7228/Elite Evaluation

Elite Evaluation
Date of Scene:	18 April 2019
Location:	The Triskelion, New York City
Synopsis:	Natasha and Skye are paired up for a Technology evaluation, and undeclared use of an outside resource has repercussions for the pair. (This log coincides with log 7268.)
Cast of Characters:	Melinda May, Black Widow (Romanoff), Quake, Hawkeye (Barton)

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Melinda May has posed:
This round of agent evaluations is nearly complete, with the highest ranking (and typically busiest) agents left for last. It typically means fewer spectators milling about.

Standing in the center of the various areas, May is waiting for one Agent in particular that she knows as well as anyone else doesn't truly NEED to be evaluated, but if the Acting Deputy Director herself has to go through these paces, so does everyone else.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
At two minutes to the appointed time, Natasha arrives. She's dressed in her SHIELD uniform, the black bodysuit with the SHIELD patches on the arms. Since she wasn't sure exactly what this would entail, just that she had to arrive for an evaluation, she had opted to dress officially instead of arriving in workout or street clothes. Her wristbands and holsters (with Glocks) were worn as well.

She entered, taking a glance around then moving to stand in front of May. "Agent Romanova reporting for duty," she says, managing not to look amused. She knows May well enough to know May is serious if she's calling for these things to be done.

Quake has posed:
"Didn't I just do all of this?" Skye complains, heading into the testing area with Clint close on her heels. "I've had everyone up in my business for months now on what I can and can't do, so why are we suddenly making me do all this all over again?"

Of course there were reasons - not the least of which everyone else had to do it, witness one Natasha Romanova already there and waiting, and likely to be put through her paces before Skye had her turn. And also because, as Skye well knew, at least one of her evaluations was a cover for their flight into Cuba.

Then again, would it really be Skye if she didn't complain about the testing and evaluation? Probably not.

"Hey, look who it is." Her words a whisper to Clint. "May really is serious about these things."

Hawkeye (Barton) has posed:
Clint follows Skye in, the archer is dressed in sweats and a hoodie, a smirk on his lips, "Bureaucracy?" he offers for why the sudden bout of testing. "But seriously, S.H.I.E.L.D. needs these evals to be able to guage what we can do and how much trouble to throw us in. Hell, even I have to do them."

Annnd it appears Nat too, Clint grins and waves, "Get her Nat!" he calls from the sidelines.

Then settling against the wall he nods whispering back, "Totally is. It's been fun though, you should have seen Jemma at the weapons drill I ran, or did I tell you that story already?" he asks, he's days have been full of evals and mission prep, the details are getting hazy.

Melinda May has posed:
May nods hello to Natasha. "It's the quarterly evals." She knows the redhead likely detests them as much as any other agent above security level 7. "The sooner they're out of the way, the better." She gestures toward the area marked 'Technology' and then start over there. "I know you'll just walk through the others, so let's get this out of the way first."

When she gets closer, she calls out to Skye and Barton, "Barton, Skye." She knows they'll understand that she's summoning them. The 'Technology' section of the evals this year has been set up as a bomb defusing simulation, and the agent overseeing the section nods politely to Natasha and May as they approach.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
Hearing what her challenge will be, Natasha lets out a groan and looks at May. "You would. You know I hate defusing bombs." Though the Widow has had extensive training, actually defusing bombs isn't one of her strongest abilities. She has done it. She also has failed to succeed when trying.

May came up with the perfect test for the agent.

Heading into the Technology area, she reaches up a hand to push a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She does move over to the side to pick up some scanning equipment, standard SHIELD issue, that allows her to do a quick scan of the bomb in question so she can have a holographic image of it to try and discern where to even start. She doesn't bother with a flak jacket because, after all, if she was that close to a real bomb going off, it wouldn't likely help matters.

Quake has posed:
"You hate difusing bombs?" Skye mutters, moving to join her 'partner' as May decrees the challenge. "I have no clue how to difuse bombs."

Okay, she's recently stood over Galina as the Crimson Dynamo difused an *actual, primed ready to blow* bomb, but somehow that seems less intimidating to the young hacker than this proposed evaluation. Even if Nat is the one doing the technical work.

"So, let me guess, I'm lookout and safety?"

Melinda May has posed:
May nods to the agent standing by the table, who starts a timer. The pair have ten minutes. Well, nine minutes and fifty six seconds now.

The bomb itself has some very notable differences from the real thing, including a plastic box with faint seam lines on its top and sides instead of actual explosive material and a frame that is holding it bolted to the table so it can't be upended or moved. Also, it does not appear to have any computerized components at all. The timer is a small analog clock set into a metal casing about the size of a cigar box. The rest of the table's surface is covered in a truly random assortment of objects that would be readily found anywhere, from a butter knife to a ball of rainbow-colored cotton twine to a red Swingline stapler.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
"You have two assignments," Natasha tells Skye as she begins to examine the holographic scan, turning the image a bit to be sure she has the lay-of-the-land on he inside before she even starts. "First, is the safety of the civilians in the area so you pegged that one perfectly. The second..."

She lets her voice trail off as she makes sure there are no triggers on the outside of the bomb before she picks up the butter knife, looking to the screws and preparing to start removing a panel so she can get access to the important stuff on the inside.

"...You need to study up on defusing bombs so next time we reverse positions."

Quake has posed:
"hahaha," Skye minces at Natasha. "Because we all want me difusing bombs. Don't we have teams to do this?"

Of course, the countdown is begun, and all snark aside, they have less than ten minutes. Nine if they are cutting it close and want to be assured of safety. Thankfully (she hopes), May isn't throwing the gamut at them of a counter-attack team - because that would just be cruel, right.

It hits her, though, that Nat isn't kidding - or wrong - about the reversal of positions. And, despite her lack of enthusiasm for bomb difusal skills, it could be necessary in the future. It was, after all, one of the reasons she's been learning to pilot. You never knew when your partner would be taken out and you'd need that skill. Some, like her hacking, were specialized enough that few expected others to be able to do them (everyone better be able to plug a USB stick in or gods help them), but a broad swath of general skills never went amiss, and now that she was a level 5 field Agent, Skye was expected to pick her skillset up.

"Shame I can't teach you my added skillset," Skye murmurs, taking up a defensive position where she can both watch Nat, and the entrance to the room. The main one, at least. "I can set up a barrier, but I have to warn, we'll be in the blast zone." Not unexpected. "And, I don't know the threshold of how long I can hold it." Ten minutes didn't seem long until you were holding a shield in place by will alone.

Melinda May has posed:
Watching the pair for a moment, May walks around to where she can watch the pair from a different angle. She doesn't offer comments on the way they choose to split the work of the bomb defusing, but inwardly agrees with Natasha that next time it'll be Skye's turn to actually handle the bomb directly.

The casing to the timer is simply closed with screws, but one seems to resist the butter knife differently from the others, and the second hand on the analog clock stutters and jumps ahead by fifteen seconds.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
When the clock shifts, Natasha frowns and looks more closely at the screw. Then she consults the holographic scan. "Seriously? I'm going blind in my old age. should've caught that," she murmurs to herself. She sets the other screws to the side for now and more closely examines to see if there is another way in without triggering that spot again. If not, she'll use it even though she knows she will likely lose up to a minute to get it removed.
    She continues to chat with Skye as she works. "I'd be toast anyway if it went up. Just be prepared to throw up the shield when I get to the important bits, for yourself and anyone in the blast radius. For now, you are waiting in case I start swearing in Russian."

She focuses on something else even as she finds what she was looking for. She thinks. "What skillsets are those? Picking bad frou-frou beer and charming archers?"

Quake has posed:
Skye's glance flickers between what Natasha is doing, and the area. She's, by this time, put her containment shield in place, but were this real life, she could be forced to chose between that or blasting someone. And having seen some of the evaluations already, Skye wouldn't put it past May to force the agents to have to chose between a rock and a hard place.

"Talk me through what you're doing," Skye nods to Nat, because it all looks like a rather less organized inside of a server to her - which is both helpful and not helfpul as far as these things go. It gives the young woman a place to wrap her head around to start thinking in terms of how to approach it - things like you don't go in willy nilly poking at wires, or tucking at connections or other bits at risk of breaking them, or in this case, setting off the bomb. It also makes Skye more than a little aware of how complicated the thing could possibly be, and how little she knows about some of the particular aspects of other Agent's jobs.

Not for the first time, Skye is appreciative of the skills of others and how SHIELD works as both individuals and a gestalt.

"Hey, don't knock the frou-frou. Besides, that's a personal joke between Hotsh-- Clint and I." She's not sure if she and Nat are up to pet names for Barton yet or not in their relationship with one another. "And you know what skillset. You're damned good at hacking, but I can still teach you a few things there. Just unless you've suddenly undergone an Inhuman change nobody told me about, nothing I can do about.. you know."

She's not yet talked frankly about who and what she is with many outside the small circle of close friends. This here is an overture.

"And he charmed me." Lips pursing in remembered amusement. "Besides, you set us up. You can't still be angry with me?"

Melinda May has posed:
With Natasha's care and steady hands, the casing with the analog clock on it is removed from the bomb casing, revealing a complete rat's nest of wires. And every bit of it is green. One of those green pieces of wire was looped around the screw holding the casing cover in place.

Just barely visible under the rat's nest of wires are some other electronic components, though clearly all of older make: capacitors that look like miniature AA batteries, resistors with different colored stripes on them, even a few diodes and the like. Almost completely obscured by the wires is another timer, this one a very simple digital readout. And it's about thirty seconds closer to the time limit than the analog clock.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
"Pretty sure I did not set you up. You two were constantly chattering and harassing like an old married couple. I just pointed it out," Natasha corrects the young woman as she manages to get that covering off. "As for the beer, I will knock it until my dying day. I have no idea how you drink that stuff."

Staring at the mass of green on green on green, Natasha looks over at May. "You are evil. I knew I liked you for a reason." Then she gets back to the task at hand.

"Skye, you are looking for the wires that connect the timer to the explosive itself. But there are almost always false leads, dummy wires. There are also traps more often then not. I'm surprised there isn't a ..." She smiles as she moves a wire and spots the tiny glimpse. "Mercury switch. Trigger that, it all goes up anyway." She begins the tedious task of tracing wires then pulls out that scanner again, checking a bit of detail within before she reaches for a pair of scissors amongst the many items provided.

Quake has posed:
"I have no clue either," Skye admits. The beer was /horrible/ - but it was also the epitomy and representation of her relationship with Clint. All the messed up things shouldn't have worked out but somehow they did relationship that had spread from the pair to an ever growing circle of intimates at SHIELD. "Besides, we can guarantee at any gathering that nobody else will drink our beer. You can't buy safety like that."

Truth. Nothing but truth.

However, they also had a mission here, and test or not, it still required seriousness. "Mercury switch? Isn't mercury poison?" She was sure that was the case. "Why.. ah. Let me guess, titchy switch. Who thinks of this shit anyway?"

She's still holding the shield, and while she hasn't shown any outward signs of the stress of it, inwardly, she can feel it itching along the bones of her forearms - the entire reason she had those custom made gloves of hers. The test, however mundane her part *seemed* to be, was also an excellent gauge of where Skye was in limits on her abilities. "So, in other words, it's like a maze, meant to delay you as much as anything. Gotcha. Take too long identifying what you're looking at, or touch the wrong thing, boom. Right. And I'm guessing we don't have time for wires 101, but that's a start."

Melinda May has posed:
May merely nods in response to Natasha's comment aimed at her. She's fully aware of exactly how ridiculous that test bomb is.

The rat's nest of wires is exactly that, a tangle. There are even a few points where two wires are linked in X or T junctions, just to make it more of a mess. Underneath it all, though, is that digital timer, ticking down neatly with no less than eight wires soldered to connection points around it, and six wires leading out of the casing to the plastic box 'explosive'. There are also still four wires leading otu of the casing to the analog clock set into the lid.

Watching Natasha navigate the mess inside the bomb casing, her eyes narrow a tiny bit for the briefest moment, and then she's watching Skye as the younger agent maintains the protective shield. She also seemingly idly touches one ear and murmurs something under her breath.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
Natasha frowns a moment as she murmurs. "What the hell was that?" Then she shakes her head and goes back to looking at the mess inside the box.

The instructor type voice returns as she addresses Skye. "Usually the timer on the outside is false but it may still be a backup to the other one. If you look here," she points at the digital readout that is much closer to the end of its countdown than the analog one. "This is the main timer. Set faster than the other so that we hopefully will be thinking we have extra time when it goes off. It's a sneaky thing to do but it's common as well."

"Ah! I see." Where that is coming from, who knows. Natasha isn't generally one to talk to herself but it seems to be par for the course today. And suddenly, she knows just what she is doing.

It takes a series of cutting twelve wires in a very precise order with just the right amount of time between cuts. One second here, four there, three then back to one. The longest is a wait of sixteen long seconds before she can cut the next wire. The green one. Yes, that green one. No, not the other green one next to it. She places the scissors around it and starts to cut when she stops and goes very still. Slowly she withdraws the scissors then moves to the other green one.

Suddenly , it's over. Natasha sets aside the scissors and looks at the two timers which have both stopped on their respective times. It's a new record for her on defusing the bomb, as her records will attest. She must've been practicing in anticipation of May throwing this at her. Or something.

Quake has posed:
Skye, of course, is getting a bit more of the scenario than someone else might, given her senstive hearing. It's an edge, but not a perfect one. Like Natasha's talking to herself - Skye doesn't seem to consider that confusing. And more importantly, while the subtle touch of finger to ear isn't noticed, the low murmurs from Agent May aren't missed. What /exactly/ it means might be up in the air, but the gist of it is clear.

The young woman goes from listening to Nat's explanations, to a suddenly voice, "Incoming!" while she looks about to the obvious points of entry and possible venues of outside attack, because that's the most logical progression from May's murmur. Skye prepared to drop the shild and send out a directed blast, missing in her seeking out the possible incoming dangers, that Natasha believes the bomb to be difused.

Melinda May has posed:
Skye's snap assessment turns out to be correct. Natasha VERY tidily dismantled the simulated bomb, but almost at the same moment the younger woman calls out, the thing goes off anyway.

*FWOOMP*

The entirety of the space inside Skye's shield is obscured, filled with airborne swirls of iridescent pink glitter that takes a surprisingly long time to settle to every surface inside the shield.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
The warning from Skye has Natasha turning, raising her arms as she prepares to fire her Widow's Bites at anyone entering, covering the opposite exit from the one Skye has covered. She should've know that May had an ace in the hole should they succeed.

If only she knew what sort of ace really, she would've had a very different reaction.

The bomb goes off. The world outside disappears into a mist of super fine iridescent pink glitter, filling the space around her and forcing her to close her eyes lest she get the stuff in them. She lowers her head and tries, in vain, to protect herself.

There is no protection. It's too late. She's been glittered!

Quake has posed:
So not the incoming Skye expected. /Had/ she expected that, the shield would have been dropped and she'd have directed her powers away from the two women, and neither would be walking glitter factories for the next millenia - because everyone knows that stuff never goes away.

As it is, the glitter is ever so neatly, and evilly, contained within Skye's protective shield - just as you'd want an actual bomb's blast to be, and more than neatly demonstrates what happens if you fail to stop the explosion in time.

"I'm pretty sure this is not the way to congratulate us for succeeding," Skye says dryly after some of the glitter settles. Some. For the moment it's still snowglobe central going on, the last of the glitter doing a peaceful and graceful float to the ground.

For the sake of everyone involved, or watching, Skye tries to hold the shield as long as possible, but evntually, she has to let it go - whatever glitter is still airborne gets sucked by the equalization of pressures and floats to hapless nearby victims. Skye rubbing at her wrists and wincing.

She'd managed longer than she expected, but it wasn't without some cost.

Melinda May has posed:
May's more than far enough away to avoid the few drifts released by Skye dropping her shield. "Romanova, next time declare the person on your comms as a resource. Both of you, take fifteen to clean up, then come back for your next tests." With that, May turns and walks away from the scene of glittery carnage.

"Operations, get Stark on the line," she says as she heads for the exit.

Quake has posed:
((For those who are interested in such things, Tony Stark's off-camera consultation with Natasha on bomb difusing can be found at: https://www.unitedheroesmush.com/scene/scene.php?id=7268 ))

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
"Busted," Natasha mutters, shaking her head and sending a spray of glitter out in every direction around her. She flaps at her arms and but she knows it is useless. "I thought we were supposed to use everything at our disposal for the test," she proclaims, trying a bit too hard to play innocent. They know she can play it perfectly if she wants to, she simply is choosing not to be perfect.

Technically, she didn't cheat. She was told to report in her usual working uniform and she did. It just happens to include an Avengers communicator and thus, she had tapped into that resource.

There was going to be hell to pay but it had been worth it for those few seconds when she had beaten the bomb. Right before it exploded all over them.

Quake has posed:
Skye shrugs as Nat mutters 'busted' - she'd known who was on the other end of the line, though she'd not put much effort into eavesdropping per se given the number of other things she was concentrating on. That, and she'd actually expected an outside attack from May, so much of her focus had been on listening for *that*..

"Likely should have declared," says she who hadn't met a rule she couldn't flaunt, and hadn't. "Point taken, though."

Right now, though, they had to clean up and ready for their next eval. "Think we're a team on this next, too?" Still rubbing at her wrists. "And I can't see a shower helping this."

She could try something to help.. "Mind if I experiment?" Skye getting a suddenly amused look on her face. "If it works, everyone is going to be unhappy." Voice pitched, of course, for Nat and Nat alone.

Melinda May has posed:
May has disappeared out the door, so whatever Skye plans to do she's not here to either approve or complain about.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
"Go right ahead. Not sure I could be in any more trouble," Natasha murmurs as she tries again to brush off some glitter.

Quake has posed:
"You'd be surprised," Skye says, still with that self-same grin plastered on her face.

It's not immediately evident to those in the room watching what she intends, but once they catch on, it's too late to escape her plans. Her idea is both helpful and evil in turns.

Helpful in that at the very least she's going to get the worst of the glitter off of herself and Nat (all, if she's lucky, but she's not counting on that). Evil in that everyone, and everything else, in the room is going to share a like fate: pink discoball glitterfest for all!

With a look of concentration on her face, and hands balled into fists at her sides, Skye sends a blast of vibrations centred from herself and Nat (mostly herself) outwards, lifting glitter from her and Nat's bodies and the immediate area, and forcing it away from them much the way pressurized air cleans a keyboard.

Who's laughing now?