Forged In Hellfire

Part 3(Ch1)

  The team gets back to SHIELD HQ and Lady Sif goes over as much as she can about Lorelei.
  “I’ve tracked her down over three planets. One of which I found nothing alive. Your planet harbors a lot of power within the inhuman population.”
  “Tracking them down will be her biggest priority.” Says Coulson.
  “Do you think she knows about the registry?” Asks Quake.
  “We’ll have to assume she does.” Says Coulson. “I’ll alert Director Mason. He can pull the registry offline, but I’m not sure for how long. There are a couple of Senators that are very worried about inhumans being a threat, they’re not going to want the system offline for too long.”
  “What about a fake registry? It’s not like any of the Senators are going to know who is actually on the list, and it may allow us to lead her into a trap.” Suggest Quake.
  “But what are we supposed to do when we find her?” Ask Fitz.
  “If we stand any chance, we will need to separate her from the stone.” Insists Lady Sif.
  “Well, Robbie isn’t inhuman, and since he can’t willingly surrender his powers, he’s gonna be our best asset.” Coulson looks to Robbie who nods in agreeance.
  “So, how do we track her in the meantime?” Simmons asks.
  “The Consumir is celestial energy.” Informs Lady Sif.
  “So, we track the energy signature.” Fitz starts pacing while trying to think. “But we need a reference to know what that signature is.”
  Lady Sif places down her sword and removes the base of the handle. Inside is a small gemstone that she removes and hands to Fitz. “This is a piece of the Consumir. It’s how I was able to track her through the cosmos.”
  He hesitates to take the stone from her. Sif assures him it’s safe, that the small shard is more or less useless aside from giving off small amounts of energy. Fitz takes the stone and can feel a pulsating vibration coming from within it. He immediately starts to analyze its energy signature.
  “Let’s start setting things in motion. The quicker we track her down the quicker we can get the two of you your powers back.” Orders Coulson.

  Sif finds Emilie standing in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea. She had just lost her powers, all of them, and was suddenly starting to feel like she had caught something.
  “Is everything okay?” Sif walked over to Emilie.
  “As far as I know this is the first time I’ve ever been ‘sick’. My throat is sore, and I have the chills. Do Asgardians get colds?”
  “We do have something similar on Asgard, but it only effects the younger generations under 70 years of age.”
  Emilie chuckled at the idea of 70 being considered the “younger generation”. “I never once thought I would feel so useless being normal.”
  “You’re not useless. We’re going to need as much manpower as possible. I have a feeling Lorelei is eager to imbue the power of the Consumir to herself.”
  “And then what happens?”
  “War.”

  Quake gets started on the fake registry and Fitz gets started on tracking the energy reading. Coulson, Robbie, and Mae strategize with Lady Sif. Emilie walks into the lab to see if Simmons needs help with anything.
  “How’s it going?” She asks.
  “This is turning into one giant headache. I mean, how exactly are we going to fight someone that can freeze time and teleport a whole group of people to the middle of nowhere in the blink of an eye?”
  “Like we always do, as a team.” Says Emilie.
  Simmons and Emilie look over some data they pulled from Fitz’s analysis of the stone when Lady Sif walks in.
  “Let’s say we track Lorelei,” Says Simmons. “we still need to find a way to get the stone away from her without someone getting seriously hurt or imbuing all that power to themselves.”
  “That is unlikely.” Says Sif. “The only way to imbue the power is…” She smacks herself in the forehead. Simmons and Emilie look at her confused.
  “You have to put the stone into your head.” She clarifies.
  “Like…?” Simmons smacks her forehead.
  “So, she shoves a stone the size of a can of soda into her head and that’s how she gets the power?” Questions Emilie.
  “The stone itself is encased in the rectangular cube. It helps to focus the power into the stone. But once she uses it there is only one person on who can remove it.”
  “Just to clarify, when Quake and I get our powers back…we won’t have to…” She smacks her forehead.
  “No.”
  Emilie breathes a sigh of relief.
  “Why is she waiting to imbue it? Why not just get it over with?” Simmons asked. “I mean once it’s in, that’s it.”
  “Because once she uses the stone on herself, she won’t be able to siphon any more power into it. If I can get close enough to put this on her, I think we will be ok.” Says Sif, placing down an iron neck collar. “But once the stone is inserted there is no guarantee her powers won’t be too great to overpower it.”
  Emilie picks it up and looks it over.
  “This looks like what Gideon had.” She says looking at Simmons. “The shackles he kept me in had this same writing, I couldn’t use my powers while they were on.”
  “This is the speech of the gods. It’s a dead language on Asgard but the spells cast onto them still remain strong.” Informs Sif.

  “I feel like my head is going to explode any minute.” Fitz sat at his computer rubbing his temples. It had been three days and he wasn’t picking up anything close to the energy signature given off by the Consumir. “How do we know she didn’t just jump planet once you found her?”
  “Earth is what you guys call a jackpot. The stone requires a lot of physical energy when it is used the way she does. She is more than likely in a stasis trying to regain some of her energy before continuing on.
  “How long do you think she needed to rest after she wiped out that planet?”
  “There’s no telling. The planet itself was only a few hundred thousand years old, its stability was unknown. The smallest disturbance in its ecosystem could have been disastrous.”
  “How you feeling?” Robbie walked into his and Emilie’s sleeping quarters with more tea for her. He placed his black bag on the floor and took a seat on the bed next to her.
  “My throat is still sore, but I don’t feel feverish anymore.” She sat up from the bed and took a sip of the tea. “I guess Simmons was right to order me to bed. I was sicker than I realized. Any word on Lorelei yet?”
  “No, Sif thinks she’s laying low, recovering. You hungry?”
  “I’m starving.”
  “Luigi’s?” Robbie saw her face perk up as he pulled a to-go bag out of his black one. “Wings and a calzone.”
  “Have I told you I love you today?” She smiles as she opens the bag.
  “You were miserable last night, I thought that would cheer you up.”
  “My fever broke and I couldn’t get comfortable.”
  “I know, that’s why I slept in the Charger. You kept forcing me out of the bed.”
  “I’m sorry, I’ll make it up to you when I’m feeling better.” She teased.

  Fitz was finally able to triangulate the location of Lorelei and narrow it down to a 10-mile radius late that evening.
  “The signature is all over the place, I’m not sure if it’s her or a weak signal.”
  “Good work Fitz.” Coulson places a hand on his shoulder.
   “It looks like she’s heading East for now.”
  “Time to load up.”

  Everyone starts to board Zephyr One, Robbie pulls Emilie to the side.
  “I already know what you’re gonna say.” She says.
  “No, you don’t. I’m wasting my breath telling you to stay put. I just want you to be careful.” He says.
  “I promise.”
  They’re in the air for about two hours when Fitz is able to narrow the radius of Lorelei to 4-miles and Coulson confirms that she is heading to a Shield Command Building in Washington D.C.
  “She’s most likely going to raid their registry databases.” Says Coulson.
  “I’ve set up a secondary firewall and placed the fake registry between the two. Hopefully she doesn’t dig too deep into the servers and realize it’s a decoy.” Says Quake.
  “Good, if we fail to retrieve her and the stone, we’ll at least have some idea on where her next targets will be.”
  “Using the stone unequipped is draining. She’s powerful, but if we can get her to use a large amount of power, we may be able to tire her out enough to make our move.” Says Sif.
  “Director Mason is with General Talbot and has the facility on lockdown. Let’s just hope we can get her on her leash before chaos ensues.” Says Coulson.
  Lorelei causally walks into the lobby of Shield Command to a dozen armed agents pointing guns at her. She smiles charmingly before raising the stone. All the guns levitate out of the hands of the agents and turn towards them. Gunfire is heard throughout the building.
  “She’s here.” Says General Talbot as he pulls up the security footage in his office. “Jesus.” He says looking at the agents who were gunned down.
  Mason pulls out his phone and calls Coulson. “How far out are you?”
  “We just landed on the roof.” Confirms Coulson.
  “Good, because she just took out a dozen agents in the lobby in about 5 seconds flat.” Says the Director.
  “I’m not planning on taking out more than I have to in order to get what I need.” Says Lorelei, appearing in the General’s office.
   The Director hangs up the phone.
  “We need to go now. Daisy, Emilie, you two stay here with Fitz-Simmons.”
  Coulson, Robbie, Mae, and Sif head down to the rooftop and enter the building.
  “The General’s office is on the 7th floor.” Radios Fitz while he and Quake tried to set up a link to the security cameras inside.

  “What is it your looking for exactly?” Asks Director Mason.
  “Power. And you two are going to tell me where to find it.” She says to Talbot.
  “Sweetheart, I’m not going to tell you a damn thing.” He smirks.
  Lorelei holds the stone up and Director Mason makes a move in hopes of overpowering her to recover it. She holds up her hand stopping him in his tracks before forcing him into the wall. A flash of light goes off in the room.
  “What was that?” Questions Simmons. The camera feed showed up on screen just as the blinding light flashed.
  “I don’t know.” Says Fitz. “Guys something just happened. A flash of light just went off in the General’s office.”
  The team comes through the staircase doors just as Lorelei walks out of the office. Mae and Coulson raise their weapons.
  “So, it’s just you Odin sends after me.” Says Lorelei to Sif. “With all the battle’s he’s fought in his lifetime you would think he would know a suicide mission when he saw it.”
  “You have the stone Lorelei, but it appears to be too much of a match for you in it’s current state. Are you sure you’ll be able to handle imbuing all that power to yourself? You already look like you’ve gone a few decades without sleep.” Says Sif.
  Lorelei smiles and the team circles around her waiting to make a move.
  “What did you do to the General and Director?” Asks Mae glancing over to the quiet room.
  “I just needed them to chill out. I don’t want to cause any more harm than necessary.”
  Robbie makes a move towards Lorelei, she jumps across one of the desks and kicks it back towards him. He breaks through it and goes after her again. Sif wields her sword and swings it at Lorelei who dodges it causing it to hit a cubical wall. Coulson makes his way toward the General’s office and finds the room frozen in ice while Mae lays down cover fire for Robbie and Sif. Lorelei takes the stone in her hand and halts the bullets missing one and taking it in her arm. She almost loses her grip on the stone but cradles it before falling to the floor and teleporting away.
  “Damn it.” Says Mae. She turns and sees Coulson looking around at the Director and General.
  “Fitz-Simmons. We’re going to need a transport team down here to retrieve the Director and General.” Requests Coulson.
  “Are they…?” Asks Mae.
  “No, they appear to be in a cryostasis.” Informs Coulson as he uses his robotic hand to scan for signs of life. He pulls up a tracking signal. “Good work on tagging her.” He says.
  “Lucky shot. She must have been getting tired.” Says Mae.