And So It Begins…
"The secret is out." Skye began into her computer. She was working on making another Rising Tide video. She never thought she would be here, and yet here she was.
"For decades, your organization stayed in the shadows," Shield. They were why she was in her current placement. She learned about Shield from Tony. He told her a lot of what he knew about them, from his father apparently being a founder, to their little involvement in helping him find a suitable replacement for palladium poisoning.
"Hiding the truth," He also told, well ranted to, her about them being a spy organization. Skye knew that and was yet still surprised in what she found. Tony had placed a bug on their computer system, allowing Skye to look through most of shields information. She didn't expect to find a redacted file on herself.
"But now we know-" Skye knew alright. After finding that, she decided she would need to find more. After the Chitauri invasion in New York, Skye told Tony about what she found. Tony was exceptionally supportive, help Skye in any way he could. The problem was, out of the two of them, Skye was a much better hacker, so neither of them were able to gain access for the unredacted file. They decided that Skye would need to find a way into their organization to get anymore information. Thats when she found out about the Rising Tide.
Skye decided 'what better way to get shields attention then to ruin some of their missions.' Tony laugh when he heard that, but agreed that it might work. Getting into Rising Tide was ridiculously easy, in Skye's opinion, but that may just be because she was exceptionally good at hacking. The guy who got her into the Rising Tide, Miles Lydon, was the person she had to beat in hacking into some agency that called themselves Advance Ideas Mechanics, or A.I.M for short. Skye broke in in under a minute. Miles, who was impressed because they had most of their group working on it for months beforehand, had accepted her into the group, introducing her to a few other members.
"They're among us. Heroes… and Monsters." Then the whole problem with the Mandarin/A.I.M. hit. Skye was devastated when she heard through the news that Tony was dead, only to be relieved later when she got a message from Jarvis telling her otherwise, and asking her to trace the Mandarin's signal. Man, was she surprised to find it was in Florida. After sending Jarvis the coordinates, she noticed that there was a problem in his coding. Realizing that sense the main computer Jarvis was centered at, she found that Jarvis had re-centered himself into her computer, as set up by Tony's contingency plan. Skye quickly fixed the problem.
After the whole battle on the oil rig, Skye felt kind of responsible for not noticing that A.I.M. would be a threat. She spent the next few weeks going through each and every agency she was able to hack into, and analyzed if they were threats. She found one that was called Centipede. There was a headquarters of sorts set up not to far from her location, apparently. It was leased as a self-empowerment center, but thats not what Jarvis found from there. After finding out about that, she started to take walks down to that area and back every few hours or so. Along with leaving a small microphone that was centered on the building near the area.
"The world is full of wonders." Wonders indeed. Skye remembers back to when she got the video footage of the hero.
Skye was walking past the building on the other side of the road. She was getting use to these walks, and was actually enjoying them. They allowed her to think about nothing in particular, just allowing the sounds of the city wash over her. Of course, that all stopped when the suspected building exploded. Out of habit, being around Tony when he was doing science wasn't always the safest place, Skye ducked down and covered her head. Without delay, Skye pulled out her phone, and began filming the recently exploded and now ablaze building. After a few minutes, she got the video of a guy jumping out of the building as it exploded behind him, holding a woman, who was most likely passed out, in his arms. Skye moves the video camera away from the scene as the guy lifted up his head to look at her.
He pulled down his hood over his head and took off down the street. Skye began to follow him, but stopped, remembering the woman that was currently laying in the street, and went to her side to make sure she was alright.
"We can't explain everything we see. But our eyes are open." Skye continued into her computer, pulling herself out of her own memory.
"So what now?" So what now. Thats what Skye's wondering. She probably should go find the unknown hero, and warn him about the people that are most definitely going to come after him.
"There are no more shadows for you to hide in. Something impossible just happened. What are you going to do about it." Skye ended the voice recording there. The video wasn't done, she still needed some time to edit and process the video, before sending it out online. But before she did that, Jarvis had found the location of something that Shield was after, something from Chitauri incident. Posting the coordinates online would probably piss them off, a lot, hopefully. She then moved on to the process of editing her video with Jarvis' help.
After a nights rest Skye went out to find the hero to warn him about Shield, of course it was harder that she thought. She ended up sitting on a bus stop bench, relaxing and listening to her surroundings. It only made sense that she could walk around for a hour and a half and not find someone she was looking for, then sit down for 4 minutes only to have the hero walk behind her. Getting up, she started to follow him discreetly, or at least discreetly enough for him not to notice.
He went into a dinner. Skye waited a few minutes, let him rest a bit, get some coffee. The news was on, playing a video of the exploding building from yesterday along with the video of the woman that he saved being led into an ambulance while she asked if there was a way she could thank him. They were calling him the Hooded Hero. Skye decided that it was time to talk to him, and slid into the booth seat across the table from him.
"Just act natural." Skye said to him, glancing around the dinner anxiously.
"What," He asked.
"Just pretend that we're talking." She said, trying to calm her nerves.
"We are." He said in a confused manner.
"Good." Skye said, slightly out of breath, "Cause you never know who's listening."
"I don't even know who's talking," He retorted.
"I'm Skye. And you're the Hooded Hero." Skye stated, and chuckled a little bit, "Please tell me you're not staying with that name."
"Wait. What? I'm not- I'm a factory worker." He said. Skye knew he was trying to throw her off her trail. It was even somewhat convincing. She reached over and grabbed some of the sugar packets to keep her hands busy.
"Sure, by day" She said, quoting every cheesy superhero movie that Pepper and her went to watch. Skye decided to get some reaction from him by going into fangirl mode, "I saw you. You're a hero. Like, a for-real superhero, which is- I'm not, like, a groupie, stalker type, but… Oh, my god! That is so cool! Okay, okay, chill. Just don't- don't draw attention." Then she took a breath, going to her next strategy, "You're in danger."
"You got the wrong guy lady." He said, Skye had to admit, he was good at keeping his cool.
"No, you've got the wrong approach." Skye said, "That cute girl from the hospital is dying to thank you- and possibly 'Thank' you- and you're hiding. The clip of you rescuing her has had the most hits since that puppy with vertigo, and you… can't even find a job." Skye knew it was a low-blow, but she needed something.
"What do you mean about danger?" He asked. 'Finally' Skye thought, 'we're getting somewhere.'
"Shield." Skye said.
"Shield, what? I should carry a shield?" He questioned, making a hand gesture as if he had a shield on his arm.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. Government. Scary men in dark suits who come after guys like you." Skye explained, "They knew about the Battle of New York before it even happened, and then cleaned it up before anyone could ask any real questions- overnight. How long do you think it'll take for them to clean you up?"
"And you want to know why I'm hiding," he said in a condescending voice.
"What if you didn't hide? What if you got in front of this and let people know that you're a hero?"
"I'm just a guy."
"Well, a guy like that gets work, gets perks. I can help." Skye said, "I'm great with computers- like, weirdly great. I mean, I could help you create a whole new identity or…" an idea came to her, "A mask."
"Okay," He said getting up.
"Well, you could just- also, we could just stick with the…" Skye followed him to the counter, and realizing that she was losing him, grabbed his drivers licence out of his wallet, calling upon her old pickpocketing days, "... hood. Listen, you cannot walk away from this. With great power comes…" Skye tried to remember that line from a guy she overheard back when she lived in the orphanage, but she forgot the rest of it, so she went with, "A ton of weird crap that you are not prepared to deal with. Now my office is-"
"You have an office?" He interrupted, sounding a little suspicious.
"Yes, I have an office. It's a mobile… office. It's a… van. I live in a van- by choice. But it's always in the alley around the corner- free Wifi," She thanked Tony for that all of eternity, "and you can come by anytime."
"Thank You." He said before walking out the door.
"They're coming for you." Skye said, waving to him as he walked away. Then she glanced down at the licence and muttered, "Mike."
After that encounter, she headed back to her van, to started making another video.
"How will you come at us? From the Air? From the ground? How will you silence us this time? How can you? The truth is in the wind. It's everywhere. You cannot stop the Rising Tide." Skye really hated making these stupid video's promoting the Rising Tide, but she needed to in order to stay with them at least long enough to get on the inside of Shield. "You will not find us. You will never see our faces. But rest assured- We will rise against those who shield us from the truth. And nothing, nothing can stop us in the-" Suddenly the door to her van opened. She could see the suit from the corner of her eye. It must be Shield. 'Well,' Skye thought, 'It took them long enough.' Before doing anything else, she muted Jarvis before he could say anything about an intrusion.
"Hey," Skye said turning to them. She was about to say something snarky, but was cut off when she saw someone she didn't expect to see. Coulson. Tony showed her a picture of him one. She remembered that he had died before the battle of New York. Shocked, all she could get out was, "What up?" before a bag came over her head.
When the bag came off her head after a long, boring trip that she entertained herself by deciding ways she could increase Jarvis's sarcasm, she found herself in a room. The room was different that she thought it would be for an interrogation room. It did have the standard chair and table, though they seemed to be upgrade, the walls were covered in little hexagons, with lights coming out of some parts of walls and the area between the walls and the floor. She noted the cameras in the corners of the room. She was put in the chair by Agent-Not-Coulson, for lack of a better name, while Coulson closed the large door.
"You guys are making a big mistake." Skye said as she got her bearings.
"You don't look that big." Agent-Smart-Ass said. Skye started to brush hair out of her face.
"Sorry for the lack of finesse." Coulson said, sounding quite sincere, "Agent Ward here has a little history with your group- the Rising Tide."
"I don't know…" Skye began, knowing it would be worthless, "What you're-"
"Okay," Agent Ward began, "There are two ways we can do this."
"Oh." 'Is that how it's going to go.' Skye thought, "Is one of them the easy way?"
"No." Agent Ward stated.
"Oh." Skye said, only now realizing what she is getting into.
"What's your name?" Coulson asked.
"Skye." She said after a moments hesitation. Taking a breath, she calmed herself into thinking rationally. She started to think about her surroundings, trying to determine an idea of where she could be.
"What's your real name?" Agent Ward asked. 'That's what I'm wondering' Skye thought.
"That can wait. Coulson interjected, "There's another name we need- a certain hero." Skye realized that the want Mike's name.
"What makes you think I know that?"
"Well, you made a little mistake." 'Mistake? I don't make mistakes.' Skye thought defensively, realizing at that moment how much of Tony's ego has rubbed off on her, "The phone you filmed the Hooded Hero with had the same cryptographic signature as a few of the Rising Tide posts."
"Wow. Yeah" 'That was the point. See, no mistake.' "Was it a mistake? Or am I now sitting in the center of your secret headquarters?" 'Not the center' Skye thought, 'Observe your surroundings' the voice of her only friend back at the orphanage came to her. "What is this?" Skye thought out loud, "A plane? I got inside." 'Finally,' She added silently. "And by now you've discovered you can't beat the encryption on my equipment, so you got nothing." Skye hoped that they didn't recognize the encryption to be the similar to Tony Stark's. That would be hard to explain.
"We have a fairly strong coincidence- you being on the scene right before it went up in flames." Coulson said, tossing a folder right in front of her. 'That might be a problem,' Skye thought. "Want to tell me what my team is gonna find there? How did you know the Hooded Man was in the building?"
"Did you blow it up to draw him out?" Agent-Annoyance said from his position beside me.
"Did you?" Skye retorted, looking up at him.
"That's not our style." Coulson said.
"I was just kidnapped by your 'Style'." Skye countered as she decided what to say next, "Shield covered up New Mexico, Project Pegasus. Of course you'd be covering up Centipede." Skye waited for a response, watching both of their reactions in slight surprise. "Holy no way. 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?" 'And Jarvis, but they don't need to know that.' she thought.
"You need to think about your friend." Coulson said, "We're not the only ones interested in people with powers." Coulson said, reminding Skye of the potential threats list she had back at her van, "We'd like to contain him, yeah. The next guy will want to exploit him, and the guy after that will want to dissect him."
"What is centipede?" Agent-really-getting-on-my-nerves-so-I-should-do-the-same-to-him, as Skye thought of him, questioned sternly.
"Centipede-" Skye began after getting up to walk out some nerves, using the cover story she made up just incase, she couldn't outright tell them that she hacked every organization around the globe to make a possible threat list, "It was chatter on the web and then gone. I traced the access-point Mac address to that building."
"What were you after?" Agent Ward asked.
"The truth." Skye replied honestly, "What are you after?"
"World peace." He said getting up and walking over to her, "You pseudo-anarchist hacker types love to stir things up. But you're never around for the fallout. People keep secrets for a reason, Skye."
"Well," Skye started, realizing this was her chance to mess with him, "Just because you're reasonable and… firm," She said poking him, "Doesn't mean that you're not an evil, faceless government tool bag."
"Just give us your guy's name."
"He's not my guy," Skye shouted, not liking what robot here was insinuating.
"You understand he's in danger." Coulson piped up.
"Then let me go! Let me talk to him. Me, not the T-1000 here."
"You want to be alone with him. Of course." He scoffed, then turned to Coulson and said, "She's a groupie. All this hacking into Shield, tracking powers- she might as well be one of those sweaty cosplay girls crowding around Stark Tower."
"I would not!" Skye shouted. 'I would walk into the tower and talk to him about the latest updates to SI security systems and Jarvis updates,' Skye thought.
"Ward." Coulson said opening the door.
Skye sat back down, and calmed herself. Thinking about the familiar coding of Jarvis as she calmed her nerves and waited for Not-Dead-Coulson and Agent Less-Personality-That-Dummy to come back into the room.
"This is QNB-T16." Coulson said when they came back into the room. "It's the top-shelf martini of sodium pentothal derivatives." Skye had no idea what that meant, but she tried to stand back up as Agent Ward held her into the chair. "It's a brand-new and extremely potent truth drug. Don't worry. The effects only last about an hour." He said calmingly.
"And you'll have a nice little nap." Agent Ward said, standing next to Coulson, "And we'll have all the answers to our- Hey," He squealed as Coulson stabbed the needle into his arm, "What the hell?!"
"I'm sorry." Coulson said in a tone that said he really wasn't too sorry, Skye was use to that from Tony, "Did that hurt?" That was borderline mocking.
"No. But you've lost your mind." Agent Ward said, "You should never do that to a member of your team. And, yes, it did hurt a little bit. But I always try and mask my pain in front of beautiful woman 'cause I think it makes me seem more masculine. My god, that stuff works fast."
"Don't trust us?" Coulson said, "Ask him whatever you'd like."
"Wait a minute." Ward said as Coulson made his way to, and out, the door. "Wait. You can't just- This is definitely not protoco-"
"You seem nervous, Agent Ward." Skye said taking off her jacket, while leaning forward. 'This is going to be fun' Skye thought.
"I'm calling to mind my training." Agent Ward said as Skye stood up to walk around, "There's no way I'm gonna reveal classified secrets to a girl who's hell-bent on taking us down."
"Have you ever killed anyone?" Skye asked, going for a question she knew the answer to.
"Yes, a few," Agent Ward began before thinking, "High-risk targets. But they were terrible people… who were trying to murder nice people. And I didn't feel good afterwards."
"And does your grandmother know about these things?" Skye questioned.
"Gramzy?" Ward said.
Skye spent the next hour questioning him on many different topics about shield and not about shield. She kept a tab on all the things he said, keeping it under a skeptical folder in the back of her mind. She'd have to remembered to call Tony about the drug later, to see if it's a real thing. Eventually, Ward fell asleep, and Coulson took her out into a room with the interrogation room on a screen on one of the walls.
"Did Agent Ward give you anything?" Coulson asked Skye.
"He told me he's been to Paris, but he's never really seen it and that he wished you had stayed in Tahiti."
"It's a magical place." Coulson said naturally.
"Ward doesn't like your style." Skye stated, "I kind of think I do."
"What about his?" Coulson asked, pulling up a news video, showing Mike on security footage.
"This is wrong," Skye said, "This is not… the guy I met. He was. He just needs a break."
"Then give him one." Coulson said, "What have you got?"
Pulling his drivers licence out of my pocket, Skye handed it over to Coulson. Around 15 minutes or so later, Coulson had brought in three other people and jumped into the explanation of Mike to them, and they started debating what was going on. While they were talking, Skye, half paying attention, was studding each of the team members. There was the stern lady on one side of the computer table. She talked steadily, and gave off the impression of tough as the Hulk, don't want to piss off, kind of person. The two on the other side of the table, one of which is named Fitz, were quite the opposite. They both were very in-tuned with each other, and talked with a Scottish and British accent. They apparently had trouble with syncing the data, which caused Skye to interrupt the conversation.
"What if you had the audio?" Skye asked. When everyone turned to her she said, "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-"
"You can clean that up, can't you?" The british girl asked Fitz, "Find a sync point and use cross-field validation to find-" "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." Then both Fitz and the other one turned to her and said. "Thatweaudiowouldwillbetakebethatgreataudiothankyoupease, very much." Skye was very surprised that she was able to keep up with their conversation at all.
"Your van's here, but you were right-" Coulson said, "We couldn't decrypt the files."
"The encryption coupled to the GPS. Get my van back to that alley, and then I'm in business." Skye stated.
"Agent May will escort you." Coulson said, then turned to the woman now identified to Skye as May, "And on your way out, wake up Ward."
'Ah, how good it feels to be back here.' Skye thought, sitting down in her van. She was happy that she refurbished it so that the second desktop and fancy Stark technology was gone. Though she missed their functionality, they would be very inconspicuous. She booted up her computer, muted Jarvis, then grabbed the files and sent them to the bus while talking to them on the phone. She laughed a little bit as he got flustered trying to talk to her before hanging up.
After she put her phone down, she saw May looking down the alley. Moving quietly, she pushed the paper covering three microchips aside. Grabbing the microchips promptly, she stuffed them into her bra. The first one she grabbed was everything she knew about her past, which was basically the redacted file from shield. The second one was tested programing she was working on before she implanted it into Jarvis. Finally, the third one was her list of potential threats that she kept.
"That should do it." Skye said to May, closing her laptop.
"Let's head back." May said.
"Alright, let me just-" Skye was interrupted when a blurred figure jumped on May.
"Mike," Skye said after he threw May into a wall on the other side of the alley, "What are you doing?"
"Saving you." Mike stated, "From the scary men in dark suits. And you're gonna help save us."
"'Us'?" Skye asked.
Mike pulled in a small kid who couldn't have been older than 8 into her view.
"Don't cry," Mike said as he brought his son into Skye's van, "Okay? Stay strong for me, Ace. What are we?"
"We're a team?" Ace answered.
"That's right." He said, then turned to Skye while slamming the door, "Now drive." Skye, doing as she was told, and started to drive to the train station.
Once they got there Skye started to delete the files on Mike and his son. She also sent Jarvis on in the background to hack the bus and send them her location.
"How long is this gonna take?" Mike asked.
"This is top speed. Trust me." Skye said, "It's not like I'm deleting a Facebook page. I'm bypassing the License Bureau's A.E.S.-protected data stream. So chill." In all honesty, Skye could have gone faster, but she needed to delay Mike for as long as possible.
"How do I know you can really do this?" Mike asked.
"I've done it before." Skye answered honestly.
"We'll take the nice lady with us." Mike said to calm his son, and maybe himself. "We- we- we can't go to the airport, so we'll- we'll take a train. And there, she'll- she'll help us start over, make a new life- a better life, like I always said."
"Mr. Peterson. Good morning," We heard through the van doors. "We're not a threat. We're here to help. But you're in danger, and we need to take you in."
"What did you do?!" Mike shouted at Skye.
He then pushed the door off the van and and at the Shield agents. Holding Ace with one hand and grabbing Skye's arm with another, he lead them into the train station. Skye glanced around for a way to get away. She saw a group of tough looking guys, ones who wouldn't take kindly to a hit to their pride. A plan formed in a matter of seconds. She went to kick one of them in the balls.
"You're right-" Skye said, "He is a little bitch." Which sent his buddy after Mike. Skye bolted through the crowd. She saw Ace walking quickly another way. Skye tried to open some double doors, but they were locked. Before she could run to another door, Mike grabbed her are. Suddenly there was a gunshot, breaking some glass near them. Mike knocked down the locked door with his foot, setting off some alarms, and dragged Skye in that direction.
"We've got to stop!" Skye yelled, removing her arm from his grip. "These people can help you."
"The men in suits? They're your buddies now?" Mike accused, "Where'd they take my son?" He grabbed her, and pulled her to the glass half wall that overlooked the main plaza.
There was a shot from their left, and Mike pushed her to the ground to go deal with the assailant. He was shot off the pavilion and fell to the ground, making a large crashing sound when he fell. The assailant cocked his shotgun and started to aim it at Skye, causing fear to roll up her spine, before a blur came from the right of him and took him down in two seconds flat. Never has Skye been so happy to see a Shield agent before.
Skye, followed by May, ran down to Mike, and stood behind Coulson as Mike gave his speech. Skye watched as Coulson spoke to Mike, calming him down. Then he went down to a silenced gunshot. It shocked Skye, all of them. The british girl came running out to check on him. It was when the british girl looked up and smiled that Skye realized he was still alive.
About a day later, after Skye was able to rest and clean up after the Union Station incident, she went with Coulson to drop off Ace at his Aunt Mindy's house. She was able to contact Stark on her Stark phone she hid in her van. Skye told him about how Coulson is alive. It took all of her persuasions skills she learned from Pepper to convince Tony not to come storming up to the plane. He wanted her to stick close to him, and keep an eye on him. After a brief discussion, we've decided that he should only tell the other about Coulson if he can also prevent them from storming after him for an explanation, with Tony suggesting that maybe he could lock them in the tower until they agreed.
"I told him his father was coming home." Skye says to Coulson as we walk back to his car.
"He will." Coulson replies, "We have some experience with this."
"He almost blew." Skye said unbelievingly, "We almost died."
"We have some experience with that too."
"Don't have it all mapped out."
"True," Coulson said, "We didn't cut off the head of the centipede. Whoever sponsored that little experiment is still out there, among other things."
"It's a brave new world." Skye declared, then looked down, "And a really old car."
"Lola can keep up." Coulson responded, "What about you? Have you thought about the offer?"
"Hitching a ride on the crazy plane?" Skye joked, "I'm not exactly a team player."
"We're not exactly a team. But we're in a position to do some good. You'd be a great help. And you'd be front row center to the strangest show on earth," 'As opposed to box seats' Skye thought. "Which is, after all, what you wanted."
"I was able to hack Shield from my van." 'With help from Tony and Jarvis' "You're gonna show me something new?" Coulson's phone then rang.
"Go," Coulson said.
"Sir," Wards voice said over the line, "We've got an 0-8-4."
"Is that confirmed?" Coulson asked.
"They want us to go in and confirm it." Ward said. Coulson then hung up.
"What's an 0-8-4" Skye asked.
"You've got exactly 10 minutes to decide if you really want to know." Coulson said, turning the car on.
"There's no way we can make it to the airfield in-" Coulson hit a few buttons, then the car started moving upward, "... 10 minutes." Looking over the side, Skye saw the car lifting off the ground, causing dust to rise up beneath it.
"The tide is rising." Coulson quipped. Then flew the car to the airfield.
Hello. I hope you enjoyed the chapter.
The title is from the Supernatural soundtrack.
If anyone has any suggestions for how the story could go, or parings, or what could happen, leave a comment or PM me with your idea's. I'm alway looking for good idea's. Also grammar & spelling help is always welcome.
With Daredevil coming out on Netflix, I have decided that Skye and Matt did meet at the orphanage, and maybe I will write a oneshot of how they meet an their time at the orphanage later.
Also, I thank all of you who have Followed, Favorited, and Reviewed my story. You are all Amazing. Thank You.