Against My Will 9

Not even a full twelve months I’ve had this seat. There was only so much Fury expected to handle as the head of SHIELD. Not a full twelve months yet.

The job had already taken a few steps into high gear with the mutant problem, Xavier’s little idiots and Magneto’s bigger idiots making his entire job so much harder. Taking over after Ross kicked it had required making some decisions that had ultimately made his job much much harder. Ross never had it this hard.

Some of those were necessary simply to avoid a bigger blowup — like cutting free any remnants of those Weapon X loonies — while others…

Others were less so.

And this one—

“What do we even do now, General Fury?” The analyst was almost shouting, the words screamed near Fury’s right ear and — if the way he was holding that microphone was any indicator — likely deafening whoever was on the other end. “Even with Banner’s notes, Tech figures they’re still almost two hours out from putting together a replacement.”

Stark’s telemetry was dropping, the limited readouts the man allowed them visible on its own singular panel on the wall. Every single number on it was cratering faster than Bush’s popularity numbers after he licked Magneto’s boots live on camera; reactor output, thruster stability, armor integrity, without a doubt…

And Stark was up there still, firing hard and fighting with more bravery and willpower than most men who ever bothered to wear fatigues. It was one thing to train to shoot and fight other men but a rich boy throwing it all away for a fight against a monster…

If that wasn’t enough to give him a headache, the main screen had the nose camera streaked with rain faster than the wiper could manage to clear it, and Hulk stood at the asphalt bowl in the center of Forty-Ninth— the gray thing that went by Banner.

Captain America was held in the thing’s hands, that vibranium shield bashing hard against the monster’s skull and giving him the mother of all headaches as Stark and Janet Pym kept him off-balance and unable to do much more than bellow like a baby.

That man had spent sixty years in the ice before Fury had dragged him back up into the modern world to fight his battle and here Captain America was — getting wrung out like a dishrag soon to be on the ten o’clock news.

A whistle of a sigh — breath passing between pursed lips — was the first answer that left the man as Fury suddenly realized that, perks aside, he was beginning to miss his simple days as a secret agent hotshot. 

Almost as much as he missed his hair and that oh-so-nice white tech-suit. Another thing I decided to go without when they offered me this job.

“We do exactly what Cap strategized, homeboy.” A hand rubbed at his head as he decided on the plan of the night. “Get me that nuke and ready it just in case.” With another sigh, the Director of SHIELD opened his line to broadcast out. “Wasp.”

“I’m busy!” Janet Pym went across his lens as a smear of motion, wings fluttering at a rate that would make a dragonfly proud as little yellow bursts launched free from her fingertips. “He won’t hold still and getting any closer, at this size…”

Mmmhmmm. “Stark.”

“Nicholas. Pal. Buddy.” Oddly composed for a man so close to the reaper right now, but Stark always was full of surprises. “I’ll be frank with you. Always hated that name, by the way, did I ever tell you that?”

“Stark, is now really the time?”

“Can’t see a better one. Especially as I’m looking at about a solid ninety seconds of meaningful output left.” Two lines of light tore from Stark’s gauntlets, that gray back scorched enough to steam. All it got anyone was a scream and a stumble. “Yeah, two more minutes of that and you’re looking at the world’s most expensive lawn ornament.”

“The Triskelion doesn’t have a lawn.”

“Really?” Stark managed to sound downright bemused, even as Fury watched the man barrel roll past a wild one-armed swing of gray muscle. “With that budget of yours? You should get to work on that.”

Any joke Fury had to throw back went to ash in his mouth as Rogers came up on the feed, no audio on his line as he did his best to fight back against the pressure hold he found himself caught in.

Not enough.

Hulk was the exact kind of threat Ross had worried about; too strong and too tough and a problem that simply scaled the more you threw at his head. Every asset Fury could reasonably bring to bear without turning the city to slag had already been thrown at the gray demon; all that could be flown, loaded or talked onto a helicopter at least.

And that beast just stood there in the middle of it all taking it all like hail off a tin roof, halfway to an erection on top it all if his own words had anything to say about it.

Goddamnit. Fury nearly hung his head, one hand gripping the edge of a console. We did not break the Superhuman Test Ban Treaty just to go out like this. They were already looking at UN hearings over this bullshit and sliding the Ultimates through as PR and national defense had been the only way they had even made it this far.

At this point, the only other way this could play out involved something inside a case the size of an overnight bag, yield low enough the Pentagon called it tactical with a straight face. It would only take him all of one phone call to 1600 Penn Ave to make it legal and Fury didn’t like the math of that.

He definitely wasn’t a big fan when it came to the math of what it would look like on the ground.

A third heavier sigh left him and Fury found himself making the choice he hated. “Get me the goddamn White Ho—”

The wall went white, every panel at once a flat white that sent the speakers blaring static off every channel at too loud a volume to be good for anyone’s hearing. Half the command deck shot out of their chairs, analysts with hands on their headset as they read off their consoles as quickly as they could.

“—every channel, every single on—”

“—ajor discharge coming down from atmo, sir, w—”

“—an’t even describe how much power this is!”

Fury blinked as white peeled back from the edges of all of SHIELD’s Manhattan cameras, rain and smoke the first things he could make out before the street came back together to show off a brand-spanking-new crater.

“What in God’s name…”

“Sir!”

Fury turned to see one of the kids off the White House desk at his elbow, another analyst who was at least a couple years younger than Cap’s actual age. A SHIELD lanyard around his neck marked him as a level 3, just barely the clearance needed to be within spitting distance of him and to work one of SHIELD’s computers.

“What now?”

“Sir.” Both hands thrust out a paper that Fury barely looked down at, eyes still on the confusing mess on every screen. “From the President!”

“Now?” Whatever that bumbling Texan could want at this moment couldn’t be that important at all, not compared to what Fury was about to ask him.

“Yes, sir. Right now.” The young man looked down at the sheet. “He’s agreed to double the international aid budget.”

Fury’s mouth nearly fell open as he looked back up at the feed as smoke cleared just a little bit more, a tall shape standing in it with bright blond hair down past his shoulders and something heavy hanging from one fist. That bastard…

Only one man on this planet had put a price tag on showing up tonight and it was this Norwegian asshole who got a win out of the president. “And to think I voted for Nader…”

That same Norwegian swung out on the screen, Thor’s hammer pulled back and striking forward faster than chopper cameras could keep up with. The head of it met that gray jaw and the Hulk’s hands fell open; Rogers dropping free as that gray body was launched the other way entirely.

Hulk tore through asphalt, a trail behind him deep as a ditch, before he went head-first through the ground floor of a bank. All the glass in and on it gave up at once, the building open to all comers.

Thor took it up on the invitation, the hippie running headfirst into crumbling debris. 

“Rise!”

The ‘god’s’ laugh came through on some camera’s open channel, fragmented and faded but clear enough to be caught regardless. He was laughing all the way as he charged in, hammer ready to be swung again. “Rise then, great one! Rise up, and let the son of Odin meet you again!”

The gray troll tore free of the bank vault.

Lightning came off the hammer on the downswing, tearing down from the sky, as Mjolnir put the Hulk through that same door. Hulk flew again, back arched on the pavement as he finally crashed down again.

A gray hand came down as he went to push himself up.

The hammer came down on that hand.

He got a knee under himself.

The hammer wasn’t far behind.

Fury watched as the Norwegian bashed and battered and brought that hammer down again and again, hitting and hitting and hitting him some more. No matter what, every time the gray bastard tried to get up off that street, the hammer gave him second thoughts.

In no time at all, the street was a black crater thick with rainwater; a pool deep enough to drown the Hulk himself already building while little blue threads of current crawled over it.

“Well, I’ll be…”

Fury could only rub his chin as Hulk laid there on his stomach, chest still rising and falling from what the camera showed but clearly uneven with it as Thor stood over him. Rain fell atop them both, most of it turned to vapor by the time it landed as the air was thick with the haze of ozone around the European posthuman.

“Your jaw is broken, Banner.” The laugh was still there but it had gone out of it. “Your ribs, most of them I think, are cracked now. And a lung has surely been punctured.”

On the ground, the monster pushed up with his elbows again; effort clear in his grunt.

“Have you tasted enough of Mjolnir yet?”

“Nah.” The Hulk rolled his massive head on the pavement, those big tombstone teeth clear on the frame as the gray beast grinned. “Thor’s hammer just make Hulk horny for Betty again, hippie.”

Lord have mercy. Fury stood up straighter, annoyed but finally feeling confident again as — for the first time since eleven after nine — Nick Fury was looking at a win on the wall.

“Sir—”

That mood held for three seconds. “Not now.”

“Sir, we’re looking at a major energy spike.”

“Yes…” His good eye closed, the spymaster holding back a sigh at overeager analysts. “That’s the lightning, son. We all saw the whole grid get lit up li—”

“No, sir.” The tech at Terminal 14 was adamant as he stood up, a hand flat over one ear and his eyes still firmly on the screen. “It’s us. It’s internal. It’s the Triskelion.”

“Confirming the same on Terminal 7, sir!”

“—ame on nine, same on eleven!”

“Where.” Fury didn’t even bother phrasing the demand as anything but.

“Uh…” Terminal 4 looked over his way, the woman’s voice climbing as she read off her screen as best she could under rapid updates. “The secure science wing, sir, I… I can’t be sure, it’s spreading so fast, sir, I can’t get a value. It’s outrunning the sampling we ha—”

“It’s an Index 9 on the scale, sir!”

Index 9? Fury could only stare at the analyst, those words taking a full second to make proper sense. That’s… that…

That was fucking theoretical at best.

Hell, 1-7 were the only ones on the Index properly measured and charted. Everything above that had yet to be anything but simulated. Hell, they had estimated Thor as averaging an 8 and Banner… No…

At his absolute worst so far, SHIELD had estimated Banner at maybe a 9.

Containment alarms began to blare somewhere down below them, a long tone coming up through entire floors of concrete, metal and steel as the deck’s own speakers finally picked it up and began to spread it further.

“Jade wing just dropped off, sir!” Fury didn’t like that. “The whole wing. Cameras, locks, all the telemetry. It’s dark, Director!”

Fury really didn’t like that. Can anything go right?

He’d taken that ring off with his own two fingers kneeling down in a crater in the Pine Barrens himself, rotors beating over his head as he slid it off the boy’s knuckle. Two hours later, he’d been holding a piece of dead green jewelry. “…do we have any reports, any at all, from down below?”

Nobody spoke.

For far too long, as the alarms blared, nobody bothered to answer.

Then the windows went green.

Out past the long wall of glass that faced the city, the entirety of the Upper Bay went bright as day all at once; light washing over the entire command deck all at once to turn every face at every console the same emerald shade. It was like someone had painted the sky over the Triskelion as Fury stared up at a green sun hanging at night over his building.

“—EEN LANTERN’S LIGHT!”