CARS

By Wesley Overhults

SHIELD Safehouse 23

Wipeout braced himself before knocking on the door.  He didn’t usually get nervous or at least that was what he told himself.  Fear was never a good thing in his line of work.  It made people do really stupid things and people who did really stupid things usually ended up being caught.  He had experience with that.  It was what led to his current line of work, the one that few people knew about.  Being an agent of SHIELD wasn’t the greatest job in the world but it was better than jail.  Jail would have been less frightening than this was though.  Wipeout hesitated a moment more and then he finally let his hand collide with the door.

“It’s open.”

Frankie casually opened the door and saw Stephanie Sydney sitting at her desk with an open notebook as the only thing occupying it.  It occurred to him that out of all the Secret Warriors, her life was the one turned most upside down by their job.  Wipeout was used to being alone and taking care of himself.  He was used to bending the rules and doing what he had to do to get by.  Neon wasn’t used to any of that.  She was the one that had been living a normal life with someone to provide for her.  Now she was in the same sinking ship as the other Warriors were and they were all doing everything they could to stay afloat.

“I kinda need your help with something,” he told Neon.

“It’s about Finesse,” realized Neon.  “You wouldn’t be this quiet if it had something to do with the rest of us.”

“Yeah.”  He only responded with that one word and she already knew that her assumption was correct.

Neon smiled and motioned for him to come into the room.  Frankie was always obnoxious around everyone.  She could tell that he craved attention from the people around him and he got it by being cocky and a general ass to everyone.  Things were changing for all of them though.  Sometimes she wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing.  She never questioned her uncle about his former line of work.  He never said that much about it and by the time she knew the full story, he was already dead.  Sometimes she wondered what the great Raymond Sydney was like when he was an agent of SHIELD.  Would she have seen him differently if she knew what he was like when he was on the job?

“So tell me what’s going on,” she said once Wipeout had entered the room and closed the door behind him.

“Well,” said Wipeout and he let the last syllable of the word draw out.  “I kinda wanted to get her something.  You know, like a birthday present or something except I don’t really know when her birthday is.  I dunno, I just want to get her something nice because . . . because I think she deserves something nice.”

“Okay so where do I fit into all this?” inquired Neon.  “I mean this is totally adorable and everything but I don’t really know how to help you with this.”

“I just figured that, well, you’re a girl and you and Sebastian are kinda a thing.”  Wipeout hated feeling so uncomfortable.  He enjoyed thinking that he was the guy that every girl wanted.  He wasn’t used to working for things, at least not honestly working for them.  “I just thought maybe you’d be able to help me find something she would like.”

“I guess I could try,” offered Neon.

“Awesome,” said Wipeout and he held up a set of keys.  “We’ll take the car.”

“You can drive?”  Neon’s question came with a skeptical arch of her eyebrow.  She hadn’t seen Frankie drive and they had known each other for a while now. She wasn’t even sure he had a driver’s license and she knew that she definitely didn’t have one.

“Oh yeah, definitely,” said Wipeout nonchalantly.  “Got my license and everything.  No worries there.  So yeah, let’s hit the road then.”

“You’re lying to me right now.”

Wipeout scoffed at the idea and headed towards the garage where their car was kept.  Neon trailed after him and watched him get in the car and start it up.  He wheeled the car out of its parking space and pulled up alongside her, rolling the window down as he did so.

“Does it look like I’m lying?” he asked her.  “C’mon, how long have we known each other?”

“Sorry,” she apologized, circling around to get into the passenger seat.  “So where are we going?”

“Dunno,” admitted Wipeout.  “I figure we’ll cruise around town and something will come to me.  You’re totally free to offer suggestions too.”

“You really haven’t lived here long enough,” said Neon.  “You don’t ‘cruise’ around New York City.  We’ll go to a mall or something and see what’s there.  I bet I can help you find something that Finesse would like.”

Wipeout wondered exactly what the hell he was doing in this place.  Despite his appearance to the contrary, he was never very good with girls.  In his experience, girls were attracted to expensive things and the guys who could afford to buy them expensive things.  Wipeout didn’t come from a family with money, far from it in fact.  He learned a long time ago that he was never going to get anywhere with girls unless he figured out how to score some cash.  Being a thief helped with that or at least it did for a while.  At some point though, he became emotionally numb to his profession.  He learned that the kinds of girls that were attracted to expensive things weren’t really all that great in the end.  In some strange way, getting caught by SHIELD was actually a blessing for him.  It was a change in the monotony of his lifestyle.  It was something new and exciting.  Plus there was the added bonus of working with Finesse.  She was different than the girls he had encountered before.  It was true that she still had expensive tastes but she wasn’t shallow like the girls Wipeout had known before.

“You don’t even know her size,” reminded Neon as she caught him staring at the window displays in a clothing store.  “Don’t even think about dragging me to Victoria’s Secret either.  She broke your fingers that one time.  If you buy her something like that, she’ll end up breaking your neck for it.”

“Fine,” replied Wipeout, sighing and turning away from the store.  “Hey, what about jewelry?  Girls like jewelry.”

Neon never believed Finesse to be the type of girl that wore jewelry.  She obviously didn’t wear it when she was in the field, probably because it could get caught on something during a fight.  Stephanie had never seen Finesse wear it around the house either.  Jeanne was a girl that valued practicality.  True she was a thief just as Frankie was and they both were attracted to extravagance but Finesse seemed like the type that would rather have something useful than something pretty.

“You need to get her something personal,” advised Neon.  “Are you serious about her?”

“What do you mean?”

Wipeout was very rarely serious about anything.  It was a personality trait he had cultivated over the years because that was another thing he noticed that girls seemed to like.  The truth was that he didn’t even know if he was serious about Finesse.  He wanted to be and he thought they were making progress but he still wasn’t sure.  He looked at Neon and thought about how things were between her and Requiem now.  Ever since they had officially started dating, they were always around one another.  It was a little nauseating but more than anything it made Wipeout long for a relationship like that.  Nothing in his life was ever normal and most of it was manufactured.  He was a thief and he could steal all the nice things in the world but they weren’t really his.  He could create whatever kind of opulent life he wanted for himself but it would never really be his.  He wanted something real with Finesse.  He wanted something that felt like how he thought love should feel.  He wanted to see her every morning when he woke up and wanted her to be the last thing he saw when he went to bed every night. Maybe that was love.  He thought it sure felt like it and he hoped that he was right.

“Do you really care about her or not, Frankie?” asked Neon in response to his question.  “If you don’t really care about her then all you’re doing is wasting time with this.”

“I do.”

“Then get her something personal instead of just something generic.”

Wipeout began to think about what Finesse liked.  She enjoyed gymnastics, she liked martial arts, and she delighted in beating the crap out of people.  It occurred to him not for the first time that she really wasn’t like any of the girls he had previously met.  Maybe that was why he was attracted to her in the first place.  The problem was that he couldn’t think of any gift that she would really enjoy.  Finesse had been a thief for most of her life and chances were that she had stolen just about everything there was to steal.  So what could he get for the girl who already had everything?

“I got nothing,” he finally told Neon.  “I’m sorry, Steph.  This was probably just a big waste of time.  Finesse isn’t really like other girls, at least not any of the ones I’ve known.  I can’t think of anything to get her that she probably hasn’t already stolen for herself.”

“We’ll keep looking,” decided Neon.  “I’m sure something will come up.  C’mon, let’s see what else is around.”

The two Secret Warriors headed out of the mall and back onto the streets of New York City.  They were about to get into their car when they both heard a deafening boom coming from a block away.  Car alarms started going off and they instantly moved in the direction of what was likely an explosion.  Someone was in the process of robbing a bank.  The two Warriors could see the driver parked on the side of the street and he looked visibly agitated, most likely about the slowness of his cohorts.

“Blind the driver and knock him out or something,” ordered Wipeout as he shifted into his water form.  “I’m going inside to deal with the robbers.”

Neon nodded and moved towards the car.  Wipeout liquefied his body and snaked along the street, slipping under the bank’s door and getting inside.  He turned himself into a column of water and then began spraying blasts of it at the robbers.  The men turned and flew backwards when they were struck by the torrents of water.  The ones that were still able to fight back leveled their guns at Wipeout and began firing.  The bullets harmlessly passed through his liquid body and they buried themselves into the concrete of the bank’s walls.  Wipeout realized that he had a bigger problem though.  The robbers were bringing out their bigger guns, specifically a rocket launcher that he assumed they planned to blow the vault open with.

“Really, guys?” asked Wipeout as he saw one of the robbers shoulder the weapon and point it at him.  “Not really big on the subtlety are you?”

The thug’s finger twitched but Wipeout was faster.  He shot himself towards the weapon and knocked it from the man’s grasp before he could pull the trigger. The rocket launcher clattered across the floor and Wipeout hit the thug in the face twice with a combination of punches that took him down.  He flowed across the floor and reformed in front of the two robbers who were trying to make an escape to their getaway car.  It took only a low-level blast of water to send both of them hurtling backwards to join their friends.  Wipeout realized at that point that all the thugs were down and that he had taken them out in record time.  He returned to his human form and surveyed his handiwork, marveling at how easy it was to save this particular day.  He still wasn’t comfortable with being the hero though.  With all the stacks of money littering the vicinity, it would be easy to help himself but there were too many people around to witness him doing it.  He remembered the mission that forced him to return to Hope Springs and to confront Excavator.  Ricky had tried to do the same thing, steal from thieves.  It wasn’t the professional thing to do, especially given that Wipeout wasn’t even a real thief anymore.

“Nice job, kid,” remarked one of the bank guards.  “This was gonna be a real bad situation until you showed up.  You some kinda new superhero or something?”

“Or something,” answered Wipeout.  “I’m sorry but you’ll have to do without an autograph.  Places to go and people to save.”  With that, Wipeout turned and went back outside to see how Stephanie was doing.

The driver wasn’t very attentive.  He hadn’t been paying any attention when Neon snuck up on him and when she finally got his attention, all he saw when he turned in her direction was one of her light pulses.  He cursed and put his hand up to his eyes while Stephanie opened the door and dragged him out of the car. When the man got to his feet, Neon had a light blast waiting for him.

“Crap,” she muttered as she realized he was about to stumble out into the street.  She ran towards him and managed to grasp his wrist and yank him away from the street before a passing car could clip him.

The thug rewarded Neon for her good deed by landing an errant blow to her jaw that knocked her backwards.  He cleared his vision enough to start running away and Neon got back to her feet to give chase.  She sprinted in his direction, running as fast as she could to catch up with him.  He was looking for something and it soon became very obvious what the something was.  He had decided to steal their car.  Neon thought that it was an extremely stupid move on his part considering that the vehicle was SHIELD tech and probably had more than one anti-theft system in place.  Something happened when he touched the car.  Its frame began to warp itself for just a few seconds before he opened the door and got inside.  Stephanie created a concentrated globule of light and then tossed it at the car.  Her makeshift flash grenade went off but the driver used his ability to alter the windshield, tinting it so that the glare from the flash grenade wouldn’t affect him.  Stephanie wondered just what the hell he was.  Was he a mutant with some weird technology-based power?  Did he have some kind of device that was allowing him to do what he was doing?  Whatever the case, she knew she had to stop him before he got away with her car.  Quake would have their heads if she and Wipeout came back to the safehouse without it.

“You picked the wrong car to jack,” she told the driver as she tried to open the door.

“And you picked the wrong guy to mess with,” retorted the driver.  “Name’s Overdrive and I think I’ll be keeping this ride of yours.  SHIELD, right?  You guys sure know how to make nice cars.”

One of the car’s anti-theft measures went off when Neon tried to force the door open and an electric shock surged through her body.  She recoiled instantly and it gave Overdrive the few seconds he needed to pull out into traffic and take off.  Wipeout arrived and saw what was happening.  He shot towards the car and hit it with a blast of water designed to smash through the back windshield.  The glass held firm though and he realized he couldn’t stop Overdrive that way.  He took a split-second to ponder his next move but Overdrive had already decided on a course of action.  A hatch opened up in the car’s trunk and something shot out of it.  The rocket hit Frankie and exploded on contact, blowing him backwards and splattering him across the pavement.

“He took our car,” notified Neon as Wipeout literally recomposed himself and looked to her for an explanation of what happened.  “I don’t know what the hell kind of power he has but it has something to do with cars.  He made the car unlock itself and disarmed all the security with just one touch.”

“We’ve got to get that car back,” realized Wipeout.

“We need backup if we’re going to do that,” decided Neon, pulling out her cell phone and beginning to dial Quake’s number.

“If you let Daisy find out that we lost that car, she’ll kill us,” warned Wipeout, stopping Neon from finishing her call.  “We have to get it back on our own.”

“How are we going to do that?”

Neon’s question was punctuated by an explosion in the distance and the two Warriors looked to each other before moving towards the direction of the noise.

“He’s not going to be hard to find,” answered Wipeout.  “Which of these cars looks the fastest to you?”

“What?”  Neon had no clue what Wipeout was asking her but he apparently wasn’t going to wait around for her to answer him.

“Sir, I am an agent of SHIELD and I need to commandeer this vehicle so I can apprehend a dangerous felon,” declared Wipeout as he forced his way into someone’s car while flashing the man some kind of ID.  “Neon, you coming or are you going to chase this guy down on foot?”

“What the hell did you show that guy?” asked Neon.

“What, you don’t have one of these?”

Neon looked at the ID that Wipeout passed her and couldn’t believe that they issued him credentials when their superiors hadn’t done the same to the other Warriors.  Aside from that single mission he had to pull solo duty on, Wipeout had only worked with the rest of the Warriors on their missions.

“Pretty cool, right?”  Wipeout gunned the engine on his car and roared towards the sound of the explosion.

“This thing is fake,” realized Neon as she felt a catch in the plastic coating of it and peeled it back.  “Where did you get this piece of crap made?  I knew kids at my high school that could make better fake IDs than whoever did this.”

“When I went back to Hope Springs, they saddled me with two goofs for keepers,” explained Wipeout.  “I picked their pockets and then I turned the guy’s ID into mine.  Figured it might come in handy some day when we’re out in the field.”

“Or when you need to look legit while you’re doing something you shouldn’t,” countered Neon.

“Right, like SHIELD doesn’t already do that.”

Neon couldn’t deny that the Warriors had all done things on the job that were definitely not by the book.  She still didn’t know how to feel about that.  Things were easier when she was in the dark about how the world really worked.  It was easy to believe that the bad guys were the ones that did all the bad things and that the good guys never had to cut corners to get their jobs done.  Things weren’t so simple anymore now that the truth had come into the light.  She didn’t have a retort for Wipeout and he focused on driving instead of the conversation.  He wished he had some kind of siren instead of just the horn.  People thought he was just another angry driver without some kind of sign that he was law-enforcement.  Luckily, Overdrive’s rampage was clearing out the road ahead of him so he didn’t have as much traffic to weave through.  He felt Neon’s fingernails dig into the skin of his arm and flicked his eyes towards her, flashing her a smile in an effort to reassure her that nothing was going to happen to either of them.

“He’s that one,” said Neon.  “What did he do to the car?  It looked like he changed the paint on it with his powers.”

“He did but he wouldn’t want to change the kind of firepower it has,” realized Wipeout.  “If you were a crook and could have a car that packed heat like that, wouldn’t you want to keep it around?”

“True,” agreed Neon.

Wipeout moved through traffic, almost clipping a car with his rear bumper in the process.  He put himself directly behind Overdrive and stepped on the gas to catch up with him.  Frankie saw the same housing open up out of the car’s back and he knew the crosshairs of the missile launcher were squarely locked onto him.  He raised his hand a shot a blast of water through the car’s front windshield just as the missile shot out of its housing.  The stream of water hit the rocket and actually managed to stop it in mid-air.  Wipeout adjusted the stream and succeeded in knocking the rocket off course, causing it to fly into the air.  He knew he was going to have to get to Overdrive somehow but the question remained how.  Frankie had no clue what kind of tricks the Warriors’ car really had and it seemed especially deadly when in the hands of someone like Overdrive.  If Wipeout figured out the criminal’s powers correctly then he assumed that Overdrive could just modify the Warriors’ car to have whatever kind of armament he wanted.  That meant that Frankie and Stephanie were both in big trouble unless they could come up with a plan of attack.

“I’m going to have to get closer,” realized Wipeout.  “Steph, I need you to take the wheel when I tell you to.”

“I don’t have a driver’s license,” she reminded him.  “I barely even know how to drive and you want to throw me into the middle of this mess?  Are you out of your damn mind?”

“Steph, driving isn’t really complicated,” explained Wipeout, noticing that the missile launcher was warming up for another discharge.  “I’m doing just fine at it and you’re way smarter than me.  You’ll be alright.”

“Fine, just tell me when to do it.”

Wipeout continued to keep his foot pressed down on the accelerator in an effort to close the distance between himself and Overdrive.  Another missile came out of the launcher and again Wipeout met it with a jet of water.  He wasn’t intent though on simply diverting the missile’s course so it harmlessly went into the sky. No, this time he was going to make sure that the launcher wasn’t going to be a problem anymore.

“Now!” he ordered as he turned his whole body into water and shot himself through the stream at the missile.

Neon slid over and took the wheel as Wipeout came out of the hole in the window and hit the missile with such force that he shoved the projectile backwards and forced it to collide with the back of Overdrive’s car.  The weapon exploded and Overdrive struggled to keep the car on the road as its back half began to catch fire from the explosion.  Wipeout used his water to douse the flames and then clutched onto the roof of the car with both hands.  Overdrive swerved hard, zigzagging along the road in an effort to shake Wipeout loose.  Frankie struggled to hang on and tried to figure out how to get inside without causing even more damage to the car.

“You wanna play rough?” asked Overdrive as he finally stopped driving so erratically and spied a button on the dashboard.  “Let’s go for a real ride, kid.”

Wipeout didn’t know what was going on but he suddenly felt something in the car start to vibrate.  He looked over the edge of the roof and saw the tires rotate themselves.  He knew what was going on and he knew that things had just gone from bad to worse.  The rocket boosters hummed to life as Overdrive engaged the car’s flight mode.  The thrusters roared and the car took off into the air with Wipeout hanging on for dear life.  Neon stopped her car and looked into the sky, realizing there was no hope of catching the two of them now.  It was all up to Frankie to stop Overdrive.

Frankie Jensen couldn’t count the number of times he thought he was going to die.  That number had increased exponentially since he became a member of the Secret Warriors.  Currently hanging onto the roof of a flying car that was rocketing higher and higher into the sky ranked as one of the strangest near-death experiences he had been part of so far.  He expected that as he continued being employed by SHIELD, he would run into something that would top it but right now this was definitely the weirdest way to die.

“Maybe if I get out of this alive I can ask Sebastian what the statistics are for dying like this,” wondered Wipeout aloud as he continued gripping the sides of the roof and tried to figure out how he was going to stop Overdrive.

Overdrive, meanwhile, was having the time of his life.  He was used to staying on the ground, preferring cars as his usual means of transportation.  However, his power worked on any vehicle and he had at least some experience with flying.  He wasn’t lying earlier when he told Neon that SHIELD made nice cars.  He had read about them and heard rumors about them through his various underworld contacts but he had never driven one before.  They were even more than he could’ve dreamed.  Everything about a SHIELD car was top-of-the-line.  The organization spared no expense when it came to manufacturing them and they housed technology that was hard to find even on the black market.  Overdrive knew he could fetch a great price for the car whether he sold it as it was or chopped it up for parts.  However, he knew that he was keeping this for his private collection.  With the right modifications, which came for free thanks to his powers, he could turn the car into the ultimate getaway vehicle.  With this car in his possession, anyone wanting to pull a heist would want him to be their driver and he could name his price for the jobs he attached himself to.  This car was going to make him more money than he knew what to do with.  All he had to do was get rid of the annoying SHIELD agent that seemed to want it back at any cost.  Overdrive didn’t consider that a huge undertaking.

“Let’s see if this thing has any other weapons in it or if I need to add some,” he decided as he scanned the buttons on the console.  He clicked the one for the anti-theft device that he had used on Neon earlier.

Wipeout screamed as the jolt of electricity mingled with his water form and it caused him to almost lose his grip on the car.  He knew he had to figure out something quick before Overdrive could do the same thing again, a move that would assuredly send him plummeting to the asphalt below.  Frankie sighed in resignation as he realized he was going to have to irrevocably damage the car in order to stop Overdrive.  That meant he was going to get an earful from Quake when she finally learned what had happened.

“You were a good car,” said Wipeout to himself before focusing all of his concentration on the car.

Every automobile had an engine and the majority of the coolants used to keep that engine at the right temperature were water-based.  That meant that they were susceptible to Frankie’s control and even a car issued by SHIELD proved to be no exception.  Wipeout could feel the water in the engine coolant and he latched his powers onto it.  The hood of the car shook and then a stream of liquid shot upwards out of it.  It splattered all over the windshield and momentarily blinded Overdrive but he realized he had bigger problems than that.  Without any coolant, the engine began to overheat.  It started to smoke and it wasn’t long before the thrusters of its flight mode sputtered out.  When that happened, the vehicle dropped like a rock.  Overdrive began to panic, trying desperately to think of a way out of his current mess.  He used his powers to try to get the car back in working order but he could only change the makeup of the car and couldn’t magically produce engine coolant to fill its tank.

“You’ve killed us both!” he shouted to Wipeout.

“Technically I would only kill you,” reminded Wipeout as he focused on the ground that was rushing to meet them.

A geyser erupted out of the pavement and came up towards the car.  The end of it spread out and turned into a giant hand that caught the vehicle and slowed its descent.  With the threat of immediate death no longer occupying his concentration, Wipeout was able to slip his watery body inside the car.  When Overdrive turned around to notice that he had a passenger with him, Wipeout punched him in the face with a fist of hard water.  The blow knocked out Overdrive and Frankie returned to using the geyser to gently lower the car back to the pavement.  Neon was standing next to the car they had stolen along with the car’s original owner who looked very displeased with both of them.

“Are you okay?” she asked Wipeout.

“Right as rain,” he cracked back, dragging Overdrive out of the car.  “So I guess all we have to do now is call the cops and then figure out how to get the car back home before . . .”

Neon saw Wipeout’s expression change and she turned around to see what he was looking at.  A horde of SHIELD agents descended in their flying cars to presumably take Overdrive into custody and assess the property damage caused by Wipeout and Neon’s apprehension of him.  What was especially troubling was the fact that leading the charge was none other than Quake.

“Did you really think you could take SHIELD property out for a joyride and we wouldn’t notice it?” she inquired, marching straight towards Wipeout because she suspected the entire incident was likely his doing.  “The two of you are going to the Helicarrier and we’re going to have a very long talk about what happened here today.”

“You mean about how this asshat stole our car and we got it back?” asked Wipeout.  “No need to thank us or anything.”

“Oh I certainly won’t be doing that,” promised Quake.  “Just because you apprehended a wanted felon doesn’t excuse the fact that you trashed the car, destroyed public property, and endangered civilian lives.  You’re lucky I’m not letting them cuff you right along with him.”

“Boy you SHIELD guys are really ungrateful,” said Wipeout.  “Are you going to tell me I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done?  You probably would’ve taken out the whole city block with your powers.”

“No, I wouldn’t have because I wouldn’t have lost the damn car in the first place,” retorted Quake.  “You two, in my office, immediately.”

“So what have you got to say for yourselves after that nice disaster you caused?”

Wipeout just smirked and draped his arms over the back of the chair he was sitting in.  Neon looked noticeably nervous and kept her eyes focused on anything except for Quake.  The Warriors’ handler looked at both of her young charges, glaring harder in Wipeout’s direction and waiting for an answer to her question.  It was obviously not going to come and she let out an exasperated growl when she realized this fact.

“Hazard of the job, boss.”

The room shook slightly thanks to Quake’s powers and Neon shot Wipeout a look that said he shouldn’t push things further.  They were in enough trouble as it was without him having to shoot his mouth off and make it worse.  The problem was that shooting his mouth off was what Frankie was best at.

“It was my fault, Daisy,” she explained to Quake.  “Frankie was handling those bank robbers and I was supposed to take care of their driver.  He got away from me and even when I caught up with him I couldn’t have known about his powers.”

“Thank you for answering my question, Stephanie,” said Quake, not taking her eyes away from Wipeout.  “Still, you shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I’m willing to cut you some slack because you managed to retrieve the car although its engine will have to be completely overhauled.  Consider yourselves lucky that all I’m doing is reprimanding you.”

“If we hadn’t have been there then Overdrive and his crew would’ve gotten away with the money,” reminded Wipeout.  “Sure, maybe some other superhero would’ve shown up to save the day but who can say how that would’ve turned out?  Maybe they would’ve caused even more damage than we did.  Did you ever think of that?”

“Yes I did,” admitted Quake.  “Both of you are going back to the safehouse.  If you want real credentials then we’ll issue them as needed but after what happened today I wouldn’t count on that happening any time soon.  Also, Mr. Jensen, I would suspend your license until further notice but it seems the great state of Arkansas has already done it for me.”

“I knew you didn’t really have a license,” said Neon.

“I had one,” countered Wipeout.  “It just didn’t work out so well.  Besides, that’s the least illegal thing I’ve ever done.”

“You’re getting off easy,” said Quake.  “Be thankful for that.”

“Whatever,” said Wipeout after a flippant salute.  He casually shuffled out of the office and looked back to see if Neon was coming with him.

Stephanie got up and nodded to Quake before following Wipeout out of the office.

“Stephanie,” said Quake and Neon turned back in acknowledgement.  “I expect better of you next time.  Your uncle would’ve been disappointed in you today.”

“I’m not sure whether that’s a bad thing anymore,” admitted Neon.  “I’m sorry, Daisy, but next time you feel like telling me something like that just don’t.”

Wipeout simply stood there and grinned as Neon shut the door behind her.  She shot him a dirty look and then it softened into a smile of her own.  Wipeout jerked his head towards the exit and then started walking towards it.  Neon moved to catch up with him.  The day had been fun in a dangerous way.  She knew that Requiem was probably worried to death about her safety if he had been informed of what happened.  He always said that cars were the number one cause of accidental death in the country.  Still, there was something fun about being reckless.  Stephanie looked at Frankie and wondered if he really wanted to live his life that way.  Sometimes it was fun but it was also somewhat suicidal.  The problem with being so reckless was always that you couldn’t find things to live for because when you did it made you scared.  That kind of recklessness could lead to self-destruction and Neon knew that she and the other Warriors were the ones holding Wipeout back from that path.

“Thanks for sticking up for me back there,” said Wipeout as they headed towards the hangar where their escort was waiting to take them back to the safehouse. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I told Daisy the truth,” said Neon simply.  “I never got a chance to thank you for something either.  The day my uncle . . . the day he died during that mission, you were the one that killed the man who shot him.”

“Oh.”  Wipeout felt like he couldn’t say much more than that.  He realized not for the first time that people like him were built for this line of work and people like Stephanie did well to stay as far away from it as possible.  “It’s okay.  It just, you know, felt like the right thing to do at the time.”

“It probably was,” agreed Neon.  “I dunno.  At the time, I was mad about that because I felt like I would never get the closure I needed.  I’m starting to feel better about it though.”

“I guess that’s good,” said Wipeout as their escort arrived.  “Hey, I never did figure out what to get Finesse as a present.”

“If you think I’m going on your little quest with you after everything that happened today then you’re crazy,” said Neon.  “Right now all I wanna do is go home and soak in the tub for like an hour.”

“Fine,” said Wipeout as they both got into the car.  “Hey, any chance you think I could teach you how to drive?  I mean you never did get your license.”

“You’re also crazy if you think I’m getting into a car with you behind the wheel,” said Neon as they both got in the car and it took off to deliver them to the safehouse.  “You don’t have a license either or did you not hear what Daisy told you?”

“Maybe we could both get them,” he suggested.  “Besides, I bet I could score us some fake ones anyway in case we . . .”

“I really don’t like where that sentence was going,” decided Neon before seeing the look on Wipeout’s face.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” said Wipeout hastily and Neon could almost immediately tell he was lying.  “I think I just got an idea about what to get Finesse.  I can’t believe it was right there in front of me the whole time.”

SHIELD Safehouse 23

Finesse wasn’t a girl who had patience with people.  Few were the ones that she would wait around on and few were the ones who managed to not irritate her. Lately, it seemed that Wipeout was falling out of favor with her.  She had, of course, heard about his little stunt with the car.  She liked that car, even enjoyed thinking that one day when she managed to slip away from SHIELD’s leash that she would take that car with her as part of her severance package.  Now it seemed as if her dreams of escaping were dashed all because one of her teammates decided to take their only mode of transportation out for a joyride.  Finesse wondered what possessed Frankie to do something so completely stupid and then decided that there probably wasn’t a reason behind it.  In her experience, Frankie wasn’t usually one to have rational reasons behind his actions.

“I’m going to punch him in the face when I see him again,” she said to herself after closing the door to her room and making sure it was locked.  “Next time he gets it through his incredibly fat head that he should . . .”

The rest of her sentence died in her throat as she stared at what was sitting on her bed.  The box was small and it was wrapped in plain paper with a simple red bow sitting on top.  It was quite possibly the most non-festive present she had ever seen and she could only guess it was because the gift-giver in question didn’t have the money for anything extravagant.  Finesse, of course, knew exactly who the present was from.  The only question she had was why Wipeout would choose to give her anything at all.  It was far from Christmas and she knew for a fact that he didn’t know when her birthday was because no one did.

“Well fine then, let’s see what you got me,” she said as she picked up the box and began to unwrap it.

What awaited her inside the box wasn’t at all what she expected.  She knew that Wipeout enjoyed fancy things and she expected something that was flashy.  Her first guess was some kind of jewelry, something that looked expensive but probably wasn’t.  In truth, that only would have bored her.  She had no real use for jewelry and she had already stolen anything that caught her eye.  No, it seemed that Wipeout had actually found something useful in the wide world that she hadn’t already stolen.  That in itself was a mark of excellence in her book and it made her rethink her earlier promise to punch him.  She smirked when she read the note that was also inside the box with the SHIELD identification badge that was obviously not his.

Sorry about getting into your room without your approval.  Didn’t know what to get you but I figured you could use this.

“I think I can find something to do with it,” she said to the empty room.

When Wipeout went home to Hope Springs to track down Excavator, he had two agents handling him.  He had stolen both of their IDs but only kept the male agent’s badge on him after he had altered it to look like his.  He kept the female agent’s badge hidden in his room, not knowing what use he could put it to but unwilling to throw it away.  As it turned out, he had found a use for it after all.  Finesse decided that maybe he wasn’t so hopeless after all.