A/N: Just finished all my finals! I hope everyone is staying safe and well :)
"Don't leave like this Carla. It's not my fault. I just couldn't say no to the President." Talbot looked pleadingly at his wife as the two continued further into the airport.
Carla turned and looked her husband in the eyes. "Yes, you could've, you just didn't want to. You're always choosing career over family Glen-"
"That's not true."
"-And now we're finally paying the price." She turned away and walked through the security gate.
Talbot's voice caught in his throat. "I'm going to fix this, Carla."
She didn't look back.
Stuffing down the feelings rising from his chest, he flashed his security clearance and made his way to the viewing area, watching his wife's plane prepare for takeoff. She was going to a safehouse. Like his son should have.
A dark clothed man materialized next to him. "Everything okay?"
"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked Coulson. "Are you spying on me? You know my personal life is none of your damn business."
He started walking, knowing the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent would follow.
"You're right. But the ATCU is. Which you now run. And since you refuse to talk to me or return my calls I didn't really have a choice."
"I've been busy."
"You know I'm technically your boss now right?" Talbot stopped short, seething, and Coulson turned to look him in the eye. "But I'd prefer to be partners."
"I didn't ask to get put in front of this side-show circus."
"It was the President's idea. As was this symposium in Taiwan that we're supposed to be getting ready for. We need to be prepared."
"Somehow I have a feeling that your idea of being prepared and my idea of being prepared are two wildly different things."
The pair made their way out of the airport and approached the parking deck. Their dark attire looked out of place in the bright afternoon, and it got a few more side glances than the paranoid general was comfortable with. Is it paranoia if it's warranted?
"The symposium is going to be a colossal waste of time. Sitting around a conference table and singing Kumbaya is not going to accomplish a damn thing." Talbot asserted firmly.
"I'm less interested in the symposium than I am with the intel we can gather there. We need to know if any of these countries are harboring Inhumans."
"My people had to drop everything to clean up the damage from your team's adventure trying to get your ice-man back. I'm sure you're familiar with a certain Carl Creel as well. You sure Inhumans are that much more special? We don't need a sneaky little spy mission."
"It's S.H.I.E.L.D., remember? That's how we roll. And, both of those individuals aren't exactly on our side. We have Inhumans that are."
Talbot bit his tongue, trying not to reveal the ace up his sleeve.
Coulson, Talbot, Bobbi, Daisy, and Hunter found themselves in the S.H.I.E.L.D. strategic briefing room. Talbot's presence was definitely a cause for friction, as was that of his entourage. Creel's introduction could have been smoother, though Talbot was happy he had survived Lincoln's lightning, May's melee, and Coulson's case of ammunition.
Hunter was tense, "He killed my friends, Izzy and Idaho. I watched them die."
Talbot responded, slow and measured, "He was brainwashed by HYDRA. He didn't know what he was doing. It took us months to undo their dirty work. He's a good kid."
"He's a murderer." Bobbi was curt.
"And he had a criminal record long before HYDRA got their hands on him." May wasn't buying it either.
"He's from the streets. He made some mistakes. He's reformed." Talbot's last hope was selling his case to Coulson.
"I believe everyone deserves a second chance, but taking him with us on a covert mission doesn't seem like the place to test it."
"It's a crazy world out there, full of powered people. I finally have one of my own. I don't leave home without him."
"What are you saying?"
"He doesn't go, I don't go."
Daisy interjected, "Fine. We'll go without you. We don't need him."
Coulson grimaced. "Actually, we do. If the acting head of our own ATCU doesn't show up, it sends a bad message... not to mention it will embarrass the president and destroy any hope of an international coalition.'
"What are you saying?" Hunter's turn to interject.
"He goes."
"You can't be seri…"
"This debate is over." Coulson couldn't afford mutiny on their first joint mission with Talbot as the head of the ATCU. "I'm taking a big leap of faith. You better be right."
"I trust him with my life" said Talbot, bowing his head ever so slightly.
Daisy ignored the uncharacteristic deference of respect from the general. "If he steps out of line in any way, Lincoln and I will take him down so hard, he'll never get up."
"Agent May, will you escort General Talbot down to see Creel? And Daisy, you're not on this op." Coulson wished he could look past his finest agent's threat. But peace was the only option they had for this symposium to work.
Feeling the room's disagreement, Coulson decided to continue, "There are two rules for the symposium. The first is, no aliens." Daisy's expression turned sour. "The second is no weapons." Daisy's expression was joined by those of Hunter and Bobbi.
"And what are we supposed to do if someone else decides not to play by those rules?"
"That's why having Creel there might not be such a bad idea. He's not Inhuman, so he'll pass any DNA screenings they may have, and if he is truly reformed, he could be an asset. And besides, Talbot didn't want me to tell you this yet, but Daisy's needed elsewhere."
Hunter experimented with the large munitions launcher, aiming it haphazardly around the hanger, to Fitz's disconcertment.
"Watch where you're aiming that, you're not seriously going to take that with you, are you?"
"Best to be over prepared than caught with your guns down."
"...It's a diplomatic conference."
"Yeah, but throw inhumans into the mix and you have to expect the unexpected. Speedy powers, melty powers, eyeball deathrays, icy Antarctic blizzards..." Hunter's voice trailed off pointedly. Secretly, he was glad it wouldn't be him dealing with the cause of the last one.
Fitz rolled his eyes, finishing his original task of loading the technology the agents would need in Taiwan onboard Zephyr One. But Hunter's overeagerness for weapons did remind him that he had some prototypes to hand out.
Daisy arched her back, stretching her arms out far above her head.
Deep breaths.
Finally, she could get away from the judgement she'd been feeling all day for being Inhuman. Her genetic makeup wasn't something she could control. Her powers, on the other hand, she could.
She was still fuming from the discussion in the lab with Simmons. An Inhuman vaccine? They were trusting a murderer, and talking about using his blood to keep people like her from finding their awakening. She tried to ignore that Lincoln, sitting next to Joey across from her in Zephyr One's loading bay had been okay with it.
She had a mission to lead.
Her arms fell back to her sides, brushing against the straps of her parachute.
"Alright team," her tone growing confident, "we've been given another chance to bring in Donnie. While Talbot and the rest of the plane here scope out the symposium in Taipei City, we'll be cleaning up the ATCU's mess down below."
Lincoln's head tilted in confusion. He and Joey examined the satellite display Daisy had supplied for their briefing, "We're flying over the middle of the Pacific ocean. What exactly is below us except the Lemurian Star?"
With a dramatic flourish, Daisy changed the naval command center's designation from the light color of allies, to the dark one of hostile forces.
"Talbot," she said with as much distaste as she could muster, "left the ship for reasons he's not telling us a few hours before you, May, and Coulson intercepted him and Creel. While he was gone, the acting captain followed our protocol to investigate spikes in ocean concentration of Terrigen. It seems like Donnie caught up with the current events pretty quickly, because he created one intentionally, then ambushed the ship."
She played a clip from the distress message the crew had sent out. A group of forty or so were huddled, hiding, in a maintenance room. At first glance, the video looked like it was taken inside an industrial freezer. The inhabitants' breath was freezing into clouds in front of them. Their shivering blended into the video's static.
Daisy grimaced, "We have to go in carefully. The Lemurian Star has a nuclear reactor and enough offensive capability to level a city. Donnie won't be able to operate all of it himself, but satellite images show him changing course to Taiwan, and they won't know that."
"So why not sink the ship? I fixed the ship once, I can undo that." asked Joey.
"Because according to Creel, aside from leashing fish, he's been modifying ocean currents to get around. That's how we found him in Antarctica. He cooled enough water to create his own naval highway. If he's spiteful, and remembers anything from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy, he'll know how to sabotage the reactor and spread nuclear fallout to at least three continents."
"And we're supposed to deal with this ourselves?" Joey was incredulous.
"The team needs to spread out a bit right now, but we'll all be together soon."
"And we'll still be working together," Fitz said, entering the loading bay with his arms full. "Jemma and I blew up the weapons we were going to give you the last time you headed out on some HYDRA agents, but we came up with more."
He set his crate gently down on the floor. From Lincoln's seated perspective, it looked to be filled entirely with silver tennis balls.
Daisy crouched to pick one up, and threw it underhanded with a smirk at Joey's excitement. Fitz's prototype spun once, then stopped mid-air.
A series of soft beeps rang out from the crate, and more of the balls took flight and spread themselves out in the confined loading bay, finding what space they could between the fake company van and other operations vehicles the team planned to smuggle into the symposium. They hovered silently around waist height, with no visible means of doing so.
Lincoln stood hesitantly. He couldn't explain it, but his fingers inched towards the spheres, and he felt like they needed to be sparked.
Lincoln's inclinations were not unnoticed by Fitz, who confirmed, "they're negatively charged. Any electricity you cast will follow the path of least resistance to them. Pure silver exterior as well, highest electrical conductivity of any element and the most expensive item in my budget this year."
Joey paused, remembering his background in construction. "We used copper for our electrical systems, silver tarnishes too easily. It is right now even."
He was right. All around the room the spheres were taking on a hue that was less like the smooth space grey of the Zephyr's interior, and more like the undersides of the cars they were next to.
Fitz's eyes glimmered with his enthusiasm for his craft. "You're right. In any normal conditions, silver would tarnish and be useless. It's a shame we don't have someone who could change the rules of physics, and take advantage of the fact that silver also has the highest thermal conductivity of any element."
Now it was Joey's hands' turn to betray him, and before he could help himself, the tarnish all around him had replaced itself with a shining mirror-like surface. With another wave of his arm, the spheres had moved themselves back into the crate on the floor.
Neat, Joey's mind buzzed with possibilities.
Daisy pulled up a design schematic of the Lemurian Star, "when we're on deck, we'll be relying on you to spread these out across the interior hallways and place them near any control panels. Lincoln, we'll need you to chain your lightning into each one."
She hoped that HYDRA wouldn't have joined Donnie on board, but if they had, she hoped that being able to fight the enemy around corners and across different floors would help keep her friends safe against their warship-freezing target, and his telepathic and paralyzing friends.
"We'll be HALO jumping in to avoid the Lemurian Star's radar. If anything goes wrong, May, Hunter, and Bobbi, will abandon their mission objectives and fly the Zephyr back for extraction. Donnie's got a warship hostage. We can't let him get a symposium with the international community too."