Yeah, Baby
The incessant beeping of an alarm clock in the morning seemed to be the only constant in Carol’s life. From the age of six, she learned to wake up before anyone else to sneak off to school to avoid her father's rages, at fifteen, she couldn’t afford to miss the bus because she would have to walk two miles to class. As soon as she was old enough, she joined the Air Force where the alarm was a bugle but no less irritating and the guns she heard that hit her wings seemed to have an eerily familiar beat to them.
She thought she was going to die. She prayed to wake up as she hurtled towards the ground. She would wake up and she would be ok and she didn’t want to die she didn’t want to die—
She came to. The steady beeping wasn’t an alarm clock. She woke up and the hospital room wasn’t a hospital room and there was a man in a uniform she didn’t like and she had wires and electrodes stuck to her head and why didn’t she like the uniform she was probably overreacting that’s what Dad always said she overreacted and he didn’t hit her and she should probably listen to what the uniformed man told her.
For once in her life, Carol Danvers went back to sleep. She didn’t listen to the heart rate monitor, why should another alarm clock tell her what to do she went back to sleep and—
Vers woke up sweating. She tore off the covers and grabbed Soren’s alarm clock and wrenched open the shitty window. She yanked the cord out of the wall and pitched the damn machine out the window. It crashed satisfactorily. She grinned. Vers 3, glorified potato radio 0.
She strode across the room and shook her roommate awake. “Soren! Up!”
She groggily swatted at her. “Why? The human body needs eleven hours of sleep. Probably. I should get a bit more just to be safe.”
Vers crossed her arms and stared at her. Soren squeezed her eyes shut tighter. Finally, she sighed. “It’s Thursday, isn’t it? We have to serve the nerds who come in to get fries for breakfast?”
“Yep.”
“My alarm didn’t wake me up. You did. You destroyed another one, didn’t you?”
“Yep.”
“Tell me you didn’t put it in the bathtub again at least, right?”
“Nope. Out the window.”
She sat up and climbed out of bed. “So much for keeping a low profile.”
“Hey, not only do we live in New York City, and compete with the guy who wears cat ears and fights crime for the “weirdest neighbors ever,” but this way, the downstairs assholes think we’re the idiots who keep knocking out the power with our destructive shenanigans.”
“Y’know, I’m pretty sure they’re horns. His official Twitter says so. It’s in the bio and everything.”
“It’s not like he’d know. Go take a shower while I get dressed. We gotta be at work in an hour and we have to bike. Spidey threw a subway car at Hydro-Man last night. Made the ten o’clock news. Not that you’d know. You go to bed at eight like a psycho.”
Soren ignored her jibe, “Hydro-Man is made of water. The train car would just go through him. Why would he think—”
“Go. Shoo.”
She grumbled and resisted but let herself be shepherded out. Meanwhile, Vers rifled through her dresser searching for that one band t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Granted, her entire wardrobe was band tees and jeans but there was one nice grey one that paired beautifully with her bomber jacket—
Aha. She yanked off her sweatpants and sleeping tank top and tossed them back into the laundry basket. She tugged the shirt over her head and hopped on one leg as she forced the other into the pant leg, before tangling them both and face-planting on the hardwood floor.
“Shit!”
Vers lay slumped on the cold hard ground and groaned. That’d leave a mark. She managed to pull her pants up like a big girl and crawl onto the couch.
“Ow,” she muttered, clutching her forehead. Scratch everything she told Soren. She was never gonna move again. She would spend the rest of her existence on this one comfy cushion.
The universe disagreed, and decided to start knocking on her door.
“Get the door!” Soren yelled from the bathroom.
“No,” she yelled back, rocking from the pain.
“If it’s a bad guy, you get to beat them up!”
Vers sighed. “Fine,” she said, stalked off towards the door, and threw it open.
A scrawny kid holding a stack of pizzas shrunk back.
“...hi? Is your face ok?”
She cocked her head and squinted at him. “You don’t look like an assassin. I could pick you up and throw you. Is the pizza poisoned?”
“I sure hope not,” he said, giving her a tolerant smile.
“I’m still gonna need you to take a bite, seeing as I didn’t order any pizza.”
“That you didn’t, ma’am. It was ordered and paid for on your behalf through the Horny Hippo’s Pizzagram App.”
“Sure. Then you wouldn’t mind having a slice.”
The kid looked frustrated, yet he kept that infuriatingly patient smile on his face. “Ma’am, we aren’t allowed to do that. What you do with the pizza is none of my business, but I’m going to need you to sign that you got it.”
He held out a tablet and stylus. Vers carefully read the terms and conditions and clicked the checkbox.
“Thank you. The pizza came with a message. I’m guessing you don’t want to listen to it in song.”
Vers raised an eyebrow. “No, no, I wanna hear you sing it…?”
“Peter” he offered, before clearing his throat, tapping his shoe and sang to the tune of Happy Happy Birthday;
This is Wendy Lawson
It turns out I’m alive
Good people have been slaughtered
And now the shield’s a hive
Atrocities thought ended
Didn’t begin again
They happened in the shadows
And Mar-Vell starts with M
So come now out of hiding
And lend a helping hand
I’ve sent you my three wise men
They’ve traveled through the land
Or at least to Pancho’s
You’ll see them very soon
Lead them to salvation
From the fiery blue moon
Vers gaped. “Doctor Lawson’s alive?”
“I don’t know who that is, but the song said so.”
“You didn’t write the song then?’
“No, it came pre-written from the customer. I have a printed copy. I really wasn’t sure what to sing it to. I usually deliver cutesy anniversary messages, not… whatever that was. Do you play D&D or something?”
“Yeah, whatever kiddo. Give me the transcript.”
Peter pulled it out of a pocket in his pizza-insulating bag but held it out of reach. “Would you like me to call the cops?”
“Nope.”
“Would you like me to call the Punisher?”
“Definitely nope.”
“The TMNT?”
“The what?”
“The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? They live in the sewers, fight crime? Wear colorful scarves around their eyes that do jack-crap to disguise them because they are literally giant turtles?”
Vers blinked. “The what?”
“I deliver pizza to Deadpool. Nothing shocks me at this point.”
“Have you considered another line of work?
Peter winced. “Death before retail.”
“It is too early and I am probably too concussed for this. Gimme the transcript and pizza and I tip generously.”
Peter handed over the transcript and pizza. Vers tipped generously.
She closed the door on a bemused teenager and turned to where Soren stood in a towel holding a bread knife.
“What happened to your head?”
“Fuck work. Lawson’s alive. She’s contacted us,” she said waving the piece of paper.
Soren’s jaw dropped. “How? She was shot! You saw it yourself!”
“I’m not sure about anything anymore. Get dressed and grab a highlighter. The message is weirdly cryptic. We’re gonna have to go all English teacher on this bitch.”
——————————————————
Clint, Nat, and Maria walked in the chute currently occupied by one other nameless agent bulked up in tac gear. Nat held her wrist up to a hidden scanner, and they shot down the shaft like a bullet. The agent checked their watch before stepping in front of Maria.
We have thirty seconds they signed.
The eyes see a loop. They can hear though.
Clint frowned. Eyes?
Cameras, Maria quickly signed. Brief us
Trust no one. Act normal. We’re compromised. We’ve evacuated as many as we can trust. Save Q. They needed to stay on base to keep up appearances. You three are our only hope. M stands for—
The agent wavered on their feet and tried to lean on the wall before collapsing.
Nat rushed to their side while Clint and Maria pulled out their heaters. The chute kept falling, getting closer and closer to floor -616 with no signs of stopping. Nat took the agent’s pulse, before shaking her head.
Abandoning stealth, she started barking orders. “Clint! Pop the panel on the ceiling.” She grabbed a flashlight from her belt and tossed it to him. “You know where the emergency brakes are.”
She turned to Maria. “This agent had a heart attack from the falling chute. Understood?”
Maria nodded and rifled through Clint’s duffel bag. She pulled a pair of magnetic handles out and passed one to Nat.
“This’ll be rough.”
Nat braced for impact.