Skye stumbled on the uneven ground almost as soon as the group landed. Ryan caught her before she was able to fall. "Easy there, grasshopper," he teased with a smile. "Wouldn't want you to be a casualty before the battle actually begins..."

"We're *there*?!" Skye gasped, a nervous lump forming in her throat. Ryan nodded.

Fallon took the lead. "Mistress Lièrén," he asked. "Which way?"

Beckett opened up her hearing to orient herself to their prey, turning in almost a full circle until the location of their enemy revealed itself to her. "This way," she finally announced, taking the lead.

Skye watched slack-jawed as almost everyone she had just met took off with the speed she had only previously attributed to her mentor. "Wait..." she exclaimed. "They...they can *all* do that?"

"Yep," Ryan chuckled. "They can all do that."

"I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only one who *can't* do that," Skye grumbled.

Ryan chuckled. "Come on," he told her. "We'll catch up to them."

Skye tugged on Ryan's arm, trying to stress the potential urgency of the thoughts that were running through her mind. "You don't understand. I don't know how long the shield will last. I need to be there to refresh it if it conks out. We'll never 'catch up' to them in time."

Ryan didn't respond to Skye's worries. He simply offered her his back. "Hop on."

"Hop on?" asked Skye.

When Ryan nodded, Skye gave in and climbed up onto his back, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. "Don't worry," Ryan reassured her with a confident smile. "We'll catch up."

If she hadn't seen almost three dozen people just run away from her at the speed they were moving, Skye would never have believed that any human being could move at the speed they were moving - not to mention move at that speed while carrying another human being on their back. She wanted to scream...but stifled the urge when she worried that the sound would alert the bad guys to their presence.

The ride was over mere seconds later. She stopped, frozen in place, in the middle of a scene that felt like a war movie. Bullets whizzed by at what felt like mere inches from her head. Some of the members of her 'army' were actively engaged in shootouts; others were in fist fights. The Sìfāng's shields absorbed every single one of the enemy's bullets and blaster shots. The impacts rippled with blue energy like hail pellets cascading into an electric blue pond that was splashing the power freely around her. All of the army fighters looked like they were making spectacular amounts of progress...

Right until the time that Ryan pulled Skye down to hide behind a fallen tree trunk. "You gotta be careful there, grasshopper," he teased with a chuckle. "I have no idea if Castle's got a shield on you..."

"They..." Skye stammered, "how are they doing this? Centipede's soliders are all super genetically enhanced..."

"It's a long story," Ryan replied. "You should get your boss to tell it to you sometime."

"If we all get out of here?" Skye asked nervously.

Ryan smiled broadly, his entire being radiating a supreme confidence. "Just keep your shield up," he replied. "The less Quinn knows about our moves the better."

Skye nodded, deliberately forcing herself to set aside her raging emotions and do the job she was born to do.

#

Don't think, Coulson told himself. Just fight.

The agent knew he was probably handicapping the tiger spirit by not giving him total control of the situation, and yet...he had never felt so free in his life. His previous encounters with Centipede's super-soldiers had been terrifying experiences where his training had to fight not only his opponent, but Coulson's own fears. Now, though...this felt like when he had had to face down the schoolyard bullies as a child.

Only this time, *he* was the one with the power.

Coulson plowed through opponent after opponent. Most of them were so easy to defeat that Coulson found himself knocking most of them out with his bare hands. The soldiers who had been foolish enough to come at him with bullets were taken down in seconds, usually with precision shots to the knee when his eyes were working in slow motion. A few bullets somehow made it to Coulson, hitting him in the arm and the leg. One even grazed his head, the shot avoiding being a fatal wound by mere inches. The wounds healed instantly as Coulson's supernaturally charged cells pushed the bullets out of his body.

He could *really* get used to this.

Whenever he was tempted to stop, even for the slightest of moments, Coulson looked to his right, then his left...and watched his fellow warriors at work. Regular men and women who should never have been put in that position, yet volunteered to put themselves in harm's way to protect their friends and their families. To help him. To protect Skye. Coulson wanted to thank all of them for their sacrifice, knowing that the time and effort they put in to prepare for this night could not have been easy for any of them.

But he also knew that he didn't need to thank anybody, because whatever gods were watching over them had sent the tiger spirit to back all of them up: the fiercest of all warriors who fought alongside them, ahead of them, behind them and through them. He healed them, watched over them and protected them. He kept up their energy, gave them strength to fight strength and speed to dodge experience and bullets. Even if only for this one night, the men and women who were fighting at Coulson's side shared that spirit with him. For this night, they were the brothers and sisters Coulson had never been lucky enough to have.

With one exception.

Coulson felt and sensed Fallon's location before he was ever able to pinpoint it. The strength of their shared connection to the tiger spirit drew him like a beacon; no matter how many Centipede soldiers were surrounding him, Phil Coulson knew with absolute clarity exactly where Mark Fallon was and what he was doing during the entire battle. He now had a brother for life, of that much Coulson was sure.

And now, it was time to follow his brother's lead.

Surrounded on all sides by a half-dozen Centipede super-soldiers, Coulson finally gave himself fully to the power of the tiger spirit coursing through his being.

The first two soldiers went down with lightning-fast strikes to the bridge of the nose.
The second two had their necks snapped before they had the chance to launch a single punch.
And the final two soldiers lost their lives when their a single superpowered leg sweep send their skulls crashing into the concrete stairs behind them.

When Coulson returned to his senses, the scene around him was one of carnage. But after he took a quick head count of his allies, the carnage mixed effortlessly with relief and a powerful rush of adrenaline.

The three dozen of them had just taken down a hundred Centipede super-soliders. Without a single casualty. "Skye!" Coulson yelled, his voice echoing down the hill as if it were rolling on a stone.

Skye jumped up from behind the fallen tree trunk like the piece of wood was about to roll over on top of her. "Yeah?" she yelled back, following her boss' lead.

"Lift the shield," Coulson ordered at the top of his lungs. "It's time for our enemy to know who's coming for him."