Marvel Oneshots

Unbeatable (Platonic!Bobbi Morse)

Written for Fictober 2023 Day 17 on Tumblr!

Summary: Bobbi Morse needs her best friend's help defending their record as the baddest bitches SHIELD's Ops Academy has ever seen.

Prompt: "I never said it would be easy."

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I sighed as I settled into the cocoon of blankets I'd built in my quarters at SHIELD, a bowl of popcorn resting in my lap and my favorite show on my laptop. After running around the world almost dying for a month on a mission, I'd decided to take my first full day back at SHIELD HQ to rest, and absolutely nothing else.

At least, that had been my plan, until my best friend practically broke down my door barging into my room.

"Thank goodness you're back!" she cried, urgency in her tone. I just stared at her, bracing myself for whatever the hell she'd come in here to tell me. "We have a situation."

"Barbara Morse, I just got back from a month long mission-"

"Two new Ops recruits just beat our time on SHIELD's toughest obstacle course."

I stopped mid-sentence, popcorn and show forgotten as I stared at Bobbi and tried to process her words.

"Impossible," I finally decided, scowling. Bobbi nodded sympathetically.

"It should've been. Our record's held for years. But it just got beaten, by two barely-not-teen boys, no less. I don't think I have to tell you we can't let that stand."

"Damn right we can't," I agreed, setting my popcorn aside and throwing the blanket off of my lap. I stood, closing my laptop and going to my closet to change out of the pajama pants I'd been living in ever since I got back. "Give me like five minutes and I'll be ready to go."

"I'll go get the Quinjet ready to take off. Ops academy here we come."

We did our secret handshake that we'd come up with in our first year together at SHIELD academy, then separated to accomplish our missions. I made it out of my room in four minutes, jogging through the hallways to get to Bobbi faster. A few people waved to me and welcomed me back, but I didn't stop to chat. Bobbi and I had a new mission of peak importance to take care of, and we couldn't let anything get in our way.

For a long time, the SHIELD Ops obstacle course had been the end-all be-all of class credibility, outside of actual class rank. Recruits were expected to attempt it in pairs, and only the absolute best could make it through at all, let alone with any kind of speed. Bobbi and I had trained like maniacs until we'd blown the previous record out of the water, going down in history as the two best agents to ever take on one of the academy's hardest challenges. We coasted on that reputation for the rest of our academy career, and people still seemed impressed by it even though we'd left the academy long behind us.

Many had tried to break our record, and none had ever succeeded. One or two people had come close, but on the whole, our record seemed absolutely unbeatable. If two new recruits had come in and done the impossible, then they must've been incredibly impressive agents. And they also had to be stopped and reminded of Bobbi and I's supremacy immediately.

Bobbi brought the Quinjet in for a landing at the Academy not twenty minutes after she'd first burst into my room. The two of us marched through the hallways shoulder to shoulder, heads held high like we owned the place. And after graduating top of our class, we kind of did.

"Alright, let's see just what these two pulled off," I said, Bobbi and I slipping into one of our old classrooms and accessing the records for the obstacle course. I put their replay up on the projector, then went to take a first row seat in the auditorium with Bobbi.