"The laser isn't working." Jemma said, frowning at the failure of the laser cutter on Bashful's failure to even make a mark on one of the thorny plants covering the HUB.
"There was a dragon when this happened before." Hildy said. "I don't think fire can hurt the thorns. Are you sure that someone wouldn't want to lock my brothers up for doing this? So our teacher can come down from the tree and so our other teacher might come back from the hills? His husband's really upset."
"Dragons are real?" Fitz said.
Hela nodded. "Most real. I have a book. Actually, I have several books that you might find interesting on them. The chapters on the space dragons might prove most useful intelligence for Shield some day. I'll send them along as soon as this is taken care of." If they could find a way to fix the problem. She had written a letter and sent it to her grandmother by Ikol, but there had been no reply yet, and scientific attempts to tackle the thorn problem didn't seem to have achieved much.
"Okay, heat and lasers aren't going to do this if these things can stand up to dragons, which I am really alarmed to learn are real." Skye said. "What about cold?"
"Liquid nitrogen, maybe?" Fitz said.
"It could make it harder to analyze a sample." Jemma said as she considered the situation. But if it was their only option, maybe she could make it work. Possibly spraying the liquid further back on a thorny fine would cause a larger section to break away and leave her with a sample untouched by the cold to examine. "I think I can do it, though. Call Bashful back, Fitz, and let's get him set up with the liquid nitrogen."
"It looks like it's doing something." Skye said a few minutes later as they watched the liquid being sprayed onto a thorny branch at least a good food away from the tip through the monitors.
"Alright." Jemma said. "Let's see if Bashful can break it off, and…" But before she could finish the sentence, the vines surrounding the branch they were attempting to break were moving, lashing out, and Fitz was barely able to pull the dwarf back in time to keep it from being smashed.
"Are those things alive? And I mean in a way that plants normally aren't alive?" Skye demanded.
"I don't think so." Hela said, but after a moment's thought she added. "I'm afraid it might not be beyond the realm of possibility that they have a degree of intelligence, though."
"Any luck?" Coulson asked as he came over.
"Does bad luck count?" Fitz said. "I'm going to have to run a diagnostic on Bashful to make sure there isn't damage. I think one of those fines might have grazed him."
"There's nothing? Nothing at all?"
"I'm very sorry, Sir." Jemma said. "I'm sure that I could tell you more and hopefully develop a plan to deal with this if I had samples to work with, but I'm afraid taking the samples is proving to be rather problematic to say the least."
"Maybe Agent Hand will appreciate getting to take a nice nap?" Skye offered. "She might be a lot less grumpy when she wakes up."
"I don't think she's going to be in a good mood if she wakes up to find out that we failed to rescue her from a hundred year nap." Coulson replied.
"The cold did seem to damage the thorns." Fitz looked up from where he was examining Bashful for a moment as he spoke. "The problem is that the other vines reacted to the exposure before we could do anything. Maybe if we could make a colder spray or a wider spray?"
"I do have a number of citizens of Helheim who have the gift of cold manipulation." Hela offered. "And some of my own gifts can create an intense cold as well. But I would be very concerned about using such things without knowing that the people trapped inside might not be endangered as a result."
"That's the problem I see too, Sir." Jemma said. "Trying to find a way to get through the thorns or at least to examine them to try to find a way to get through them that isn't going to endanger innocent people inside the building."
Coulson wanted to scream, or at least ask Hela if her father might be interested in taking a few minutes out from his punishment to drop by for another go at stabbing him. Stabbing and death or a long stay in medical would at least spare him from having to deal with this. The HUB was surrounded by thorns that there seemed to be no way through, and hundreds of his co-workers, including Victoria and Jasper were trapped inside, facing a hundred years of sleep if they couldn't figure out some way to save them. How could this possibly get worse?
Before he had a chance to curse himself for thinking that, Coulson heard a plane, and looked up to see another aircraft with Shield markings approaching.
Worse, this was definitely much worse, and if he didn't think it would totally destroy Fitz and Jemma's moral, he would moan or beat his head against something, was Coulson's first thought when he heard John Garrett's familiar voice a few minutes later after the new plane had landed.
"Phil, what did your people do to Vic?" John called, staring in shock at the HUB and the thorns covering it for a moment before hurrying to join the group with Trip following him. "She wasn't in a good mood this morning, and was threatening to remove things if I didn't get the paperwork I was behind on in, but this…. What did your people do?"
"Why does everyone assume that my team did something to provoke her?" Coulson said. "Never mind." He said before John could give the details on exactly why people might suspect his team of being the ones to aggravate Victoria. "Some sort of inter-dimensional artifact caused this. We're trying to figure out a way to fix it now."
"What? What happened?" John demanded. Thinking that this was the result of Vic dealing with Coulson and his team was one thing, something he could laugh off, but he didn't like the sound of an artifact being involved at all.
"I'm very sorry." Hela said. "I'm Lady Hela of Asgard, queen of Helheim and Neiffheim, and these are my brothers Jormangundr, Fenrir and Sleipnir, my maid and friend Leah and my apprentice Hildy. A group of Asgardian children took a very dangerous artifact and tossed it off the Bifrost into your realm. By the time we arrived to try to recover it, it had already been activated. I'm very sorry."
Asgardian? If Fury knew something Asgardian was on the loose again, he would be going nuts. John almost smiled at the picture that created in his head before remembering the situation at hand, the HUB covered with thorns due to some alien thing and Vic trapped inside. "What's the timeline on fixing this? What does the thing do anyway, besides causing a lot of plant growth?"
"Have you ever heard the Sleeping Beauty story?" Skye said before Coulson could think up a way to gently tell John that the timeline on fixing things might be a hundred years. "If you have, think of that. Everyone inside the building's going to be taking a nap for the next hundred years if we don't figure out a way to get inside. And you know, even if we do get inside, Agent Hand's the one who has to get true love's kiss to wake everyone up, right? Am I the only one sensing that's going to be a way bigger problem than the thorns?"
"What?" John's eyes went wide with shock. "Phil, she's kidding, isn't she?"
Coulson shook his head as he motioned for John to take a look at the footage of Victoria's office, still broadcasting from Sleepy. "They're asleep, all of them, and unless we're able to get in, and figure a way to reverse this once we get inside, everyone in the building might honestly spend the next hundred years fast asleep."
