Post by DiscipleofBob on Jun 1, 2015 7:25:20 GMT -5
Agents of SHIELD #9:
Serpent Society
Serpent Society
The rest of the Serpent Society had either been captured or at least were soon to be. They were all small fry though; easily replaceable grunts. HYDRA had given them powers. It could give a new batch of criminals the same. The real target was Lady Viper, who had slipped away from the chaos as soon as she could. As much as Captain America's team tried to cover every possible exit, the slippery Viper managed to make her own escape, with one girl from the batch of young, malleable teenagers in tow. Like countless time before, she slipped through the cracks, her own disposable soldiers acting as distractions.
Or so she thought. Captain Carol Danvers had somehow managed to cut off her escape path, and while Carol may have initially thought the drop she'd gotten had given her the upper hand, Viper had her own insurance. She quickly turned the gun towards the teenage girl, who had already been frightened enough at the prospect of being kidnapped by HYDRA before having her life threatened as well.
"Now step aside. Unless you want something unpleasant to happen." Viper had no intention of letting the girl go or killing her, but whether Carol realized it or not, SHIELD agents couldn't risk putting an innocent civilian in harm's way, no matter how foolish it was.
Carol hesitated before reluctantly lowering her weapon, and stepping aside. "Good girl. Now put your gun on the ground and kick it away. No clever ideas now," Viper ordered with a smile. Carol scowled before slowly putting her sidearm on the ground and nudging it to the side. "Excellent. Now the two of us are just going to walk out of here and we're all going to be nice and pleasant about it. Well, except for you, dearie," Viper smirked as she pointed the gun towards Carol. "You won't be walking out of here alive."
Carol slowly put her hands up as if to surrender, closed her eyes as if in resigned defeat, then pulled a small device tucked away in her glove and flicked it towards Viper. The miniature flashbang grenade did its job admirably. Both Viper and the girl were briefly stunned. The HYDRA mistress was just disoriented enough that her shot missed after Carol dove to the ground after her gun. With one swift movement she picked it up and, while prone, shot the only clean target she could, knocking Viper's gun out of her hand.
Viper was still seeing stars, but managed to reposition her human shield to be just that. Since Carol was the only one with a gun, she charged forward to separate Viper from her hostage. Viper's free hand reached to her waist and unraveled a long, coiled, leather whip. With a sadistic smile she cracked the whip, lashing into Carol's side and leaving a long bleeding gash even through her armored SHIELD uniform. The wound wasn't enough to stop Carol's momentum as she threw a right hook just above the teenager's head and socked Viper in the jaw.
Viper lost her grip on her hostage and fell backward. Carol pushed the teenage girl away from Viper's grasp before staggering herself, the deep gash in her side suddenly a lot more painful. Viper quickly picked herself up and licked the blood off her lips. "Little birdie wants to play!" Viper cracked her whip again. Carol lifted her arm to block and caught the blunt haft of the whip, nearly dislocating her arm and dropping her firearm in the process. Viper didn't stop there as she leaped and struck Carol in the face with the tip of her stiletto.
While Carol knew how to roll with the punches, there was no way to lessen the blow from the uppercut kick to the jaw except to fall backwards, head spinning. Viper pulled back the whip to crack it on Carol's skull, but at the last second the SHIELD agent rolled over on the ground and caught the whip with her hand. The whip coiled around her arm, and Carol used that to simultaneously pull herself up and jerk Viper off her footing.
Viper's face met Carol's elbow in a clothesline as they traded places on the ground. Carol turned back around and tried to pin Viper with her knee, but Viper somersaulted away to her feet, whip back in hand after it'd fallen loose from Carol's arm. "You're a lot spunkier than the last SHIELD agent I killed," Viper smiled.
"And you're just as crazy as every other HYDRA stooge I've ever met. How about we call it a draw and you surrender?" Carol retorted.
"No need to get snappy, little birdie. We're both strong, independent women, deserving of respect," Viper said, every word dripping in sardonicism.
"I wouldn't call anyone who works for a guy who introduces himself as 'Baron' independent."
Viper's confident sneer vanished, replaced by indignant rage. "Foolish girl! I choose who is worthy enough for my services!" Almost as quickly as she snapped, her unwavering swagger returned to try and cover up her innate volatile personality. "Besides, neither of the Barons are the head of the serpent anymore. But then you and your new 'SHIELD'-bearer already knew that, didn't you?" It confirmed everything that SHIELD had already feared. The Red Skull has been revived and reinstated as leader of HYDRA.
Viper picked herself up and pulled back the whip. Carol quickly pulled back from its reach as it cracked down where she was just standing. The HYDRA mistress pressed forward with an assault of rapid lashes from her whip, leaving gashes in the concrete and brick walls. Carol maneuvered her position to give as much room to retreat as possible, at least until she had an opening or could find one of the guns.
"AAAHH!"
Carol turned to see one of the whip's strikes carve a gash just above the huddling teenage girl. Between the flashbang and general trauma, she couldn't be expected to get to safety in time. Without thinking, Carol rushed to the girl's aid, the whip catching her ankle and throwing her off her feet. Carol crashed to the ground merely feet from the girl's position, but quickly pulled herself over to shield the girl with her own body.
"Ah, yes, the noble SHIELD motto: never leave a man behind when we can all die together!" Viper struck several more times, leaving deep gashes in Carol's back. While the attacks weren't lethal, the pain and damage they could inflict was extensive. Viper only ceased when she managed to locate her gun on the ground. "Well, as much cardio as that is, I'm afraid I'm going to have to expedite this. Now if you'll kindly remove yourself from the girl, we'll be on our way. Unless you want me to shoot both of you now?"
"I'd put that gun down right now if I were you," Carol grunted in pain.
Viper laughed at the bold response, "And why would I do that?"
Suddenly a violent windstorm picked up in the alleyway. Before Viper could pull the trigger, the Qunijet materialized above, its mounted machine guns firing a barrage of bullets. Coulson didn't dare risk hitting either an agent or a civilian, so all he managed was mostly suppression fire that didn't come close to hitting anyone in the alley, but they were enough to force Viper to flip back where the others were out of harm's way.
"Because my friend's is bigger."
"You play dirty for a SHIELD agent," Viper said as a Cheshire grin formed on her lips, "I like that." After the spray of bullets, in the few moments the Quinjet took to realign its target, Viper pulled a small syringe from her cleavage, filled with the same glowing superpower-granting chemicals as the rest. Carol couldn't even begin to think of all the reasons that was an insane thing to do. Viper stuck her neck, emptying the syringe as her veins started glowing a sickly green.
Coulson managed to fix its target and fired again on Viper's location. Instead of killing or even incapacitating Viper, the bullets tore through a thin, leathery façade where Viper had been just been. The torn silhouette fell to the ground like a snakeskin, with the real Viper nowhere to be found.
Carol looked around frantically, but the target had just vanished. At the very least, the danger had passed, so she turned her attention to the terrified young girl in her arms. "Hey, you okay?"
She was still trembling. "Wh-where'd she go?!"
"She's gone. But don't worry. We'll get her," Carol quietly assured her, though it didn't seem to console her much. "Hey, it's okay. Look at me," she said as the girl slowly turned to face her. The teenager was an olive-skinned brunette. She couldn't have been older than 16. "What's your name?"
The girl hesitated before responding. "Kamala."
"Kamala? That's a very pretty name. I'm Carol," she replied smiling, extending a hand.
"You aren't... going to arrest me?" Kamala asked tearfully.
"No. We're only after the bad guys. But I got to ask: why are you here? Don't you know what kind of people these are?" Carol asked as calmly as possible.
"I... I..." Kamala stammered and looked away, unsure of how to respond until her eyes went wide and she clutched her hand. "No! Not now!" Carol looked down to see her hand and wrist grow significantly larger.
"You're a mutant," Carol realized.
"I don't have to be a freak though!" Kamala protested as her hand continued to grow. "I look normal! If I can just get some control, I don't have to spend the rest of my life locked up in a lab, or the sewers, or a freak show!"
Carol placed her hands around Kamala's growing one. "You're not a freak, Kamala. If you go to someone like HYDRA, you won't be taking control, you'll be surrendering it to some very bad people."
"I thought SHIELD took people like me and made them disappear," Kamala said worryingly.
"We take people who are a danger to the rest of the world and take them to where they can't harm anyone. I don't think you're a danger to anyone, Kamala. I think you're just a little scared, and if you just take a deep breath and stay calm, you won't need anyone but yourself to control your powers. Anything else would just be a crutch."
Kamala was still panicking. "How do you know?"
"I don't. Whether you can take control is up to you, but I'll be right here with alongside you," Carol said confidently.
"Why?"
"Because that's what I do." After a few moments of internal struggling, Kamala's hand finally shrunk back down to a normal size and remained stable. "See? I told you that you could do it."
Kamala finally stopped hyperventilating, exhausted from the day's traumatic events. "I just wish I could stop it permanently. I don't want this."
"Hey, it's not so bad," Carol reassured her. "I only know one other guy who can do that, and he had to crash a space station first." This at least got Kamala to laugh, which was all Carol needed to get her to calm down.
Coulson's voice sounded over the communicator. -"Captain Marvel, the rest of the Serpent's Society has been apprehended. We're ready to head back to base."- Kamala looked at Carol like a scared puppy dog.
"There's some stuff I have to take care of here. I'll come back with the cleanup crew," Carol responded over the comm.
-"Understood. See you when you get back."-
"Captain Marvel? Is that your superhero name?" Kamala asked, half-joking, half-hoping she was right.
"Something like that," Carol laughed. What would be her real name after the wedding did sort of sound like a cheesy superhero name, and that suited her just fine, especially if it could help her connect to kids needing a hero, like Kamala. Carol stayed and kept Kamala company, until other SHIELD agents could arrive to secure the site and take care of the kids.
Pick a spot in New York City. Choose a random direction and toss a rock. Chances are that rock will find a bar and/or pizzeria, or just start a fight somewhere. Some bars were classy places a rich guy could take a date for an overpriced martini. Others were places where working joes of any class could stop at the end of the day for a cheap beer to drown the sorrows of their tedious existence. Then there were the real dive bars. The sites of which were almost exclusively reserved for shady deals, potentially lethal barfights, fake IDs and terrible drinks.
The Sagittarius was the latter kind, but for Clint Barton, it was irreplaceable. He would spend so much time in other the backwoods and deserts of foreign countries that a watered down beer and a black eye sounded downright lucurious. Neither a SHIELD agent nor any self-respecting member of society would ever set willingly set foot down there, which only made it more attractive to Barton.
Barton didn't bother dressing down for the Sagittarius. They all knew him well down there anyway. The man they didn't recognize was the large, muscular, blond-haired, blue-eyed man in the 1940's leather jacket.
"Careful, Cap. This place is a little more rough and tumble then your 1935 speakeasy," said Barton as Rogers pulled up a stool next to his. "Shouldn't you be debriefing with Fury?"
Rogers ordered a beer, but took one sip before contorting his face in disgust at the beverage. "Coulson's handling the finer details. There's a few details I need to sort out first before I deliver my report."
"Like what?" Barton asked tipsily, already knowing the basic answer.
"Like why you went off-book and crashed the party early," Rogers replied. "That could've gotten a lot worse if the others weren't in position."
"Yeah, but they were, so I guess it all worked out in the end," Barton replied nonchalantly.
"Actually, no. Lady Viper managed to escape," Rogers added.
"Yeah, but she was always going to slither away. That's kind of what she does."
"You're saying even if things had gone differently we wouldn't have captured her?" Rogers asked skeptically.
Barton turned to face the Captain. While Clint was by no means skinny or out of shape, sitting next to the muscular behemoth of a man, he might as well be a stick figure to Michaelangelo's David by comparison. "All right, let's look at the facts: We just manage to form a team and order the matching jerseys when we just so happen that one of the top brass of HYDRA is, for some reason, out in the open and easily traceable. She engineers a situation where not only do her superpowered henchmen alone outnumber us 3 to 1, not only does she have a small army of heavily armed personnel beyond that, but we also have to split up to cover all the exits, pretty much ensuring that each individual exit won't have the manpower to stop her. This was an ambush."
"Not much of one. We cleaned up pretty well," Rogers retorted.
"I didn't say it was a good ambush," Barton replied. "Besides, I sincerely doubt the whole purpose of that was to do anything but see what kind of force we'd throw at HYDRA given the chance at one of their top brass." Barton downed his current glass and motioned for two more, one for Rogers and one for him.
"All right, so if you thought it was an ambush, how come you didn't say anything? You just went dead on the comms and we didn't hear anything from you until you smashed through a window."
Barton laughed. "Haven't you heard? I'm an insubordinate, grandstanding showoff."
Rogers turned to Barton deadpan, "Yeah, that's what everyone else is saying. And at this point I almost think that's what you want them to say."
"Izzat so?" Barton replied, his words starting to slur. "Well how about this, then? I don't want a bunch of kids to get hooked on super-juice or whatever HYDRA was peddling, and if I tell you or the rest of SHIELD over a communicator that we need to move out ASAP, I can be rest assured knowing you'll file the signed paperwork in triplicate and waiting for no less than three high-ranking SHIELD officers and a unicorn to approve MY request to save some teenagers. If Viper had distributed those drugs, we would've had twice the army on our hands. So yer welcome."
Rogers sat in thought as he slowly sipped his drink, praying to god there was beer in this time period. "See, on the one hand, I could tell you that's never been how I've done things. I don't wait for bureaucracy and red tape in the middle of a warzone. On the other hand, I know that that's probably almost exclusively what you've had to deal with working for SHIELD in terms of leadership, so I can't really expect you to take my word for it."
"So what do you suggest, oh Captain my Captain?"
"Fury really wants to reassign you. Says you're too volatile to be a team player. That when it comes to SHIELD's snipers, you take the gold, there's a dozen silver medals waiting in the wings that would actually follow orders."
"Well, nice knowing you, Cap. I'll send you a postcard from my next assignment. Personally hoping for Aruba, but I get the distinct impression I'm getting Antarctica next," Barton said as he turned to walk out the door before Steve grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Not so fast, Barton. I didn't ask Fury for you to join my team just for your ability to hit a target. Like I said, if I wanted a sniper, there are a dozen comparable to you who actually follow orders," Rogers explained. "Carol, Natasha, Phil, hell, even Frank. What they all have in common is that for one reason or another they'll follow orders, mostly without question. I need someone who will question everything I do, to point out flaws in every plan and strategy I make. If I just follow the SHIELD guidebook we get days like today, where we're so predictable we play right into enemy hands.
"The only way that works, though, is if instead of running off on your own plan, you let the rest of the team in on what's going on, or at least me so I can plan ahead accordingly. You're here to be my second pair of eyes, in more ways than one." While Rogers gave his spiel, Barton sat at the barstool, staring into his mostly empty glass, presumably taking it all in. "Of course, if you'd prefer, I can speak to Fury about transferring to Antarctica. I hear it's cold this time of year," Rogers joked.
"Still not much of a team player. I work best alone," Barton commented.
"All I'm asking is you give me a chance as a leader, the same way I'm asking everyone else to give you chance. Going solo is easy. Cooperating with other people is hard," Rogers replied. Barton hesitated, fiddling with a stray dart as he postponed answering. Even if Rogers's speech had gotten to him, pride kept him stubborn. "Tell you what, Barton. Let's play a few rounds of darts. You win, you can decide what you want to do and I'll back whatever you want with Fury, even if that means you going solo again. I win, you give this a shot. A real shot this time."
Barton scoffed. "You've got to be kidding me. Super soldier serum or not, I've got, like, 99% accuracy with pretty much anything I shoot or throw. The bow's only a preference thing."
"Then why don't we make it interesting?" Rogers smiled as he ordered another round of beers. "Unless you're chicken?"
"Fine then, soldier boy, you're on!" Barton said excitedly.
When Steve Rogers made his way back to the SHIELD base, Clint Barton's arm was draped around his shoulder. The archer was having trouble forming complete sentences or even standing, but at the very least he seemed to be enjoying himself. He helped Barton onto a couch as Phil Coulson met him.
"Was he as hammered as this when you found him?" Coulson asked dryly.
"No, but he didn't seem to realize that I can't really get drunk. Enhanced metabolism and all," Rogers offered.
"Still not sure going out and getting him wasted was the right thing to do."
"I'll make sure he doesn't do any flying or shooting until he's good and sober," Rogers assured him.
"Yeah, but you still probably should have given him the third degree."
Rogers shook his head. "Barton isn't a soldier like you or me or most of SHIELD. He doesn't respond to authority or drill sergeants like most of the rest of us. If you bark orders at Barton, his first instinct will be to disobey them just to spite you. If you want a guy like that to respect you, you have to earn it on a different level."
"You think he'll actually play ball?"
"Well enough now. Speaking of which, what did Fury have to say?"
Coulson sighed. "Something about us supposed to capture a big fish but only getting a bucketful of anchovies. I don't know, it was very metaphorical. Either way he's not happy we lost Viper."
"We'll get another shot. Next time we'll get the drop on her. What about the superpower drugs she was passing out?"
"We'll need some of our specialists to confirm the contents. Since we're dealing with more enhanced than we initially expected, we're going to need some equipment upgrades and support staff. Fury wants a full report ASAP."
Rogers nodded. "All right, then. Let's rest up while we can. Things are only going to escalate from here."
To be continued...