interviews to collaborate.

Goddamn mess, the whole lot.

"Major Hill?" The woman codenamed Ares looked over to see a heavyset FBI Agent approaching her. Ah, Senior Agent Richard Marshall. He and his FBI Agents had taken over guard duties and interrogations at the site of the Trisk to keep the SHIELD Agents and HYDRA Operatives away from one another. Captain Rogers had the FBI Agents on rotation to prevent too much fraternization in case someone got silly. "We've got another round of interviews to do with someone I think you'll want to be present for. Jack Collins."

"That cocksucker." No lost love there. Lieutenant Commander Jackson Timothy Collins was a part of STRIKE Team DELTA, and its second-in-command. Its CO, Brock Rumlow, had come up second place in an argument with Natasha Romanoff and ended up splattered on the plaza of the Trisk doing a thirty-plus story swan dive after opening a window with his body. Maria had asked for the grizzly details; she wanted to know how the man died. Somehow, every damn person in STRIKE DELTA was HYDRA of their own free will; obviously, recruited for their beliefs and sent to SHIELD's elite go-to team for high-risk situations. Every fucking one of them, our best damn heavy hitters were fucking HYDRA to the man, Maria couldn't believe just how bad they had all been played. She had known some of those men for years, had given them orders and trusted them to do their jobs. "Alright, I'll be there in two minutes. Try not to cook him alive before then."

"Heh, no promises." Agent Marshall replied as he turned to head out as Maria looked over to Rhodey.

"Hold down the fort while I nuke someone?" The Major asked the Colonel, a little bit of mirth in her voice.

"Whose suit do you want to use, yours or mine?" Rhodes asked with a smirk, making Hill laugh.


"The Camp", Triskhelion, Theodore Roosevelt Island, District of Columbia, December 17, 2012

Lieutenant Commander Jackson Timothy 'Jack' Rollins sat manacled to a metal chair in a make-shift interrogation room that had a plastic card table in front of him and a six-by-six room with two cameras (one facing him, one facing the interrogator and the door) as he sat in a chair he couldn't stand up from. He was manacled wrist-and-ankle with a connecting chain that was looped through a D-Ring secured to a metal plate bolted to the floor. And the chair had been welded onto the plate as well for good measure. This was most certainly the don't-fuck-around accommodations. All that was missing was bad lighting and the one-way mirror to one side to make it perfectly gauche. It wasn't like he hadn't graced a jail cell before, and Search, Escape, Resist, and Evade (known as SERE) School had certainly introduced him to the interrogation room as well. But this wasn't training or a test where he'd get a few chances. He had one shot to either bury himself, get out of jail free, or… something else. He wasn't even sure who would be doing the interrogating, but his first thought was FURY.

He doubted he'd come out of the room alive if that were the case. He was pretty okay with that considering.

Instead, after a few minutes after being pinned to the floor, two people walked in, one not really surprising him, and the other an unknown. The sight of Major Maria Hill wasn't an unexpected one; she was a woman who handled her own shit and wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. She wasn't the quintessential thumbsucking office weenie whose idea of a bad day was running out of leaded coffee in the office or getting a paper cut. Word around the water cooler was that the woman was proficient shot with her pistol, a black belt in classic karate, and had been recruited out of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Academy when one of the instructors got too handsy and she put the guy back in his place… that place being a three-week coma due to a fractured skull. Fury never did fuck around when it came to his little 'Commandos', and Maria was pretty much the Bitch Queen of Hell (in the complimentary sense). That she was here in the same room as him didn't surprise him at all. The other one, the overweight one that was pushing sixty or so, had a clip-on badge that sported the obvious three-letter acronym of 'FBI' on it. Well, the Feebees had showed up sometime yesterday, so the presence of one of them wasn't surprising. The FBI hardly impressed him.

"Hello, Jack." Maria was obviously going to start the show, Rollins wondering if this was going to be the good cop/bad cop routine. Probably. Maria certainly wasn't interested in playing good cop, that was for sure. "Four years at Annapolis, picked up by the War College for Selection. Five years with the Teams, dozens of successful missions, the very image of American wrath made flesh. And then four years with the top team in the country as a SHIELD STRIKE Operative." The woman just looked at him, shaking her head slowly. "Why, Jack? You were some of our Goddamn best! We gave you the missions that prevented wars, nuclear arms sales, mad scientist bullshit from cooking up something even worse, high-value target captures that you knew made the world a better place. The best shooters in the country, in the world, and every single one of you was HYDRA to the very man." Betrayal laced every word in her voice, someone who had believed and found that others weren't so sincere. "How? Why? Some people I get, others might believe in some new world order shit. But you and Brock literally helped stop wars and save the world. You were doing great work, righteous work. Were you being lied to?"

"Hardly." Jack replied simply, wondering if Maria would even listen to the truth. Or believe it. He looked to the plastic chair on the other side of the plastic table and nodded his head towards it, indicating for her to sit. She reluctantly complied while the fat FBI Agent content himself to stand in a corner and watch. "I knew what I was signing up for; the how, they why, all of it. The difference between you and me Hill was that you were the one being lied to while I knew the truth."

"It was your masters that were lying to us." The Major stated.

"Hardly." Jack laughed. "You know what the difference between SHIELD and HYDRA really was, Maria? Nothing." The woman didn't look like she believed him. "SHIELD did the same damn things that HYDRA was doing, except that HYDRA was doing it with a goal and a purpose. Same missions, same perimeters, same kill orders. Except SHIELD was convinced that they were fighting to keep the status quo, to having two-hundred plus nations that can start all out wars and massacres and convince everyone that every single piece of podunk backwater life meant a tin shit in the scheme of things while people starve, overdose, kill each other for religion, power, money, or whatever reason. SHIELD wasn't doing shit to fix things except keep as many people breathing as possible for a potentially worse tomorrow or next year. HYDRA wanted to change things, to make them better."

"By killing tens of thousands of people a day with flying death machines and superpowered killing squads?" Hill asked incredulously.

"How much money has been spent trying to 'fight' the War on Drugs, or the War on Terrorism?" Jack replied, making Maria scoff. "We all know the solutions, but people lack the balls to go out and do it. We would have solved North Korea decades ago if we had manned up a little more back in the Seventies and Eighties when they couldn't even string two lights together, but now they're doing nuclear tests. We've got hundreds of thousands of homeless people and gang members just roaming the streets, and we pretend that we should have them matter over a public that does the right thing every day. We've got overstuffed jails and countless appeals for death row convicts. We know what to do, it isn't that hard to figure out. HYDRA was going to do just that. Instead, you fought for a system that wants to empathize and emphasize worthless creatures that do nothing but bring us all down. I don't see anyone trying to go and help fix Mexico because it would somehow be a war to turn that nation into something worth staying in. Instead, we're content to letting it be corrupt and worthless and have tens of thousands of people brave a pretty damn dangerous landscape on foot on the bare chance of a better life. We were going to give it to them."

"With mass murder?"

"Culling the flock, getting rid of the chaff." Jack replied, shrugging his shoulders. "People die absolutely every day, and most of them for worthless reasons or petty excuses. We weren't killing them willy-nilly; there was an overall purpose. To recreate the world to one of order and logic, where there was a government that would help run a global economy, not a mish-mash of petty states where one big nation supports a dozen faltering ones. Where East and West influences weren't the name of the game. All the things anyone ever wanted or wished someone was going to go out and fix? We were going to fix them. But you elected global diaspora and planet-wide misery. Tell me something, Maria… what happens on January 19, 2038?"

"The… Epochalypse?" That had the woman take back a figurative step. "The Unix Y2K38 Problem. What of it?"

"Every model shows that most systems are going to freeze up and go into constant reboot because the time-t code will have timed out, all Unix 32-bit systems embedded with an internal time clock freezing up. We've known about the problem since 2006, and yet no one's doing a thing. How many computers is that, Maria? How many essential systems." Jack just looked at her. "World's going to suffer a digital apocalypse when people discover a year prior of another Y2K and buy phony software from scammers and people that have no idea what they're talking about, and on the morning of January 18, something like ninety percent of all electronic devices are going to shut off. Automation, sensors, what keeps the lights on and the power plants running. A new Dark Age that will probably last a couple of centuries as people kill each other for scraps of food because nobody grows anything anymore. You boggle at the thought of killing tens of thousands of people every day when tens of thousands of people die everyday anyhow. I boggle because you're going to be responsible for a worldwide catastrophe that will kill damn near everyone because its more politically correct to save the weak, give more rights to the guilty, and support the useless. Between you and me," Collins shifted in his seat to be more comfortable, "you picked the side that's crumbling and failing every day, ran by weakness and controlled by thumbsuckers on social media. You ask me how could I? I'm asking why didn't you."

Before Maria could respond, a taser went to the back of her neck and brought her down with a cry, falling unconscious, twitching on the ground.

"Good timing." Jack looked to the FBI Agent that had tased the one called Ares now who was pulling out a handcuff key from a pocket. "I take the cameras are dubbed?"

"It's looped on another interview, and one of our men is monitoring it." The heavyset man replied. "Since he doesn't 'know' what you look like, that will give him a reason not to recognize a false recording. We have falsified evidence that will implicate a SHIELD Agent and throw them a little bit into the loop as you make your escape."

"And you?"

"Tased. Side of the neck. Make it look like someone else did it." The older man replied, Jack snorted and smiled. A simple and effective plan. "You're to report to the Madame, and there's an Alex PD Officer by the name of Herst that will take you there." The FBI Agent pulled out from under his jacket a simple pair of slacks, a button-up shirt, and a lightweight sports blazer, explaining some of his bulk. "We still have work to do, and you are still needed."

"Any other miraculous escapes?" Jack was rubbing his wrists as he was freed from the handcuff, beginning to take off the orange jumper that labeled him a convict.

"Just you. There's a plan for you." The FBI Agent replied with a smile. "Hail HYDRA, Commander."

"Hail HYDRA." Rollins replied as he took the taser and jammed it into the side of the FBI Agent's neck and tased him into unconsciousness.


Doctor Doreen Allene Green was humming slightly as she worked, peering at a medical chart listing several hours worth of vital signs to acknowledge various changes of a person over a timeframe. While the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine was most certainly educated in the concepts of taking care of the four-legged variety of Earth creatures, basic biology and numbers were pretty universal. Besides, all the Medical Doctors that SHIELD had were killed by the HYDRA variety for more-or-less the same reason people shot at combat medics first in war; to demoralize and take away the ability to bring an enemy back into the fight. As far as medical expertise went at the Trisk… she was the expert. There were no Doctors of Human Medicine around, so everyone got her.

Thankfully, the SHIELD Agents were more than happy with her care. Especially since she saved no less than seven lives due to gunshot wounds with an emergency medical field kit, some quickly donated blood, and more than a fair deal of emergency prayer as she extracted the bullets and stapled the wounds closed for medical transportation. Everyone knew who Doctor Green was and where she stood, and absolutely no one said a word about being worked on by a Veterinarian with strange looking fingers and teeth. Sure, they were a little startled at first, but she wasn't getting weird glances or overhearing quiet comments (and her hearing was much better). The surviving SHIELD Agents had obviously been told that she looked different, but that she had been mind-controlled by the squid, altered, tortured, rescued and freed, and had fought alongside the Avengers before the Second American Civil War to stop HYDRA. There had been more than a few she had fought alongside with when she had fought in the plaza that was the Triskhelion's grounds, keeping HYDRA forces from either reinforcing from the outside or keeping others from leaving. They knew her name, her call sign, and the fact that she was an Avenger. That was all that they needed to know. Considering that a great many of them had been patients of hers under her care, putting the pieces back together especially in those first few hours after victory had been called only cemented the fact.

The HYDRA patients she got didn't say a word; word had spread around the internment camp that Doc Artemis most certainly had claws and knew how to use them, and none of them gave her any lip after the first one went back to the holding camp with more wounds than what he started with. It wasn't like Vets swore the Hippocratic Oath like Medical Doctors did, and the asshole in question did try to swipe a scalpel to cut her with. As if that would had worked.

"Mike, Agent Forsyth here needs a change of bandages and to understand the importance of the fact that yes, while he's a big tough guy, taking it easy on his stitches will mean he'll heal faster." Doreen told her attending 'nurse', a former Navy Corpsman-turned-SHIELD Agent hilariously named Michael Jackson. He had gone to the Navy to be a Hospital Corpsman not to work at a dispensary (what they called the routine clinics in the Navy) but to be a combat medic. That meant he had pushed himself to become a Marine since the USMC didn't have their own medics, going through two different sets of medical training programs to reach that goal. She called him Mike or Chief, and he was a Godsend; an extra pair of hands with experience on humans both in a clinical setting as well as in a warzone. He had no issues working with her, called her 'Doc', and helped with the workload. He had a rather interesting philosophy for medicine; bandaids for friends, bullets for enemies. She was pretty okay with that. The Agent she was looking at, one Daniel Forsyth, had gotten a rather nasty cut during the fighting, gouging out a good part of his forearm taking cover while under fire. Doreen had cleaned his wound, stitched the flesh back together, and given him both a Tetanus shot and a penicillin shot once he confirmed he wasn't allergic to it to be on the safe side during the first hours after the battle when she was doing hectic triage to save the lives of SHIELD Agents who had been wounded in combat. The Doctor learned an important lesson that day; war didn't end with the final call, the pieces needing to be picked up afterwards.

"They're stitches, not a zipper." Chief Jackson told the Agent-in-question, who looked a little surly. Forsyth was a member of the SHIELD response teams whose job was to go out and ascertain threats and capabilities of situations, someone that posed as another agency to action in on questionable events and ascertain what was needed to solve it and cover it up. Pretty much the SHIELD version of a FBI Special Agent, in other words; a problem solver. There was a ton of work to be done, so much to comb through and pieces to pick up, and Doreen didn't doubt the man was trying to do his part while his left arm suffered a six inch long cut that almost went down to the bone. He, like many others, had lost friends and co-workers due to friends and co-workers, and there was that impossible stigma of can I trust you? hanging in the air over everyone's head. No one wanted to find out they had missed out on collecting HYDRA Operatives… or being named as one. It wasn't the best of situations.

"Just hate doing nothing, y'know?" Agent Forsyth groused, his accent pure Bostonian. That was a tough town filled with tough people that took no lip but gave it right back. Doreen understood his dilemma; he didn't want to be seen doing nothing when there was plenty to be done. Lots of SHIELD Agents felt that way. And no one wanted to be accused of doing nothing and being seen as somewhat helping HYDRA by figuratively sitting on their hands.

"What they got you doing?" Green asked as she annotated on the paper clipboard that was Forsyth's brand-new medical record of the past two days of the bandage change and the fact that the stitches were strained and the flesh swollen and puffy due to overusage. Funny to think that Medical Doctors probably complained about people visiting their offices for overinflated diseases and miladies to get out of work or to get the good stuff in terms of medications. She was having the opposite problem; trying to keep these headstrong Agents from hurting themselves even more doing too much. They were worth fighting for, both in and out of war.

"Battlefield assessment and collection." Yikes. Doreen knew how he likely had gotten hurt; his job was to comb over the Trisk and ascertain those who had died fighting; names… and affiliation. He was going over the corpses and retrieving them for identification and burial, most of them having been collected during the first several hours with the barest hint of investigation concerning if they were SHIELD or HYDRA. Captain Rogers hadn't wanted the bodies just laying out in the open, suffering weather and animals, and he had been pretty particular about the diseases and maladies that a bunch of dead bodies could bring (that was right, Steve Rogers' father was a WWI soldier who likely wrote about something like that to his wife, Steve's mother). It was the humane thing to do, but corpse retrieval wasn't a job anyone would want to wish on themselves. But there had been volunteers, men and women who likely wanted to see to their friends and co-workers who had fought for their side (and the unfortunate fact of those who hadn't). Nearly all the bodies were stored in one of the rooms in the Trisk where the temperature was set at near freezing for preservation while teams (four randomly selected people) went over identification and evidence to ascertain who the person was… and who they belonged to.

While the casualties had been pretty damn high, the SHIELD Agents knew for a fact it would have been a lot worse for them if it hadn't been for Miss Marvel's holographic technology, creating hundreds of illusionary SHIELD Agents for HYDRA to waste their bullets on, giving them a much better chance since they had been left completely in the dark. Doreen had noticed that SHIELD Agents had been doing something on their uniforms; a cloth armcuff over whatever uniform they wore with some markered-in symbol. Some showed a star with a circle around it, a few with a familiar-looking iron helmet, some with a mallet, and ones with a bow and arrow. When she had seen the third or fourth one late in the evening on the Fifteenth while working her way through the triage list, going from worst to least in terms of injuries, seeing a female Agent with one that had something that was supposedly a storm cloud, Doctor Green had finally asked what it meant. The answer had taken her breath away.

It was the mark of the Avenger that had saved their life. And the symbol Doreen had seen the most had been the one with a lightning bolt; the mark of Miss Marvel thanks to her holographic projection of her Life-Model Decoy standing twenty stories tall and punching a ship in the face. Agent Forsyth had that mark on his left arm depicting whom he thought he owed his life to.

There was a rescued white board that had a tally for those who wanted to mark that very thing. Doreen somehow ended up with the mark of the wolfs' paw (as somehow wolves ended up with the reputation of being the noble hunter) and had twenty-seven marks to her name. Some of the 'symbols' for the Avengers were cute or clever (Maria Hill ended up with a Spartan helmet, Jessica Drew with a storm cloud, Jessica Jones with wind blowing from left to right to depict a western wind) while others were obvious (the helmet was Tony Stark, the star Captain Rogers, the hourglass Natasha Romanoff, the minigun James Rhodes). But the field with the most marks was that of the lightning bolt; Kamala Khan. The spunky teenager that had been picked up by Jennifer Walters months ago on the thought of making holographic targets to confound an enemy or give friendly forces a better chance had fulfilled that hope a hundred times over and a hundred times again.

The raid on the Office of Naval Intelligence had been a practical slaughterhouse thanks to Plan: Agent Smith where everyone inside the building had 'turned' into an Avenger along with dozens of fake ones running about to buy the real ones time to escape and give Nat the chance to rescue Jessica Drew thanks to a fifteen-year old. One of the SHIELD Agents who survived that ordeal (and cursed himself vocally for not putting things together afterwards when he ended up in the Trisk for the Civil War) when he ended up turning into Natasha Romanoff and people were trying to kill him for it. Despite that… he had nothing but praise for Miss Marvel once he had been told what had happened, especially since, like many others, he wore an armcuff with the lightning bolt on it. During the Civil War, he had been one of the five percent of SHIELD Agents that had been turned invisible, a helpful little Miss Marvel drone telling him that he was in Predator-Mode and happy hunting. His arm had been broken from the MOAB that Tempest had pushed into the Potomac River, the explosion making him slip and fall and 'break his damn arm like an idiot' on a desk when he lost his balance being on the river side of the Trisk hunting squid. Underneath the lightning bolt on his arm was a smaller storm cloud to show who else he owed his life to.

Doreen had taken a picture of the whiteboard and sent it to Kamala so the young woman knew just what kind of impact she had made… and just how much she had for the men and women who had been betrayed. The Doctor had never met Kamala's parents, but she would readily guess that if they had still been alive, they would have been extremely proud of their daughter. The Veterinarian most certainly was. Those six days stuck in a plane had everyone almost elbows and knees with one another, and Doreen had found herself liking Kamala and becoming fast friends with her. What made it hysterical was that she was Jewish and Kamala was Muslim… and neither one had a problem with it. Only in America. Kamala was young, spunky, full of promise and doing her damnedest to take life in both hands and enjoying the ride. Oh, there was no doubt she was a very modern 21st-Century young woman; the internet her playground, video games and comic books her lingua franca, memes and troups her slang, and the Age of Heroes they all found themselves in her favorite past time. Kamala literally couldn't have lived at a better time or at a better age, though life certainly hadn't given her every boon; she was now an orphan thanks to HYDRA. Doreen had decided for herself to being the fun Aunt for the teenage girl just like Jennifer Walters had taken the young girl in to raise. Pretty much every one of the Avengers had been of like mind for the young woman who had earned her way into their ranks through her sheer intelligence and effervescent attitude, and then had went and proved herself again as a force to be reckoned with. Doreen wanted the Jersey City-born girl to know her contributions, saving almost as many lives as Captain America had when he caught one flying ship with another flying ship to keep it crashing in a residential area. Quite literally just about everyone in the Trisk owed Kamala Khan and Jessica Drew their lives.

"Alright, Agent Headstrong," Doreen gave Forsyth a playful smack on his shoulder, "I'm going to throw some butterfly bandages over the stitches not so you can do more work, but so you don't pull them further. See me again, and they'll be Scooby-Doo bandages and you'll get the Cone of Shame, too." He looked like he was about to say something but thought better of it, meekly complying as Chief Jackson chuckled softly as he grabbed a couple of the proscribed bandages when a wailing alarm rang out over the camp, stopping all three of them in their proverbial tracks. That alarm was for one thing and one thing only.

"Chief, man the post!" Doctor Green shouted as she was already heading out the door, rushing right by a wide-eyed Doctor Maya Hansen as the Veterinarian was already shrugging off her lab coat and heading out of the medical tent with her teeth aching and her fingers hurting as she began to shift, her feet lengthening as her thighs grew shorter and thicker, her back curving forward as fur began bursting from her skin. She was already lopping forward on all fours as she saw Captain Steven Rogers ahead of her gunning it after a figure ahead in the distance, making it for the bridge leading towards Alexandra and the mess of cops as Doreen sped forward after the fleeing figure, amazing herself as she caught up to, and passed, Captain America in less than ten seconds despite his speed and distance initially.

The human that was trying to laughably outrun her was hardly able to make it much farther as the cat-like woman tackled him in mid-stride, pouncing on him with her claws out and snarling. They both landed in a rolling heap with Doreen on top, her claws at the tender flesh of his throat as she snarled and hissed, her jaw opening wide and lips pulling back to show her panther-like fangs to intimidate the man she had caught. The older man quivered in fear, looking to be in his sixties and most certainly had an FBI clip-on badge that said 'Marshall' on it.

"Holy fucking what the hell…" The man blubbered as he looked at her with fear, Captain Rogers finally reaching them, the Super Soldier finding the Veterinarian with her claws at the man's neck. "Captain, this… thing attacked me…"

"Nice try. Maria recorded the interview on her cell phone." Steve replied, making the man pale as Doreen's claws gripped a little more, the points sinking enough to dimple the man's skin and very tender neck. Her enhanced sense of smell most certainly found the whiff of urine coming on strong. "This one tased Hill and helped Jack Rollins escape by giving him clothes and an FBI badge while a SHIELD Agent who was monitoring the camera was in on it. Jessica Jones found the both of them when this one woke and claimed he was attacked and told a story, but Jones found that Maria had been recording the interview on her cell phone and played it back while Marshall here said he was going to visit Medical to get checked up." That had Doreen hackle at the man. "I'll take custody of him, but Hill's still out. Can you look to her?" Green nodded with an affirmative mew as her hazel eyes went to the man underneath her, baring her fangs and hissing it him. Now there was a whiff of fecal matter. Good.

She had something more pressing to attend to than some slippery squid.

Doreen made excellent time back to the medical tent in what the other Avengers called her weretabby form, surprising more than a few SHIELD Agents as she lopped back into the encampment, no doubt more than a few having seen her exit. She reached the tent and began shifting back, her joints and muscles popping and cramping as she gasped in pain, practically falling over as she caught herself on a medical bed before Chief Jackson moved over to her side, hoisting her up as the Doctor grunted while returning to her human form. Her skin was slick with sweat and her body fatigued as she stumbled over to a bed where she saw Major Maria Hill lying unconscious, Doctor Maya Hansen already hooking the unconscious woman to medical monitoring equipment to give them an idea of her vitals as Doreen moved to the bed as Maya finished putting on the last of the medical diodes on Maria's arm and the electrocardiogram began reading out the SHIELD Agent's vitals. Green ignored her body's own plight as she saw the electronic screen display numbers and a baseline, the Veterinarian grimacing at what she saw in terms of heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure.

"JARVIS? Have Sam spin up the Quinjet for MEDEVAC to a local Emergency Room." Doreen fired off when she saw the readings; too low heart rate along with an arrhythmic heartbeat, blood pressure too low for both the systolic and diastolic reading, and her respiratory rate was high. Maria's eyes were open, her pupils dilated but uneven, mumbling slurred words, and her left arm and leg were twitching. Green cursed herself for not being a human practitioner of medicine (though that would mean she would still be in residency and not at the tent at that moment), but she knew enough to know what was happening. "She got tased in the neck. Where?"

Maya just looked at her as her hands adjusted Maria's head to one side, the gurgling noise her mouth was making easing as the biologist pointed to the burn mark, and Doreen felt her heart sink at the location.

The Medulla Oblongata; the point where brain met stem. It was a condition known as a convulsive status epilepticus; when someone had a seizure for more than five minutes or more than twice in an hour. Not only was Maria going into an epileptic seizure, her body was having a hard time running her body as well. While less than one percent of people died from seizures and epilepsy every year, it wasn't the most understood condition and it came with a whole host of warning signs such as strokes, aneurysms, embolisms, heart failure, and comas. Police weren't allowed to taze people in the neck due to that reason. But Maria had gotten hit right in the worst spot possible.

Hill would quite literally die right in front of them in the next five or ten minutes if they didn't get it under control. And that wasn't even considering what internal damages might have been done.

"Get the Lorazepam." Doreen told her contemporary as Chief Jackson helped the Veterinarian roll Maria to her right side in case of vomiting or fluid in the lungs, the woman still convulsing and gagging in her hands. Lorazepam was a pretty standard muscle relaxant medication given as an anti-convulsion in Emergency Rooms for seizure cases in ER's, which a medical tent was hardly that. But in order to transport her, Doreen needed to stabilize her. Hansen came back with a syringe with 10cc's of fluids within it. "Right arm." Maya was already on it, grabbing the SHIELD Agents' arm as Doreen kept her eyes on the monitoring equipment, seeing the heart rate and readout getting even more erratic, Hill's blood pressure still dropping as the biologist injected the blood vessel in the crook of Maria's right elbow. Sadly, very few chemicals were actually 'instantaneous', even the chemicals in a body, and the Lorazepam would take as much as a minute for it to start taking effect. Doreen watched the monitor, then looked down to the woman under her, seeing that Maria had lost consciousness, her breath coming in a rasping gasp.

"We're going to need to intubate her." Doreen was already putting Maria on her back and tilting her jaw upward as Maya grabbed a nearby package and ripped it open and pulled out a laryngoscope and a tracheal intubation tube, inserting the metal bridge into the right side of Maria's mouth, rotating it to the left to slide her tongue out of the way while pushing it towards the roof of her mouth so they could view the glottis, vocal cords, and trachea. Doreen was already inserting a breathing tube through the tube into the laryngoscope to assist the Major in breathing, unable to intubate a conscious person due to gag reflex. During the time it took her to do that, Doctor Green saw the heartrate and blood pressure drop even further, critically so.

"Chief? I'm going to need the AED." The Veterinarian told the former Navy Corpsman, who nodded in compliance. Doctor Hansen just looked at her oddly.

"Have you ever used one before? I haven't." The biologist asked quietly, obviously realizing fully that they were a bit out of their depths.

"They make those things with color-friendly placards in English and Spanish for anyone to barbecue their first human being. But I have trained with one." Doreen replied. "On… pigs."

Maya just looked at her.

"There were more Vets in the Wild West than there were Medical Doctors. Guess who patched people back up then?" Doreen was taking a pair of medical sheers and cutting open the front of the SHIELD Agent's shirt, baring her torso and sports bra as Chief Jackson came back with a handheld portable defibrillator unit. Doreen was putting the first adhesive lead by Maria's right shoulder, just under the collar bone, and then the second one under her left armpit. Humans were, by nature, semi-conductive, and the leads were to direct the current that would depolarize the sinoartial node, the heart's natural pacemaker. The problem was that with an arrhythmic pulse, fibrillation would cause heart damage. They would have to wait until Maria's heart reached an asystolic state.

Flatline.

Doctor Hansen was connecting the wires to the leads placed on Maria as Chief Jackson set the Automatic Emergency Defibrillator to it's lowest setting; 120 amperes. Doreen kept her eye on the monitoring equipment, her heart breaking as she saw the pulse get slower… fainter… beep… beep… beep…

…gone.

"Clear!" Green nodded to the Chief as the former Navy Corpsman pushed the activation button to pump Maria Jacoba Hill's body with 120 Amps of current. Despite Hollywood bullshit, a body didn't 'jump' with defibrillation. It did jerk slightly, and there was a beep on the medical monitoring equipment, a single note breaking the dial tone of asystolsis; cardiac arrest. But only one. "Fifteen seconds." Doreen was already putting the pad of her left hand into the space in between the second and third rib known as the plural space, overlapping it with her right hand as she locked her elbows and set her shoulders and began to pump once a second to stimulate a heartbeat while intubation tube simulated breathing. Doreen was trying to focus on keeping her strength to a minimal as she felt Maria's chest press downward, knowing that even doing it right, cardiopulmonary resuscitation could crack ribs. And she was more than strong enough to do worse. After fifteen chest compressions, the Veterinarian removed her hands.

"Clear!"

Maria's body jerked slightly. Beep… beep… beep… be-beep… be-beep… be-beep…

"C'mon…" Doreen looked at the monitor as the pulse line, the jagged graph that showed the strength and tempo of a heart, began to make stronger and stronger waves. The pulse rate was hovering in the low forties as the blood pressure went into the one-hundred to sixty-five range; not great, but not life-threatening either. The real plus was that the heartbeat was no longer erratic and was beating at a more normal rhythm. That had Doreen sigh in relief. Hill still needed to go to an Emergency Room and get an Magnetic Resonance Image of her brain to see if being tased did anything permanent to her brain or if she was suffering any kind of cranial bleeding or swelling, but for now, she was alive and her pulse was getting stronger. "Chief, we'll need a transpo gurney and a quick chart of her information and whatever medical records we can scare up in the next minute." She saw at the front of the medical tent two men standing ready, one being Samuel Thomas Wilson and the other Clinton Francis Barton. Sam was circling his finger discreetly in the air letting her know that the bird was ready, and Doreen nodded. The two male Avengers were already striding forward as the former Navy Corpsman pulled in a collapsible gurney and set it right next to the medical bed, positioning it before moving to Doreen's side as Sam and Clint moved to the other, having to stretch over the gurney as they grabbed the bed sheet as the Doctor and SHIELD Medic were doing. "Count of three! One-two-three!" The sheet and the woman laying on it was hoisted up and over onto the transportation gurney in as level a manner as they could, the monitors still showing decent-enough vitals to make the short flight. Like ambulances, MEDEVAC's needed at least a semi-stable patient for transportation, limited space and supplies being the big issue.

"Go. I'll scan and text you a chart. Me and Doctor Hansen got this." Chief Jackson said as Doctor Green nodded, moving to the rear end of the gurney as Sam took the front, already beginning to push it towards the waiting Quinjet. Doreen couldn't help but look at Maria's prone, unconscious form as she pushed the gurney out of the medical tent and towards the aircraft, having but one thought as she did so.

Not one fucking more, HYDRA. Not on my watch.


Author's Notes: Probably a bit unexpected for Maria to get tased, but I needed Rollins to be free. So I came up with a decent escape plan. There will be some add-on to this in later chapters. But you have an idea who might be in charge, as I named them.

And thanks to readership, I realized that I had utterly goofed and had been calling Jack Rollins 'Collins' by accident thanks to a typo in my 'names' list to keep names straight. Whoops. I corrected it in this chapter.

Now… I'm not a medical professional of any kind. Combat Life Saver courses are nice for shoving tampons into bullet holes and keeping the red stuff in your body, but not much more than that. But much of the information I put down should be correct as I did research when I wrote a story about a Navy Corpsman. And I do joke a little bit about the AED, what most might recognize as the portable defibrillator. I might joke that the placard is in multiple languages and in color-friendly palate, but it probably can be operated by a 5 year old and save your life. I fully approve. And the 'tags' do go right shoulder and left arm pit to 'direct' the current to your heart.

The Resolute has been the desk for many consecutive Presidents (save George Herbert Walker Bush) and was made from a recovered British vessel, donated by Queen Victoria herself.

And I mentioned that Kamala would be taken in by Jenn, but I made it official in what I think is a bit of a touching manner.

I had to come up with a reason why Jack Collins wanted to be in in HYDRA in the first place. So I came up with a bunch of asshole ones.

Both Jack and Maria mention the Unix Y2K38 Problem. On January 19, 2038, at 03:14:07 AM of whatever Time Zone it happens to be in, the signed 32-bit integer counter timer that is present in all complex processors will time out. It is theorized that this with either time out all higher-functioning computers and associated electronics, or put them in an endless loop where no further operation can be done. So the thing that everyone was crying about with Y2K (which was a GUI calender so you knew that date and year and I knew to be BS by 1997) is actually in 2038. While 64-bit and unsigned 32-bit systems won't be affected by this problem, anything that needs time and updates (like just about every internet-capable device such as your cell phone, your tablet, and your X-Box and Playstation, even the brand-new spanking ones) will cease to function. I don't recommend changing the date to January 20, 2038 to see if this will affect you or not unless you like having a computer that doesn't function properly again.

I know it sounds silly to have two Doctors that aren't MD's in a medical tent… but it's probably true that Doctors of many a kind probably do have some basic first aid under their belts. Like being a cop, the title 'Doctor' isn't one that's only activated between the hours of 9 to 5 after all. During WWII, many Doctors of many varieties served as medics, triage, and medical practitioners with would likely equal basic first and with some extra training, though surgery was almost done by actual licensed surgeons.

There are two ways to intubate someone, nasal and laryngeal; fancy words for 'nose' and 'throat'. The nasalintubation tube is really not much more than a rubber hose beveled on one end with a cup on another that is done on conscious people as shoving a tube down someone's throat will activate their gag reflex (no puns or bad jokes about this, this is factually true). It is uncomfortable as hell having someone shove one in your nostril, but if you need to breath… you'll take it. The laryngoscope is the big-boy term for the plastic or metal J-curve device meant to open ones' mouth to expose the back of the throat clearly; which is why it possesses the names 'larynx' and 'scope', to see the back of your throat. A tube is inserted into your esophagus when you have lost consciousness and cannot breath on your own.

I also mention that Doreen tilts Maria's chin upward when performing CPR, though this isn't actually necessary. When doing Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, you do tilt the head back and chin up to that you are giving air to the lungs and not the stomach (some how, we're evolved like that). But since Maria had a tube in her throat, this wouldn't be necessary at all. But I like being informative, and if you ever need to perform CPR, now you know. I have performed CPR six times in my life (to include an Iraqi and an Afghan), and even insisted in a tracheal intubation; that's when they cut the bottom of your esophagus right above the collar bone and insert a tube, what some people might know as the 'Trach Ring' or for some older ones of us, a particular episode in ER. This method is a last resort or when you don't have much of a face left anymore.

The comment about Veterinarians being impromptu Medical Doctors is true somewhat. Back in the old West, Veterinarians were very much needed (livestock) and it was more likely to see a Vet in an old West town than a Doctor (traveling doctors wasn't just a saying). Since they were the only person with medicine and the knowledge to use it, there are actual real accounts of Vets also helping people as much as animals. I imagine that is still true today in third-world countries where medical facilities and personnel aren't so guaranteed as they are in first-world nations.

And if you do have a taser or a stun gun, don't aim for the neck. While not necessarily lethal, it can cause several problems to the brain and sensitive connections that can lead to blindness, paralysis, coma, stroke, or death. I don't think you want an involuntary manslaughter charge zapping someone. Best places to hit are the right shoulder (most people are right handed), a leg (see what a cramp can do? But worse), or the diaphragm (that will bring a man down for sure).