The Consultant
If somebody asked Nick Fury what was the thing he hated the most in the world, he would invariably answer "Consultants" in a gruff voice, before muttering swears under his breath. Over world threatening enemies, uncontrollable superpowers, maniacal gods with an ego problem, consultant were more problematic in his mind.
He would be right.
Consultants were, as a definition, outsiders. That already meant two things. First, that meant that they were needed because you couldn't do the job. For someone like Fury, who was the head of SHIELD, the most powerful agency in the whole world that routinely dealt with alien life and other unexplained phenomenon, that meant a great dose of humility and failure.
Then, the outsiders were usually not exactly balanced people. For someone to be needed as a consultant by SHIELD meant that you were either the best in the world or someone that had lived an interesting life. Experts were great in their particular field, but they were not trained military personnel, people that were used to discipline and to not question authority. That left clashes between Fury and the different experts, sometimes leading to somewhat explosives resolutions. The other crowd was even worst. Half were crazy and were as likely to try and bit your head off as to help you.
It is easy to imagine that such people wouldn't be highly trained intelligence operatives, responsible for hundreds of covert operations protecting the Earth and humanity as a whole.
Of course, as with all jobs, Fury made things work through his distaste. He had the expert closely followed and the whole facility was generally issued a locked-down order to make sure nobody would escape with sensitive information. Finally, his best operatives available were sent to oversee the security and take down troublemakers.
That had worked for Fury's whole tenure. However, consultants were destined to bring him his worst trouble ever.
It was still mind-boggling how such a thing had been possible. The council had pushed for the study of the Tesseract, the artefact recuperated years ago by Fury's predecessors. They believed that this object would be the key against the future problems. Fury sent the best scientist the organisation possessed to study the object. After years of study, not a single advancement was made. The higher ups were beginning to become impatient, so Fury bit back his pride and called upon the best expert on extra-terrestrial events he could find.
There is where the first mistake Fury's generally perfect team made. The background check was usually done by Joyce, an aged woman who knew her way around government agencies. However, on that particular day, she had to take off, her sister having died in a car accident. If the man driving a Porsche at ninety in the city hadn't hit Sephora, Joyce's sister, Dr. Jolicoeur would have never been called and brought to an agency's safe house. However, since Sephora had just been killed, Joyce was replaced by Anthony Ribeiro. Anthony wasn't a member of SHIELD, but his father was a congressman and he hoped to join the CIA in the future. The Congressman had arranged for the young college student to temp in SHIELD's intelligence department. Any other week, poor Anthony would have merely collected paper and brought coffee. This particular week however, things were a bit hectic for the intelligence department. An increasingly bad situation was unfolding in Afghanistan with a terrorist group amassing highly technological weapons designed by Stark Industries. The territory was incredibly volatile and with the newly found conscience found by Stark himself it was a powder keg ready to implode on itself. This left the whole team with their eyes on Afghanistan and Anthony with the job of researching and doing a background check on the consultant.
Now, Dr. Jolicoeur was a well-regarded teacher at one of Canada's main universities and is considered an expert by many in his field. However, his specialisation is in sociology and secret organisations. His doctorate thesis was made on the possibility of living without such agencies in the modern world, in which he argued for the public implosion of secret agencies.
So, of course, when Jolicoeur received a cordial phone-call announcing he was needed to study an artefact for SHIELD, he took the chance to put a proverbial metal rod in the wheel of SHIELD's bicycle.
That all led to that day's events.
OoOoOoOoOoOo
Fury looked from the viewing bay down at the huge hangar that SHIELD had requisitioned years ago after being in disservice for many years. A vestige of the Second World War, the agency's historians had informed him.
Of course, it didn't really matter. Almost everything had been stripped down and then equipped with the latest technology at their disposition. The ancient base was now a high-tech building where the world's best studied things that would make the normal world tremble in terror at their mere mentions.
Fury's attention was solely on the only man not dressed in a military garb or a lab coat. The Professor that had been shipped from Canada was dressed in pretty informal jeans and coat. It made a pretty big departure from everybody else, but Fury had long since learned to accept consultants' quirks. If dressing like he had just finished working at the nearest coffee place was the worst this consultant did, Fury would be ecstatic.
However, one could never really be sure with consultants.
That was why Fury was watching the man from afar, all the while having him be escorted by two agents. His last insurance policy was Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye perched in the dark, his bow aimed straight at him.
Still, the black man couldn't help but to feel like he had missed something. A feeling of dread, not unfamiliar, was settling in his gut. He knew the feeling very well. It was generally what preceded things going awry. But, even with that feeling, he stayed stoic, and carefully observed the undressed man downstairs as he inspected the Tesseract.
The man hadn't done anything yet to the alien artefact other than pacing around the item and muttering to himself. It reassured him a little. Evidently the man was in full knowledge of the power of the object before them. It was something that called respect. His carefulness made Fury's feeling of dread smooth a bit. At least, he wasn't touching it with his bare hands and shaking it like the last guy had tried doing.
"Sir," someone called from behind him.
Fury turned his head back, looking at his interlocutor. Perkins was a relatively new recruit. He had been transferred from the Air Force after he had managed to find Tony Stark in the middle of the god-damn Afghan desert using only satellite imagery. The billionaire owed his life to this twenty-three years old kid that had been fascinated with Google Earth as a kid.
Fury had pounced on his expertise without a single regret. He needed that kind of people in his organisation.
"Yes?" he answered, his voice betraying annoyance. The young lad looked taken aback by the tone. He'd learn. Fury wasn't a typical military officer. He didn't care much for decorum and formulation.
"We have a problem, sir. We have noticed a boogey of unknown nature barrelling in restricted airspace at supersonic speed. We haven't been able to either identify it or to contact it with our resources in the area."
"Where is it going?" Fury asked, his attention fully on the problem. Unknown boogey usually meant smugglers, but they rarely were smuggling things in a jet. A private test was possible, but other possibilities couldn't be put aside either. Even the scary ones.
"That's the thing. It's barrelling through Iran as we speak, and will reach Afghanistan in a couple of minutes. It seems to be aiming straight at Kabul, sir."
"An attack from Iran?"
"We don't believe so, sir. The technology seems… more advanced than anything Iran has shown able to produce. We haven't even been able to detect a single trace of carburant."
Fury frowned, "Do we have a point of origin."
Perkins hesitated, "We don't. It appeared from nowhere. We have no idea how, but it managed to slip past everyone. The US Air Force isn't aware of anything right now. It only by luck that its passage was spotted by one of our drones in the area."
Fury shook his head. Just what he needed, a problem while he had a consultant on his hands. He needed to prioritize. "Tell Coulson to come in here right now. I want the professor to be escorted out. Continue to track the bogey and inform our teams in the area of its projected flight course. Get a drone in the air, I want a visual before it reaches any densely populated area. If this is a type of bomb or WMD, I want to know before Afghanistan is bombed back to the stone age."
The young man nodded once and quickly exited the room.
He didn't make it to the door before everything went all wrong.
Gunshots crackled from outside the bulletproof window. The sounds were immediately answered with at least four more weapons spitting bullets at highspeed. Shouts of men giving orders fused from outside the viewing bay. The young analyst crashed to the ground, his sidearm forgotten in his fear.
Fury would have rolled his eye if he hadn't been already walking to the window, his own sidearm already in his hand, cocked and ready. The time the Director took to walking to the window, the gunfire had completely stopped, which meant either good news or catastrophic failure.
Outside, men were pouring out, their weapons trained on a lone figure on the ground, clutching a blue cube in his hands. The jeans and sandals were easily recognizable, even with the splatter of blood soaking their way through his clothes.
Of course it had been the motherfucking consultant. Who else?
The man was lying on his side, still alive, for now. On the ground next to him, a standard issue handgun was being secured by security personnel. One other man, a soldier, had medics flocking to him. Judging from the amount of blood still pouring on the ground neither men would make it.
The soldiers were surrounding the fallen man, but they hesitated to advance. Jolicoeur was holding the Tesseract close to his chest, and nobody wanted to be the man to shoot the unique and powerful alien artefact that had been judged to be the future of the human race.
Fury could understand.
However, it seemed that the hesitation the soldiers felt was the final nail in the coffin. It secured that day to be Fury's worst day ever. The blue square in the man's hands lit up with a blue glow.
"Fire at will!" shouted Fury in his earpiece.
The men downstairs were disciplined soldiers. They didn't wait a second. They fired immediately. Jolicoeur's body jerked as it was filled with lead.
Fury didn't have a moment to relax. The Tesseract's energy that had built up in the past seconds exploded outwards.
Fury was projected backwards as the bulletproof window exploded in glass shards. Fury landed in a heap, sliding towards the door. Perkins, still in the room managed to stop him before he hit the wall head on.
He gave the analyst a grateful look before standing back up. His earpiece hanged from his collar, useless, hopelessly crushed by the blow. A couple of shards of glass had cut Fury's face, but he gave it no heed. He didn't give a single order to Perkins.
He didn't need to. This was the first time the object had showed any sign of power since 1945. The last time it had been used, weapons of disintegration had been created in an era where the usual armament consisted of rifles and ancient airplanes.
Whatever the blast had meant, it was nothing good.
He stepped out of the small viewing bay, Perkins in tow. He headed out in the familiar gray hallway. The hallway was bustling with activities. People tending to injuries, trying to solidify damaged structures, soldiers running to their emergency posts. Over the doors, the yellow emergency light was spinning wildly.
Fury didn't stop a moment. Everybody had a job to do, and his was to lead S.H.I.E.L.D.
He stepped past the larger door, entering the Command Center. The place was filled with computers, all showing different sectors of the Earth, flow charts, a smattering of information necessary to make decisions that affected the Earth. In front of the computers was at least fifty analyst all fervently looking at different screens and talking on phones to interrogate sources.
He gave them no mind as he stepped onto the platform standing above the analyst's bullpen. A man was already there, wearing his usual suit impeccably. His usual easy smile was gone for a serious expression, the face of a man ready for war.
"Coulson," saluted Fury simply. The man nodded his head once. He knew not to waste time.
"What the fuck happened?" he asked simply, his words carrying over the bustling bullpen with people running around and checking things all over.
"We still don't know. Cameras show that the professor tried to touch the cube. He was stopped and manhandled by one of his escort, but the prof managed to get his hands on his firearm and shoot our guy. He grabbed the cube before receiving multiple shots from our sniper team. Apparently, something activated it and it released intense energy in the room."
Fury nodded once, "I want to know who the hell was this guy and who let him come here today." Coulson nodded, unperturbed by the harsh tone. Besides him, a man nodded too and walked away from the room.
"What is the situation inside the room right now," he asked aloud. Coulson turned to his right where two people manned a post with multiple screens. The first man stood at attention while the other continued to tap on his keyboard uninterrupted.
"It released a sort of blue energy wave. It fried most of the camera but two are still working. We don't know much about what happened, so I sealed the room," explained Coulson as images of inside the hangar started popping up on the screen. "Everyone looks to be somewhat alright and our medics inside are already tending on injuries."
Fury nodded, "Do a full battery of test when these people come out. I wanna know if this thing is radioactive or if one of my men is going to change into a big green creature anytime soon."
Things looked under control as Fury let out a sigh. Still, it somehow didn't feel resolved, as if the tension was still lingering in the air.
"We have something showing up here," shouted one of them, breaking the tension directly. He tapped a few keys on his keyboard. His screen appeared on the main display overlooking the whole bullpen. "There's a fluctuation consistent with the Tesseract's energy signature. It's… really powerful. It's concentrated in this area, in-"
"Afghanistan," finished Fury. Of course, it had to be Afghanistan. He had learned early in his career never to believe in coincidences. With an unknown bogey on the way to one of the hottest spot on the Earth in terms of tensions and violence, it added up a bit too neatly for his liking. "I want people on the ground there yesterday. From now on, we are assuming the unknown bogey is connected to this. I want this thing shot down."
"Too late," said Coulson, "it's almost there. It's gonna be there in a couple of minutes at most, and nothing we have is going to be there that fast."
Before Fury could give orders, another person spoke up, from the end near of the room, "I have another signal! Los Angeles!"
"A third in South America, Brazil!"
Fury closed his eyes for a second, before opening them back up, his mind already set with orders to give. "Send a dispatch for Afghanistan heavily armed. I want everything moped up over there, including the terrorists. I want Air Force in on it, we need people in the air to shot down that god damn thing. Send the info to the Brazilian army, they can send people there faster than us. Coulson, you're heading straight to the US. I want you to lead the operations from there. Talk to the authorities, I don't want anything touching the site of the event." He took a pause to look at all the analysts in the room. They were scared he knew. Most of them hadn't been in confrontations with obviously paranormal events like these. "We are rising the threat level globally people. I want everyone to be on their guard and direct lines with the concerned countries in five minutes."
His words were final and the lull in activity in the bullpen stopped as everyone blurred back into action. Fury was satisfied. Even if he knew nothing for now, he would eventually. It was always a matter of reactions. When to intervene and when to let a situation play out. In Afghanistan, he could not afford terrorists learning about atomizing energy while they were planning to conquer all of Asia. Brazil could fend for itself. The United-States was more worrying, but maybe an alliance with Stark would explain away a shockwave of blue energy.
Maybe.
"Sir," cut another voice out from his thoughts. There was something else than urgency in his voice, something that led to Fury to listen to him, "There's another signal."
"Where?"
"Mojave Desert. It's here, sir."
Fury spun on his heel. People were reacting at the words, he could see the faces of analysts who hadn't seen combat scenario since basic training. He could see the fear overtake their features as they froze.
Coulson was already in full movement when he opened his mouth to shout. "Everybody get down!"
He barely managed to utter the last syllable before the whole building shook as another shockwave shook the bunker from its core.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOo
Where was he?
His last memory had been running in the forest, then fighting some girl he didn't know the name of. He remembered having trouble fighting her. Genjutsu users were always tricky for mid-range fighters like himself. Then, in a lull of their fight a giant blue light had flashed before him. He had felt a pull on his body and the ground leaving his feet.
Then a whole lot of nothingness. No sounds, no light, nothing. He barely felt able to move.
At least, until he landed back on ground. The blue light flashed one last time before disappearing completely. His senses were suddenly back as if nothing happened.
The only thing was that Shikamaru was not in a forest anymore.
He was now in a giant room, not unlike a warehouse one could find in Konoha's economic quarter. The walls and the ground were made of concrete. Metal support beams stood at regular intervals. On the height of the next floor, walkways hanged from the ceiling.
That's where the comparison ended however. The catwalks were not made of rusty iron, but were sheets of steel reinforced with a short concrete wall. The ceiling wasn't made with wood, but with metal. At far right of the room, a large opening at the higher level revealed a room.
Finally, instead of merchandise, the room was filled with soldiers dressed in black pointing at him with some black contraption.
"Don't move," shouted one of them on his immediate right. Shikamaru had no intention of disobeying. The black things they held looked like some new weapons tech. Maybe these people were from Rain. His father had told him that they had been known to innovate and it was one of the few countries Konoha didn't have much updated intel available.
"Fuck off asshole," came the reply on his left.
He wasn't alone here.
Shit.
On his left, the redhead girl he'd been fighting was glaring defiantly at the soldiers in front of her. She didn't seem to pay Shikamaru any piece of her mind. He was grateful for it.
"I repeat: Do not move or you will be shot down" answered the same voice, his tone rising.
"And I said, I don't give a fuck!"
Shikamaru saw everything happen at the same time. She took a single step forward. The next moment, a mist of red splashed the concrete next to her as her leg failed her and she crashed on the ground.
What kind of weapons could injure someone so fast? He had good eyes and he hadn't seen any projectiles. If that was the power of these weapons, these people could not be underestimated.
"Argh, fuck!" she screamed from the ground. Still, she was determined, if not smart. She put her other foot solidly on the ground and rose, her left leg completely useless. "I'll fucking gut you like pigs you asswhipes."
The man directly in front of Shikamaru took a step back. He could see the others tensing too. They hadn't expected her to continue after the first attack. The guy on his right who seemed to be leading the group lifted a hand to a black box attached to his black vest.
"Roger that, Hawkeye"
What kind of name was Hawkeye?
He heard the telling whistling sound of a weapon moving through the air. It was a sound all ninjas were well acclimated to.
His body reacted on instinct. He shifted his weight and turned his body sideways. The arrow almost grazed him and collided straight with the first man in the front. Instead of piercing him like arrows usually did, it stuck to him and opened, revealing a small mechanism. Electricity sparked from the strange bolt and coursed through the man in black. He shook from the intensity and dropped to the ground twitching.
Another spasm sound attracted Shikamaru's eyes. Beside him, the girl had tried to dodge it, but hadn't been fast enough with her leg. She had tried to grab it, but the bolt had simply latched to her hands and shocked her all the same.
She fell on the ground without any more sounds.
Shikamaru's heart was racing. He hadn't moved overtly much, just a small shift in position and a turn, but the guys next to him looked completely on edge.
Seconds moved slowly as everyone stayed immobile by the tension. Shikamaru was watching for another bolt coming from behind him. He'd probably take that one even if it shocked him to evade getting killed immediately. It was easier to escape when people were underestimating you than surrounded by a platoon of men with hyper-efficient weapons and an archer hiding.
Fortunately, he didn't have to.
"Stand down!"
A man's voice boomed in the room. Immediately, all the soldiers took a few steps back and let their black weapons face the ground. A single man was making his way through the soldiers. They all snapped to attention as his heels clipped on the concrete ground.
Shikamaru tensed as the man approached. He stood and looked like a leader. Which could be a problem for Shikamaru. He was a Chuunin, he expected to face other ninjas. However, leaders of armed groups as large as these were usually jonin or even greater. He would not be able to win in a dogfight against a jonin-level opponent.
At the very least, the red-head had been neutralized. He'd completed his part of the deal, time for the others to retrieve Sasuke and go back to the Village.
He might need rescuing soon too.
"I've been doing this job for years now. I've seen almost everything, people changed by quantum particles, aliens that can change forms, humans that can transform in giant beasts. This, however, this is new, I got to give it you," he started. His voice sounded derisive, but at the same time it wasn't. There was a distinct lack of humor in it.
"When an ancient artefact is suddenly activated and energy matching it start popping everywhere on Earth, I'm expecting some cataclysmic thing to crawl out of it. Shit, I might have settled for a demon from another dimension. But no. I have only a scared child dressed like its Halloween and a teenager that is bleeding from the floor because my men have itchy fingers." His last words had cut deep into his men. The guy who had used his weapon seemed to retreat on himself.
"Come on, get her help! You really want to be the one to explain why you killed a teen for no reason?"
A group of guys from the pack almost fell forward in precipitation as they began to attend to the girl on the ground. Which was a mistake. A really big one if she woke up and started to use genjutsu on an army armed with deadly weapons.
"You really shouldn't do that."
The leader raised the eyebrow over his eye patch, "Really. Why not?"
"You guys really want to wake up a foreign ninja without binding her first?" he countered.
He saw the sliver of confusion in the man's face before he drew back in his façade. He would have missed it, if it hadn't been the confused body languages of most of the soldiers.
"She's shocked unconscious. She's not waking up anytime soon. She needs medical attention, or she will be dead soon."
Shikamaru shoved his hands in his pockets with a shrug. He didn't miss the nervous tensing form the soldiers on his right. They were still completely alert even if their leader was out on the field. Maybe even more so. Maybe their leader wasn't one of strength, but one that reigned because of some ability? Maybe he was the one that had provided the weapons. So many theories and so little time to delve into them. It didn't matter for now. He had no intention to escalate this into a fight.
"She's from Sound," he simply stated back.
Again, the confused body-language. The man didn't show anything, but his soldiers were not as well trained.
"I see," he said back. "We'll take our chances, thanks." He turned around, his back facing Shikamaru, "The guys will bring you into a room and we'll let you go after a few questions. Karlsson?"
The guy in charge made a sharp move with his hands and two guys stepped up to stand behind Shikamaru. He didn't give them any mind, his attention still on the leader walking away.
Something wasn't right here.
"Why are you trying to use me as bait?"
The guy froze in his tracks. He felt the two guys behind him tense up, but he didn't care. The jig was up.
The guy turned back to him, "I have no idea what you mean. We don't use children as bargaining tools."
"Except I'm not a child, am I?" he said back.
Everyone looked confused. Even the leader couldn't keep his thoughts from bleeding into his face.
"You wouldn't know anything about that I gather. You don't recognize two evident ninjas, you have weapons that are unheard of and even after I tell you the girl is Orochimaru's underling you want to help her heal. I have no idea where the hell that blue light sent me, but I know I'm not in the Elemental Nations."
Everybody froze.
"And you didn't shock me either. So, you need me conscious. I don't know why, but I can venture a guess. You said I wasn't the only energy or whatever thing that arrived at the same time. Means that you want to use me as a bargaining chip with the others. Am I wrong?"
Silence filled the void that followed his words. The leader seemed impassible until a small smirk appeared on his face.
"Damn, man. You're really brighter than you look." He said with his derisive tone still humorless. "I got to give it to you. I think this is a record time to fuck yourself completely."
His smirk dropped with the last sentence. At the same moment, the two guys behind Shikamaru shifted.
Or at least, tried to.
"Shadow Imitation Technique Complete" He said as he brought his hand out from his pockets. The hands of the two guys behind him moved at the same time.
Everyone's weapons were trailed on him, but they were hesitating. They were worried. Shikamaru knew how to exploit that fear. "If I get hurt, they die directly. I'd step away from them too, otherwise they'll explode and kill us all."
Everyone took an instinctive step back. Except the leader of course. He was now finally staring at him seriously. Shikamaru had interacted enough with Naruto to know he hadn't really had his attention. His mind was occupied elsewhere. Now, he had his full and undivided attention.
Time to make it worth.
"Let's negotiate, shall we?"
The man didn't move or say anything.
"I'll let these guys go if you let me free"
The man was already shaking his head. "We cannot allow for an anomaly with special abilities to walk in the world."
Shikamaru shook his head, "I don't care to go out of this place. There's nothing out there for me. I don't mind staying with you. But I don't want to be locked inside a cell. I want to be able to know where my people are. I want to participate not as an unwilling participant, but as a partner."
The man narrowed his only eye. "Why?"
Shikamaru shrugged, making the other two shrug with him. He could feel them try and strain the connection, but they weren't attacking the chakra itself. It was like a five years-old tugging on an adult. It made no difference. He could keep this up much longer than he could against ninja.
"Honestly? I don't want to be here any more than you. I want to go back. I have no interest in your world. I'm also kinda lazy. I don't want to find them myself, that'd be too much work. You're trying to find them. That's great, I'll just hang around and help out a bit with advice until you gather them and we can go home without problems."
The man looked like he was musing the proposal. "And you will be letting my men go unhurt?"
Shikamaru smirked, "Not exactly. They'll be free to do as they want, but if I die or I'm locked somewhere, they're dying of the most gruesome explosion you'll ever see."
The man didn't react at the threat. He extended his hand forward.
Shikamaru smiled and took his hand. The hands of the two others didn't follow as the shadows retreated back safely under him. They shook hands as both smart men looked in each other's eyes.
They both knew that each of them was already trying to devise a plan screw the other.
Shikamaru's smile wasn't faked at all. These were the situations he was the best in. The physical confrontation had just shifted into a game of shogi with a worthwhile new opponent.
He hadn't been this excited in forever.
A/N : Alright! This is another thing that has gathered dust on my computer for a year now. I have so little time with university and working in a bar, so I don't promise anything. However, I like this story and its possibilities. I guess we'll see where I can take it. I'm also not the biggest experts on Marvel, so if I miss anything, well...
Anyway, hope you like it!