Family of May's Past

"Well no duh." Tripp laughed, "Of course it was big in the family! The stories Granddad told... There was never any question of where I was going. Although honestly—if you could work for a global peace force that dealt in aliens and gods, why would you want to work anyplace else?"

"I have to agree." Simmons smiled. "I mean, I didn't have your illustrious history, obviously—"

"Trust me, that history gets a lot less illustrious once everyone starts mentioning it to you." Tripp interjected.

"—but my parents had met in the service, and they had very definite plans for me." Simmons giggled a little. "They kept quiet about it as best they could, but there were little hints, here and there..." She shrugged. "I had a positive mania for puzzles as a child."

Skye arched an eyebrow. "As a child?"

Simmons ignored her. "I sometimes wonder if they did it deliberately, to pique my interest." She confided. "My mother was a psychologist and neurologist for SHIELD back in the 70's, and my father was absolutely brilliant when it came to playing mind games."

"What about Fitz?" Skye asked, looking suddenly troubled.

"We went to the same boarding school as children." Simmons answered. "Given my skill at keeping secrets, well..." A nervous laugh, and a shrug. "He applied to SHIELD directly once he picked up on the whole thing."

"No, I meant his folks." Skye insisted, the troubled look persisting. "I just realized that they really ought to know about his condition."

"Oh." Jemma wilted a little. "His... father was never around very much." She said, finally. "His mother worked somewhere in a Scottish gene therapy firm, I'm not entirely certain where. She died, unexpectedly, while we were in Academy."

"Man." Tripp frowned. "That guy cannot catch a break."

Simmons gave a forced smile. "He wasn't... terribly off about it, actually." She assured them, a little too quickly. "Said her work had always kept her awfully busy, she'd never had the chance to talk to him much."

"What about May?" Skye asked, hurriedly. "You guys know anything about her? Boy, her family's gotta be a piece of work, right?"

"Not as much as you'd think." The three looked up at Coulson, in the doorway. "A bit stern, sure, and slightly more..." He waggled his head back and forth as if searching for the right word, "...crude than May is, but just as direct, and just as deadly."

Tripp raised his eyebrows. "You've met her, sir?"

"Her name's Melissa Mao." Coulson smiled. "Retired now, but used to be a high level field sergeant in charge of shadow op maneuvers."

"Oh, is she a SHIELD operative, then?" Simmons put in.

Coulson seemed a little puzzled about how to answer the question. "Well..." He said, coming into the lobby and perching on the edge of the couch. "Yes and no."

Skye's forehead wrinkled. "Come again?"

"She works for MITHRIL... sort of the Japanese version of SHIELD." Coulson explained. "Kinda-sorta-not-really affiliated with us, operate out of a giant submarine-aircraft-carrier instead of a helicarrier."

"A subma-carrier?" Skye echoed.

"No offense, but that does kind of make better sense, sir." Tripp gave an easy smile.

"So her mom's Japanese?"

"Chinese-American. She just works for the Japanese." Coulson smiled.

"And her father?" Skye asked.

Coulson shrugged. "Never heard much about him. He's German, I know that much, and he probably worked in MITHRIL, but beyond that..." He thought for a second. "There was one time when I complimented her marksmanship and she made some passing comment about how I should have seen her father." Another shrug. "May doesn't talk much about her family; I get the feeling getting away from them was a big reason she signed up with SHIELD."

"Huh." Skye pondered that for a moment. "It is hard to see lil' May growing up anywhere but in a military family." She conceded.

"It's hard to see lil' May at all." Tripp protested. He glanced to Simmons, who was suppressing a smirk. "Honestly, Miss Hate-Fu Death-Eyes Cavalry as a toddler? I could do without that image."

Simmons giggled.

"So, wait." Skye held up a hand and looked at Coulson. "There's a SECOND major secretive paramilitary agency?"

"Technically, we're all under the same umbrella." Coulson waved his hand. "They were founded independently of the SSR right after WWII, by some philanthropists who wanted their own private peacekeeping force. Built it out of the remains of Japan's Defense Force."

Skye frowned. "I thought we dismantled the Japanese military after WWII."

"Sure we did." Coulson smirked. "For a while they operated independently of the SSR, but the two agencies kept butting heads, and the UN finally combined them and a couple other groups into SHIELD."

"Other groups?" Skye raised her eyebrows, but Coulson just gave an enigmatic smile. "But hang on, SHIELD was formed back in the sixties or something, right? May's not that old."

"The MITHRIL crowd kinda... stuck together." Coulson nodded. "They had a killer team spirit, and even when the UN fused them with the SSR, they kept their own thing going. They're not an official group, but they're this private club in SHIELD that tends to be a little isolated from the main leadership. Kwan Chen, the guy who helped us with Scorch in Hong Kong? SHIELD recruited him, but he wasn't allowed to work in the Eastern Hemisphere until THEY cleared him."

"Wait, so... they might have avoided some of the whole... full-scale infiltration by Nazi conspiracy." Skye said eagerly, raising a finger.

Coulson frowned. "Maybe. But so far as I know, no one's had contact with them since the Battle of the Triskelion. They've had a total communications blackout, and no one's found their submarine carrier."

"A submarine carrier would be a kickass thing to have, boss."

"I doubt they'd just let me take command of it." Coulson smiled. "Kind of independent, remember? They might not care who Fury left in charge. And that's assuming that Hydra didn't steal the sub-carrier already."

"And... I just got a new phobia." Skye slumped back into her seat. "Thanks, Coulson."

"Any time." Coulson smiled, getting up. "Oh." He paused in the doorway. "Better not to let May know I told you this." He looked a little nervous. "She's... sort of touchy about her family."

Skye fired off a mock-salute. "Your word is my command, Kemosabe!"

Coulson looked a little exasperated, but he left.

"Okay, I was not expecting to get all that backstory at once." Skye said, turning to the others. "Did you guys know any of that? 'Cause I thought we were pretty on top of things in the Rising Tide, but these days it seems like we were only ever scratching the surface..."

Tripp broke down into a sudden fit of laughing. Skye stared at him, bewildered, as Simmons laid a hand on her arm. "Dear." She said kindly. "You're a brilliant hacker and a wonderful person and an amazing agent all round..."

"...but... sometimes... you're... terribly gullible... Tripp managed to gasp out.

"What do you mean?" Skye looked from one to the other.

Simmons rolled her eyes. "Melissa Mao is a character from Full Metal Panic, an anime about a secret military organization with giant robot warriors and submarine aircraft carriers, called MITHRIL." She explained.

"He... he was feeding me an anime storyline?" Skye glanced in disbelief at the exit.

"I'm rather surprised he knew it, actually." Simmons confided. "It was a little after his time, and it's not at all in line with his other interests."

"Why, that little..." Skye shook her head. "Oh, it's ON now."

Coulson climbed into the cockpit and sat next to May.

"What was all that laughing about back there?" The woman asked, not taking her eyes from the controls.

"No idea." Coulson cast a puzzled look back at the lobby. "May, I've been meaning to ask you... when you met with your mother... did she give you any indication about how her people were handling Hydra?"

May did not look at Coulson, but her jaw tensed ever so slightly.

"She didn't talk about work." She answered. "She never does."

A/N: I know this will never happen in the show, but until we get a firm answer on May's Mother, and her "organization," I'm going to believe that "Melinda May" is a nod to "Melissa Mao," and the little sequence where she met with her mother and mentioned her "organization" was an Easter Egg of sorts to hint at that. Also this will be my headcanon.

This has no connection to Recruitment Drive, by the way. This is just a fun little story I thought I'd write. I'm still working on the AoS/Dollhouse crossover.