The Winter Wraith

Chapter 23

Apparently, team bonding was going out to dinner and mini golf in the city. So, that meant Adina was left behind at the Avenger's facility. Currently, she was passing the time by mindlessly flipping through TV channels in the comfy lounge. She was sitting with her legs tucked up in the middle of the long couch, untouched popcorn bowl beside her, centered before the giant flat screen TV.

"Oh, you're here."

Adina whipped around at the sudden voice behind her.

"Hey, who let you have that knife?!" Pietro yelped at the very sharp knife that was suddenly brandished in his face.

Adina rolled her eyes at him, and switched the knife to point the handle toward him, gesturing for him to take it.

"No thanks, you can keep that pointy object. Just don't point it at my face. And maybe don't let Steve see it."

The side of her mouth slightly tugged up as she put the knife back in its previous hiding place. She inclined her head, silently asking what he wanted.

"I stayed back because I can only be around those crazies for so long before it starts to get to me. I thought I had the place to myself, but you're alright I guess." He walked over to the couch, plopping down next to her and snatching the remote. He grabbed a handful of popcorn from her bowl and popped it in his mouth, already switching channels.

After a few minutes of silence, he glanced over at her. "You don't talk much, do you?"

Adina shrugged. "Nothing to say."

"Well, I'm bored. Want to do something fun?"

Adina just shrugged again.

"Let's go. We're out of popcorn anyway."

It was her popcorn originally, not his, but Adina didn't say anything. She just got up and followed Pietro to the kitchen. He was rummaging around and using his super speed to quickly search through every cabinet.

"Where is it? Where is it," he mumbled to himself while banging open cabinets. Eventually, he got to the last one, but he didn't seem to find what he was looking for.

"Where did he put his stupid candy stash," he grumbled with an exasperated sigh.

Adina walked across the kitchen, and took out her knife again.

"Hey! Stop taking out that knife. Wait a second, that one looks different. Where did—"

Pietro stopped talking when he saw that Adina was loosening the screws to a vent in the wall near the floor. He looked at her with curiosity as she popped off the vent. She reached in and pulled out a handful of Laffy Taffys, holding them out to Pietro.

"Ah, Adina, good work," Pietro said, grabbing a few from her hand. "You're now my favorite person in the Compound."

Pietro scooped up some more candy and put it into his pockets. When Adina stole candy from Sam's stash, she only took a couple of strategic pieces so that it wasn't noticeable to him. Clearly, Pietro didn't care about any repercussions as he dug into the stash. When he was finally satisfied with his loot, he ripped open a green apple Laffy Taffy and popped it into his mouth. He chewed the slightly sour candy over while Adina carefully used her knife to screw the vent back into place.

“If you’ve found this stash,” Pietro mused out loud, “I wonder what other wonders of the Compound you’ve found…”

He stared expectantly at her, silently willing her to spill what she knows. Realizing he wasn’t going to give up until he got his way, Adina sighed and beckoned for him to follow. She didn’t want to reveal any more of Sam’s stashes because at the rate Pietro was eating through his looted candy, he would definitely demolish the other stashes in a couple days, at max. She was not willing to part with Sam’s candy anytime soon. What could she say, the man had some good taste in sweets. Though Clint’s junk food stash is pretty good too, and well-stocked. His was actually really strategically hidden, making Sam’s hiding spot look like a child’s work. Adina realized she really needed a new hobby that did not include raiding someone’s secret stash.

Which was why she was again leading Pietro somewhere besides a hidden stash. She led him down a couple of levels and then through a maze of hallways. Pietro was starting to think that she knew the Compound better than him. Adina stopped at a door that read ‘Authorized Access Only.’ After making sure no one else was walking around, she opened the door. At first glance, it seemed that the door just led to a cramped and disorganized supply closet.

“So…Is this your little hideout or something? It’s a little…messy,” Pietro said, looking around.

Adina rolled her eyes at him, pushed aside some cleaning supplies, kicked a half-deflated exercise ball away, and revealed a metal ladder in the corner of the small room. She started climbing it immediately, without waiting to see if Pietro was following or not. Pietro shrugged his shoulders and started climbing a few moments after her. After a minute or two of climbing, the ladder stopped at a tunnel, at which Adina was currently perched on. Upon seeing her sticking close to the metal floor, he crouched down too and continued to walk behind her. Weird noises were coming from the end of the tunnel.

“Why are we crouched down? There’s room to stand up.”

Adina shushed him and replied, “I don’t like heights.”

“Heights?”

Adina led him a few more yards down the landing, and the tunnel suddenly stopped, opening up into a ginormous room, and the metal landing with side rails continued all the way across it. Pietro looked down over the walkway, curious as to what the noises below were, and he saw a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. recruits training.

“That’s the second reason,” she said, yanking him back. “Don’t let them see you.”

After watching the recruits train for a few minutes, Pietro grew bored. “What’s so special about watching some rookies train?”

“Just give it a second.”

Pietro rolled his eyes at her perpetual vagueness, but looked back down at the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Adina had watched from her high rise a few times, so she was pretty familiar with the training schedule. The training had not actually started yet, and the recruits were just checking the safety of the equipment to be used, stretching, and warming up before the real work began, which should be any second now. Sure enough, the instructor appeared through a set of double doors at the front of the gym. A grave silence quickly settled upon the recruits as they stopped milling about, waiting for his direction.

“Attention!” the instructor, a tall, thick balding man, barked out.

The agents quickly filed into a single line for roll call. This was one of Adina’s favorite parts. The Compound definitely needed more entertainment options, but she took what she could get.

“Junior Agent Selena Pace,” the instructor yelled.

“Present,” a feminine voice called back.

“Junior Agent Ruslin Amerighi!”

“Present.”

“Junior Agent Sparkle Princess!”
“Present,” a deep voice exclaimed.

“Junior Agent Fluttershy!”

“Present!”

That was Adina’s favorite. She had found out what My Little Pony was after witnessing yet another weird argument between Sam and Bucky. She spent too much time around those two. She couldn’t help but wholeheartedly agree with the instructor that the beefy rookie really resembled a ‘Fluttershy.’ 

After the roll call was completed, Pietro asked her for an explanation on some of the weird names that were interwoven in the normal ones. She had explained that the instructor had given some of them special names as a form of hazing and because they were too cocky. Unsurprisingly, it was only men who had the humiliating alter-egos.

As the instructor started a drill centered around quickly reloading a handgun, Pietro turned to Adina again. “So, this is what you do for fun?”

“Well, it’s not like I’m allowed to do very much. Plus, it’s pretty satisfying to see the instructor go off on a recruit when they mess up.”

“Fair enough. This does have potential for causing some chaos. If I just had some long string and a magnet then I could…”

Pietro schemed for a few minutes and deemed that he would be back to this walkway again sometime soon. In the meantime, he had a different idea to cause some mischief.

“Adina, have you ever come across a hidden stash of Nerf guns during your exploring?”

Published: 11/20/23