Heroes Assemble!

Appearances Aren't Everything

Harry's eyes widened at the sight of a blue bolt streaking towards him from one direction and three tiny plastic balls shooting towards him from three other directions simultaneously. Instantly, he dropped, rolled and swept his wand up and across in front of him. Two of the paintballs whizzed by overhead; another hit the ground, just missing his side; while the blue paint spell slammed into the just-formed stone wall that he'd managed to conjure.

Jumping back to his feet, Harry spun to the left, firing a volley of four orange paint spells at Melati, making her leap into a series of backflips. Thankfully, while he was making sure that Melati was on the backfoot, Teddy, Peter and Doreen were shooting at each other. Teddy, he saw, was relying on shields to defend against Peter who was swinging from tree to tree with his paintball gun and Doreen who was currently squatting high in a nearby elm.

Fffpppt Twack!

It took all that Harry had in him to ignore the sound coming from a hundred metres behind them where Clint was having another archery lesson with his daughter Lila and to concentrate on the Academy exercise in front of him, but somehow, he managed it.

The faintest chittering from on high was the only warning that he had before a hail of pellets rocketed towards him. Thrusting out his left hand, Harry magicked a small, buckler-type shield to protect himself even as he fired back at Doreen. Four of the yellow paintballs hit his shield, leaving a stain floating in the middle of the air. Thankfully, his return shots were right on the mark – the first red paint spell hitting Doreen high in her shoulder even as the others forced her to 'jump' backwards and to lose her balance.

Peter, he saw, took full advantage of her fall, swinging in and hitting Doreen a further three times with his own paintball gun before she landed in a sprawl. However, while Peter was focussed on Doreen, Melati nailed him with a series of purple shots. Harry's grin blossomed on his face as he heard a surprised-sounding, strangled scream coming from a pin-wheeling Peter as he disappeared headfirst into a bush.

Suddenly, a hard thump hit him in the back of his right shoulder, sending him tumbling forward. Even as he was spitting out dirt, Harry rolled onto his front, raising a shield to protect himself from ... Daisy?

Harry blinked. He didn't even know that his fiancé was even on the island, let alone a part of the training exercise.

"What was that?" he asked.

"You gotta pay attention to all of your surroundings," Daisy laughed. "May was always drilling that into me."

"Speaking of," Harry said, getting to his feet and backing away from the training exercise so as not to get shot in the back a second time, "how is May, Coulson and the others?"

"Good," Daisy replied. "This Inhuman thing is going to keep them occupied for ages, though."

Harry nodded to Bobbi and received one in return, passing the 'baton' of who was in charge of the Academy at that moment. Reaching out, he pulled Daisy in for a kiss, then, hand in hand, they strolled towards a nearby bench. Lavender, he noted, was sitting with Cooper, an ordinary stick in his hand as she showed him the basics of wand movements. Wanda and Pietro were also nearby – him speeding all over the place while she tried to 'nail' him with her magic.

"The Inhumans?" Harry asked once they were seated.

"Yeah. It seems that S.H.I.E.L.D. had an accident back when my mother went all crazy and tried to take over that carrier," Daisy replied. "A crate of terrigen crystals ended up in the ocean, they dissolved, infected the fish and, when they get eaten by humans – even in as simple as fish oil capsules – it triggers terrigenesis in Inhumans like me," she explained.