Abduction

Chapter 9

Valda stopped leaning on the wall as she saw Barton appear around one of the many similar corners with Sybil walking beside him, an unsure look on her face that disappeared when she noticed her. "Valda!"

"Sybil!" She ran over to greet her friend with a grin, she hadn't been allowed to see Sybil until she'd woken up and Fury had spoken with her. "How do you feel?"
"A bit confused... sore from the fight... other than that... fine I guess?" Sybil didn't meet her gaze and instead stared at the wall over her shoulder.

Valda gave Barton a worried look as she noticed the strange behavior. "Should S.H.I.E.L.D. wait to start her training? She was electrocuted by an Asgardian... that had to hurt her a lot."

"I'm fine." Sybil assured her, still not looking her in the eye. "Not a scratch, I'll be okay... trust me."

"... Okay." She agreed finally, though concern was still lingering in the back of her mind as Barton led her friend into the training room.

Valda shrugged a few seconds later, if Sybil thought she'd be all right... She could remember a time when they'd been messing around in the woods, play fighting with large branches to fight like oversized swords. Sybil had reacted too slowly during one of the attacks and Valda had smacked her friend in the side of the head, or more specifically the corner of her eye, and she froze as Sybil took a few steps back. She had expected her friend to be mad but instead Sybil had started laughing at Valda's reaction to it.

Valda backed off a bit from the force of their attacks colliding with each other before raising up the awkwardly long branch, which was actually a small tree a bit taller than her that had been pulled out of the soft ground. She ran at Sybil with a grin on her face as she swung the branch again only to see Sybil's branch swing too low and too late to stop hers... A moment later there was a small cracking sound, barely audible, and Sybil staggered back with a shack of her head. Valda froze in panic and dropped her stick, unsure whether she should leave or go see if her friend needed help, so she compromised and stayed nervously where she was.

"Sybil, are you okay?" She asked hesitantly as her friend regained her balance and looked up.

Instead of answering right away Sybil burst out into laughter. "You should've seen your reaction! You looked like you just witnessed a murder and the killer was about to take you out as well! That's priceless!"

Valda stared at her friend for a moment before repeating her original question. "I-uh- are you... alright?"

"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?" She smirked and held up her branch. "Come on, let's keep practicing."

Valda reluctantly shook her head and kicked her stick off the barely visible path; as much as she loved messing around in here she didn't want to be blamed for hurting a friend. "We should probably get home, you need to put some ice on that before your mom gets home and sees the bruise."

"You know by now that I don't bruise this easily, besides, it didn't even hurt to begin with... just a bit dazing for a few seconds." Sybil was still grinning with excitement from the hit.

"Just in case though." Valda replied.

Her friend sighed and nodded before pulling out her phone to check the time. "Fine... She'll be getting home in about twenty minutes anyway, and then she'll want to hear what I've been doing. May as well make a partially true alibi right?"

Valda nodded, her heart still slowing from the brief moment of worry, before answering. "Yeah, see you at school then."

"Later." Sybil responded and walked off, leaving Valda to walk in the other direction to her own home.

That had been both a funny and terrifying moment... not to mention how her mother had reacted when she'd found out. How Sybil's mom had found out though still baffled both of them, especially considering there, remarkably, wasn't a mark, nor did one ever show up. Valda was still surprised about that.

So perhaps Sybil was fine, she was very tolerant to pain, Valda looked into the training room where Barton was showing her friend what she'd be doing. She knew she wasn't supposed to interrupt this but that didn't mean she couldn't watch from out side right? Besides, she deserved to know what that criminal had done to her best friend.

"The bastard." She muttered as she saw Sybil nearly slip on some ice that she'd made on the floor.

Valda continued to watch as the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes turned into hours. Barton had switched out with other members of the Avengers team to help Sybil, though none had said anything to her when they saw her watching. It wasn't all slow progress, some of the powers, Valda noticed, her friend learned to control quickly. Others however, were taking her some time to completely get a good enough hold on for what she could guess Fury considered safe. She wasn't sure how making illusions of yourself against your will occasionally was unsafe but Valda wasn't about to argue with Captain Eye Patch.

She was nearly asleep when Steve led Sybil out of the training room and Valda jumped awake as they came out. "You're done!"

Sybil gave an exhausted nod, though energy still shown in her eyes. "For now."

"Get some rest, we continue training at dawn." Steve said, sounding a bit like a drill sergeant. "That goes for you too Valda."

"Aww..." She stifled a yawn and began walking back to her room, helping to guide Sybil through the halls. "I hate sleep."

"I heard that." Steve shouted as he walked away. "But you'll be thanking me when you don't pass out during training. Natasha's first on the roster."

Valda groaned, the assassin had trained her well but she of course still couldn't hope to keep up with the red haired woman. From beside her Sybil gave a tired sigh of agreement.

"We could always try hiding in the vents." Valda joked.

Sybil shook her head. "I could bet they have cameras in there, if we didn't get caught going into the vents we'd be caught crawling through them... It's the first place they'd probably search anyways."

"That's true." Valda yawned before continuing. "Guess we're stuck with a master assassin first thing tomorrow... fun."