Hi? I'm still alive? I guess a lot of people were wondering where I've been, as well as whether I've abandoned all my stories. Well keep calm! I'm still working on them (ALL OF THEM), and it's just been lack of inspiration and RL. I'm working now! Haha. As a part-time writer, which kind of means that I'm juiced out of writing energy by the end of the day.
This isn't actually a new chapter, coz I've written this a really long time ago. But I figured that I should at least put something up now, so that there's at least some signs of life hahaha!
To those who don't know, this story is actually my attempt at somewhat original storywriting. There's supposed to be more Agent focus than Avengers, but this is one of the few short "arcs" that Lianna goes through that involves that Avengers. :)
Lianna wondered if she had somehow done something wrong in this universe. She was sure she'd managed to balance the people she did harm onto with the lives she saved by doing said harm, give or take an inch or two. She'd made sure to read all the mission parameters that she received, and once she made level five, she'd exercised her right to turn down the ones that were suspect. Well, it wasn't a surefire method of making sure her hands remained relatively clean, but every agent knew that some things just have to be done.
But she'd been doing okay so far, running assault missions and playing substitute handler for the agents who were still recovering from the Loki Incident, even volunteering extra time at Control despite her distaste for it to help take some of the load off her boss. She'd been a good senior agent, giving advice to her juniors, managing her team with an iron fist, filing all her paperwork within the unofficial grace period.
And avoiding the Avengers.
All of SHIELD was in complete agreement in regards to the superhero taskforce that their director had conceived. They were to be avoided at all cost, lest they be pulled into the equally ridiculous and dangerous antics that the superheroes seemed to attract like flies that squishy, normal humans weren't meant to withstand (It was general consensus that Agent Philip Coulson, Director Fury and Deputy Director Hill were considered superhuman). Anyone in contact with them for more than a few minutes a day would spend the next week looking over their shoulder or staying in a small group of particularly well-armed colleagues.
Not more than four, because large groups of agents attracted strange forces as well (the most common being a supervillain strong enough to render all their hard work and training moot), though the trouble generated by that was still outstripped by Avenger-caused trauma. They'd rather an entire mob of agents than a single Avenger, thank you very much.
(Black Widow and Hawkeye were already trouble magnets before they joined the team, a little more avoidance was barely noticeable.)
She was one of the few agents on the helicarrier who had managed to avoid the disaster-prone group until now, even competing for the record. This, she had achieved by arranging to be either at the engine room or the mission's office or some other equally mundane section of the carrier when the (unofficial) Avengers Alarm was given (a quick AA muttered over the l5sIC comm-frequency or pop-up alert). And since she had made level five before the Avengers had come together in an official capacity, she'd been able to duck guard duty around the corridors leading to the Director's office. Instead, she'd taken as many missions outside the country as possible until the dust had settled.
(Many of her peers had complained bitterly, especially after Bruce Banner hulked out in two meetings and nearly pureed a baker's dozen of them, but hey, someone had to keep track of the assorted ex-Soviet mad scientists in Siberia.)
But it looked like her karma balance had finally decided to tip the other way in the most extreme manner.
Guess she really had been the axe murderer her brother always accused her of being in her past life.
xXXx
Senior Agent Lianna Thyrell had been on her way to the Assault Division after her lunch break when a shout snagged her attention. Although shout was a vague term because the pitch of the voice and the length of the incredibly piercing exclamation was more suited to a 'shriek', but it couldn't have because there were no shrieking people allowed on the helicarrier. And by extension, it meant that she went into kill-or-capture mode, unclipped her sidearm, and smashed the glass of a conveniently located munitions box with her other hand to dig out the submachine gun that she favored but could not get permission to carry.
(Incidentally, she'd memorized all the locations of the munitions boxes containing submachine guns.)
What followed was a somewhat confusing tussle, where she disabled seven junior agents less gently than she preferred and found herself with two miniature human beings dangling from each arm, struggling to escape. (Children were her exception, as was with most Agents, and even then, the line had been foggy more times than she'd liked)
She stared.
She lifted the less squalling one up to eye level, and then turned to one Agent Philip (call me Phil) Coulson questioningly.
The exasperated legend released a somewhat familiar sigh of equal parts aggravation and relief, but made no move to retrieve her cargo. Instead, he gestured for her to follow him to the director's office. Seeing as he had not given her the kill signal (or the hostage signal, or the interrogation signal, or the 'render them unconscious' signal affectionately termed the 'Quiet, Please' signal), she hoisted them securely under her arms so that the dark-haired one would stop choking on his collar, and followed.
By the time they saw the door of the director's office, dark-haired mini-human numero uno had recovered enough to begin swearing in an admittedly un-human-below-certain-ages way. Senior Agent Thyrell was beginning to get the creeping feeling of certain doom up her spine, the same way poison ivy would wrap itself around…things.
So sue her, she was a SHIELD agent, she wasn't exactly paid to make flowery (pardon the pun) descriptions.
When she stepped into the office that she had so far managed to avoid except for the times she had to accept official notice for her promotions and saw the four other knee-high life forms, she knew she was screwed.
When she suddenly took note of the exact shade of dark hair on the life form under her right arm and the blonde tufts peeking from her left, it was all she could do to drop them on the floor in a way that didn't break them and (attempt to) flee.
Agent Coulson had (wisely) barred the doorway.
"No," she uttered, sending him a pleading look. It was a look she did not use often, although it was, as all weapons of Agents, deadly. Unfortunately, she was a little rusty in its execution, and no match for someone who used to handle the wily Black Widow.
The returning gaze was not reassuring.
"Agent Thyrell," Director Fury boomed, "I have a job for you."
Lianna Thyrell, a senior agent of SHIELD at the relatively young age of twenty-five, yelled "NO!" at her commander-in-chief, shoulder-checked a mildly astonished Superior Agent Coulson, and fled down the long and twisted hallway with the butt of a submachine gun dragging on the ground.
xXXx
"Y'know, Coulson," Fury rubbed his temples, "I'm trying to keep most of our loyal, competent staff. Not have them quit while running away screaming."
Philip Coulson smiled wryly, "We let her dodge them long enough. Besides, it's best to start off with baby steps."
"…You. Fucking. Didn't."
xXXx
So. There was good news and bad news.
The good news was that…the Avengers were still in possession of their adult (or as close to matured as Stark could be) minds. Which meant it wasn't so much a true de-aging as a physical de-aging. Which was bad enough, but in some ways, she would call it a blessing.
That tied in with the bad news.
The bad news was that she, Senior Agent Lianna Thyrell of (newly christened) formerly mythical Level Six clearance, had been tasked with the care of said miniaturized-Avengers until they either changed back or grew up. Whichever came first.
And yes, SHIELD had plans for if they had to take the long route. And they included her. (And a bump up to *Level Seven*, but she didn't know that yet.)
So, two pieces of bad news then.
Well fuck.
xXXx
"No," Lianna told Stark when he turned towards her. It's the same monosyllabic reply she's been giving him since she started the first babysitting job she's had since she was twelve. She's never actually met Stark in person before this, but she knows better than to let him railroad her into something that would probably end up in explosions and fury. And possibly Fury.
He twists his mouth into an ugly—uglier scowl, the darkness of it sitting uncomfortably in the crook of a prepubescent boy's lips. Tony Stark was a handsome child, not that the old press photos of Howard Stark's son hadn't proven that. In the hour she'd been denying him voice, he'd become increasingly belligerent.
"I could have needed to go to the toilet," he spoke at her, voice vicious and laced with an old resentment he probably hadn't intended to reveal, "I could have been hungry." He glared at the side of her head as she tapped on her phone.
"Stark," she frowned, "you are an adult. You are not actually a child. If you needed food you could have gotten some yourself from the pantry. And you don't need permission from me to go to the bathroom."
There was a collective wince from the rest of the Avengers as they watched the ensuing scene. Bruce Banner was taking deep breaths to calm himself. Damnit.
Lianna turned to the rest of the superhero team and addressed them, "I am not actually here to take care of you like a nanny, but protect you from being targeted. I am your bodyguard." She gave a brief nod to the two other Agents. Despite her avoidance of the Avengers, no Agent level 4 and onwards has avoided a mission with the Special Agents. She had the usual understanding with them and they co-operated very professionally with her on ops.
"I'm pretty sure I could modify the suit to fit my current size," Stark bared his teeth and growled.
"I'm pretty sure you would be able to protect yourself more effectively when you have done so," she nodded, before returning to tapping on her phone. Some of her junior agents were sending her reports on their surveillance missions regarding the circumstances surrounding the Avengers' de-aging.
When a minute passed with no further protest, she took a wary peek. Stark was still glaring at her but it had mostly powered down to annoyance and…confusion? She spared a look at the Hulk and was relieved to find him breathing normally.
Stark opened his mouth again.
"No."
xXXx
Another two hours of denial, some tiptoeing around a stressed Banner, dodging the thankfully less coordinated Black Widow and Hawkeye, Lianna was finally freed from maximum security scrutiny (sadly blowing her Avengers contact time out of the water) and allowed to…follow the Avengers back to their tower.
She cursed her luck, her karma, and whatever deity was at fault for this travesty. She was going to be killed if this continued on. As fodder. She, a level five (six…whatever that meant) agent. Fucking hell.
Agent Coulson had told her to collect all necessities before leaving, which meant that she was as good as moving to the tower.
She probably wouldn't even last a week.
Fuck.
xXXx
"She's not going to last a week," Tony whispered furiously to mini-Steve. He scowled at the memory of the stonewalling agent and resolved to drive her from his tower. Maybe she wasn't on the same level as his old governess (who had governesses even back then?) but she had still grated on his nerves in a similar way. The constant on-the-phone thing brought back memories of being ignored or locked in his room. He'd never thought he'd ever feel the same way again.
Usually, he'd be going for the alcohol, but he wasn't entirely comfortable being drunk within the vicinity of one of Fury's brainwashed cronies, and so he didn't. Instead, he headed towards his workshop.
"Where are you going?"
"None of your business," he sniped without hesitation. As he walked down the steps, a shadow fell over him.
He really, really hated it when people loomed over him.
"And what do you think you're doing?" He snapped at the shadow.
"I'm going with you to make sure you don't get hurt overestimating your strength or height while engaging in experiments that may cause irreparable hurt to a child's body."
He'd been ready with a rant at the first four words, but that had petered out a little at the rest. It was, he supposed, logical, but he could manage just fine. He'd done so without someone watching over him and it didn't make sense to have someone do so just because of a little body shrinkage. And she'd had to be all reasonable when she'd said that.
"You are not going anywhere near my workshop!" He exclaimed, stamping his foot to emphasize the point, "I can manage just fine by myself and even if—" he stopped himself before he could continue, because therein lay stuff he wasn't going to touch. Nope.
"Is there another person whom you can accept in your workshop, then?" she asked…well, just asked. There was no other meaning or insinuation to be gleaned from that. He could respect that. Somewhat.
Still, "I don't need anyone else in my own fucking workshop!"
"Tony…" and there was Bruce wringing his hands and shuffling his feet, "I think it's better if you had someone there. I saw the footage of the Mark VI test flight…"
He gaped. He felt betrayed. He thought they were bros. "I don't need anyone there! She's not coming into my workshop!"
"Tony…" now Captain Fucking America was joining in. Great.
He threw his hands up, "She's not coming and that's FINAL!"
xXXx
"Fucking fuckety fucking fuck!" Tony bellowed (it was actually more like a howl) as he stomped around his workshop. He usually felt a lot more at ease surrounded by all his tech, but the fucking agent had slipped through the door before JARVIS could close it in her face. He needed to fix that.
She didn't reply, so he was free to bang and clang his way through a couple of old bots before finally cooling down enough to work on the Mark X. Except that he didn't quite trust her enough to work on his suit in front of her.
He finally flung his wrench away in disgust when it was apparent that nothing was going to be done while Agent Lianna Thyrell was in his workshop.
This was not FAIR!
xXXx
As Tony Stark's rampage petered out, Lianna continued to give support through her phone. She couldn't give instructions as quickly with her comm—she wasn't supposed to talk about missions outside the Helicarrier—but like every Agent, she made do. The Tower was probably capturing every text she sent, but for now, she was running low priority missions, and they were really short on experienced staff.
Being as her repertoire included infocomm skills, she'd managed to wrangle an agreement from the director to allow her to run missions whilst babysitting. The fact was, unless there was a big-time villain intending on taking over the world, Stark Tower (or rumour had it, Avengers Tower) was one of the safest places in America. Sure, it was pretty much target number one to all supervillains at large, but Stark had turned it into a veritable fortress ever since Loki.
In some ways, she supposed it was comforting, despite the near guarantee that she would be one of the first dead should something big enough hit. And at least she'd be able to send Command some intel of their enemy before she kicked the bucket. She hoped.
"Are you sure they should go that way?" Stark piped up smugly, drawing up a hologram of the texts she'd sent as well as camera shots of one of the ongoing missions. She sighed, continuing to text even as he fiddled around with her files. Confidential? Very. Too valuable to land in enemy hands? Extremely. Something Tony Stark wouldn't be able to find out hacking into the system? Unlikely.
Well, Coulson had encouraged her to keep as professional an attitude as possible, so that meant no talking about confidential missions with Stark, even if he already knew everything. She did doublecheck the route just in case she'd missed something, but suddenly, her blackberry was typing by itself.
"Stark," she warned. This wasn't the time to show-off, there were lives at stake here.
"They're going the wrong way," he insisted, "There's a better one!"
She shook her head frantically, "Stark! You don't know how to run a mission! Stop it! They could die if you confuse them!"
"But I know a safer route," he pointed at a layout, "Look! If they go here and here they'd get out quicker!"
Her eyes widened, "Did you just tell them to go there?! Stark! I'm telling them to go around it because it's too obvious! It's open space and there'll be snipers!"
Iron Man blinked, "Erm. No. I mean. Not yet. I haven't sent the text yet."
"Erase it," she demanded, "I need to reply quickly or they'll get boxed in."
"Okay," he nodded nervously, fiddling with the display, "Okay. Yeah. Done."
She went back to typing furiously on her blackberry. From the prompts she'd gotten, the team had had three narrow escapes within the time she'd spent talking. She swore when one of them reported a movement-impairing injury. This was supposed to be a simple mission!
Thankfully, she managed to get the team to the extraction point without more hassle or casualties, but they had suffered injuries that would need more than a few days' rest which meant yet another team having to take up the already overflowing workload. She sighed in frustration.
"Stark," she wasn't quite sure how not to snap at him. Coulson had taken her aside beforehand to caution against being too severe with Stark due to his childhood experience. Despite retaining his adult mind, his immature body wasn't really equipped to handle complex emotions. That meant it was less able to handle stress and trauma. She was sympathetic, honestly, but he'd nearly killed an entire team of Agents for the sake of proving his superior…intellect? Technology? She didn't really fucking care.
"I'm sorry, okay?" He hunched into himself, looking very much the small child awaiting a beating, "It was just a small mistake. I won't do it again and I'll even make you a better communicator. I'll tell JARVIS not to interfere again."
"Stark," she sighed, his file stated he tended to resort to material bribery to fix social problems. He was the definition of 'fix things with money'. She also knew that he was the type to beat himself up over mistakes, which really made her…scolding or whatever redundant. And he was very nearly in tears too, being unable to control himself at his current physical age.
She frowned. He most likely already knew the consequences of his actions. Stark fooled around with a lot of things, but when it came to human lives he was extremely careful. She didn't really need to drive in the fact that lives had been at stake when he could easily figure it out himself.
"Just don't do it again," she said quietly, returning to her phone. It was a bitch texting instructions, but she already had another mission to run.
Stark stared at her for a long moment, before turning back to his desk, mumbling under his breath.
xXXx
"What's this?" She stared at the thing in his hands as she sent the last text of instructions for her mission handover. She'd gotten 15 missions done so far, pretty alright for someone who'd been doing it via text messages and only a memorized layout of each location. She was an Assault Agent, so honestly, 15 was pretty good. She didn't make Level 5 for nothing, after all.
(But if she'd had a comm and been at HQ…)
Stark scowled, but tried to push the phone-and-earpiece set at her, "I said I'd make you a better communicator, right? Here."
She blinked. Truthfully, there was no reason not to take it. He already knew of all the missions she'd been running, and if someone could hack Stark Tech then the helicarrier would already have been shot down.
Furthermore, according to his psych evaluation, Tony Stark was the type who would push the more he was curious and nothing made him more curious than when someone refused him. So, the best way to go about it would be to accept it but not really use it. (Probably submit it to HQ so that it could either be reproduced or given to someone with higher priority…Or just confiscated. She ignored the twinge of mine!)
"Thank you," she nodded. She took the things and slipped it into her civilian-esque leather jacket. Leather was good, it was not too restrictive and durable. She checked her issued phone for any updates before putting it in a different pocket.
Stark scowled even more, but didn't say anything.
He tried to stomp away again, but it was lunchtime, so she dragged him to the dining area where the rest of the Avengers were gathering.
And that's all, folks! Welp, for now at least. I haven't really planned out what else to write for this, but this won't be the last of Lianna! And yes, it's not in chronological order, coz I'm still figuring out how to write ordinary Agent-life. Hahaha! As for the reviewers whom I haven't replied, I'm sooooo sorry! I do my best to reply asap, but again, RL, and I pretty much forget what I see after (coz I kind of chuck everything ff related into a different folder) and then I forget whether I've replied already lololol.
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