The Old Hydrokinetic (MCU AU) : #27.2

Commissioned by [Thykindhunter] on P*treon.

Disclaimer - All the usual Yada Yada Yada. I don’t own any rights to any characters in this fic save for my OCs. Don’t sue me.

Anywho, without further ado - read on.

Earth-6161 [May 2012]

Maldives

–Agent Eric–

He shook his head, checking on the Arc Rector once more, before moving on to the other things. Due to the vastly improved power situation, the agency had installed a Desalination plant, allowing for 24/7 clean water.

It was not for Ms.Weber; she was water incarnate. It was needed for cooking and for his own purposes. Along with lights, Air Conditioning, and more. All the creature comforts that were impractical before, were made practical because of that single Arc Reactor.

For that alone, Mr.Stark would have his thanks. It also allowed for improved communication between him and the base, as a small satellite unit had been installed for powerful radio bursts, allowing for long range communication even during bad weather.

All in all, that single gift had made his life very easy. 

With the checks out of the way, he climbed up through the base, reaching the kitchen. It was styled like a bar, with an open kitchen behind him, bottles and glasses in front of him, with Ms.Weber absent, likely swimming in the ocean or doing something else.

Tracking her was not part of his job. That was for the veritable army of analysts surrounding them. All he had to do was make sure breakfast was ready, and a suitable drink to go in hand with that, for whenever she came back. Usually, sometime near 9, she was back on the beach, and he would be waiting for her, with a change of clothes in hand.

She did not need a towel, not really, since water was her domain.

As he was cleaning the glasses, his gaze inadvertently slid to the sceptre, just hanging down in the center of the shack, glowing a brilliant yellow, bathing the shack in its glow, even with all the other lightning in place.

It was almost 7 in the morning, the sun was starting to rise up, and despite all the other sources of light, that sceptre’s yellow glow was the thing that was most dominant here. He shuddered as he still remembered the time he had almost fallen into its influence. He did not remember any of it but video footage showed him advancing towards the scepter with a ladder in his hand with a blank look in his eyes.

It was really disturbing. Though…

He smiled as he saw the slight indent on top of the sceptre, created by Ms.Weber. She was the one who snapped him out of the sceptre’s control and then carved into the sceptre itself, making it behave. It was a very controversial piece of report that he had sent to the higher ups, resulting in multiple meetings, one with the Director himself.

It was very frightening in the beginning, so much so that he moved most of the kitchen stuff from the shack, so that he could prepare her food but also stay the hell away from the demonic sceptre. Nowadays though? It did not bother him much, if at all.

Really, though, Ms.Weber would be the only human on the planet who would be bold enough to just use that sceptre, a tool of mass mind control and an alien weapon, as a light fixture. Just one of the many perks of working here. 

“Hey, Erik~,” He sighed as that insufferable voice echoed through the shack speakers, disturbing the otherwise pleasant mood set by his music. Tony Stark was back.

The perks were great, yes, but he just wished it did not come with needing to handle someone like Tony Stark who made it his mission to pester him all the time he was here with them on the island.

____xx___

[A year Later]

“Thank you,” He said to the otherwise silent Ms.Weber, taking the platter away to be washed, as he was in the mood for seafood tonight and had cooked a special Cajun seafood boil for her, something that she liked, judging by his empty utensils.

Thankfully, he had already stored his dinner away, after taste testing it, obviously. Heaven forbid, he managed to anger Ms.Weber simply because he did not cook properly. He did not think she would harm him but even losing sight of her would be detrimental to his career and in some ways, his life.

Stashing the utensils in the dishwasher, he turned off all the other lights of the shack after checking that Ms.Weber had left it, leaving only the yellow glow of that damned sceptre as the sole illumination.

It was not that late, only 10, as he closed down all the doors and moved to his personal chambers. Well, it was more like a dorm room but it was home for the past year or so. During the year, he had also noticed something interesting. It was really subtle and almost impossible to find if he was not the one personally experiencing it.

His health. For over a year, he had been eating and eating, not exercising, beyond the daily walks and some flexibility exercises as he was getting pretty up there in age, but nothing substantial. Despite that, he had not gained any fat, his movements were as flexible as before.

His digestion was impeccable. His skin was smooth. He did not feel bloated, dizzy, tense, or even sick at all. Over a year of perfect health, despite leading a not so healthy lifestyle, coupled with his age.

It all pointed to a single thing. Ms.Weber. She was keeping him healthy, somehow. It was not hard to do for her, considering they were on an island and she healed Tony Stark using water as well.

He had not included that in his weekly reports, for now, but he was not sure how long he could keep it up. Once the Director came to visit or the biannual doctor’s visit, SHIELD would know and it would be better if he—

His thoughts screeched to a halt as he heard a buzzing noise, coming from the shack. Now, past experiences aside, that sceptre had behaved for the most part, for the entirety of the past year or so. So, heaving a resigned sigh, and trusting Ms.Weber to protect him if anything truly horrible happened to him, he took out a flashlight and walked towards the shack.

Switching on all the lights, despite the sceptre illuminating it plenty, his eyes widened as he saw a circle in the air, right below the sceptre, with dust fragments swivelling as well. He did not know what it was, so he promptly pressed the SOS button on his phone, the silent one so an alarm reached SHIELD and they immediately began preparing a landing party and took over surveillance of the place.

Loud SOS would just blare sirens everywhere, flash lights, and send a blank SOS in every single radio frequency, which was supposed to be reserved for life and death scenarios. This was not that, hopefully.

He took a single step forward, to take a better look but the second he took a step forward, he stumbled and landed on his ass, somehow finding himself in what could only be called the stuff of nightmares.

A black sky, with grey stones all around him, with a jagged path beneath him. He took the phone out and cursed as he saw no signal blaring on it. The flashlight worked for now, but it was not needed as something akin to moonlight shone on everything, despite the sky being empty, void of any stars, which was really creepy in his opinion.

“Ms.Weber?”  He hazarded a crazy guess and slumped when he heard no response. So, her help was out of the question.

Carefully, hesitantly, he activated the phone’s camera and walked forward, documenting everything. The path beneath him made a crunching noise whenever he took a step forward, making him wince at the loudness of it in the otherwise completely silent area around him.

A subtle red glow made him pause a bit but he walked forward, turning around at the corner and then the sight in front of him made him pause and root him on the spot, the angle of the camera forgotten.

His jaw hung agape as he saw two giant stones, pressing down on each other, holding a red liquid in the centre, which seemed to move and flow about itself.

Something made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he took a hesitant step back, phone slipped into his pocket as he turned around and made to dash away from that really ominous thing, only for red to fill his vision and then darkness to claim him.

____xx___

[A few minutes hours earlier]

The second Agent Eric disappeared into the whirlpool of broken space in the shack, the air and dust spiralling it dropped to the centre as well. As the people in the ships nearby as well as the analysts dedicated for this at the Triskelion panicked, a flash of blue caught everyone’s attention as Samantha Weber appeared inside the shack, looking at the pile of dust in the centre, and then all around the shack, eventually landing on the sceptre hanging on the roof.

The sceptre trembled, its glow dimming as it realised its fate, as the waters around the island trembled, along with the fury of one Samantha Weber.

____xx___

–Nick Fury–

“Get me Stark on the line!” he shouted as he surveyed the shaky footage as well as the energy readings from that damned shack as Agent Eric was somehow sucked into an invisible portal formed in the middle of that place.

Webre’s ensuing wrath had knocked away the sole camera in that place but the mic was active, through which they realised that Weber was currently in the process of dismantling that sceptre, judging by the shrill noise, the occasional blast noise and the yellow glow in the background that the camera could catch from its misaligned angle.

Looking at the missing phone from Eric, he sighed in exhaustion. This came really out of the blue, depriving SHIELD of its one asset that could somewhat establish and maintain communication with the strongest being on the planet, someone who could extinguish any alien conflict if it spread beyond their containment capabilities.

The analysts had recently analysed that Weber should listen to Eric’s request soon enough, give or take a few years. He was playing the long game, ignoring the Council’s badgering, knowing that within a few years, no one would be able to tell him that he was wrong.

And now? All that progress was potentially down the drain as well.

“Get a drone there, talk virtually. Tell her that SHIELD is doing everything it can, and to remain calm. She is already generating strong ocean currents, for god’s sake.”