A Parallel Investigation, Part I

Posted on Thu Sep 28th, 2023 @ 4:57pm by First Lieutenant Bethany Harrison & Level 10 Minamoto 源 Takashi 崇

Mission: HYDRA: Another Head Rises
Location: Cult Compound
Timeline: Present Day

Bethany sighed and handed over her identification out of the window of the battered Jeep emblazoned with the US Marshal’s logo, to the guard at the entrance to the compound that had been raided by one of their teams just a short time ago. He wasn’t typical military, and she recognized the tactical setup immediately as being SHIELD. She knew that they had been informed of the situation, but she had hoped to get in there before they went traipsing through everything. Damn Dyami and his waterfall meditations.

After looking over her badge and identification, glancing at her dubiously a couple of times, he handed them back and said, “Thank you for your cooperation, Marshal Harrison. I wish I could tell you to have a pleasant visit, but there’s nothing pleasant about this place,” the tall, thick-shouldered agent tried to quip, but he didn’t even seem to find much humor in his own joke.

“These places never are,” the experienced young woman said, giving a slight shrug. While she was incredibly young, only having turned twenty-one less than a year ago, she had been raised on one such compound, trained as a terrorist for her twisted father’s cause. She had seen this same scenario many times since then, and had begun to build a reputation as a trafficker’s worst nightmare. “You can’t let it get to you though, or it will eat you alive. And you can’t help anyone that way,” she finished with a tired wisdom that was well beyond her years, as she tucked her credentials away and clipped her badge to her belt.

She pulled through the checkpoint and immediately parked her beaten up Jeep alongside a few dark, military vehicles. She climbed out of the Jeep and pulled her black, hand-crafted, thigh-length coat around her against a chill autumn wind. The young woman wore no makeup, and her brown, unnaturally thick hair was pulled back in a simple braid.

Bethany had never exactly been a slave to fashion, preferring to keep things simple and useful, though she had a subtle, natural beauty that seemed to escape her notice. Her manner of dress was plain, though mostly military in nature. A black t-shirt with the US Marshal insignia on the front in gold, black BDU pants, and a worn looking pair of combat boots.

She paused as she looked up, gasping softly, as she was instantly taken back in time. The young woman shuddered and forced herself to shake that nearly overwhelming sense of horrid nostalgia off, instead setting her tactical mind to work at studying even the slightest of details, still not quite able to push her legs to carry her further into the disturbingly familiar compound.

The buildings were obviously hand built, by less than master craftsmen, and while each of them was whitewashed, it really looked like they could have used a fresh coat or three. The house at the front was a bit larger, being two stories, and seemed older than the rest, the patio sagging slightly in the middle. It was also immediately apparent that there had been a recent running fire-fight, most of the buildings bearing small burns and bullet holes, as well as doors hanging awkwardly from broken frames.

Bethany sighed heavily, shaking her head. Most of these places looked similar. Only just livable, with food crops and farm animals that barely produced enough to keep a small number of people fed. All of it above ground just seemed like the people that lived there simply preferred the distance from modern society. But to her trained and experienced eye, it was a prison, meant to keep the world out in order to hide the horrific abuses going on behind closed doors, tall walls, and razor-wire topped fences.

Takashi stepped out of the SHIELD mobile command center nearby, door *swishing* open then closed as he passed. He looked over at the woman inspecting what remained of the compound’s buildings and started toward her, his footfalls making nary a sound as was his custom.

He wore a version of the traditional SHIELD suit; only this version and cut was that of a traditional *kimono*; long black *haori* (outer jacket) with the silver SHIELD logo on its back, Minamoto Clan *mon* in white at the lapels. Black *umanori hakama* (split outer trousers) covered his black colored *kimono* with white accents, and black, hard-soled rubber *tabi* covering his feet. The only other adornment he wore was his black sheathed ancestral Daisho and a sleek pair of SHIELD issued sunglasses. His hands were folded before him within the voluminous sleeves of the *haori*

“Good afternoon, Marshal Harrison,” he said in a mildly Japanese accented English, his voice a pleasant sounding tenor as he arrived and stopped behind her, a few feet away. “I was expecting you.” He was doing his best to sound calm, sincere, and unthreatening.

The quiet man that stepped out of the command center and stopped behind her caused an upraised brow as she turned with a bit of a start, to face him. The young Marshal automatically took a step back, putting herself out of his immediate reach, and seemed to force herself to stop moving further.

While Bethany had learned how to trust a handful of men that she worked with, she still viewed most of them with a wary distrust. Most men in her life had been nothing more than abusive monsters, save for her team. That number had been drastically cut down, quite literally, to one in the last HYDRA attack. She had learned that not all men were evil, but years of torture had definitely skewed her view of the male members of the species. Her distrust of SHIELD didn’t exactly help with that.

His manner of dress reminded her of Miss Syn, though rather than the symbol of her academy, her robes tended to have images of cherry blossoms and golden dragons embroidered on them. And she preferred warfans over the sword.

“And you are?” Bethany asked, her emerald gaze meeting him evenly, coldly.

“My apologies for startling you,” he said to her as he slowly and deliberately unfolded his arms non threateningly, sliding them out of the wide sleeves, palms open and toward her to show he wasn’t holding anything. “My name is Agent Tak and I am the senior agent in charge. I am honored to meet you.”

With that, he slowly brought his arms down, placing both hands against the front of his thighs and bowed at the waist respectfully, hands sliding downward along his lap as his torso bent forward at the waist, as was the Japanese custom. After about two seconds, Tak returned to an upright position, tucking his hands back inside the wide sleeves.

The young woman watched as the agent in charge bowed to her, eyeing him curiously. She had to repress a soft laugh, not wanting to be rude to the man, even if she had no trust in him, or his organization. He just kept reminding her of the tiny dragon lady that ran the academy, which was kind of humorous to her, and made it a little easier to relate to the agent.

“Um, nice to meet you, Agent Tak,” Bethany responded, her tone professional, though with a hint of discomfort at the interaction. Jon had always run interference for her with social interactions, considering just how unfamiliar she had been with the world at large when he had found her. As well as her typically tactical response to men that tried to touch her. “I figured you’d be warned that I was incoming, but I wasn’t expecting a formal greeting, or anything.”

“We have been here for some time already,” he said, glancing back briefly at the compound proper, then over to her once more. “We have taken preliminary scans and photographs as well as eyes on sweeps. HQ also has satellite surveillance on us as we speak, so we have full spec coverage of the site.”

“As for the greeting,” he said, a slight smile curving one side of his face, amicably. “It is always in good taste to be polite to others. We Japanese are nothing if not polite, specifically in public.”

As he spoke, Takashi used his considerable observational abilities to glean what he could of the woman in both state of mind as well as her personality. He had already read the file SHIELD had on her and knew some of her past, so he could estimate the level of psychological damage it potentially had taken on her, and that was only what SHIELD had about her past.

All things considered, Takashi knew it was only the tip of a very large iceberg. Becoming a U.S. Marshal was a good way of dealing with that past trauma, albeit with a few formal reprimands of unnecessary violence. And, as an Omega Level Mutant, Takashi wanted to meet Marshal Harrison personally, to gauge her for himself. The files only showed one facet of a person. His father always said, to be truly effective, you must get to know your mark.

“I can appreciate that,” the young woman said with a polite nod. While she was uncomfortable with social interactions, the Preacher hadn’t made a complete heathen out of her. Her mama had seen to that.

While Bethany was polite, she wasn’t overly communicative, a darkness lurking behind a brilliant green gaze, and a chilled aire to her posture. Her head tilted slightly and she blinked at Tak briefly, seemingly lost in some thought. He reminded her of Miss Syn in manner and dress, but there was something else there that he mirrored. A darker side, a dangerous thing.

She knew all about being a dangerous thing. A predator, a soldier...an assassin. The young Marshal turned to her business at hand. “Don’t worry, Agent Tak, I’m not going to burn the place down,” she said with just a hint of grim sarcasm in her tone. “Our teams seem to have done an efficient job of it. I’m just here to see what I can glean from this place. Though, any information that you’ve found on any connections to other cults and compounds might help.”

“To be honest,” Takashi said sincerely, looking her in the eye through his SHIELD modified sunglasses. On the right side of a small heads-up display within the sunglasses’ field of view, several different field reports quickly scrolled from the other sites his men found, all with similar results. “We didn’t find much. Similar to the other locations; small farm homesteads away from civilization, very recently abandoned and everyone seemingly vanishing into thin air. All signs point to this being the most recent location they had, though. It still feels ‘lived in’.” He turned away from her and took a few steps to face the compound proper, briefly doing a scan of the whole area.

“I am inclined to believe they are using a Meta, Mutant or technological teleporter to get away so quickly,” he said, pulling out his right hand from the left sleeve of his *haori*. Tapping the right side of his sunglasses frame with his index finger, the HUD switched off, then slid his hand back inside the sleeve with practiced ease. “We haven’t found any tire tracks, signs of a helicopter, or other VTOL landing sites they could have used for extraction. I even had my men scan for any possible underground entrances with no results.”

“The people were gone because Talon took them,” Bethany said, again blinking a bit at Tak, giving a small, confused shrug. “I thought you’d been briefed on the raid. I’m certain you can get the full cooperation of the Marshals Office for those files.” The young government agent had that dark sarcasm edging her tone again. She gave a frustrated sigh at the thought of the two government agencies butting heads over ridiculous, red-tape mundanities, rather than coming together to get this vital job done. “So, yes, a meta did remove them from the area, just not for the reasons you’re thinking.”

“Apologies,” Tak said, bowing slightly to her once more. “I have just been… assigned to this case. I am a quick study if you would be so kind as to bring me up to speed as we go along.” He was a master of the Japanese propensity for understatement, specifically when it worked in his favor. Just before he arrived on site, Takashi was given this case immediately after he became SHIELD Director.

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TBC
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Bethany Harrison
Fractal
Mutant Underground

Minamoto Takashi 源崇
Hypernova
Director of Shield