Chapter 9: Establishing Protocols:
Star City
February 28th, 2017
1:00 P.M. PST
After their brief celebratory toast to getting A.R.G.U.S. up and running, Grayson and Waller got to work. Nightwing pulled the thumb drive full of S.H.I.E.L.D. files that Nick Fury had given him and plugged it into the computer in the office. Once it had been inserted, he began copying its contents over to his hard drive. Once that was done, he pulled up chairs and turned on the projector screens so they could go over the documents without having to crowd around the computer. The first document they pulled up was a memo outlining S.H.I.E.L.D.'s policy on dealing with 0-8-4s and other supernatural objects.
"We'll need to be a bit more thorough than that for our own protocols," Waller commented. "There're so many alien and supernatural artifacts on Earth alone that we'll need to catalog unidentifiable objects based on whether their origin is mystical, technological, or extraterrestrial."
"Obviously," Nightwing added as he tore open the bag of chips he'd brought with him to the office. He smirked in response when Waller shot him a glare that would have made Batman proud for bringing food to work. "And we'll have to classify the tech, both man-made and alien, based on whether or not it's a weapon. That line is blurrier for supernatural objects so we'll have to evaluate on a case by case basis." After a few more minutes of jotting down minutes for the informal meeting, the co-directors moved on to the next file, which ended up being a new recruit's outline explaining the S.H.I.E.L.D. Index of Gifted Individuals.
"We can't catalog the entire Justice League," Grayson remarked. "But if we're going to have our own Index, it'll only be for supervillains and independent superheroes operating outside the League's jurisdiction."
"Gifted is too broad of a term though," Amanda observed. "We'll have to create two separate indexes. One for metahumans, whose powers come from their bodies, and the Gifted list will just be for independent heroes and villains with advanced technology." Nightwing voiced his agreement before moving on to a different document.
This pattern went on for the next several hours before the duo had worked out the details of A.R.G.U.S.'s official policies and protocols. The Justice League would be left alone for now, but independent heroes would have to register with A.R.G.U.S. as a contingency in case they ever "went to the dark side" as Nightwing put it. Supervillain activity would be monitored around the clock, and whenever there was a battle between heroes and villains, A.R.G.U.S. would handle the cleanup. Because of the wide variety of superhuman powers, Waller and Nightwing agreed on creating weapons capable of stopping a rampaging supervillain by reverse engineering the salvaged Chitauri and Destroyer tech that Nick Fury had given the young vigilante before his return home.
Once all their decisions on policy had been made, the co-directors went on to plan their strategy for dragging The Light's actions into the public eye. Because A.R.G.U.S. would be operating with international jurisdiction, Waller came up with the suggestion of pulling a similar trick to how The Team had sabotaged the Light-Reach alliance the previous year. The only problem was planting a recording device on one of the conspiracy's members without them noticing it until it was too late. Resolving to continue that discussion once they had more agents, they moved on to the next phase of setting up their organization: figuring out who to recruit. They had to be extremely careful in their choice of agents for A.R.G.U.S. They needed to make sure the people they hired had no connections with The Light or any of its allies.
We are now officially one third of the way through Cut Off One Head, folks. 20 Chapters to go. For those who read the original version of the chapter last night, sorry it was so short. I was tired and trying to get the chapter posted as fast as possible.