"You going to tell me what's wrong?" Ward asked Romanov as they sat playing chess while flying to an incident in Nepal.
"Nothing" was the reply, with a smile that was a little too bright.
"Check mate"
"What? Already?"
"Exactly. What's wrong?"
"You talked to Skye yet?" Romanov asked changing the subject.
"No."
"Going to?"
"I'll get round to it."
"Whatever. I can tell you miss her."
"Are you going to reset the board or am I?"
They reset the chess board and spun it around so that they were playing using opposite colours. Coulson had noticed the pair, while being themselves while on assignment, were unusually quiet in downtime. He knew that Ward still blamed himself for hurting Skye, and that they hadn't talked about it. At least he had stopped the punching. It was either that or they were planning mischief, which was always worrying.
When they arrived in Nepal, they realised that this wasn't a Covenant incident. The damage was too significant to have been from an electo-magnetic pulse. In fact, the village looked like something big had been running through it. They were there simply to find out what had caused the damage and essentially cover it up.
Original thoughts guided them to believe it was the Hulk, but satellite imagery didn't show anything large and Green passing through there. In fact, their intelligence put Bruce Banner in Malibu with Tony Stark, so they doubted that it would be him.
"I have something here!" Skye shouted, climbing over rubble to get to a wall, where there was a large, dried out, purple scale.
"Eww, gross" she squirmed as she picked it up using some tweezers Simmons handed her and put it in a specimen jar to look at further back in the Lab.
They found multiple scales around the scene and decided, seen as though hit had disappeared for now that they would follow its trail that lead to the village.
They stocked up at the plane with necessary equipment and supplies, Coulson didn't want a repeat of Giza on his hands. They set off hiking. Ward and Romanov were bringing up the rear. This was a worrying notion for Coulson. Ward and Romanov together at the back of the pack was a danger sign.
Sure enough, within minutes there was a scream from Simmons, as she dropped her pack and ran as a Lizard popped its head from underneath Simmons supplies.
"Ward, Romanov. I want you to lead." Coulson told them. Keeping them in his sights was a much safer option. He could at least watch them and try head off trouble.
It took four hours to reach their destination and what had caused the destruction in the village was apparent. They found a nest that had obviously been lived in for quite a while. There were animal bones scattered across the floor and tucked in between two rocks was a vivid purple exo-skeleton, similar in texture to a snake skin. It was 10 feet tall and had FOUR legs. What it was they couldn't tell, but it was obvious that it wasn't coming back here.
So they set off on the four hour trek back. They still had a few hours of light left, but the heat was cooling off a little. Coulson still had Ward and Romanov out front. Suddenly Ward stopped and used his arms to halt the rest of the team.
"Nat don't move" He told her, concern apparent. She froze in her tracks.
"Why?"
"Androctonus Scorpion"
Romanov looked at her left shoulder to see the world's most deadly scorpion crawling up her arm. She must have picked it up when she brushed by some bushes.
"What do we do?" Fitz asked, turning to the others.
"We can't touch it. If it stings one of us we'll be dead in minutes."
As the others were debating the best way to remove the rearing scorpion off Romanov, Skye saw Ward give a quick glance over his shoulder to see who was watching and then he narrowed his eyes in concentration. They turned blue and the scorpion landed on the ground and scuttled off.
"It's nice to know he's still practising, even if he won't talk to me." She thought.
"It's ok. The scorpion's gone."
"What? How?"
"Big stick" Ward replied holding up the stick he had pretended to use to remove it. "Ran off that way"
"Let's get back to the plane. We have hotel reservations tonight, it's an hour flight to get there and then we need to find this thing in the morning." Coulson told them.