I missed April Fools when I started, so I guess I'll end it on one.
I know, I know. Over nine months since the last update. Much procrastination and myself to blame. But it's done! Expect a lot of randomness; I wanted to finish it at least somewhat and made sure certain details were placed in, so I let some parts stay...parts. Enjoy!
Creeping around a hallway corner, Fitzsimmons went back the way they came. They scoured the lab silently, making sure to stay close to the light of the crystal. They both took items that were lightweight and reasonably inexpensive.
"Time's almost up."
"Alright." Simmons ran her hand along a lab desk nervously. A gentle hand went over it, forcing it to relax. Simmons looked up.
"It's going to be alright, okay? We've gone through too many things to be taken down by some power outage. Besides, we've still got to see the look on Ward's face, eh? We've still got that to look forward to."
Simmons let out a laugh. Together, they took one last look around the room to make sure everything was in place and walked out, Simmons hand still in Fitz free one, and their others' crammed with supplies.
…
May left Skye with her crystal by the side of a wall, saying that she was going to get artillery, which was just great, in Skye's opinion. She wondered where Ward was. She knew he had already picked up his gun from the lab, so he was self-defensed in ways more than one. He was probably getting himself in his robot mode so he could kick some alien-powered rebel butt (which would be a sight she didn't want to miss out on). Still, she wondered if he was thinking about her. She decided to let him know she was safe.
BANG-BANG-BANG. The sound of her boot connecting with the wall echoed through the corridor.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
BANG-BANG-
"What are you doing?" May appeared around the corner with Icers on her belt and precision-aim long guns. "It's the dead of night! Everyone within a distance of 100 kilometers can hear us."
"I was trying to send out a message to Ward!"
"You can send it later. Let's go."
May stalked off into the darkness. Skye ran after her with a surprised "Hey!" But not too quickly, as that would make her seem like she needed her and that she was afraid of the dark, which she was not. Besides, May had guns, and who doesn't want those? Not Skye. (There was also the point that Skye sort of had to go at the moment, so following May back would really have been the most convenient option.) Having made her point mentally, Skye followed May with slightly greater confidence, assuring herself that Ward and Coulson had everything under control.
…
Fitz, Skye, May and Simmons were sitting cross legged in a circle. May dropped all the weapons she had into the center.
"Alright, so now that we're all here, I-" Skye raised her hand. "I need to pee."
May sighed. "Fine." Skye opened a stall. They waited in silence until she came out and washed her hands.
May had two fingers on the bridge of her nose. "Are you done?"
"Hey, at least we know the water system still works." May glared at Skye for approximately two seconds. "O-KAY! As I was saying, now that we're all here-" Simmons raised her hand. May sucked in a breath. "Yes?"
"How much time do we have left?"
"Not enough. Maybe a few minutes. Pick your weapons fast."
Simmons had held on to her fire extinguisher. It was slightly dented by now, but that didn't really matter to her. May held various guns, most of them non-lethal. Skye had average, entirely lethal guns along with an Icer, while Fitz opted for the night-night gun and some serious looking lab equipment.
"Right, then," May said. "Let's roll."
…
Skye saw the figure before it saw her. It was hiding around the landing gear, looking for a way through the wheel compartment. She pressed the emergency door button, readying her gun.
The sound of the door dropping was louder than she expected, and so was the speed of the 0-8-4. It bored into her as she misfired, the shot chipping off part of the doortop.
Skye gritted her teeth as she wrestled with the unidentified person right before they kicked her in the mouth. She reeled to the ground, striking her leg out in an arc. She rolled off the ground before her opponent could stand and whacked their head with the flat of her gun. They made no comeback move. Skye stood fully up, her face contorting to a grimace, and spat out Scotland dirt.
…
Ward almost smashed Fitz into the ground. Fitz almost shot Ward in the chest. However, neither of those things happened, so their reunion went fairly well considering the occasion they met by.
"Where'd you even…" Fitz trailed off, eyeing the large pipe in Ward's hand. He rubbed his jaw. "You know what, I'm just going to leave you with your iron bar without any questions."
Ward shrugged. "The bus can't use it anyways." Fitz's eyes widened as he nodded slowly. "Ah." He became increasingly nervous as Ward stiffened and narrowed his eyes at him. "Um, Ward?" He started. "Is there something-"
He just barely ducked as Ward swung the pole through the spot his head had been in- and hit something else entirely. Fitz back away and slowly stood up next to Ward. "You could have warned me, you know."
"Ruins my element of surprise. Besides, this guy is crazy strong; his head dented the pole." A side near the end of the iron tube was bashed about a centimeter in.
"So he's fine?" Fitz stared at the unconscious man doubtfully.
"With a head like that? I'd be surprised that he's actually asleep."
"So that's a yes, then?" Ward gave Fitz a look and began to inspect the indented side of the pole, starting to walk away.
"Ward, this isn't funny, I need to know the logistics-" Fitz began running after Ward to catch up. Ward looked back once, then kept up his stride.
…
"How many do you think there are?" Simmons and May huddled around the side of a landing wheel. Simmons turned to May worriedly, clutching her fire extinguisher.
"It depends."
"Depends? Depends on what?"
"On how large Scotland's population is." May stood up and shot into the darkness, then turned around into a high kick, phasing in and out of martial arts skills while she wrestled with seemingly invisible forces. Simmons watched her for a while, jolting back when a figure pulled at her from behind. She screamed for a second and scrambled to her feet, swinging the extinguisher wildly. It connected with an audible thwack, the figure's grip loosening against her. She sighed in relief. Drawing a breath in, she brandished the red can once more, readying herself for another attack.
…
"Ow!"
"Coulson?"
"Yes, don't hit so hard!"
"Wait, Skye, hit him again!"
"What?" Skye looked up so see…Coulson, advancing towards her. She looked back down.
Coulson.
"What?!"
Two bullets out of seemingly nowhere fired between the standing Coulson and the Coulson on the ground. The standing Coulson stood his ground, raising hands up in compliance. "Okay, I'll stay here. But Skye, it's me. You gotta trust me on this one." Skye bit her lip.
"If you're Coulson," she said, "then what is this?" She pulled out a thick black-capped pen from her jacket.
"It's…Skye, that's just a sharpie." Standing Coulson wrinkled his brow, confused. "We need to get the rest of the 0-8-4's rounded up-"
A long metal pipe sliced through the air and hit Coulson in the head, causing him to fall over, unconscious. Ward strode over and picked the pipe back up, shaking out the sleeve which he'd pulled up to throw. "With Coulson, it's never 'just' a sharpie."
The Coulson closest to Skye said in a low voice, "1935, Monteblanc, vintage edition…that's mine, isn't it?"
"Erm, yeah." Skye looked slightly uncomfortable.
"You stole that from me, didn't you?
"Yeah." Skye squirmed.
"I'll talk with you later." Coulson pushed himself up. "And your blows could really use some work. Although I'm flattered," he shouted to the unconscious non-Coulson, "That you'd pretend to be me, out of everyone. Does wonders to my morale." He dusted himself off. "Scotland dirt really does get in everything, doesn't it?"
"Um, sir?" Coulson looked up to a concerned Ward. "There are still others attacking, as far as we know, and their effects vary from person to person. The bus is already down, and we don't know what caused their powers in the first place. Depending on what it is, we may be affected. What do you expect us to do?"
Coulson stared Ward down levelly. "We use it to our advantage and we fight."
The slightest smile grew on Ward's face, although the darkness may have only been playing tricks.
"Yes sir."
...
In all that was left, Ward had his gun, his pole, and his arms. Skye and Fitz had a combination of guns.
Coulson just decided to watch.
Until May arrived with another Coulson. She and Simmons stopped dead. "Phil," May said slowly, glancing between the one next to her and the one on the side, "what is going on?"
No one was really able to answer her.
"May," Ward started, "that's not Coulson."
"He seems real enough," said Simmons, looking at the one she had arrived with. "Why? Did something happen while we were gone?"
"That's because he's acting." The Coulson sitting down to watch stood up. I told you, remember? I'm Coulson, and as your leader, I think I should be kept safe-"
Ward shot him in the middle of his speech.
Silly String came bursting out of the barrel hole and attached itself to Coulson's shoulder.
What?!, Skye mouthed, while Ward just looked around, lost for words. His eyes landed on Fitz.
"It was just a prank," Fitz started, and Ward's eyes widened in rage.
But he stopped, because the Coulson he had shot was changing, becoming…not Coulson, but a middle aged man with sandy brown hair.
Ward looked at the gun with newfound love.
"Wait, so the Silly String cures them?" Fitz's jaw dropped, then turned to Simmons. "The nozzle still works, right?"
Simmons lifted the plastic coil of her now very battered and indented Extinguisher, squeezing down on the trigger. Misty foam squirted onto the nearest Coulson she saw.
"Yes?"
"It's close enough to the materials in Silly String; something in the chemical make-up might work." Fitz stiffened for a moment, debating something, then an unseen force tackled him and he went down. Ward hoisted his gun, aiming, but he sighed, frustrated. "I can't get a clear shot!"
"It's Silly String, you idiot! Just shoot! No, wait! Don't! Ward, DO NOT SHOOT!" Fitz seemed to roll around in the darkness for a bit before he finally managed to get up. He ran into the Bus's open door, a shadowy figure crossing seconds after he disappeared.
"Why would he tell me not to…" Ward trailed off. "Oh." He narrowed his eyes. "He's one of them, isn't he." He couldn't find either Fitz or the figure in the dark, so they must have still been in the Bus. "I'll get you when you come back out…both of you," he muttered. In the meantime, he turned back around to the remaining group. Coulson was out cold. Ward looked at May questioningly.
"I couldn't stand the suspense," she said. He nodded.
"Simmons," May said suddenly, "The people who we knocked down earlier. You know where they are, right?"
Simmons nodded nervously. "Most of them."
"If the spray works-"
"Fitz is a traitor," Ward growled. "We're not sure if what he said was even true."
"Either way, it's better than nothing. The people who are unconscious can have a peaceful transition from the change, and hopefully we won't have to worry about them later."
Ward nodded. "Skye or you should go with her."
May had her skills and an array of weapons. "I'll stay here."
Skye sighed, not wanting to be out of the main action. "Fine. Come on, Simmons, I'll show you where the others are." Both of them watched as they two of them left, alert from anyone else that may come.
"I think this canister of String is almost done. We need to find something else to combat the attackers." As soon as Ward said the words, someone jumped him.
"Argh!"
He shot the last of the string out at his offender. "How many powered people are there?" He asked, half-rhetorically.
May shrugged. "The number seems to be slowing. Only about one or two per minute now."
Simmons and Skye came back, the fire extinguisher dangling from Simmons' arms. "We weren't sure how much to put on each person, and some of them were hard to see."
"We don't have a lot of it left," finished Skye.
A commotion of noise-not a loud one, but in the silence that fell, enough to be heard by everyone- came out the enterance of the Bus.
Ward threw his gun to the floor. "May, you get the shadow figure, I'll handle the rest." May nodded, getting into position.
Fitz streaked out with something red in his hands, but not fast enough to dodge the interception from Ward. He grabbed him into a back-necked chokehold, right elbow connecting with Fitz's stomach. The thing that Fitz was holding fell to the floor, rolling down the platform.
A fire extinguisher.
Unused.
Bright and shining in the rising moon.
"Simmons!" Fitz shouted quickly. "Spray it all over the ground, as much as you can-" Ward squeezed, and he stopped talking. Simmons quickly snatched up the canister, unloading the lock, tuning the nozzle. Now she held two of them, one bent and almost used up, the other just opened. Or reopened. The lock seemed loose.
"Simmons, it's not Fitz. I don't know what his power is, but you can use up the last of what you know works to stop this havoc from happening."
Or take a risk and do what he says. She could only choose one. She looked at the canisters. Her gaze shifted to the first one, her first one. The red was beginning to peel off. She looked up at Fitz. He gave her a small smile, one edge quirking up.
She readied the nozzle.
The foam in the canister shot out into the ground, illuminating the stark contrast for a moment before beginning to dissolve.
"Simmons!" Ward was aghast, and then Fitz kicked his leg up backwards and he had other things to worry about.
Fitz's appearance was in a definite 'Come at me, bro,' arms spreading wide with a large grin. "Scotland dirt," he said. "It gets in everything." Then he scowled. "And who's bright idea was it to haul me up in all that?"
Skye's brow furrowed. "What?"
Fitz clarified. "Whatever's in the antidote's now in the dirt. So whoever steps on the dirt-"
"Gets a full dose of the antidote." Simmons grinned. "Fitz, you're a genius."
Fitz's dimples were starting to show through, making him look like some evil Mickey Mouse face with the dark over everything.
"The shadowhunter."
"What?" Fitz's smile dimmed in confusion.
May continued, "The person who followed you in. Where is he?"
"Oh, he's inside. I just wanted to make sure that the foam worked before setting it all over the place." He glanced at Ward, staring at him darkly. "I guess not all of us caught onto the plan."
…
"So it turns out it wasn't actually the material itself-"
"Silly String, extinguisher foam,"
"but the compressed air which mingled with one of the ingrediants."
Skye's brows raised, but she wrote it all down on the notebook with a ballpoint pen.
FitzSimmons were back in their lab, showing modules of the chemical makeup in their report on the hologrid. Glass was everywhere. Microscopes were askew on the tables. The now empty and battered, possibly hazardous fire extinguisher lay beside them, a token of their adventure.
"Do you know what caused all of it in the first place?"
"Well, we did notice...one thing," Fitz began falteringly. Skye looked up in askance.
"Scented-"
"Substance. Coming in the compatible form of keychain dogs."
"Apparently it's a real thing. They don't, however, want to put one in the Macy's parade. Not that it's important," Fitz added quickly.
"The scent had some attribute to a chemical disruption. We couldn't find an actual module, but the traces we found in sources tested were similar."
"Not identical?"
"Different scents probably had different outcomes, possibly also leading to the varied results in powers the people had last night."
"If there wasn't any model, how do you know the keychains exist? They could have just been...I don't know, eating pancakes."
Fitz and Simmons debated who was going to give the answer. Finally Simmons replied, "We took information from a few of the people the powder previously inhabited. What they gave was the same."
"A test run, some trial given in the mail. They couldn't tell us a name, but they received some notion that a new shipment might be coming in and assumed it was ours."
"They were in the earliest stages of addiction, but whatever was mixed in was clearly very potent. We're trying to recover the source, but anything like this is probably...hard to find." Simmons had trailed off, trying to avoid a certain wording.
"Right," Skye said slowly, cutting to the chase. "So you're assuming it's alien because it gave alien powers."
"Yes, yes- that exactly." Simmons smiled. Her smile remained all the way until Skye left. Then it slid right off.
"Fitz," she started, "I think we had more leads with Slozcheckistan."
…
"So you took my 1935 Monteblanc vintage edition."
"…Yup." Skye accented the word, not really sure what to say.
Coulson sighed. "You could have just taken a normal pen." He couldn't really bring himself to be upset; after all, it was so small compared to everything else- which he was continually getting filled in on during every visit. Ward was sullen, Skye was just Skye, and Simmons wouldn't let go of her lab extinguisher, which he was sure had seen better days. "At least we're all back. May's running through the energy levels right now. We should be ready to take off soon. Just…" he sighed again. "Just go clean something. We're going to have to get rid of most of the wreckage before we land." Before Director Fury asks for an explanation was what Coulson meant, but he didn't say it out loud.
He watched the amber door close as Skye left the room, rubbing his forehead.
"Kids these days," he muttered.
…
"Silly String."
There was a pause.
"You filled Ward's gun with Silly String."
Simmons looked at Fitz, both unsure of what to say. Coulson jarred his hand down on the table, scattering various holograms.
"Where would you even get such a thing?!"
Fitz searched for words. "Well, there was Brett Erlich on Level Three who has access to these things."
"We sort of had a deal."
"He wanted a hug."
"And an autograph."
"It worked out fine."
"Agent Brett on Level 3." Coulson's brow burrowed. "Do I know him?"
"He said he knew you."
Coulson's eyes widened. "Brett!" An explosion went off, but not at them.
"He was supposed to bring me cake!" He shouted angrily before calming down. "Yeah, I know Brett. But you did all that for one can of Silly String?"
"Not exactly."
Fitz rubbed the back of his neck. "We have twenty shipments stuck in the closet right now with more on the way. It's a bit overwhelming, actually. At this point, I think he's just giving them to stay in touch."
"But we couldn't turn it down, and he seemed so eager…"
"Of course," Coulson waved them off absentmindedly. "I'll deal with him later. But twenty shipments…That's going to take a lot to clean up."
"Especially when Ward gets back to his room."
"What?!" Coulson carried a look of disbelief. Fitzsimmons glanced at each other. Might as well go with it the whole way.
"Oh," said Simmons nonchalantly while Fitz gave a grin, "We didn't tell you about that?"
And so it ends. Or does it? *dun dun dunnnnn*
References, foreshadowing, plot left open-
Reviews or a saying of whether this story should continue on would be most welcomed and helpful. ;P
Thanks for reading! So much. May the shenanigans live on.