𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍

𝘕𝘐𝘎𝘏𝘛 𝘖𝘍 𝘍𝘜𝘙𝘠

━━━ NICK FURY LOOKED LIKE THE TYPE OF GUY YOU REALLY DID NOT WANT TO MESS WITH. He was fairly tall with dark skin and an eyepatch that covered his one eye, making Meilani silently wonder what happened to that eye. Fury had this aura around him that just screamed dominance and power and Meilani wasn't even surprised when Steve had mentioned to Meilani outside that Nick Fury was the head of SHIELD. It was an organization that was supposed to keep the United States safe from any sort of threat with SHIELD ( Strategic Homeland Interventions, Enforcement and Logistics Division as also explained by Steve ) having many super powerful weapons and had great military power within its walls. 

Everyone — minus Bruce, Adrian and Stiles who were all still aboard the aircraft that the Avengers came in so Bruce could use the minor tools in there to check out Stiles' current predicament — had gathered around in Clint's conjoined kitchen and living room area to hear what Nick Fury had to say to them. He'd been tipped off to what happened with Ultron and, judging by the tense air that settled in the room, Nick wasn't about to deliver any of them any sort of good news. Not that Meilani ever expected good news anymore after all the trials and tribulations she'd been through as both a wolf and a true alpha.

"Ultron took you folks out of play to buy himself time," Nick said to the Avengers and McCall wolf pack. My contacts all say he's building something. The amount of vibranium he made off with, I don't think it's just one thing."

"What about Ultron himself?" Steve questioned, leant against the archway between the kitchen and the living room. Meilani, Apollo, Victor, Natasha and Sawyer all sat around the kitchen table together with Meilani sat in the chair closest to where Steve stood. For whatever reason, Steve had found himself absentmindedly wanting to stand near the McCall girl.

"Oh, he's easy to track. He's everywhere. The guy is multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit. It still doesn't help us get a good gauge on his plans, though," Fury responded, floating around the kitchen as he helped himself to some coffee from the pot that rested on the kitchen counter and took a tentative sip from the steaming mug.

Apollo scrunched up his nose at Fury's wording, tilting his head like a confused puppy. "Catholic rabbits exist?"

Meilani rolled her eyes at Apollo while Victor shot his boyfriend a deadpan expression. She waved the Hale boy off while Fury furrowed an eyebrow at him. "You learn to ignore him, Mr. Fury. You can continue on."

Fury turned his single eye from the brunette wolf and over to Meilani, a curious gaze now gracing his features. It was the first time Meilani spoke in his presence since she'd dropped herself down on the chair at the table, ears trying to strain to listen for Stiles, Adrian and Bruce, but she couldn't hear whatever was going on inside where the three boys were. "Meilani McCall, am I right? The true alpha of Beacon Hills? Saved your whole town from nearly getting blown off a map?"

"Uh, yes, sir," Meilani sheepishly replied, for some reason finding herself embarrassed over how much Nick Fury knew about her. Though, it shouldn't have come as a shock to her if he came from a strong military organization and it wasn't like all her accomplishments hadn't plastered all over the news once Meilani had come clean to the town about what she was and what she'd done to protect them in secret for three whole years. "But it wasn't just me that saved the town. My pack helped, too. I couldn't have done it without them, honestly."

"Spoken like a true leader," Fury said and Meilani noticed Steve suppress a smile to himself at her words. "Heard good things about you and your pack, Meilani. I can see why Tony came to you for help on this."

A dart hitting the dartboard on the other side of the room cut into the conversation and all eyes snapped over to Tony who stood in his flannel and jeans, twirling the other dart in his hand. The other dart he'd thrown had fallen somewhere just below the bullseye. "Speaking of the mission I asked her to help me on, is Ultron still going after launch codes?"

Fury exhaled heavily and took another sip from his mug. "He is, but he's not making any headway."

Tony slapped his hands to his sides with a scoff, turning to face those that occupied the kitchen. "I cracked the Pentagon's firewall in high school on a dare."

"You want a medal or something, Stark?" Sawyer chided, poking his head around Meilani to show Tony he didn't give a shit.

"I do, actually. Make sure it's really shiny and has my name on it," Tony shot back, turning away again to continue throwing his darts.

"Well, I contacted our friends at the Nexus about that actually, Stark. It's the world internet hub at Oslo. Every byte of data flows through there. Fastest access on Earth. They say he's fixated on the missiles, but the codes are constantly being changed."

Tony stopped throwing darts to blink at Fury in confusion. He stumbled back when a whizzing sounded through the air and a dart landed right in the bullseye. An annoyed look was shot in Clint's direction who cheered in triumph before Tony's focus was back on Fury. "By whom?" 

"Party's unknown. Ultron does have an enemy. That's not the same thing as him having an ally, though."

"Who else could have Ultron pissed off besides us?" Victor asked, blue eyes flickering over to the eyepatched man. "As far we as know, we're the only ones he's tried to maim and kill."

Tony huffed and threw the final dart at the board and stepped further into the kitchen, leaning against one of the counters with his arms crossed. "I might have to visit Oslo. Find our unknown."

"Well, this is good times, boss, but I was kind of hoping when I saw you, you would have a lot more than that," Natasha chimed in.

Fury gestured to the group of superheroes and supernaturals around him. "I do have something. I have all of you. Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere. Ears, everywhere else. You kids had all the tech you could dream of. Here we all are, back on Earth, with nothing but our wit and our will to save the world. Ultron says the Avengers are the only thing between him and his mission. Whether or not he admits it, his mission is global destruction. All this . . .laid in a grave. So stand. Outwit the platinum bastard."

Sawyer licked his lips as a smirk graced them, mischievous blue eyes swinging over to Steve who ticked an eyebrow up at the Bowen boy. "Easy with the language, Fury Dude. Stevie boy doesn't like that kind of potty talk."

"Okay, seriously, will any of you let me live that down?" Steve groaned, banging the side of his head against the archway he leant against.

"Definitely not, Captain," Apollo shook his head laughing, crossing his arms as he slouched in his chair. "You sounded like one of those old men trying to get the kids off his lawn."

"Lay off him, would ya?" Meilani playfully chastised her wolves, kicking them both in the shin and earned her yelps from both of them. She glanced over her shoulder to Steve who only chuckled in amusement, clearly not bothered by Apollo and Sawyer picking on him. "Sorry about them."

Steve shrugged nonchalantly and smiled softly at Meilani. "Heard worse from Raymond and Bucky."

Fury walked over to the kitchen table and took the final remaining seat on Meilani's other side, placing his coffee mug down on the table. He ran a tired hand over his face and remained quiet for a moment, as if he were trying to collect his thoughts again and try to work through everything they already knew. "Alright, so . . . what does metal tin want? What is he trying to do?"

"To become better," Steve suggested, standing up straighter where he stood. "Better than us. He keeps building bodies."

"Person bodies," Tony added in, chewing the inside of his lip as his mind actively worked to try and formulate what Steve could be suggesting. "Human bodies are insignificant. Biologically speaking, we're outmoded, but he keeps coming back to it."

Natasha folded her hands on the table in front of her and drifted her gaze over to Tony. "When you and Bruce programmed him to protect the human race, you amazingly failed."

"You can have a medal for that one, too," Meilani mused, snorting when Tony glowered at her and she high-fived Natasha across the table. This earned a tiny smile from Steve. 

"They don't need to be protected. They need to evolve," Tony said after a long moment of silence in the room, brain visibly working as he slowly pushed up from the counter he leant against. "Ultron's going to evolve. Has anyone been in contact with Helen Cho?"

After the team figured out no one had really spoken to Helen Cho since the party at the tower, Steve had suggested it would be a good idea to go out and to her own lab and check on her to see if she was okay and had any intel they could use. Meilani had slipped away for a moment while everyone talked amongst themselves to prepare to go check on Helen with Meilani telling Steve to wait for her because she wanted to accompany him so he, Clint and Natasha weren't alone. She just couldn't leave without at least checking on Stiles first, see how far Bruce had gotten with checking him ( and Void ) out.

Crossing the grass towards the ship, Meilani knocked on the outside twice to alert everyone inside that she was coming inside. She ducked through the door and stepped into the spacious belly of the ship where Stiles still laid on the medical table in the middle with Adrian on one side of him with his arms crossed and Bruce on the other, scribbling notes into a random notebook. Both Adrian and Bruce snapped their attention over to Meilani who sheepishly stood a few feet from them.

"Hey . . . um, I just — I just wanted to make sure Stiles was okay," Meilani said, voice sounding small and timid. She still blamed herself internally for Stiles getting slapped in the face again with Void, but she pushed through it as she wanted to make sure one of her best guy friends was okay. She needed to verbally hear something good.

Bruce exhaled heavily and rubbed at his eye beneath his glasses, turning back to his notebook to finish scribbling down more notes inside. "I don't know how to help him, Meilani. I mean — this is something that science has never touched before. It's weird, though, it's like . . . it's like Stiles has control and then doesn't. Like he can bring himself back and push this Void demon away and have his body back."

Meilani furrowed her eyebrows and dared her feet to move her deeper into the ship, stopping next to Bruce. On the table, Stiles remained with his eyes closed, his chest moving gently up and down as if he were simply asleep. Judging by how steady and slow his heart beat was, Meilani wanted to safely assume he'd fallen asleep while Bruce did whatever he needed to with the tools he had on the carrier. "So, what? Void and Stiles can just exist . . . at the same time?"

"I have to do more tests, but from what I could gather so far it's like Void locked himself inside of Stiles," Bruce explained, shutting his notebook and gently tossing both the notebook and his pen onto the space next to Stiles on the medical table. "Void mentioned something about the door in Stiles' mind finally being closed?"

Meilani's head snapped up at that, heart stuttering in her chest as her wide, brown eyes stared at Bruce. "Did you say the door in his mind?"

"Yeah, why?"

"It'll sound insane to you, but Stiles, myself and our late friend Allison sacrificed ourselves to save our parents back when we were in high school," Meilani explained, running a hand through her brown curls with a sigh. "It — it opened some kind of door or something in our minds. It gave Allison and I these weird hallucinations that eventually went away, but Stiles' mind was affected differently and he was taken over by Void because his door was still open. I thought — I thought maybe when we got rid of Void the last time that it would have closed the door . . . but if he's saying the door is only closed now . . . "

Adrian's face paled as realization dawned on him, seeming to catch up to what Meilani was saying. He had been so inside his own head the whole time him and Stiles had been with Bruce that he hadn't even been thinking straight enough to put the two together. "You don't think that Void closed the door in his mind and trapped himself there . . . do you?"

"I —" Meilani was cut off with Natasha calling her from the back porch, telling her it was time to go if she was still joining them on the small recon to check on Helen. She mentally cursed to herself and turned to Adrian. "I don't know, but if Void mentioned something about a door in Stiles' mind to Bruce . . . I'm thinking that's what it is."

"You can go with Natasha if you need to," Bruce instructed, hearing Natasha shout Meilani's name again. "She hates waiting and I can't do much more until Stiles wakes up again anyway. Seems like Void uses up a lot of his energy and causes him to crash. I'm sure he'll be back up again when you get back and I can have more information."

Meilani nodded silently with a tight smile to Bruce as a sign of thanks. She turned on her heel to jog down the ramp to head back towards the house. However, before her feet could touch the grass, a warm hand wrapped around her wrist to stop her. Peeking over her shoulder, Meilani saw Adrian and turned back to face him. "Adrian?"

"I just wanted to tell you that I don't blame you," Adrian said, green eyes bouncing between Meilani's clearly distraught brown ones. He kept his loose grip around Meilani's wrist to keep her where she stood, though he knew Meilani wouldn't be moving away from him. "I know I was a brooding dick on the way here."

"You're always a brooding dick," Meilani tried to joke, though it fell flat even to her own eyes. 

"Hey, watch your mouth there, McCall," Adrian scoffed playfully, letting go of her wrist now and crossing his arms. "I was just trying to tell you to cut your usual Meilani shit where you blame yourself for everything. I'm not mad at you and I know you think I'm mad at you so . . . stop moping around like it's your funeral. I don't hate you, okay? I'm pissed about the situation, but not at you. You and I both know that you would know if I was pissed at you."

Meilani huffed quietly and hated that Adrian could read her like an open book. The red head had always been the one person besides Scott that was able to tell just what Meilani was thinking or feeling just by looking at her. Hell, even Isaac now could physically hear and feel all her thoughts and emotions, but the blue eyed beta knew better than to ever say anything to her about it. Adrian just didn't give a shit and would tell Meilani how it is because he had never been one to go easy. "I just shouldn't have suggested the Allison thing, you know? Maybe — maybe if we just waited for Chris to call me back — "

" — then who knows what else shit we would have gotten into? Wolfie, if you're going to be going out now with Natasha I need you to not worry about Stiles," Adrian said, placing his hands on her shoulders and glancing to back porch when Natasha's voice sounded for the third time. He motioned to her to go back inside and give them a minute before he focused back on Meilani before him. "If you get hurt going out, then who the fuck will I brood to about Stiles? You hurting yourself because you're not focused isn't going to stop this shitty situation. So I'm not letting go of you till I know you've chilled the fuck out."

"Always so good with your words, Adrian," Meilani sighed, eyes flickering up to Adrian's with a soft frown. "You don't hate me?"

"If I say no will you just go and do what you need to?"

"Maybe. I'll see if I believe you."

"You'll never know. I learned to control my heart rate. Your wolf abilities are really annoying and I'm not getting outsmarted by them, Wolfie."

Meilani blew out a laugh and shook her head at Adrian, feeling some of the tension ease from her shoulders as she realized that Steve was right earlier. After a few hours of letting Adrian be alone and getting closer to what was going on, he'd relaxed as much as one could when their boyfriend was possessed by a thousand year old spirit. "Okay, okay, fine. I'll stop "moping like it's my funeral" and go help Natasha, Clint and Steve."

"Good girl," Adrian praised Meilani, kissing the top of her head platonically and hugging her. He wasn't usually one for affectionate hugs or any of the sort, but he knew the action helped Meilani feel better and be reassured he really didn't hate her. Honestly, it would probably take a lot for Adrian Martin to ever hate Meilani McCall. "Now go and I promise I'll text you with updates on Stiles."

Meilani squeezed Adrian tightly once around his mid-section before she took off for the house, feeling some of the weight lift from her shoulders now that she knew she and Adrian were okay and they would be closer to helping out Stiles. Stepping into the house, she joined up with Tony and Steve near the front door where Steve already wore his shield on his back and was dressed up in his Captain America gear. 

"You know, I miss the days where the weirdest thing science ever created was me," Steve was saying to Tony when Meilani approached, already sounding tired of everything.

"And they say science is lame," Meilani teased, stepping up to the boys and bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Is everything ready?"

"We were just waiting for you, doll," Steve said, missing the heated way Meilani's cheeks went when he called her "doll". He turned back to Tony and nodded once at him. "We'll report back with anything that we find."

"I'll be with NEXUS. Hopefully one of us will find something."

Meilani followed Steve out after that, the two jogging down the steps and towards the quinjet where Natasha and Clint already were settled. She just hoped they'd be able to report something back because she'd hate to think what would happen if they were to let Ultron go any longer MIA.  She had a feeling it would not lead to anything good.

word count: ( 3.2k )

— it's the way i'm obsessed with McRogers already and they haven't even kissed yet for me. but we are officially on the final hour of AGE OF ULTRON, folks! the last sixty minutes and it's going to be a whole ride and i just need to get to CIVIL WAR already, please and thank youuuu! 

— hope you guys still enjoyed this chapter even though not much happened. i promise we'll get into some action soon now that we're getting closer to all the fun Ultron stuff!