Chương 44: Interludes
-Nick Fury-
Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D, was sitting in his office, rubbing his temples at the mess that had just occurred on American soil.
"So, what's the total body count?" He asked with a sigh.
Maria Hill, his second-in-command, answered him while looking at a clipboard. "So far, we have 78 confirmed people who were killed in the streets of Los Angeles and 42 confirmed injured. The hospital is another story, however." She added with a somber tone, "There were 112 casualties inside with no survivors found. That angel was extremely brutal. Even now, we have him completely chained down and sedated constantly after he tried to escape earlier." She added with some disdain.
That was a close one. Fury never would have lived it down with the council if the first superpowered being their agency was created to fight against managed to escape their Hulk-grade prison cell, only an hour after being delivered to them.
"We'll leave him sedated for now. Now, what do we know about this Prince Thor that they were apparently hunting?" Fury was upset that an alien prince had apparently been on U.S. soil, and no one had any clue about it.
"Unfortunately, we don't know much more than the average civilian at this point. Katherine Farris, a reporter from the Daily Bugle, briefly interviewed the supposed devil who was with Tony Stark, and he was the one who mentioned Odin and Asgard. It's from those mentioned terms that we suspect the supposed Prince Thor of being the Asgardian prince."
Knock, knock.
His office door opened, and his other three top agents all entered.
"You called for us, sir?" Agent Coulson spoke for the three of them.
Nick nodded to them. "I did. Barton, Coulson, Romanoff. You three are my top field agents and have been out roaming LA all day. What have you found?"
The three of them all had frowns on their faces. Fury figured that was not a good sign. He rubbed his missing eye over the patch as he could already feel the incoming migraine he was going to have.
"It's not good, sir." Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, spoke first. "People are very upset that angels turned out to be... that. Numerous churches have been burned to the ground, and there is rioting in the streets. Not just in LA either..."
"The LA Angels baseball team just announced they were changing their name. It's not a good day to be an angel fan…" Barton said.
Fury had to agree. Honestly, the biblically accurate giant eyeball monster angels would have received a better public reception... As long as they didn't go murdering people and spouting how they wanted to destroy humanity and claim the realm for their own that is. And then there was that declaration from one of the angels that really set people on edge. A person had been hiding in a nearby building and recorded the entire fight of Jake Gremory and Ironman against the four angels from their phone. Including the angel's proclamation about humans… It had gone viral so fast there was no chance in hell they'd ever be able to scrub it from the internet!
"Well, on the upside, today was a win for the more obtuse religions…" Clint Barton, Hawkeye, tried to joke. "The amount of devil worshippers and Norse followers is at an all-time high... you know, since apparently devils and Odin exist..." He trailed off as Fury just glared at him.
"What about Jake Gremory?" Maria asked the question he was going to ask next. "Suppose he really is a devil and those actually exist, which at this point is seeming highly likely. Do we know what his objective here on Earth is and where is he now?"
"I know that one," Coulson responded. "He was also searching for Prince Thor from what I've found. Apparently, he was trying to protect him."
"You know, I thought Thor was supposed to be a badass in mythology. Wasn't he slaying monsters and bedding wenches left and right?" Barton spoke up again.
Fury wanted to tell him to zip it with his jokes, but he did have a point. Thor was supposed to be a giant Viking who wielded a powerful magic hammer and could control lightning. Where was he when all these angels were attacking LA? There certainly weren't any reports of thunderstorms happening during that mess.
"That is odd, but at this point, we're going to have to take all historical and mythological facts with a grain of salt. Clearly, they were way wrong about angels and devils," Natasha said.
"Not quite," Maria added. "Jake Gremory did confirm that devils used to be very evil and did steal human souls. I speculate that there was some kind of civil war wherever they dwell, which ended up in his side's victory, obviously." Fury thought that made sense.
"Do we know where Jake Gremory is now?" he asked.
"He supposedly is still with Tony Stark at his mansion in Malibu. Tony is helping him search for the missing prince using his 'definitely not a real AI,' even though we all know it is..." Natasha said, while adding some finger quotes.
"Once they handed over the angel to our guys, Jake Gremory went around the hospital parking lot, asking anybody if they had seen Prince Thor. From Jake's description of the man, he actually matches Barton's thoughts on him quite a bit," Coulson explained.
Natasha continued, "Prince Thor is supposedly well over 6 feet tall, 'has muscles for days,' and does, in fact, carry a hammer called Mjolnir. We got all that after re-questioning the people he'd talked to. Apparently, someone on the street had said Thor had been hit by a car and was supposed to be taken to the hospital the angel attacked."
"A god went down to a car? That's weird. From the street battle video, Jake Gremory threw one of those angels through an entire building, and they got back up again," Barton said. The others in the room found it strange as well.
"Do we have the ambulance records to confirm that?" Maria asked.
Fury smiled a bit. Finally, they were getting somewhere! At least they had a lead now to follow!
"Yes, we do," Coulson said with an odd tone Fury didn't like. "A patient of that description, minus the hammer, was listed in the paperwork we found in the ambulance that EMTs fill out on the way to the hospital."
"So what's the problem then?" Fury asked, irritated. "Did that ambulance get lost or something? Clearly, it didn't because you just said we searched through it!"
"Did someone kill all the EMTs and kidnap our prince?" Natasha asked bluntly. She may or may not have pulled a similar snatch-and-grab operation back in Russia…
"That's not it. The EMTs were all fine. We found them drinking in a pub a few blocks away. The problem is that they and everyone in that pub claim they were there for hours," he said with a sigh.
"Mind control!" Fury spat angrily. The Prince-napper was a mutant. Fury figured probably a team of mutants, considering those guys always traveled in packs…
Barton shuddered. Mind control seriously freaked him out for some reason. He leaned towards Natasha and whispered to her, "If someone ever mind controls me, promise me you'll whack me over the head to snap me out of it!" She just smiled at him and gave a subtle thumbs up.
"Looks like I'll be paying a visit to a certain school, then, to see if the professor knows anything," Fury said.
—-------
-Jake Gremory-
"So, Jarvis was it? Have we found any news on the prince yet?" Jake asked the AI. He was a tad bit nervous speaking with an actual AI because he had, in fact, seen Terminator. Tony had apparently seen that movie in this dimension too and assured Jake that Jarvis had numerous fail-safes to prevent that scenario.
"Apologies, Mr. Gremory. His trail goes cold after he was taken from that ambulance. Something also disabled all the cameras in the surrounding area for the next 5 minutes, and once they came back, he was gone."
"That's some pro-level work right there and would require some serious tech and planning," Tony commented from off to the side. Tony found himself taking a liking to Jake and invited him to his mansion after the kid told him he had nowhere to go and no human money on him.
Jake just sighed. "I just hope Loki won't be too upset that I lost Thor," he said.
"I guess all we can do for now is wait and see if Jarvis can find any more clues," Tony said as he stood up from his seat on his couch. "We might as well call it a day and try again tomorrow. You can borrow some of my clothes, Jake. Yours look like shit and are covered in angel blood. I'll have them burned." Jake nodded before standing himself.
"Maybe don't burn those clothes just yet," an English-sounding woman's voice spoke out in the room, causing Jake and Tony to jump up in shock. They both spun around towards the woman.
"Well, hello there, gorgeous. I don't remember inviting you here, but you're welcome to stay," Tony disguised his nervousness at someone easily passing through his state-of-the-art security system with his flirting.
"Hello, Loki," Jake said, relieved to see her alive and well. "What happened in Asgard? Is Serafall alright?"
"Loki's a girl?" Tony questioned himself but was ignored.
"Serafall is fine, though she has yet to wake. The healing halls were not part of the angels' attack. After you had left, Asgard did face a large invasion from Heven. It's pretty much all hands on deck here at the moment," she said. "In fact, I'm not even really here at the moment." She waved her hand through the sofa to prove she was just a projection. "Before you left, I placed a tracking rune on your clothes, so don't burn them in case we need to speak again." Jake gave her a nod. "Now, where is my dear brother?"
Jake sadly told Loki that Thor had somehow gone missing while he was fighting the angels. Loki frowned at that. Thor was an idiot, but he was a strong idiot they could really use for the coming war... She sighed in defeat as she supposed it wouldn't have mattered anyway.
"I suppose it matters not," Loki said. "One of the first targets of the angels' warships was the Bifrost. It has been destroyed and will take months to a year to rebuild. My father has entered his sleep period and wouldn't be able to unseal brother's powers anyway." Jake wondered if he could use his mist power to transport himself to Asgard, but he decided he needed to train with it to closer destinations first before trying to cross a whole galaxy.
Loki told Jake it was taking a lot of power to speak with him, and she asked him to please keep searching for Thor while they wait for Odin to awake and lead Asgard once again. She vanished right after.
Once he watched the surprisingly hot Loki vanish, Tony turned to Jake and smirked. "Soooooo, Loki's quite a looker, isn't she? Who would have thought?"
"She's over 1500 years old, Tony," Jake said. Not that he had much room to talk since Serafall was 600... but still.
Tony gagged a bit at hearing that number before he shrugged. "Wish I looked that good at her age. Too bad I'm only human." He laughed.
Jake just gave him a strange look. "Well... there is one way I know of to live forever..."
-#########-
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