Friends and Foes

There were times when Phil Coulson honestly hated being the new director of (the new) S.H.I.E.L.D. - and the times of the Iliad siege or Ward's infiltration weren't even the worst; the times such as now and here, when people not so much cut him out as...left him to his own devices, to run S.H.I.E.L.D. per se were. Phil Coulson didn't like to admit it, (he probably didn't have to admit it - agents were perceptive people, after all), but he was something of an extravert - he liked being around people, and on his own? Not so much.

...That had been partially a part of the reason why he got Grant Ward onto his team: back in the beginning he had honestly wanted to help the younger man, to come out of his shell and become a part of 'the team' - and it backfired very, very badly, especially for poor Fitz and Simmons, who actually bought Grant's act to the max...everyone had bought Grant's act...

Coulson banished the thought (not so much unwelcome as confusing) from his mind as the quinnjet landed, and a bunch of people (some of whom he didn't actually know) rushed by him, accompanying - or guiding - a medical gurney - with someone on it, ignoring him completely...

It was times like these that Coulson fought an urge to grab someone by the shoulder and tell them, peevishly: "I'm the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. - shouldn't someone tell me things?" - but he didn't. He was the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. after all. So instead he followed the crowd, hoping to learn what was going on here.

And he did.

"...This is Naomi?" Coulson kept his voice carefuly neutral as he joined the rest of the team around the local medical bay.

"Yes," Melinda's voice was evident with tight self-control, but Coulson, for one, knew that he had to pick words carefully, or else the sleeping dragon wouldn't lie anymore, no need for extra instructions here.

"I meant," he made his voice even more carefully controlled, "what has happened to her?"

"This is what we're going to find out," Melinda exhaled as she handed to Phil a modest-looking grey folder. "Phil, keep it with you for now. I, Skye and - some other agents - will go and talk to Andrew."

"You don't have to, ma'am," a big stranger (a family relative of May's?) replied in a half-rumbling and half-familiar voice. "You can stay here. The Elders did deputize me to get rid of him-"

"You're not getting rid of him - not yet," Melinda shot back, "if Andrew's innocent, he'll stay. And if he is guilty - I'll get rid of him personally."

Everyone blanched at the last words. Right now, the Cavalry sounded less like a Cavalry and more like some sort of a dragon lady - with the emphasis on the dragon.

"Melinda," the voice of the elder (eldest?) May woman was even quieter than Melinda's own was, but Melinda turned back around immediately, her own simmering rage going down straight away. "Here. Use this if he is difficult."

...You just didn't expect a little elderly lady (Melinda took after her mother in height) to hand over an H&K sniper rifle to her daughter with a complete poker face (May took after her mother in this too).

"A G3? Nice!" Hunter said cheerfully (the man just couldn't keep his mouth shut, it seemed). "Can I borrow it later?"

"Hunter, you idiot," Morse spoke with a voice that contained a strange mix of disgust, amusement, and exasperation. "You never ask this sort of thing about a sniper rifle - especially a personal one. I knew a man once who was very possessive about his PSG1: he was ready to admit that a Remington was better, but he just didn't care." She paused and turned to May. "Ma'am, if you aren't staying, can you take Lance with him? If he pushes you - you'll just break his limbs, but you'll let him live; your parents - probably not?"

"Agreed," May nodded and gave Lance a particularly heavy glare...which was blocked by the big gifted.

"Ma'am," he said, doing his best to sound placatingly, but with a note of challenge, too. "About this-"

"You're coming too, Mr. Hudima," May's gaze shifted to the bigger man, but unlike Hunter, 'Hudima' dug in and stood his ground. "I haven't forgotten what you told me."

"No, ma'am, you don't understand. Your husband is killing people - people of Li Shi, who honestly don't want to fight with S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore-"

"I know, sir, but if you're lying...I must take this chance," Melinda's voice was as tight as a spring. "He and I...Andrew has his flaws, but-"

"You misunderstand me, ma'am. It's your show - I'm just asking if I can come along for the ride," Hudima replied. "Please? It'll be your call in the end."

"Thank you, sir," Melinda nodded. "Skye, you're with three of us. Ok?"

"Sure," Skye nodded with relief (and for a good reason - it seemed that May has toned down slightly through her conversation with the big gifted). "What's the plan?"

"I'll explain later," Melinda told the younger woman. "Follow me."

And the foursome left.

Coulson shifted his attention back to Naomi, but Morse was holding court there once more, (in a manner of speaking), and clearly his involvement was not required. Feeling rather lonely once more (and perhaps with justification), Coulson left.

For once (or yet again?) in her life, Skye (or Daisy) felt relieved at the fact that Lance Hunter couldn't really keep his mouth shut, not unless it was broken, most likely. Several minutes after they began to approach Andrew's place of work (by car, rather than by plane - Melinda decided to be subtle here), Lance broke the silence once more.

"So, you and Morse go way back?" he asked the other man in the car.

"Yes. We were partners. It was, it is different from what you have here, some sort of a bigger team, correct?" 'Mr. Hudima' gave a cautious look over his shoulder to May and Daisy (he was the one driving, BTW). "It was...Victoria Hand's idea. She's not a bad woman, but too much of a schemer."

"True," Hunter agreed, his voice carefully neutral. "Never liked her much myself. Izzy did, as did Idaho, but, yeah, I've changed some from the time when they were alive."

"For good or bad?"

"I don't know," Hunter admitted. "I miss them, but, I'm not sure what would happen if they were to be brought back."

"They cannot be brought back-"

"Oh, you don't know, rumor has it that director Coulson was," Hunter looked more serious than he ever did and didn't even make a single joke about that. "I don't know if this fact or fiction and I don't want to learn. Now, about you-"

"I wasn't a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. I was more of an asset, I believe."

"True, he was," Skye admitted, reluctantly. May had promptly steered her in the direction of the old Index- and the Index-related activities of the old S.H.I.E.L.D., and she did find the man's description. For some reason it didn't bring her much comfort - yes, the description fit him, but somehow seeing him live was different. Plus, it was the Index - if Hydra hadn't risen, then Skye herself would be on it, most likely, and - yeah, this wasn't something that she had enjoyed thinking about, uh-uh. "Morse was your handler?"

"She's my partner," the retort came sharper, "or at least that's what Hand had planned - as part of her greater plans overall. Morse and I...well, we had closeness, and she is a very beautiful woman, though she was more of my father's type than mine."

"You have a father?"

"Dead now, for the last few years," the bitterness was back. "Hand was the closest thing I had for an aunt - she's not the maternal type."

"Oh no, back when I saw her in Australia, she was one cantankerous and garrulous old witch - the scar on her temple didn't help her temper any, but her mind was as sharp as ever," Lance shuddered. "Bob may be a she-devil but Victoria is the original model. The more time Bob spends away from her, the better."

Skye felt something give inside of her. She wasn't very fond of Victoria Hand herself, and it was possible that their new gifted friend/asset honestly didn't know any better, but Hunter? "She's dead," she told flatly the two men. "Mr. Hudima, you may not have known this-"

"How did she die?" 'Mr. Hudima' interrupted with a rather soft rumble (by his standards).

"Grant Ward killed her."

"When?" this time it was from Hunter.

"Um," Skye did some mental calculations and gave the date. "On that day or some time earlier," she gave them the date.

"Uh-uh, doesn't end up," Lance shook his head. "Izzy and Idaho and I and the rest of the gang? We met her in Australia quite a while after that - she was scarred, she was pissed, she was angry - and she was alive and not a vampire or a zombie, so you've got your info wrong - possibly by her. She was less than happy by Coulson being made director...so were Izzy and even Idaho...me, I didn't care either way...maybe she just took a leaf off Coulson's own book and pretended to die...who knows?"

"Or maybe she's Hydra too?" the other man rumbled. "In the last years it became really hard to tell S.H.I.E.L.D. apart from Hydra, at least for such people as us - the gifted. Rather, we didn't trust either group."

"The gifted knew about Hydra?" May sounded interested despite her intentions. "...Well, this makes sense, I suppose. They had their own agents...such as you, Mr. Hudima, sir?"

"No," the gifted rumbled. "I had my own falling out with Jiaying quite some time before Hydra came into the light, I rather worked with Hand and Morse - they were more sane than Ms. Zabo was..." He paused. "But Victoria herself is a gifted - a very powerful, very old gifted. She didn't really need me - or Morse - to pass on information to the rest, you know?"

"...Garrett was Hydra, Hand's gifted, Barton is Hawkeye, Romanoff - the Black Widow," Skye finally broke the silence, "oh, and DC did die for slightly longer than a few minutes. Is there anyone in the old S.H.I.E.L.D. who was exactly who they appeared to be?"

"Me?" Melinda suggested carefully, looking askance at the two men.

"You're a wife and a mother, May. You didn't look like either when we first met," there was a note of not-quite-bitterness in Skye's voice. "What's it like, BTW?"

Melinda opened her mouth to tell Skye (who apparently was calling herself Daisy these days for some reason) that she stopped being both ever since Bahrain, for she was unworthy to be either, when Hunter cleared his throat.

"According to the GPS," the British native told both women, "we're here?"

Despite - or perhaps because of - the tense conversation in the car, (May was not anywhere so stupid as to believe that her biological family didn't strike some chord in the younger woman's soul, considering Skye's own family situation), the ride towards Andrew's office (May told the security guard that she wanted to surprise her husband; he took one look and buzzed her and Skye in, telling them that Dr. Garner was upstairs, in his office, so up they went.

"So," Melinda told Skye as they counted the floors that they passed by via the elevator (the campus where Andrew worked and taught had some tall buildings, very modern and equipped - but then again, it did have the Starks (both Tony and his late father) among their alumni, so this wasn't so surprising, after all. Too modern to be Ivy League, but still. "You still want to talk about it?"

"No, but I want you to," Skye replied. "Oh, and my name is Daisy, BTW, now."

"...Why?"

"Why not? This was my true name - my parents gave it to me before they lost me," Skye shivered. "They, especially Jiaying, they weren't the best of people, but neither they were the worst." She looked askance at May. "This is not a dig, incidentally."

"I killed a child in Bahrain, you know this?" May replied softly, suspecting that Skye possibly did. "How could I look Naomi in the eyes after this?"

Before Skye could answer, the elevator's doors opened on their floor and they stepped out. After a tense question for another security officer to confirm that yes, Dr. Garner was in his office, May and Skye went there and entered.

He wasn't. In it. There was no mess, no sign of struggle, the office was just empty, and Andrew Garner's hat and coat were missing too. "I don't sense any secret passages," Skye confessed to May as the older woman slowly moved around the office, checking the books on the shelves and the documents on the table, in a methodical way that was sort of scary, even for Skye, so she bravely continued, "but I sense something...unusual. May, look outside and tell me if the current security guy is still there."

With a slight glare (for her, anyways), May complied and looked back outside. "He's...gone too," she spoke softly to the younger woman. "He must've left as soon as we went inside-"

"Check out the nearby offices on this floor," Skye's own voice was even and calm despite her increasing nervousness. "You don't have to be subtle-"

May kicked down one of the doors, then another one, and third.

"They're all empty," she commented after the fourth (or the fifth - not that Skye was counting).

"Yes," the younger woman said simply. "May, I think we've been had. Shall I call DC and ask for back-up?"

"No," May grew more thoughtful herself. "This here is something else - it doesn't feel like Hydra, not yet. Let's get back to the car and get out of here. It's getting late. I want to check on Naomi. Let's go home."

So they went.

"So Andrew has flown the coop?" Lance asked in his typical manner as the other man drove their car back to the HQ, but with his ears clearly cocked and alert. "You sure he wasn't kidnapped?"

"It's hard to say," Daisy confessed, "but the place - it didn't feel like a kidnapping scene. It doesn't have quite the right Hydra feel either."

"If it wasn't for Ward there wouldn't be a Hydra feel in this," Hunter snapped. "May, what was in this folder? Does your ex do business with Hydra, or Nautilus club, or who?"

"He's an agent of ATCU - you know, the new people - and they might be a cat's paw of Hydra's," May replied, however reluctantly.

"No, Coulson is sure that Hydra isn't sponsoring them," Hunter shook his head. "We're being boxed."

"Oh?" Skye looked around.

"Yeah," their 'driver' rumbled. "There's a grey Saab, a BMW, and now, as Hunter has noticed - a light blue Audi and a nasty pink Lotus Esprit too. They seem to be doing this properly too - are they Hydra?"

"Too subtle and professional for Hydra, too yuppie," May wrinkled her nose in thought. "Can you lose them?"

"Let's try. Where's the nearby exit?"

"17th," May pointed her finger at the exit, and Hudima complied, signalling at the last moment, accelerating onto the exit ramp, moving onto a big oval roundabout, cutting before a pair of slower-moving cars and swerving onto some road - fast. Within moments the main highway was far behind them, and before long they were lost among dark country lanes.

"Now what?" Lance asked, once the car slowed to a safer speed. "Cut the lights?"

"Did this already. Call the, uh, director? Coulson?"

"Already did," May replied from the back seat, as she assembled her G3. "He'll be looking through your folder, Mr. Hudima, even as we'll be getting back."

"Ok. Do we follow the GPS?"

"Yes," May nodded as she finished the assembly. "Skye, keep your powers ready and aim them at the outside - but only if there's trouble and when I give a signal..."

"Trouble," Lance pointed towards their front, where two sets of lights had appeared - the Audi and the Lotus. Driving bonnet to bonnet, they clearly were done with just boxing the agents now. "Big guy, go!"

...From where Skye was sitting, there was very little room between their own vehicle and the left ninety-degree turn, but their driver delivered all the same, utilizing handbrake, accelerator and foot-brake like a pro.

Soon, they were in another road, one overshadowed by trees, still bare, for right now it was winter in this part of the world. "Did we lose them this time?" Skye asked, just as from the behind came a series of tiny blue flashes and followed by the sound of bullets hitting their vehicle.

Hudima swore and released the wheel, his hands clenched tight, and so was his face. "Hunter, take over," he snapped.

"Are you hit?!" Hunter yelled as he took over the steering.

"This isn't about me, we must do something now or leave the car! Agent Melinda?" Hudima snapped.

With a dazzling blast of its lights, the Saab came out of the darkness (by now, the sun had set and it was fully night), closing quickly. One of its passengers fired a couple of shots, openly aiming for the tires.

"All right, this is it," Melinda growled, as she used the barrel of her own G3 to knock out one of their own weapons before firing a shot. One of the Saab's lights went dead. As that happened, the enemy driver seemed to lose control, rolling first right, then left - right into the middle of May's line of sight. She fired once, twice more, and the windshield of the Saab collapsed. The car itself hanged around the agents' rear bumper for a few moments, then faltered and swerved to the left.

For a few moments the agents saw the Saab suspended perfectly in mid-air, and then it vanished in darkness, which was lit just moments later by a plume of fire.

"I think we should put some distance between ourselves and this wreck," Hunter muttered to the others.

"We must get out of our car now," Hudima replied instead. "Please?"

This was really the first time that he spoke in such a term, so instinctively the agents proper did just that.

"Now what?" Skye asked when they walked some distance away from their vehicle.

Hudima straightened out and released his inner tension with a snap. Before the agents' very eyes, their own car was consumed by fire and collapsed within moments.

"I, um, have been preventing this from happening for the last ten minutes?" Hudima looked embarassed rather than proud here. "I should've told you that we've been hit, but I could handle it - I'm a pyrokinetic, remember?"

"Fair enough, and thank you," Melinda nodded. "Can you do it in reverse?"

"I can do almost anything - with fire," Hudima nodded. "Ask Morse - she knows all about me doing this sort of thing."

"Can you do something about that?" May jabbed G3's barrel in the direction of the plume. The gifted nodded in reply, and concentrated, making a squeezing motion with his hands. Immediately, the flames died down on the wreck of a driver who had been crawling away from the wreckage.

"That's good enough?" Hudima asked May, who just nodded in reply and knocked the enemy out with the barrel of the G3.

"Yes, now we can call Coulson and HQ again," she said curtly.

"Ok," Skye nodded, as she took out the communicator to call Coulson and the HQ, before pausing. "Can I do that, BTW?" she asked the pyrokinetic gifted, trying to pretend that she wasn't impressed by his powers and control.

"Considering that you're very different from me and most other kinetics? It's complex to reply," the latter replied evenly. "You're a great person and prodigy according to the rumors, but this? This comes from practice and experience, something that you still lack. But don't worry - with time you will be able to do things that I never will be able to, because you're a creator and I'm not."

"What are you, then?" Skye said quietly. (She wasn't used to handle compliments, even awkward ones.) "A destroyer?"

"Sometimes, but I can be something of a healer too," Hudima nodded solemnly. "Speaking of which?" he pointed to the downed man.

"We have other medics on site other than Morse," May said simply as she pointed upwards, where a jet's bulk was darker than the night. "Our ride is here - let's go."

TBC