Side Story: Snakes, agents and Slayers! Oh my!
Snakes, agents and Slayers! Oh my!
Disclaimer: all characters are property of their respective owners
Spoilers: spoilers for Thor (the movie), and general spoilers for BtVS.
Author Note: Thanks to Jediknight for betaing it.
Two weeks after the Great Storm. A restaurant.
London, United Kingdom
Rona hated being the senior Slayer, but with Buffy still on personal leave and Faith in Africa helping to organize the new school, she was the one in charge. At least, Izzy was the senior Watcher this time, instead of one of the surviving fossils of the old Council. The restaurant they had chosen was almost empty at this time of the day, a definite plus if they didn't want to be overheard.
Fortunately for them, the people they were going to talk with arrived at the same time than them. Two of them were already known to her from the file, Riley and Samantha Finn, but the third, an average sized man with a receding hairline and a friendly face, was unknown to them, although she suspected that he was the one who called the shots here.
"Hello, I'm Phillip Coulson, from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, or SHIELD for short, and you probably already know Riley and Samantha." he said.
"Only by reputation." Izzy said, "It's a pleasure to meet you, I'm Isabella Ferguson, the acting senior Watcher."
"And I'm Rona Mitchell, the acting senior Slayer." Rona said.
"Fancy place you chose for a meting." Riley said as they entered the building.
"It's discreet." Izzy said, "The old Council used this place regularly because of that."
A nervous waiter guided them through the stairs to the first floor, where there were a series of small private rooms for those who wanted to eat without being disturbed.
"Discreet, indeed." Coulson said, "I gather that it would cost a pretty penny to eat here."
"Quite, but there is an... arrangement with the owners." Izzy said, unwilling to say that the Council owned the restaurant through several cutouts.
"Ah." Coulson said, while thinking, 'I bet that either is owned by the Council or by one of the families associated with them.'
The waiter guided them to the room and took their orders, scribbling with a trembling hand in a notepad, before leaving.
"So, what brings you to old jolly England?" Izzy asked as they sat down.
"We need information about an... artifact." Coulson said, "Some time after the war, World War II, I mean, we, meaning SHIELD, came into possession of an artifact, the Tesseract, that HYDRA..." he paused for a moment until Izzy nodded, yes they knew who they were, "...had been using as a power source. It seems to have been inert until very recently..."
"The night of the Great Storm, I suppose." Isabella said, "When Mjolnir, Thor's hammer, fell to Earth on New Mexico."
"You are good." Coulson said.
"It wasn't that difficult to make a guess, the story of the hammer was all over social media the day after the storm. And then, poof, everything vanished from the net." Isabella said, "Your doing, I suppose."
"Yes." Coulson said, but he didn't elaborate. "We want information about the Tesseract."
"And what would you give in exchange?" Izzy countered.
"What we have learned about it and the hammer."Coulson said
"Interes..." Izzy started to say.
"It's odd, some of the waiters are gathering at the corridor." Rona interrupted, before cursing, and starting to search for something in her handbag
"How have you seen it? The frosting in the glass..." Coulson asked, while Riley and Sam looked to each other and took their cellphones.
"The glass in the door has a small defect in the frosting. I noticed that all the 'waiters' seemed to have ill-fitting uniforms" Rona answered, as he took her own cellphone, "No coverage, we're being jammed."
Coulson took a device from his pocket, looked at it and shook his head.
"They are jamming SHIELD frequencies, too." he said.
"It seems that the head honcho is here, a big guy wearing a sleeveless tunic." Rona said, while looking around.
"Big as in fat, or..." Coulson asked.
"Muscle, definitely muscle." Rona said, "And he has both his arms tattooed."
"What kind of tattoos?" Coulson asked, pursing his lips. He had a suspicion of where this was going.
"Snakes. A cobra on the right, and a normal snake, maybe a viper on the other."
"Goddammit." Coulson said under his breath, "The Kobra Cult."
"Who?" Rona asked, while Izzy looked as if she was trying to remember where she had heard that before.
"Some kind of doomsday cult, who seems to be better financed than usual for those kinds of cults." Coulson explained, "SHIELD has had several confrontations with them in the past. "
"Oh, for god's sake." Rona said, rolling her eyes, knowing where this was going, "And they are following some prophecy or something like that."
"If Agent B... one of our agents is right, yes, something like that. Their followers are all fanatics, also, so we won't be able to get out of here by talking." Coulson said, and looked at the Finns and then to Rona and Isabella. "We are in the first floor, there are no windows, and the only way out is controlled by the enemy."
"Actually..." Rona said, poking at a wood panel with her fist. It sounded hollow.
"Of course." Isabella said, snapping her fingers, "This building was built in the Victorian era as a manor. There would be a lift to move the dirty dishes to the kitchens to be washed. But it could be completely walled out."
"I don't think so. I have heard noise from the parking earlier." Rona disagreed.
"Can you open it?" Coulson asked, while Riley, Sam and Izzy took the table clothes to make a makeshift rope.
"Of course. But it's going to be noisy." Rona said, and then she noticed something in the corridor, "But I think that it's going to be the less of our worries. There are a few other big bald men in the same kind of tunic entering the corridor, and the 'waiters' are shedding the uniforms."
"Let me guess, more snake tattoos." Coulson asked.
Rona nodded as she managed to slip her fingers behind the panel.
"When I say three, I'll get the panel loose. You throw the rope and start to go down."
"And what are you going to do?."
"Don't worry, I don't plan to break rule one." Rona said, and looked out, "No time, they got weapons. One... Two...Three!" She ripped the panel from the wall and in a single movement used it to cover the crystal at the door, while using her strength to keep the door from opening.
While the rope didn't reach all the way down, it was long enough for Coulson, Sam, Riley and Izy to jump down without problems, landing in a place without any light.
"Is everybody alright?", asked Coulson producing a flashlight from a pocket.
"I'm fine." Riley and Sam said simultaneously.
"I think I'm well." Izzy said, "Where are we?"
Suddenly a door was kicked open and they could see against the light of the underground parking several members of the cult standing there with blades on their hands. But before they could do anything Rona fell through the shaft and dispatched them in a few seconds.
Unfortunately they weren't the only cultists in the parking lot, and as they tried to run away, they found themselves chased by them. After a series of fights, they found themselves with half of the cultists blocking the exit of the parking lot, while what remained of the other half was approaching from behind.
They stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do, but suddenly a car could be heard just a moment before a big metallic shape passed through the cultists blocking the exit, rolling over the ones that where too slow to get away. The car, a big pink SUV made a sharp turn as it went down the ramp, drifting until it stopped barely a foot before them.
"Get inside, por Dios!" a Mexican accented voice said from inside.
"Anita!? What the Hell...?" Rona said, recognizing the voice.
"One of yours?" Coulson asked.
"Yes, a Slayer." Izzy said, which prompted Riley and Sam eye-rolls, all too familiar with Slayer driving
They quickly boarded the vehicle, packing themselves inside as best as they could given the space available.
"Secure yourselves, this is going to be a ride." Riley warned as he and Sam buckled themselves with the seatbelt. "I have experience with Slayers driving."
"He is not kidding." Izzy said from the front seat doing the same.
"Come on, we are not that bad." Rona said, as she threw a dagger to one of the cultists who were approaching them.
Coulson decided to listen to the voice of experience and buckle up too, not a moment too soon, as Anita stepped on the accelerator, burning rubber before disengaging the handbrake, and shooting up the ramp. The maneuver embedded him in the back seat as the car ran over a couple cultists too slow to jump away or too crazed to care. With some difficulty, Coulson produced his communicator, and turned it on as soon as it started to receive a signal.
"Coulson to Brand. The building was full of Kobra cultists." he said, "Don't shoot the pink SUV, we're inside."
"Brand to Coulson." answered a female voice with an unidentifiable accent, "We saw it plow into the underground parking entrance before we could react. I assume that they are Council operatives."
"Yes, she is. Apparently they also had back-up on site." Coulson said, "Kobra seems to have laid an ambush for us in advance."
There was a pause before Brand answered.
"I understand. " she said in a meaningful tone, "Do I assume hostages?"
"Proceed as if that was the case." Coulson answered.
"...Very well." she said after a pause, "See you later, Phil."
"See you, Abby." Coulson answered before turning off the device.
Next day. SHIELD London HQ
"...And afterwards we talked and they got us the translations, copies of the originals and the name of some books we can check to see if we can find something they have missed." Coulson said to the screen where director Fury was debriefing him and the Finns.
"Pretty generous of them." Fury answered, "Do you think that giving them the results of what we got from the New Mexico incident is worth it?"
"From what I have seen of the documents, it is, and more." Coulson said, "If the investigation clears them of any involvement in the incident, I want to establish a permanent liaison program with them."
"And that's a big if, Phil." Fury cautioned.
"Yes, sir." Coulson said, "But this attack had all the hallmarks of something done on the fly. Hell, a part of the restaurant staff was still alive, despite the Kobra cult usual practices."
"You think that the leak came from our side?." Fury said, understanding the implications almost immediately.
"Maybe, sir. God knows that I have some suspicions about Burr and his aides." Coulson said, "But, I could be wrong. According to our reports, the Council has recently suffered a complete upheaval, and it could have been done..."
New Council London HQ. The same time
"...by a faction of the old guard." Izzy said taking to Giles, Buffy and Willow through videoconference.
Giles took his glasses and cleaned them, before talking, signifying his distress.
"Unfortunately, I agree with Isabella." he said, "The ultraconservatives are panicking now that the moderates, their former allies, are reaching an accommodation with the new order."
"Do you really think that they would do that?" Rona said.
"Yes." Izzy and Giles said simultaneously.
"Allow me to work as the Devil's Avocado..." Buffy started to say.
"Advocate." Giles corrected in a long suffering tone.
"Yeah, that. But are we sure that the leak didn't came from their side?" Buffy said.
"No, we aren't. But we didn't tell them about the meeting place until an hour before." Izzy said.
"Actually, the ambush looked like something done in a hurry. The waiter that received us was nervous as hell... and he was sloppy in taking our orders, as if it wasn't his usual role." Rona said, and then added with a shrug, "What? My dad had a restaurant, and the Watchers only caught up to me just before the whole fracas with the Bringers."
"Okay." Izzy said, "So, at the moment, we don't know one way or another."
"That seems to be the case." Giles said, "What do we have on the Kobra cult?"
"Not much. The old council investigated them and it seems that they thought they were like many other doomsday cults, nasty, but with no supernatural involvement." Izzy said, "We are revising our estimations, but it's an involved process."
"Can you send me a copy of the report about New Mexico that they give to you?. I have read about Jane Foster, and her theories are brilliant, and put a theoretical basis much firmer than I had on my thoughts on the relation between magic and physics. If she was able to detect the arrival of Thor, that's Big, with a capital B."
"SHIELD seems to think the same, given that they are financing her research now." Izzy commented, "Now that I think about it, didn't Fred Burkle have the same specialty as Doctor Foster?"
Heathrow Airport. International terminal.
Her work here was done, and now both the Council and SHIELD would be too focused on those idiots of the Kobra Cult to keep track of her doings. It had been a child's play to manipulate the London cell of the cult to do her bidding, now back to the States to torment her brother a bit more. She hated going through plane, but giving that Dad was not happy with her right now, it was a bit risky to teleport through Hell.
"Go'n somewhuz, luv?"* a scruffy blonde man wearing a trenchcoat said to her, interrupting her thoughts.
"Excuse me? Do I know you?"
"Nah, luv, but me and yer da' 'uv met."* he said, before sprinkling something on her, "Tell yer da' dat John sent yous!"*
She disappeared with a bout of flame and the man removed the paper with an strange set of symbols he had just stuck in a column before talking to the succubus. He lit a cigarette and went to the door.
THE END
*Translated to normal english:
"Going somewhere, love?"
"No, love, but me and your father have met."
"Tell your father that John sent you!"