Author's Note: Guess who has been re-reading 1602? Gaiman's Fury is so amazing. I wish I had been able to convey it as effectively here, but I don't think my Fury has anything close to the dirty fighter darkness he needs. Anyway, came up with this random scene while wondering how exactly the Brotherhood would have fit into SHIELD, as we saw in the final episode. Also, please forgive the Firefly reference. I can't help it.

I hope that I explained Nimrod well enough for the non comic followers in the audience to get the basic gist of what it/he is. It/He appears briefly in Xavier's visions of the future (After the Future Brotherhood vision, but before the "class picture" ending shot, when Xavier is talking about challenges that await. On Hulu it's at about 20:34), surrounded by other Sentinels. Because its/his character design is much more "human" than any other version of Nimrod, I secretly hope that the Evo was planning on introducing Bastion, as well. My only reason for being a Nimrod fan is because of Bastion. Best thing to come out of Siege Perilous. Ever.

Final note, if I ever did an Evo-FMA crossover, Lance would be such a dog of the State. You know he would.

Dogs of War

"So, ready to save our people and the planet?" Pyro grinned, standing as the helicopter zoomed through the air.

"Only if you're there with us, Sweetums," Todd grinned, yellowing teeth gleaming in Wanda's direction.

The Scarlet Witch glanced at him haughtily. "Where else would I be? I think the real question is if Fred and Pietro are ready for their parts."

"Are you kidding me?" the green uniformed Quicksilver looked at the buildings receding into the distance, before fixing his eyes on the horizon of desert, waiting for the gray speck of bunker. "I've got a girl back home waiting for me to come home the big damn hero."

Fred rolled his eyes as Todd stuck out his tongue in disgust. "Yeah, waiting back home so that she can destroy you before her boyfriend gets a chance. You ever gonna give up on her?"

Pietro smirked. "Big damn heroes never give up; you should know that, Blob."

"One day I'm going to get a package with your nuts in it, and a love note from Crystal, if you keep this up," Wanda told him.

"Hey, just think of it this way, if we fail, Crystal will be saved from finding a nice set of stationary," St. John joked morbidly.

Lance, trying not to be airsick, tried not to think too hard on the mental images that the other five were conjuring. He looked over the tactical maps with Fury, memorizing the layout of the building. "The other team is going to push in from the west," he commented. "We can't use Leech's help, because we already played that card five years ago, but I think this will work. If it's just Nimrod in there."

Fury chewed on his toothpick noncommittally. Brown eyes, and a darker brown eye shared a glance across the expanse of table. It was not just Nimrod in there, and they both knew it.

"On the bright side, you'll live through this one, old man," Lance smirked, even if we don't, old bastard.

Fury nodded. "After a while, you pick up the knack."

His first assignment had been a far cry from this. They'd all been so afraid that the protests were the upheaval of society, as they knew it, of course. And of course, they had been, but society had survived '68 fine. Would society survive '09 if Zero Tolerance had its way? Probably. But not as well as it had survived '68. Mutants would be gone, and robots would fight for justice. What kind of world was that for an old school spy? Not that he should be comparing this. The team had been on plenty of assignments; tempered through the fire fine. Fury, maybe, had not survived things as well at their age, because it was one thing to kill a man in the heat of a fight. It was another to tell an 18 year old to make certain that the right bullet found the right man in the heat of a fight. But he had survived that fine. The memory of the man had slipped his conscience a long time ago.

Chicago had been a success in the eyes of SHIELD, after all. In the wake of the massive failure of '63 any success was to be applauded.

The mission into Russia in '71 still haunted his dreams on occasion. He'd watched some of the greatest soldiers be created in enemy hands. Although Rogers had been living proof that Super Soldiers were not the be all and end all. Not that super soldiers were to be scoffed at. The relentless pursuit of the man in carbonandium was terrifying, especially if you had been the one to personally shoot him in the face. Fury had survived. Fury always survived. The other men in his squad had been able to limp away. The had not stopped project Omega Red. Failures were to be remembered.

Like Vietnam. Fury had never been able to track down Ngoc Coy, despite the fact that the Vietnamese bastard had slaughtered a troupe of SHIELD operatives that no amount of Vietcong grenades, mines, and machetes had been able to touch. Nick hoped that the man was enjoying his money, because one day he would be found, and then he'd learn why Old Nick was another name for the devil. Good men stayed dead, though, and Fury knew he wouldn't see them again, no matter what closure revenge brought.

He was not a good man. Which was why he was still alive today. He would live through this one, whoever won.

It was not always a given, of course. When bad people face one another, someone has to die—what a myth. He'd tracked down the blue assassin, Mystique, to Austria, once. She broke his arm, shattered one kneecap, slashed his stomach open, and tried to take the left eye. He'd left ten cartridges worth of lead in her body. It hadn't mattered, in the end. He wouldn't have the team assembled in front of him if he had succeeded in the mission. But Apocalypse would not have nearly broken free six year ago. He might have found the boys on his own. But they probably would have been Xavier's and Magneto's, so wedded to their causes they couldn't relearn to hug the fringes of the fight, and destroy the balances of power on command.

Lance stood back. He did not ask: "Have you ever said 'no' to orders?" He was still fighting airsickness. One of the fabled SHIELD elite ops, and he was terrified of flying.

Fury did not reply: "Never. I circumvent them." Some things could not be said.

Like the knowledge that your people sometimes died. Like back in Vietnam. Worse. Sometimes they died because you were the one who pulled the trigger. Fury did not ask for forgiveness. Rogers would have given it, of course. The man had been mad, as far as Fury could tell, and not in the simple "I will use my death ray to destroy all that you care about," way. They were simple to deal with, as all Fury cared about was the job. SHIELD would survive in one way or another, no matter what happened.

He did not enlighten Lance about his recruitment. There were plenty of secrets in his past that belonged buried. Fury had been a rough child, growing up in the fatherless fifties. It did not matter that World War Two had stripped all of the simple family pleasures from him before he was aware of it. That was the fault of history. Nothing he could do, but fight his way through life. If things had been different, he never would have been noticed. The scrappy kid with no real past, outshining graduates of West Point in the eyes of the agent that sighted upon him unexpectedly.

They had put guns in his hands. They had fed him. They had given him purpose. They had given him strength when he was too far gone. That was SHIELD. His family, who had taught him how to clean revolvers, and service M-16s in under a minute. They had been there when he learned what death was like if he was pulling the trigger. That had been all he had ever needed to do for them.

All he needed Lance for was another body that could take his orders, and carry them out. Sometimes circumvent them, when necessary. He had put the mutants in the hands of capable instructors. He had taught them how to assassinate men and women without making a scene. He had fed them for it. They could fight for holding the world from the brink of chaos. Fury had used them to hunt deadly men and women who had destroyed more experienced operatives. They were still alive (even though they were so very young). He had given them all the tools that he could. Hopefully, at the end of the day, the team would not learn that sacrifices had to be made.

Now he was sending them into the den of an evolving machine that was programmed to destroy their kind, and even if the other team accomplished their end of the plan, there was the chance that the hunter Sentinel was not alone. It was a suicide run.

The chopper hovered over the ruins of the complex, coming into land on the plateau that overlooked the former hulk buster base.

Lance looked up, ready for what was coming. "Get in position," he said, consulting his communicator. "Team Two is at the landing site."

Quicksilver sped from the copter, Toad hopping after him. The Scarlet Witch jumped confidently from the aircraft. Fred followed just behind her. Lance looked at Fury for one last, measured moment. "Your orders."

"Your future," Nick Fury shrugged.

Lance smirked. "You could make the world a much cleaner place—without all this mutant ruckus—if you give me the order to sabotage Team Two. Your orders, sir."

Nick Fury looked at the tall young man. He felt old, suddenly. Knowingly, or not, he had created the next generation of SHIELD operatives. If ordered to kill him by those in higher command, they would not. Whether out of loyalty, or because they refused to make his mistakes, they would not accept all commands given them. He did not say: "Don't bite the hand that feeds you, Alvers."

It would be pointless.

"Don't mess around. Go down there, take out the Sentinel Nimrod, and any other Zero Tolerance Operatives that might be protecting, or using, it, Avalanche."

"Just checking that I won't get written up for messing with the San Andreas fault line," Lance Alvers saluted. His communicator beeped. Everyone was in place.

He jumped from the copter, landing on ground that bucked and roared as the land in Death Valley slipped and slid. Fury watched on a computer screen as the bunker split open, one half swallowed by the earth, the rest spilling its innards on the desert sands. His team walked into the breach with the clarity of purpose that all trained dogs possessed.

For a small second, Nicholas Fury allowed himself a smile. Those were his men in there, doing what he had trained them to do, and doing a fine job of it, too. Carefully, he squashed the hope that they would all get out alive. They had not had time to acquire the knack of survival. Still, they were better dogs than he had been. Together, they were wolves.

I'm not sure about the conclusion, here. It feels as though it could be tighter. I wanted more Lance/Fury interaction, but it did not come together in my head in a way that would allow for the time frame of the helicopter ride to California. Any comments/suggestions would be appreciated.

~ MF