Phil Coulson had not been expecting a call at six in the evening, December 23rd. While SHIELD wasn't really an organization where you could expect holiday time, and it wasn't like he had family outside of the job, things that time of year were usually at least slow. International threats liked to take it easy around Christmas as much as anyone. He'd been out of the office, heading back to his job-provided apartment, and trying to make up his mind about whether he'd grab takeout or have something delivered.
And then he got the call that the NYPD had picked up something at the New York Public Library that was right up his alley. As he walked past the famous lions on an evening that was just dropping below freezing, he was quietly hoping for ectoplasm on the card catalogs and maybe a full-torso apparition.
"Coulson. SHIELD. I was invited," he showed his badge to the uniform on duty, who peered at it before deciding that it looked sufficiently official. SHIELD still wasn't as well known as the organizations with only three-letter abbreviations, but the rank-and-file was at least vaguely aware of them.
"It's a weird one. You're the ones that do weird, right?" the officer asked. The guy whose name tag said "Saunders" was short and dark haired. He radioed ahead to his supervisor, "Got the guy from SHIELD here." After a return squawk from the radio, he pointed across the lobby and said, "They've got everybody in the exhibition hall."
Coulson nodded and headed across the floor, his way cleared through the interested citizens by several officers controlling access. He could see even more officers spread out inside the big room for exhibits. A uniformed sergeant, stockier, older, and with thinning hair met him at the door. His own tag said "Silva." "What can you tell me, sergeant?" Coulson asked, peering through the door, where he could make out at least half a dozen people in Santa Claus costumes cuffed and seated in a line against the wall, officers warily watching them. It looked like the room had acquired a ton of the historical technology exhibits that should have still been at the Stark Expo, if it hadn't been turned into a disaster area over the summer.
"Some real Home Alone shit," Silva opined. "Santas attacking kids in the underground stacks, and getting knocked out and tied up. By the kids."
"Kids?" Coulson's eyes widened and he stepped far enough in to look at the rest of the room. If the briefings were right about who was in the city for the holidays…
Yep, there was Harry Potts and two of his school friends, off to the side of the hall, not in handcuffs, but clearly also not free to leave. The boy noticed him after a moment, said something to the other two, and they grinned and waved at him.
Coulson was sure he was going to regret not getting dinner before this.
"Have you debriefed them yet?" he asked the sergeant.
"Said they should probably only talk to SHIELD. They're why we thought to call you so early," Silva shrugged. "Sounds like you've run into this group before?"
"Officially, he's not Iron Man's sidekick," Coulson deadpanned, after giving up on trying to succinctly explain their actual relationship. "Yeah. Trouble seems to find him. I'll do the debrief. Thanks, sergeant."
Silva motioned to the officers guarding the kids to pull back as Coulson walked over. They'd been corralled near Howard Stark's early prototype flying car. Coulson grinned slightly to himself about his own, better piece of memorabilia. "Phil!" Harry said as he walked over into earshot. "I'm glad they sent someone I know."
"More of a chance than you'd expect," he nodded. "I handle a lot of the weird stuff."
"Like hammers in the desert," Harry nodded with a shrewd look. Coulson gave nothing away, so the kid continued, "These are my friends Dean and Hermione. Dean lives here—in New York City, not at the library—and Hermione's over with her parents for the holidays."
Coulson nodded at the two kids. He'd gotten a thorough briefing on Dean Thomas from the paintball excursion that Romanoff and Barton had been on. He was less familiar with the girl, though she'd been flagged as a close contact. He was pretty sure her last name was Granger, and that she was a British national. "Should we have a solicitor?" she asked, her accent removing all doubt.
"Only if you're suspects instead of witnesses," he informed her. Besides a quick glance at one another to confirm nobody was planning on saying anything that made them sound like suspects, none of them followed up on that. "Okay, what can you tell me about what happened?"
Again, another of those quick looks, which clearly elected Harry Potts as spokesman for the group. Coulson filed away that the three were tight enough to have that level of silent communication. Harry leaned back against the hover-car and began, "I was a little surprised that we were all going to be in New York for Christmas…"
It had been a pretty tense semester at school. Between rat and relationship problems, Harry was excited to get a few weeks off. Because ground had finally been broken on Stark Tower in Manhattan, Tony and Aunt Pepper were spending a lot more time in New York, so had figured it would be fun to be there for Christmas. And since Dean already lived in town, Harry's aunt had gone ahead and invited his other friends' families.
It was probably better that the Patils hadn't felt comfortable with it. Things were still a little tense with Parvati. It had turned out to be hard, dating the school's biggest gossip…
Granger interrupted, "Harry, I don't think Agent Coulson wants to hear about our relationship drama, no matter how dramatic it's turning out to be."
"I've met teenagers before," Coulson nodded. "So you came to New York with Mr. Thomas, Ms. Granger, and Ms. Granger's parents?"
"How did you…" Potts said, realizing he knew the girl's last name. "Oh, right, SHIELD. Yeah, everyone got to come over on Tony's jet, after we got back to London…"
It turned out Tony had gone ahead and long-term rented the top two floors of one of the hotels right off of Grand Central Station overlooking the Stark Tower construction site behind it. He had basically everyone at the company that was involved in the project and didn't already live in the city put up at the hotel. Tony claimed it was cheaper than arranging a bunch of short-term apartments that were convenient and secure. Harry figured it wasn't actually that cost-effective, but Aunt Pepper wasn't complaining, so they at least must have gotten some deal on it. Regardless, they got to spend the winter break in a swanky hotel with an excellent view and access to a bunch of places. A bunch.
For all that London was at least as dense, Hermione was as much a suburb kid as Harry was. And Dean really hadn't gotten to spend that much time just getting to do what he wanted in central Manhattan. But very quickly the parents had gotten exhausted trying to keep up with them and decided that three teenagers ought to be able to wander around the city on their own recognizance, as long as they were ready to press the panic buttons on their phones.
"I'm assuming you didn't use the panic buttons before dealing with these Santas?" Coulson checked, already mentally drafting his report for both Fury and Ms. Potts.
"Turns out all the stone downstairs plus the metal shelves really messes up cell service," Potts nodded. "We texted them we were okay when we got out. But I'll get there. Anyway…"
They'd spent as much time in the big nearby comics shop as Hermione could stand. They'd been up and down the Chrysler building. They'd been all over Grand Central. They'd even become regulars at the bistro under the Park Avenue Viaduct. But they'd taken until the 23rd to finally devote a day to going to the famous public library.
Hermione was sure that she'd need at least a day.
They'd done the reading room. They'd visited the exhibits. They'd consoled Hermione that she didn't actually have a New York address to get a library card so she could check anything out. Over the course of the day, they'd gradually become suspicious of all the people they saw dressed in Santa Claus costumes funneling through the lobby as the trio passed from one point of interest to another. They were never going upstairs, only down, into the stacks. Hermione had already been informed the public was only allowed into the stacks on special tours, which she'd already missed for the day.
It was Dean that clocked that the Santas all seemed very aware of the security cameras, moving for the staff-only hallway while they'd be in a blindspot of the rotating devices. There was a weird way of loitering and looking, when you were trying to avoid video. Not that Dean had ever done it, of course, but some of his cousins had mentioned how to do it, and it was obvious when you were seeing it. Of course.
But maybe it was a special Santa performance? There was probably no need to bother the library staff telling them wild stories about a team of Jolly Old Saints Nick invading the building. They'd almost certainly be told it was nothing. They were often told that it was nothing. And Hermione was desperate to get a look.
"I wasn't desperate!" Granger insisted. "While, yes, I do consider it slightly unfair that the bulk of the library's collection is only able to be requested, not perused, I understand that this is a logical way of going about it with one of the busiest libraries in the world with one of the most valuable collections. You both manipulated me! I was manipulated. Don't make me out to be the instigator here!" she pouted.
Coulson nodded, "So Ms. Granger was convinced it was okay to investigate by yourselves rather than telling the staff because it would mean getting a look at the book stacks?"
"Uh. Pretty much?" Potts admitted.
Honestly, Coulson was really starting to doubt Romanoff's theory that these kids were at a secret MI-6 school. Thomas was the most composed of the three, but nothing about his background indicated why he'd be invited to such an academy, unless his unknown biological father happened to be a former double-oh. Granger was clearly bookish and brilliant, but even the analysts Coulson had met in most spy organizations were harder to read. And Potts… also had no real tradecraft, but at least seemed to have a handle on his own secrets.
The thing that really rankled the agent was that interviewing the three kids was like dealing with certain highly-skilled operatives. They weren't afraid of him. They weren't afraid of the cops. They were just worried about tipping the authorities off to how much they could do if they needed to escape.
Maybe they'd let something slip if they kept going. "So you did the same trick of waiting for the blind spot on the cameras, and went into the stacks yourselves?" Coulson prompted.
"It really is very interesting down there!" Granger allowed. "You know that they built the stacks out of steel to prevent any chance of organic contamination? You can even see the Carnegie steel impressions on some of the shelves…"
Potts interrupted her before she could get too far on the tangent. "But the Santas weren't there to appreciate the classic engineering…"
They'd managed to catch sight of a flash of red and white as the Santa they'd followed descended into the stacks and followed, occasionally having to drag Hermione along to keep her from stopping to browse. Even Harry and Dean had to admit the dense collection of books was pretty impressive. They'd all seen big libraries, of course, but the enclosed area and metal shelving really made it feel like a secret vault full of all the world's knowledge. And it wound down and down into the bowels of the sub-basements beneath the library.
The lack of actual staff was a curiosity. Surely in order for the whole process to work—putting in book orders up in the reading room and having them delivered—there must be librarians below to find the books and put them in the delightfully-classic book elevators. They were probably short-staffed due to the impending holiday, but the trio wondered if something else was going on to draw off the staff while the increasingly-suspicious Santas descended, little suspecting that three teens were following in their wake.
Or at least, they assumed they were following undetected until they got several floors down and a man's voice echoed along the steel shelving. "If you've brought a great dane, we're in real trouble. You haven't got a dog, have you?"
While they did know a teacher with an extremely large boarhound back at school, they obviously didn't have the dog with them and asked, "Is that… a Scooby Doo reference?"
"I'd say that you're familiar with the classics, at least, but I suppose they keep remaking it," the voice yelled. "Harry Potts, I presume. And friends."
"I'm really not that famous," Harry demurred, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. It wasn't amplified, but the combination of thick steel and dense paper did odd things to the acoustics. He motioned for Dean and Hermione to take different aisles so they wouldn't all get pinned in between the same bookshelves.
The man continued, his voice seeming to move, "And yet, we get periodicals down here. Your look is distinctive. I've hacked the camera feed and saw you in the lobby. With the Stark tower going up down the way, there was a small but non-zero chance that I'd see someone related to that organization cross my path. And I don't imagine Tony Stark has much nostalgia for bound texts." The accent was flat and American, maybe a local.
"This is very creepy," Harry said, reaching the end of his row and seeing a flicker of movement that wasn't red and white several aisles down to his left. "We just wanted to know what was up with the Santa convention in the basement."
"It's funny," the man continued, and Harry was sure that he was the flicker, the voice coming from the same location, "I'd actually built in a small but significant chance that my problem would be 'meddling kids.' But the chance that they'd come with an Iron Man chaser was vanishingly small."
"Why's that funny?" Harry asked, catching sight of Dean as he passed an aisle, who was moving to flank the voice back down the other way.
"Because if it had just been normal meddling kids," the unseen speaker explained, "I'd have a huge number of options. The fact that you can bring Tony Stark down on my impressive head limits the possibility space significantly."
Harry stepped around the corner of the aisle he thought the voice was coming from, and saw Dean move at the other end simultaneously. In the middle of the aisle, relaxing against a steel upright, was a man in jeans and a hoodie. He'd have been an unassuming middle-aged white guy, except for the impressively oversized head.
"Macrocephaly," Granger interjected. "That's the term. Though I suppose what he had was beyond even the normal level of disfigurement."
"I'm familiar with the case," Coulson sighed. Romanoff had just missed Dr. Samuel Sterns after the Hulk incident in Harlem earlier in the year, but had spotted someone with an enlarged cranium fleeing the scene. Their operating theory was that he'd gotten exposed to some of Banner's blood and was experiencing a mutation somewhat less than Banner's or Blonsky's. Persistent rumors of an elephant man in Manhattan had not quite reached the level of triggering a bigger investigation. But it was part of why Coulson was still local. "Go on."
The deformed man flicked a glance behind him but continued monologuing as if unconcerned he was now trapped in the aisle by the two teen boys. "You know I set up here hoping to avoid scrutiny, but I guess no one can plan for bad luck. You'd be amazed at how many of these books I've been able to read in the last few months. If I'd been going through the internet that fast, I'd have tripped some agency's monitoring and drawn SHIELD down on my location. I hope you kids are careful with what you do on the internet, they really are monitoring everything. They got me and a compatriot with one unencrypted email using codewords they'd worked out. It's really criminal."
"So… you're running from the government and hiding in the library because you can't use the internet," Harry summed up.
"Excellent synopsis!" The guy seemed a little goofy, and if he hadn't been intimating that he was a Scooby Doo villain, the kids probably wouldn't have been that bothered by him. "But, yes. It didn't hurt that there would soon be a world-class research facility in the neighborhood that I could sneak into, but at this point they'll be on alert for me so that's scrapped. I guess I'll just have to barter for funds and a way out of the country directly. It would be so much easier to work out your ransom value if you were Stark's son, instead of his girlfriend's nephew, but we do what we can with what we've got."
Harry shot a, "Can you believe this guy?" look at Dean down the aisle and asked, "So you're kidnapping us? You and the Santas?" Harry wasn't an idiot, and he glanced around to make sure he wasn't being pinned in by one or more Fathers Christmas.
"And my elaborate preparation!" the self-implied genius grinned. He leaned a shoulder into a spot on the shelves and suddenly the entire line of steelwork began to twist like a transformer. Books fell to the floor as the shelves to either side of Harry and Dean rotated free to quickly slap together into a pair of metal boxes, anchored by the ends of the rows of shelving.
It was honestly impressively fast. Harry had really good reflexes, and hadn't been able to jump out of the way. Part of it was that he really wasn't expecting that solid steel bookshelves could move like that.
"I did all this with hand tools in the middle of the night!" the man continued explaining, his voice moving to indicate that he must have also built the shelves to allow him free into another row when the ends of that one turned into mantraps. "Now, where are my associates and have they rounded up the girl yet?"
"She's fast," a man's voice sounded from somewhere deep in the stacks. "We've almost got her cornered." He didn't sound particularly jolly.
"Everything myself," their leader complained. "I've been improving them, you know. Locals looking for a leg up, better living through science."
"Why do they have to dress as Santas?" Harry shouted.
"Alpha test problems on the serums," the doctor admitted. "We'll get the facial deformations worked out in the next run. You interrupted them coming in for their checkups."
Huh. So Harry figured they were dealing with some kind of mutants. Maybe this guy had something to do with the Hulk fight, and he was yet another person trying to make super soldiers. He wondered how deformed the Santas were under those beards. He, of course, wasn't just waiting for them to catch Hermione, and assumed that Dean wasn't either. The shelf steel was sturdy, and latched together fairly well, but…
"It's not illegal to know how to pick locks, especially if you're worried you might be kidnapped," Coulson explained, when Potts' story ground to a halt.
"Is it so not illegal that we could get you or Nat to give us some more pointers?" the boy asked, hopefully.
"We'll see. I take it you managed to escape confinement without it being immediately obvious?" he prompted.
The shelf-slats had a weak point where they had been designed to ratchet at the corners, and Harry managed to bow two out enough to slip free into the aisle, and saw Dean had accomplished pretty much the same thing at the other end. They gave each other thumbs ups and slipped off into the stacks through the exit of fallen books that had, indeed, opened in the middle of the aisle.
While the guy that Harry was starting to think of as Dr. Bighead seemed inhumanly smart, there wasn't really any way he could plan for three young teenagers to have a bunch of advanced martial arts training and be better than the average kid at sneakiness. So he didn't seem aware that there were now three kids loose and hunting their hunters through the book stacks. "Don't worry," he was continuing. "I'm not going to subject any of you to the tests, since that would be unethical. Though I do have some thoughts about how the process might have much better uptake rates in adolescents, so if you want to be involved, we can probably work something out."
Harry spotted a red-and-white suit ahead, lifted a particularly hefty tome that would require a trip upstairs on the dumbwaiter rather than the smaller book lift, and managed to clock the guy in the back of the head pretty quietly. Of course, since it was a library, the thud of a book into a head and the thump of a burly man onto the floor seemed extremely loud. Harry hesitated a moment, but Dr. Bighead didn't break his exposition to comment, so he figured he'd somehow gotten away with it. Out of curiosity, he rolled the guy over and pulled down the white beard. Sure enough, in the dim lighting he could make out that the guy's face had gone lumpy enough that he'd have a hard time going out in public without comment. Six Santas would probably draw less notice coming into the library than six Toxic Avengers, even in a city full of folks that would swear they wouldn't discriminate due to disfigurement.
"Maybe two of you should just head down while two of you head up," Dr. Bighead shouted. "If she's bolting, we need to catch her. There's not really anywhere to hide, it's a bunch of shelves."
Harry grinned to himself, managing to do just that, and stepping over another fallen Santa that Dean or Hermione must have laid out. But he spotted another hustling down an aisle that might see the unconscious body soon, though hadn't spotted Harry. He set up and managed to step into the guy's midsection and throw him headfirst into the end of one of the shelving units. Carnegie steel really was built to last, even when having wannabe super soldier mutants cold cocked with it.
Unfortunately, that guy managed to scream in pain before passing out. "Sorry, guys, stealth's up," Harry warned.
"Basically done here anyway," Dean answered from three rows down as there was another Kringleish grunt of pain and then the sound of a ringing shelf.
"I've two tied up already back here!" Hermione shouted from several rows further up.
"I think that's everyone but our host, then," Harry summed up. "What were the odds, 3PO?" he taunted, as he moved toward where he'd last heard the megalomaniacal doctor, eyes peeled for any more parts of the shelving that looked like it had been trapped.
"Extremely small!" the man said as they got into line of sight with him. "Did you three take out all of them? Very quietly, too. Are you tiny ninjas? That's so cool." He glanced around, seeing that he was bracketed in on all three sides by the kids, Dean having cut through an aisle of books to face him while Hermione and Harry blocked him on either side of the row between them. "You know, the downside of learning everything from books is that combat training is hard to come by. And I'm top heavy. So I don't suppose I can talk you into negotiating a place in my plans? No? Pity. Until next time, then!"
With another backwards shove, he leaned into what seemed to be a solid wall around the central book lifts. Like the bookshelf trap, the wall bent out of his way in a mechanical action that was really interesting to look at, and a rigged bookshelf fell over to block any chance they had of following the man through his escape hatch.
"And we figured that he was either hiding somewhere we wouldn't find him, or already escaping the building," Harry summed up. "So we tied up the rest of the Santas and went to call the cops. That's about it."
"Let me go confirm some points of your story?" Coulson asked, and they shrugged in agreement. He went over to Silva and asked, "Any IDs back on the Santas?"
"Bunch of local low-lifes," Silva agreed. "But they aren't nearly that… messed up looking in their mug shots. Third-stringers at best for some of the gangs. I think they're hopped up on something."
"Oh?" Coulson prompted.
"A couple of them mentioned strange lights. Invisible kids. I'm still not sure how three kids beat up six thugs. They must have been high or something," the sergeant explained.
"Stark may have also given the children some self-defense technology, that they didn't understand," Coulson covered, but glanced shrewdly back towards Potts, who smiled innocently as he caught the look. The agent had been pretty sure they were leaving something out of their explanation of how they got the drop on the adults.
Silva shrugged in agreement. "Could be. You want us to take them to the normal cells?"
"We'll probably be by to pick them up as soon as possible, but yes. They might have enhanced strength, so be careful. Also be on the lookout for Samuel Sterns. He has a, uh, extremely large and deformed head. He was doing illegal experiments on the men, and might try to break them out. He reportedly favors surprisingly-complicated schemes."
"Only in New York. Things sure are getting weirder around here, huh?" Silva agreed, not seeming to need comment. He started rounding up the local uniforms to load the Santas up while Coulson went back over to the kids.
"You eat yet?" Potts asked.
"No," Coulson admitted. "I was about to before I got called in."
"Want to go with us to Pershing Square?" the boy offered. "That's the bistro we've been going to. It's right across from Grand Central. They take contactless payments from my phone, so we've been eating there a lot."
"You just want to see if Beth's working," Dean rolled his eyes.
"She's nice!" Harry objected. He explained to Coulson, "She's a waitress there. She plays D&D."
"Should I tell Ginny that you spent all break with a pretty blond waitress that likes D&D?" Hermione checked.
"We really should show Ginny how to play," Dean interjected, before the teen drama got out of control.
"Anyway, you coming, Agent?" Harry asked. "They do breakfast for dinner. Or they have burgers and steaks, if you want. I'm paying."
Coulson considered the professionalism of it, but shrugged as his stomach grumbled. It would give him more time to build his own theory about what was up with the trio's secretive private school. "I could eat."
I opted to go with Sterns being more goofy and less green than usual for the Leader, given Tim Blake Nelson's performance in Incredible Hulk and the screenshots I've seen of him post-transformation from the Fury's Big Week comics.
Credit to Dimension 20's second season, The Unsleeping City, for the idea of mutant Santas in NYC.
Saunders, Silva, and Beth are background characters from Avengers.