Flushing, Queens...
Knock, knock, knock! "Bob, with UPS," the brown-clad deliveryman called through the door. "UPS with a delivery!"
He scowled down at the address on his clipboard. Yep, he had the right door; there just wasn't anybody home. Sighing, he pulled out the 'While you were out' slips and began to fill one out, balancing his clipboard on the package dolly.
"She won't be home until late," said a scratchy voice from behind him, "but if you like, you can leave it with me. I'll see that she gets it. I get her mail for her sometimes, too. She left me a spare key, just in case."
Bob turned to see the old woman from across the hall...what was her name? Oh, right. "Sorry, Mrs. Libbitz," he said with a smile, "but I have special instructions. If I can't get her at home, then she'll have to come down to the office to retrieve it."
"Somefin from her papa, then," the tiny old woman nodded. "He sends stuff like that alla time. I've signed for those before," she added hopefully. "Poor gal works so late these days. Your office'll be closed by the time she gets off."
Bob smiled patiently. He knew a nosey old woman when he saw one. "Sorry, Mrs. Libbitz: no can do. But," he looked down at the next box, "I do have something for you." He put the sticky note on Miss Sauer's door and turned back to her neighbor with his clipboard. "Jest sign here?"
The old woman scribbled excitedly. "Can you put it on the dining room table? It's been ages since I got a package...do you want some coffee? I can put on the kettle..."
Bob walked into the apartment, leaving the dolly in the hallway for a moment, and the door swung shut.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Stark Tower
"Shhh," Coulson soothed, patting Sauer paternalistically on the head. "Shhh, it's alright. Ward, three doors down the hall, left-hand side, is a utility closet. There's a first aid kit; I'll need it. Fitz, Simmons, Sky...get these papers picked up, will you? May, can you take a look here? I don't think she broke her nose again, but I want to be certain. JARVIS, why aren't you answering Miss Sauer's query? As an employee, she has enough clearance for a simple request." Agent Coulson looked sharply around for the nearest speaker, since the AI did not technically have a body to address.
There was a frustrated humming noise, followed by a series of pops, and then the AI spoke with strained tones.
"Voice print matches Level 6 SHIELD Agent Phillip Coulson, esquire, said to be deceased since May of 2012, killed in single combat with Prince Loki of Asgard. Identify yourself, sir."
"Voice Print match confirmed, JARVIS," Coulson explained patiently. "I am indeed Agent Phillip Coulson, now SHIELD Level 8. I was revived soon after my stabbing by Prince Loki and rehabilitated by SHIELD medical personnel. You were never updated on my physical condition. My apologies."
There was another quiet hmmmmmmm from the machine.
"Identity confirmed. Welcome back to Stark Tower, Agent Coulson."
"Thank you, JARVIS. Answer the query, please. Why are you not responding to Mr. Stark's secretary?"
"Miss Sauer is currently speaking a language not in my lexicon. I am unable to process her request."
Agent May gave Coulson a sharp look. "She is speaking English...isn't she?"
Coulson turned his gaze back to his young friend. "How about it, Pistol? Are you speaking English, or not?"
Sauer shook her head. "Probably nog," she said through her swelling nose. "Wgen I fell dhe first ting I saw was Mjolnir, an' my head re-set itself to its native language. I'm probably speakig All-Tongue, if you can unner-sdand be. JARVIS doesn't unner-sdand All-Tongue." She frowned. "How can I unner-sdand you?"
Coulson frowned. "You understand me, but not anybody else?"
May shrugged. "No-one else has spoken, Agent Coulson."
"You just did, May," he corrected. Coulson pointed at the Oriental agent. "Did you understand Agent May, just now?"
Sauer shook her head. "Just when she said 'Coulson'. The rest was gibberish."
Fitz stood up with a small stack of papers and walked over. "Names don't translate. If she can't understand English, then the only thing she will comprehend is a proper name."
Coulson frowned. "How long has this been going on, Pistol?"
She shrugged. "A few hours, I tink. Ask JARVIS; it gnows."
"I would rather get the briefing from you," Coulson said firmly. "Can you re-set your language skills to English?"
Sauer nodded. "I ndeed a picture of Prince George Mountbatten-Windsor to look at; my brain sets itself to da native language of da first person I see wgen I open my eyes. Looking at da baby sets me back into English."
"Any language?" Simmons spoke up as she slapped a sheaf of papers on the desk. "That could be useful! Can you read in it, too? Think of the things we could have translated that are sitting in Archives right now! How did it happen? When..."
Sauer groaned and looked at Coulson. "Is she always like this? I bet it's all "how cool is that" and "tell me more" and "just a few scans is all."
Coulson smiled a little ruefully. "She's a scientist. You know how they can be. JARVIS, how about it? Can you find a current picture of Prince George Mountbatten-Windsor for Miss Sauer?"
"Processing now," the AI replied, "one moment please."
"Hey!" Simmons said indignantly. "I didn't say..."
Sauer turned to glare at the young scientist, blinking slowly as she did so.
"Seall: am bheil thu ga mo thuigsinn?"
"What?" Simmons gave both Sauer and Agent Coulson a blank look. "I didn't catch a word of that."
"B' àill leibh?" Sauer continued.
"Huh?" Jemma answered.
Fitz nodded suddenly. "She says: 'Look: do you understand me?' and 'Pardon, I didn't understand you?' he volunteered. He turned to Sauer. "Tuig rian nam facal," he said, patting her on the shoulder. Turning back to his lab partner, he explained. "Apparently your ancestors spoke Scots-Gaelic, Jemma. Her brain re-set itself to your ancestral DNA, but you no longer speak the language of your ancestors."
"It's like she's dealing with old language software: whatever downloaded into her brain is not making allowances for the passage of generations or change in language," Jemma exclaimed.
Fitz nodded. "Plus, she only speaks one language at a time. No translation available to her original language."
"Who on earth doesn't know that languages change like that?" asked Skye. "Even English has changed in the last 50 years!"
"Nobody from Earth, which is a really good reason to get her back into English," Coulson interjected. "How about it, JARVIS? Do you have that picture ready yet?"
"Onscreen, Agent Coulson," the AI replied.
"Seall, Miss Sauer," Fitz said, tapping the computer monitor.
"Buidheachas," she said, sitting down at her desk with a sigh. She closed her eyes for a moment and then examined the baby picture.
"S e do bheathaur beatha," Fitz said, smiling.
"What?" Sauer asked, looking up from the computer monitor.
"Wow that was fast!" Sky exclaimed.
"You have no idea," Sauer groaned, settling back into her chair. "In the past few hours, I've gone from English, to Swahili, to Russian, to German, and to God-knows-what-else, plus that magical language of Thor and company, every single time I blink. It's a pain. The All Tongue is easier to deal with, because everybody can understand me, but then I can't understand English."
"So don't blink," said Ward, finally arriving with the first-aid kit. "Simple. Here," he said, breaking open the cold-pack and handing it to her, "put this on your face."
She glared at the taller agent but accepted the cold-pack gratefully. "That will work for about thirdy seconds, you know."
"We could blindfold you!" Skye suggested. Six pairs of eyes swiveled to look at the young hacker, astonished. "Look, her head resets itself to the ancestral language of the first person she sees when she opens her eyes, right? Set her head to English, and then blindfold her! No new face should mean..."
"That her language skills should stabilize," Coulson finished for her. "It's worth a try. Is there a blindfold in that kit, Ward?"
"Nope," the tall man said, rummaging through it.
"But we do have a few medical eye-patches here. These will work for a while," said May. "Close your eyes, Sauer. Can you still understand me?"
"Yes."
"Good. Stay that way," the older woman commanded. She quickly applied the bandages and stepped back. "How do you feel now?"
"Like a blind pirate. Arrrr."
Coulson chuckled. "That will do, until we can get something else figured out. Now, let's have that briefing, Sauer," he patted her on the shoulder.
"I'm supposed to call the major news networks and arrange a press conference for my boss," she informed him. "That's why I'm down here by myself. Everybody else is upstairs."
"Everybody else?" Coulson asked. "What do you mean, 'everybody else'?"
"Mr. Stark and Ms. Potts, Agents Barton, Rogers, and Romonov, Director Fury, the Arch-Bishop of New Jersey, Princes Thor and Loki of Asgard, The Warriors Three, and Lady Sif, also of Asgard. Ouch."
Coulson's hand, still on her shoulder, had spasmed at the mention of Prince Loki. "Sorry, Pistol. What exactly is Prince Loki doing here?"
Sauer sighed and patted the hand she now could only feel. "Same thing Thor is here for. Some bad-ass alien named Thanos is coming to destroy the Earth, and the Asgardians-oops, Aesir-are here to help defend the planet. Prince Loki was his captive for about a year prior to his own invasion, so he has inside knowledge of the bad guy's tech and tactics."
"The God of Lies is here to help? How are we supposed to trust him?" May was incredulous.
"We can trust whatever he says," Sauer protested. "Odin put some kind of magical whammy on him, so he can't lie at all. He can't speak or write falsehoods; he tried. He's forced to tell the absolute truth whenever he says anything. Try saying that about Director Fury," she added bitterly.
"So we have to be careful of his silence," Coulson noted. He looked oddly down at the young secretary. "We still need that briefing. Sky can take care of the phone calls for you, with JARVIS' help. Skye," he looked up, but the young hacker had disappeared. "Where did she go?"
"Over here," she said. She had squatted down next to Mjolnir, and was tapping on it with a pen.
"What are you doing?"
The young hacker didn't even look up. "Teaching Mjolnir Morse Code." Tap tap tap went the pen.
"You're teaching an inanimate object Morse Code," Fitz said, giving Coulson a worried look.
"It isn't inanimate," Skye responded. "It's an AI, same as JARVIS. Since Miss Sauer's mind re-set to All Tongue after she tripped over it, it may even be sentient." The other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents continued to give her weird looks, so she finally stopped tapping and looked over at them. "She ordered it around and made it move when we were standing here! Am I the only one who saw that? This hammer," she pointed down at Mjolnir, "has a name, shoots lightening, can fly on its own, takes orders, and has at least a rudimentary understanding of justice. Therefore it can learn," she said, returning to her tapping.
"So, why teach it Morse Code?" Jemma asked.
"So it can interface with JARVIS, of course."
Coulson nodded. "They can talk to each other. Trust the hacker to think of that one. JARVIS, are you prepared to interface with Mjolnir, using Morse Code?"
"I am ready whenever it is, Agent Coulson."
"Good. When you're done there, Skye, I need you to help Miss Sauer with her phone calls." The older man turned back to the blindfolded secretary. "Then, we're going to talk."
"Sir, a word?" Ward asked.
The two men stepped into a separate corner.
"What is it, Ward?"
The young man jerked his thumb in Sauer's direction. "How is Stark's secretary cleared to know you're alive, when even the Avengers aren't SHIELD Level 7 clearance?"
Coulson turned cold eyes to the blindfolded young woman. "You know that magical trip to Tahiti I used to mention?"
"Yeah."
"She got me my boarding pass. When Prince Loki stabbed me and left me to die, that girl," he pointed to Sauer, "shoved a Tesseract-powered energy cell into my chest to stop the bleeding. She is the reason I'm Level 8, and not S.H.I.E.L.D. fertilizer."
"She's an agent? I thought Stark was adamant about having non-S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel working for him, after the Romonov incident."
"Ex-agent," Coulson said softly. "She saved my life, but apparently it was the wrong one. She had to watch someone else die, and that was unforgivable, at least to the Council. Fury declared her MIA and cut her loose. We lost a lot of agents in that fight, so he figured the council wouldn't notice her dismissal."
"Who did she see die?"
"Nobody of worth," Coulson snorted. "Now play nice for once. Don't piss her off, she's a crack shot. Just because she's blindfolded, doesn't mean she can't hit a target."
Ward's eyebrows went up. "She's that good? Then why isn't she still..."
"I told you. She saved the wrong life. I was salvageable material. She," he nodded in Sauer's direction, "was young and expendable. So was Jemma once. Remember your sky-dive over the Atlantic? You broke an order rescuing Jemma. She had been declared 'infected cargo' by the HUB, and was ordered jettisoned for the good of the plane and its crew."
Ward started to sputter.
"Politics, boy. Learn it now. Sometimes the worst people to deal with aren't the enemy; they're your superiors." Coulson turned away from the astonished Ward. "Are you kids done playing on the telephone?"
"Yes, dad," Sauer sassed back, "and for once, I'm still employed."
"Good. Let's have that briefing."
It took an hour, with JARVIS filling in certain details that Sauer had missed, either because she wasn't in the conference room or had been unconscious. By the end of the story all of the agents sat in a semi-circle, stunned.
"He made you watch..." Skye choked, silent tears falling down her pretty face.
"Yes," Sauer said hoarsely. "Then he made me taste their souls. And he's coming, and he's going to do this to the Earth, and there's nothing we can do..." she choked as well, and the bandages over her eyes became wet.
"Get a hold of yourself, Pistol," Coulson said sternly. "There's plenty we can do. The reason Thanos took your mind was to spread fear. Don't let him do that."
"But his tech...and we aren't that space-capable...even if Hel fights with us we may not have any hope..." the young woman sputtered.
"Then we will have to do without hope," May snapped at her.
"Right," said Skye, "there's always vengeance!" The other agents gave her a weird look. "What? It's in Lord of the Rings!"
"That'll work," Coulson nodded. "Get mad, Pistol. You said this victim of his died telling you how to kill Thanos. You want some payback, at least for her sake?"
"Hell yes!"
"Good girl. Let's take this to the conference room down the hall. JARVIS, I need you to assist Miss Sauer in creating a holographic display of the Mad Titan's command deck, as well as any part of the ship she can tell us about," Coulson commanded.
"As you wish, Agent Coulson. If I may make the suggestion, you will want to use Conference room C. There is damage to Conference room B that will make its use problematic," the AI replied.
"Understood, JARVIS, thank you," Coulson replied. Reaching down, he took Sauer's hand. "Let's go, Pistol. Give me a target, will you?"
"With pleasure," she gritted.
TBC