Coulson had been extremely busy lately. He was occupied with putting the Avengers together and figuring out how the members would communicate and work with one another. Although he had recruited everyone, they hadn't even had a chance to meet each other yet.
Over the past couple of days, Coulson had been planning to arrange a get-together. It was difficult enough to organize a meeting for the Avengers right under Hydra's nose. If Hydra found out that Coulson had secretly brought the group together, they'd surely blow their tops!
Just look at them! The Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, and an alien girl who was a mage. Coulson, what on earth were you thinking, gathering all these violent troublemakers in secret? Who put you up to it? Was it that dark-skinned guy? What was the plan?
Oh! And Black Widow and Hawkeye? No, no! They didn't count. They were just extras. Hydra didn't take those two seriously! One was a high-level female spy, and the other was a nutcase who could only shoot arrows.
Come to think of it, with technology so advanced these days, why did Hawkeye have to mess around with a bow and arrows? In terms of range and power, weren't all kinds of guns a hundred times better? He claimed arrows were stealthy and silent? Great! S.H.I.E.L.D. had hundreds of silenced weapons for him to choose from!
No matter how strong Hawkeye was, or how powerful his arms were, how far could he shoot? How many times could he keep drawing that bow? He had excellent eyesight and wasn't putting it to any practical use—he just kept posing with his bow! If he used a sniper rifle, S.H.I.E.L.D. would have another ghost sniper on its hands, at least. With S.H.I.E.L.D.'s resources, was it really so hard to make him a custom weapon?
All right, none of that mattered! The most important thing was that right in the middle of his busiest stretch, Coulson saw a call from someone he least wanted to hear from on his phone again. It was Annie's teacher, Ms. Maine—the stuffy woman who loved calling in her parents!
"Melinda, honestly, God is my witness! I don't like that Ms. Maine at all." Coulson sighed as he stood outside the school gates.
It hadn't even been a month, and Coulson and Melinda, two senior S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, were once again walking into Julia Academy as Annie's guardians, their feelings complicated.
There was no need to guess. Annie had definitely caused some kind of trouble again! Sure enough, Annie's teacher, Ms. Maine, had called them once more and told them they had to come to the school as soon as possible, no matter how busy they were!
"You can say that again. I don't like her either!" Melinda had to change into an outfit that made her feel terribly uncomfortable every time she came to the school.
No matter how much they disliked it, they had no choice but to put up with it for now. As long as Annie was still a student, and they were still her legal guardians, they had to come to the school and face her teacher's scolding whenever they got a call.
Coulson and Melinda walked into the familiar office once more and took the same seats as last time. You could say they were repeat offenders by now. The awkward atmosphere of facing a teacher in her office made them extremely uncomfortable. Compared to this, they'd both rather face that bellowing dark-skinned guy in the director's office.
"Ms. Maine, did Annie get into trouble again? Like, did she barbecue frogs? Or cats and dogs?" Unable to stand the stifling silence, Melinda was the first to break it.
"Get into trouble?" Ms. Maine thought it over. Annie hadn't gotten into trouble lately. That wasn't why she'd called the two people who claimed to be Annie's guardians but behaved so suspiciously that they didn't seem like good people.
Ms. Maine had realized last time that the two of them were definitely up to no good. The school security guards in the monitoring room had nearly been called in, because the pair had been constantly looking around warily as they walked through the school, paying special attention to all the security cameras. They'd even spotted the hidden cameras! People who behaved like that had to be spies or thieves. Either way, as far as Ms. Maine was concerned, they were no good!
"No! Annie hasn't gotten into trouble lately. In fact, she's doing very well in all her classes!"
Maine remembered the fire dragon displayed in the most prominent spot in the student exhibit room.
Annie had sculpted it out of modeling clay. The clay dragon was incredibly lifelike; you could even make out its scales. When Annie's art teacher saw it, she was so shocked she couldn't praise Annie enough, saying she was destined to become a great artist!
Overcome with excitement, the teacher had put Annie's work in the student exhibit room, right inside the most prominent glass cabinet. She hadn't even held it against Annie that she'd snatched modeling clay from the other students. Annie had "borrowed" all of it to sculpt the dragon!
"If she hasn't gotten into trouble, then why did you call us here?" Coulson's tone was a little sharp. If Annie hadn't done anything wrong, what was the point of bringing them to the school? Was this supposed to be fun? He was incredibly busy lately! This one trip to the school had thrown off his entire schedule for the day!
"Well, I want to know what kind of environment Annie is growing up in, and what you, as her guardians, teach her at home. I've discovered that Annie has learned to lie! I believe you may bear some responsibility for that." Ms. Maine spoke firmly.
She thought Annie was surely the best student in her grade. But now this outstanding student had learned to lie! The ones responsible had to be the two temporary guardians sitting right in front of her! Perhaps they hadn't been fulfilling their duties as guardians. Maybe their habits had misled Annie, turning a perfectly good student into a bad one. It was simply unforgivable!
"Take a look at her essay first. Both of you read what she wrote!" Ms. Maine shook her head and angrily handed them an exercise book.
"Uh..." Coulson and Melinda exchanged a glance before taking the exercise book. Annie had learned to lie? Surely not!
As far as Coulson and Melinda could tell, Annie never lied. Even when they sometimes couldn't understand what she was saying, it always turned out afterward that every word had been true! Confused, Coulson and Melinda looked through Annie's exercise book together.
Annie had filled it with wobbly letters. To the two of them, her English still wasn't very good, but that was understandable. She hadn't been learning it for long, after all. The fact she could write at all was impressive!
It turned out that Ms. Maine had assigned the students homework: they had to write an essay in the form of a diary, recording two or three of the things that had made them happiest over the past few days.
Annie's essay went like this:
May 2, sunny.
I'm very, very happy today! I made a deal with that dark-skinned director! I got an airplane in exchange. Aha! I finally have my own flying mount! They're modifying the plane now. I told them to paint it bright red, and I even gave it a name: Princess Annie!
Unfortunately, Aunt Melinda said tonight that they'd taken all the weapons off the plane! Oh! Actually, they hadn't taken them all off. It still had a Vulcan Cannon in the belly? But they wouldn't give me any ammunition... That black bear lied to me! I called and yelled at him! Then he said he'd kept his promise and given me the plane. But weapons and ammunition weren't part of the deal. That's just awful!
May 5, sunny.
My Princess Annie was finally finished today. After learning from Aunt Melinda for an hour, I flew it out. At first I nearly crashed into the sea, but luckily Aunt Melinda pulled it up in time.
Aunt Melinda flew the plane really, really high before letting me take over again. Then I ran into a metal monster! I chased him in Princess Annie, and he had such a terrible time! But later, our plane ran out of fuel and fell into the sea. That was so lame! Only afterward did I find out he wasn't a metal monster. He was called Iron Man?
May 7, cloudy.
I had nothing to do after school today, so I decided to take Princess Annie out for another flight. But Uncle Coulson absolutely refused to come along. Hmph! Fine, don't come! Aunt Melinda was enough company. Not long after we took off, we spotted that metal monster called Iron Man again. But this time we couldn't catch him. He was too fast and vanished in a flash. What a shame!
As we were getting ready to go home, two planes appeared and attacked us! They were bad guys! They fired cannons and missiles! They blew up my Princess Annie! So I got really angry and used the Vulcan Cannon I'd secretly modified to turn them all into a heap of melted junk. Now my plane's been taken in for repairs, too. Those lazy people said it would take ages!
Well! After reading Annie's homework, Coulson and Melinda looked at each other, speechless. Everything Annie had written was the absolute truth, wasn't it? There wasn't a single falsehood in it, not even one lie!
Sometimes, things were just that ridiculous. You could tell someone the truth in all seriousness, and they'd think you were lying about everything! If Annie had gotten into trouble again—say, barbecued some unlucky teacher's or student's pet—they'd grit their teeth and accept getting called in for a scolding.
But Annie had written a perfectly good diary, filled with nothing but the truth, and they'd been dragged in to be scolded again. Was there any justice in the world? Just look at the teacher's comment: "Because of the influence of their parents and guardians, the child has learned to lie at such a young age. As parents (guardians), you must deeply reflect on your own behavior, improve the child's environment, and do your best to provide a positive and wholesome home education."
Coulson didn't even want to remember how it had all ended. He just felt completely exhausted—emotionally drained!
After he and Melinda picked Annie up from school and brought her home, the moment they stepped inside, he dictated while Annie wrote and Melinda offered suggestions. The three of them spent more than half an hour writing Ms. Maine a "believable" replacement assignment! Not a single thing in it was true. Coulson had made it all up. Yet Ms. Maine had been delighted with it and even given Annie an A!
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