I do not own the characters. DC and Marvel do.

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Chapter Four

Hammer

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"…and so, I call on you to stand with me!" The Supreme Pontiff declaimed from the screen. "Let us stand together to protect the human race against those who would pervert it, who would debase our species, who would warp the very spiral of life into mockeries of the human form! Let us stand together against those who would weaken us against those who would seek to corrupt the purity of humanity!"

The screen shattered as the frame in which it was set flexed inwards.

"Daaa-aaad!" Quicksilver protested. "I'd just finished setting that up for my gaming! I was going to have a re-match with Tekmage!"

Magneto gave his son a quelling glare, then glared at the shattered television as if the preacher was still spewing his bile and hatred.

"This so-called Church of Humanity has the potential to be the greatest threat on the planet to our cause." He growled. "They claim that humanity is perfect, but we are the future, not them. Their time is almost over, they have yet to realise it, but they shall."

Pietro stared in near-worship at his father.

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The deck seemed to shiver as the Helicarrier landed on the lake, the bridge windows darkening as the water covered the outside of them.

"The tugs are moving into position and the wings are being retracted, sir."

Fury nodded as he scanned the status screens. "Excellent. And the replacement wings?"

"Ready to install, sir. The engineers say that it should only take a few hours to swap them over once we have docked."

"What?" Fury barked. "A few hours? It took two days to fix the current wings on."

"But they didn't have us helping." A voice said and Fury turned to see Cir-El stepping onto the bridge with four other Kryptonians, one of whom was very welcome.

"Clark."

"Fury." Clark replied with a respectful nod.

"Flamebird. Mon-El." Fury greeted the other two adults, then he looked at the final figure. "Superboy. Clark…"

"Chris' powers have matured enough that he needs training in them." Clark said in explanation. "Since he now has enhanced strength and flight, I agreed that he could help."

Fury frowned. "He's young. There are legal issues…"

"I thought of that." Clark said, fishing out a folded piece of paper from his belt and handing it over. Fury unfolded it and scanned it before snorting with amusement.

"A presidential permission note allowing him to help for training purposes." He said, slowly shaking his head. "Alright, you win this one."

"May we enter?" A new voice asked and Fury leaned slightly to one side as he tried to peer past the Kryptonians.

"Kal and his cousin Kara overheard what was going on and asked if they could help." Clark shrugged as the black-and-silver-clad Superman stepped onto the bridge, followed by the similarly-clad Supergirl. "Since they're from the JL reality, I thought that at least they wouldn't be actively distrusted."

"Seven Kryptonians helping with the upgrade." Fury realised. "Now I understand why the engineers are so insistent that they can do it that fast."

Cir-El pointedly didn't smirk, but Fury still glared at her.

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The door swung open, letting shafts of light lance into the entry cavern and causing sparkles of dust to glitter as they swirled in the air.

"Here we are, sir." One of the men who had opened the door said. "One hidden base, abandoned by SHIELD as surplus to requirements five years ago."

"Excellent." The Supreme Pontiff smirked as he limped in, his staff striking the floor as he used it to help support himself. "Do they still have the records for this base?"

"No sir, I deleted them myself before escaping their investigators." The man replied. "The records are gone, sir, over-written multiple times so that they cannot be re-constituted."

"You have done well, my son." The Supreme Pontiff said in benediction. "Now, please, show me around this base… no. Not base, this Chapel of Righteousness!"

"Yes, sir!" The man barked as he braced to attention and underneath his holographic mask, Boliver Trask smirked in triumph.

"You may have helped us win our crusade, Jenkins… no, Jack. I am proud that you have chosen to stand by my side."

Jack Jenkins grinned with pride.

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Fury stood on one of the balconies of the Triskelion, watching as the staff moved through the freestanding archway in the middle of the primary entrance hall. Whenever an agent had been sent staggering backwards by the invisible force that filled the archway, one of the Konohagakure ninja under the command of Yamanaka Inoichi would use their near-teleport technique to appear beside the agent in question and vanish in a swirl of quickly-disintegrating leaves. Once secured, the agents were given a choice of veritaserum under the gazes of Henchgirl and the Doctor from Black Ink, or undergoing a mind-walk performed by one of the Yamanaka clan.

Surprisingly, several of the agents who had been singled out had proven to be innocent, but in the middle of reconsidering their career prospects. Almost half of the rest had been infiltrators from various security services and were… encouraged to return to their former employers.

Of the rest, quite a few had tried to flee, only to discover that even the best-trained soldiers in SHIELD were no match for any one of the quartet of Hyuuga chunin that were supplying the primary security of the Konoha ninja. After all, it was hard to fight someone whose every strike could cost you the use of a limb.

"Director."

"Jonin Inoichi." Fury replied in greeting, his voice calm despite his unease at how well the ninja had snuck up on him.

"Henchgirl has declared that all those who have not fled have been checked." Inoichi stated. "Agent Hill has confirmed that the personnel records have been modified accordingly so I believe that our mission is over."

"I will have the balance of payment sent to you by the end of the day." Fury agreed. "How many infiltrators were there?"

"About one in twelve." Inoichi replied and Fury hid a wince. "Of which a third were… legitimate infiltrators, if that is not too much of a contradiction."

"And the rest were Hydra." Fury stated.

"Mainly Hydra, yes. Fourteen were working for someone called the Kingpin."

Fury failed to hide his wince.

"But those who remain are confirmed as being loyal." Inoichi concluded. "You may start to rebuild your forces once more."

Fury nodded, then half-turned.

"Do you know anyone who would be interested in a job training my troops? Recent events indicate their current training is… somewhat lacking."

"Since they don't use chakra, that isn't surprising." Inoichi said thoughtfully. "Most of our fighting styles need chakra to boost our basic abilities… I can't think of anyone who specialises in chakraless combat… I'll ask around for you, though."

"I appreciate it." Fury said and Inoichi nodded.

"Well, I think I should be going. Kami knows what mischief my daughter has got into."

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"No. Freaking. Way." Phil Coulson stated, his normal reserve having abandoned him in the face of what he was seeing.

Outside the viewport, the Triskelion II floated with the only movements being the final portions of the internal fitting.

"But… how?"

"Training exercise." Lieutenant-Governor Faora explained as she landed beside the gobsmacked agent. "We used the building of the Triskelion II to test out all of the building slips, then assembled everything as efficiently as possible using the advantages of our mixed workforce. Given that it didn't need to be constructed to withstand the rigours of combat, we were able to put it together without having to worry about more than four layers of redundancy."

"Four?!" Phil choked and Faora nodded.

"We will start it moving to Earth tomorrow, once the Bubble-drive unit is attached to the top. Has the foundation been prepared yet?"

Phil shook his head in disbelief.

"Then I would suggest you get started."

"We're still assembling the team!" Phil half-protested.

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Lance Alvers climbed out of the helicopter and frowned as his power recognised a familiar presence. Following his instincts, he soon found himself face-to-face with a large grey-haired man in orange coveralls that was staring at him with the same confused recognition. After a moment, Lance decided to break the silence.

"I'm Avalanche. Terrakinetic with The Brotherhood." He said.

"Richter, formerly with the Omegas." The man replied. "You the one I went up against at the big fight?"

Lance nodded and the man grinned.

"Nice to meetcha at last. There ain't that many of us ground-shakers. You fought damn well."

"You fought well too." Lance said, fighting down the confusion he was feeling at their friendly conversation. "So… you here to dig the hole as well?"

"Yep. It's gonna knock a year and a half offa my sentence." Richter grinned. "Once this is over, I'll be a free man once more."

"Same deal with me." Another man in prison overalls said as he walked up. "Stonewall, I can pull the ground up to form barriers."

"So, this is where us metahumans are meeting." Another voice said and the trio turned to see a group in military fatigues walk up. The leader looked at them and nodded. "Gentlemen. I know you from your files, but allow me to introduce ourselves. I am Rampart, I specialise in raising stone formations in a manner similar to Stonewall. To my left is Bunker, he can move the earth to form trenches and, as his name suggests, bunkers. To my right is Barrage who can hurl large objects telekinetically and behind us we have Shockwave who can break rocks down into gravel, Tank and Tiny."

Lance found himself staring upwards at the ten-foot-tall hugely-muscled man with the wry grin.

"T… t… tiny?" He choked and the giant nodded.

"Yep, but don't let my name fool you. I'm quite big in real life."

Lance stared at him, temporarily unable to form a coherent response.

"Just ignore the big lunk." The metallic man beside Tiny laughed. "So, we've been detached to help to make a big hole and Rampart here's in charge of getting us to work together on it. What say we get started?"

Lance managed to restart his mind and he smirked.

"I agree. The sooner we do this, the better. I have a Mario Kart rematch waiting for me."

"Gentlemen." Another new voice said and Lance turned to see a suited man who had somehow managed to walk up to them without anyone noticing. "I am Agent Alvers… and no, Avalanche, we are not related. I checked."

Lance blinked in surprise.

"Thank you for agreeing to help with this project." Agent Alvers continued. "The area required to be excavated has already been marked out and we need to sink the hole no less than a hundred and forty meters."

Lance looked at the circular area marked out and whistled as he tried to calculate just how much rock needed to be moved.

"We have trucks and ready to transport the soil elsewhere and Superman was kind enough to let us hire some of the devices that he used to relocate his Fortress. Supergirl has agreed to oversee their progress in moving the waste but what we need is for you to loosen the soil so that it can be moved."

Lance and Richter exchanged glances, then they walked to the edge of the marked area.

"Rampart, Stonewall, you reinforce the sides to stop them collapsing. Richter, we'll break up the area. I've got the left. Barrage, pull the rubble out as we make it." Lance said.

"Good plan. I'm on the right." Richter replied, nodding respectfully at the younger man.

"Let's rock!"

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"What the hell?"

The comment echoed across the Helicarrier's bridge and Fury turned.

"Report."

"Sir, we seem to be missing one of our old bases."

"What?"

Fury didn't remember actually moving, but one instant he was standing on the bridge's command dais and the next he was leaning over the Agent's shoulder as she pulled up several files.

"I only noticed it because it was my first posting." She explained. "I'm trying to access its systems now and… no good, sir. The base is dark."

Fury reached across and tapped several commands into the console, only for the same lack of results to occur.

"Mr Fury?" Chris called out as he floated into the bridge. "Dad says that all the links are done and the wings are ready to test."

Fury paused, then nodded. "Good, can you please go and get him? I need to talk to him about borrowing some of his allies."

The agent looked at him quizzically as Chris flew out of the bridge and he shrugged slightly.

"All of SHIELD's troops are currently tasked and they proved themselves at the Battle of the Cure."