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Phil Coulson, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., sat on a bench in the small, alley-way garden adjacent to the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall. A quiet moment of contemplation before duty would call.
From his shadowed spot, he watched as a small group of birds jumped and tussled over seeds in a bowl. He loved to watch birds. Small and fragile, yet incredible in their own way - capable of something as amazing as flight without the aid of superpower or magic. Simple mechanics and beautiful design gave birds a power no human would ever posses naturally.
Though different from human beings in almost every design, they were similar in other ways. Fighting over food, territory, mates, power among the flock – the birds always presented a simple grounding reality that all creatures, despite design and ability (super or otherwise) were essentially the same. All creatures at their core of purpose are simply trying to survive in a world they cannot control.
And when focused on this core purpose, they become oblivious to the greater threats around them.
A stray cat had been slowly moving up the path, inch by careful inch. Coulson had been aware of him for some minutes, but if the birds had noticed, they’d given no sign, reminding Coulson of his other grounding reality: that all creatures, no matter how incredible, need the help of an unseen hand from time to time.
Coulson stood and walked to the garbage can near his bench. He casually removed a half-eaten turkey sandwich he’d spotted sitting near the top, stripped out the turkey, and approached the cat. He knelt, gave a few reassuring sounds, lightly tossed the turkey into the leaves near where the cat was hiding, and took a few steps back.
After initial investigation, the cat began to eat. The birds continued unaware of the danger or of their relative safety. Agent Coulson returned to his bench and his quiet contemplation.
After a few minutes, his phone beeped. Duty called.
Coulson turned onto the Mall and strode East towards the Air and Space Museum. Five minutes to five meant crowds of tourists were forcing their way out of the museum at the gentle urging of guards. Coulson moved easily against the tide as people seemed to instinctively part from his way.
He walked inside the museum and met the eyes of Agent Finley, who fell in stride and walked with Coulson to the stairway and the second floor. They turned into the Moon Landing exhibit and Finely calmly announced the exhibit’s closure, ushering the straggling tourists. Coulson continued without breaking stride, moving to a small, locked door. He flashed a S.H.I.E.L.D. card and the lock clicked open.
Coulson stepped inside the darkened exhibit that held Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit and a lunar rover. He couldn’t help his heart flutter for just a moment as he stood in front of the suit and remembered his own childhood dream of spaceflight. Despite all he had seen and done in his own life, all the tech and power he’d wielded, the simple bravery of one man stepping out into the unknown with just these scraps of fabric between him and oblivion inspired a sense of awe and respect. The suit held a magic of its own.
It was for that reason, Coulson had chosen it years early as the hiding place for a different kind of magic.
He reached into the tiny pouch on the suit’s right arm and removed a smooth, flat rectangle of dark material. Three inches long and half an inch thick, the rectangle weighed nothing in his hand. Literally nothing. It was a tangible object with no physical presence in this world, despite appearances. A stolen treasure of Asgard, it was pure magic in static form. Power beyond reckoning.
His task accomplished, Coulson slipped the little object into his breast pocket just as casually as a pen and walked out of the exhibit. He and Agent Finely moved with the rest of the remaining tourists, out the doors and on to the Mall.
***
He’d been aware of them since before he sat in the garden. Their presence hadn’t warranted enough concern to deviate from the plan – it still didn’t – but Coulson liked to avoid unnecessary casualties.
The three men following them were human, he was sure of that. They hung back, moved casually. It was clear they’d had some training. Coulson felt sorry for them. They had no idea they were fodder and a mere distraction sent to test Coulson’s and Finley’s reactions.
He’d feel badly if he had to kill them.
He and Finely had progressed north as far as the National Archives. Coulson paused at a vendor’s kiosk while Finely continued on. Coulson took his time selecting a blue t-shirt with yellow “FBI” letters across the front, sized small. He paid cash, smiled at the vendor and invited her to keep the change. He took a moment to look back at his followers, who were now struggling to look causal. He thought they looked angry. One clearly wanted to continue after Finely, but the shorter of the three, their leader, was holding him back. Coulson smiled and nodded to the group, then turned his back and continued on, turning right at the corner.
There was little reason to hold their façade now and the group of three responded accordingly. They moved quickly to close the distance and rounded the corner after Coulson. He was waiting quietly at the next corner, watching the ‘do not cross’ signal blink red. He turned to greet them, smiling as they approached. He kept his hands unthreateningly relaxed, holding his new t-shirt in one hand and the white plastic bag it had come in in the other.
‘Hand it over,’ demanded the shorter one.
‘I’d rather not,’ Coulson replied, still smiling.
The thug started to move forward but had barely lifted his arms before Coulson snapped the t-shirt up and into his face, blinding him. The thug reached up to hold his eye, stumbling backwards into the man behind him. The third man raised his gun, but Coulson quickly wrapped the t-shirt around the man’s wrist, using it to swing him around and pin the arm across his back. He quickly released the t-shit and pulled it over the man’s head, temporarily binding his arms to his sides.
He turned to face the second man, who had pushed his leader, now screaming and clutching his detached eye, to the ground and was starting to pull his gun. Coulson used the man on the ground’s back as a launch point and lunged at the second man with his plastic bag. He wrapped it over the man’s head as he slid past and behind him. He pulled tightly on the bag, while reaching for the man’s gun. Fear of suffocation had a way of loosening grip and the gun was easily stripped away. Coulson casually stepped around and smashed the man’s face with his own gun. He collapsed in a heap. A quick back-hand saw the t-shirt-bound man fall next to the rest.
Coulson placed the gun on the ground and turned back to face the cross-walk. The signal blinked over to ‘walk.’ He looked up at the J. Edgar Hoover building across the way and hoped the FBI wouldn’t waste too much time in discovering and removing these three. They were clearly in over their heads. Best if they were out of the public for a while.
Finely pulled up in their car, Coulson hopped in the passenger side, and they sped off down Pennsylvania Ave.
**
It wasn’t long before they spotted the follow-cars. Two sleek silver cars and three black SUVs hung back at varying distances. Both types of vehicles were a dime a dozen in the DC area but these each gave off subtle tell-tales. Most significantly that they stayed together in light formation despite commuter traffic as Finley sped away from the city towards Andrews Air Force base.
The cars themselves weren’t threatening. The silver cars were meant for the inevitable high-speed chase, the SUVs were heavier, carrying men and weapons for the inevitable fight. What Coulson did find concerning was that neither of these inevitable outcomes seemed immediate. The chase cars seemed content to hang back and simply follow, neither allowing their vehicle to escape nor provoking a conflict. They were clearly waiting for something.
Coulson focused on the in-dash S.H.I.E.L.D. terminal and used the scanners to search for what he’d missed. He’d have spotted a sixth car or aerial drones, so he tapped into the helicarrier’s network and searched space. First, low Earth orbit, then high Earth orbit, then the moon, then beyond. No unidentified satellites or spacecraft presented themselves. Weapons tracking indicated no incoming missiles or unregistered Stark-tech in the area. Radiation levels were normal, as was air temperature and quality.
Something subterranean, perhaps?
As Finely weaved quickly and expertly through traffic, Coulson turned to the vehicle’s ground penetrating radar. There was nothing in the immediate area and as they’d cross into Maryland soon, they were not far from the base. But Coulson was not one to risk the unexpected and expanded the radar’s radius to extend several miles from the vehicle in every direction.
Nothing. He reached to switch to another system when a blip suddenly appeared racing up the Anacostia River. He switched to satellite imagery and scanned the river. There was nothing visible on the river’s surface. He met Finely’s eyes, who then picked up speed.
Suddenly three large, winged creatures burst from the water’s surface and swung towards their vehicle. Pterodactyl-like with large claws and beaks, the creatures screamed in unison as they caught site of their target on the road and dove towards them.
“They sent birds?” Asked Finley.
‘It would appear so,’ replied Coulson as he rolled down his window. “There are too many civilians. We’ll need to get off the road quickly.”
The three creatures swooped and flew over the vehicle, one their claws scraping through the roof, testing its resistance. They sped up a ways and circled back, regrouping behind the vehicle for another pass. Finely continued to weave in and out of traffic at high speed, though it didn’t seem to deter either the creatures or the follow cars in the slightest.
With another cry, the lead creature dove for an attack run. Coulson calmly leaned out the window and aimed his pistol at the creature. A flurry of shots ricocheted off the creature’s armored skin, sparking as they did. Uninjured, it swiped at the vehicle as it passed, its claws cutting deep and fast enough into the trunk to cause it to swerve. Finely corrected, narrowly avoiding a collision with the guardrail.
The second creature began its attack run and Coulson readied at the window with a more advanced weapon he’d retrieved from the center console. He took aim as the creature screamed in attack.
The creature shot an extremely long, spiked tongue with enough force to shoot through the back window and through Finely’s right shoulder. In the brief moment of surprise, Coulson was reminded of giant squid grabbing prey in a similar manner.
The creature responded to the hunt and pulled Finely backwards, twisting him out of the driver’s seat and towards the rear. Coulson fired a plasma shot at the tongue, severing it, and quickly reached back in for the wheel. Finely had been pulled into the back seat. The hooked, barbed tongue stuck out from his shoulder and the remainder of the creature’s tongue flapped against the trunk lid like a tail.
Coulson slid back inside and over into the driver’s seat, taking control without them losing much speed. He gave a quick checking glance at Finely in the rear view mirror, then looked back down the road to see the injured creature bleeding and flapping among traffic. A second cry drew his attention left as a creature attacked. His barbed tongue shot into Coulson’s door. The creature pulled it from the hinges and carried it away as it passed over the vehicle. Coulson corrected for the momentum shift as well as the road garbage that jumped up at him through the opening.
Another creature was readying its run, so he swerved across all lanes and down an exit ramp, passing in the breakdown lane close and fast enough to scrape a few cars along the way. He’d narrowly avoided the attack and the creature sped over the ramp and circled around for a better run.
As Coulson turned onto the roadway, one of the creatures attacked his open side. Its barbed tongue shot at Coulson as he calmly leaned backward to avoid the hit. The tongue drove into the opposite door but before the creature could pull, Coulson hit the brakes hard and spun away. The change in momentum whipped the creature against the side and then under the vehicle. Coulson shifted and sped off again. The tongue stretched tightly across his chest as the creature scraped maddeningly underneath. A quick flick from a handy knife sent the now severed tongue flying out the door.
The remaining creature was readying its run from directly ahead. Amazingly, civilian vehicles were still on the road. Some even tried to pass him in the mad panic to get away. Coulson needed to end this fight quickly.
He sped directly at the creature and when he had gotten a little room between him and the other vehicles, he pulled the brake and spun hard, positioning himself horizontal across the roadway. The cars screeched to a halt, the creature cried and dove, and Coulson calmly rose from his seat and stood on the roadway. He pulled his pistol and aimed. As the creature shot its long tongue, he pumped a flurry of bullets into its mouth.
The tongue severed in mid air, fell and skidded along the roadway to rest at Coulson’s feet. The creature veered and flapped madly, crashing through a bus shelter and into the parking lot beyond. A quick glance over his shoulder showed the chase vehicles approaching at speed. They wouldn’t be content to hang back any longer. Time to go.
Coulson brushed a bit of dirt from his sleeve, got back in the vehicle and sped off towards Andrews.
***
S.H.I.E.L.D. maintained a presence at Andrews Air Force base, though for reasons of national security, no one actually on Andrews knew this fact. It often made gaining base access… fun. Most often, an overly patient bureaucratic smile and a stack of confusing orders was enough to convince the guards to let an agent pass. Other times, more creativity was needed. Rarely was stealth necessary.
Today’s entrance would require a different tactic altogether.
Coulson sped down the highway at a high rate of speed. Finely was trying gamely to stay upright. He had sliced the barbed tongue from his shoulder, but the blood loss and obvious wound poisoning were taking its toll. He would not have long.
The two sleeker chase vehicles had positioned themselves on his right as the SUVs set up behind and to the left. The SUVs were not built for speed, so they clearly hoped to use the sleeker vehicles to herd him in such a way as to leave his open door exposed to the SUV’s weapons. It was such a simple plan it was almost quaint.
A black-clad man leaned out of the SUV’s side with an automatic weapon and peppered Coulson’s vehicle with bullets. They bounced and sparked off the rear and side armor. The lead sleek car sped up, trying to get along side and hopefully spin him. Coulson checked his mirror and saw the SUV’s gunmen had reached back inside for a piece of alien tech – a very large energy pulse weapon.
‘Brace yourself,’ he said to Finely, who barely had time to get his legs against the chair backs before Coulson slammed the brakes. Loudly squealing to a stop, he pulled his pistol and aimed out the passenger window. The sleek vehicle came into view and Coulson let off a single shot, hitting the vehicle’s driver as he passed. The vehicle swerved across the lanes flipping over a guardrail as the second chase car avoided collision and blew passed the wreck.
The SUV tried to brake, but the surprise plus its speed and weight meant it would skid past the now stopped Coulson. As it passed, Coulson reached out his doorway, stripped the weapon from the surprised gunmen’s outstretched arms, and turned it back around. He fired at the SUVs rear, watching it explode and flip into the oncoming lanes. He turned back and took aim at the remaining SUVs. The driver closest tried to swerve, but sideswiped the other vehicle. Coulson fired. The vehicle exploded and forced the other vehicle off into the breakdown lanes, skidding along the guardrail.
He stepped back into his car, put the alien tech on the passenger seat and sped off. The sleeker vehicle had turned around and was fast approaching. Coulson shifted gears and responded in kind, aiming straight for the oncoming vehicle. Shots rang out from the vehicle and sprayed across Coulson’s hood and armored windshield. Fortunately, Stark Resilient had designed the vehicle for extreme energy efficiency. Any external force could be absorbed through the vehicle’s armor and transferred to the engines. The more they shot at him, the more power he had.
The two vehicles approached rapidly with Coulson picking up speed the whole way. It was a game of chicken the other driver hadn’t quite anticipated. At the last second, he swerved to avoid collision, coming close enough to scrape down Coulson’s right and take the mirror.
A check in the rear view mirror showed Finely slumped across the seat. A look down the road showed the sleek vehicle turning around and the disabled SUV back on the road. This day wasn’t working out quite the way he’d planned, but then again, they rarely did.
He checked his watch. At least he was still on schedule, he thought as he made his break for the Andrews exit ramp.
***
Coulson approached the base entrance at 20 mph. He didn’t draw suspicion until the guard noticed the missing door. Hand on his weapon, the young guard ordered him to stop. Other guards focused attention on Coulson, weapons up as they moved to take positions around the vehicle.
Coulson showed his hands and smiled as he leaned his head out of the opening.
“I have a man in need of medical attention and you need to raise defensive pylons.”
The guard noticed Finely in the back and pulled his pistol. “Step out of the vehicle!”
“OK. OK. I don’t want any trouble.”
Still smiling, he rose slowly with his hands in the air. The guard turned him around and pressed him against the car as he peered inside at Finely. Another guard had come around the front of the vehicle, rifle up. Coulson smiled at him.
“You really need to raise the pylons.”
“Why is that?”
“Because of them,” he said, nodding back down roadway. The two remaining chase vehicles had finally caught up and made the turn towards the entrance gates. They saw Coulson’s vehicle and opened fire.
All attention turned to the approaching vehicles. The guards dropped to protective positions and returned fire while the first guard screamed for the pylons and alarm. Coulson took advantage of the distraction. He spun, grabbed the first guard just as he’d turned to order alarm, and used the momentum to hurl him against the guard at the front, trapping the rifle between him and the vehicle. He quickly punched the guard, dropping him, and then reversed with a quick elbow to the first guard’s head. He let the rifle fall between them and reached back in the car for the pulse weapon.
Guards continued to fire on the approaching vehicles that continued to spray the entrance with bullets. Coulson saw a guard aim the mounted anti-tank cannon and decided to waste no more time hanging around. He ducked through the pylons as the explosions began. Now inside the gate he saw reinforcements approaching and addressed them with all the authority of a Man in Charge. Given the chaos and his obvious Man in Charge demeanor, the troops didn’t question. He directed them to set around the entrance, secure it, and get to the wounded men. With them thoroughly focused on their tasks, Coulson slipped into one of their hum-vees and drove off towards the subterranean S.H.I.E.L.D. hangar.
****
A car was waiting for Coulson as he touched his Harrier down on a private landing strip just outside of Aberdeen, Washington. The flight had passed largely without incident though a press release would later describe a scuffle over South Dakota as an ‘unfortunate training accident.’
The car whisked Coulson to Stark Resilient. Bambi Arbogast met him at the door and invited him inside. He sat for several quiet moments, reviewing the day in his mind, planning for the next day. Pepper Potts emerged smiling – a bright spot in his day. She drew a smile from him in spite of himself.
‘Agent Coulson.”
“Phil.’
“Phil,’ she repeated. She smiled and gave him a brief hug. ‘It’s good to see you. How was the trip?”
“Fine. Thank you for asking.’
“Well I’m glad you were able to get out of the office. Maybe you can stick around for a little adventure this time.”
“Thank you, but I’m not really the adventurous type.”
“Oh come now, Phil. Everyone needs a little adventure from time to time.”
He smiled politely.
“Have you ever tried rock climbing?” she suggested.
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Hmm… well, what do you like to do?”
“I enjoy bird watching.”
Pepper frowned as she considered his pleasant, unassuming face. “Well, we’ll have to think of something. But in the meantime, Tony and Bruce are expecting you.” She slipped an arm into his and escorted him towards Tony Stark’s private lab. “They always seem to have the adventures. We should get to have some fun from time to time, don’t you think?”
He blushed but quickly recovered. “That would be nice.”