A/N - Hey folks! Got this one out before labor day break, will be gone for a couple of weeks. Got my youngest off to college - what an ordeal! - and will take the rest of the summer to relax.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Previously:

Cursing herself, Bella realized she was trapped in this car with a gun pointed at her, and she was at their mercy. She had fallen for their trick so easily, all of her warnings and her training...for nothing!

Surprisingly, only a few seconds had passed, and the man in the back responded to her challenge phrase. "Delta Five Nine Zero Two," he said, his voice completely neutral, no stress in it at all that she could detect, despite the fact he was almost certainly pointing a gun at her.

Bella nodded, playing along like they got the code right, trying to buy herself some time, hoping to fool her kidnappers; she recognized the old code as one they'd been using just before they were changed yesterday. Her Case Officer had even warned her to be careful of anyone using the old codes!

Of course, Bella was supposed to ask for them before getting into the car!

As the car waited at the traffic light, she felt like the driver subtly relaxed, possibly convinced that they'd fooled Bella.

As they turned to the west, they were held up briefly as there was a news van blockign two lanes, and a reporter was standing outside with a crowd of people surrounding him. Bella didn't even comment that they were heading in the opposite direction from the Triskelion.

No, she'd play 'dumb trainee' for as long as she could.

Let them think she was helpless, trapped, nowhere to go.

Closing her eyes, Bella concentrated on willing her magic to life, grabbing hold of her 'blanket', ready to unleash it on her enemies and surround herself as tightly as she could - tight enough to stop a bullet.

She hoped.

Chapter 24.

Washington DC

Agent Johnson had been following Isabella Swan for the last two days, since the code alert had come in from someone higher up the command chain than him. Apparently, SHIELD was facing an enormous crisis, but details for lower ranked agents like himself - a lowly level three Agent - were limited, and the rumors he'd heard were so outlandish as to be not believable. His scepticism was even higher given the fact that he was basically following around a young woman on a 'protection' detail that had more holes in it than his college sweatshirt.

His current assignment was to keep Agent Swan in sight at all times, and to clearly identify himself before approaching if she spotted him. He wasn't doing this undercover, and he was serving as sort of a remote 'bodyguard' for her, according to his mission briefing.

A bit unusual, but he wasn't one to question orders despite how silly they seemed sometimes.

His partner in this assignment - a level four agent who, he believed, didn't know much more than he himself did, was on the night shift, the lazy bastard. Swan spent most nights in her apartment, at the school library, or asleep, so his superior got to mostly sit and relax, unlike Johnson who had to follow her wherever she went, keeping an eye out for any possible threats but not 'crowding' the target either.

Johnson snorted in disgust. It seemed like, in trying to both protect her and keep a fair distance, they were doing a poor job of both. If trouble arose, he was not quite close enough to provide immediate support; better to just let her know he was there and stay close, he thought.

Shaking his head, Johnson put the lousy orders down to the confusion that seemed to be pervading SHIELD bosses over the past couple of days: he'd never seen panic like this before, and he found himself often wondering what was really going on.

Johnson followed the nervous girl faithfully though, never letting more than about a hundred yards separate them. He wasn't sure why she was being guarded at all; by all measures that he could see, she appeared nothing more than a simple college student. She went to classes, chatted with friends, and spent time in the library. Save for a meal or two out that was pretty much it. If he didn't know differently, he would never suspect she was affiliated with SHIELD: besides the very young age - she couldn't have been more than 21 or so - she just seemed like a young, pretty, normal college girl.

So why did someone think she needed to be guarded? Certainly, as far as Johnson knew, SHIELD didn't assign Agents to guard other agents, unless they were part of some op. Was there a specific threat against her? If so, shouldn't she have been fully informed of it, enough to dispense with this half-assed coverage assignment?

Sighing, he saw she had picked up her pace again - she had a habit of sometimes walking very quickly - and he followed after, watching her cross the street and turning onto the street with her apartment.

Johnson had to wait as the light changed and traffic began to move, blocking him from crossing. She was perhaps a hundred yards away, walking briskly past people who were out enjoying the warm September day. Johnson wasn't particularly concerned as the distance opened up a bit, as there had been nothing whatsoever in the last two days to make him think anything was going to happen to Agent Swan, and the presence of a parked news van and the news crew doing a story put him further at ease. Surely nothing would happen on a crowded Georgetown street like this, with cameras rolling and pedestrians everywhere, many wearing the telltale backpacks of students.

When the light changed, Agent Johnson hustled across the street with a dozen or so people crossing with him, his eyes trained on Swan who was now almost a hundred fifty yards ahead and beginning to become difficult to spot with all the people on the sidewalks between them. He picked-up his pace, wanting to close the distance, but reared in surprise as a dark SUV pulled out of traffic and stopped right at the curb in front of Swan. In quick order, two men - both dressed in dark suits with stiff bearing that screamed 'Agent' - walked directly to her, one of the men in front and the other standing by the car.

What was going on? Johnson wondered. Did SHIELD send another team without informing him? Or was this something else?

He quickened his pace to a near jog now, tapping his earpiece twice to initiate a call with his Control officer as his training dictated. He now was jogging, eyes trained on Swan, when one of the suited men glanced in his direction affording Johnson a really good look at him.

Johnson suddenly felt cold as blood drained slowly from his face as he registered what he was seeing.

Standing perhaps a football fields' distance away, one of the Agents who had been listed as 'Rogue' was motioning for Swan to get in the car with him; and worse, she was getting in!

'Fuck! Didn't she know they were on an alert list?' he wondered. Johnson and his supervisor on this guard mission had both watched the briefing yesterday, hell he thought everyone in the agency was alerted to these guys! Johnson began to run, knocking into several people but not giving a rat's ass. He watched in dismay as the door closed with Swan inside the car, and then the first rogue agent walked around to the driver's side and got in.

Fuck! I hate rookies!

Running flat out now while reaching for his service weapon, he began shouting into the miniature microphone that attached to his earpiece. "Control, this is Johnson, Zulu Four Seven Niner! Agent Swan has just got into an unmarked vehicle with 2 rogue agents, matching the description of the Alpha Level Alert! Repeat, Swan has just gotten into a vehicle with likely hostile agents!" He didn't bother calling out his location; the earpiece was being tracked and his exact position would show up on Control's screen.

A momentary pause, then an unemotional female voice crackled in his earpiece. "Roger, copy," answered Control with a disproportionally calm voice that further irritated Johnson. "Get a plate and pursue. Reinforcements en route, estimated 4 minutes out. You are cleared to use any action necessary to insure Agent Swan's safe retrieval."

"Roger, copy," panted Johnson, his flat out sprint too late to stop the car as it pulled away from the curb. His own car - with his partner probably dozing in it, though Control would surely get his ass moving after this - was parked a few blocks and probably a minute or two away. His partner was good, but he was parked the wrong direction from where they were on a one way street, and it was debatable whether he would reach them in time before the black SUV disappeared into DC traffic. He knew, of course, that SHIELD would be able to track her via other means, but he had no idea if Swan was going to be alive in the time that might take. Cursing again to himself, he rattled off the plate number. "Virginia tag, Zulu-Echo-Mike, Two Four Four. Target car is Black Chevy Tahoe."

Control began to speak, a bit more animated now. "Virginia, Zulu-Echo-Mike, Two Four Four, Black Chevrolet..."

A sudden burst of static in his ear piece startled Agent Johnson for a moment, and he was not exactly clear on what happened next, even when he ran it back through his memory later that day.

First, his earpiece screeched, the sound not unlike a high pitched zipper being rapidly opened and amplified into his brain. At almost the same time, the fleeing Tahoe - which Johnson was watching closely as he raced down the sidewalk after it - lit up inside like someone had rapidly and steadily turned up a fader light that was equipped with a million watt bulb. Even as he blinked at the sudden bright light that left an afterimage on his retinas, he tried to comprehend what was happening to the car itself. It seemed to suddenly 'swell' - that was the only way to describe it - like it was balloon that quickly overinflated to the bursting point before exploding outward. The roof, doors, back end - all of it - simply pulsed straight outwards and off the vehicle like pieces flying off of a plastic matchbox car that had a bomb go off inside, save there was no explosion or flame.

There was a concussion, however; when it hit him a moment later - carrying a fair amount of dust and street debris with it - Johnson was pushed backwards, nearly bowled over by the blast.

He quickly regained his footing, slowing his headlong sprint and readying his gun in front of him with both hands. He walked forward quickly but cautiously, trying to squint through the haze and settling debris, his gun trained forward as he scanned for targets even as his mind tried to recover from the shock of the extraordinarily strange explosion.

Inside the black SUV, Bella's nervous eyes swiveled to the side mirror as the car began to pull away from the curb. She briefly saw a suited man running after their car with a gun in his hand, his mouth moving and presumably talking to someone. With a strange clarity, Bella felt in her gut that the chaser might be a good guy; and his desperation in catching them showed the seriousness of her situation.

This finally pushed Bella's fragile hold on her emotions a step too far to be contained, and she called her magic to her.

Summoning it all - just like she had practiced endlessly for the last year, just like she did when she blasted the wizards who tried to curse Harry in the back in London, just like she had thrown at Loki - it eagerly answered her call, filling her to almost bursting with heat and light. When she felt completely suffused with her magic, her mind remembered what it felt like to use it against those Wizards in London and against Loki in the desert.

And she 'pushed.'

There was no conscious spell cast here; no, instead, as happened before, the feel of the heat in her rose until she felt almost flayed by it. It felt most concentrated in her right hand, which suddenly had her wand in it - she must have summoned it from her wrist holster subconsciously - and just as she felt like she couldn't contain the magic anymore and surely she must burst into flame - a white light obliterated her vision, luminously filling up the car and causing her eyes to clench shut against the painful brightness.

Even as she did this she felt her 'barrier' - her shield - racing outwards and away from her, a tangible entity with weight and depth; and though her eyes were tightly shut, her senses seemed so acute now that she could 'feel' the edges of it as it met the puny frame of the car and its occupants. She felt the car coming apart around them, felt her shield as it pushed away aluminum and plastic and leather like it was flimsy paper. The scream of rent metal and popping seams and shattering glass filled the space, and then she suddenly felt like she was flying through the open air, aware that she was no longer in the car. Wind was in her face, her hair streaming behind her while her forward momentum carried her perhaps two dozen feet before she curled herself into a tight ball as she sensed something colliding with her shield. Her breath was expelled from her as if she took a body blow, and then a moment later she crashed hard into the pavement, her wand flying from her hand as she rolled, pieces of the car dinging all around her. The rough surface of the street tore at her skin and clothes as she tumbled, gravel and rocks hitting her face and arms, and Bella cried out in pain.

And at almost the same moment, she sensed her shield pressed back and winking out just as something big struck her in the back and side with tremendous force; it might have been the car door, she realized, tumbling along with her, or maybe the car's engine. Thankfully her shield had absorbed most of the impact before failing, though she still felt like she had been hit by a battering ram, knocking her remaining breath from her.

Laying in a heap, dazed and bruised, she frantically tried to get her shield back up, having trouble focusing now without the benefit of her wand.

It took her a moment to accomplish, but she succeeded finally, though the shield felt weaker without the wand's help, less focused perhaps, and wilder. But her heightened senses returned, and she took a moment to gather herself. Shaking her head clear and rapidly blinking her eyes to regain her vision - which was still filled with grainy afterimages like she'd had a light bulb flashed in her face in a dark room - she realized she was laying flat on her back, her ears ringing and her head feeling woozy. Taking a few deep breaths and grunting at the pains in her body, she managed to sit up, the white coruscating circles in her eyes slowly fading while she grasped blindly around the pavement for her wand. When she couldn't find it straight away, she reached down to her ankle, breathing heavily and fumbling for her gun, fully aware that she might still be in danger. She had no idea what happened to the two men in the car, and she wouldn't be caught unawares again.

Cursing when it didn't come free, Bella pulled hard on the release strap, and when her fingers closed around the handle she finally pulled it clear while moving to a squat position - she didn't trust her balance enough to stand up yet - with her gun trained forward as she scanned for threats.

Bella saw movement to her left side, and turned towards it. To her surprise, she saw the man that had chased them. He certainly looked like an Agent, legs spread and wrist locked in a shooters stance, tracking something beyond the wreckage of the car's body that Bella couldn't spot from her knee-squat position. She had no idea who this man was, and - more importantly - if he was a friendly or not, though she suspected he was. So she lurched to her feet, her gun trained on him while she backed away towards cover behind a large elm tree that was planted in a sidewalk cutout maybe a dozen feet from her.

"Agent Swan," the man called out to her before she could challenge him, his gun still pointed towards the wreckage of the car, "I'm Agent Johnson! Watch out! Both armed hostiles are still a threat!"

Bella turned her head from cover, and from her new position she could now see the other two men that she'd blown out of the car when she ruptured it? Exploded? Expanded?

She wasn't sure what she did, exactly.

One of the bad guys - the man who'd been sitting behind her in the car - was to her immediate left, and was clearly who Agent Johnson was covering. With just a quick look she could see that the bad guy was dazed, sitting on his butt and looking around like he was heavily concussed. Blood was leaking from his ears and his nose, and his face looked seriously bruised, a huge red welt on his jaw and a vicious cut on his forehead. When his attention suddenly shifted to Bella, she swung her gun around to cover him as well, even as she looked for the other guy with quick cuts of her eyes over the debris field.

Focusing on him again, she realized that something was different about his demeanor; even above the thundering of her heart and the crazy lucidity which she saw everything, she noted that the expression on his face was completely different than before. He looked almost confused, his dark eyes having almost a panicked look in them.

When he saw Bella with her gun pointing at him, he blinked a few times before he slowly raised his hands in a classic surrender. One of his wrists looked broken - as it pointed out at a strange angle - but the man kept arms over his head though it must have pained him to do so. The man's gun was nowhere in sight, and Bella heard more shouted commands from Johnson, telling the man to turn to his belly, face to the ground.

Catching movement in her peripheral vision, Bella turned, only to find the other hostile moving from behind the wreckage of the car's frame. The sudden crack of a gunshot was heard and Bella pulled herself back behind the tree even as she swung her gun to the source, spotting her target - the Agent who showed her the ID - maybe twenty yards away in a shooters stance, firing at Johnson. Even from her position across the street, his glowing blue eyes were eerie, implacable, as he poured fire at Johnson, getting off two, three, four shots in quick succession.

Bella felt her magic surging again, but with the gun in her hand her reaction was almost like muscle memory. Just like it was a day at the range, Bella spotted the center of her target and pulled the trigger, her left hand supporting her right, her muscles holding firm against the recoil of the small pistol which tried to pull upwards as the bullets left the barrel. Her training had her pulling the trigger a second time even as she saw her first shot score a direct hit, knocking her target backwards a step as if he had been punched by a strong boxer to his left side. Her second shot arrived before he had steadied himself, hitting him in the left shoulder or upper chest area, spinning him half around and sending him backwards again, his legs wobbling for a few seconds until he fell to the deck.

Stunned at the speed at which everything happened and what she had just done, Bella could barely hear anything above the roaring in her ears and the echo of the gunshots. It took a few moments for her training to kick back in, and when it did, she scanned the street, looking for any more targets. She saw that the first hostile was still on his ass with his hands in the air, and then looking further left she saw Agent Johnson with his left arm clamped over his right arm, which still held his gun. Blinking rapidly, she realized that he had been shot, and was trying to staunch the wound.

Cursing, Bella started towards him. "Agent Swan, I'm Agent Johnson. Zulu Tango Five Five Seven."

Bella sighed in relief, recognizing the new code that she had memorized the previous night. She gave the correct counter code in a tight voice, and Johnson nodded towards the hostile that was still sitting his hands up. He pulled his arm free for a moment, and tossed a pair of cuffs over to her. "I'll cover him; get him secured, and then I need to get a tourniquet on this arm."

Nodding jerkily as she could smell the blood, Bella walked over to the seated hostile, approaching from behind him. Checking to see that the other bad guy was still down, Bella secured one of his wrists before having him stand up and securing the other behind his back. Johnson had been covering her while backing towards the other bad guy, and she sighed in relief when she saw him kick the gun away from the man she'd shot before moving back towards her.

Bella had very little experience with securing prisoners with handcuffs - that part of her training had been very very brief - but she thought she did a good job of it, and a brief thought flickered through her shaky thoughts of what Charlie would think if he could see her now.

Turning back to Agent Johnson, Bella was aware that many bystanders had approached and had formed a rough semi-circle maybe thirty feet away. She was concerned, as the crime scene was anything but secure at the moment, but she pushed that aside, focusing on following protocol, though she was having trouble remembering exactly what that was through the thundering in her ears.

Luckily, Johnson remembered for her. "Go check the other one, make sure he's secure then come help me with the tourney." She saw now that he had pulled a small black leather strap from his belt area, and was working the looped part of it over his arm.

Bella nodded, the sudden adrenaline crash making her dizzy. Her magic had receded when the threat ended, and she was feeling very weak at the moment. She had to fight through the shakes that wanted to come, and forced her feet to move. She cautiously approached the man she'd shot - shot! She would deal with that later - and kicked his gun further away when she was just a few feet from him, never lowering her own gun, always keeping it trained on him.

A quick glance showed that both her shots had hit; besides the bloody ears and nose like the first bad guy, he was bleeding freely from a wound on his left side just below his ribs, and had another wound on his left shoulder that was bleeding profusely and had soaked the top of his white shirt. She wasn't sure if these were going to be fatal, but Bella had no first aid gear that she could use to help him at the moment anyway. The man meanwhile lay flat on his back, facing the sky, his arms out to the side and his breath coming in soft gulps.

Ignoring the growing background noise - she could hear sirens above the din of shouting people now - Bella finally took a good look at his face, the bright blue eyes making her shiver again. Her magic responded to the sense of danger, of 'wrongness' - and she stepped closer to the man.

When she was just a few feet from him, she saw the strangest thing; his eyes - a moment before an electric blue - were now flickering back and forth from blue and dark brown.

Then, like a lightbulb going off in her head, she remembered when she'd seen electric blue eyes like this! It was when she'd faced Loki in the desert.

And suddenly, everything clicked for Bella. The sudden SHIELD alerts, the cryptic warnings, Harry's involvement...Loki was clearly back, and was somehow controlling this Agent.

And then, with a chill, Bella remembered Loki's words to her in the desert, words that held the weight of a promise: "We shall meet again, Seid-Kona."

Immediately, her magic responded again, and she gasped, fearing that Loki might be near. Her wide eyes scanned the streets as she whirled, cataloging everything he moving eyes could see, her magic making everything sharp and clear. She concentrated harder, afraid that perhaps he was using his illusions again.

But it was no good; there were far too many people out now, and he could be hiding anywhere. When her eyes scanned the row of townhouses and the dark windows of the nearby apartments, they suddenly looked like ominous, dark pits where anything could be hiding inside.

Perhaps a half minute passed like this until Bella was finally distracted by the encroaching crowds. Several braver - or more obnoxious - people had moved closer, perhaps less than ten feet away. To her dismay, she saw the news crew not far either, and this whole thing just got messier.

Bella picked up his gun of the downed man and cleared the chamber. She held it securely in her left hand, no longer concerned that the man was a threat. His breathing was labored now, and Bella didn't think he had long to live as he continued to bleed profusely, a large red puddle gathered under his prone body. She moved closer, fighting her nausea at the smell of the blood, glancing at him with pity. To her surprise, she saw that his eyes were no longer that flickering blue; they were a deep brown now, not a hint of blue visible.

The man blinked a few times, gasping for breath, his expression changing completely. "What...what..."he wheezed, and shakily lifted his head to stare at Bella. Her own eyes met his, and all she saw in them was a confused and frightened man. "I...he...," and then the man groaned, his right hand covering his abdomen where his blood had completely stained his white shirt. "Shit," he mumbled, his head falling back to the pavement.

Johnson came up to them a moment later, a field tourniquet over his bicep. "Pull that tight, Agent Swan," he directed. Bella handed him the 2nd gun, and pulled hard on the strap. Johnson grunted, grimacing in pain, but nodded his head in thanks.

"The other target is secured," Johnson said to her, "and we'll have friendlies here in 1 minute. I don't have a chest seal for him," he muttered, his gaze moving to the man dying on the ground, "but I'm going to apply pressure." He scanned the crowd, said a few words into his microphone that sounded like 'medical' and 'police tape.' He then began to wave people back. "Everyone step back, this area is now part of a crime scene." He might have said more, but Bella was no longer listening. She saw him moving to the downed man, and kneeled down next to him with his hands moving towards his shoulder. She thought she heard 'press here' but she wasn't sure. She was tired and drained and felt oddly detached from everything happening around her.

She didn't understand how Loki was controlling those men, and she didn't understand why his eyes changed when she stepped close. She couldn't put it together, her head felt like it was floating. She was aware of people shouting questions at her now, but she couldn't find the energy to even look at them, and she moved a few steps away, her eyes looking blankly at the debris of the car scattered all around them. When her eyes randomly fell to her wand, she picked it up without thinking, the wrist holster 'grabbing' it and sliding it back into place in its hidden holster.

The sirens came closer, but Bella ignored them. Again and again she was running those last few seconds through her mind, how the man's eyes suddenly became brown again when she was close and gathered her magic around herself.

Was she able to somehow counteract Loki's control? Was it related how she could see through his illusions but no one else could?

The sounds of the sirens became almost deafening now. She watched dispassionately as two DC police cars suddenly pulled up, disgorging four uniformed police officers who jumped out with guns in their hands. Thankfully, they were pointed at the ground, and Agent Johnson had been more alert than her. His ID was already in his hand, held open for the cops to see, and their guns were soon holstered as the police took control of the crowd and and began moving them back.

And then a veritable armada of SHIELD personnel arrived, along with an ambulance and a fire truck. There were black SUV's parked all over the street, and they soon blocked it off from traffic, cordoning off a large area where most of the car wreckage was left. It took less time than Bella imagined to get things settled, and then she was being led to one of the SHIELD Agents in charge, her head down and her hair covering part of her face, trying to ignore the curious crowds with their phone cameras and the completely inconvenient news crew reporting live from the scene, sure to be on tonight's six o clock news.

Before hysteria - crying or laughing, she wasn't sure which - could set in, she heard a voice that overrode all others, and she turned to see Harry, his green eyes ablaze like she'd not seen since London. He moved quickly towards her, ignoring the calls of the police to stay behind the yellow tape. Bella rushed him and fell into his arms, the stress of the last ten minutes finally crashing down on her, and she let him lead her to a vehicle nearby, past the swarming police teams and the SHIELD agents with their dark suits and mirrored sunglasses and gleaming white earpieces, all standing sentry under the warm afternoon sun.

Waiting for Loki's next strike.

A/N - Next up - Well, you knew Bella wouldn't be on the sidelines for long. At last, the full Avengers will finally Assemble (save for Barton and Thor, of course; Barton is a puppet at the moment, and Thor hasn't been sent to Midgard yet. I haven't any clue as to what will come next, as the only part of the story that's 'written' in my head at this point is the last few chapters. All the stuff in between? Nada...

Enjoy the rest of your summer!