Is it reasonable for someone you've just met to immediately ask for one of your most valuable possessions?
Wouldn't that be asking a bit too much?
"That's way over the line!"
Coulson was practically hopping mad.
"I came here to recruit a superhuman, not attend a matchmaking session!"
"How could we possibly just hand over the Tesseract to you?! Wait, no—who told you S.H.I.E.L.D. even has the Tesseract?!"
"Oh, You can see it?"
The Tesseract's security classification was extraordinarily high. Even Captain America standing beside him had no idea that S.H.I.E.L.D. had recovered the artifact decades earlier.
"I remember Captain America crashing into the Arctic together with the Tesseract."
Having confirmed that S.H.I.E.L.D. was still tinkering with that dangerous object, Joey couldn't resist stirring the pot a little. He turned toward Steve and waggled his eyebrows.
"Look, Cap. They managed to find a tiny little cube at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean sixty years ago, like finding a needle in a haystack. But somehow a whole human being wasn't pulled out and thawed until recently."
"So tell me—which do you think was more important to S.H.I.E.L.D.? You or the cube?"
As one of Captain America's most devoted fans, Coulson immediately suffered a mental overload.
"That's not what happened at all! We—"
He stumbled over his words, completely unable to formulate a rebuttal.
Fortunately, Steve wasn't the sort of person to take offense over something like that.
Although the news about the Tesseract surprised him, he immediately came to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s defense.
"There's no need to explain, Coulson."
"The Tesseract fell from the aircraft before I did. It landed far away from the site of my crash."
"It isn't strange that S.H.I.E.L.D. needed more time to locate me."
Steve Rogers had only been awake for a few short weeks.
An outdated old man who was more than a century old, he was still struggling to catch up with the modern era.
Aside from the familiar word mission, almost everything in this world felt foreign to him.
To help himself adapt, he had even started catching up on old movies and television shows under Coulson's recommendation.
At the moment, he still had no idea that the young Jedi Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars Episode I&II, which he was currently watching, would later become Darth Vader.
S.H.I.E.L.D. was similarly unfamiliar territory.
Its founder had once been his friend Howard Stark, but seventy years had passed.
The world had changed.
Everything had changed.
After meeting the black-coated man named Nick Fury, Steve had developed a nagging feeling that something about S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't quite right.
A good commander couldn't rely solely on instinct.
But neither could he afford to ignore that vague sixth sense.
For now, however, Steve continued to operate according to the principles of the old era.
A soldier's duty was to obey orders.
He had been a champion of freedom beneath the Stars and Stripes during the 1940s war against the Nazis.
That much should never change.
Even if S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't quite as ideal as it presented itself to be, it still objectively maintained stability between ordinary people and superhumans.
Surely the organization couldn't be that bad...
...could it?
While Steve continued wrestling with those thoughts, Coulson finally shifted his attention toward the largest object on the rooftop.
He lightly tapped the wreckage of Leopardon, which practically covered the entire rooftop.
"So... what's the story with this thing?"
"Has our resident billionaire finally gotten bored of playing with little robots?"
"But there should be a progression, right? Going from that to this in one leap seems a bit... difficult to adapt to."
Coulson wiped away sweat that wasn't actually there.
A moment earlier, he had nearly let slip something he absolutely wasn't supposed to mention.
After all, he'd spent countless hours trying to track Superman down.
Now that he was finally here, they couldn't very well exchange a few pleasantries and then immediately leave, could they?
Nick Fury would probably kill him afterward if he returned empty-handed—he might even deduct the Quinjet's fuel costs from Coulson's paycheck.
At first, Coulson had followed S.H.I.E.L.D.'s usual approach: try to 'win the guy over' and see if he could be persuaded to work with the organization. But by now, it was obvious that wasn't going to happen.
Among all the superpowered individuals S.H.I.E.L.D. had dealt with, Coulson had seen every type imaginable. Some wanted money. Some wanted power. Some wanted fame. Some wanted absolutely nothing. Others were simply being controlled through leverage.
But he had never met anyone who demanded the Tesseract as payment for working with S.H.I.E.L.D.
To S.H.I.E.L.D., the Tesseract was every bit as important as oil was to the United States. Who in their right mind would simply hand it over?
A demand that outrageous could only mean one thing: the other party had no intention of cooperating.
Ordinarily, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s response to uncooperative superhumans was straightforward and forceful.
So Coulson made a decision.
"Well... if we can't be partners, can we at least exchange contact information?"
What could he say? Superman wasn't exactly a villain. There was no need to make things ugly.
Besides, the current situation made any kind of conventional operation completely impractical.
The entire rooftop had been occupied by the wreckage of the giant robot.
The three of them barely had enough room to stand. Superman was floating in the air just to free up some space, let alone provide enough room for a Quinjet and its tactical team to land.
And Coulson's brain hadn't been dissolved by his daily two cups of iced Americano.
Against someone who could kill the Abomination with a single punch, several elite strike teams—plus Captain America and himself—still wouldn't be enough.
"Contact information?"
Only then did Joey realize that since arriving in this universe, he hadn't even bought a phone.
"I don't have a number. If it's not urgent, contact Tony. If it's an emergency, just shout 'Superman,' and I'll come save you."
Coulson stared blankly.
"Huh?"
What kind of logic was that?
Answering anyone who called his name?
Did Superman think he was some kind of god?
Besides, what kind of emergency could S.H.I.E.L.D. possibly have?
If things ever became so bad that S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't handle them on its own and needed outside rescue, wouldn't that mean the entire planet was already doomed?
"I can give you a communicator."
Always mindful of his budget, Coulson pulled a pager-like device from his pocket and handed it to Joey.
"Don't worry, it definitely doesn't have any listening functions. Only tracking—well, it's a satellite communicator, so that's just how it works. Since you're smart enough to solve Osborn Industries' research problems, I'm sure you understand the basics."
"Whatever."
Joey accepted the communicator casually.
His earlier demand for the Tesseract had merely been a spur-of-the-moment idea.
The Inheritors. Doctor Doom.
His schedule was already crowded enough.
Right now, Joey only hoped that whatever disaster S.H.I.E.L.D. was brewing with the Tesseract would take a little longer to explode.
One crisis after another kept coming for him.
The familiar feeling made him slightly sick.
There was definitely something wrong with this universe as well.
The only problem was that Joey hadn't figured out what it was yet.
His silence did nothing to dampen Coulson's enthusiasm.
The fact that Superman had accepted the communicator was already a huge step forward.
"No matter what happens, if you ever need help, don't hesitate to contact S.H.I.E.L.D."
The two shook hands.
With that, the S.H.I.E.L.D. side prepared to leave.
Then Joey hesitated for a moment.
In the end, he decided to stop the man who had been standing beside Coulson as a bodyguard the entire time.
"Captain, do you have a moment?"
"There are some things I need to discuss with you."
"And it has to be in private."