It makes her sick, the way sadness is addicting. Sadness is familiar. It's comfortable and it's easy in the sense that it comes naturally to her. But everything else about it is hard. The way her body aches with self-hatred. The way her mind spins a...
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Washington D.C.
Athalia had spent a few months on Earth since her last visit. She had her mission. Finding Loki scepter. During the New York event, the Asgardian siblings only brought the Tesseract home, which was safe in their weapons vault. Athalia only thought that it was right she returned the scepter, knowing it wasn't safe to have a powerful weapon like it still hiding somewhere on Earth.
The only problem was, she needed to figure out where to start.
There were only a handful of people who knew she was on Earth. Thor, Lady Sif, Volstaugg, Fandral, and of course, Nick Fury. In fact, Fury was one of the only Midgardians who knew about Athalia's presence on Earth, however, Athalia was sure that Maria Hill knew about her whereabouts as well. Most likely because of Fury.
Athalia almost gave Fury a heart attack the day he found the goddess on S.H.I.E.L.D. premises. She's broken into a saucer room, with lots of confidential, classified, information, the hush-hush secret stuff that they don't want getting out, after shifting her appearance to look like another agent. Unfortunately, Athalia wasn't very good at using human technology so she wasn't having any luck trying to find what she was looking for.
Athalia was currently on a side mission. She'd put a pin in her quest to find Loki's scepter and now sitting in a car with Natasha Romanoff, about to pick up Steve Rogers. Athalia was sat in the tiny backseat of the car, and Natasha sat in the driver's seat, racing down a street.
They came to a halt, and Natasha rolled down the window. "Hey, fellas. Either one of you know where the Smithsonian is? I'm here to pick up a few fossils." Athalia leaned forward in her seat and hit Natasha on the soldier, rolling her eyes sarcastically.
"That's hilarious," Steve said as he walked towards the car, opening the door. The man Steve was with squatted down on the sidewalk, looking into the car. He smiled at Athalia and nodded his head.
"How you doing?" he said. Athalia tilted her head and smiled.
"Hey," Nat rolled her eyes.
"Can't run everywhere," Steve said to the man.
The man slowly shook his head, "No, you can't." The window rolled back up, and they drove away from the man, quickly. The tires of the car screeching.
●○●○●○●○●
Indian Ocean
"Target is a mobile satellite launch platform, the Lemurian Star. They were sending up their last payload when pirates took them, 93 minutes ago." Rumlow, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that was crammed into the jet, explained to them. Natasha, Steve, and Athalia listened as he gave them the rundown.
Steve nodded his head, "Any demands?" he asked. They had been suited up only moments before, Athalia shifted the rings on her fingers as they talked.
"Billion and a half," Ramlow replied.
"Why so steep?" Athalia asked, her interest peeking at the amount of money. Rumlow looked at her with a smug look on his face.
"Because it's S.H.I.E.L.D's,"
"So it's not off-course. It's trespassing." Steve said. Nat rested her hand under her chin as her eyes glanced over the facts and numbers in front of them. She shrugs her shoulders softly.
"I'm sure they have a good reason,"
"You know, I'm getting a little tired of being Fury's janitor."
"Relax. It's not that complicated."
Steve turned back to Rumlow. "How many pirates?" He asked.
"25. Top mercs led by this guy." Rumlow said, pulling up a photo of the guy. Athalia tilted her head when his face came up on the screen, she crossed her arms over her chest. "Georges Batroc. Ex-DGSE, action Divinison. He's at the top of Interpol's Red Notice. Before the French demobilized him, he had 36 kill missions. This guy's got a rep for maximum casualties."
"Hostages?"
"Oh, mostly techs. One officer. Jasper Sitwell." Rumlow quickly showed them the faces of the hostages and then pulled up the officer's file. "They're in the galley."
"What's Sitwell doing on a launch ship?" Steve asked. "All right, I'm gonna sweep the deck and find Batroc. Athalia, you come with me. Nat, you kill the engines and wait for instructions. Rumlow, you sweep aft, find the hostages, get them to the life-pods, get them out. Let's move."
"S.T.R.I.K.E, you heard the Cap. Gear up."
[Amber's little chats; super short chapter - only 742 words - since i haven't had time to prewrite any new chapters like I usually do because I have been slammed with University work....]
