Coffee, Courage and a Captain

Chapter Twenty-Eight: A Bad Day

Colonel Phillips was having a bad day.

Everybody at the lab knew it- the man had been pacing up and down the hallways for most of the morning, yelling at any lab technician who dared to get too close to him.

And as afternoon approached, he seemed to get into a worse mood.

Charlotte, Peggy and Howard were crowded into her lab working on designs for the battery weaponisation. The past eight months had been spent working on stabilising the energy, and now they were on to their prototype phase. After nearly blowing up the lab multiple times, Phillips had deigned that Peggy permanently become Howard and Charlotte's official occupational health and safety officer.

Which meant that majority of her day was spent watching Charlotte pull Howard away from explosions and vice-versa. And a lot of paperwork.

Charlotte stood to water her plants- a dozen she had gradually accrued in her time in London- from where they sat under her lighting display in the corner. They were specifically placed there in order to not irritate Phillips further regarding her growing collection.

"Why aren't you sitting them outside? It's such nice summer weather, Charlotte," Peggy asked, pointing her pen up above them, to where the concealed storefront entrance to the bunker sat.

"Because last time by the time I dragged them all upstairs to get some sunlight, this stupid English weather changed and it began raining. I'm not doing it again, the weather is too moody," Charlotte grumbled in response.

Peggy chuckled.

"Do you think we could neutralise the burning effect if we ran some kind of coolant through a thickened barrel?" Howard asked from where he was poring over their drawings for the modified handgun and clip.

Charlotte mulled it over. "It's a possibility," she said eventually.

Peggy looked up from where she was filling in the paperwork for the pair's most recent explosion. "This is beginning to sound like another incident," she warned.

"I would never," Charlotte replied in mock sadness, clutching her hand to her chest.

Peggy smirked. "I'm holding you to it the next time we have an explosion."

Howard tore up a diagram and discarded it in a nearby bin. "Well, that's not particularly fair, Agent Carter. We both know that I am responsible for at least sixty percent of those."

Charlotte snorted as she finished her watering and returned to her seat.

"Have you worked out why Charlotte reacts the way she does to the batteries?" Peggy asked, not looking up from her paperwork.

Howard sighed. "We've only done two tests, but so far we've noticed that there is an uptick in Charlie's brain activity each time, specifically in her frontal and occipital lobes."

"Which means that my body is absorbing the energy. It's not killing me."

"The plants seem to be okay too," Howard muttered, earning himself a slap from Charlotte.

The weapons lab outside of Charlotte and Howard's lab fell silent, and the two technicians exchanged worried glances.

"Red!" Phillips bellowed, causing Howard to sharply inhale as the three occupants of Charlotte's lab stood and looked toward the door as a red-faced Phillips appeared.

"Get your stuff now, we're heading out to where the Howling Commandos are," he said breathlessly, seeing Charlotte quickly grab her notebook.

"Are we coming with her, sir?" Peggy asked.