8990/7th Seal: Book 1, 3

7th Seal: Book 1, 3
Date of Scene:	08 December 2021
Location:	W.A.N.D: Triskelion
Synopsis:	The Medallion of St. Maurice has a message. It may not be the one Jon shares.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Mary Jane Watson, Jonathan Sims, Jemma Simmons, Martin Blackwood

---

Jane Foster has posed:
02.12.21, about 0115 hours. W.A.N.D. Vault 12. Subfloor 2B.

The Triskelion by night never ceases to thrum with activity. Offices in China, India, Africa, and Southeast Asia come online to report the goings on of the world's great megapolises on the other side of Greenwich. Jakarta, Mumbai, Tehran, and Shanghai bridle with effervescent activity. Agents speaking Korean, Hindi, Farsi, and Swahili swing into action in the nerve center for SHIELD's night-time world in New York.

Few analysts, translators or IT operators know what happens in the subfloor vaults beneath W.A.N.D.'s offices. W.A.N.D. doesn't even get the good offices. Confined to their corner like S.W.O.R.D. is to the unwanted floors near the smelly compressors (get them used to space, right?), the initial concern over the fire alarm barely registers beyond security. A few phones bleat, the modern equivalent of a phone tree or pagers, but nothing to give cause for alarm. Simple lockdown procedures on the sealed vaults mean stripping oxygen from the area and using that lovely fire suppressant foam last encountered on the Zim Harwich freighter in Boston Harbour.

Except the suppressant doesn't stop the fire. Neither does it make the horrible smell any better. So here they are, three hours later, with the rotten patina of burnt spice and lutefisk, animalistic musk, and something that's disturbingly like burnt human -- the better to be unmistakeable -- emanating from the vault. At least the fire is out, having not spread beyond the compartment where one of those pesky items is stored. The sort that SHIELD collects, tosses aside, and says 'No one else use that' about? That's one of them.

They'll take who they can get at this hour. Pandora's out, Kara Lynn has other work, no telling where Jane is (it's complicated), and bam: trouble.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Mary Jane's actually been here at the Triskelion catching up. She's spent the last several months doing all kinds of grunt-work in the field, but she literally just earlier got out of a meeting where she officially got promoted. So, in her bright shiny new jumpsuit, she makes her way down towards the area, ready to be a pair of hands, or whatever she can do to help prove her worth.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon was aware that /something/ was going on, but returning to the Triskelion after the whole business in Rockefeller Plaza he first grabbed his husband and took him for a walk in the snow. Having caught him up on the whole business with the 'Spear of Destiny' and Sam Wilson's worries, they've finally noticed the alarm and headed back inside to check on W.A.N.D. and whatever's making that god-awful smell.

    He can't See the glow until he's in the room, of course, so he'll have to be /in the room/ before he can comment on that, but he wrinkles his nose. "Good lord... /what/ is even /in/ there?" He sighs and goes ahead and makes sure his Sight's /all/ the way open. Prays it won't blind him.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
There are some benefits of living in the Triskelion.

No traffic for your commute, for one. Access to state-of-the-art recreation facilities, none of the hassle of actually seeing the sun, all the free wifi you could possibly want. It really is rather handy.

About the one thing that isn't the best is that no matter where you are, someone can find you. And, really...at any hour. Such is the case of one Doctor Jemma Simmons. Apparently, her 'little' tracking application, designed to identify and locate unusual energy signatures, caused a server to, well, basically implode. A sudden spike...and so much tracking information that the server was treated to unspeakable torment.

Oh....when Daisy finds out....

So, regardless of how early it is, Jemma is awake. Sifting through the information salvageable...the incident places it square in WAND's territory. And...since there was a fire. Yeah....pretty sure there is something weird going on in WAND.

Great. Jemma just loves going to WAND. Which means she doesn't. Things that she cannot explain with science make her uncomfortable.

As Jemma walks for the WAND division, it looks like it is going to be a rather uncomfortable early morning for her.

Martin Blackwood has posed:
    Martin had spent the evening shift reading over what he could about this item (descreetly of course, he's not going to let random EMTs see SHIELD documents.) So after the walk with Jon he was ready to look into the item in question. What was in the box was above his paygrade but the box itself was documented well enough.

    He retrieved the documents he managed to get ahold of and flips through them as he follows along behind Jon.

    "Fifteen hundred degrees *Celcius* is just... there are military grade weapons that don't even hit that temperature and this thing simply... spontaneously combusted" he mutters, consternation on his face. Entering the main room of WAND makes him stop in his tracks. It's not the smell. There's a *feeling* in the air; something that immediately sets him on edge. "Umm... Jon..." he says, not going much further than the threshold. "Something is... *watching* us. I don't know what, but it wasn't until we entered..." he mutters softly. This whole new range of sensation was different for him and still set his teeth on edge when it reared up. But he's stopped ignoring it... especially since Nilaa.

Jane Foster has posed:
Not just anyone gets into W.A.N.D.'s vaults, else they wouldn't see the end of Tony Stark mucking around in there. Centuries of people fearful of magic or misusing powerful objects gives good reason to lock things up or conceal their presence behind dull notices like 'storage' and 'archival filing records, NE Quadrant, Kenya, 2000-2009.'

The smells emanating from the subbasement, though, put the idea of hiding to the test. They very well command attention, testing the constitution of a frost troll in their bewildering strength. Even zookeepers might be dry-heaving if they breathe through their noses. Forcing a door open isn't so much an act of lockpicking as waving badges, ocular scans, and overrides that senior status in Jemma's hands helps to push along. Then come the metallic thunks audible to all, the weird wavering of a suppressing ward probably left by a halfway talented mage that other mystics can feel, and the gurgling noise of air pushed through the outer barrier.

A lot of smoldering wreckage occupies the niche where a lead box used to be. There also used to be a steel panel around that, sort of like a helpful banker's box or a morgue. Except the whole containment unit is a puddle still hardening into semi-solid form, while an imprecise round shape burns like a coal in the middle of it all. The fire alarm is technically off because the spontaneous combustion either murdered the sensor, or someone overrode it. Either way, the small but distinct open hole melted by said coin reveals where it sits in the vault. Inconspicuous relics? Wrong department.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
    Mary Jane has learned a lot about the chain of command in the last year. And since both Agent Simmons and Agent Blackwood outrank her, she's going to defer in that direction. The redhead looks over to the two more senior agents, and asks simply "Is there anything I can do to assist?"

    Her body language is showing her nervousness. She hasn't been /involved/ in things for almost a year, except for a general day-to-day. And it's not often something burns a hole through part of the Triskelion.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
"Oh, Agent Watson. How pleasant to see you..."

That is true pleasure in Jemma's voice. She has interacted with Mary Jane before, of that it is apparent. "It would seem that our little bauble we dealt with a year ago may be the cause for our sudden warm front in the bowels of WAND here." Yes, Jemma came with the jokes. And...she did her research.

The nose wrinkles in disgust at the smell of burning. No...of near plasmic levels of heat. Rather worse than burnt hair. There might have been delays...but yes, the power of the senior agent is palpable. That...and Jemma has history with some of the objects in storage here. Even if she doesn't want to admit it. And...it is that history that opens doors as fast, if not faster, than flashing a fancy piece of laminated plastic.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon follows along with the senior agents, nodding respectfully to both Jemma and Mary Jane. He reaches out to put a hand on Martin's arm when he stops. "Close your eyes. Focus on that sensation and see where it leads you." Martin may outrank him, but Jon has a /lot/ more experience with sensing mystical things. His shoulders shift and he frowns, peering over his shoulder a bit.

    Then Jemma gets the doors open and he blanches, puts a hand up to shield his eyes. "What... /happened/ here? Agent... Simmons, right?" He glances at Jemma as if he's trying to see her past looking at, well, the sun. "What was in this vault?" His tone is respectful, but more than a little tense.

Martin Blackwood has posed:
    Martin nods at Jon's instruction and tries to focus on what he is feeling. "It's... protective... like... a sentinel..." He holds up his hand at the light coming from the object in the vault, shielding his eyes with the documents about the vault and it's box itself. "And it's coming from that..." he says gesturing with his free hand. "Whatever it is... it's aware of us."

    He doesn't want to go closer, but he knows that if they can approach it Jon's going to regardless of the danger and he will not allow his husband to be hurt by some unseen glowing miniature guardian if he can help it. He takes another step in, haltingly, and gives a nod to Jemma and Mary Jane. "Simmons, Watson..." he's familiar with the former more than the latter, if only on a reputation basis. He tries to steady his tone as he addresses the Senior Agent, and manages but only, "Containment is probably a moot point at this stage but... what have you tried?"

Jane Foster has posed:
The vault is one of many, similarly designed with heavily fortified walls and a plain poured concrete floor. A ring of salt runs along the margins where floors and walls meet, built in behind protective heat-treated glass. Not necessarily attractive, these small benefits help ground the auras of individuals and objects. Decent acoustics happen to be a side benefit.

The coin is hot, that much needs no skill to discern. Somehow it has not melted, though everything around it has to some degree. Without magical assistance, the slightly tarnished, silver coin is just that: no incinerating glow, no evidence of reaching unfathomably hot temperatures. An antiquated figure is scored onto the face, proof of originating from an era when coinage was hardly standardized to any great standard. The opposing side obviously remains out of sight as the coin lies there. Liquid metal surrounds it, the stone shelf beneath absolutely blackened and filthy. Definitely the source of the smell lies in the puddles, not the coin.

To the Sight? It glows that steady, intense shade that does not waver. Coming too close produces no deviation except the aura clearly originates straight from the coin, not the remains of the box or protective case.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
    "This thing reacted to the presence of magic." Mary Jane comments, sharing that information to anyone who might not be as up to speed on the records. "But what could possibly be making it go off on this kind of scale? I mean Doctor Strange lives in this city and it hasn't done this before." The redhead moves up more closely, since no one's told her not to, carefully looking over towards the coin. Thankfully it's not a million-watt light to someone who doesn't see magic.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
What as Jemma done?

She's opened doors. And....that is about it. But she doesn't tell Martin that. In fact, she doesn't say much to him at first. She does, however, lift her hand to her face, partly to deal with the smell...and also to hide the slight smile as Martin struggles with addressing Jemma. It's so cute!

Right...the business at hand. "I have not done much, to be frightfully honest. I have just arrived myself." A pause, as she nods over towards the molten chaos...and the coin just sitting there. "What I can tell you is that the particular item in question is very reactive to certain energy wavelengths that only certain objects are actually known to produce. I had developed a tracking application, using similar harmonics, to locate an item initially a year ago...but has been used for other purposes since. It was this tracker application that just recently crashed an entire server."

Yes....Jemma indirectly took out a server. Daisy is so going to have words with her.

Continuing on, Jemma regards an inventory of what is supposed to be in the storage space. "The object has been known to react rather violently with objects from the Met last year. A stone font and a lance. If the stories are to be believed, the Holy Grail and the Lance of Longinus. It was instructed that the artifacts, which were involved in a Nazi plot, were to be kept as far apart from each other as possible."

The brown eyes continue to scan through the inventory manifest. "I suspect that someone made a very simple and extremely serious mistake. I am looking to see if that was the case."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon's hand darts out as Mary Jane moves closer. "Don't! It's... it's /glowing/ magically, /incredibly/ brightly. Like a million watt torch." His badge may say 'Recruit' but he /is/ WAND, and he speaks with surety. Then blinks over at Martin. He can... /See/ it? That's... a development.

    He takes in a long breath as Jemma explains what was in here. Lets it out, slowly. "So, ahh. The... Lance of Longinus might be back in play," he says quietly. "The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lit up without any electricity. There was an aura of... /agape/ type love in the whole plaza afterward. Agent Wilson said it felt the same as... as back when he held the Lance."

    He swallows. This is a /foolish/ idea. But despite his warning to Mary Jane, he takes a step into the room and focuses on the coin, reaches out his right hand. Not to touch it--it's /far/ too hot for that--but to... get the energy from it, if he can. Pull a statement off of it.

Martin Blackwood has posed:
    Martin blanches at the names being tossed around. That the Lance of Longinus (Spear of Destiny... pwah... seriously, the Nazi's were utter twats) was back in play was bad enough. That the Holy Grail *of all things* was also around didn't make him feel any better. He swallows and nods to the room in question.

    "Jon... be cafeful" he says, shakily. "It's..." He lets out a breath. "It's not a hard stretch to think there might be twenty-nine more out in circulation..." God, he hopes not. He *seriously* hopes not. "Silver coin. Roman face on it."

    He addresses Watson and Simmons. "Specific wavelengths might as well just be tagged as 'Holy' given the associations involved." He wasn't sure what a Holy artifact would do to the Archivist, but he was damned well going to use extreme caution and give Jon everything he could in prep. "And... how advanced can you make this tracking application? I mean, I would argue for golbal sweeps, but people tend to get their knickers in a twist with that sort of thing, even with it comes to global safety."

Jane Foster has posed:
Resources pulled by Jemma's tablet search produce a suite of useful hits. Last time the coin was installed came via recommendation of one Agent Whitman, SHIELD, rank 2 (provisional 3: WAND) after the events at Cloisters. Seals set and employed at order of Director Kara Lynn Palamas in September 2020 means practically no activity whatsoever, aside from the occasion scan by some poor vault tech asked to make sure no man-eating horrors or irradiated intern craving Nuka Cola took up residence. The last update? 30 November, confirmation for a [redacted] hearing with [See Deputy Director Hill or higher] for [really, there's nothing here]. A review of the vault with correct access checks took all of 15 minutes. One day later, it's setting fires. Various analyses performed visually, scanned or checked it's intact, all hold up. Really, the thing is inert down to its temperature at a steady 22'C until it decided to be a coin-blowtorch.

---

No evidence for the Lance of Longinus or Holy Grail in the vicinity lurk, for Mary Jane and Jemma have the chops to identify the mundane form of the latter. Other items in storage, concealed behind their stone-and-cement walls, are likewise inert. Their voices carry over the polished surfaces, a dull hymnal. If MJ touches it, that's another thing.

His right hand moves and Jon very well feels a ripple of movement through the air around him. Burning points of resentment, boundless devotion, and that most human element of hope twining around despair stab through him tight and fast as an adder striking from the desert sands. Light doesn't begin to express the sensation, the blazing pale-yellow hue found at midday in the scrublands where pitiless salt flats and scrub cannot offer more than meagre shade to hide. Grains of sand spill through the wounds of a touch where a cut should be, pounded through the wrist, and in the humming lament of the sand, the words...

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
    Mary Jane is right up there near the others. Fate has brought her near this once before, and now it's brought her near it again. and while the others are checking the magic, memories of the spear are in her head. She bites her lip a bit, worrying at it as she considers. "Maybe...maybe it's trying to get our attention."

    And then, in what may or may not end up to be a spectacularly bad idea, she reaches out her hand to the coin, lightly touching it with her fingertips.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "Agent Simmons... what was the precise time this, ahh, meltdown happened? The server crash? I'm wondering if it lines up with the tree"I figured," Jon says softly to Martin. He swallows, takes another step closer. He has to know. It's always like this. He doesn't want to know, but he /has/ to.

    And then Mary Jane touches the coin.

    The Archivist's eyes glow, yellow-orange, and he speaks in a voice not his own. Deep, sonorous, speaking in Babylonian:
"At that time, Michael shall arise,
And the great prince who stands watch on behalf of the people,
And a time of trouble will come like there has never been since nations began until that time.
Many of those who are sleeping in the dust of the earth will awaken-
some to life everlasting,
and some to disgrace and everlasting contempt.
Those who manifest wisdom will shine like the radiant expanse of heaven,
And those who turn..."

    The voice switches to vulgar Latin, repeats the incantation in Greek in a higher pitched voice:
"...and is that not the point? All these fabricated truths wrapped around you, swaddling you in wool, leaving you deaf and dumb supplicants before broken walls. How long are you willing to remain on your knees? These are the shackles that keep you ignorant--"

    Latin and then Greek again:
"--break the shackles, I swear it. I call you into my heart, my body, my mind, my soul! Arise through the pathways of my flesh to merge and conjoin your eternal power with the mortal dirt of the abandoned garden--"

    And then suddenly he's speaking English, a mid-Atlantic accent: "--Is it true, then, that you believe yourself to be Major Hans Schneider? I find it hard to accept that fact when we have irrefutable evidence for his demise in 1945--"
    Deeper, a German accent now, still English: "--Of course I am. You may argue with the fact all you want. Call yourself the King of England, a pauper, a baker, it does not change the facts. My name is Hans Schneider--"

    Then a Southern accent: "--confirmed every fact we've been able to hold up against what the 2nd Armored claimed before Zhukov and Malinovsky ordered it all burned--"

    Then Aramaic, a voice that should not come from a human throat, soul-scraping and terrible:
"What will ye give me, and I will deliver unto you?
What can you give?
For you will give, and give, and give until--"

    Hebrew, just as impossible: "Behold. I am coming."

    Lastly, in English: "--and so was it written in the Book of--"

    He stumbles back, would probably fall over if Martin weren't there to catch him. "Oh gods," he whispers. "Oh, /gods/. This is bad, this is /bad/. Can you hear it? The wind on the sand, the pounding of nails? Can you see the light, the sun at noon over the salt flats...?"

Martin Blackwood has posed:
    While the myriad voices (most of which Martin didn't even understand) coming from Jon wasn't what Martin expected... it wasn't entirely out of the question of possibilities that could come from taking a statement from a coin of such significance. He holds Jon upright as well as he can, Jon has a good fifteen pounds on him so, it's more a stabilizing hold than anything else.

    "I only caught the end of the statement... the English and Hebrew bits. The rest was..." He shakes his head. He could guess who was saying the Hebrew parts well enough. He looks at the coin and ask Jon directly, "How do we fix it, Jon?" Focus the Archivist on the solution, not dwelling on the problem... that way lies madness.

Jane Foster has posed:
Jemma performs her research and Martin supports a man speaking in tongues, some of which might actually be his own. When Mary Jane touches the coin, hopefully avoiding the leaden slag and steel not quite cooled, it ironically isn't that hot. Warm to the touch, a silver piece that boasts irregular sides rather than being a perfect circle. The chit has some weight to it, as ancient coins often do, not being especially large.

A figure wearing a cloak secured off his side rises in battered relief above the edges, superimposed against an equilateral cross. The embellishment is hardly a masterpiece. It has a bit of a slippery finish, worn in places.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
    Mary Jane closes her eyes a moment as she touches the coin...then slowly opens one, and peeks about. No explosion. No fire. No weirdness. Which for her, is weird in and of itself. Perhaps slightly anticlimatic. Martin seems to have Jon well in hand, so she very carefully picks the coin up. Leaving it in the middle of the ruined holder seems like a bad idea.

    She turns to look at Jon and Martin, and says "I'm fairly certain that one of you ought to have this?" Her SHIELD strengths lie mostly in beating people up, not ancient magical artifacts.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "/Fix/ it?!" Jon pulls himself up so he's standing mostly on his own, just needing minor support from Martin. "How should /I/ bloody well know how to /fix it/?! This is /your/ God Martin, not mine!" He takes a slow breath in, lets it out again. Get yourself under control, Agent Sims.

    "Sorry. I... sorry. That was... a lot. Resentment, hope, devotion... light and sand in the desert..." He shakes his head, pulls off his glasses and rubs at his eyes. "There's something going on, and we're going to need to tell Wilson and the Chief, I think. And... if I take it, I'll just put it in the Archive, which amounts to another SHIELD vault, which... it was already in."

Martin Blackwood has posed:
    Martin winces at the mention of it being *his* God. "I'm am well aware of Elohim's part in all this..." he says and he only adds a stabilizing hand on Jon's arm. "Prophet or no, Jesus was an important figure who martyred himself for the cause of the Jews." He sighs and eyes the coin being offered by Watson.

    He rubs his forefinger and thumb together for a moment and then withdraws something from his pocket. "Put it in here" he says, withdrawing a white leather glove with some sort of patern on the palm and back of it. "I know the sigils won't contain it any more than the box did... but... I don't want to touch it. Not directly." He looks at Jon sympathetically. "And if SHIELD's vault couldn't contain it, I doubt the Archive will do any better." He licks his lips. "I can figure something out to do with it..."

Jane Foster has posed:
The cameras monitoring the vault or at least outside the vault capture the conversation. Jemma, too, is in proximity to make decisions as needed. All said and done, the old silver coin doing no harm to anything presently rests in MJ's hand being slightly warm. St. Maurice remains a lonely fixture on the one side, the other stamped by some dead person from long ago. As far as evil or scary artifacts go, this likely ranks as not very troublesome. If only.

"Uhhh." Some poor guard in the hall walks up slowly to avoid spooking anyone. "You doing okay in there? Do I need to get on the horn or bring you a bandaid or anything?" He's thoughtful! Training says no scaring the agents and certainly not implying they need to go to the cafeteria. "We got a fresh pot of coffee out here if you need something. And those fancy blue gloves..."

Oh yes, someone's gonna have a field day about gloves. Like the glove Martin has.

The coin sticks to MJ. Simple as that.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
    Mary Jane nods, and moves to drop the coin in Martin's gloved hand. Annnnd....nope. Wait, what? She frowns, and shakes her fingers a couple times, trying to get the coin to drop on the glove. Nope. She looks a little annoyed, a little upset, and shakes her hand more.

    Finally, she lets out a litany of cursing in...well, what the hell IS she speaking? She grabs the coin with her other hand, trying to pull it free, spitting out another vehement comment, before looking utterly disgusted as she curls her hand into a fist, coin in it.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon watches this, expression bland. Raises his eyebrows. "I wouldn't bother, Agent Watson," he says, tone as bland as his expression. "Clearly it's yours now, for whatever that's worth."

    A pause, and then, "So. What do /you/ know about the Lance of Longinus? Because I think you just got drafted into this whole business."