Hey so like

This story existed in my head for a while and then the power went out in my house and now I'm using my remaining battery power to put the idea on paper- wait- I'm typing it.

For those who missed it, yes, this story does have Soulmate Marks in it. I don't know if this will just be a side gimmick or will be important later, but this is absolutely my way of avoiding having to write much romantic angst. :/ (For now, at least?)

I'm only doing this once so, Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, making no money from this, fair use & shit.

o – o – o – o

Chapter 1

In Which Clint, Phil, and Melinda Assemble a New, Small Team

o – o – o – o

9:45 am, July 20th, 1998

Clint Barton

It all started on a Tuesday morning. It was the start of a pattern, really. Not that Clint Barton knew it at the time. At the time, the agent, the famous Hawkeye, was bounced a rubber ball against the wall. He was sitting in a small office on the third floor of the Triskelion, HQ of one of the most secretive spy organizations in the world, his feet resting upon a desk from where he sat on the couch. Behind the desk, in a perfectly pressed grey suit with a blue and red tie, sat Agent Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. A tall stack of papers had been moved on the desk and stacked by the floor, and the two were playing a game of chess.

"Check." Clint gave a sigh as he looked down at the board, where the pieces were almost all white, and his black pieces were few and far between. He moved his king to the left. Coulson responded by moving his piece again. "Check again." Clint moved his king backward. Coulson gives it a moment of thought before shifting a different piece, his queen this time. "Check." He looks away to fill in a blank on the sheet of paperwork next to him. Clint banged his face on the table and shifted his king again. Coulson looked up and then moved a third piece. "Are you even trying Barton? Check."

"Somedays, I think I hate you," Clint responded. Phil looked up from both the game and his report at Clint.

"No, you don't." He deadpanned, and Clint sighed.

"You're right, of course." Clint moved his king. "I just hate that you're so much better than me at chess." Coulson pointed his pen at Clint.

"See, now we're getting to the heart of the issue!" The agent cleared his throat and adopted a silly, high pitched accent. "Now, what in your life do you believe to be the cause of these psychological disabilities?" He gets a snort out of the 24-year-old archer for his troubles.

"Coulson, you sound like the shrink SHIELD pays to do the regular psych evals. What's her name again? Something with an M."

"Marissa. Which you'd know if you showed up to your last three appointments." He doesn't even look up – there's little heat in his voice, only very quiet, resigned disappointment. They've had this discussion, and Clint promised to show up for two a year, which is more than a fair number of agents, so Coulson only brings it up here and there, never with real conviction. He's gotten as much from the archer as he can, and he knows it. Clint moves a piece across the board, moving his piece to the left again. Coulson adjusted the piece he had used second. "Check."

"Do you ever feel like our lives are just like a game of chess, Coulson?" Clint asked, in lieu of moving his pieces again.

"In a way I suppose. A collection of pieces, each with their own talents and abilities, all moving together to work towards a larger goal, it does kind sound like S.H.I.E.L.D, doesn't it? How very-"

"What? No! Christ, Coulson, get your stupid optimism out of here! I meant this game in particular- Repetitive and hopeless, each one of us chasing a goal we will almost achieve, only to have it ripped away from us at the last minute, in desperate need of a change to our status quo." Coulson looked up.

"If you keep this up, I might have to force you to actually go to more psych evals more regularly, you… you pessimist, Barton." Clint snorted and moved his piece. Coulson snorted and moved his piece again.

"You know I'm just bored, Phil." Clint flicked one of his captured pawns across the table, so it landed precisely on top of the line that Coulson was lowering his pen to. Coulson cast an unamused look on the younger field agent. He opened his mouth with a retort when the door flew open. A younger Asian female agent stormed into the office, short black hair in a bob-cut falling around her face. A junior agent's badge was on her shoulder, and she had an overflowing manila file in her arms.

"Agent Coulson and Agent Barton?" She asked, clearly out of breath yet still somehow composed. Coulson was already rising from his seat. He gave a little start, but Clint knew from almost a year of working with the man why. The words gently rested against the back of his neck, a black color. Agent Coulson and Agent Barton? They ask Coulson, spoken by someone unseen. Phil had shown Clint after they had worked together for a couple of months when they were awaiting an evac out of India and were both only kind of sober. Clint knows he hears the words all the time, but he hopes for his friend's sake that one day the right person will say those words, and soon. Coulson's always been a bit of a romantic, and if anyone deserved to find his soulmate, it was him.

Clint's words are easier. They're lavender, on his stomach, next to his navel. Hello Sir, what can I get for you? The special today is pie.

"That would be correct, Agent…?" He asked. The woman gives no reaction to those words, so Clint assumes whoever Coulson's soulmate is, it isn't her. He doesn't miss the small way Coulson's shoulders sag for a moment before he composes himself again.

"May. Agent Melinda May, but proper introductions are going to have to wait. Fury wants you in his office." She handed the file to Coulson, and they were heading out the door at a furious fast-walk pace. Just a moment later, Clint was bouncing off the couch and following them. Coulson was already flipping through the file as Clint was catching up, a concerned look on his face. He turned to look at the archer.

"Well, you said you wanted something interesting. This case is… definitely interesting." They rounded a corner, heading into a larger, more crowded hallway.

"I said I was bored. I was going to lead into, hey we should take a couple of days off and go upstate, or go do something fun together, or when you said no, I was going to go off with my old Russian friend, something off the books, lend her a hand. Not… get wrapped up in another paperwork filed op before we can even finish our chess game. You and I have a very different definition of interesting, I think." Agent May raised a single eyebrow in surprise, mouthing old Russian friend to herself. They rounded another corner, heading into an elevator. No one else got in, and Coulson turned to Clint.

"I think you and I will both be interested in this one. It's an 0-8-4 that turned appeared in Upstate New York." His eyes flick down to the paper. "The eyewitnesses, a family of three and a trucker who was passing by say that there was a flash of green light that overwhelmed their sight, and then a blue…" He pauses as the elevator door opens on a floor other than their destinations, but Agent May raised a hand to stop them and pointed to the illuminated button indicating they were headed to the floor where they had executive offices. The agents stepped back, and the doors swung shut. "Anyways, the witnesses all say that there was what is being called a blue wormhole in the sky, and a something huge came crashing through it. The trucker thinks it's a plane, the parents are calling it a UFO, but the most interesting testimony is the one the 13-year-old boy gave." The elevator swings open.

"Alright, I'll admit this is interesting. What gives? Why's this kid's testimony so interesting.?"

"Well, his parents immediately fled the scene after out 0-8-4 appeared, but he didn't. He says he saw two figures come out of the plane, fighting each other. One could make objects float and threw them at the other, who shaped the futuristic red and gold armor he was wearing to create a shield to block the flying objects. At which point the first person lifted the ground he stood on and flew back through the portal, and the armor-clad man flew back through after him. The 'wormhole'" Coulson made air quotes around the word "Closed after they both left." They entered Fury's office, only to see him locked in a debate with one of the higher-ups, so they headed to one of the couches. Agent May followed them, although Clint wasn't quite sure why, at this point.

"No offense Coulson, but this sounds like maybe the kid hit his head too hard or something, I don't know, or maybe he's making shit up."

"Hunks of metal can fall from a wormhole in the sky, but this is where you draw the line?" Agent May raised an eyebrow at the bow-wielding agent, who shrugged.

"Well, here's the thing Barton, there are objects from one side of a clearing that have been scattered about, a large chunk of ground missing from one spot, and a pair of strange shaped footprints that had particles found in them that have the S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists freaking out, because as it says in this… large portion of the dossier by the scientists, they are gold-titanium-vibranium nanites, and there is no one alive who can even make a sustainable alloy of the three, much less make actual nanites with them, as apparently they are but a theoretical… tiny… robot… at this point." Coulson flipped through several pages of what looked like scientist scrawl.

"I assume you're paraphrasing and translating from scientist back to English?" Clint smirked.

"The lab techs are… very excited about the possibilities this offers, yes." Coulson turned four more pages in the file in one go. "Very… very excited." Agent May snorted.

"You haven't been down there today, have you. It's like Christmas came early in there. Either that or someone released a small demon that we will find later again, but I'm assuming it's the first." She stated.

"Always better when the labs aren't devolving into a circle of hell, isn't it?" Coulson turned to the short woman.

"That is always better." The voice of Junior Director Fury cuts in and all three agents turn to face him. "The last time I saw a scientist this incoherent, he was about to perform an autopsy on a dead extraterrestrial." Clint wants that story.

"This when there was the altercation with the Kree, Skrulls, and Carol over the tesseract, Sir?" Coulson asks. Fury gives a nod, and now Clint really wants that story.

"Our scientists are currently concluding that whatever that wormhole thing was, it has dropped us a collection of technology from the future. They can't give me dates, but they estimate anywhere from 30 to 50 years ahead of us. That's not even the really curious stuff though." The Junior Director goes on. Clint tries really hard not to stare at the eye-patch, but then it just feels like he's staring at Fury, and suddenly he wants to look away. He doesn't know where to look, so now Clint is looking at the wall behind the bald man, trying to appear like he was looking at the Junior Director. "Am I boring you, Agent Barton?" The one-eyed-man asked.

"No, sir."

"Then what seems to be the problem, Agent Barton?"

"Sir… I just- I don't know where to look. On your face, Sir." Clint stammers out. He hears Agent May give a soft snort, and he can feel Coulson's patented disappointed glare on his back.

"At my face, Agent Barton. Just like you would any other agent." Clint forced back the embarrassed flush to stay just below the surface of his skin,

"Yes, sir." He felt like he should salute or something.

"Any more stupid questions from the peanut gallery or may I continue? Good. Our agents who first arrived on the scene identified the 0-8-4 as a plane and attempted to board from the only door visible, 5 feet above the ground on the side. The plane lowered a ramp for them when they approached, it slid right out onto the ground by their feet. They attempted to approach the aircraft but were rebuffed when a voice from the plane informed them that only members of S.H.I.E.L.D. or members of the 'Avengers Initiative'. I sent Agent Garret out with a S.T.R.I.K.E. team, but they were unable to enter. One of his younger agents grew frustrated upon their third attempt to enter anywhere else and kicked the hull of the plane. Upon his doing so, the ramp dropped the ground out from under him, and the plane itself, in what is described as a female Irish accent, told him that A: the plane felt that behavior was quite rude, and B: All associated agents were no longer permitted nearby. It has since not allowed any agent nearby. We were hoping that you would have better luck, Agent Coulson." Fury finished. Coulson took a second file that Fury offered him, giving him a small nod of acknowledgment.

"I would like to take a team of agents. Green, Junior agents, I think. People with no other loyalties, something smells fishy about this – why claim S.H.I.E.L.D. members can board, but not let them on board? Maybe green agents will be able to enter since they're the core of S.H.I.E.L.D." Coulson added.

"Buncha green optimists, you mean." Clint snorts.

"A bunch of people who still believe in the idea of S.H.I.E.L.D. as a shield, people who still want to uphold justice and protect the people."

"That's… a nice idea." Agent May chimed in quietly.

"What do you need, Coulson?" Fury asked.

"I want to take Agents May and Barton with me, as well as a diplomatically inclined agent – someone who's still inclined to do whatever crazy this job offers, someone who is willing to discuss diplomacy with an airplane if we need to. I want a lab tech, someone who is clear for the field and combat, we don't know what is inside of the plane. They don't have to be an expert in any particular field, but someone who can prepare samples for the lab. I want a mechanic, someone who helped build the new mobile command centers, someone who knows planes." Coulson ticked fingers off as he went through what his goals. Fury crossed the table to his desk, a pulled a big binder out and flipped through it, heavy papers thumping as they blew passed, flipping over. He stopped on another page.

"Your diplomat can be Agent Hill, she has great marks under people skills, and all of her instructors said she was ready to deal with the crazier side of our organization." Coulson nods, and May punched something in on her pager. "For lab tech, we have Agent Morse, a biochemist who has been sending me upwards of a hundred complaints because she wants to be in the field, desperate for a mission that will let her prove herself." Fury pulls another pager out, putting something into it. He flips his hands through the binder again. "Your mechanic is Agent Mackenzie; he was studying under the man who was head mechanic on the first mobile command." Coulson uses his pager this time. Agent May stood up and headed for the door.

"I'm going to go requisition a quin-jet, so it'll be wheels up in 30 minutes. You and your team better met me in the hanger, or I'll leave you here." May turned and walked out, back straight like she was the strongest woman in the room. Clint wasn't sure she wasn't.

o – o – o – o

Clint ducked into the labs, and a quick look around revealed that the labs were, in fact, a giant, chaotic mess. He took one look at all the flashing lights and moving scientists, and he immediately regretted the decision to come down to the lab to pick up their biochemist. There was an explosion, and a handful of shrieks and Clint reached up and turned his hearing aids off, relishing in the quiet peace it brought him.

Clint made his way to the desk at the front of the lab. Stopping in front of it, the man who was supposed to be keeping track of which scientist was where was leaning back appearing to be locked in conversation with someone else. His head was turned away, and Clint still had his hearing aids off, so the topic of conversation escaped him. He took a moment to compose himself before he cleared his throat.

"Excuse me?" He asked, and the desk tech turned to face him. He had a strange look on his face, so Clint assumed that his voice still sounded a little strange without his hearing aids to help him. He had missed his last couple of speech therapy appointments due to a mission that went sideways, and he hadn't had time to make them up yet. The lab tech turned a deadpan glare on.

"Oh hell-. What -an we d- f-r y-u, A ge nt B ar t on?" Clint internally cringed as he watched the lab tech talk with what was clearly a strong accent, and then the angry way he pronounced every syllable of his name, Clint assumed someone had mentioned that he was notorious in the labs.

"I'm here to see Agent Morse? Agent Coulson has asked her to join a team he's putting together for a special op." The lab tech raised an eyebrow but leaned over and called over his shoulder into the uncaring void of chaos. They waited for a moment, Clint tapping his foot against the ground a bit, the silence a little strange after having had his hearing aids on for several days straight leading up to this but unwilling to suffer the headache the labs can cause. The desk tech takes another minute of the foot-tapping before calling something else over his shoulder. This time he must have gotten a satisfactory response because he pulls a file out of a cabinet to his left and passes it to Clint.

A quick peek down at the file shows Clint that he is holding Agent Morse's personal file, and he casts a small nod of thanks to the desk tech before a young, fit blonde woman can be seen hurrying between other scientists, removing the lab coat from her practical top and jeans as she waves at the entrance. She makes her way over to Clint, stopping only to hang the sterile white coat up on a rack of many similar coats.

"Are you Agent Morse?" Clint asked. The blonde woman nods while she says something to the man working the desk. "Mind if we talk outside? It's really loud in here." He flicks his hearing aids on, barely letting a blink show as a visible outlet of the cacophony of sounds that assault his mind all at once.

"Not one bit." Morse agrees and opens the lab door. They head out into the hallway, where Clint leans against a wall, relishing the more peaceful quite the soundproofed wall brings. "So, you wanted to see me?" Clint nodded in response.

"Agent Coulson would like you to a temporary team for an op? There's an 0-8-4 that we're being called to investigate, and we'd like to take someone who knows how to prep samples with us." The scientist blinked in surprise. Then she paused for a moment.

"Wait, you're serious? I can't believe it! I have been waiting for an assignment for the longest time, of course, I'm interested! When is it?" Agent Morse was visibly calm, but her voice was just radiating excitement.

"Meet in the hanger ASAP, Agent May has ordered wheels up in 20."

"Alright! Right away, I'm going to swing by the lockers to pick up my gear."

"Mind if I tag along Agent Morse? I need to make a pit stop as well." Clint started walking towards where the weaponry lockers, catching Agent Morse's nod of agreement in the corner of his eye.

"Of course, and please, call me Bobbi."

o – o – o – o

Phil Coulson

Phil's head was full of a bubbling mess of thoughts as he approached the accounting portion of the Triskelion. The first and foremost thing in his mind was the thoughts of having to navigate negotiating with a talking plane. It was certainly nothing like anything else Phil had ever done before with S.H.I.E.L.D. before. It thrilled him.

Phil had joined S.H.I.E.L.D. because it was Captain America's legacy, but also because he wanted to follow in the old American hero's footstep, to become a shield to protect the people from the strangeness of the world. The weirdness that surrounded his job was… weird yes, but at the same time it invigorated him, it filled him with a feeling that he had done something good in the world. It was fulfilling, dealing with everything that the military couldn't.

He entered the entrance of accounting, and approached the front desk, pushing all his other thoughts to the back of his mind, especially the ones about Agent May and the words on his neck.

"Excuse me, I'm here to meet with an Agent Hill? She's been assigned to my task force temporarily. Orders from Junior Director Fury himself." The woman behind the desk looked up at him.

"Third desk on the right next to the wall. You can't miss her; she's got short black hair." The desk worked went back to his laptop. Phil followed the directions and found himself at a pristinely organized desk with a woman checking some numbers on what looked like a budgeting sheet. He cleared his throat.

"Agent Hill, I assume? I have to say, this is a neatly organized desk, a real rarity around these parts." That got a small snort out of the woman as she looked up.

"You assume correctly. What brings someone from STRIKE down here to our humble little neat desks?" She counters.

"I'm Agent Coulson. I've been assigned with running a small taskforce for a peculiar op, and you were recommended for the team by an old classmate from the Academy." She looked up, confusion covering her face.

"Really? Why? I was hardly the top of my class for the field, and I always intended to become an Agent's handler, not the agent myself. I prefer to use words over weapons." Agent Hill spoke clearly, even as she set her pen aside and moved the paper she had been overlooking onto what appeared to be a pile of completed forms.

"You were recommended exactly because as you put it, you prefer to use words over weapons. The situation my team is being called into is quite unusual, and we need someone who is willing and able to talk negotiations while still being flexible. Agent May assured me that was the case for you." This garnered a snort from the woman.

"Melinda. Of course." She stood up. "I'm not opposed to going into the field temporarily, but I'm going to need all the info on the situation beforehand, and I should warn you that I'm only a so-so shot." Agent Hill offered her hand to Phil, and they shook on the deal.

"Glad to have you aboard, Agent Hill. Let's walk and talk, shall we?" He asked and handed her the file on the 0-8-4 as they headed out the door.

o – o – o – o

Melinda May

After the meeting in Fury's office, Melinda headed out first. She had to make a stop in the administrative offices before heading down to the hangar. Rounding a corner, she pushed the door marked as Agent Assignments on the largest administrative floor.

"Is this where I need to be to file an Agent Transfer Report?" She asks a tall white woman surrounded by boxes of papers, and stacks of unfiled sheets. The woman looks up, seemingly surprised at being addressed.

"That would be correct, Agent…?" The woman looked at Melinda from over her should, not turning in her chair from her desk. Melinda rubbed her shoulder on autopilot as she responded.

"Agent Melinda May, Ma'am. I'm going to need 6 total Agent Transfer Reports, and then there is an urgent mission, we only have half an hour to deal with the paperwork and requisition a plane." In actuality, Melinda had never done an 0-8-4 run before, she had no idea how urgent it was, but she didn't have the patience for more than maybe 15 minutes of paperwork, so now it was an urgent mission with a deadline she set herself. She had a deep suspicion that neither Agent Coulson (picking up related case files) or Agent Barton (Stopping at equipment lockers) would stop into paperwork, so Melinda just decided to do it for the whole team.

The paper worker sighed and pointed to a box to the left of her chair, by the leg of her desk.

"Blank copies of form 1-3A can be found in there. When done, please leave the white pages in the tray by the door labeled 1-3A, the yellow pages are yours to keep." With that, the taller woman bent back over whatever she had been doing before, and Melinda wove around her chair to pick out six copies of the aforementioned forms. She grabbed in pen from off the ground next to the box and made her way to a chair in the corner and filed each sheet out with basic information for each agent – name, rank, current department, the reason for transfer, new department each had clear blanks. Melinda marked Junior Director Fury as the agent who ordered the transfer for each, ripped the white pages off the top of the yellow pages below, where they had absorbed markings from the pressure applied to the white, separating the two.

Melinda dropped the white pages in the tray that was marked with the form number and looked through the yellow sheets. She took Agent Mackenzie's form in her left hand, and she pocketed the others. She entered the elevator, pushing the button for the airplane hangar, and an agent she recognized from the academy – Agent Garrett, perhaps? She didn't remember liking him, so Melinda inclined her head in response to his wave, before pulling the rest of her yellows out of her pocket and smoothing them over, pretending to read through a series of transfer orders.

Finally, the elevator door beeped, and Melinda stepped out of the elevator into the hanger, ignoring Garrett's wave goodbye. She folded the five transfer orders up again and took a right into the engineer break room, the one transfer from for Agent Mackenzie in her hand again. She stepped into the room, and it felt like every eye in there flew to the yellow sheet in her hand. Melinda cleared her throat self-consciously.

"Agent Mackenzie? Orders from above, a temp team is being assembled." She spoke, and the whole room was quiet as taller, African American young man made his way over, she handed him both the redacted copy of the mission file she had and his yellow slip. As he read through it, she checked her watch – still ten minutes until her wheels-up time. She turned to a mechanic on the left. "We'll also need to requisition a plane for 6 Agents, for a two-day time period, with the possibility of return a day early." The agent nodded and went to go get a form.

"Alright, we'll get everything all nice and ready for you, we just need your signature here, Ma'am." A form was passed to her, and Melinda scrawled her signature on the appropriate line. The agent who took the sheet turned to Agent Mackenzie.

"Mack, apparently your team is taking…" He checked the form again "Jet 4-Q-3, I assume you can find that on your own?"

"Yeah, don't worry about it. See you guys when I get back." Agent Mackenzie grabbed a bag from a locker on the wall, and he headed towards the door. "Just this way, Agent…"

"Agent Melinda May, thank you, Agent Mackenzie," Melinda commented as he held the door for her, and she ducked through, and they headed over to the plane.

"Please, just call me Mack, everyone does."

"Then just call me May, the only person who calls me Melinda is my mother." Mack gave a good-natured chuckle at that, and May sent him a smile in return. "Get ready Mack, wheels up in…" Melinda checked her watch, "7 minutes, and Agent Coulson, who's leading the team, plans to do a formal debrief in the air." She headed over to the cockpit and began to boot up the plane systems.

Agent Coulson arrived 4 minutes later with another black-haired female agent who Melinda assumed was Agent Hill, and the two of them set a stack of files on an open chair before each introducing themselves to Mack.

Agents Barton and Morse arrive with one minute until go time, so they quickly stashed the five bags (Melinda thanked them for grabbing hers when she spotted it) under the seats, and everyone buckled in as Melinda fired up the engine, closed the bay door, and their plane took off, flying out through the S.H.I.E.L.D hangar doors, out from the Triskelion into the sky, where Melinda planned a gentle but quick course towards Upstate New York.

They all took turns introducing themselves, (Agent Morse wanted to be called Bobbi and Agent Barton simply said to call him Clint, titles were to fancy) and then Agents Coulson and Hill passed out the similar case files as Clint handled the brief for those who had missed Fury's, and then they made their plan of 'attack'.

o – o – o – o

Ok so like, that happened, I guess. Wow then. Expect chapter 2… at some point. This story will be a second priority to the other story I have in progress, but I just wanted a silly, lighthearted story about the avengers in a personalized Helicarrier flying around, chilling out, and getting along man.