Hail HYDRA! // Mission Pied-Piper // Phil Coulson, Steve Rogers

The apocalypse was finally over. SHIELD was once again safe. The war had been bloody, it had cost a lot of lives on both sides, but it was over. They'd survived. Well, most of them had. Now the arduous task of clean-up and damage control could begin. Octuple rations of coffee for all.

Having spent three days as a kidnap victim (not that she'd ever let herself be labelled as such), Maria had returned to utter chaos and since then had been surviving on amounts of coffee that would make even Coulson raise his eyebrows at her. There was so much to do, and not enough people left to do it all. Helicarrier repairs, organising counselling for all surviving agents, autopsies and reports to be carried out and written, recruiting, recovery of weaponry looted in the attack. For starters. Not to mention the fact that Fury was still missing and had to be found.

It was times like these that Maria wished she had multiple clones of herself, just so everything would get done, and done correctly as she wanted them to. Delegating jobs to others always carried the risk of the tasks being handled incompetently, though with the more senior agents, the risk was lessened. She was extremely grateful that during the attack, a significant amount of senior agents had made it out alive. It made her job just a tiny bit easier.

Days passed, turning into weeks. Three weeks on and life was finally returning back to normal. Or as normal as life could ever be, working for SHIELD. Entering her office with a steaming mug of coffee and a stack of mission reports that she had to read over and sign off on, Maria gave a very unlady-like yawn. Nightmares had been plaguing her for the last three days, now things had quietened down, and she was now surviving solely on obscene amounts of coffee. She needed to tire herself out to such an extent that she would not dream.

Dropping the reports onto her desk, she eyed up the lone case folder lying on top of it. Given that no one had access to her office except her and Fury, it must have been him that had left it for her that morning. A new mission. This'll be fun. Settling into her chair, she took a long sip of coffee as she opened the file and scanned through it. Children disappearing in German districts... Numbers estimated in the low hundreds... All viable trails stop at the Black Forest... Disappearances date back three months... Kidnappings all sporadic with no pattern, blahblahblah. Maria shut the report and took another long drink from her mug.

Had it not been for the number of victims in such a short time frame that were all localised, Maria wouldn't have been all that concerned. That they were sporadic went either way: it could mean something, but in the same vein it could mean nothing at all. Finally the fact that the area where all trails were lost was at the border of the famous mountain range, a place so isolated that unless you were a mountaineer you had no trustworthy reason to be in, made her suspicions rise higher. Something was going on here, and it definitely wasn't good.

Picking up her coffee and the briefing report, she locked the office and walked out. Three phone calls later, and she was waiting in a debriefing room, waiting for the three others to arrive so she could brief them on the upcoming mission.



STATUS``: active
TAGGED``: phil coulson, steve rogers
OUTFIT``: her usual SHIELD uniform
NOTES``: post in whichever order you wish! i apologise for any geographical inaccuracies; google and wkipedia can only get me so far. the thread will be moved into the europe category as soon as the plot develops to that point. and finally: the time limit has been extended. since this is probably gonna be a huge thread, i'm extending it to four months.
LYRICS``: this is war by thirty seconds to mars
CREDIT``: this template was made by the TAYLYNOSAURUS REX! of caution 2.0.

Coulson was the first to arrive. For some reason, Maria wasn't actually surprised that it was him. A slight smile curled up the corner of her mouth as he greeted her. At his words she chuckled, shaking her head. "Any longer than three days and I'd be begging to come back. Vacations and I don't mix. Besides, you know that Fury can't survive without me," she added with a grin. "Not that you heard those words coming from me, of course." He still owed her a trip to Tahiti though. One of these days she'd have to claim that trip.

Bringing her mug to her lips, she frowned as only a drop reached her lips. "Low profile. If it is anything serious, I don't want to involve the local cops. They're so useless. It'll be a lot faster just to do everything ourselves. Besides, I don't want to deal with translators. Number of disappearances are hard to give an exact figure to," she began, flipping through some pages, "but it looks to be around the 500 mark." She frowned, biting her lip in thought. "How the hell do 500 school kids go missing without a trace?"

Her phone vibrated on the table and she picked it up, shooting off a text before shoving it into her pocket. "There's nothing in the way of severe extremist groups. A few Neo-Nazi groups popped up a while back but as far as I can tell they were squashed pretty fast." At Phil's next comment, confusion mixed with surprise flitted over her features. This was certainly news to her. "Huh? No..."  She flipped through the pages again, eyes searching for the information. She mentally kicked herself; she should have known this. Captain Rogers wasn't an agent she dealt with usually, so her knowledge of his history wasn't as impressive as, say, her knowledge of Barton's, but she chided herself nonetheless. "Well, it is now. Good job catching that one," she added with a slight smile. He was probably one of the only people she'd allow herself to compliment if they'd caught a mistake of hers.



STATUS``: active
TAGGED``: phil coulson, steve rogers
OUTFIT``: her usual SHIELD uniform
NOTES``: phil and maria are just gonna keep chatting until someone drops in. after that order will go back to normal.
LYRICS``: this is war by thirty seconds to mars
CREDIT``: this template was made by the TAYLYNOSAURUS REX! of caution 2.0.

"Low profile, and indeed, the local cops can get rather competive when we show up, they like to show off, and do all sort of dumb actions, trying to prove they are superior to SHIELD, they would indeed get in our way." Coulson said, he then asked "Whats our cover story? News reporters coming to investigate the disappearances?"

When the Captain entered the room, that was something Coulson was not prepared for, he was not yet prepared to reveal his survival, and wanted to do it when he was ready, but now it seemed that choice is no longer his to make. Coulson took a moment to give thought on what he would say to Captain Rogers, but could not really think of anything. Coulson then decided to joke "Turns out I was not really good at being dead" Coulson then turned over to Maria and asked "So do you want to fill the Captain in on the mission or should I?"

Coulson then waited for Maria's response, and while he was waiting, Coulson went back to looking at the file about the mission that was going to commence soon.

"I think they've taken up Stark as their role-model," Maria replied, giving a wry smile. She could of course understand the urge for agencies to show off how clever and competent they were, but given that none of them could ever compare to SHIELD, they just ended up being a nuisance.

"We could pretend to be the FBI. Get all the suits in trouble once word gets out they're supposedly investigating," she offered with a evil grin. But given the fact that she'd be the one cleaning up the mess since Fury never did anything that he didn't want to (which lately seemed to mean that he refused to do absolutely anything), the idea didn't sound as pleasing when given some thought. Dealing with angry FBI agents was not one of the things she usually did if she could avoid it. "But reporters sounds a decent enough cover-up. People do so love their chance at fifteen minutes of fame. Take lots of photos and they'll be putty in your hands."

She turned as the door opened, and gave a nod in greeting to Steve as he entered. "Captain Rogers, glad you could make it." It wasn't until Steve's eyes slid over Coulson and he glared at her did she realise what the hell she'd done. Ignoring the look of disappointment and anger that Steve gave her, she flashed Coulson a look of pure annoyance. How could he not have told him that he was, in fact, still alive? Out of all the Avengers, out of all of SHIELD even, Steve was the one that deserved most to know. He had been his hero; how could Coulson not taken some time out to let him of all people know that he wasn't in fact dead?!

More than that, how had she supposed to have known that Coulson hadn't revealed the fact that he was back from the dead to Rogers? If she had known, she never would have called these two for the mission together. "I apologise for Coulson not being courteous enough to mention the fact that he was still alive to you, Captain," Maria replied, glaring at Coulson for a moment longer before turning back to Steve. "Director Fury and I had thought it was common knowledge throughout SHIELD by now, besides we decided it was up to Agent Coulson to let his friends know about his resurrection." She bit back a sigh. Why couldn't she just have one mission that started off smoothly? "Agent Coulson, since you are so good at filling people in on matters, why don't you brief the Captain?" she replied to Phil, withdrawing her phone and checking her messages. If Natasha couldn't make it, this was just going to get awkward.



STATUS``: active
TAGGED``: phil coulson, steve rogers
OUTFIT``: her usual SHIELD uniform
NOTES``:
LYRICS``: this is war by thirty seconds to mars
CREDIT``: this template was made by the TAYLYNOSAURUS REX! of caution 2.0.

Coulson stood up and said, "Well now that everyone's here, lets get briefed on the situation and rules of engagement." Coulson then flipped open the file that was in his hand and began the actual briefing "A situation has come up to our attention, a large amount of children have disappeared in the black forest area, SHIELD is deploying a team to investigate this, and we are the team." Coulson then took out a map of the area and walked over to his idol, Steve Rogers, he then handed the map to Steve and said "Take a look at your maps everyone, Captain Rogers you operated in this area before, their is a former HYDRA base in the area of operations, my suggestion is that we investigate it once we set up operations in the area, this has to be discreet, we will be going in with the bare minimum of equipment." This was not a invitation mission, so SHIELD would not be bringing anything flashy, nor anything that would attract the attention of others. Coulson then walked back to his seat and continued "We are not entering on the invitation of the German Government, if we are discovered, we may be imprisoned as spies, the reason why we are not announcing our arrival is that if the source of these disappearances know we are here, they may go dark and set up show somewhere else, they may have agents in the government, trust no one but your team." This was going to be a delicate situation, one of the worst case scenario would be the public blaming SHIELD on the disappearances, that was a disturbing thought. Coulson flipped through the brief one more time and said "You will find you cover identity on the last page, we are going in as tourist and journalist, learn your cover, we are departing tommorow morning, I advise spending the rest of the day reviewing the file and your cover, if you have any questions, refer them to Deputy Director Hill." Coulson then made a mental note to take a moment to talk to and explain his reasoning of not revealing his survival to the Captain. Coulson felt disturbed by his survival, especially now that he knew how his survival came to be. It was a disturbing thought.