Things weren't easy after that. May had tried chasing after Creel on a motorcycle but she couldn't catch him without blowing her stealth mode.
Fitz wouldn't be able to engineer cloaking for them, so they had to steal it. That's what the mission was about. Even though Hartley and Idaho had gotten killed for it.
Tripp and Daisy landed back at the base where Coulson commended them for getting the quinjet.
"Where's mom?" Daisy asked, not seeing her anywhere.
"She's fine. She went after Creel and I had to stop her. We need to know who he answers to." Coulson informed her.
"That thing that messed up Hartley's arm, it had the same symbols you have me looking into." Daisy told him. "They came up out of it like Braille, like Hartley triggered something by touching it."
"What the hell is that thing?" She asked.
"I don't know, but good work."
Skye stopped in her steps.
"Good work? After a month of combing the planet for this stuff how about 'Holy crap Daisy we gotta get on that!'" She retorted.
"We have more important problems. A five alarm fire otherwise known as Lance Hunter."
Hunter had been captured and if he talked they would have to burn the base and evacuate. Something they really didn't want to do.
Daisy tried to convince her father to let her go back into the field but he refused.
"I need to get back out there and help mom bring him in. She's my SO, I can handle myself. We need to get Creel and that object back." Daisy argued.
"Your mother can do this. If you want to help, go down to the bunks and pack up Hartley's things." He told her.
Daisy walked away frustrated but understanding. She grieved for the agents they lost, packing up Hartley's things slowly.
May tracked Creel to a diner. Watching him for over an hour. Coulson stayed on comms with May, who told him Creel was either waiting for a drop or getting drunk.
Suddenly, a scream let out. May ran inside to see what was going on.
She found a waitress on the floor, turning to stone.
"Please help me." She pled.
"Hold on." May said, to no use. The woman turned to stone, she was dead.
Once authorities arrived, May went outside. What she didn't expect was to bump into a flurry of red hair.
"May?" A familiar voice said.
"Nat?" May was confused.
"Nat?" Coulson said in her ear.
Natasha Romanoff had burst into the diner.
"What are you doing?" May asked, confused.
"I was tracking Creel. Trying to snuff out Hydra." Natasha answered.
"So was I." May answered.
People began staring so Natasha suggested they move outside.
May lead her back to her motorcycle.
"So SHIELD's still out there then?" Natasha asked.
"Did you think we really disbanded?" May answered.
"No but Hill's working for Stark and Fury is a ghost."
May sighed.
"I can tell you everything, but not here." May glanced around.
"So you're Director now? Fury passed the burden to someone he trusts."
"Just follow me." May hopped on her bike.
Natasha climbed in her car and followed May all the way back to the base and into the hangar.
"What the hell is this?" Natasha looked around. She saw the vehicles, the bus, the quinjet.
"An old SSR base. We use it as our base of operations." May answered. "Just brace yourself."
With a deep breath, she lead Natasha into the base. This wasn't going to be pretty.
Natasha looked around the base as they walked in, and people stared at her, whispering and nudging each other.
"This is going to be a little bit of a shock." May warned her.
"Not much shocks me anymore May." Natasha smarted.
May led her up to Coulson's office and opened the door.
Once they stepped inside, Natasha did indeed stop in her tracks, shocked.
"Hi Nat." Coulson greeted.
Natasha regained her composure.
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Fury faked his death why not yours too." she said.
"On the contrary. My death was real. Fury used an alien made drug to bring me back." Coulson said.
"Seriously, nothing should surprise me anymore." Natasha said with two fingers on the bridge of her nose. "Okay, so I'm guessing I can't tell anyone?"
"I'd appreciate it." Coulson said.
"Okay, but I'm going to help. I've known Hydra is still out there, Creel is the proof. And I have a feeling you're a lot farther in the search than the government." She grossed her arms.
"How close are they?" May asked.
"They think Hydra has been eliminated." Natasha deadpanned.
"Of course they do." May rolled her eyes.
"How have you gotten your intel?" Natasha asked.
May sighed.
"What?" Natasha was nervous for the answer.
"One of our own was a sleeper. We took him to Fury's secret base, trusted him with our lives, and he ended up being Hydra. He's locked in a basement cell here." Coulson told her.
"What? Are you torturing him for information?" Natasha grinned.
"Not exactly." May said.
"He had kind of a thing for another member of our team." Coulson said.
May noted he didn't mention the member was their daughter. No more surprises for now then.
"He talks to her. Claims he wants to help her." Coulson finished.
"I'm glad that's not me." Natasha said.
"He turned us on to a frequency Hydra was using to contact Creel, we followed it and-"
Coulson was cut off by Daisy coming in the room.
"Hey, Dad I-" she stopped dead in her tracked at the sight of Natasha.
"You, you're..." she stammered.
May sighed again. So much for keeping that a secret for a little while.
"Dad?" Natasha turned to Coulson.
"Natasha, meet Daisy. She's my daughter." Coulson said.
"When did THAT happen? Because I've known you since I was picked up by SHIELD and never knew about this and there is no WAY she's that young." Natasha looked Daisy over, making the other woman uncomfortable.
"She's actually only a few years younger than you." Coulson said calmly.
"What-? How-?" Natasha stammered, which May and Coulson were both truly amused at. It wasn't easy to get this kind of reaction out of the Black Widow.
"When she was a year old and she was abducted. May and I just found her again a little over a year ago."
At that information, Natasha actually made a really confused face and turned to May, who raised her eyebrows.
"You and...? When did that happen?" Natasha raised her voice.
Daisy had backed herself into a corner, away from the other three.
"We were actually married for a few years. We had Daisy, Hydra abducted her, and we ended up divorcing. Coulson recruited me to fly his plane, we picked Daisy up in LA and a few months later when she was shot a DNA test was ran. And here we are." May shrugged as if this was all completely normal.
"But!" Natasha turned to look for Daisy. She spotted her in the corner and stared her down again.
She did indeed look like May, but something about her was very obviously Coulson too. She held eye contact with the red head and Natasha saw May's eyes looking back at her.
"Anything else?" She asked.
"Daisy is the person our captive Hydra agent likes to talk to." Coulson said casually.
"Okay." Natasha paced a little bit. Then she turned around, she wanted to properly introduce herself to the daughter of the woman who had trained her.
"It's nice to meet you Daisy, I'm-"
"The Black Widow." Skye finished for her. "Everyone here knows who you are."
"Yes well, May was my SO, she meant a lot to me back then, still does. I'm glad she found you." Natasha smiled.
"She's mine too, hopefully I can be as good as you one day." Daisy smiled.
Natasha noted how pretty the smile was.
"With her genes to go with the training, I have no doubt."
Now that everyone was comfortable with each other, they sat down to catch Natasha up with the intel Ward had given them so far.
The woman was amazed at how far they had gotten, but when you had a Hydra hostage who had a crush on one of your agents, she supposed it was a lot easier.
The frequency Creel was using popped back up with a phone number on it. Tripp remarked that maybe Creel was lonely. But they decided to call it.
It ended up being Raina, a thorn in their side for months.
For a few minutes she seemed to be antagonizing them. Then she made it clear she was no longer working for Hydra, they didn't have the same endgame she did. She wanted the Obelisk to be kept by someone who understood it. She said Garrett did and she was thinking Coulson might too.
That seemed to trigger something in him, something unpleasant. Natasha watched the exchange on the phone with curiosity.
Raina claimed she had embedded a tracker in Creel and they had better hurry, he was growing pretty unstable.
"The moment that tracker's frequency comes through I want everyone on the move." Coulson told them.
"We'll get prepped." Natasha modded.
"No." Coulson stopped her, "you'll draw too much attention."
"You're kidding right?" Natasha grumbled.
"I'm really not. SHIELD still has to stay in the shadows. If someone recognizes you it will draw all sorts of questions." Coulson told her.
Natasha crosses her arms. "I've been hunting Hydra for months."
"You can be on comms with me but for right now, we need you to stay here." Coulson told her.
Daisy didn't know how to feel about this. She and the other agents were going on a mission and leaving the Black Widow behind.
They were in all place when the tracker went live. After Coulson confirmed they would be going after Creel, all went silent.
Chaos ensued. Hunter iced everyone and seized the gun Tripp was going to use, with armor piercing rounds in it. But since he wasn't exactly sneaky about it, Creel was prepared and it didn't work.
Coulson ended up having to be out in the open with Fitz design to neutralize Creel, much to May's displeasure. He wasn't supposed to be out in the field.
And then he actually proposed Hunter stay on as an agent, although he assured him May savored a grudge and she had been iced by him. That part almost had Hunter consider running off.
Coulson really just needed Hunter to sell him out to Talbot. They delivered Creel to him in a frozen truck, warning him to keep him a little more secure this time. Talbot laughed and asked why he should take them seriously considering government intel showed them not having anywhere near enough ammo to be considered a threat.
He was proven wrong when the bus uncloaked with a gun aimed at him and Coulson stepped into a nearby cloaked quinjet to take off. From there on out they would be leaving little presents for Talbot and he would leave them alone.
"See why you couldn't be part of this mission?" Coulson asked Natasha when he got back to base.
"Fair enough." She said. Talbot would have recognized her and the government would have wondered what the hell she was doing. "But I'm helping when I can. When I can stay covert."