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Tweak says, "The other white meat."

"ɴɪᴄᴋ ғᴜʀʏ" (

shapeshifted) wrote in

avengers_logs,
@ 2019-07-24 15:03:00

Who: Talos (wearing Keller's face) & Doc Strange
What: A new arrival and the doc is like wtf but can't put his finger on why??
When: Today??
Where: Outside a 7-11; get dat slurpee
Rating: Green (with Spider-Man: Far From Home spoilers)
Status: Complete

This wasn’t space. It wasn’t diamonds of a thousand moons or supernovas or galaxies or dense air (the air smelled like garbage though, he could tell you that much). This wasn’t...anything resembling home. Or whatever constituted ‘home’ for a vagabond sort of people - though, really, his family of Skrulls and their compatriots had actually been thriving over the course of many years, after that touch-and-go battle with the Kree. They had a little pocket of space to call their own, brought together by a ragtag group of folks including himself - and now run by one Nick Fury, who had asked Talos for a favor. ‘Just pretend to be me for a little bit, Talos.’ ‘I got shit to do outside of Earth, Talos.’ ‘It ain’t even that hard, Talos.’ Fffffffff.

Wait, where was he again?

Oh - for the love of...was this fricking New York? Come on! Sure, there were Kree sleeper cells on Earth that needed dealing with yesterday, but let’s just drop a Skrull general here in this city. Maybe he’d even have to babysit a hormonal teenage boy again instead of taking care of actual business.

“Great,” Talos muttered, features quickly shifting and coming together again to complete the puzzle - it was the face of R. Keller, former SHIELD director and official Silver Fox. No one knew who that guy was, save for Carol. And Fury. And Coulson. And - well, what the fuck ever, as long as he was here he may as well grab a slushee from someplace.

Bless, it was a 7-11. Inside he went, emerging a minute later with a gigantic cup and half of the sugary cherry-red concoction already sucked up through the straw. Slurrrrrrp.

Tipped off by his spell net, Dr. Strange arrived via portal...outside the front doors of a 7-11 where a nondescript man in a suit was slurping a slushie. That was when he knew that this wasn't going to be one of those meetings and deliveries that would go by the book.

Not that there was a book involved for that. It was a pamphlet, and he had that tucked into his waist pouch.

He could sense that this man was...different, but in a way he couldn't quite put his finger on. He was what he was, and yet he wasn't. And it was in a way that made his aura impossible to read, a scrambled ever shifting mess that was never one thing.

"Hello," he told Slushie Man. "I'm doctor Stephen Strange. Welcome to a new universe, mister....?"

He raised his eyebrows while waiting for that blank to be filled in.

“Keller,” Talos introduced himself, because that was totally his name. While he was wearing this face it was, anyway. He knew, thanks to reviewing the files he’d studied after taking over as Nick-o, that the guy in the red cape really was Dr. Strange. What he didn’t know was what R. Keller happened to be actually up to these days - if he was smart, he’d squirreled away on a remote island somewhere after Fury replaced him as the Director of Strategic Homeland Whataburger. And speaking of... “SHIELD agent,” he added helpfully. “I need to speak with Nicholas Fury as soon as possible.”

Yeah, that was kind of a necessity. Either him or Carol, and Talos just assumed that the latter was floating off in space - lucky gal. He missed those days of clowning around together, with her when she didn’t have a spiked hairdo and Fury hadn’t been half-blinded by a Flerkin.

"Okaaaay then." Another SHIELD agent. Strange gave Keller a looking over, but he didn't see anything out of order, despite the shifting aura. Which might account for the oddness of Slurpee slurping. Some people were just natural born oddballs. He guessed that this was one of them.

Besides, Bobbi Morse showed up in a bikini. So this wasn't the weirdest SHIELD agent appearance. It was second place.

"I'll contact Fury to let him know about your arrival," Strange said, taking out his phone. He glanced up at Keller after tapping out a short text and asked, "You don't look too phased about being in a new universe. I'm guessing you know about alternate dimensions already, and I can save the speech, hand you the welcome pack, and get you to Fury. Right?"

Oh boy. Nick was gonna be thrilled to see him - old friends reuniting though, really, it hadn’t been that long since he’d seen Cyclops. Talos waited patiently while Dr. Strange fired off a text, sipping on his Slurpee - his tongue was probably stained cherry-red by now, but damn, these things were fantastic.

His love for Slurpees could always be chalked up to how he was ‘foreign.’ People said the accent he had sounded most like ‘Australian.’ From what Talos knew, it was a nightmare-land overrun with killer birds and relentless kangaroos. Pass.

“I’ve been with SHIELD awhile, son. You see a lot of weird shit there.” Like aliens who shapeshifted into Earthlings, with just a glance. “So, yeah, alternate dimensions - different versions of Earth.” Maybe Beck hadn’t pulled that entirely from his anal orifice after all. “You’ve got a welcome pack?”

Well, well. That just sweetened the pot, now didn’t it?

"Then you know what happened to SHIELD a few years ago," Strange said, not really volunteering that tidbit of information. He was hoping to determine what time frame Keller came from, although he supposed by Fury's return text that he was eager to see Mr. Keller again as soon as possible. "Yes, there's a welcome pack. Allow me."

He opened a small portal right there in the parking lot of 7-11, reaching in and taking out a gift bag that looked like a birthday present. That portal closed as he held the yellow, blue, and purple bag (with tissue paper and a bow) out to the gentleman.

Strange didn't sense anything overtly evil about this individual, which he chalked up to it being a good thing. That meant he could let Fury handle things, and he would go back to scouring ways to remove demons from a pregnant woman, without harming the woman or the child. Or tipping off the demon in the process. Overall? Not easy.

"Welcome to your new life," Stephen said, with his usual dry demeanor. "I'll open a portal that you can walk through, where Fury's waiting. He'll explain everything to you there."

Wow.

Was that a gift bag? "You oughta meet my daughter, she'd love this trick," Talos said, and that was no lie. She was older now but he always looked at her like his little girl, and had missed a lot of her growing up to due her and Soren's refugee status - he was a father, it was what his ilk did.

But he took the welcome pack that doubled as a goody bag for a five-year-old's birthday party. "Thank you," he added grandly. "You stay safe out there, kid."

As stated, he was paternal. First order of business was to dad everyone in the vicinity.

Then he stepped through the portal, eager to find that jackass who got his face ripped off by a Flerkin (told ya so).

Strange had already opened the tunnel and was staring straight forward, unblinking, as those parting words sunk in.

"Yeah, that was one of the weird ones," he finally said to no one in particular, making sure that agent of SHIELD was through the portal before he waved a hand to close it.

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