Chapter 12: The Incident – Part One
"Sir, we have contact!"
"Put it up! Get me a visual!"
Director Fury had emerged from his office just as the sirens started to blare throughout the bridge. Whether that was because he found out moments earlier, had excellent timing, or was about to have a very bad day, was unknown to the SHIELD officers present. With Fury, you could never really tell for certain.
The giant holographic screen which dominated the bridge lit up, a sea of blue, and a blue sea. As the view panned out, Fury recognized the Tokyo coastline. A very large red question mark hovered in the projection, just off the coast. Fury squinted at it.
"Is it my imagination, or is that moving towards the coast?"
"Confirmed, Sir! Moving at... about forty miles an hour. Direction... Tokyo. Estimated time to arrival... less than an hour."
"What do we have in that area?"
"Carrier Illiad, sir. Some ground teams. Three VTOL."
"Order the carrier to intercept. Order the ground teams to prepare for imminent contact. Get those VTOLS in the air to track movement. And where is my damn visual?"
"Coming, Sir!"
The holographic view zoomed in. Somewhere, a SHIELD satellite was rotating in orbit, and pointing its high definition camera towards Japan.
At first, the outline of the Japanese coastline was fuzzy, indistinct. Suddenly, it snapped into place, like water crystallizing into the hardness of ice. Then the view zoomed in. A much smaller section of coastline appeared. You could actually see Tokyo at this resolution – a sprawling grey mass on the green backdrop, pressed up against the blue sea.
The view changed again, zooming in a hundred times in the blink of an eye as the SHIELD orbital got a good focus.
It was a fox. Or rather, it looked like a fox, except for its many tails... and the tiny dots moving alongside it. It also seemed to be on fire – a sort of red haze surrounded it, coming off it like flames.
Fury squinted at the display again. "Report! Do we know what this is?"
"Negative, Sir. Cross-reference to index of known threats suggests kitsune, a type of fox-demon common in Japanese folklore. Thought to be mythical. Known abilities include illusion, invisibility, and. Oh."
"And what? Spit it out!"
"Sir, legend has it that the strongest of the kitsune can warp reality itself."
"What? Threat assessment!"
"They're gods, Sir. Literally. Japanese worship them to this day. They can tell the laws of physics to shut up and sit down."
"So, just like Thor, and the Asgardians?"
"No, sir. If the historical record is accurate, these things... can fold time and space. They can take the shape of a MOON, sir. They can create entire landscapes out of thin air. They're immortal. They can warp your mind just by looking at you. There are stories of them torturing humans for fun, like children torture ants."
"Source?"
"Google, sir."
"GOOGLE? Are you shitting me, son? We operate the most advanced intelligence network on the fucking planet, and you're giving me intel from GOOGLE?"
"For a quick overview of the legends associated with something mythical, sir, yes. It is our best source. I have people looking for classified SHIELD reports, but while we look for those, yes, sir, Google. You wanted a quick overview of what the world knows about these things? This is it."
Fury peered at the blob of orange that was getting ever closer to Tokyo.
"Do they all have nine tails?"
"No. Only the most powerful ones. The ones revered as gods."
Fury leaned in a little towards the holographic projection. "What are the little dots?"
No answer was forthcoming. After a moment, he turned to face his officer. "Well? Answer, dammit!"
The bridge officer had gone white. Fury could recognize shock when he saw it, but he never liked seeing it in his bridge officers. It never bode well for his day. His fingers itched to be carrying something heftier than his pistol.
"Sir... the dots are... kitsune."
"Tiny ones?"
"No sir, normal size ones. About the size of a fox."
"So, the big one is..."
"Bigger than a hellicarrier, sir. Bigger than the empire state building."
"That thing can SWIM? How is it not sinking?"
"Sir, we can see its legs in the shot. They are above water. It appears to be... walking on the water, sir. All of them are. No... they're still moving at sixty-four MPH sir... they are running on the water. As fast as a car, sir!"
It was at this moment that Thor entered the bridge. There were times that Fury was grateful that they'd set up an automatic distress beacon, activated during incidents like this, which essentially screamed 'Earth is under attack!' across the cosmos, so that nearby allies could check in and offer help.
He was less pleased, however, that Thor seemed to always be the one to answer first. While he was no doubt strong, his straightforward, blunt personality was the exact opposite of the reserved, slightly paranoid spymaster that Fury had become.
Thor took one look at the hologram, and whistled. "Well, its a fair bet to say the big one is in charge", he opined, smiling to Fury as if he'd said something profound, or perhaps simply relishing the likely chance he was going to get to smash something. Relishing Fury's annoyance was also a possibility.
Fury did not have time to glare at him.
"Get the Avengers en-route to Tokyo. No matter where they are. Whatever they are doing – it is canceled. Tell the commander of that hellicarrier to be ready for anything. Also, to keep his distance – approach with fighters only. Contact the Japanese Ministry Of Defense – see what they have available. Mobilize anything and everything else that can be at the scene within two hours, and put the rest of our forces worldwide on alert.".
"You think THIS is a diversion, sir? An attack of this size?"
"It is totally unlike their actions up till now. We cannot rule it out. Worldwide SHIELD alert. Go."
"Done. Now what?"
Fury knitted his brow in thought.
"Those ground teams. Who do we have, right now, in the Tokyo area?"
"Teams Coulson and Garrett."
"Get both on the line."
"Sir, Garret is non-responsive. Went off the grid... less than an hour ago."
"What? Status?"
"Unknown, sir. His whole team is off the grid. None of them are responding."
"Where were they stationed?"
"Tokyo... the east side – next to the sea."
Fury had that sinking feeling again, the one he got when he knew Earth was about to have a very bad day.
"Is Coulson responding?"
The bridge officer spent a tense thirty seconds jabbing buttons on their console, and, more than once, swearing into their headset.
"Yes. His team is accounted for."
"Put him on!"
The hidden villages teach that water-walking is an essential skill for ninja. Most ninja learn it before they even become adults. It isn't easy, as it requires fine chakra control, but it is incredibly useful, even outside of combat, which makes it an important part of a ninja's skills. The difficult part is channeling just enough chakra to your feet to make you stick to the water, without falling into it, and without impeding your ability to move. Running at full speed across water requires quite some practice – for a human.
Of course, humans are not creatures made entirely of solidified chakra. Humans are also heavier than water, whereas the density of chakra is largely up to the chakra wielder.
So it was that Kurama and his children sped towards Tokyo, their footsteps leaving ripples like a series of stones thrown across the water.
Kurama's enormous ears heard the buzzing first. A few seconds later, a tiny Kyu barked.
"Hear that?"
They did. Now, they all did. Metal craft were approaching from the east, from deeper waters. There appeared to be a few dozen of them. Human attack ships, most likely.
Still, they had expected something like this. So far, all was going according to plan. So far.
Then the radar locks started.
At first, the buzzing was quiet. Within about thirty seconds, it had built up to a physical force, something every kitsune felt in their bones. The metal craft were throwing something at them, and it wasn't friendly.
Ears twitched, tails flicked. A ripple of tension went through the seething mass of orange, as it moved towards the coastline.
"Hold", growled Kurama roughly. "Remember the plan, everyone. Let them come."
"Target acquired. All fighters report lock."
"Time to landfall?"
"Five minutes."
"Expected landing zone?"
"They're... they're heading for Fukushima."
"Fukushima?"
"The nuclear power plant. It supplies Tokyo. There's enough nuclear material there..."
"Still no response to communications?"
"None, sir. They haven't even slowed down."
Commander Gonzales of the SHIELD hellicarrier Illiad closed his eyes. It was only for a moment, but to him, it felt like an eternity. Five minutes. Assuming they had weapons, which seemed like a very good assumption, their range was unknown. Nuclear power plant. Right next to one of the world's most populated cities.
There was no choice.
"Fire the missiles."
"Which mi-"
"All of them."
His officers leaped into action, relaying his command to the airborne wing.
"Red squadron, fox one away. Fox two away!" barked a decorated flight officer, while his counterparts on the other side of the bridge made similar reports for squadrons blue, green, and yellow.
It took them a moment to realize what they had just said. None of them smiled.
By that point, approximately a hundred guided AGM-114 'hellfire' air-to-surface missiles were in the air, blazing streaks of orange and white as they rushed towards their target.
"Almost there" growled Kurama, his enormous tails swaying slowly behind them as the group advanced on the shoreline. He moved at a walking pace, now, but the sheer length of his legs meant that the smaller kitsune by his feet still had to run along the surface of the water, just to keep up.
It was one of them that spotted the white streaks first. "Boss?" came the curious tone of Onyx, who had stopped for a second, underneath him, to look up at the streaks rapidly converging on their position. Apparently the metal craft did more than emit angry buzzing.
Kurama stopped, and they immediately scattered themselves in a circle around him. "Change of plans", he growled. "They seem intent on doing this the hard way." His gaze swept over the small army of tiny foxes surrounding him, all of them with ears up, and seeming to breathe heavily from the exertion of keeping up with him. Then he looked ahead. A group of coast-guard ships were forming into a crude line, a defensive formation, between them and the shore.
"Red yang barrier formation! Now! Rest of you, clear a path!"
"Red One, closing on target, estimated thirty seconds to primary weapons range."
Captain Herman had seen a lot of action over the years. Being stationed as a fighter pilot assigned to the Illiad, he'd found himself in a bunch of post-avengers cleanup operations, as well as more than his fair share of firefights. In his experience, few things survive multiple hits from air-to-surface missiles, and nothing short of a world-threatening crisis survived a whole salvo of missiles followed up by sustained fire from a hellicarrier's fighter complement.
The missiles streaked ahead of them, leaving billowing trails of white smoke that the fighters had to be careful to avoid. While the smoke was, in theory, harmless, it limited vision, and limited vision going into a firefight had a severe negative effect on the life expectancy of a fighter pilot.
Not that they were expecting an actual fight.
The target appeared to be a giant fox. Unusual, yes, in that it had many tails, but they'd downed bigger buildings than this with their attack runs before, and, as far as the pilots could tell, the target had zero air-support, or even anti-air capability. Captain Herman had plenty of combat experience, but he wasn't familiar with what a kitsune was, nor did he, in his airborne position, see reason to be afraid of it. That would not last long.
As Herman's fighter wing was about twenty seconds from primary weapons range, he noticed that the monster and its entourage had stopped moving.
At fifteen seconds to weapons range, he noticed that the monster was sitting, on the water, showing casual disregard for the laws of physics, and that the other, smaller dots around it were hordes of tiny, little monsters.
At ten seconds to engagement range, he noticed that the dots were forming a pattern. At the center was the giant fox-monster. Around that, was a ring of mostly red dots. Outside that... were four white dots. As he started at them, his craft's instruments flickered. Digital displays winked out for a second, dials twitched, and he got a hiss of static in his ear. He ignored the tiny red dots that seemed to be breaking from the main group, and advancing towards the line of coast-guard ships. His target was the big one.
The four white dots suddenly glowed deep red, the same deep red as the monster in the center. The monster who was now staring up, directly at them. They were not trying to dodge. They were simply waiting. His years of combat experience told him what that meant.
"Break, break! They have anti-air! They have anti-air! Break!"
His wing turned sharply upwards, attempting to evade the anti-aircraft projectiles they expected to be coming their way.
What they did not expect, however, was a wall of fire. From four tiny white figures, a red square appeared on the ground – and rapidly leaped skywards, forming a red wall of ridiculous height.
The missiles impacted on the barrier, and the captain recognized it for what it was: an energy shield, and a rapidly growing one.
"Pull up, pull up!" he screamed into the radio, his engines screaming, and radio buzzing, as the red yang formation barrier rushed upwards and outwards to meet them.
The captain of the Dauntless, by contrast, was not a combat veteran. He'd failed out of his acceptance tests to the Japanese navy, and had taken a coast-guard position as it was the only thing he qualified for. As he liked to jest to his brother, "it was that or fishing, and I'm no fisherman".
He did, however, have one critical advantage that the legions of combat veterans, SHIELD and otherwise, converging on the area did not. He had spent considerable time in the Shinto shrines as a child. He knew a kitsune when he saw one – but that was not his advantage. All of Japan recognized the many-tailed fox monster for what it was on sight. They were ingrained in popular culture – a well-known myth from earlier times, his people had thought. As well known as werewolves or vampires, at least in Japan. His advantage was that he had truly read the stories about them, and had enough humility to recognize when he was outclassed. He had heard of kitsune taking the forms of men, of creating illusions that warp the mind, of doing things thought even by contemporary science to be impossible.
He knew right away that this was one of those times when he was hopelessly outclassed.
As he watched the white streaks explode harmlessly against the enormous red barrier, a barrier that had seemed to appear out of nowhere, his thoughts were confirmed, and he realized just how outclassed they truly were.
It was with this in mind that he jabbed his radio, and spoke gruffly to his fleet.
"HOLD FIRE. You just saw what these things can do. We aren't aircraft. We don't have the luxury of suddenly being somewhere else. HOLD FIRE. Dammit, men, I am not having any of you die today. HOLD FIRE. I have a plan."
He let go of the radio button, and, to the puzzled gaze of his bridge officers, arose from his chair on the Dauntless bridge.
As he strode towards the door that led to the deck, he glanced back at his navigator, then his comms officer. "Break us out of formation. Get us closer. I want to put us between them and the rest of the fleet. Tell the other ships that if this doesn't work, they should get clear."
His XO murmured quietly, barely audible over the sounds of the instruments, and the tension in the air:"Sir! What are you going to do?"
He smiled, as approached the door to the ship's deck. With possibly his last glance back at his crew, he tried to inspire confidence. "I am going to get their attention", he said calmly, unhooking the megaphone from beside the door, and emerging into the daylight.
Fury stared at the holographic projection. Twenty-four SHIELD strike fighters, represented as the SHIELD logo atop a pair of wings, converged on one enormous fox, which was superimposed with a giant red question mark on the display.
He saw the white line appear, as the carrier on-scene projected its course, and his eyes followed the line until it ran straight into the Fukushima nuclear power plant... and continued straight into downtown Tokyo. That couldn't possibly be a co-incidence.
The red targeting crosshairs appeared on the largest of the monsters, and he imagined in his mind the hellicarrier Captain running through the same mental checklist as he had. Civilians. Nuclear plant. Five minutes to landfall. Unacceptable risk. He closed his eyes. Had they at least tried communication? He had to assume they had. SHIELD agents were trained for that – at least they were after the Thor incidents.
He nodded sadly as dozens of little "M" symbols streaked from the fighters towards the group of invaders.
His approval turned quickly to a frown as they appeared to stop, and line up in defensive formation. So much for the idea that these things weren't intelligent.
During the minute where the missiles were in-flight, nobody on the bridge spoke.
It was only after the missiles disappeared from view, that someone stated the obvious.
"They have energy shields!"
Fury wasn't watching the targets anymore. His eyes had moved to the line of ships directly between the monsters and the shoreline.
"Get those ships some backup!"
"Sir! Those ships are Japanese coastguard! They're barely armed!"
"Then be quick about it!"
Coulson and his team were having lunch when they got the call.
"Y'know, I thought I had good sushi before, but this is something else!"
"You know, nutritionally, you'd be better off eating... that does contain a lot of salt... what kind of fish is this?"
Coulson wasn't paying attention to Skye's conversation with Jemma. The events of the previous evening were still on his mind. He wanted answers, and he wasn't going to be happy until he got them.
His phone emitted a shrill beep, and his team fell silent.
Jemma started at Skye for a moment. "Priority Alert – Director Fury", she mouthed.
"Coulson, is your team in one piece?"
"Yes, sir. What happened?"
"An hour ago, Garrett's team went dark. Shortly after that, we got a massive portal alert off the coast of Tokyo. We have incoming on your position. Massive incoming. Sat feed coming to your phone now."
He nodded, and glanced at the screen on his device.
"Seriously? Attack of the giant foxes?"
"Seriously. We believe it is headed for the nuclear plant."
"Oh."
"Your orders are to get the civilians in the nuclear plant to safety. Oh, and these things are apparently legendary in Japan. Ancient gods or some-such. We're already taking flak from the Japanese government for moving on them. If anyone asks, this was your own initiative. Good luck."
Coulson put down the phone.
"Well, at last - we know what we're up against."
Jemma beamed at him. Ward simply cocked his head curiously. Fitz seemed a little disappointed, and May, well, May had few facial expressions other than anger, barely-concealed anger, and inscrutable maybe-anger.
"That's good! See? I told you that you'd feel better", chimed in Jemma.
"Not so much", he replied. "They're attacking the nuclear plant. Our orders are to get the civilians to safety. Let's move!"