Tuesday, 2 August 2022

Ned Leeds is hungover (fiction) - Aug 2

 ...Will be attempting something different for August - I'll be posting fiction here as well! Here's one piece:

Ned Leeds woke-up after the S.H.I.E.L.D. New Year party. His brain hurt.

With a truly herculean effort, Ned Leeds tried to put his scattered thoughts – and brain cells – together. They still hurt, but now he vaguely remembered that he – and other people – had been battling a giant three-headed rat that got conjured… probably not by him, and what’d happened next?..

“You fainted from mental exhaustion – not that the rest of us were much better,” came the reply from a young woman of approximately Ned’s age from the next bunk over. “Hi, by the way – I’m Kora Johnson!”

“Johnson, Johnson – why does that sound familiar-?”

“Because Daisy Johnson – or Quake – is my sister?” Kora did not sound too happy in talking about her sibling.

“…Okay,” Ned thought some more. “You’re the girl in the top, thong, and sheer pants from the last night, right?”

“Absolutely!” Kora beamed very, very happily at him. “You remembered!”

“…Yes, yes I did,” Ned winced. “I mean, I do. I remember the rat-“

“That sneaked-up through a tear in reality after Wong and Coulson got into an argument over an old orgy in Las Vegas-“

Ned blinked and looked around. “Hangover?” asked an S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that Ned had never known before, while handing a glass of ‘hangover cure’ to him.

“Yes please,” Ned said gratefully, as he downed the entire glass in one swig, and things began to zoom back into focus almost straightaway; next to him, Ned could see Kora have the same experience.

“Hey, Daisy,” the younger Johnson sister said sourly; “did you take my sheer pants?”

“No, May did-“

“Ah, that’s ok then-“

“…I really hate you sometimes-“

“Did the three-headed rat bite you-?”

“No, we had to deal with the FitzSimmons’ and their time-travelling machine, as well as their counterparts from both the past and the future,” Daisy’s companion said cheerfully… before Daisy grabbed him by the collar and dragged him away.

“…What?” Ned just blinked.

“Oh, they’re just trying to figure out what their relationship is,” someone else replied from behind him and Kora. Ned turned around and blinked.

“Do I know you or do I not know you?” he asked the Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, aka Peter Parker. 

“Eh, it’s hard to say, so I will just comment that while Dr. Strange’s heart is in the right place, he’s still an unreliable bastard,” Peter replied in the same tone of voice – MJ had shared her stash of weed with him, and it showed – literally, since MJ was sharing it with Ned and Kora now as well.

“No, I’m not!” the sorcerer in question snapped, as he briefly looked into the infirmary. “Also, Ned – nice work with Clea.”

“Who?” Ned blinked

“The extra-dimensional witch-queen who turned herself into a multiheaded rat-monster, only to be turned into a field of tulips by you,” Dr. Strange replied brightly.

“…I was going for begonias instead, but I was that stinking drunk by then,” Ned confessed.

“…I’ll be going now,” Dr. Strange spoke, after a pause that was just a bit too long, and that was exactly what he did, leaving the four young adults by themselves for a change.

“So, what do we do now?” Ned asked no one in particular, (while secretly wondering if he and Kora really did join forces to turn the treacherous Clea into a bunch of flowers, among other thoughts of his). 

“I don’t know – enjoy the next few weeks together?” Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, (see above), replied just as brightly, and this was what they did.

End

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