SIENNA ran out of the Los Angeles coffee shop as soon as she heard the explosion. When she exited the shop she saw a thick dark cloud of smoke emerging from the fourth story of a brick building. She picked up her walking pace as the fire trucks started arriving, she pushed her way through the crowd to see a familiar face filming the scene. Sienna grabbed the woman's arm and turned her around.
"Skye! What the hell are you doing?"
"I'm filming the explosion, duh."
"That's great, why don't you just run right in there while you're at it?"
Before Skye could answer a man jumped out of the top story window with an unconscious woman in his arms. Against her better judgment Sienna ran forward to the woman. She used her limited knowledge to figure out that the red-haired lady wasn't injured too badly. Sienna checked the woman's pulse and looked over her body to make sure there weren't any major areas of injury.
She backed away as the paramedics came forward, one even thanked her for her 'upstanding efforts' to make sure the woman was okay. After seeing that the lady was loaded into the ambulance she turned around and faced her twin sister. They turned towards the alley and walked briskly to their van.
"Want to tell me why you happened to be right there when the building exploded?" Sienna asked as she slid the van's door shut. "I swear Skye if you got yourself mixed up in some dangerous shit again."
"I didn't! Okay? I'm fine, I was just going out for a walk while you were getting food, the building exploded and I pulled out my phone to film." Skye grabbed her phone out of her pocket and proceeded to show Sienna the video of the man jumping out of the window. "Isn't it so cool? He must have super-strength or something like that!"
"No, it's not cool, it's dangerous. Skye wake up! We are 20-something year olds, who live in a van, only one of us works and I'm pretty sure there's a warrant out for your arrest somewhere. You can't be out looking for trouble, we're not teenagers anymore."
"Sienna come on!" Skye could see that this wasn't something that Sienna was going to budge on. "I—alright fine, you're right." Skye put on an extra dramatic pouty face and the two sisters erupted in laughter. It was times like these that made Sienna grateful that through everything she's been through, at least she has her sister. "Well it seems that while I was out causing trouble, you failed to get us lunch. So as a way to make it up to you, I'll go get us some food and you stay here and relax. You took the night-shift last night anyway so I'm sure you're tired."
Skye was right, Sienna was tired, she'd been picking up as many extra shifts as possible in order to make more money. "Sounds like a plan to me, I'll probably take a nap or something." Skye nodded and grabbed her wallet and coat. She exited the van and slid the door shut behind her.
Skye was going to get food for them, but she was also going to find Michael Peterson, the man who jumped out of a four-story building and survived. She had seen the man enter a diner after fleeing the scene of the burned building. She figured with any luck he'd still be there.
Sienna let her hair down from its high bun, her long dark-brown locks cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. She kicked off her boots and hung her army-green jacket on a hook that was bolted to the wall. She yawned and checked to make sure the doors were locked before laying down. She didn't need any hobos breaking into the van while she was sleeping, after a few minutes of laying there she fell into a peaceful wave of sleep.
She woke up about forty minutes later to the sound of Skye saying something into her computers mic. "You can not shield us from the truth." Sienna sat up fully and rubbed her eyes, she noticed that Skye had her computer recording. "You will not stop the Rising Tide." Suddenly the van door swung open extremely violently, Sienna was now fully awake and standing up. A large arm stuck a needle into Skye's arm and then put a cloth bag over her head.
The same guy stepped into the van and his line of sight settled on Sienna. He came at her with another needle and she side-stepped and punched the guy in the face. He opened and closed his jaw and shook his head, "Well that wasn't very nice." She threw a kick and it hit his side and sent him stumbling backwards. Sienna wasn't the best fighter, but she had some techniques, you had to know some stuff growing up in the system. Before she could react a needle was jammed into her neck from behind, a second guy caught her as her body went limp.
• • • • • • • • • • • •
Sienna woke up handcuffed to a steel table in a tiny honeycomb patterned room. She noticed Skye was also awake and was also handcuffed to the table. Slowly Sienna started remembering everything that happened, she turned toward her sister.
"You're working for the Rising Tide again?!"
"What? You're not going to ask, 'Oh Skye are you alright?' or 'Skye you good?'" Skye pretended to look extra hurt.
"Apologies, Skye are you alright? You better hope you aren't because I'm going to kick your ass!"
"Woah! Calm down Sienna! We're fine."
"We're fine? We're fine?" She scoffed. "I wouldn't call being kidnapped and handcuffed to a steel table in some ridiculous honeycombed room fine!" Suddenly the door opened and the two men who had taken them walked in. "Oh look it's the two idiots who kidnapped us."
Skye noticed the growing shiner on the younger guys face, she looked at her sister. "Did you do that?" She gestured her head toward the guy.
"I did in fact. I even kicked him in the side. Pretty good considering he seems to be someone out of the movie 'Men in Black'. It's a good movie, highly recommend."
The older man turned toward Skye, "Sorry for the lack of finesse, Agent Ward here has had a little history with your group—The Rising Tide."
"So you are hacking for them again. Damn it Skye, you said you would stop."
Skye looked at Sienna and then back at the pair of agents. "I don't know what you're..."
The younger agent, Ward, spoke up. "Okay, there are two ways we can do this."
"Oh, is one of them the easy way?" Skye asked mocking the agent, Sienna just laughed at Skye.
"No." Sienna took a deep breath.
"Listen, I know enough that you can't just keep us here and do whatever you want. We are people and we have rights, you can't just kidnap us!" Sienna spoke up, trying to look as tough as possible.
"I know her name is Skye, what's yours?" The older agent asked Sienna.
"Oh? You care about my name now? After you kidnapped us!" Neither agents answered. "It's Sienna, even though it's none of your business."
"What's your real name?" Ward asked, Sienna scrunched her face up in disapproval.
"That can wait, it's another name we need — a certain hero." The older man interrupted.
"What makes you think I know that?" Skye asked.
"Well you made a little mistake. The phone you filmed the hooded hero with had the same cryptographic signature as a few of the Rising Tide posts." Sienna looked at Skye in disapproval. "It seems to me that you're not only in trouble with us, but your sister is scaring me with that stare and I'm not even the one on the receiving end of it."
"Wow. Yeah. Was that a mistake? Or am I now sitting in the center of your secret headquarters? What is this? A plane? I got inside, and by now you've realized you can't beat the encryption on my equipment, so you got nothing."
"We have a fairly strong coincidence — you being on the scene right before it went up in flames." The older man dropped a file in front of Skye.
"Did you blow up the building to draw the hooded man out?" Ward asked.
"Did you?" Sienna asked coming to Skye's defense.
"That's not our style." The older guy answered, Sienna scoffed once again.
"We were just kidnapped by your 'style' and I'm pretty sure Mr. 'Tough Guy' over there is still salty about the fact that I got a couple hits off on him."
"SHIELD has covered up everything, I'm not surprised that you'd be covering up Centipede too." Skye said. Ward not so covertly mouthed 'centipede' to the older agent with a confused look on his face. "Holy no way." Skye chuckled. "You don't know what that is. Billions of dollars of equipment at your disposal, and I beat you with a laptop that I won in a bet?" Skye laughed again.
"What is Centipede?" Ward got in Skye's face.
"Hey! Back off, get away from her." Sienna pulled against her handcuffs. Skye nodded towards Sienna signaling it was fine, Skye explained how Centipede was on the web and how she traced the access point back to the building.
"Your guy's in danger." The older man said to Skye.
"Then let me talk to him. Me, not the T-1000 here." Sienna laughed at Skye's movie reference. The pair of agents left the room for a few moments, probably to discuss some form of torture. Sienna took the opportunity to breath fully for the first time since they were taken. The two agents entered the room again holding a metal case. The older one opened it and pulled out a vile.
"This is QNB-T16. It's the top-shelf martini of sodium pentathol derivatives." Skye squirmed in her chair and Ward grabbed her arms. "It's a brand new and extremely potent truth drug. Don't worry. The effects only last about an hour."
"You'll have a nice little nap and we'll have all the answers to our questions." The older agent stabbed the needle with the drug into the arm of the younger one. Sienna almost laughed out loud. "Hey! What the hell?!" Ward yelled out as he grabbed his arm.
"I'm sorry did that hurt?" The older agent asked with fake concern in his voice.
"No. But you've lost your mind. You should never do that to a member of your team. And yes, it did hurt a little bit. But I always try to mask my pain in front of beautiful women, cause I think it makes me seem more masculine." Sienna raised her eyebrows. "My God this stuff works fast."
"Don't trust us? Ask him whatever you'd like." The older agent walked over to Sienna and unlocked her handcuffs. "Meanwhile Sienna and I are going to have a civil conversation outside of the interrogation room." The older agent beckoned for Sienna to follow him and he opened the door, she walked through and he shut it leaving Ward and Skye in the honeycomb room together.
• • • • • • • • • • • •
Sienna treaded cautiously as she was led out of the metal room. She followed the older agent to a room with a giant table and an equally giant screen hanging on the wall. He walked over to the other side of the table and pulled out a tablet, he started reading off of it.
"Margaret Anne Poots. Twin sister of Mary Sue Poots. Approximately 24 years old, left on the steps of St. Agnes Orphanage. Been bounced around foster homes your whole life, about 16 different ones. Never in one home for more than 10 months. You have no crimes listed under your name, you have no rap sheet, although your sister Mary Sue does. Something tells me that you're very tough and a pretty good fighter, based on the fact that you did a number on one of the best agents in SHIELD. You graduated high school 2 years early, but never applied to any colleges. You have a photographic memory and excelled at biology and even interned at multiple hospitals. So tell me Margaret, why are you living out of a van in an ally of Los Angeles?"
"First of all, it's Sienna and Skye, Margaret Anne and Mary Sue are the stupid names the nuns gave us. Secondly, I learned how to fight because I had to. No, I don't have a rap sheet, but when you grow up in the system, you have to know how to defend yourself. Third, the only reason I graduated early is because of my photographic memory, I never applied to any colleges because I have no money. Foster kids don't exactly get all the opportunities life has to offer. In a perfect world I'd be starting my residency to be a surgeon, but this world is most definitely not perfect. And to answer your question, I'm living in a van, in an ally, with my twin sister because we aged out of the system with no money whatsoever. So all the pathetic stuff you think we have, we had to fight to get. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a mean world. Now that you're done interrogating me, may I ask you a question?"
"Go ahead Sienna."
"Who the hell are you?"
"Glad you asked, I'm Agent Phillip J. Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division also known as SHIELD. This is my team and my plane. The members of my team as of now are specialists Melinda May and Grant Ward, biochemist Jemma Simmons, and engineer Leopold Fitz. Can I ask a question now?"
"Only seems fair if you do."
"Will Skye give us the information we need?"
"Yes, she will. I would have already given it to you, I may seem 'tough' but I'd rather avoid conflict with the government. Skye's more of the free-spirit type and I've always been more of the rational one, we balance each other out. That's how we survived the system you know, by depending on one another. In biology you study symbiotic relationships, one of those types of relationships is a mutualistic relationship. It's when two organisms interact together in a way that benefits them both. Like the relationship between flowers and bees. Bees drink the flower's nectar and in turn the bees spread the flower's pollen around. It's how an ecosystem remains stable, you remove one organism from an ecosystem and the entire environment comes crashing down. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that you shouldn't try to separate Skye and I."
"Is that a threat?"
"It's whatever you want to take it as."
"You're very protective of her."
"She's my sister, of course I am."
As Skye emerged from the room, and joined Sienna and Coulson in the large table room, he put on a news channel. On the news it featured Michael Peterson on film beating up the foreman at the factory he used to work at.
"This is wrong. This is not...the guy I met. He was...he just needs a break." Skye said defending the man on the television.
"Then give him one. What have you got?"
• • • • • • • • • • • •
Agent Coulson had gathered the rest of his team — with the exception of Ward, who was still sleeping the drug off — in the 'conference room' to discuss what Skye had given him. Turns out that Skye had taken Michael Peterson's license which Sienna was not happy about, at all.
"Michael Peterson — factory worker, married, one kid. Gets injured, gets laid off. Wife jumps ship. Good guy, bad breaks. Best guess is, somebody tells him they can make him strong again, make him super." Agent Coulson summarized.
"Who has the tech to do that? And why would they want to?" Agent May asked.
"Fitz, what do we have from the security footage from before the blast?" Fitz brought up a blurry video frame, that was focused on two men.
"What are we seeing?" May asked, this time directing her question at Fitz.
"Well, the man is angry at the other man." Sienna raised her eyebrows amused at Fitz's response.
"Well, the data is very corrupt." Fitz's British counterpart, Simmons, said defending him.
"Yeah, like Cold War Russia corrupt." Fitz said and Simmons agreed with him. "I-I can't sync the time code without—"
"What if you had the audio?" Sienna looked at Skye with a disapproving glance, she realized that if Skye was asking this it meant that she had the audio, which is the type of thing Skye promised Sienna she wouldn't do anymore. "I was...running surveillance on the lab. I had my shotgun mic pointed at the window before the blast. The digital file's in my van, there's too much background noise for me, but you could probably—" Skye gestured to FitzSimmons.
"You have got to be kiddingme!" Sienna exclaimed.
"You can clean that up, can't you?" Simmons asked Fitz choosing to ignore Sienna's outburst. "Find a sync point and use cross-field validation—"
"But I can't scrub for expression patterns when the Vit-C is all—"
"Well, is there a chrominance subcarrier?"
"Yeah, attached to the back porch. Brilliant." Everyone else just watched as the two scientists went back and forth about the audio layering.
"Um, that audio would be great. Thank you very much." Fitz said at the same time as Simmons said, "We will take that audio, please."
"Your van's here, but you were right — we couldn't decrypt the files." Coulson said to Skye.
"The encryption's coupled to the GPS. Get our van back to that alley, and then I'm back in business."
"Agent May will escort you and Sienna back to the alley." He turned to May. "And on your way out, wake up Ward." Sienna and Skye followed May out of the room and to the hanger door where the sister's van was sitting. They all hopped in and Skye started driving back to the alley.
• • • • • • • • • • • •
"Audio file should be coming through. It's not compressed so it might take a minute." Skye said into the communication device that Coulson had provided her and Fitz with.
Sienna in the mean time, gathered her phone and her wallet and shoved them into the back pocket of her jeans. She then stepped out of the van and into the alley where Agent May was waiting.
"So, we haven't been properly introduced. I'm sure you know me, but I'm Sienna."
"May, Melinda May."
"Alright that should do it." Skye called from inside the van.
"Let's head back." May announced.
Before Sienna or Skye could react Mike Peterson dropped from the air and landed on May. May landed a couple of punches before Mike threw her into the wall knocking her out.
He turned toward Sienna and jumped forward to grab her, she stepped back and narrowly missed his attempt to grab her. She was the one to throw the next move and she landed a punch on his face. It did nothing, but anger him more. Mike punched her in the face which left a bleeding gash on her cheek. He picked her up and threw her into the side of the van knocking her out and then into the pile of garbage.
"SIENNA!" Skye yelled out as she saw her sister get thrown around. "Mike what are you doing?!"
"Saving you, from the scary men in dark suits. And you're going to help save us."
"Us?" Mike grabbed a little boy that must've been standing in the dark corner of the alley. Mike lifted up the boy into the van and then climbed in himself.
"Stay strong for me Ace. What are we?"
"We're a team." Ace answered. Mike slid the van's door shut.
"That's right." Mike said to Ace, he then turned to Skye. "Now drive." He instructed Skye.
Skye made the spilt-second decision to listen to Mike and not fight back. She figured Sienna would be safer if her and Mike just left. Skye silently prayed to whoever was up there that Sienna was okay.
"Where to?"
• • • • • • • • • • • •
hey guys! so i hope that you like this first chapter! this idea came to me when i had a pounding headache and was laying on my couch, pretty funny if you ask me. i have so many ideas for this story and i feel very motivated so hopefully the next chapter will be out soon! anyways, i hope you liked it and i will probably continue to write in third person and if not it'll be in either skye's pov or sienna's. enjoy and stay safe/healthy! - toni
this story is unedited so i apologize if there are any grammatical or spelling errors
please don't copy my storylines, i want everyone to enjoy this story in its original form
i do not own marvel's agents of shield or any of the characters involved in the story
the only character that is mine is sienna and any other new characters that might appear
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