KellHound270's Work

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Hello, everybody! Welcome to chapter 1 of Hail to the Queen!

Now, there's not much to say here, so go ahead and read, and don't forget to review!

Chapter I

Temple of the Moth, Yunnan Province, China

Hank walked through the stone labyrinth of the Temple of the Moth. He was perplexed as to why Monarch was stationed in a Chinese temple dedicated to moths. Of course, he knew next to nothing about why he was here, so he kept himself from making assumptions.

"Dr. Pym?" a feminine voice called. Hank turned his head to see who called to him.

He was face-to-face with a middle-aged woman, about his age, who bore the look of a seasoned scientist. She was of Asiatic descent, her hair dark and her eyes deep brown.

"That's me," he replied, extending his hand.

The woman shook it. "Dr. Mina Ling. I was the one who requested your presence."

"I was about to ask about that." Hank followed Dr. Ling through the labyrinth. "Why am I here?"

"Your work on insects has been exemplary," she explained. "So much so, we think you may like to see what we have."

"Now I'm really interested."

Ling led Hank into a lab. It was filled with monitors, displaying various measurements, from radiation to temperature to heart rate.

Wait, heart rate? Hank thought.

He looked out the window opposite to him. It opened into a massive cavern, with an ancient platform in the middle. Atop the platform was an enormous, ellipsoidal object, approximately the same size as many tanks he had seen.

The object glowed a steady cyan color, with a few spots appearing in pulses. These pulses did nothing to change the color of the room, but they were bright enough to be noticed.

"What is this?" Hank wondered aloud.

"We're not sure," Ling answered. "The bio-scans we've taken show a creature similar to caterpillars. That's why we brought you in, because you were S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best entomologist."

"That thing has a creature inside it?"

"Yes, Dr. Pym. We believe it's an egg."

Hank ran his hand through his hair. He couldn't believe what he was seeing: A caterpillar egg the size of a tank?

"There's gonna be one heluva big baby."

California

"So what brings you to Earth, Miss Vers?" Fury asked.

Fury and Coulson had earlier confronted Vers about her strange appearance in Los Angeles, but they were cut off when 'Skrulls' (shapeshifting aliens, according to Vers) attacked them. Fury had fought a Skrull who sat in the passenger seat of his car, pretending to be Coulson, and wrecked the car, killing it.

Now, Fury was conversing with Vers in a bar out in the middle of nowhere. She had come here for reasons unknown to both of them.

"You know the primary reason I'm here," she replied.

"Oh, right. You're here to investigate who Dr. Wendy Lawson is and stop the Skrulls from acquiring her research. My bad. What's your secondary reason you're here?"

Vers' gaze suddenly went blank. Fury could tell she was trying to pull something from her memory.

"I feel like I have a history here," she explained. "But I don't know what it is. It's like my mind has been wiped clean."

"And you're trying to piece it back together?" Fury asked.

"I hope I can."

"Well, let's start with Project Pegasus. Where do we go?"

"To the installation, first of all."