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….
"Oh, you give me grief," I shook my head, and she clearly understood why I did it, even got a little embarrassed, but didn't change her posture anyway.
"Drink your cocoa already! The faithful handmaiden of an evil genius must treat her boss's quirks with respect! We evil geniuses are sensitive and tender creatures; we need moral support, otherwise we'll fall apart, so you know."
"Yes, sir," the girl replied. She picked up the cup and took a disciplined sip, her face a perfect blank slate revealing absolutely nothing of what she thought about the rest of my speech.
"You're on the right track," I smiled, saluting her with my own cup.
In a perfect world, I probably should have handed Yuriko over to the Professor for a professional psych eval. Her obsessive devotion clearly wasn't going to fade anytime soon, that much was obvious, but... if I'm being completely honest? I didn't really mind. As long as her fixation didn't end up hurting her, and I fully intended to make sure it didn't.
….
Somewhere around the same time...
"They're flanking us on the third deck, sir!" Agent Coulson reported to the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Or rather, the former Director... seeing as the organization itself was rapidly ceasing to exist.
Coulson punctuated the update by putting a bullet through the head of an enemy attempting to peek out from said deck.
"Backup is close. We just need to hold out for three more minutes," Fury practically growled, aiming his weapon down the corridor.
In the heat of battle, a brief lull settled in, and Nick found himself wondering: How the hell did it come to this?
Earlier that day, nothing had foreshadowed a disaster. The internal investigation had hit a dead end. Polygraphs hadn't revealed any "Russian agents," and the very fact that absolutely everyone connected to the organization was strapped to a machine and asked highly uncomfortable questions was breeding a sullen resentment among the operatives.
Everything changed when Coulson burst into his office with a report. Specifically, a brief tale about a strange brunet with an arrogant face. And Hydra agents allegedly infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D.
It all smelled like a blatant provocation, but when it came to those Nazi remnants, you couldn't, you absolutely could not, ignore even the shadow of a suspicion. So Nick had given the order to initiate a second round of polygraphs with an entirely different set of questions.
He just didn't have the time to start it.
The task force from New Mexico, which, on Coulson's orders, had been disarmed upon arrival, thrown in the brig, and forbidden from communicating with anyone, actually didcontain Hydra agents. They realized their cover being blown was only a matter of time, and so...
"Hail Hydra!" A "mere technician" lunged at them with a live grenade in hand, only to get his brains splattered across the nearest wall.
If Nick had reacted half a second slower, the blast from the dead man's grenade would have killed them both.
The arrested agents had managed to send a signal while being escorted to the cells.
The reaction was instantaneous. No, there was no mass arrest, it's just that... just that more than half of "his" people suddenly barked "Hail!" and turned their guns on their unsuspecting comrades.
Some loyalists managed to fight back, but they were a minority; the element of surprise was absolute.
If the Hydra agents hadn't clearly been forced to launch their coup prematurely, the takeover would have already been complete.
Even now... if backup didn't arrive, it was over. They would just thrash around a little longer and take a few more enemies with them.
But backup finally arrived. With the screech of tearing metal, a man encased in a high-tech suit of armor crashed into the compartment situated between the decks.
"Stark!"
"I see things have really gone to shit if you're this happy to see me," the eccentric billionaire replied, touching down. "Now let's skip the pleasantries. Give me one good reason why I had to drop my wedding preparations and rush over here."
"Hydra... they've taken over S.H.I.E.L.D., and..." The next words were agonizingly difficult to say, but letting his closed eye convey his pain for only a second, Nick forced it out. "...I need your help."
"Yeah, I heard that part when you were begging me to save your ass on the comms," the insufferable clown waved him off.
"But be a pal and explain why the hell I should wade into this crap and lend you my resources to clean house, especially after everything you've done to foster such 'deep affection' between us?" The armored billionaire actually took the time to raise both hands and use air quotes to drive the irony home.
"Stark, this isn't a game, and it isn't one of your 'business negotiations'!" Fury snarled. "This is Hydra! The organization your father dedicated his life to fighting!"
"Something tells me..." Tony casually raised a hand.
A small, glowing projectile shot out, bouncing around the corner on a strange trajectory.
Flashes of light bounced off the walls, accompanied by the crackle of high voltage and the heavy thuds of bodies and metal hitting the floor.
"...that these guys aren't exactly SS veterans. They look like US citizens from good families with perfect tax records. And all you have to accuse them of is working for a shady agency with a pretentious name, angling for more money and power. When are you planning to purge the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI? After lunch or later this evening?"
"They are killing my people right now!" Nick roared, driven to absolute fury.
"You won't believe this, but I've barely restrained myself from doing the exact same thing a couple of times," Stark didn't even blink.
"So far, all I see is American citizens shooting other American citizens, all of whom are active-duty operatives of the same US intelligence agency. Even if I take your word for it that this is some 'New Hydra,' you still haven't explained how it's any different from your S.H.I.E.L.D., yet you want me, a private citizen, to jump in guns blazing!"
"Are you just going to let them do what they're doing?" The Director couldn't believe it. "Let them destroy your father's legacy?"
"'My father's legacy' is the only reason I'm standing here instead of telling you to go to hell right off the bat, 'Keeper of the Legacy', whose 'services', by the way, normal laws classify as grand larceny carrying seven to twelve years in federal prison. Besides, according to what you told me not too long ago, I 'have no connection' to S.H.I.E.L.D. and 'its' developments that Howard Stark 'handed over' to you, conveniently without witnesses or any legal formalities…"
"…By the way, I meant to ask: were you planning for me to just 'hand over' the Iron Man tech the exact same way, huh? You know, come to think of it, I'm starting to feel a strange urge to help these guys in the field gray."
"What do you want?" Fury didn't have the time or the desire to bargain.
"Fifty-one percent of the shares in your little firm..."
"S.H.I.E.L.D. is not a joint-stock company," the colonel ground his teeth at yet another mockery.
"Yeah, I agree, you've got a long way to go to reach those standards. Alright, I see you're struggling in the humor department, so I'll make it simple. You guys screwed the pooch playing spy games. You can't even vouch for your own employees. So, since I've already 'privatized world peace' and am essentially America's main defender, I'm now 'privatizing' you. You will supply me with information, report on your operations, and so on, exactly as a normal subsidiary is supposed to do for the heir of its co-founder."
"You want a pet international intelligence agency?" Nick couldn't believe his ears.
….
If you want to read ahead by 20+ chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
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