We observed that the subject was able to manipulate items from his present while still holding an item from his past - in this case, a large wrench. Able to disappear and reappear seemingly at random, the subject was ultimately captured when the reason for his corporal state was threatened.
Simmons sat at her lab station, typing up an e-mail to a quirky SHIELD academy professor whom she and Fitz had occasionally corresponded with since graduation.
Although Dr. Fitz and I somewhat disagree as to whether or not the subject could technically be labeled a "ghost," we both felt you would certainly appreciate this story and perhaps would be interested in more observations for your continued study of the undead.
We hope you are doing well and please give Dr. Mallow are best.
Sincerely,
Jackalope Skeleton
Jemma frowned, rereading what she had just typed. "Jackalope Skeleton?" She wondered out loud.
Frowning, she deleted her signature and typed out her name again. And yet, the moment the letters J-E-M-M-A spelled out on her screen, they immediately autocorrected to Jackalope. She tried Simmons again to the same result.
Narrowing her eyes, Jemma tried opening a new e-mail and typing her name in the blank template. Jackalope Skeleton stared back at her.
"Fitz!" She yelled, saving the e-mail to her professor as a draft and rising, intent on finding her partner.
She hadn't even made it out of the lab before the man in question appeared, a mischievous grin on his face. "You rang?" He asked sweetly, leaning against the door opening.
"Jackalope Skeleton?" Simmons challenged, crossing her arms and cocking her eyebrow.
"Hey! That's Doctor Jackalope Skeleton. You worked really hard for that first PhD Simmons, don't you dare give yourself a demotion." Fitz said, smiling, brushing past her on the way to his lab station. "After all, you're always the one going on to me about how I shouldn't be shy when correcting people who call me 'Mister Fitz.'"
"Fitz!" Jemma cried, following him closely and slapping his arm lightly.
"Ow!" Fitz protested, still grinning from ear to ear. "Watch yourself, Dr. Skeleton! You don't know your own strength!"
"How long?" Jemma asked, staring him down.
"How long what?" Fitz asked innocently.
"How long has my e-mail been programmed to autocorrect my own name? How long ago did you go in and mess with my settings? How long have I been sending e-mails to very esteemed colleagues, respectable heads of SHIELD, good friends, even my own family or your mother, without ever realizing what my e-mail signature said? How long have I been looking like an idiot?"
Fitz struggled to compose his face, "About a week."
"A WEEK!?" Simmons exclaimed. "No! Fitz! It can't have been a week! I…" She trailed off, thinking off all the people she had e-mailed in the last week. Her eyes widened and she stared at Fitz, her frustration slowly morphing into anger and embarrassment, "I e-mailed Peggy Carter last week. Peggy Carter, Fitz. THE Peggy Carter. You know how much she means to me. You listened to me go on and on about what a wonderful opportunity it was for me to e-mail her, and how I begged Coulson for him to let me be the one to do it after the archival team made those discoveries of early SHIELD-era technology. You watched me spend days agonizing over that e-mail." Her eyes widened and she took a step back from Fitz, looking so betrayed Fitz's heart nearly broke. "You even proofread the e-mail for me! And you were sitting there, laughing to yourself the whole time-"
"Whoa, whoa, Simmons, calm down!" Fitz said, all humor dropping from his eyes and reaching out to put his hands on both her shoulders. "Simmons, I was joking, okay? I just switched the settings about an hour ago! Your e-mail to Peggy Carter was perfect, I promise." He watched the panic in Simmons' face start to drain away and he started rubbing his thumbs on her shoulders in an attempt to soothe her further. "Relax, Jem. It was just a prank to get you back for the shaving cream."
Simmons, seeming to have recovered from her near panic attack, hit Fitz again, this time on his chest. "Not funny, Leo." She said, frowning.
"I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said, enveloping her in a hug. "I swear, I know how important she is to you."
A moment later Simmons stepped out of the hug and sent him a pointed glare. "I already told you I didn't do the shaving cream prank," she said, still grumpy.
Fitz stared at her, unconvinced. "Really? Because I seem to recall one of your terrible boyfriends teaching you that prank at the Academy."
"Aw, Frank wasn't terrible Fitz, he just wasn't terribly bright. Well, not at least compared to us. But at least he was fun," Simmons said, trailing off dreamily at the end.
Fitz frowned, "He was still awful. Not as bad Milton, though. Ugh, he was the worst."
"You always say that."
"It's always true."
Simmons rolled her eyes, walking back to her computer. "Well, I promise I didn't do it. Anyway, come put my settings back to normal then." Fitz followed her, leaning over her shoulder to type away at her keyboard while she remained seated. "While you're in there, feel free to fix any other settings you messed back to the way they were."
Fitz paused, his fingers hovering over the keyboard, then opened up her word processing program. Clicking into the settings folder, Simmons watched him scroll through over a dozen common words such as "the, in, and, of, I," and more that had been set to autocorrect to different monkey varieties.
"Ugh, Fitz!" She protested. But she couldn't hold back the smile. Biting her lip for a moment, she rested a hand against Fitz's arm. "Hold on one moment," she asked, then took back control of her mouse and clicked out of the settings and opened a new blank document.
Quickly, she turned the screen away from him typed in the first three sentences of her favorite poem and then read the result on the screen, snorting in laughter.
"Wha?" Fitz looked intrigued, turning the screen back to face himself and burst into laughter.
"Oh, Dr. Skeleton, I had no idea you were such a wordsmith!"
"But of course, Dr. Monkey!"
The pair spent the next hour typing in their favorite movie quotes, song lyrics, and book titles to see what they looked like "monkified."
