A Real Hero

Colonel Nick Fury, Director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (or SHIELD as it was normally referred to amongst those few who were privileged to know of its existence) lay back in a leather backed armchair in his penthouse apartment-a veritable fortress and probably one of the most secure locations in Washington DC besides the White House or Pentagon of course.

Sipping some iced beer, he could still barely get a grip on the events of the last 48 hours.

For Fury, the veteran of some of the darkest of black ops missions undertaken by the military during both Gulf Wars, the man who had successfully navigated the treacherous and bloody corridors of espionage for decades, to be overwhelmed by anything...meant that it was something very overwhelming indeed...

Jesus Christ, to think...that it was all true! After all these years, decades...

He thought of the years he and Ross and all the others had spent trying to revive the Super Soldier program...the years and the billions of dollars, to say nothing of the incalculable collateral damage caused by the one 'successful' result all this had produced (if one could indeed call a mindless green monster rampaging across a university campus a 'success')...and to think that all this while, the answer to all their problems was simply lying there, under several feet of thick Arctic ice...

And once one accepted the fact...accepted the miracle that Steve Rogers, America's first super-soldier and its greatest heroic legend, was alive and well, having aged not a day since 1944...a lot of things fell into place quiet beautifully and...organically...

The world needed 'superheroes'...Fury had never had the slightest doubt about that. And it had heroes in operation currently...in a manner of speaking anyway. But what had the 'Avengers Initiative' yielded in that regard so far anyway? A billionaire playboy and alcoholic turned self-proclaimed humanitarian and one-man army, courtesy of some very fancy and very lethal toys...A real-life (and extremely destructive) Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde... An alleged Norse God from another dimension whom they had no way of contacting, or of even knowing if he would be back...A couple of skilled black ops agents with a catchy codenames and a mild taste for theatrics...

All of these had their uses no doubt...but still, what America...what the entire world needed now in the dark days that undoubtedly lay ahead...was a real hero...

And by God, if only the doctors could get Steve Rogers out of deep freeze, if only he could be revived, rehabilitated, reconditioned...if only they could get him to take up the shield again...if only America could get back its finest soldier...

Then at last, the Avengers would truly be prepared to see the light of day!

Fury's mind raced back to the distant days of his childhood, when his father had showed him the old war propaganda reels from the 40's...and some of the lyrics came back to him...

Who will indeed lead the call for America,

Who'll rise or fall, give his all for America,

Who's here to prove that we can?

The Star Spangled Man with a Plan!

Empty words at the time they were written...and yet they were potent as a foreshadowing of what the 'Star Spangled Man with a Plan' had gone on to accomplish not long after...what he could still go on to accomplish...

Yes...today was one of those rare moments in Nick Fury's crazy, cynical world where he felt a stab of hope lancing through him...

The world needed a real hero...and if he had any say in it, they damn well would have one soon enough!