The alarms have been ringing in my ears for more than five minutes now. A grin is plastered across my face. 'Finally some action around here.'
I turn to grab my bag. It's a simple black thing, with a small SHIELD emblem on it. I toss in my basic phone, regulation sunglasses, which make me look about ten years older than I am, a credit card and several forms of ID. Just as I swing the messenger bag over my shoulder, the door slides open.
"Dad, I'm ready to go." I say, checking around my room one last time. I've been confined to SHIELD, and in particular this bedroom, for almost a year, and yet it still doesn't feel any more welcoming than the first time I'd walked through the door.
My dad is already in agent mode, with a clean suit, regulation sunglasses and an earpiece. "Anna, I need you to follow me. You will be evacuated to a safer location." He says pleasantly.
"Ugh dad, I can hear the alarms too, I'm not stupid. Also can you not be Agent Coulson right now?" I say with a classic eye roll. We exit my room and the door slides smoothly shut behind us.
Keeping a fast pace, I try to match my fathers stride length.
"So what's happening?" My eyes flick from agent to agent, as they all seemed to be frantically running around trying to evacuate.
My dad remains silent for a moment until I nudge his shoulder, not willing to be clueless. "It's classified." He speaks in quips. I groan and briefly pause to let him walk ahead. Catching up again, "I just want to know if there's anything I can do to help. You know I've been in training for a while now and I've gotten pretty good at the whole control thing. I don't want to just sit around waiting to be evacuated when I could be of more use."
We turn a final corner and enter the elevator. A security guard armed with an automatic rifle stands at the back but we ignore him. It's funny how when I first arrived at SHIELD, after the... incident, that whole gun thing would have freaked me out, but now I turn a blind eye to it.
My dad turns to me as the elevator doors close, removing his sunglasses. As soon as the glasses come off and I can see his eyes again, it's like he switches from Agent mode to dad mode. "Look, you want to help, you want to do something, I understand that. But the most helpful thing you can do right now, is get down to the garage, get on an evacuation truck, and get out of here." He says, his tone reprimanding.
I sigh and roll my eyes. "You know that's not what I meant." As the elevator arrives, he flips back on the glasses, and thus switches to agent mode again.
Just to make him happy, I follow my fathers' instructions. I get down to the garage, settle into a truck, and am on my way to the SHIELD main base when I see it. It's almost as if the earth is caving in on itself. The structures and buildings where I lived and trained for a year, swallowed up by the earth in some blue plasmic explosion. I gasp and want to keep watching the horror unfold, but the truck is fast sprinting away from the scene.
A few minutes later, having recovered slightly from the shock, I hear my phone buzzing through my bag. Caller ID lets me know that it's my dad, probably worrying like a ruffled mother hen.
Despite the obvious glares I get from the guys with guns, I answer the call.
"Oh thank god you're alive." Is the first thing that breaks through the phone. I smile to myself. "Yeah, I'm on my way to the main SHIELD base right now." I say.
Pausing for a moment, I just breath. Feeling the air moving through my lungs helps calm the nerves tying knots in my stomach.
Then "Ok, so promise me when we get to the base, you'll tell me what that was all about." I say, truly testing his limits. There's just a moment of breathing on the other line, before he sighs. "It's confidential, I'm sorry, but I really can't tell you anything. Look, let's just get to the base and be safe before we worry about anything else." He tries to plea mercy with me, but I'm not having it. "You know that's not fair." I say before disconnecting the phone.
'Looks like I'll have to do some investigating of my own.'
Repacking my bag swiftly, I let my eyes flick around the truck again before they fall on one of the soldiers who gave me the glare before.
I decide to play a new game. I stare intensely back at him before he is forced to look away. It takes a few moments before he catches on, and I have to contain a laugh as he awkwardly blushes and focuses on admiring the nighttime scenery.
He looks rather cute, and can't be older than twenty. With sandy blonde hair, a tan complexion a darling brown eyes, he's actually quite the looker, if only he hadn't spent the entirety of his first time seeing me glaring at me like I was a pesky gnat.
I read his nametag off of his shirt, and mentally store it for later. 'Lieutenant Rogers' I think mentally, and before I can control it, I feel a quick burst of electricity flow through me.
Luckily enough, all the SHIELD agents and security staff are clothed in thick gear that shields them from feeling most of it, although the one soldier on my right gives a little gasp as he feels the shock. I look down at my shoes rather interestingly, hoping to avoid interrogation.
What feels like hours later, the truck stutters to a stop. Being the first to hop out lightly on my toes, I admire the scenery, even though it's hours past midnight and there's not much to see.
As the boots of the SHIELD army men thud heavily against the ground, I note that we have arrived at what must be a private air base. There are two helicopter looking planes rearing to go and carry us some ways out to SHIELDS main naval base.
Beyond the blackened Tarmac all I can see for miles beyond our location is the same dusty brown landscape covered with weeds, dying grass and sand.
I almost jump as a warm hand clasps my shoulder tightly, causing a small burst of tingling of electricity to run through my fingers. A deep voice orders me away. "Don't have time for dawdling." I turn around to scowl at the face of Lt. Rogers.
He scowls back, although I can tell it is just part of his masquerade of being a tough, manly soldier. 'God, guys are so annoying.' I roll my eyes as he quickly turns and marches me to the second plane.
As I nimbly follow him up the rather steep ramp onto the plane, I discover that the only remaining seat is next to the bundle of joy himself. Biting my tongue before it can throw out a sarcastic remark, which would be sure to get me even nastier looks from the Lt., I sit down next to him.
Taking out my phone and making it clear that I won't be even acting social, I pull up a game of virtual solitaire. I can practically feel him rolling his eyes as he shifts awkwardly beside me.
A few minutes pass and I feel myself uncoil and relax in my seat. My fingers move swiftly across my phone screen, making long lists of cards in the game.
Slowly, as I feel my concentration strengthening and my mind begins to ignore my surroundings, I begin to take time to process. To think over what had just happened. I let my memories shift back to the past year.
I remember Fury offering me asylum from certain unmentionable organizations who would use my newfound powers for evil, in exchange for my training as a shield agent.
I feel the memories blur for a moment before a new one comes into focus.
I remember the first few weeks of training, and how tough they had been. I had to learn to control my mind in order to control myself. Everyday I would spend hours in a blank room with no windows, trying to control the tingling electricity that I felt coursing through me.
I allow myself to feel a remnant of the frustration and anger I had felt. It burned inside of me, churning my core. Yet it is nowhere near as powerful as what I had felt at the time.
It was only after weeks of proving my growing control over my mind and therefore body that I was allowed to start physical training. Which by all accounts was worse.
My mind blurs and then refocuses again, almost like the image under a microscope when one is fine-tuning.
I remember the grueling schedule that allowed me to grow stronger. Waking up at five in the morning everyday for months to a piece of fruit and then a five kilometer jog. From that point on my daily routines would change.
Somedays it was hand-to-hand combat, which taught me to hold my pride and tongue unless I wanted my ass kicked.
Others would focus on a specific combat skill such as archery, gun shooting, or knife throwing. I found myself particularly adept at throwing the knives. I remember the feel of them in my hands, their equal weight, and the power I felt at launching them perfectly in the air until they hit the target, with growing accuracy.
On rare occasions when my trainer was feeling particularly lenient, I would spend all day inside, learning more intellectual skills, such as how to diffuse a bomb and navigation techniques.
I remember training was supposed to end a three in the afternoon, but it never usually did.
I was also expected to learn at least one foreign language to help me if I needed to go overseas. I remember trying to trick them into letting me take Spanish, since I'd taken that in school for years and was already fairly fluent.
Due to my failure at deceiving them, I was stuck with learning Romanian, a language kindly chosen by my instructor who said she had relatives from there and could help me. I was still expected to spend three hours a day on the language in order to pick it up at a relatively fast pace.
I remember sitting at a meager excuse for a desk trying to wrap my head around verb conjugations while keeping up with the vocabulary that was being regurgitated to me.
Somehow a year passed like that. What with everyday waking up to the same thing, it began to feel as if time no longer existed. The world outside could have been eviscerated to me for all I heard of it.
"You can move that queen of hearts." A deep voice grunts to me.
I blink, not quite sure where the noise is coming from. "Ugh," it groans, before a large hand comes out to move the queen of hearts across, gently brushing against my arm and left hand. I feel my heart give a jolt, and a small tingle bursts through my fingertips.
I give him a disapproving look, as I slowly realize that I must have been sitting there staring at the phone screen blankly for a while.
"Um thanks." I mutter quietly.
He scoffs, "No problem."
Moving a few more cards around the screen, "Except the giant stick up your ass." I whisper under my breath.
Apparently I'm not too subtle though, because the next thing I hear is, "What makes you think you have the right to talk to me like that?" He speaks aggressively, although his tone is muted as we are both getting looks from the commander.
Unable to hold my tongue, I whispered venomously "Well I'm sorry your royal highness, but you been horrible to me since you first glared at me from across the truck. So unless there's a perfectly good reason for why you should hate me, then could you just kindly shut up?"
He doesn't need any more incentive, for he sharply turns away from me, and busies himself with fixing his sleeve. I return to my game, which proves unfruitful in the end anyways.
I can't help but feel a slight nagging in my core. 'Was I too harsh?' I entertain the thought for a brief moment before throwing it away.
Two hours later and well into my eighth game of solitaire, we begin to prepare for landing. The plane slows as the helicopter like parts of its wings begin to manoeuvre the plane into position on the landing strip.
We have barely made touchdown before Lt. Rogers jumps up and he dashes to be the first one off. I roll my eyes at his over dramatic show of not wanting to be anywhere near me.
Taking my time to collect my belongings and firmly close my bag before swinging it back over my shoulder, I'm nearly the last one off the plane. My eyes hang low as I see the first few rays of orange that warn of a new day beginning to break the sky.
I wish I'd got some sleep on the plane, but I hadn't trusted Lt. Rogers enough to let me sleep peacefully.
As I drearily trudge out of the plane, it is not my father who I see waiting, but Director Fury. Giving him a strange look, I check my phone again to see if there are any recently missed messages from my dad explaining his absence. Seeing only the time and a picture of my old best friend and I on the screen that was two years old, I sourly turn the phone off and slide it back in my pocket.
Fury doesn't smile as he approaches me. "I need to talk to you." He says solemnly, although understandably considering he's just lost one of his important bases and probably millions of dollars of investments.
I prepare myself for anything from an angry rant to a depressing lecture. We begin walking down the runway towards a door that leads inside the massive ship.
Gathering in the scenery, I realize that nothing my dad had told me about SHIELDs main base could have prepared me for the real thing. It is massive and like nothing I've ever seen before. Aircraft line the runways, of which there are two, and it is built like a battleship of sorts.
It looks like it could take out a small country in one go.
As we let the metal door slide shut behind us, Fury speaks first. I gasp a little at the change to pure oxygen, but listen intently to him.
"Due to the fact that we have just lost one of our most important bases, and with it some of our best Agents and soldiers, I find that I must graduate a few agents in training. Your name was he first to come up in suggestions." He says in his dramatic way, his long coat billowing behind him as I try to monitor my pace in order to keep up.
"Excuse me sir?" I say bewildered and almost pausing in my step for a moment. Most agents never graduate the training, and those who do train hard for years.
"As much as I would love to take the liberty to see you suffer through training for a few more years at least, we need to cover our losses. Therefore as of now you are no longer Agent in training, but Agent Annabeth Coulson. Welcome officially to SHIELD." He says briefly turning to face me, the corners of his lips slightly upturned in what I can only presume is Fury's best attempt at a smile.
I still feel confusion flowing through me, but I keep my mind in control and my face at whatever level of gratitude I can manage.
"Thank you, sir." I say, trying hard to make it not sound like a question. Fury keeps walking straight on through, leading me up some stairs. "Look for now all I need you to do is get settled in. You can meet me on the bridge at 0900 in full agent dress." He says before turning to leave me, presumably to go to the bridge.
"Sir, one question." I try to remain formal in my speech.
He sighs, before answering "Yes Agent." I try to ignore how weird it feels to be called Agent.
"Where is my father? I thought he'd be here to meet me.." Fury interrupts me before I can finish. "He's off attending to a private matter."
I can't help but notice how Fury almost entirely avoids giving me any information at all. It irks me, so I have to reply.
"So soon? After what just happened?" I say, hunting for more information. My father will never tell me anything if the word classified is so much as mentioned in it.
Fury puts his hands on his waist as he looks down at the ground before facing me. "Look, I know what just happened was traumatic, but we have some more pressing matters. We have...certain people who we need to ally with in order to solve our problems. Your father is just helping us with that." He says slowly, careful to not give me any more information then he views as necessary.
Nodding me on my way, I turn and head down the opposite corridor to him. Given I have no idea of my way about this ship, I take it upon myself to explore it. I also keep a secretive eye open for anywhere that will give me more information about SHIELDs 'problems'.
XXX
A/N: Ok so I actually thought I had abandoned this story. After I wrote the first chapter I tried to write another one but my muse kept cutting me short before I could ever post anything. So I basically just got struck down by the fanfic gods (I guess) to make me write this. I don't know when I'll update again, but I do have a better idea of where I want this story to go now, so lets cross our fingers and hope that I can keep writing. Just as an FYI for timeline and what is happening:
I figure that it took SHIELD about a day to get word to all the future Avengers after Loki escapes with Hawkeye and the Tesseract, so this is the beginning of that day. Right now Coulson is informing the Black Widow that she has to convince the Hulk to come while he himself is off to get Iron Man.
Reviews would be nice. So Yeah.
CeriseLime