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Acquisition

Chapter Text

S.H.I.E.L.D. collects guides.

They make excellent handlers for assets, even for those who supposedly don't have the Sentinel gene set. They are easier to manage than un-bonded sentinels; less territorial and more inclined to cooperate with each other. That the stronger individuals among them have other gifts is useful, but that wasn't Fury's original rationale.

He won't argue however that the somewhat prescient guide down in R&D is worth her weight in gold (or possibly vibranium) and that the two guides in the medical wing who can "see" pain are an absolute godsend when dealing with certain agents.

He never set out to recruit guides; the WSC would prefer it if he stopped – he throws them into the line of fire far too often for most people's comfort (he doesn't understand why they are so convinced that guides should be coddled and pampered), and they tend to forget that every single guide he gives a weapon to volunteered.

When he started to staff his agency with guides it wasn't intentional – Phil Coulson was the first he acquired (standard protocols – the S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical team had pulled the then Lieutenant Phil Coulson, barely breathing and still spitting profanities out of a HYDRA base in a dull and nasty part of Yugoslavia - he was M.I.A and certainly hadn't been a Guide when he was captured) and Phil had brought in the next two. These days, most months, at least one of the guides who is already employed by S.H.I.E.L.D. brings in a possible candidate.

Most of the guides he employs don't want a sentinel. He's fairly sure at least one of the unofficial criteria used for recruiting them to S.H.I.E.L.D. is an adamant refusal to bond (there's a portion of the discretionary budget that he has mentally tagged as for Sentinels' medical bills – both Phil Coulson and Maria Hill have been known to shoot or tase sentinels that weren't listening when they said no), though some of them do end up finding a sentinel after they join S.H.I.E.L.D.

The recruitment pitch for sentinels (they do have a few after all), therefore seems to go like this:

He sends a guide out on a mission. They don't have all the information they require. The agent completes the mission (all too frequently by the skin of their teeth) and then one of two things happens. The bill for a Sentinel's medical treatment crosses his desk to be signed, or a slightly battered looking agent drags someone who shouldn't be in the building in by a handy body part. There is normally a shouting match that attracts the attention of everyone else in the facility until Phil or Maria shows up and herds the new pair into medical. Then he has a jurisdictional fight with whoever the Sentinel used to belong to.

He invariably wins.