Panicking

Daisy began to move towards the froze-over table, only to falter; she looked down. She'd been standing on a thin patch of snow, in order to get close enough to the device to photo it, but the ice had spread. She could feel it, now that she wasn't just panicking, a cool, icy grip around the soles of her boots. She tugged vainly on them.

That was just what she needed now. Her shoes were frozen to the floor. Grimacing, she braced herself with a hand on the shelves, trying to get as much **** as she could, and pulled.

The best she did was got her foot loose, and almost lose her balance. She quickly gave up on that plan; the last thing she needed was to jostle more of the artifacts to life.

Carefully, Daisy stepped back. The ice was already creeping further up her boots. The uppermost, thin parts of it cracked, but the base over her foot was solid; the best she could do was slip her foot out of her shoe. First one, then the other, and barefoot she stumbled back on the floor. Even the bits that weren't frozen were cold.

What had Coulson said? Right - extra-cautiously, Daisy lifted the machine up, moving it out of the aisle to point down the open space that joined all the paths, where its freezing emanations wouldn't hit anything of importance. Dancing carefully, gasping, and hugging the machine to her side under one arm, she crossed the patch of snow to put it down, out of the way. Glad, she stepped back from it; the metal had been ice-cold against her skin.

Then she took a running jump to clear the streak of ice. She didn't want to walk over that with her shoes frozen over.

Okay. Half hour for all that to thaw. Daisy eyed it doubtfully; the ice must have been going for a while. A small mountain covered the table.

Tentatively, Daisy approached it from the side, taking the best angle to avoid needing to walk over any of it. Okay, without the machine pointing at it, it ought to be just normal ice. So...

Gasping, she plunged her hand into it. Cold. She'd expected cold; still, she grimaced, trying to see if she could pull anything out.

The surface inch of it was snow. It crumbled under her fingers easily, but below that was solid ice, and it might as well have been iron for how much it yielded to her. Hissing, Daisy pulled her hand out, shaking off droplets of meltwater before wiping it down on her stomach, shaking her hand still to return circulation to her fingers.

Not ideal. Okay.

Maybe she should just stick her face in it? It certainly felt like her cheeks were burning enough to melt through anything. Though maybe it would be better to leave that for a last resort.

She reached into her back, and took out one of the scanners, eyeing it uncertainly. They were meant to be used in all conditions, including rain and snow, so it shouldn't damage it.

Grunting, Daisy whacked the table-sized block of ice with a scanner. It didn't make a dent. Daisy swallowed, and tried again, a bit more frantically.

Ice was way more solid than it had any right to be. Maybe she just had to wait for it to thaw a bit more?

She returned the scanner to her pouch. Her panties, still in the bag, barely concerned to her - a bigger priority was trying to get at her actual clothes. If she got a cold, so be it, her mind was laser-focused just then. And also very much not thinking straight.

Okay. Think Daisy: you're in a warehouse full of SHIELD tech and artifacts, it's probably not safe to quake anything in her, but there has to be something.

She took off the pouch, putting it a careful distance away from the ice, and very much away from where the ice-machine was facing, and then sprinted as fast as she could without that rattling against her chest. The one concession she made was, again, an arm crossed over her breasts to avoid uncomfortable bouncing.

Completely naked in a SHIELD safehouse. And Simmons less than half an hour away?

There was an open crate somewhere. As soon as she tracked it down, she ran back with the lid, vainly trying to brute-**** her way through the ice. It was still far too solid to break; she left the wooden lid nearby in case it would be any easier when the ice had thawed.

For a moment, she stepped back, fidgeting on the spot, arms held uncertainly to her sides. There had to be something.

There was a lot of stuff in here, she just wasn't sure she wanted to risk using any of it; one thing definitely caused fire, she'd seen its like before, but she was just as likely to burn up her clothes as the ice. And using her powers or finding a firearm would just caused chaos, and given that the last accidental machine activation had caused all of this, that definitely felt like an option it was better to avoid.

Which left, what? Hope the last crew had left a hammer or chainsaw?

Nervously, she pressed her earpiece.

"Out of curiosity, any timescale on when Simmons gets here?" Daisy said.

"Probably about twenty minutes now," Coulson said. "Bored with nothing to do?"

"Something like that," Daisy said.

She laughed nervously, closing the connection. Okay, maybe try risk.

She body-slammed the ice, hoping for more body heat to hasten its melting, only to hop back gasping and brushing herself down. Okay, bad idea. Very bad idea. Not that she hadn't been having enough of those lately.

There had been a lot of rows of stored artifacts, it was hard to remember them all; Daisy resorted to running, keeping on the opposite side of the facility to the ice machine. Anything that looked heavy and not mechanical. There were a few things that seemed promising, but the labels put her off - some warned of hazardous materials, others of unknown function. 0-8-4s were rarely safe to use as a bludgeon.

Her shoes could probably be reclaimed as the thinner ice over them melted, but they weren't her priority - they'd be uncomfortably sodden by now too.

She didn't know how long she'd been running around for when she heard the sound of grinding. Eyes going wide, Daisy realized that the elevator was being called up - that meant someone was upstairs. Which meant...

Daisy sprinted back to the entrance, staring disbelievingly at the frozen mound. Most of the snowy outer layer was gone now, just leaving cloudy ice as the main obstacle between her and her clothes. Desperately, Daisy picked up the crate lid again and resumed hitting it, hoping that the ice would crack. There were a few, shallow scratches, but the inner, colder layers were remaining frozen.

The grinding elevator stopped, and started again. More fervently, Daisy hit the ice; the wooden lid splintered. Daisy yelped, dropping the shards of wood on the obstinate trail of ice.

And the elevator door opened. Daisy froze.

Simmons was standing there, a bag of her own, more rigorous scientific equipment clutched in both hands, clearly fresh off her own mission. All-black, pants, an out-of-character tank top, and a beanie. And eyes that suddenly went wider than Daisy's own.

Daisy squeaked, and quickly drew her arms in, hastily slapping one across her breasts, and holding the other between her legs. She managed a nervous smile.

"Um. Hi?" Daisy said.

Simmons blinked slowly.

"I can explain?" Daisy said. "Right! It was raining super hard when I got here, I figured I could just put my clothes on the desk to dry, and, well, look at what happened."

She almost gestured with her hand, before remembering not to. Simmons slowly looked at the ice.

"And. Er. Underwear?" Simmons said, awkwardly trying and failing to avert her gaze.

Sometimes it sucked having a friend that was actually smart. Daisy stammered for a moment. Yeah, the soaked-through excuse didn't really work convincingly there.

"I wasn't- um. No. Er," Daisy said. She slumped. "There's really no good explanation for this huh?"

"I... don't think so, no," Simmons said.

Daisy's face burned.

"What's with the tank-top?" Daisy tried.

"Changed on the way here, all I had. Class-four biohazard ended up on my labcoat, actually quite fascinating," Simmons began, before catching herself. Eyes still wide, she looked back at Daisy. "Sorry, wrong time, I was here to help categorize I think. And, er..."

"This side of the building's safe for you," Daisy said, fidgeting. "Didn't have time to measure where the exact line was. Kinda busy with..."

She looked back at the ice. Simmons followed her gaze, still speaking a little falteringly.

"Oh. Right. Yes. The nudity," Simmons said. She looked back at Daisy. "That is certainly a lot of nudity."

She was babbling. Daisy's cheeks somehow got even hotter.

"So, er, in among getting access to all the precious SHIELD secrets," Daisy said. "Help? Please?"

"I am here to help," Simmons said.

"I meant with my clothes!" Daisy said.

"Oh. Right. That," Simmons said, cheeks going a little pink, and gaze steadfastedly staying higher as if trying to pretend this whole awkward situation wasn't happening.

Yeah, she thought it was awkward. Daisy snorted. That figured.

Nervously, she sidestepped, moving closer to the pouch with her panties. If Jemma would look away, she could crouch and at least put those on. Then, well, she'd have to figure it out. Hope that Simmons would have better luck, or that the ice would melt by the time they were done, and no one else would have to see her like this.

"There's got to be something in here that can help!" Daisy said.