Nick Fury finished the last page of the report, then dropped the tablet onto his desk with a grunt of irritation, tipping his chair back and putting his fingertips together as he thought.

He was not a happy man.

That was, in all fairness, not unusual. He was seldom a happy man. On far more occasions than his medical staff liked, he was a very unhappy man, sometimes living up to his name in a manner that made people tend to back away slowly while not making eye contact, until they could run.

Which very slightly amused him, although it did nothing to increase his overall sense of joie de vivre. Which was, generally, entirely absent.

Not unreasonably so, he felt, as he was tasked with keeping some form of lid on the steadily growing number of wildly overpowered vigilantes that seemed to plague the world as of late. Admitted, this wasn't by any means a new phenomenon, such individuals had been present through most of recorded history, and could certainly help on occasion, but lately…

Lately there really did seem to be more of them than seemed possible, and most of their antics didn't make him sleep any better at night.

True, most of them wanted to help, and true, in many cases they did help, often pulling off the impossible, but did they have to be so… blatant...about it? In his line of work, one tended to operate in the shadows as much as possible, partly to keep the public happy, and partly to avoid tipping off the other side.

None of his agents wandered around in power armor in bright colors, cracking inappropriate jokes, for example. Or purple trunks, or some sort of medieval armor complete with a warhammer.

That weirdo in New York with the red and blue spider theme going on was just annoying. Effective, fair enough, but really irritating.

He sighed slightly, glancing at the pad for a moment, reaching out and flicking it with a finger to scroll back a few pages.

No, it was a damn nuisance most of the time. It made the entire command structure confusing, brought far more attention from the public in his general direction than he was happy with, and the World Security Council, who were in some ways even more irritating, tended to blame him for the excesses of the costumed weirdos. He then had to have a talk with them, which usually ended up as a total fiasco, especially if Stark was in the room, raised his blood pressure, and achieved very little except a short term reprieve from the more egregious peculiarities.

Luckily the public seemed to have slightly more interest in the superhero gossip than the collateral damage, but he worried that eventually something dramatic enough would happen that there would be a backlash which wouldn't be good for anyone. The world, because like it or not, it needed these pain-in-the-ass lunatics to deal with the unconventional threats that were past the ability to handle for the conventional forces. The lunatics themselves, because if public opinion turned against them hard enough the consequences could be awkward at best and catastrophic at worst.

And him in the middle, trying to play both sides, keep everything from going belly-up, and also maintain enough sanity that he might one day get to retire. Or live to retire.

Or even have a world left to retire to.

Flicking through the report, he sighed again, more heavily. Add to the mix Norse gods, for fuck's sake, rogue artificial intelligences, bizarre enhanced humans through some odd genetic peculiarity, and fuck knows what else, and it was a total wonder that the world hadn't fallen into utter chaos long ago.

And now this.

Alien lizard-girls who turned up out of the blue, casually did things that scared even the superheroes, and vanished again, in complete disregard for sanity and the rules of the universe. Thor himself looked nervous every time the subject came up, cuddling that damn hammer of his like he was worried someone would take it away, Stark started muttering things under his breath that unnerved Fury quite a lot although he'd never say it in front of the man, and about the only one who didn't seem too upset was Banner.

Which was very worrying when you thought about it…

The blasted creature had popped out of the woodwork after New York, claimed the Tesseract was her handiwork and she'd been looking for it for some time, simply picked it up, then wandered off again, leaving everyone wondering what the hell had happened. To be completely honest he was OK with that, it was gone past the ability of anyone, apparently including the Asgardians, to retrieve, which in his private thoughts was a good thing.

But it had triggered a massive series of security checks, mostly at the insistence of the WSC, which had taken nearly two years to complete, tearing through the entire structure of SHIELD like a hurricane. He'd been furious about the intrusions, but had been over-ruled at the highest levels.

The really fucking irritating thing was that the security audit had actually found something.

Not at all what they were looking for, since they were convinced that this 'Saurial' had somehow got inside information on the whereabouts of the Tesseract from SHIELD itself. He was equally sure she hadn't, the reports he'd had, including the verbal ones from Barton and Romanoff, had left him thinking that the reptilian female had her own technology that was far past anything they had and was more than capable of doing exactly what she'd claimed.

No, they'd found, very nearly by triggering a total disaster, that Hydra had been infiltrating SHIELD for years. Decades, in fact, possibly going right back to the founding of the organization.

It was mere chance that they found out before the nefarious and shadowy group completed their plan, which was still something they were a little hazy on. But it had turned out that several of the new Helicarriers under construction were totally compromised from hull to flight deck, far more heavily armed than they were supposed to be, and very close to triggering what could have ended up as a full-scale war.

They'd managed to stop it, barely, at the cost of more lives than he was even slightly happy about, but a lot of damage had been done, much information was still missing, and the very existence of the agency itself had been put in doubt for months.

It still made him a little ill, thinking about what might have happened. And had been averted only due to chance, and a weird lizard in a trench-coat that had turned up out of nowhere.

'A phrase I never thought would be something I'd think,' he mentally winced. 'Lizard-girls. Christ. Even by the standards of the costumed lunatics that's a stretch. Although it did shut Stark up for longer than anything else I've seen, so there's that...'

He actually came very close to smiling for a moment.

Then, a couple of months back, she'd turned up again, along with a different companion than last time, this one allegedly some AI in power armor that made Stark extremely envious, along with an aircraft unlike anything they had, which was not only totally stealthed but insanely fast. Just arrived in the middle of what was some complete cluster-fuck caused, yet again, by people who didn't quite know what they were doing poking around in things they should have left alone. He shuddered to think what the outcome of a hyper-intelligent and apparently extremely hostile AI of that level getting loose into the internet would have been.

Nothing good, that was certain.

But Saurial had popped up, shut the damn thing down mainly by talking to it and allegedly, according to Maria Hill, confusing the hell out of it, then her companion had basically stolen it. Right out of one of Stark's damn drones.

The pair of them had waved happily, turned around, and left, the aircraft apparently deliberately unstealthing then hurtling off at about mach 9, just to rub it in. By the time anyone could even try for an intercept it was gone.

He couldn't decide if the reptile was deliberately trying to wind people up due to some weird sense of humor, or just had a very good sense of timing and theater. Whichever it was, it was another thing that he found annoying. Although he couldn't deny she'd helped out twice now, even if only accidentally, and with a smirk.

Hill was still pissed about that. She felt the girl or whatever she really was had been enjoying their problems way too much.

Coulson, on the other hand, seemed to think it was funny, having made several dead-pan jokes at her expense. Luckily he was involved with other operations these days and seldom joined briefing meetings, or it could have become embarrassing. Since his 'resurrection' he definitely had a more sardonic view of the world, despite not remembering what had actually happened to him.

Standing orders had been put into place to report any sightings of the reptilian female or her two currently known associates, but so far nothing had turned up. He wasn't sure if he was pleased, relieved, or slightly disappointed. She might have been a good addition to the Avengers Initiative, if only for her ability to confuse Stark and shut him up.

If he could bottle that…

Even the man's friends would probably pay.

Pulling a hard-copy printout of the very small amount of useful information on the lizard-like alien out of his desk, he opened it and perused the contents, yet again trying to wring some sort of sense out of the thing. There were notes on Saurial herself, the apparent AI 'Dragon', a suitably themed name, and the other lizard, introduced as 'Metis,' who had accompanied Saurial to New York on the first occasion. Very little hard information on any of them was available, really only observations from witnesses, and statements from the three themselves.

What 'The Family' was, for example, could only be deduced. It sounded like some sort of Mafia organization more than anything else, but it could equally be a literal description, as Metis was apparently Saurial's cousin.

Some of the things in the report were on the face of it preposterous. She'd claimed that she'd actually made Thor's hammer Mjolnir, for example, about fifty three thousand years ago.

As a disposable tool, no less.

Both parts of that sounded insane, but she'd been able to pick it up like it was an ordinary hammer, and when he'd thrown it at her it had bounced. Having seen the thing in use, that was more than a little discomfiting to Nick. Thor had been even more puzzled, and if he was any judge of Asgardian expressions, more than a little scared about the implications.

He certainly didn't like talking about it.

The last time, she'd threatened to go to his father and interrogate Odin of all people about what she claimed was his habit of taking her own artifacts as his own, which seemed to annoy her. Fury would almost pay good money to see that.

There was almost no information on her companions, only speculation on scraps of data. If Dragon was truly an AI, Stark was of the opinion she was entirely sapient and probably at a post-human intelligence level. Something the man seemed fascinated by.

Fury was less happy about it.

Their technology, based both on what was apparently some form of inter-universe portal, and that aircraft, was clearly far past even Stark's tech base, which was funny in a way as the man seemed quite envious of the fact, but also worrying.

Never mind what Saurial could do without any visible tech at all. Such as whatever the hell she'd turned the Tesseract into by poking it with her hand. Eric Selvig was of the opinion that she'd directly manipulated the fabric of reality in higher-dimensional ways that he'd found quite disturbing. Considering how peculiar the physicist himself was, that was telling.

The WSC was very interested in acquiring that technology for their own purposes, much as they'd wanted to grab the Tesseract in the first place. He was less sure that would end well, and entirely certain that it wasn't something that the creature would simply hand over. And he had a pretty good idea that trying to force her, if and when she turned up again, wasn't something that would work at all effectively.

Still, he had his orders, even the Director of SHIELD had people who could tell him what to do. Not many of them, true enough, but they still existed.

Picking up a pen he noted on the document, 'Approach with extreme caution and no hostile activities. Subject Saurial is to be considered a class X danger, although friendly. All agents are to attempt to establish contact and politely request a meeting with Director Fury.'

Putting the pen down, he swung his chair back and forth for a moment, thinking hard. He needed to come up with some form of practical plan in case the lizard-girl did ever turn up again, but one that wasn't going to get anyone killed.

Although he was quite curious to see if she could make Stark end up looking like he had the last two times.

Turning back to the report, he grabbed the pen again, then stared.

'Subject Saurial is to be considered devastatingly pretty, and approached with ice cream. All agents are to offer lunch and politely request a ride in Dragon's shuttle.'

Nick Fury was pretty fucking sure he hadn't written that line. His original had been neatly crossed out, and the new text wasn't even in his handwriting.

Looking suspiciously around the room, he saw nothing. Even so, he reached for his sidearm, pulling out of the holster under his arm and cocking it. Getting up, he carefully inspected every possible hiding place in the entire office suite, finding nothing out of place. The door was still locked, the security system was armed, and a quick check of the access control logs showed he was the last one to come into the office that afternoon.

When he was certain that he was alone, he went back to the desk, looking at the paperwork again.

He sighed heavily. There was another line under the first, in the same handwriting, which read, 'She is also very funny, and likes practical jokes. By the way, your gun is full of chocolate bullets.'

He checked.

It was.

"This is not actually very funny at all, and a major security breach," he growled.

"Sorry, I couldn't resist," a female voice said from behind him. Turning around, raising the weapon until he recalled it wasn't a lot of use, he found himself looking at a smiling reptilian figure in a trench coat, wearing a fedora, who was leaning on the wall next to the window in a casually comfortable manner.

"How the hell did you get in here?" he asked, glaring at her. "And why?"

"Magic, and because I was in the area on business and I thought I'd like to meet the famous Director Fury," she replied calmly. "We looked you up last time, Dragon found some interesting stuff in your computers when she was making sure that her new friend hadn't caused any trouble. You remind me of someone from home and I wanted to say hi."

"That's it?" he said. "Magic? That's what you're going with?"

She shrugged. "It's both accurate and something you can understand," she smiled. "If I start talking about multidimensional transfinite fractal manipulation, it will probably confuse you. That's what normally happens."

Straightening up, she wandered around the office inspecting everything with interest, while he watched her closely. "Nice place. The security's not bad either."

"It's obviously not good enough," he muttered.

"Trust me, practically nowhere is good enough to actually keep me out," she grinned. "It's a gift. But I'll go if you want me to. I was just curious. How did your Hydra problem work out?"

"You know about that?"

"Learned about it the last time, like I said. They sounded pretty nasty. Good thing you stopped them."

"Except for some of the leaders who managed to escape," he sighed, lowering his weapon. He was still worried, but she seemed non-hostile and there wasn't much he could do anyway. Glancing at the panic button discreetly hidden under his desk, he considered nudging it, but wasn't at all sure it would help. Better to see what she wanted and hope it worked out.

Although the security people were going to get one hell of a lecture when this was over.

Magic.

Right.

"Yeah, I heard about that too. This might help."

She tossed him a small object, which he reflexively caught, then looked at, his eyebrows going up. "A USB drive?"

"Locations of the remaining Hydra agents and resources. Call it a little present." She smiled. "From what we've worked out, we're sort of the cause of you finding out about them in the first place, might as well finish the job. They don't seem to be very nice people. And you really do remind me of someone I know, she's done right by us, so it's only fair to pay it forward."

Nick studied her for nearly thirty seconds, then nodded once. "Thank you."

"No problem."

She glanced at the document on the desk, then added, "Although I'm not interested in joining your little club. I have enough to do. I might stop by occasionally even so, we seem to be able to access your universe more easily than most and it's quite interesting. I've been meaning to look up Doctor Banner and have a talk with him, he seemed like someone I'd get along with. That Tony guy is a bit weird, though."

He wondered how much of the report she'd read, and how many of their secrets were still secret. There was an uneasy feeling that the answers would be 'all of it' and 'none' respectively. Whatever this creature really was, they appeared to have gained her interest, which was quite possibly something he should be worried about.

"Well, I must be off," she said, turning away from where she'd been reading one of his wall plaques, her head on one side. "It was nice to meet you, Director Fury."

"Where are you going now?" he asked, not sure why.

"I have a Norse God to have a word with," she frowned. "He's a damn klepto and needs a good talking to. I'm getting tired of people pinching my stuff and claiming it was theirs."

"Thor's hammer, I assume?"

"That and a couple of other things. And some of my nicer music boxes have gone missing, I'm sort of pissed about that. One of them was a present for my Dad's birthday."

Nick looked oddly at her, causing her to shrug with a small smile. "I like making things, and he likes the results. Most of them. Anyway, Odin is irritating me, so I need to go shout at him for a while. See you around, maybe."

He raised a hand, causing her to stop in the process of turning away. "A request?"

"Hmm?"

"Two, actually. One, if you come back, please knock first?"

She grinned. "OK. Fair enough. And the second?"

"Any possibility of a recording of you shouting at Odin?"

Her grin widened. "Yes, you really do remind me of someone," she chuckled. "That can be arranged."

"Thank you," Fury said, nodding to her. He watched as she walked towards the door. There was a weird twisting in the space surrounding it and she vanished. He gaped for a moment, then checked the recordings of the office security cameras.

They'd shown her perfectly, so she really had been there. Even so, there was no way to work out where she'd come from or where she'd gone. Or how.

Sitting down, he stared at the report, then his gun, before slowly reloading it with real rounds, dropping the ones made of chocolate onto the desk for later analysis. He had no idea how she'd done that little trick.

Reholstering the weapon, he picked his pen up, scratching out her added lines, then writing under them, 'Do not approach. Subject Saurial is to be ignored if at all possible. For everyone's sanity.'

Putting the pen down, he shook his head, then took the USB stick with him as he headed off to the secure computer room to investigate what was on it, feeling weirdly happier than he had been for some time.

She was clearly nuts, but at the same time she'd been far less difficult to deal with than practically every one of the other crazies he had to handle, which made a nice change.

The only real down side was that Stark hadn't been there to get all confused and quiet again...