January 5th 2015, Avengers Tower
Harry stood in his hero uniform at the front of his team looking out over a sea of reporters and officials. To his right was Maria Hill clad in the new administration uniform for SHADE members, a dark gray body suit with green highlights and the SHADE logo on the left part of the chest, the acronym spelled out above an outline of the Earth.
"We're glad you could come today." Harry said into the mic, "The Avengers as a team have worked alongside SHIELD in an effort to better protect the world from threats on planet and off world for a few years now, but during the last year we've seen that we can't be everywhere at once."
The crowd below started talking to their neighbors and making comments causing the venue inside the tower to echo noise in a growing crescendo. Frowning Harry snapped his fingers causing a loud whistling noise to pierce the room stopping all conversations dead.
"As I was saying. With us only being a team of 7 we had a hard time keeping up with our efforts worldwide, so in response we've started a new initiative." Harry said as he looked at Tony who pulled up something on his phone before a large display appeared behind the team. "SHADE, also known as; Super Hero Agency for the Defense of Earth, is a new group being led by the Avengers and a group of trusted administrators tasked with the protection of the world from supernatural threats within and without our planet."
"Our goals have always been the protection of citizens and that isn't changing. Already we've started several new teams of supers that can respond to another attack like the attack on New York last year or 3 years ago." Steve said as he stepped forward before once again falling into line with his team.
"Thank you Captain." Harry said as he gave him a look before moving his eyes over to Maria Hill who nodded and stepped up. "This is Maria Hill, the future director and coordinator of SHADE administration. She'll be the backbone of this new group and comes highly recommended from SHIELD." Maria looked out over the crowd as she gave a nod before stepping back. "Her main duties will be overseeing logistics and ensuring an easy communication process between us and the governments of the world."
"Now I know many of you will have questions, but they can wait until after the presentation where many of them would likely be answered." Harry waved towards the displayed SHADE logo before a presentation started allowing the team to back off and regroup to the side of the stage.
"Jeez, I'm about to get a crick in my neck from standing up there so long." Clint said with a groan as he rubbed his neck.
"Oh quit being a baby." Natasha said as she leaned against the wall. "You looked good up there, Summoner." Natasha said with a wink towards Harry who just chuckled.
"Looks like most of them are pretty happy with what they're hearing." Tony commented from the side as he looked out at the crowd as the recording of Jarvis listed out the newly joined supers. Harry looked out and saw that most of the reporters and officials in the audience were either neutral or smiling, while a few seemed upset or aggravated.
"We'll have to watch a few of them, they seem quite upset." Harry said as his eyes narrowed.
"We can't make everyone happy." Bruce said from the side, looking quite uncomfortable. Steve patted his shoulder and nodded in agreement.
"When are we going to debut the new team?" Steve asked as he looked over at Bucky standing to the side of the room with Rhodey and the Twins.
"Not for a while." Harry said with a shake of his head, "We need to fine tune their teamwork and get them up to snuff before we present them as new members. If their debut has any issues the public will come down hard on them."
"Very true. We've saved the world and still have image issues. New members will have an even tougher time." Tony said as he scrolled through his phone, "Posts online are already talking about SHADE and the reception is mixed so far." He said as he turned his phone and showed a heated debate in some sort of comment section.
"While public opinion is good, we should be more worried about making sure we're strong enough to defend our planet from whoever sent the Chitauri." Harry said with a look at Thor.
"My brother has yet to say one word about whoever sent him." Thor said with a shake of his head. Harry hummed as the presentation was finishing up.
"Let's head back out there for the Q&A, we can discuss Loki and his backer later." Harry said as he led the team back to the dais. They all stepped up and lined up behind Harry as he took to the podium again. The audience was speculating and chatting. A few were already shouting at the stage before Harry raised his hand again causing the audience to quiet down.
"Now that the presentation is over, we'll be taking questions… in an orderly fashion." Harry added at the end as a few people shouted at the stage. "You." Harry said pointing at a man in the front tow.
"Jacob Neilson, Action News. Are the members of SHADE going to be revealing their identities as public figures?" he asked.
"As of right now we have no plans on forcing any member to publicly reveal their identities." Harry said before pointing at a woman mid way through the audience.
"Carol Travers, BBC. Will SHADE be cooperating with the UN or other government agencies?"
"SHADE is working closely alongside SHIELD in an effort to help their agents deal with supernatural threats." Harry said before pointing to an older man with graying sideburns and a thick mustache.
"J. Johan Jameson, Daily Bugle. How do you plan to repay the damages you caused?!" Harry finally recognized the man as the one who attempted to stop him during his search, rescue, and repair work after the League's attack on New York.
"Now I recognize you, Mr. Jameson. You were the reporter who stopped me during my rescue activities last year." Harry said with a cold tone. "We did everything in our power to limit the damages and repair what was broken. SHADE is the next step in preventing the widespread destruction we saw last year and we can only hope it won't happen again." Harry ignored the man as he pointed at another reporter.
Harry and the team spent the next hour fielding questions about SHADE, the team, and their views on the future of the Avengers before the questions started boiling down to their personal lives.
"I think we can end this here. Thank you all for coming and if you have more questions there's a communication line on our new website." Harry said as he led the team through a portal, disappearing from the venue. Clint immediately collapsed into the closest chair in the penthouse.
"Now I remember why I liked being an agent." Clint said with a groan. Harry tapped his shoulder as he passed, giving the man a grin.
"Buck up Hawkeye, at least you weren't the subject of thinly veiled questions on your dating life." Natasha said as she sat next to Harry.
"I'm still surprised one of the reporters asked Hulk a question." Tony said as he walked back from the bar, drink in hand.
"I'm not." Harry scoffed as he leaned back. "Hulk is wildly popular. If he didn't have the Culver incident under his belt I bet he would be the most popular Avenger."
"I am the most popular Avenger. Not only can I fly, I'm handsome and a prince." Thor said as he tossed his hammer up and caught it again with a superior smirk on his face. Tony could be seen rolling his eyes while Clint blew a raspberry.
"Based on these numbers you aren't the most popular Avenger." Tony said as he waved his phone. Everyone turned to look at him. "Someone set up a poll on a stream of the conference. Nat is first, no surprise there, followed by Thor, Summoner, Hulk, Me, Captain, and Hawkeye."
"I'm the least popular?!" Clint said as he exaggeratedly whined.
"I'm more surprised Steve is so low." Harry said as he ignored the whinging archer.
"Well Widow is self explanatory, Thor is a god in real life, You are mysterious, which counts for a lot, and like you said Hulk is wildly popular." Tony explained as he scrolled through online comments and posts. Steve sat to the side looking over Tony's shoulder slightly bewildered.
"I wonder why Hulk is so popular? He's done a lot of damage over the years." Banner said to the side of the room, his eyes changing green for a moment as Hulk made his annoyance known.
"Easy. His powers are simple and he's the strongest Avenger based on Strength alone." Harry said as he propped his feet up, everyone around the sitting area thought about it for a second and nodded, agreeing with his point. "Not to mention that video of him beating down Abomination in Harlem is still getting tons of views."
From that point on Tony, Thor, and Clint tried to explain why they deserved to be higher or others lower on the list as the rest of the team watched in amusement.
/OO-HP•SoS-OO\
January 10th 2015, Harry's Workshop
Harry was surrounded by open books at his desk, the current one a book of sacrificial rituals.
"Damn." Harry said as he closed the book he was reading. He looked at his written notes, all about rituals to restore the body to perfect condition. The latest entry was a sacrificial ritual, using a virgin of the same gender to restore the body to a perfect state. It couldn't add lifespan, but it would definitely allow Nat to have children again. Harry leaned back and rubbed his face with his hands before he waved one of them causing the books to fly back into the shelves along the wall.
"Most of these rituals require things that don't exist in this world." Harry said with a sigh as he stood up, "Maybe I could adapt one of them, or wait until I head back to my world." Shaking his head he was about to head upstairs when he got a call from Tony.
"Hey Houdini, I got something new to show you. Come over to the lab." Harry agreed before continuing his trek upstairs. He found Nat sitting in the living room reading while Teddy rolled around on the ground with a huge stuffed dragon in his wolf form.
"Hey you two, having fun?" Harry asked as he walked in.
"Of course we are." She said as she looked down at Teddy who was still on his back with a dragon snout in his mouth as he looked up at the two of them. Harry and Natasha both stared at Teddy who eventually ignored them to continue wrestling causing them to laugh. "So what's up?"
"Oh, well Tony called me and wanted me to goto the lab, so I was just coming over to let you know." Nat nodded stood and gave him a kiss before sitting back down. "I'll be back later." Harry said with a wave only to receive a bark in reply. Smiling he opened a portal to Tony's lab and stepped through.
"There you are!" Tony said as he beckoned Harry over, "Check this out." Harry moved beside Tony to see a set of equipment sitting on the table.
"This the new support gear?" Harry asked as he inspected each item. The farthest item on the left was a card of some sort, barely the size of a playing card, black with the SHADE logo and a light indicator on the corner.
"Yeah, first is the emergency beacon." Tony said lifting up the card, "It has a link to the vitals monitor in the new communicators and will activate when the vitals spike for any reason. An agent will try to establish contact and if that fails send in a rescue party."
"Nice. I'm guessing these are the new communicators?" Harry said, picking up an earpiece.
"It's actually a new set of runes I found in a Japanese book on talismans. Unfortunately that means that each communicator is unique to the person it's bonded to." Tony explained as he pulled up the rune scheme.
"That's not too bad. I'm guessing you got the magic primer working?" Harry asked only to see Tony pull a metal wand of sorts. "You made it look like a wand?"
"I thought it would be appropriate." Tony said with a laugh, "With this I can now jumpstart any rune scheme that works off ambient magic. Moving on though we have the escape tokens and escape beacon." Tony said as he motioned over a small bronze disk and a large rune clade pole, "The escape tokens are still disintegrating after use, but the trip is much smoother now. I don't think I could have made these without the access you gave me to the Tree of Yggdrasil."
"I don't think I could have made it this time." Harry said with a laugh as he inspected the coin and beacon, "From the notes you gave me it required a level of arithmancy and math that baffled me." Tony gained a smug look before moving to the next item.
"Unfortunately I haven't found a way to make better med-kits so that's standard for now. This however is new." Tony said holding up a silver baton, "Using a combination of tech and magic I've made the ultimate non-lethal capturing tool. Hold the tip to the chest of a criminal and they'll be locked in place for as long as 4 hours. Not even Xavier could affect me after he'd been subdued by this."
"Merlin…That's incredible." Harry said as he picked it up and inspected it. "Is it using the petrification jinx and stunning spell?"
"That's right. Well that and about 1000 volts, less than average tasers, but it's neuromuscular incapacitation rather than pain, the combination of which should leave any captured target immobile for hours." Tony explained as he took the baton and used it on a dummy nearby causing the fake muscles to constrict. "I'm already planning to equip my security with these. Moving on is our last item."
Harry moved over and looked at the last item on the workbench. It was a belt with several pouches and a long and thin box on the back. Harry inspected it for a few minutes but saw nothing special about the pouches, but the box was solid and had no openings. He looked at Tony in askance.
"It's a utility belt, enough room to carry the whole support pack. That box though is the pièce de résistance." Tony said as he dragged out the silence causing Harry to just lift an eyebrow in response. Huffing he continued, "It's a super suit holder and uses a similar function to the communicators. Bond it in blood and it'll allow whoever owns it to switch whatever they're wearing for their hero clothes."
"Wait…It can change your clothes? How?" Harry asked, completely caught off guard. He didn't think it was possible to do this with runes. Tony pulled up a large schematic with thousands of runes all linked together.
"With a combination of runic languages and some innovation it's possible." Tony said smugly. "It took me forever to get it right, but now that I got it down I can mass-produce them. Basically it bonds to the user, so it can read the information about whoever it's bonded to, not sure how but it works. Using intent the person can switch out their clothes for their hero getup anywhere."
"Hmm, looks like some pretty restrictive sizing though." Harry said as he continued to inspect the runic sequence.
"Yeah, I can't expand spaces like you can, but it should be big enough for clothes, weapons though? Not so much." Tony said.
"So production and safe houses next then?" Harry asked.
"Nah Fury and Maria are taking care of that. We get to update the team's equipment instead." Tony said as he started pulling the schematics for everyone's gear.
"Sounds good to me." Harry said as they both threw themselves into designing the next set of equipment.
AN: Hey guys! Everything went great, but he needs constant supervision so my posting speed will be a little slow for the next week and a half.
Hope you like the new chapter and I'll see you couple of days.
Reviews:
Firestar Prime, KAGR, Garnetio Solozari, Reaper1990, apocalypse24, Dauntes, dunny, flame55, Spk hunter, Freakfondu, netzoid27 - Thank you all for your best wishes. everything is a-ok. He's just in some pain and wearing a cone, but he's already wanting ot run around like normal. Which is nerve wracking with those sutures but makes me happy to know he's on the road to recovery.
Boomshanka - If you read this far I hope you're still enjoying it. while they will have adversity I'm not a big fan of major loss or putting them too far down.