1954
After Nick Fury had sent George Hatherly away on a helicopter, he, Major Lallment, and Chef Steinhoff walked away.
"So, it seems you are with us for the duration, colonel." Lallment said to Fury.
He nodded."Yeah."
"Well, there is good news at last." He looked at Fury."The high command is in a state of shock after Dien Bien Phu but someone still has his head screwed on. We have been promised a supply drop for this afternoon."
"How much, Mon Commandant?" Asked Steinhoff, a former nazi.
"Everything they can spare. Two, perhaps three aircraft, loaded with artillery and small arms ammunition. The artillery is vital. We haven't the manpower to stop another attack like last night's. But if the guns can keep firing...we still have a chance." Lallment said.
"What about long-term?" Fury asked.
"We continue the struggle to save French Indochina. By all means, feel free to join in.."
Planes flew above them, dropping crates of ammunition.
"Aren't those kraut planes?" Fury asked Steinhoff.
He nodded."Auntie Ju." He had a small smile."Every time we saw her coming, we thought we might just see another sunrise."
Steinhoff quickly focused."Obtenir pour travailler!" He ordered the soldiers."Je veux que les munitons don't recharge en dix minutes! Mouvement!"
An explosion went off far from them.
"Merde!" Lallment yelled.
"Mon dieu." Said a French officer."Les munitions d'artillerie-"
"Somebody blew it." Fury said.
The French officer looked at him."They hit the ammunition dump?"
"There was no incoming, it was sabotage. They've got someone in here with." Fury told him.
"We must contact Hanoi. There is nothing to stop a Viet Minh attack. We must request an immediate airstrike." Lallment said."We-" He stopped talking when he saw one of the local Vietnamese soldiers walking over to Lallment's command bunker, holding a big bag.
And he seemed to be going over there quickly.
"Son of a bitch!" Fury raised his Thompson to try and shoot him.
"NON!" Lallment yelled, unholstering his pistol.
But it was too late.
The bag the soldier had been carrying exploded, sending Fury back. He heard a loud ringing in his ears as he was on the ground. Once the smoke started to clear, he saw the French officer choking on his own blood.
Major Lallment, whose arm had been blown off, wrapped a bandage around the top part of his stump of where his arm had been.
"Mon Commandant!" Steinhoff, who had quickly recovered from the explosion, yelled."C'est un assaut! Les batards viennent pour nous!"
Fury then saw them. The Viet Cong. They ran out of the jungle and towards the base.
"Fury! This is it! Find yourself a weapon!" Steinhoff yelled, running towards the enemy."There's hundreds of the little fuckers! We're going to have to fight like madmen!"
Fury stood up as blood ran down his face.
"FURY!" Steinhoff yelled before an explosion happened in front of him.
Fury walked through the smoke, shocked.
He saw the Viet Cong go over to the medic and wounded, the wounded laying on the ground. They shot the medic and either shot the wounded or stabbed them with their bayonets.
Fury looked at Steinhoff, who was surrounded by some soldiers with bayonets. His hands were covering his face.
"Ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA!" He laughed loudly. He removed his hands from his face, showing that his eyes were now gone.
"I wish I could see you. I'd kill every one of you."
They stabbed Steinhoff with their bayonets.
Fury then fainted.
"Colonel Fury?" Said the man in front of him when Nick Fury awoke and stood up."Take your time, colonel. It's understandable that you're disoriented. You're massively concussed. You've been asleep for almost twenty-four hours."
Fury saw Viet Cong soldiers securing the area."We were never properly introduced, "Mistah Fury, Mistah Fury." I am Captain Letrong Giap of the hundred ninety-ninth signals company, thirteenth infantry regiment. I believe you saw my comrade sergeant Tin on his way into Major Lallement's command bunker. I envy you witnessing his glorious end. I was busy detonating the artillery ammunition. Please." Giap said, wanting them to walk together.
"I do regret the major's death. I regret all the things that war makes necessary but Lallement was unusually intelligent for a colonial officer. Did you know he was Parisian? On my last visit, I couldn't help but wonder why a man would want to leave such a magnificent city.
"So. We have won the battle. From the looks of things, we have also won the war. But I cannot be sure if this is truly the end of our ordeal. Of if might be only the beginning. My great fear, you see, is that my country's future lies in the hands of men from far beyond her borders. If that is true, such men should know that this is not a place the west can come and work out its frustrations. Not without incurring a dreadful price in blood. This is not French Indochina, Colonel Fury. It is not French anything.
"This is Vietnam."
Fury stopped walking when he saw two rows of heads on pikes. They were heads of the french soldiers.
"You want this?" Giap asked, handing him his broken Thompson.
Fury grabbed it and walked away, walking past Lallment and Steinhoff's heads.
Present
In a hotel room, Fury poured some alcohol into a glass cup as he talked into a recorder.
"When I hear these fucking pussies today, whining about Afghanistan or Iraq, how many we've lost, how many civilians we've wiped out, what we're doing to the region or what it says about us as a nation or when are we going to bring the troops home...I say, I have just one word for your stupid cocksuckers.
"Nam."
"The greatest American fuck-up of all time." Fury said before taking a sip of his alcohol."Lose sixty thousand of your own killing three million of the locals. Let the Khmer Rouge get in next door, that's another million right there. Make the guy in the G.I lid, everyone's savior from World War 2, make him into a rapist and a butcher in the eyes of the world, and still lose, well, you manage all that and maybe you and me can have a conversation."
He took another sip of his drink. He then heard knocking.
"What the fuck is that?" He said. He grabbed a pistol under his pillow."Goddamn fucking..."
He looked through the peephole. It was one of the hotel employees."Oh, Jesus."
Fury opened the door a little, hiding the pistol behind his back.
"What, goddammit?"
"Oh! Mister Fury, I'm terribly sorry, sir-"
"What is it you want?" Fury asked him, annoyed.
"Well, I am sorry, sir, but we were getting a little concerned down at the reception. We knocked before but you weren't answering and we tried calling as well-"
"What were you concerned about?"
"Well, that...I mean, you have been here for some time, sir. We were worried that something might have happened to you-"
"I should be so fucking lucky. Send me up some more whiskey."
1970
Fury and George Hatherley were outside of a bar.
"Get it out, Hatherly." Fury said to him.
"I'm just not up to the job." He told Fury."I'm out of shape. I know but it's more than that. Ever since Cuba, and some of the things since, I don't know, I just don't think I could pull the trigger when the moment came. I haven't got that kind of courage anymore, Nick. If I go with you, I'll be more of a hindrance than a help. My mind's just not in the right place. I haven't told you this but Ava's pregnant again and we-"
"Isn't that your fifth?" Fury asked him."Why don't you cut that fucking thing off before you do any more damage."
"Like there isn't a legion or two of little Fury's running around out there." George joked.
"Except I wasn't dumb enough to write down my address." Fury said."I still want you watching things back here, understood? This one's important. The voice on the radio is you and no one else."
"Of course." George nodded.
"I'll have them dig me up another shooter."
Fury walked into the bar where the men would give him his mission.
"Oh, we thought your man would be doing the-"
"No." Fury interrupted him.
"What was the name of that marine, you know, from the Hanoi thing?" Said one of the men.
"Cassidy?"
"No." He then snapped his fingers."Castle."
Present
"You can't ever like Frank Castle but you can sure as hell appreciate the man." Fury said into the recorder."He seems to come from that time in America when things were made just to work. The model T ford, the nineteen eleven colt. Don't cut corners but don't overthink it either.
"I got no bullshit from him. No, "You sure you're up to this, old-timer?" We did the same things simultaneously. Looked, judged, and relaxed. His only comment was on the carbine someone had given me the day before, the hollow black plastic awkward on my shoulder. Lose it, he said. He'd find me something that could do the job. Whatever thoughts he had about the mission, he kept completely to himself."
1970
"Apologies for the cloak and dagger, colonel, but we have an opportunity to take out a major enemy asset and we need to get you here without delay." Said Brent, one of them giving him the mission.
"The asset is a man. We believe you know him. This is the best picture of him we've been able to acquire." Brent gave him the photo.
Fury's eye widened at who he saw in the picture.
"Giap." He said, surprised.
"Nick?" George asked.
"Son Chau in fifty-four." Fury said.
"We're very relieved to hear you say that, colonel. Because as far as we know, you're the only American alive who's gotten close enough to identify him." Said Cochran.
"Cochran's right about that." Said Severn with a smile."N.V.A brass are hard enough to identify at the best of times but Giap is like a goddamn ghost."
"General Letrong Giap. He was only a captain when you knew him, wasn't he, Colonel Fury?" Asked Brent.
"He's done better than you have." Said George.
"Guess It's who you know." Said Fury.
"Giap runs the north Vietnamese training cadres. Runs them very well. According to agency analysts, his techniques have improved N.V.A combat efficiency by something like thirty percent." Cochran said.
"Which would mean, we're hoping, that his removal would result in a thirty percent in same." Brent said to Fury.
He remembered the broken Thompson Giap had given him.
"Count me in."
"He moves around a lot." Said Cochran."Difficult to pin down, as Brent pointed out. But we've gotten good intel that he'll be arriving at a training facility in Laos tomorrow night."
"Hence the need to move fast. I doubt he'll be there for more than a couple of days." Brent said."Severn."
"Oh, yes. Yes, right, of course. We see it as being a two-man job. Airstrike's not sure enough. The location is forty klicks inside Laos so you'll be inserted as close to the border as possible and hike in the rest of the way. Seeing as we're not really supposed to be there, ha ha!" Severn laughed.
"That really is quite a crucial point, colonel." Said Cochran."The mission has to remain completely deniable. You'll be on your own from the moment you exit the huey."
"What the hell other way is there to do it?" Fury said."One question. If this is an agency op in support of the military, why is Senator McCuskey here?"
Pug McCuskey smiled.
"Oh, you know me, colonel. Making introductions, helping things happen. Facilitating. You know me."
The helicopter landed and Fury and Frank Castle got off. The helicopter left once they were on the ground.
"Can he fucking give you this? CAN HE?!" Fury yelled as he fucked Shirley DeFabio, Pug McCuskey's wife.
"Jesus Christ, who are you fucking? Me or him?" Shirley asked.
Fury stopped."Shit." He got off the bed to get dressed.
"Dear me. I seem to have spoiled the mood." She said, lighting up a cigarette.
"What the fuck did you have to say his name for?" Fury asked as he put on his shirt.
"I said you were so much better than him. I thought you'd like it. Nicky...believe it or not, this is the only real human contact I get nowadays. And it doesn't happen often so can we please just start over?"
"Only?" Fury looked at her.
"Pug goes to whores." She said."I'm one to talk, obviously, but...whores? I don't even know if he knows I cheat. Or if he cares."
"So?" Said Fury as Shirley got up from the bed.
"I think it was on the honeymoon I realized he repulsed me. I mustn't have done a very good job of hiding it. Too late now." Shirley said as she poured a bottle of alcohol into two cups.
"But there are other compensations..." Fury said to her as she gave him a glass cup.
Shirley smiled at him."You're sweet, Nicky. It's a cold world to be alone in. Let's just leave it at that."
Shirley went to the balcony of the hotel they were at."D'you remember how beautiful Saigon was when we were here the first time? Now it's all heroin and hookers. I think that's really sad."
"What you might call a war economy." Fury told her.
"Please don't be dismissive. It's somebody's country. Somebody's home."
"I didn't know it got to you so much." Fury said Shirley pour more alcohol into a cup."You're hitting that stuff kind of hard, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am. I've been following Pug around the world for twenty years now. Goodwill visits, fact-finding tours. And I keep seeing it, again and again. The locals hate us. We make such a mess. We always seem to choose some total prick to support. And this place is the mess to end them all. I don't know, maybe it'll turn out okay in the end...but..."
"What brings him here this time, anyway?" Fury asked her.
"To tell you the truth I've kind of lost track. I mean, there's his ties to your people but on top of that, he has business interests all over the world. And he does an awful lot on the hill for people like McDonnel Douglas and so on. I'm pretty sure they flew us out two years back. Do we have to talk about this?"
"No." Fury said.
"If I promise not to say his name, can we just go back to bed?" Shirley asked before she laughed.
"Laughing at me now, huh?" Fury said.
"My mouth's laughing at you. My eyes are shining with sympathy and love. Come on."
"Fucking broad." Fury muttered.
"Mm?" Castle said.
"Nothing."
They kept walking through the jungle in silence.
Castle raised a fist to stop walking. Fury watched him go over to a bush. He then pulled a little kid
"WAH!" He cried. Castle quickly put a hand over his mouth to quiet him.
"Must be a ville not marked on the map." Castle said.
"Goddammit. He'll give us away." Fury looked at Castle."I don't have it in me to kill a kid. You?" Fury asked him.
"No."
"Can't tie him up either. Anything could happen. We take him with us, he'll be missed. How far are we off the target now?"
"I'd say between ten and twelve klicks."
Castle let the kid down and they left.
"Smartest thing is to abort." Fury said as they walked."Bring in the chopper, head for the exfil point."
"Your call."
"Just hate to miss a shot at this fucker. It could be our only one."
"Your call."
"Wait, you hear that?" Fury said, hearing some talking.
They followed the source of the talking and they were surprised at what they saw.
There were multiple soldiers with many trucks around the area. But what surprised them the most was a big, round, metal thing. In the circle was something blue.
"Holy shit..." Fury said. Fury and Castle were hiding behind a bush. He then noticed something from one of the soldiers."One of them is speaking Russian." Fury said.
"What the hell is that thing?" Castle asked, pointing at the round thing.
"I don't know." Fury noticed a man in a lab coat talking to a soldier."That one wearing the lab coat is speaking german. They must be using nazi scientists."
Suddenly, they heard shouting behind them. They turned around to see that two soldiers had noticed them and were now pointing at them.
"FUCK!" Fury yelled as he fired at them with his AK. They killed them and ran to the big round machine.
They were shooting Russians and Viet Cong when they got there.
Castle looked at the machine."I think we'll have to go in there!"
"Are you fucking crazy?!" Fury yelled over the gunfire.
"We got no choice!"
Fury killed another enemy but more soldiers kept coming. He's right. Fury thought.
"Get into the machine! I'll cover you!" Fury shouted.
He fired as Castle ran into the blue circle of the machine and was gone.
Fury then ran into the machine as well and disappeared.
In the Lost World, Buck was riding his pterodactyl, trying to take Crash and Eddie back home. He landed the flying dinosaur near the entrance of a cave.
"I'll be back in a minute, girl." Buck said to his pterodactyl before it flew away.
"Buck, don't send us back." Crash begged.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we wanna hang here with you." Eddie said.
"Please. We're independent. Both of us. Together." Crash said.
Buck stopped when he saw a massive boulder blocking the entrance."This boulder's not supposed to be here. How did it get here?"
"Hmm...how do you think?" Said a voice.
"Well, how should I know?" Buck asked, thinking the boulder was talking to him.
"Unbelievable. Your cluelessness is truly breathtaking."
"Don't you take that tone with me, rocky." Buck said angrily."Now I insist you roll away at once."
"Uh, I don't think it's the boulder talking." Said Crash.
"Well, not anymore. I obviously intimidated him. Seems like Mr. Boulder here is all growl and no gravel."
"Wow. Okay, enough. I can't do this anymore." Said the voice."Hey, I'm over here, you soon-to-be ex-weasel." Orson walked over to them."Look at me. Look at me with your dumb little eye."
Buck turned around to see the dinosaur."Orson." He glared.
"Buck." Orson smiled evilly.
The two possum brothers looked at each other.
"Eddie." Said Crash.
"Crash." Said Eddie.
"I heard you'd returned. But how?" Buck asked Orson."Nobody escaped from Lava Island."
"Well, not everyone has my colossal intellect." Orson told him.
"Which is dwarfed only by your ego and insecurity." Buck said."Why'd you seal the exit, Orson?"
"Oh, no reason. Just to keep filthy animals like you from coming in and infection our ecosystem with your fur and warm blood. Lost World for lost species! Dinos rule, mammals drool."
"It's true. You do." Crash said to his brother.
Eddie shrugged."Wait a minute. Dinos don't talk. They just grunt and roar like nincompoops."
"That's good. Hey, that's funny. That's really funny. Dinos have tiny brains. Like I haven't heard that a million times. Does this brain look tiny?" He asked, turning around to show his brain.
"Holy moly, that's huge!" Crash said, shocked by the size of the brain.
"Seriously, that thing's a planet! I'm surprised there isn't a little moon going around it." Said Eddie.
"That kind of reaction used to hurt. I thought I was a freak. Then, I realized my massive brain made me the smartest creature alive! But you know the best part? The jokes on you. My brain, the one thing that everyone ridiculed, is gonna get me my revenge."
Crash and Eddie hid behind Buck in fear.
"I'll rule everyone under the ice. Not even you can stop me this time, Buckmeister."
The weasel jumped in the air and nearly hit him with his whip.
"It's Buckmister." Buck corrected him."Though most call me Buck. Buckmeister's not even a name. That's like me calling you, "Shmorson"."
"Whatever, Bucky. Now that I got some muscle behind me, It's a whole new ballgame."
The possum brothers gasped.
"There's gonna be a ball game?!" Asked Eddie.
Orson sighed."Check it out."
Two raptors jumped down behind Crash and Eddie. The possum brothers quickly played dead.
"Well, look. They've gone and died. No one wants to eat dead possums. It's too chewy. It's like eating hairy gum." Bucks said.
"Okay. I can totally see your breathing. Look. Look, right there. Look, even these morons can see it. Time for a possum picnic!"
Buck tripped Orson with his whip and quickly defeated the raptors.
"Until our next tango, mi iguana gigante." Buck said before jumping over the edge of the cliff.
Crash and Eddie also jumped off.
They landed on the pterodactyl and flew away.
"No one outsmarts Orson!" Orson said angrily."Now we're gonna have to play a little game called, "Drop goes the weasel". It means take down Buck!"
Orson yelled in surprise when one of the raptors got close to his face.
"Oh my-geez! What did I say about boundaries, huh?! And you! Stop copying me!"
After they went through the machine, Fury and Castle ended up in the jungle.
"What the hell?" Said Fury, confused. Their enemies were gone. And so was the machine.
As they were flying, Eddie noticed something on the ground."Hey, what are those thing?" He pointed at the two creatures standing on two legs. Crash and Buck looked to see what he was pointing at.
"Wait a second...are those...humans?" Buck said, surprised. He had only seen a few of them before he had gone to the Lost World.
He flew the pterodactyl to them to get a closer look.