Questions and Answers
What followed was a few moments of the prerequisite “Duck Soup Mirror Scene” cliché between the two look alike young women. Each poking the other, looking each other over and walking in circles. There were a few differences. Daisy’s hair was at the usual length she’d had it in recently, whereas Skye’s was longer, but done up. Skye was still in her army uniform while Daisy was in jeans and a T-shirt. Skye was also in heals while Daisy was in Chuck Taylors so they were not at the same eye height.
“Now do you believe me Lt. Simmons?” Jemma and Daisy both reacted to the use of “Simmons”.
“I guess I don’t have much choice…” She turned to her counterpart “… So… How did you end up a ‘Daisy’?”
“I think the two of you have some talking to do?” Jemma interjected.
The others watched the security camera feed from Scott’s desk, bouncing back and forth with ideas of how the girl from the other world had arrived there and what were they going to do with her. The two look-alikes were just sitting there awkwardly staring each other down.
“She could be an LMD” May asserted. “Lot of stuff Aida and Ivanov stole is still unaccounted for…”
Scott shook his head “That through crossed my mind. But when I disarmed her, the gun nicked a relatively new looking wound on her finger, and LMDs don’t bleed.”
“What do we do if we can’t find a ‘return to sender’ button?” Fitz asked
“Culture shock alone might drive her nuts.” Mack said “Remember what happened with Rodgers when he woke up?”
“I think the shock of not seeing her wife and child again would be even worse.” Simmons added
“I’m gonna see if she’s hungry.” Scott said, excusing himself.
Skye was sitting there, just kind of staring at Daisy. “How are we doing? Brought you something to eat” Scott said, entering with a microwavable soup bowl.
“It’s Clam chowder, all I had left. Today was supposed be grocery day…”
Skye took one spoonful, and her eyes lit up, followed by another and another. Within moments she gobbled up the whole thing.
“This tastes so good!”
“That’s $2.99 instant crap I keep lying around when I don’t have anything else…”
“What’s that?” Skye asked, pointing to a small lump on the bottom.
Scott poked at it with his finger, lifted it into his mouth and gave it a taste. “Bit of clam meat.”
“clam… meat? That has real meat?” She stood up and started for the door “Please tell me there’s more!”
“Yes, I have one or two more left.” He said, grabbing her by the shoulders and sitting her back down “Just take a deep breath and sit back down. We left you here with Daisy so you could talk about yourselves to each other and you’re just sitting here. Daisy, just tell her your story.”
“Well I…”the SHIELD agent stammered “I don’t know where to start.”
“How about the literal beginning…” He said “Skye doesn’t know her personal history.”
“Well” she began “I… or we… were born July 2, 1988…”
“88…”Skye Interrupted “I’m 30?”
Daisy chuckled “That’s almost exactly what I said when I found out. Our father’s name was Calvin Johnson, here at least he was a doctor, and our mother’s name was Jiayang.”
“What kind of name is that?” Skye asked
“It’s Chinese actually… We’re half Chinese. I was actually born in China. We, or atleast I, am also an Inhuman. We’re both Inhumans” Daisy finished, motioning to her and Scott to emphises she was referring to Scott and herself.
“No” Scott corrected her “I don’t know what the heck I am. My family is Inhuman, yes, but my powers didn’t come from Terrigenesis as far as I know because I’ve never gone through it”
“This is just easier. Your family is Inhuman, you’ve got powers. Just say you’re Inhuman. You don’t have to go into full details every time someone asks. You ramble on too much sometimes. Besides… you were affected two…”
“OH! Here we go, finally, you DO want to talk about it…” Scott yelled, turning towards her
“Yeah I want to talk about it, how can we not?” Daisy yelled and stood up.
“We’ve seen each other a few times since and yet not one mention of it.”
“This isn’t something you just bring up.”
“You just did…”
“Um” Skye asked “Are you two, like, a couple?”
“No” the two agents said, a still facing each other. They quickly turned their backs to Skye.
“Full disclosure?” Daisy asked
Scott gave a small sigh before saying “Not much of a choice at this point…”
The two awkwardly turned to face Skye, both taking deep breaths
“We had sex…” Daisy started
“Once. Three months ago” Scott added.
“We didn’t plan on it…”
“We were kinda forced to by some sick little brat….
“She could command other inhumans to do what she wanted them to…”
“and in our case was a weekend as her personal living dolls.”
“But while she could order our bodies around…”
“We kinda had to sit back and ride it out…”
“It was like being drugged…”
“We had an idea of what was going on, but it was hazy…”
“The effects were only temporary, though…”
“And we came back to full control during, well you know…”
All Skye could muster was an “ewww” followed by “Wait…what’s an Inhuman? Are you guys, like aliens or something? Wait, if you’re me then, does that mean I’m an alien?!?”
The pair shared another awkward look, and started to explain.
“Well” Daisy started “Thousands of years ago, some aliens called the Kree were fighting a war. They needed troops, so they got the idea they would find primitive planets and modify the natives into living weapons. And one of those planets was Earth. They thought the plan failed and left, but it actually worked. Scott and I are descended from some of the people the Kree experimented on. When we are exposed to a substance called Terrigen, we get special powers, like this.”
Daisy proceded to create small vibrations in the table causing the soup bowl and water glass to dance around.
“You’ve already seen what I can do” Scott added, telekinetically pulling the glass to himself. “And please stop trying to break my stuff…”
“The abilities vary from person to person.” Daisy continued “I’ve met people who have all sorts of abilities. Teleportation, precognition, making copies of themselves, flying… Our mother was practically immortal and another agent we work with can move at super speed.”
“You left out one detail “Scott said.
Daisy shot him a look and then gave him a smack in the gut “Hey, office gossip” he said defensively “I swear I’ve never read them. Scouts’ honor.”
“You were never a scout…”
“Ok fair but still…”
Daisy begrudgingly accepted that and turned back to her twin “Right… I started using my powers in public and basically, I kinda became a superhero vigilante for a while. The media people gave me the nickname ‘Quake.’ I became kinda famous.”
“That actually sounds kinda cool.” Skye said
“You’d think… So… Now that we’re all in a sharing mood, why don’t you tell us about yourself?” Daisy asked Skye, with the loads both of her and Scott’s awkward “friendship” and their personal histories off their backs.
“Well, I grew up in an orphanage in Los Angeles. Because of a fire they had no detailed records on when I arrived there so I had no idea when that happened. When I was what I thought was sixteen I ran away. Lived on the streets for a while, moved around a lot. Got jobs where I could find them. Eventually I got into a pretty big fight with some asshole in a bar who couldn’t take “I’m not attracted to guys” as an answer when he tried to hit on me. Smashed him up pretty damn good, they had him in court in a body cast. Judge gave me the options of prison or the military. I took the army. They gave me a massive series of tests and when it was all said and done, I was offered the job with SSR. First day on the job, I meet my Jemma. She’s an MD, did my physical. We hit it off, went for drinks that night at the base cantina, one thing leads to another and we end up saying “I Do” a few months later. We’ve been married six years now. Last thing I remember was cleaning out an old store room at base with her when she whelped in pain, saying she was sure she’d gone into labor. I had a weird looking lamp in my hands that was stuck in the wall, the lights flicker and next thing I know I’m in the room with you pointing a gun at me.”
“ICER” Scott corrected “It’s a stun gun. Instead of lead, the rounds carry a toxin that can temporarily paralyze.” He pulled the spare clip of ICER rounds off his belt and removed a bullet to show her.
“Why were you cleaning out a store room that early?”
“Jemma and I are a rarity among SSR personal. Few are married and even fewer have kids and we’re the only ones married to another SSR member. The director offered us the store room as larger quarters so we could raise our baby. Neither of us could sleep, and we just decided to do something constructive.”
“What do you normally do?”
“I’m Director Garret’s assistant. I basically do everything for him. He even sort leaves me in charge when he’s out of the office. I’m preaty sure you probably do the same thing for…”
“I’m a field agent.” Daisy interrupted.
“Technically me two” Scott added “I just don’t get out much.”
“Wow… You…Have either of you ever killed anyone?”
Daisy thought for a moment. “Yes, but they were all terrible, terrible people.”
“I once used my powers to drop a tanker truck onto of a building full of mercenaries and terrorist. And I shot a few of them before hand” Scott added “Other than that most of my takedowns have been more in the less-than-lethal category.”
“So how did you end up in SHIELD?” Skye asked her counterpart.
“Much like you I grew up thinking I was an orphan. By my early 20s I was living in a van, oddly also in LA. I was a hacktivist”
“A what?” Skye interrupted
“Hacker activist” Daisy elaborated “I was using my computer skills to try to change the world for the better, or at least I thought I was. SHIELD, more specifically Coulson, found me one day after I’d found a guy who’d been the victim of experimentation by some really nasty people. He brought me on as a consultant and I became part of his team. We had some ups and downs, but they eventually made me a full SHIELD agent. SHIELD has become my life, my family. Coulson and May are the closest thing to an actual parents I’ve ever had.”
“How can a computer change the world?” Skye asked, seemingly ignoring the rest of what Daisy had just said.
“You’d be surprised what a laptop and an internet connection can do.”
Skye didn’t respond to ether of these words.
“Well, it’s more what the person using it does “Scott added in “Computer is only as smart as the person using it’ and all that.”
“Computers do calculations.” Skye said. “They take out the tediousness of doing lots of math.”
“Well, that was what they were created for, but with time, they became better.” Scott told her.
“Better?”
“Smaller, faster, smarter… What once took a whole building now fits into a person’s pockets” Daisy said, as the two agents both pulled out their smart phones.
“We built machines that took men to the moon with less computing power than these things.” Scott said, taking a picture of Skye with his phone, and then handing it to her to show her.
“You mean… you don’t have the Scientific Regulation and Control Act?” Skye asked, looking like someone just told her Santa Claus wasn’t real. “What happened to President Rogers? How could he have allowed this to happen?”