Revamped!


Chapter 89: The Contingency Plan Part Nine

Earlier - Somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle - Time Unknown

Emily's suit is flying uncontrollably but it seems to have a destination in mind which is comforting. Emily doesn't focus on where it's going as she sweats and tries to think of a way out. The first thing she does is pull her arms out of the armour's sleeves and bends them at her chest. She pulls around the wires of the arc reactor and turns it off.

Thankfully, this suit isn't as self-sufficient as it should be. It was a work-in-progress. Not thankfully, she was now falling for her life above stormy waters in a dead suit.

While flipping through the air, Emily starts disconnecting her suit as much as she can, only breaking a chest plate the moment she hits the ocean below. She starts to sink and follow the intense whirlpools of the water.

Water leaks through the hole in her suit and Emily struggles to break free from her suit like a hatching chick. The potent currents carry her up to the surface and she slams into a rock which was to her benefit since it smashes parts of her suit off. Emily pushes off the pieces like a baby chick hatching from its shell.

Now, she's on her own and she can barely breathe without inhaling some ocean water. She continues swirling around and looks up into the dark sky. Within the storm clouds, Emily sees a small light appear. To her surprise, Emily sees Apollo fly through. She screams for him but he vanishes.

Emily's chest tightens, feeling hopeless. She'll definitely drown here.

Then, she sees a light in the ocean across from her gigantic whirlpool and Apollo bursts out with his axe in his hand. This is her chance to save both of them.

"Emily, hey!" Apollo exclaims as if they're running into each other on the street and not in a crisis.

"Smash the rune!" Emily screams as loud as she can.

"What?!" He yells back.

"The rune! Smash it!"

Apollo looks around and sees nothing hard enough to smash the rune on. When it glows again, he knows that he will be transported somewhere else and Emily will drown. Apollo sees an approaching rock in his path and he smashes his axe against it. The rune shattering to pieces and sinks. Apollo uses his axe to fly out of the ocean. He grabs Emily by the hand and they both fly out together.

-o-

Earlier - Stark Towers - Time Unknown

He feels a burning sensation in his torso as the memories of what happened comes back to him. He can't move his body at all. His eyes remain closed as his mind drifts in and out of consciousness. The burning intensifies the more he wakes up. His eyes open and he sees it all: the destruction, the blood, the bandages, Merida lying on the couch next to him and Angela on the floor nearby.

She must've gone down too. Is he too late?

Xavier walks over and feels her skin. It's like ice. She can't be dead, she can't. Xavier looks around and grabs a blanket from the couch he was lying on. He wraps Angela in it like a burrito and rubs her arms to get the warmth started.

Xavier gets up, ignoring the pain in his side and trudges slowly to Emily's kitchen. He searches for painkillers in her cupboards and takes some with orange juice he finds in the fridge. He holds his throbbing head as he hears someone coming. To his surprise, Xavier looks up and sees Apollo and Emily fly through the window. Apollo lets go of Emily and she falls to the ground, coughing and panting: the two of them dripping wet.

"Xavier?" Apollo questions. "You're up?"

"Barely," Xavier grumbles. "It hurts everywhere. Stark, are you okay?"

Emily is on the ground, still coughing and gasping for air. She squeezes her hair and ties it up in a bun before continuing her cough fit.

"She's fine," Apollo tells him. "She just went for a little swim."

Emily glares at him. "Yeah, a 'little swim' in the Bermuda Triangle after I fell straight from the sky!"

"Right. Well, we can discuss the details when we find the others."

Emily rolls her eyes as Apollo runs to look for the others. She takes another second to breathe before following him. Xavier slowly follows, ignoring Emily's shouts for him to sit down. He just got up and there was no way he was going back down in any way.

On the floor below, they find James lying on the floor, wrapped tightly in a blanket of some sorts as if it was cling wrap. Emily pokes and prods at it, feeling unknown wires on the inside.

"It's some sort of device to absorb electricity…" Emily guesses. "I think it's clinging to his body like a magnet. It's really cool, I'll give it that. Fuck, Iqadi's so smart. Using Apollo's axe to cut him out is no option since it could hurt James even more."

"Didn't you have a straightjacket escaping class at The Academy?" Apollo asks.

"No," Xavier says. "What if we could burn out the technology before it burns him?"

"Is that even possible? I don't think so."

Emily tries to peel back the wrap and she already sees severe burns on his body. She chokes on air as she pats it back down. She can't help but think how much pain that would be for James if he was conscious enough to feel it.

"Shit…" She mutters. Then, she looks at Apollo: "Run down to my workshop and get me some plastic virgin box straps."

Apollo goes and comes back moments later with the supply, that he only knew because the container was labelled. Emily snips a hole in James's wrap and exposes some wiring that greatly resist electricity. She unravels some plastic virgin box straps and wraps it around the exposed wires. Emily yanks it hard enough and the contraption snaps, powering down. With Apollo's help, they take the contraption off of James. He slowly stirs awake.

"My body feels like it's on fire," James mutters.

"Looks like that too," Xavier replies.

"I'll manage."

"You better."

Two floors above, they find Daniel lying on the floor. Nobody could tell how he went down and after a quick examination, they still had no answers. They simply tried waking him up as if he was sleeping normally, but that didn't work.

"If only we could give him energy," James says.

"We could," Emily says, smiling a little. She gets up and pulls out some liquid vitamin B-100 from her cupboard. "This is literally a shot of energy."

"Why do you have that?" Apollo asks as James prepares a dose for Daniel.

"Because SHIELD makes me come in at 5 AM sometimes."

Xavier coughs. "You don't even show up till around 8."

Emily glares at Xavier who only shrugs because it's true. "But I have something even better."

Emily takes out an EpiPen from the quinjet's first-aid kit. "He needs an upper and this is literally a shot of adrenaline."

They turn their heads to look down at James and Daniel. James injects Daniel with the EpiPen in his leg. Instantly, Daniel shoots awake, his eyes are a vibrant shade of bright green and he starts to panic. Emily throws herself beside him and holds him close, whispering calm words for him. Daniel breathes slower as he looks at her and his eyes return to brown.

"I love you," Daniel tells her. "I love you so much."

He hugs her tightly. Apollo, James, and Xavier look at each other, glad that they weren't the ones who calmed Daniel down.

Next, they return Angela where Xavier was. Xavier explains how he found her and the blanket but he doesn't know what else to do.

"She feels frozen," Apollo says, touching her forehead.

They notice that she feels as if she was kept in a freezer. Even her skin is a pale blue like her veins. Their guess is that Iqadi's contingency plan for her involved the super-soldier gene in her body. Then, to their surprise, Angela's skin starts to regain colour on her own and she wakes up. It was probably because of her warmth, they assume.

They have no time to sort out details. They just have to get everyone back to the land of the living and solve this issue before it becomes worse.

"God, I'm cold…" Angela says, surprised and grateful to see all her friends and Xavier up on their feet. She keeps the blanket around her until she can move normally.

Lastly, there's Merida who was unconscious since the start of this and still is. For this contingency plan, they honestly had no idea what to do to overcome it. If she went down with a lullaby, how was she going to wake up if shaking her and screaming at her do nothing?

Apollo looks up from Merida and everything around him, including the others, slows down. He feels a different and stranger presence approaching him. Apollo turns around and sees Sigyn, recognizing her as the figure from some of his flashbacks and that's it but this time, it doesn't feel like a flashback. It feels like she's really here. What she could be doing here is beyond him, especially since the others are frozen and he's the only one who notices her.

Sigyn points at Merida, her hand glowing green with magic and her eyes give the message that she has a plan. She blows her magic on Merida like a kiss before vanishing. Due to his rising suspicion in Sigyn's appearance and thus her actions, he calls his axe just as everyone else moves again and Merida stirs awake. The first thing her eyes land on is his axe.

"Point that weapon somewhere else or I will make you wrap it around your neck like a bow tie."

Apollo lowers it just as he looks into Merida's eyes. They're open. She's awake. He doesn't know how nor do any of the others. Frankly, they didn't have time to wonder and ask about it. Merida is awake and that's all that matters.

"How are you feeling?" Daniel asks her.

"I'll let you know when the ringing in my head stops," Merida says. She then looks around her and sees how messed up her friends look. "What the fuck happened?"

After a brief summary of what happened since she passed out, their next step was to find Iqadi since they know she's with whoever put her contingency plans to use. The problem is, they didn't know where to start looking. That is until the winds suddenly pick up with the accompaniment of loud and rumbling thunder.

"Are you good to fight?" Angela asks Xavier.

Xavier shrugs it off. "Probably not, but I took some painkillers so I'll be fine."

"Xavier." She stops him. "You need to take care of yourself. You only have one body."

He nods. "Yeah, and I already shot it twice. What more could happen?"

"Don't jinx it. Iqadi had multiple plans."

-o-

Present Day - SHIELD Recovery Room - 6:30 AM

Iqadi's mind is blown at how her friends came back and that they could do so. She knew that her plans would work the way they did. That's why she and Imanu created them with loopholes - she knew her friends would jump right through them. Still, there was that lingering fear in her system that they would die before being able to do so.

"Yeah…" James mutters as their story ends. "Nothing like a good traumatic experience to bring people closer together."

"I still owe you an explanation on my part," Iqadi grunts as she sits up in her bed.

"No," Merida says. "You're in pain."

"This will ease the pain, trust me."


["Gee, MysteryGal5, was that Sigyn cameo a way of foreshadowing?" Well, reader who likely didn't ask that, it kind of was. That and I actually had no idea how to wake up Merida.] [2020: *coughs* cop out *coughs*]