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"Little Hermione is actually the famous Witch! You all kept this from me! I feel betrayed! Bamboozled!"
Skye glared at Hermione, feigning anger, her hands on her hips. She looked like a pouty puppy, her large eyes wide with mock indignation. She was wearing a tight-fitting hacker's vest that accentuated her athletic build, her energy infectious.
She then looked around the room, accusing everyone.
Simmons, Fitz, Ward, and May all looked away, finding sudden interest in the floor tiles or the rivets on the wall. There was a palpable awkwardness, but beneath it, a flash of envy.
They envied Skye. She had no clearance, no training, yet she had closed the distance with the terrifying Witch of New York in a matter of hours. While they treated Hermione like a ticking nuclear bomb, Skye treated her like a college roommate.
Is this talent? May wondered. Or just a lack of survival instinct?
Perhaps there was a reason Coulson had picked this stray up from a van.
CLACK. CLACK.
Phil Coulson strode into the command center, his dress shoes clicking on the metal grating. His face was serious, his suit pressed, his demeanor shifting instantly from "cool uncle" to "Field Commander."
He let his gaze linger briefly on Hermione—a silent check-in—before addressing the team.
"Everyone, focus," Coulson announced, his voice cutting through the relaxed atmosphere. "We just received intel. We have a lock on Ian Quinn."
The mood on the Bus shifted instantly.
"Get ready to move out," Coulson ordered. "Wheels up in twenty. The objective is to capture Quinn and secure the asset."
Skye, who had been clinging to Hermione's arm like a koala, immediately let go and stood up straight. "Okay! On it!"
Her eyes sparkled. Having tasted the adrenaline of field missions, the girl who once lived in a van was starting to crave the action. She forgot, for a moment, that she was just a hacker.
Simmons and Fitz exchanged a meaningful glance—a silent conversation held in micro-expressions—and immediately rushed to their lab bench. May and Ward moved to the armory to prep their loadouts.
The machine of S.H.I.E.L.D. began to turn.
Hermione watched them scurry with great interest, munching on a leftover chocolate frog. She followed the crowd into the briefing room, drifting over to Ward.
"So," she asked casually, leaning against the holo-table. "Who is this Quinn guy? And why does he sound like a bad romance novel villain?"
Ward paused while checking the slide on his pistol. He instinctively wanted to give a redacted answer—old habits die hard. But then he looked at Hermione. She was a Level Infinity asset. Redacting intel from her was like trying to hide the ocean from a fish.
He lowered his voice. "Ian Quinn. CEO of Quinn Worldwide. He made his fortune in mining and drifted into tech. He's been secretly funding and researching the Super Soldier project. He's the wallet behind the headaches we've been having."
Hermione picked up the mission dossier Ward had set down. She flipped it open.
"Project Centipede..." she read aloud, her eyes scanning the biological data.
[Subject Analysis]
Base: Gamma Radiation (trace)
Serum: Super Soldier Variant (unstable)
Catalyst: Extremis Virus (heat signature detected)
Tech: Chitauri metal implant (regulator)
"Chitauri scrap metal, bootleg Super Soldier serum, and Extremis?" Hermione frowned, looking disgusted.
"What kind of Frankenstein's monster is this? It's practically like an Americano mixed with orange juice and a savory latte. It's alchemical vomit. Who designed this? A blender?"
Upon hearing the beverage analogy, the team grimaced. They could almost taste the horrific combination.
Hermione tapped the word "Extremis" with a manicured fingernail.
"Speaking of which," she noted idly, "didn't I take care of Killian and his Extremis warriors? I distinctly remember turning him into a Roman candle. How is there still a virus leaking out?"
The room went silent.
Fitz stopped typing. Simmons dropped a pipette. Ward froze. Even May looked up.
"You?" May asked, her brow furrowing. "The official S.H.I.E.L.D. report states that Tony Stark—Iron Man—destroyed Killian at the docks."
Hermione blinked, looking genuinely surprised. "You didn't know?"
She shrugged, handing the dossier back to Ward. "Oh, that must be standard procedure for the Hard-Boiled Egg. Keeping secrets, rewriting history. Classic Fury."
She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I did it. Tony was busy catching Pepper. I did the heavy lifting. As usual."
The team stared at her. The "official story" was a lie. The Witch had been cleaning up the Avengers' messes from the shadows for longer than they knew.
The Lab.
Five minutes later, the tension of the reveal had faded into the frantic energy of preparation.
Fitz and Simmons were huddled over a workbench, arguing. It was their natural state.
Fitz held a sleek, prototype pistol—the I.C.E.R. (Incapacitating Cartridge Emitting Railgun), or as he insisted on calling it, the "Night-Night Gun."
"Jemma, the anesthetic dosage is still not stable enough!"
Fitz fiddled with the pressure knob, his Scottish accent thickening with stress. "The dendrotoxin delivery system is flawed! Sometimes the kinetic impact knocks them out, and sometimes it's just a tickle! We need consistency!"
Simmons sighed, leaning over to check the readout on the mass spectrometer.
"I've optimized the formula, Fitz! The molecular weight is perfectly balanced at $M_w \approx 450 \text{ g/mol}$ to cross the blood-brain barrier! This is the best biochemistry can do without killing the subject!"
"Optimal results? We need absolute control!" Fitz waved his hands wildly. "What if the target has high body mass? What if they have the Centipede serum? What if they develop drug resistance? We need a variable yield!"
"Fitz!" Simmons snapped. "I am a biochemist, not a miracle worker! I'm not Hermione! I can't just conjure up a solution out of thin air!"
"It's okay. I'm Hermione. I can transform. What do you need?"
A voice rang right next to their ears.
"GAH!"
Fitz and Simmons jumped in unison, nearly knocking over a tray of beakers. They realized they had been so engrossed in their "science marriage bickering" that they hadn't noticed the Witch standing right behind them.
"You two are so synchronized," Hermione observed with a grin. "You could be piloting a Jaeger in Pacific Rim. Are you drift compatible?"
"It's nothing, Hermione!" Simmons squeaked, fixing her hair. "Just... technical issues."
"Let me see that."
Hermione grabbed the Night-Night Gun from Fitz's hand. She weighed it, looking at the complex mechanical engineering.
"You want it to knock people out, 100% of the time, regardless of resistance?"
"Yes," Fitz nodded eagerly. "But the physics of the delivery system..."
"Physics is boring."
Hermione reached into her small beaded bag.
CLANG.
To everyone's astonishment, she pulled out a full-sized, heavy iron Alchemy Table. It hit the floor with a heavy thud that shook the lab.
"What the..." Fitz stared at the small bag, then the large table. "Non-Euclidean geometry?"
Hermione ignored him. She placed the high-tech guns on the runic surface. She pulled out her wand in one hand and a heavy enchanted smithing hammer in the other.
"Cover your ears."
BANG! CLANG! HISS!
Red sparks flew as she hammered the futuristic polymer weapons with ancient tools. She muttered incantations in a language that sounded like grinding stones. The air smelled of ozone and old parchment.
"Alright."
Thirty seconds later, the guns floated up from the table, glowing with a faint, reddish aura before cooling down to their normal matte black.
"Done," Hermione said, tossing one to Ward and one to Coulson.
"I have modified these guns with alchemy. I removed the dendrotoxin necessity. They now contain a compressed Stupefy charm—a Stunning Spell—woven into the firing mechanism."
She dusted off her hands. "Now, unless someone has magic resistance on the level of Thor, anyone who gets shot will immediately fall unconscious. No drug resistance. No body mass calculation. Just sleep."
"Thor-level resistance?!"
Coulson stared at the gun in his hand. His eyes went wide.
They had just watched Thor get beaten by the Kursed, sure. But they also knew that Thor had tanked the energy of a neutron star (or at least, he would eventually). He was durable. He was a god.
If this gun could drop anyone weaker than Thor...
That meant Captain America. That meant the Hulk (maybe). That meant every Super Soldier Centipede could throw at them.
"This..." Ward gripped the weapon, feeling the hum of power. "This bypasses physical durability entirely?"
"Pretty much," Hermione nodded. "It attacks the consciousness directly. Don't aim for the head, you might give them a concussion from the fall. Just shoot the body."
This was an epic boost for S.H.I.E.L.D. It turned a tactical stealth weapon into a one-hit-KO cannon.
Fitz stared at the gun. He looked like his brain was breaking.
"You... you just hit it with a hammer," Fitz whispered, horrified. "The structure hasn't changed! The rifling is the same! The chemical payload is gone! How does it work? What is the energy source?"
He looked at Hermione with desperate eyes. "Is it fusion? Is it zero-point energy? What is the formula?"
He was a man of science watching a cheat code being entered into the universe's console.
Seeing his existential crisis, Hermione laughed and patted his shoulder.
"Give up, Fitz. Tony Stark has been trying to scan my gear for years. He's got Jarvis running algorithms 24/7. The result? Zero."
She smiled mysteriously. "The power our clan has inherited for thousands of years isn't something you can crack with a slide rule."
Fitz slumped, looking disappointed and fascinated at the same time. He was jealous of Tony Stark, but if even Iron Man couldn't figure it out, maybe he shouldn't feel so bad.
"Alright, the mission is important," Coulson interrupted, holstering his newly enchanted weapon with a confident snap.
He looked at his team. They stood taller. They had the Witch's blessing.
"Ask the wizard questions later," Coulson commanded, a smirk playing on his lips. "Right now, we have a bad guy to catch."
"Wheels up!"