THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLARS

Part III

By Wesley Overhults

Townsend Harris High, New York City

Stephanie Sydney wasn’t having a very good day. She had a chemistry test next period and she still hadn’t memorized all of her lines for the drama rehearsal after school. To top it all off, a bunch of thugs in green outfits barged into the building with their guns and began shouting. She didn’t know why they were there at first but they had been talking to everyone over the intercom. They were here for someone and it was pretty clear that they weren’t going to take no for an answer. Stephanie could hear them clomping down the hall towards her classroom even now, their thick, heavy combat boots thumping against the floor as they closed in on her position.

“What’re they gonna do?” wondered one of her classmates aloud. “Why are they doing this?”

“Ain’t nobody here part o’ the Avengers,” commented a boy. “You don’t see Captain America rollin’ through here or anything.”

“They must want something,” said the girl who spoke first. “Why would they do this if they didn’t want something from one of us?”

No one could provide an answer as the HYDRA soldiers reached their destination and broke through the door. They pointed their guns at anyone who dared to so much as blink in their direction and their apparent squad leader approached Stephanie’s desk. The young Asian girl looked at the man and tried not to cringe with fear when she realized that the lenses on the man’s mask kept her from actually seeing his eyes. The root of the word “terrorist” was “terror” and everything HYDRA did was meant to instill fear and terror in the general populace. Her Uncle Raymond had told her about his days with SHIELD and she knew of HYDRA but this was her first experience with anything like this.

“One of you is Stephanie Sydney,” stated the squad leader, stopping his approach and turning his attention to the entire class. “We want her and only her. If you refuse to give us what we want then things are going to get very, very ugly.”

Stephanie watched the HYDRA goon’s head sweep back and forth and she realized he was studying each of the students, trying to figure out who was more nervous and fearful than the others. Stephanie tried to keep her composure. She discovered years ago that she had a passion for theater and when people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, the word “actress” was the first thing out of her mouth. Now she needed to use those acting abilities to remain calm in the face of certain death.

“It’s her,” accused the girl who had spoken earlier, pointing her finger at Stephanie.

“Great,” muttered Stephanie under her breath as the squad leader motioned to his comrades. “Last time I help her with her homework.”

One of them moved towards Stephanie, keeping his gun trained on her. He motioned with the barrel of his weapon that she should get out of her seat and Stephanie was quick to comply, raising her hands and keeping them where HYDRA could see she had no weapons.

“HYDRA was very interested to see your name on our list, Miss Sydney,” noted the squad leader as Stephanie walked towards the group, prodded by the barrel of a gun jabbed into her back a few times. “Our illustrious leader gave us orders to bring back any of you children that chose not to resist. However, I think we can make an exception in your case.”

“You got me, just leave everyone else alone,” said Stephanie. “I’ll go with you if that’s what you want but you have to promise that you don’t hurt anybody else if I do.”

“I believe you can work an arrangement with my commander,” decided the HYDRA soldier. “You’ll have to come speak to him yourself though.”

“Whatever,” replied Stephanie.

The barrel of an AK-47 poked her in the back once more as the leader of the HYDRA squad motioned for them to take their leave of the room. Stephanie followed them, one of the agents always staying behind her to make sure she continued to comply with their wishes. She nervously looked around for some sort of exit strategy. She knew how to defend herself, her uncle had made sure of that, but she wasn’t bulletproof. All the self-defense tactics in the world wouldn’t stop a bullet in the back and it would only take a second for the HYDRA goon standing behind her to twitch his trigger finger and it would all be over. She would have to do some maneuvering to get in a better position before she could use her ace in the hole.

“Your ‘uncle’ made life very difficult for us when he was a member of SHIELD,” noted the squad leader, speaking in reference to Raymond Sydney. “All of us were happy to hear that he had retired. It left him much more . . . vulnerable shall we say.”

“I need to get a drink of water,” stated Stephanie. “Please?”

The squad leader gestured to the water fountain sitting against the wall. Stephanie moved towards it and felt the presence of the HYDRA soldier with the gun behind her. She leaned over and took a drink from the fountain, doing so slowly so as to not arouse suspicions. After finishing her drink, Stephanie casually moved her hand up to adjust a stray lock of her raven-black hair. It was then that she made her move. For a split-second, her hand glowed with a yellow energy before she unleashed a blinding pulse of light directed at the HYDRA agents. She turned as quick as she could and ran as the blinded HYDRA goons began to stumble and grope, rubbing their eyes in an effort to clear them. She was safe as long as she could get somewhere and find some cover. What she didn’t need was for them to start firing off their weapons when they couldn’t see what they were shooting at.

“Kill her!” she heard the squad leader shout.

“Great,” muttered Stephanie to herself as she dove around the corner and curled up into a fetal position against the wall.

The air was filled with the pop and crack of bullets discharging from guns as the HYDRA agents shot wildly in all directions trying to follow their leader’s commands. Stephanie pressed her knees against her chest and tried to breathe normally even as the bullets whizzed through the air. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out the sounds of the guns. In a few seconds, the guns stopped and Stephanie opened her eyes. She realized she had to make a break for it. That light pulse wouldn’t slow them down for long and she needed to find a better place to hide.

She looked across the hallway and saw the bathroom, realizing that it was the only place of refuge available to her at the moment. Her eyes swept the seemingly empty hallway and saw no sign of HYDRA. She took a deep breath before hurriedly getting up and moving across the hallway. Unfortunately, she didn’t possess the training or nerves of steel necessary to do it with complete silence. She squeaked in surprise as she noticed a flash of green out of the corner of her left eye. She made it inside the bathroom doorway before a hand roughly clamped around her wrist and yanked her back into the hallway.

“I sent some men to escort you to me but you managed to find your way here on your own,” noted the man that had to be the field commander of the HYDRA commandos. “I admire your tenacity, Miss Sydney, but I’m afraid we can’t allow you to live, not for very long at any rate.”

“I’d say you’ve got some problems of your own,” noted Stephanie, hearing the pop and crack of gunfire coming from somewhere else in the building. “My uncle’s here for me and I don’t think he came alone.”

“Then he and his friends can watch you die,” decided the HYDRA leader as he pressed his gun to Stephanie’s forehead. “Be so kind as to take a walk with me.”

“We need to get off this roof,” decided Fagin. “If I transform again, I don’t think it’s going to hold all of us.”

He was pleased to see that Wipeout and Composite had both done exactly what he expected them to. They believed that if they kept him alive then they could use him as collateral with SHIELD and that was just what Fagin wanted them to think. For the moment, it kept him alive and if he was lucky he could find an opportunity to escape while the two boys dealt with the Wrecking Crew for him.

“Maybe we’ll just kick your ass off of it then,” suggested Composite. “Don’t think this makes us friends or anything, Fagin. We just need you alive so we can turn you over to SHIELD.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” said Fagin. “If no one’s going to lighten the load here then I guess I will.”

Fagin transformed into his mutated state and grabbed Composite, tossing the boy at the Wrecking Crew. Earlier in the fight, Composite had absorbed the concrete of the roof so Fagin knew he could survive a fall from their height. Wipeout saw the action and knew what Fagin had in mind. He didn’t like it but for the moment it was the best way to get the Wrecking Crew off the roof before the whole thing caved in from the weight of all the giants standing on it. Frankie fired two water streams at Composite, using the jets of water as propulsion to give his partner’s flying charge more momentum. Composite slammed into the Wrecking Crew and succeeded in knocking all of them over the edge of the roof and sending them plummeting to the ground.

“I was good with kicking you off too,” said Wipeout, using his water jets to shoot himself towards Fagin and take him off the roof as well.

The two of them tangled in the air, trying to make sure the other struck the pavement first. Wipeout landed first and exploded into a giant puddle of water on impact. Fagin landed on his feet and was immediately met by both Bulldozer and Piledriver. The two Wrecking Crew members knocked the purple mutant off his feet and put him through the front wall of a building. Wipeout reformed his body and twisted it to avoid the giant wrecking ball that whirled towards him courtesy of Thunderball. Frankie contorted through the air and launched a blast of water at Thunderball that didn’t even take the ogre of a man off his feet.

“It’s gonna take a hell of a lot more than that, kid,” warned Wrecker, watching Composite get back to his feet and noticing the cracks in his concrete skin. “We got Asgardian magic on our side. That’s better than any fancy mutant power you can come up with.”

“I’m not a mutant,” clarified Composite ducking as the Wrecker tried to club him with his crowbar.

Composite hit Wrecker in the jaw and barely moved the leader of the Wrecking Crew. He threw a harder punch that only had moderate success. Wrecker returned with a punch of his own, an uppercut that took Composite off his feet. He rubbed his jaw as he got back to his feet and tried to figure out what to do next. He only had a short amount of time before he would go back to his human form and he was as good as dead unless he could pick up another skin. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of any available material that could match the Wrecking Crew’s strength.

“Don’t matter what ya got, kid,” repeated Wrecker as he swung his crowbar at Composite. “Yer dead.”

Composite reached out instinctively with his hand to block the swipe. His concrete skin came into contact with the Wrecker’s crowbar and his power automatically absorbed its properties. While Henry thought it was just an ordinary crowbar, the truth was that it was much more. The crowbar was magically enchanted and it was the source of the Wrecker’s power. Thanks to his absorption, it was now also the source of Composite’s newfound strength too.

“I got whatever you got,” he told Wrecker, clubbing the villain over the head with his bare fist and taking him down. “I dunno what kinda crowbar that is but it packs quite a wallop. I think I’m going to make better use of it.”

Composite kicked Wrecker in the ribs while he was down, sending the villain tumbling across the pavement. He turned and ran towards Thunderball while the Wrecking Crew member was twirling his ball and chain to use as a shield against Wipeout’s water blasts. Composite hit Thunderball in the back and knocked him down. Bulldozer and Piledriver struck in tandem against him but Composite struck back with equal strength. He swiped Piledriver away with a backhand and then drove his knee into Bulldozer’s chest before clubbing the thug over the back with both hands.

“We need to make sure Fagin’s still around,” realized Wipeout. “You keep these guys off of me while I do that.”

“I think these guys are through for the day,” jeered Composite, watching the Wrecking Crew regroup and beat a hasty retreat. “Is Fagin still with us?”

“He cut out,” said Wipeout after checking the building Fagin had crashed into thanks to Piledriver and Bulldozer. “Now we’re completely screwed. We don’t have him, we don’t have any way of clearing our names.”

“There might be a way,” offered Composite as he noticed the news report playing on a collection of television sets in an electronics store’s display window. “It looks like something bad is happening over at Townsend Harris High. I’m thinking it’s time for us to go back to school.”

“SHIELD goes wherever HYDRA does,” realized Wipeout as he saw that the terrorist group was the cause of the trouble. “You think they’re the ones Fagin was working for and some of the kids in there are Caterpillars?”

“Maybe but it doesn’t matter either way,” said Composite. “Like you said, SHIELD goes where HYDRA does. If we back them up then maybe we can at least clean up some of our own mess. There’s a whole building full of innocent kids that didn’t ask to be a part of this thing but they’re in it now because of us. It’s our responsibility to help them.”

“You’re going to get me killed if you keep talking like that,” joked Wipeout. “Fine then, let’s go back to school and see if we can at least do something right.”

Townsend Harris High, A Few Moments Ago

“They’ve got the whole place surrounded and they’re not letting anyone in or out,” explained the NYPD officer in charge. “We’ve set up a perimeter but right now it’s just a staring contest. We can’t get in there without risking the lives of everyone trapped inside. They haven’t even told us what they want.”

“That’s because what they want is already inside,” said Quake. “My team and I are going to have to go in there, sir. We’ll give you a signal when it’s safe for you to enter the building but until then I need you to keep everyone away. There are a ton of civilians already in there and we need to keep the casualties to a bare minimum.”

“Of course,” agreed the officer. “Exactly how do you guys plan on getting in there though? Any sort of frontal attack is going to spook those goons and risk the lives of everyone inside.”

“We have a different means of insertion,” assured Quake, looking to Requiem. “Sebastian.”

Requiem took no notice of his superior. He was staring at the row of parked cars intently, almost as if he was trying to decipher some hidden meaning in them that no one else could understand. Quake waited a few moments then cleared her throat rather loudly in an effort to get his attention.

“Sorry,” he apologized once he realized everyone was looking at him. “I was just looking at the license plates on those cars and coming up with some hilariously witty anagrams using the letters on the plates. It’s actually a rather fun game when you really put your mind to it.”

“You do realize we’re going to die, right?” asked Finesse when she realized that their entire means of infiltration rested on Requiem. “You saw what happened when we fought Unicorn. He can’t always control where he lands.”

“Sebastian, I need you to teleport us in there,” ordered Quake, ignoring Finesse’s eternal cynicism. “You just have to get us inside the building and we can do the rest. I promise you it’s not that far away.”

“I can’t really see where I’m going,” said Requiem. “We could end up inside a wall or something. I don’t even think there’s a statistic for the number of wall-related fatalities suffered each year. I’ve never read one before and I’ve read a lot of books.”

“You can do this, son,” promised Raymond. “My niece is in there right now and she needs our help. Do this for me and do it for her.”

Requiem nodded and tried to summon up his magical abilities. That part was getting easier and easier with each time he used his powers. The hard part now was fine control. He could teleport but he couldn’t always teleport to exactly where he wanted to go. This was going to be the most dangerous teleportation yet since there wasn’t a lot of open space.

“I think I’ve got it,” he decided before the group disappeared in a flash. Sebastian didn’t even notice that he had involuntarily closed his eyes but he must have at some point because he opened them when they landed.

“You did it,” announced Quake. “C’mon, let’s move before they realize we’re in here.”

The group of SHIELD agents were in the main lobby of the school. The small foyer led into the cafeteria on the right where a rather large group of HYDRA agents were stationed. Quake and Raymond immediately ducked into the front office, years of SHIELD training taking effect. Finesse and Requiem both followed their lead, none of them wanting to get spotted by the HYDRA agents. The whole building was crawling with them so it made moving around a tricky task.

“We can either try to move around the HYDRA goons or we can draw some of them out and pick them off,” decided Raymond. “We need to find Stephanie either way. She should be on the other side of the building by now if I remember her schedule correctly.”

“Someone doesn’t seem willing to get with the program,” said Finesse, noticing the gunshots that echoed throughout the building. “You people feel free to continue cowering here. I’m going to find this girl that everyone seems so concerned about.”

Finesse moved across the lobby and headed down the hallway on the other side. She pressed herself against a wall and peeked around the corner to see what she could find. A duo of HYDRA agents were patrolling the hallway around the corner and currently had their backs to her. Finesse couldn’t think of a better opportunity to take them out than now so she turned the corner and swiftly moved towards the two agents. The two HYDRA goons completed their circuit and turned just in time to realize that Finesse was on them. She lashed out with a roundhouse kick that floored one of the HYDRA agents in one blow. The other one tried to point his gun at her but she grabbed the barrel and moved it away before hitting the man in the throat with her elbow. She grabbed the agent’s head and jammed it downward to meet with her incoming knee. When the man fell backwards, Finesse relieved him of his weapon and casually tossed it to the floor. The first agent she had kicked seemed to have caught his second wind. He came at her and threw a vicious haymaker. Finesse grabbed his fist to dodge the attack and then swung him around face first into a row of lockers. She watched the man slump to the floor and pass out.

“You need to follow directions,” said Quake as she and the others caught up to Finesse.

“Please, you act as if I was in some sort of danger,” scoffed Finesse. “The only thing I’m in danger of from these idiots is being bored to death.”

Quake chose to ignore Finesse’s ego for the moment and took point. She led the team down the hall and then turned another corner. The group of HYDRA agents at the end of the new hall noticed the intruders and raised their weapons. Quake threw up a vibration barrier to stop the incoming bullets. Requiem raised his hand at the agents and let a blast of magical energy fly from it at them. The bolt acted like a concussive blast and blew the HYDRA agents backwards, knocking most of their weapons out of their hands. Finesse took this opportunity to run towards them and unleash a flurry of vicious kicks and punches that took the agents down before they could recover from Requiem’s surprising attack.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” admitted Quake as she looked at Requiem.

“I didn’t either,” said Requiem. “These magical powers aren’t all that familiar to me. I’m still trying to learn them.”

“Maybe you’re not as useless as I first thought,” said Finesse. “Where is Stephanie?”

“She should be in one of these classrooms,” stated Raymond. “If you hadn’t have knocked all of them out, we could’ve questioned one of these men and found out what happened.”

“If I hadn’t have knocked all of them out, they would still be trying to shoot us,” countered Finesse.

“If you’re looking for Stephanie, they took her to wherever their leader is,” said one of the teachers. “They seemed to only be interested in her for some reason.”

“That looked like the main group of them we saw back in the cafeteria,” realized Raymond. “If they wanted to take her somewhere, it would be there.”

“Then we’re on a clock and need to move,” declared Quake, moving back the way they had come with the rest of her team on her heels.

They managed to make it to the cafeteria but the HYDRA agents saw them coming and opened fire. All of the SHIELD agents hit the floor or moved up against the walls to avoid the bullets. They heard the squad leader yell something over the roar of the gunfire and a group of HYDRA agents advanced into the main lobby, moving closer to their enemies. Quake pressed her hand against the floor and set off a round of vibrations that rocked the building to its very foundation. The HYDRA soldiers were caught off guard by the tremors as the floor began to rise up under them. The shockwaves threw them off balance and gave Raymond enough time to gun them down with precision accuracy before they had a chance to return fire.

“Go!” ordered Quake.

Finesse and Requiem took the opportunity to follow their leader’s command and moved out into the lobby. Quake and Raymond moved forward after them, covering them with the longer range of their attacks. Finesse leapt towards the HYDRA agents and let her feet and her fists fly out to tag as many of them as she could. She swiftly disarmed the first agent she could, relieving the man of his handgun and then shooting him in the chest with it. She turned to see another HYDRA goon train his gun on her. A concussive bolt of magical energy slammed into him and took him down before he could shoot Finesse. Jeanne turned and shot the HYDRA goon trying to sneak up on Requiem from behind, the bullet barely missing the side of Requiem’s face.

“That was very risky,” warned Requiem. “Last year alone, the number of casualties by friendly fire was . . .”

“Next time I’ll just miss then,” retorted Finesse, emptying her clip on the remaining HYDRA agents. She tossed the empty gun at one of the remaining HYDRA agents and nailed him in the head, knocking him unconscious with the blow.

“This was relatively easy,” noted Quake while looking at the defeated squad of HYDRA agents.

“We still haven’t found Stephanie yet,” countered Raymond.

“Allow me to make your mission easier then,” suggested the leader of the HYDRA contingent as he pressed a gun to Stephanie Sydney’s head. “The great Raymond Sydney. How easy it is to bring you low now that you no longer have the full protection of SHIELD. All it will take is a simple bullet in this girl’s head and you will be like a snake without its venom.”

“Snakes can still bite,” retorted Raymond. “Let Stephanie go and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get out of here alive. If you do something stupid like you plan on, I guarantee you won’t leave here unless it’s in a body bag.”

“I’ll take my chances,” decided the squad leader. “I’m sure your niece has some last words for you, Raymond. Perhaps you also have some for her?”

The HYDRA leader never got his shot off. A stream of water burst from the pipe behind him and blasted him in the back. Stephanie used the momentary distraction to slip out of the HYDRA agent’s grasp and get away. The stream of water was followed by another, smaller stream of water that acted like a right cross and hit the HYDRA leader in the jaw. The two streams formed into Composite and Wipeout. Composite quickly switched forms, absorbing the concrete of the floor just in time to shrug off the bullets from the HYDRA leader’s gun. He delivered a punch that floored the man before looking around at the room strewn with the unconscious and wounded bodies of the HYDRA agents.

“You two have a hell of a lot of nerve to show your faces in the same room as me,” warned Finesse, moving towards them with frightening speed. “You left me to rot on the damn Helicarrier!”

“Yeah and we came back for you,” reminded Composite, blocking the punch that Finesse threw at him and trying not to hurt her with his concrete skin. “Look, I’m not proud of leaving you, okay? I had to save my own skin but I came back for you and I had to drag Frankie’s sorry ass along with me.”

“It’s true, I totally wanted to leave you,” admitted Wipeout with a grin in Finesse’s direction. “You would do the same for me.”

“True,” realized Finesse, her anger subsiding for the moment. “Fine, there’s no honor among thieves. You need to get out of here unless you want to get thrown in jail though. I’m forced to work for these idiots; you don’t have to share the same fate.”

“I’m not running,” decided Composite. “If working for you will clear my name of all the shit I’ve had to do then I’ll take that job.”

“I want you and Jensen on the team anyway,” said Quake. “If anything, it gets you two off the streets so you can’t cause any more trouble. At least when you’re working for us, we can keep an eye on you.”

“What about you, Wipeout?” asked Composite.

“Composite, you get me into more trouble than I ever have on my own,” replied Wipeout before grinning at Finesse. “But I think if you guys are going to have any hope of staying alive then you’re going to need me on your team.”

“HYDRA’s not done with this,” said Quake. “They still have the list so they’re still out there looking for targets. We need to get into their computer system and get rid of their list. Until we do, no one is safe.”

“Count me out of this,” said Raymond. “The only reason I came in here was to take care of Stephanie. Now that she’s safe, you guys can take care of the rest.”

“And if I decide to go with them?” asked Stephanie.

“You can’t be serious,” said Raymond in response, the anger in his voice rising. “I won’t let you put your life in danger like that.”

“These people are still after me so I’m in danger either way,” countered Stephanie. “If I’m going to die, I want to be the one who decides it. I’m not going to stand around waiting for them to come to me when I can help stop this. There are plenty of kids out there who won’t be as lucky as me, who won’t have the friends that you have to protect them. Shouldn’t I do what I can to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else?”

“I’m watching your back if you’re going in,” decided Raymond, knowing her well enough to know that she would only find a more dangerous way to get involved if he continued to say no. “Now let’s get to questioning some of these goons and figure out how we can get into HYDRA’s computer system. The quicker we figure that out, the quicker we can put this whole nightmare to bed.”

Forest Hills

“You seriously think I’m going to let you keep Stephanie involved in this?” asked Raymond, looking at his former pupil.

“You heard what she said, Ray,” reminded Quake. “She wants to be involved in this and I feel her reasoning for it is valid. She has her powers and all of us to watch her back. Trust me, as crazy as it sounds she would be safer out there with us than sitting at home watching it all on the news with you. You’re just one person, Ray. You can’t protect her from everything.”

“I can damn sure try,” said Raymond. “She’s like a daughter to me, always has been ever since the day she was born and I took custody of her. She’s got a stubborn streak in her though, probably from her mother. She’s going to get involved in this whether I like it or not and I’d rather grudgingly, very grudgingly mind you, give my approval and let her think she’s won rather than argue with her and have her go running off on her own and get herself killed.”

The former SHIELD agent and the current SHIELD agent were both sitting in Raymond’s kitchen drinking coffee and strategizing their next move. Their interrogation of the HYDRA agents provided them with some valuable information concerning the location of their cells. All they had to do was pick one and use its computer equipment to get into HYDRA’s mainframe. Finesse had already assured Quake that she had the necessary skill to hack the mainframe. Of course Finesse always made herself look better than she actually was so Quake didn’t know if she could trust the girl’s word.

“So there are a dozen or so cells scattered throughout the city,” noted Quake. “We’ve determined that the most likely candidate is this one.” She pointed to a spot on the map in front of them.

“You were always a little reckless, Daisy,” noted Raymond. “I thought enough time would have changed that but apparently not. Just remember it’s not just your life you’re playing with this time.”

“I know,” assured Quake with a nod. “Trust me, Ray. I can handle this.”

“You better hope you can,” said Raymond.

Next Issue: Quake and her team are set to infiltrate HYDRA but one of them isn’t going to make it out alive.