A Note from the Author:
I couldn't leave out Phase One guys, and once I can get Age of Ultron, I'll try to make a filtered version of Age of Monsters.
Enjoy, and if you like it, please review.
"The Tesseract has awakened." A voice that radiates the abyss of the universe speaks, his voice pushed by what little atmosphere the fragments of a long-gone planet can provide.
And the voice's possessor, a rather withered soul whose ashen body, concealed by a flowing silk cloak, and his mouth, imprisoned behind metal more precious than gold, denies not the enormity of his premeditated intentions that he wishes to share to his master.
A master who deems his underling undeserving of the grace of his face, and so, turns his throne, a cathedra sculpted out of riches unheard of by many, sold only by a few, so that he may look upon the universe with an insatiable lust for its conquering.
A universe that seems to draw itself closer to his hands, especially with the latest utterances. The Other has always brought nothing but good news to his ears, and so he does regard him with value, though little it may be.
And the Other is aware of this. He is grateful to his master for his life alone, and is willing to serve him, but the employ is one of great fragility, and he is always one to take care of every action, every word spoken, every position of each fiber in his body so that the master suddenly deems him disposable.
And so the Other recites his next words slowly,
"It is on a little world. A human world."
The being on the throne does not move, but in his mind, his thoughts race to a planet, freckled by soil, blanketed by air, and skinned by water. He does not utter its name, for those who live upon it are, in his eyes, not worthy of this space.
"They would wield its power, but our ally knows its workings as they never will."
Wield its power? Perhaps their intergalactic value is not as exaggerated as he thought. These vermin were always at their most amusing the moment they fall onto their knees, begging for mercy, and why should they be given it when they always try to be more than what fate dictates. To try and attain positions only gods like him can ever hope to grasp.
"He is ready to lead, and our force, our Chitauri, will follow."
He mentally scoffs. The Chitauri are a force so powerful very few in the universe dare speak their name. To hear them being used by a vagrant is almost something of an insult to his glory.
But he stays himself. The fruit of his ally's labor will be sweeter than an army of monumental infamy.
"A world will be his." He may have said world, placate his craving for a kingdom of his own after the one that took him in ousted him after they denied him the very petition.
"And the universe yours." No kingdom could be greater than the absoluteness of the cosmos, and no other beneath it will settle his own relishing.
"And the humans," the Other said as a last remark, "What can they do but burn?"
Joint Dark Energy Research Facility. The Mojave Desert. Nighttime.
This remote research institution is property of the Strategic Home Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division, otherwise known as S.H.I.E.L.D. as part of an enterprise involving a mysterious, extraterrestrial artifact known as the Tesseract. The studies conducted on this enigmatic object have yielded results far from the intended.
Then, one day, the building issued an evacuation. Soldiers make for the armored Humvees, trying to put as much distance as possible between the structure and themselves, guided by the suited federal agents. One in particular, bears on his profile the marks of a veteran in his field. He, of all the men in the area, is the most composed despite the ambience of panic as a helicopter makes its descent onto the landing pad. The wind generated by the blades barely buffets the man as he awaits its load.
This is Agent Phil Coulson. One of the best of S.H.I.E.L.D., he was someone who carried his duty with righteousness to see his assignments done.
This earns him the respect of the two people that exit the copter. First was a woman, her hair kept short for her line of duty, her body clothed in the female S.H.I.E.L.D. agent attire that gave viewers a good idea of her measurements. This was Maria Hill, Coulson's fellow agent and personal acquaintance. Her stare was icy, a habit that stems from her professionalism in the workplace, but deep down, she's held a strong admiration for the man in front of her. She wasn't also above complimenting his appearance. A black suit and tie felt right with him, though she would never show it on duty, much less in public.
The second person is a man with dark skin, wearing a black leather trench coat that covered his own work attire. His most distinguishing features are the eyepatch he wears to cover up a disfigured injury he would rather not talk about, not even alone, and the authority radiating from every point of his being. He is SHIELD's director, Nicholas Fury, a man whose lifetime experiences render him oblivious to nearly any form and manner of surprise sprung his way.
Assessing the situation around him, Nick realizes this was no time for friendly banter. He gets right to the point while his deputy watches from the side.
"How bad is it?" He asks of Coulson, but the latter gives a report far from helpful in this time of emergency.
"That is the problem sir. We don't know."
The walk to the radiation section of the floor was one of extremely tense silence that could crush a man's spirit. But this rigidity in the mood of things was not without reasonable cause.
Exactly four hours ago, Phil recounts, the Tesseract released an energy reading that was picked up by one of the lead scientists in the program: astrophysicist Dr. Erik Selvig. This was before NASA, who was aware of the experimenting done on the Tesseract, authorized real testing of any sort. It occurred even in his absence.
That led to only one very disturbing ruling to Agent Hill. "It just turned itself on?" Judging from the expression that had broken through on Agent Coulson's face when he had reported the event to them, she didn't need a verbal reply to be certain.
And then came worse news. The energy reading climbed, and continued to do so despite the many endeavors attempted to shut down the vestige. That was when the evacuation order was issued.
And Fury was not contented by how fast it was going. "Do better" he comments.
"Sir," Hill reasons, "Evacuation may be futile." She may be below him, but women often the see the reason in things sooner than men do.
He turns on her for a moment. "We should tell them to go back to sleep?"
She continues to cite her reason. "If we can't control the Tesseract's energy, then there might not be a minimum safe distance."
Fury ends the argument without a word, and moves his mind to matters he considers more pressing than the possibility of a doomsday event.
"I need you to make sure that Phase Two prototypes are shipped out."
Hill was unquestionably loyal to her director, but even she could see that he was only human. "Sir, is that really a priority right now."
This time, he doesn't even tilt his head. "Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on. Clear out the tech below. Every piece of Phase Two on a truck and gone." The tone of his voice made it evident to all those who heard it that he was making no room for further arguments.
"Yes sir." Hill says, hiding her defeat. She then addresses the standing agents to accompany her to the storage rooms while Coulson hastens the clearing of the campus up above.
The research's most precarious processes were carried out in a spacious chamber that was, as of present, bustling with activity at each end. All around man and machine monitored the Tesseract's activity with a notable delicacy that showed itself through the many beads of sweat trickling down the scientists' faces.
And in the center of the room, itself held in the middle of a compact muon solenoid coil chamber, was the Tesseract, a cube of energy that pulsed like seawater. At times, the object flared rings that generated shockwaves felt by everyone and threatened to break them of their tentative concentration as they sought ways for it to cease its unwanted emissions.
Fury calls for the man of the house, and Dr. Erik Selvig answers. He may be ages, with his hair graying, but his intelligence is as strong as it was in his prime, and the astrophysicist is more than ready with an answer for the anxious director.
"It's misbehaving." He states.
Fury was not amused by it. "Is that supposed to be funny?" He asks intolerably, for Fury was a man who demanded earnestness when essential, and detested humor's overuse when in conversation with him.
But Selvig emphasized the gravity of the situation. This thing, a simple geometric commodity that has been spoken of in myths and legends long since thought gone, and recently proven to be existent, is in fact exhibiting a power of its own doing. Pull the plug on it, and the Tesseract simply continues to run it, which would make sense as it is an energy source.
"We're prepared for this Doctor. Harnessing energy from space." Fury assures him.
But Selvig spots some holes in that tidbit of dialogue. "We don't have the harness; our calculations our incomplete. Now, she's throwing off interference, radiation. Nothing harmful, just low levels of gamma radiation."
But those last two words brought about an incredible feeling of uneasiness that washed over Fury in a wave of nostalgia, so then he looks around, scanning for the agent that was to overlook the whole motion of the project.
"Where's Barton."
"The Hawk?" Selvig asks without even looking the director in the eye. "Up in his nest as usual."
Dressed in black tactical gear, with his trademark compound bow and quiver, Agent Barton takes note of his boss' entrance with his piercing eyes. Upon hearing the director's command of report, he rappels down from his perch on the railings and joins Fury on a walk around the quarters in a discreet fashion.
"I gave you this detail so that you could keep a close eye on things." Fury said, a chiding edge in his voice.
"Well, I do better from a distance." He justified.
It was true. Agent Clint Barton was naturally gifted with far-sightedness. It's one of the few things that earned him his codename of Hawkeye.
And Fury, for all his complaining, is very aware of this. "Well, do you see anything that might set this thing off?" In their line of work, everyone is a potential suspect, capable of causing something that could set off a bomb the world is not prepared to take action against.
In a nutshell, Barton replied with a negative, but what he actually said was:
"No one's come or gone. The oven is clean. No contacts, no I.M.'s. If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn't at this end."
Fury did a double take at the end of that sentence. "At this end?" He enunciated.
The agent looked at him, "The Cube is doorway to the other end of space, am I right?" He paused for a bit so that the impact can sink in. Barton was no scientist, but even the layman knows about the fundamentals of space and the dimensions.
"Doors open from both ends."
As Dr. Selvig's fingers fly over the keyboard, the object that had obtained the attention of the masses present suddenly released a surge of energy so powerful it generated tremors that could be felt by Hill and Coulson from their stations on the surface.
As the flares continue to dance around the Tesseract like as if it were some sort of blue, square sun, sounds akin to spark spits and boiling water growled and rolled until it released itself in the form of a cyan beam that strikes platform to which the CMS is wired.
The sounds from the artifact were now a roar, and the energy took shape in the form of a circular anomaly as bright as the sun, and for a moment, the mysterious of beauty of space, the stars, the ribbons of nebulas, the shimmering trails of comets, were all visible before an explosion of light swallows it all. The flash was strong everyone who valued their sight was forced to avert their eyes, and Dr. Selvig immediately ordered anyone who wasn't the least bit capable of wielding firearms to leave the scene at once, his voice raised to a shout as the winds stirred about caused his voice to fly about.
As the glare subsides well enough for everyone to look at the point of opening, there was someone standing where there was energy mass. His attire of gold and green slightly smoking from the hundreds of light-years of travel he had just undergone, he immediately recognizes the cold, hard metal floor on which he knelt, and a smile graced his handsome yet treacherous features.
Aside from the ostentatious armor, billowing emerald mantle, and the whites of his glinting green eyes, the thing that worried Fury, Barton, Selvig, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents now flooding into the room, weapons ready to fire, was the scepter the man gripped in one hand. A beautifully carved specimen that would not look alien in the hands of a king, situated at the pointed was a small orb of energy that made the hairs on the back of Fury's neck stand in alarm. A man in flesh he may be, but the way he carried himself was not of this world, or its dominant race for that matter.
"Sir!" He said with as much calm as he could possibly muster at this point. "Please put down the spear."
The man looks at the object, and then, seems to comply with Fury's words only to aim it at the latter's direction and launch yet another round of energy fire. Barton was barely able to tackle his superior out of harm's way.
The man had just instigated a shoot-out, machine gun fire rings throughout the vacuum chamber, but is of little use, as his armor bounces the bullets off of him harmlessly. At his turn, most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were either knocked down from the energy blasts, or were nursing wounds from special throwing knives the man kept on his person for times such as this.
Barton quickly recovers first, and seeing this, the man purposefully strides over to him. Before Barton could so much as shoot the man in the chest, the latter grabs his hand, and uses a voice that could lower the guard of even the palace guards in England.
"You have heart." And with that, he softly jabs the point of the scepter onto Barton's own chest. For a moment, the agent's sclera was now shelled in darkness, only to clear now that the scepter's cryptic workings have now enthralled him to the man. The other agents too met this fate as Fury takes this window of opportunity to take the Tesseract and keep in a case made especially for its containment.
Of course, the man might as well have eyes at the back of his head, because before Fury could so much as walk out of there, his possession of the troublesome artifact has now made him the object of the man's unwanted heed.
"Please don't," he says in a mocking tone of gentle request, "I still need that."
Nick Fury can't run any longer. He'd face a worse fate that having his thoughts taken over.
"This doesn't have to get any messier." He says as he turns.
"Of course it is. I have come too far for anything else. I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose."
Selvig, for one, could be not be any more at a loss as to this man's identity. He was of Scadinavian origin, and as such, learned of the myths of the North. The name Loki was one he was all too familiar with, but not as myth dictates.
"Loki? Brother of Thor."
The expression on the Asgardian's face soured at the mention of the second name. To Fury on the other hand, it was one of familiarity.
"We have no quarrel with your people."
Loki turned to him with a hardened look. "An ant has no quarrel with a boot."
Fury did not like that what that analogy implied of the god's intentions or opinions. "Are you planning to step on us?"
But Loki then holds out his hands as if he were the Messiah. "I come with glad tidings, of a world made free."
The edge in Fury's voice was sharpening. "Free from what?"
"Freedom." Was Loki's simple reply before he continued, "Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart-" He pauses turns to Selvig like a gunslinger, and before the scientist even knows what's happened, all his free will now Loki's to command.
He turns now to the only man left to bewitch. "You will know peace."
Fury takes this moment to take a crack at him. "Yeah when you say peace, I think you kinda mean the other thing."
It was at this moment that Agent Barton decides to speak his first words as Loki's minion. "Sir," he addresses the god with a tone that he had used only moment ago when conversing with Fury, "Director Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow. Drop a hundred feet of rock on us. He means to bury us."
"Like the pharaohs of old." Nick Fury did not become the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. by being soft. If this was his last stand, better go down fighting. From above the chamber, a large, lucid cloud of energy released by the Tesseract is enlarging by the second.
Selvig backs Barton up with his own readings. "He's right. The portal's collapsing in on itself. You've maybe got two minutes before this thing goes critical."
"Well then…" Loki then looks at Barton, issues him a silent command, and soon Fury finds himself shot and on the floor nursing his wounds as the rogue agents leave with their less than pleasant charge and made for the parking lot. Along the way, they pass by Agent Hill, who is more than puzzled to see Loki taking the lead.
"Who's that?" She inquires of Barton, unaware of his compromise.
"He didn't tell me."
She turns away, her female intuition telling her something's not right. A breath later, her walkie-talkie buzzes with life as her boss' voice cracks through the speaker.
"Hill do you copy?!" Fury hisses as he tries to pull the bullet from his side. "Barton is-"
The audible heavy breathing of his voice was incentive enough for Hill to turn and fire in the same second, but in her momentary distraction, Barton had already commandeered a truck and was now shooting back at Hill with incredible accuracy.
"He's got the Tesseract! Track it down!" Fury says between breaths as he exits the chamber. "The energy's really brewing a fucking shit storm from the vacuum chamber ceiling."
Meanwhile, some agents with a sixth sense are now trying to stop the rogue agents carrying the mysterious person away from the premises, and a drive-by shoot out ensues. Loki, with the power of his scepter, swimmingly flips the trucks over on their backs. Hill, who is on a jeep, puts a good distance between herself and Loki. If she's going to do this, she has to without endangering herself.
Meanwhile Fury and Coulson are now in the center of an earthquake. The latter shepherds the last of the agents while Fury tries to get out in the middle of a rainstorm of pipes. Coulson manages to get into a van, while Fury races to the chopper still seated on the landing pad. He could only so much as jump just as the landing pad gave way from the massive seismic activity that sends the entire facility to the ground.
Back to Hill, she manages to pull up to the left of Barton's vehicle. In this case, having the much smaller jeep is an advantage as she advances, does a full three-hundred and sixty degree turn, so that she is now facing the larger truck as Barton opens fire either to move her out of the way or put a few bullets in her so that he can escort Loki in peace. Either way, Hill doesn't relent and releases her own rounds at him. However, she only manages to get out of the way as Barton seemingly decides to run her over and floors it.
As all these events transpire, the Tesseract's accumulated energy collapses itself into a minute sphere of light, and then it is released in one shockwave of pure cosmic energy that causes the place to close in on itself. Anyone in the vicinity can feel the backwash of it and see the implosion and its terrifying effects on the building.
Unfortunately, that was only the tip of iceberg.
As Barton drives out of the parking lot tunnel, and makes headway into the desert, a mysterious figure suddenly falls out of the sky and lands onto the hood of the truck. As far as Loki's concerned, this is someone who would do well on his side, and so Barton pulls the stranger from his perilous position outside and positions his chest towards Loki's scepter. The front door pulls open, and the stranger, a person that looked to be about in his early twenties, rolls into the dirt and suddenly begins to bubble as his human skin gives way to something a lot viler.
A creature with a slender, toothed head and body, a thick muscular tail, scaly skin that was predominantly blue, and a single protruding horn from its head began sprinting alongside the jeep. Overall, its body gave observers the impression that they were staring at some breed of mutated dinosaur.
Fury's chopper meanwhile, slides the door open and the man inside begins to shoot at the vehicle. Infuriated by the man's persistence, Loki looks up at him with a hateful glare and emits one last blast of energy from his scepter, causing the copter's blades to catch fire and Fury to leap out at the last minute as the aircraft is gone in plume of flames. Fury tries to shoot from where he is, but Loki smirks at the man's hopeless attempts as he knows they've put enough ground between them for him to lower his guard.
His mind reeling, Fury receives a call from Coulson.
"The Tesseract is with the hostile force. I have men down." He then turns his focus on another person whom he knows is still alive. "Hill?"
And he knows well. Hill responds from the rubble, her jeep sandwiched in the debris, luckily, she herself hasn't sustained any life-threatening injuries. "A lot of men still under. Don't know how many survivors."
Fury doesn't want to accept the gravity of the situation they're under in, but what other choice did he have. "Sound the general call." He speaks onto his device. "I want every not soul not working rescue looking for that briefcase."
Hill responds with an affirmative. With that, Fury returns to discuss the matter with Coulson.
"Get back to base. This is a Level Seven. As of right now, we are at war."
Coulson registers the Director's words an omen of great foreboding. After a moment of silent thought, he then asks the director a question to which he hopes Fury has an answer to.
"What do we do?"
Fury, indifferent to the flaming ruins of the chopper, looks out onto the road where Loki made his getaway. The creature that had come from a person was still outlined in the distance of the horizon. Fury trains his eyes on it as only one solution comes to mind.