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Colonel Nick Fury sat back in the big plush leather directors chair as 'Directive Assistant' (whatever the hell that was) Li retrieved a sleek gadget manufactured by Wayne Enterprises, and lit up the screen with a light tap of the finger, sending up a 3 dimensional holographic page that he could examine. "Quite a considerable amount for your consideration today, director." Li said, straightening his jacket. Second-Lieutenant Li was a recruit, American-chinese in ancestry who'd arrived in the army. He was found to be an exceptional sniper, but didn't have any of the other field-skills, and wouldn't have make it as an officer. Which was unfortunate, as he had ambitions towards a career in supplies or communications. So he'd arranged a transfer, spent some time in the agency, then transferred to S.H.I.E.L.D, which needed men like him. It needed a hundred men like him, much as Fury didn't want to admit it. He was more then competent, or else he wouldn't be where he was at twenty-four, but Fury had never really warmed up to him, and doubted he ever would. "All of it important."
"You always say that." Fury replied, rubbing his temples with one hand. Fury was still the quintessential soldier, even if the uniform and job description was different now then it had been when he first enlisted. His hair dark brown was cut short in a marine's crew-cut, grey at the edges but still dark and virile at the top, his uniform was well-pressed, his shoulders broad and his back ram-rod straight. His angular face was worn and tired looking, lined with scars, and he'd lost his left eye, but his right was piercing enough for two. Around the world he is know as the top cop, the highest Authority, and the only thing that made S.H.I.E.L.D actually work. Depending on who you ask his name is praised for being a patriot and being willing to do anything for his country no matter how shady or outright immoral, or despised for the exact same reason. But even if he was still at the end of his prime, and had been for the better of a generation, he felt like an old, tired man. "Well go on then. Surprise me."
"Well, there are growing budgetary concerns in regards to S.H.I.E.L.D. As you can imagine, much of the infrastructure is perceived to be corrupt, hemorrhaging money and squandering resources. Given that it's such a considerable investment, the board has set up a committee to monitor expenditure and reduce it where they can. Which is why we intend cut-backs, removing non-essential personnel and..."
"That's you done for then. See if I can get you another job in the CIA. Though you'd be better to keep away from the Agency if you want a career."
"Quite amusing sir. But you're making light of what could be-"
"It's not our problem. Focus on your job, and let them do theirs. If the bean-counters have an issue, they can stop beating around the bush and sending forms I don't have time to read, and they can come and tell it to me personally. Man-to-man. Otherwise, they can keep it to themselves."
"But we do have to balance our budget to-"
"No we don't. Because as much as they gripe and complain, they won't do anything, and the funding will keep rolling in." Fury steepled his fingers. "Trust me on that."
"As you say, sir." Li said diplomatically. "Well, the Soviet Union wants to renegotiate super-human test band treaties, as they feel they no longer represent the best interests of Eastern Europe and Asia..."
"Just so much meaningless discussion. All the treaty says, you'll notice, is that nobody on the Security Council can intentionally create or recruit any metahumans without notifying the others, and that if anyone else tries that, they'll stomp on them just like they stomped on them Parousia when they got smart." Fury shook his head at the stupidity of it all. “Which is just saying nothing at all in so many words, but the balance of power is maintained. Bloody politics. Anything else should I know today?”
"Well, we had a request from the CIA. They want us to loan them -"
“Does it look to you as if my body is dead?”
“No, sir.”
“Then the answer's no. Whatever it is, they can get their own damn assets. What else?”
"Human resources..."
"Oh no. Not them. Not those idiots." Fury said, almost pleading. He'd single-handedly charged enemy fortified machine-gun posts while his men were ripped to shreds around him, had clawed through barbed wire and over corpses to capture positions with a bayonet clenched between his teeth, and he'd do it all again before sitting through a meeting with human bloody resources.
"I'm afraid so, sir. They have problems with our hiring standards, feeling that there is a disproportionate representation, particularly in the upper echelons, and that it is representative of standards that are woefully out-dated and should be..."
"What the hell do those goldbrickin' yahoos think this is?" Fury almost shouted. So they didn't do his sort of work, but presumably they had a functioning brain between them. "The headquarters for the Bleedin' Heart Liberals?"
Li wisely ignored that one. "They also wish to complain about the records of many of your officers, and..."
"Listen son, if I only worked with people who didn't do bad things, well I wouldn't need quite as big a headquarters as I have, would I? And the if the Hellecarrier is big, the Triskellion is huge." He replies, as though Li is the one suggesting this, and is being monumentally naive. “Half my operatives used to work for MI6, them that didn't work for the CIA or KGB, some were counter-terrorists, or psychopaths we’ve decided work better pointed at our enemies, and the rest don’t even exist at all. No, I can't trust all of them, but that doesn't matter, long as they do the job now. Got that?"
"But how do we explain that to human resources?"
"I figure if they can't figure that out themselves, they're never going to. So let them complain. I don't care. Company Policy stays the way it is." He leans back on his chair. "Next?"
"Well, there's another delay in the SkyWatch project, as the projected estimates in the required amount of adamantine for the super-structure was found to be inadequate. Their having to scrap the first attempt and recast the entire hull. Which will be very expensive."
"Some engineer forgot to drop a decimal point? Hopefully someone lost their job over it. Bendix's ego project will wait another year to be completed." Fury said, without any real irritation. He didn't particularly want the satellite, the thing was massively over-budget and behind schedule, extremely ponderous, and impractical, not to mention that Bendix had been dead and buried for ten years, despite occasional rumors to the contrary. And the Hellecarrier was quite a fine representation of S.H.I.E.L.D's power and authority on it's own. The only reason anyone had wanted it, was so they could look down on the rest of the world and lord it over them.
"No doubt sir. Now, there is talk that France is ceding from the European Union and withdrawing military commitment from Nato, unless..."
Where did I go wrong? thought the colonel as the litany went on. I was a soldier once. I fought in one World War and a dozen smaller one across the globe, it was what I did best. I led thousands of men into battle with everything from horses and swords, to artillery and tanks, to stealth planes and lazers. I put the Avengers together, I saw off a score of alien invasions, I worked long and hard at espionage, I arranged a few assassinations, helped people defect and stole valuable technology and intel, I brought down corrupt regimes, I put a stop to SPECTRE wherever it reared it's head, probably saved the world a dozen times, and I built this agency from the ground up. So why don't I even know what we're doing anymore? Are we even doing anything? If old man Frank Rock could see me now...
"Sir?" Li asked, pausing his extremely technical explanation of why the horde of communications experts and computer specialists that now formed the backbone of the company still couldn't do their jobs and identify either of the cyber terrorists who'd compromised the pentagon a week back, and possibly stolen nuclear launch codes.
"Li, will you please shut up when I'm trying to think!? I swear to God it's like running a espionage organization with my mother." Fury growled.
Li fell quiet, looking a little hurt. That seemed harsh, but Nick, as ever, had his own unique set of priorities, and Li had given up trying to make sense of Nick's decision-making processes on his first day of the job. Fury ignored him, and lit a cigar. Officially, the Hellicarrier was a no-smoking area, but he ignored it, and everyone realized you don't tell the director what to do, particularly one as infamously cantankerous as Nick Fury. He shook his head again. Well, that was what was happening. So what was he supposed to do about it? It used to be a matter of identifying the problem, then sending in either spies or black-ops commandos in, thwarting each the opposition and trying, just trying to avert global catastrophe and World War III. Then Bendix arrived, all smug and superior and 'modern', and insisted on metahuman response teams, neural implants and non-disclosure. S.H.I.E.L.D had become accountable to nobody and began using tactics that couldn't be condoned, and then finally Bendix had gone mad with power and tried to take over the world. The man was a maniac and had been put down like the animal he was, but rather then learn from him everyone seemed to be queuing up to follow his lead, and now suddenly it's all done with machines and discussion, and everyone wants to look like the good guys and put war crimes and atrocities down as 'differences in ideology', rather then unforgivable sins that lead to a bed-for-one in an unmarked grave. And there was still insistence on metahuman response teams, now that genetic engineering was the new nuke. All of it. Gone to ****.
And now look at me! I'm in the middle of it all! A colonel! Commander of S.H.I.E.L.D, the most powerful espionage agency on the planet! A political animal! I have to know a thousand details about people I don't care to meet and places I'll never visit, just in case that it becomes relevant some day. And a whole generation are looking to me for answers about a host of problems I couldn't even begin to make sense of, and all I can do is hold on until the world starts to sort itself out and things like right and wrong starts mattering again.
And here was Li, who wasn't too bad a kid really, explaining what he'd be doing with his day to him in a way he could understand, while he just sat there and tried not to feel like a man left behind by his own agency. He knew what he was supposed to be doing, or at least Li did and would tell him if he listened, but he couldn't have told you why it was important. Not that it mattered. These days, he had spin doctors and bureaucrats for that, who controlled public perception and kept their fingers on the world's pulse, men he'd never met whose judgement he didn't trust. At some point, one he couldn't have picked out for you if he had to, his country changed, and his loyalties changed with it without him noticing, and everything in the international world had gone from being clear to being a mess. It would take a man smarter then him to sort it all out, even if it could be. It had never been a perfect world, but it was the only one they had, and he'd done his best to make it a little safer, a little more secure, a little better. And now he couldn't even tell if he'd done the right thing or not.
Take S.H.I.E.L.D, which called itself an international organization and claimed it answered only to the UN, but in truth it had always served America's interests foremost. Which was why they'd been in Afghanistan stopping the Russians, but hadn't lifted a finger in Vietnam to stop the GI's from killing kids or the other atrocities that showed up along the way, why they'd intervened in the Middle East, but left the rest of Africa to fend for itself. And he'd accepted that, much as he didn't like it. The bulk of his men had to come from somewhere, as did the funding and influence, and if the alternative was to go corporate then he'd just have to make the best with what he had. So why did it feel like he'd sold-out? Not just sold his own soul to Ol' Scratch, but sold away all the little people, whose small lives got ground away by the rich and powerful, who nobody cared about or knew to protect? What's you conscience say about that?
And now? Now they didn't even do that. Wars weren't even called wars anymore, the cold war was presented as a thing of the past since The Authorities coup and subsequent step-down (and how he'd wanted to intervene with that, but it wasn't to be), there was no more scrambling for power or trying to get footholds in each others territory, no games of espionage, not even a technology race.
That's all been taken away. And for what?
Comfort, mutual prosperity, brotherhood and the betterment of your fellow man… Not that any of that was a bad thing, but...Damn.
But I'm not a soldier, or even an agent any more, I'm a manager, an administrator. I have to talk to damn committees to get anything done, though everything is delayed weeks while they discuss it self-importantly and bloody unrecognizable as anything I'd say when they finally bother to announce it, I have to talk politics and 'international consideration', and a whole host of other bull****, I go to receptions and attend press conferences and drown in paperwork, and otherwise never actually get anything done while the whole monolithic organization ticks on. And nobody really listens to me. It's all politics and forms and reports, and I can't even light up a cigar in my own damn office in my own damn headquarters.
What has happened to the days when it was all so simple?
And he couldn't even retire, because once every couple of years, they ran into something that wasn't just a lone nut, or an 'international incident' (whatever the hell that was supposed to be), something they couldn't fix, and he had to step in and deal with it because the recruiting party had plenty of specialists and computer-experts and all the rest, even a psychic-op, but if he was out of the way they'd think another Bendix was just the man for the job. They could deal with HYDRA on a good day, but give them another London at the turn of the millennium, and they'd have no chance at all. He stubbed out his cigar, then stomped out of his room and down the hall, needing to move, even if it was to aimlessly wander the corridors and hope to run into Durgan or one of the other old-guard who he could share his concerns with, without sounding like an old dinosaur whining about the youth of today. Maybe this time he'd be able to figure out how to work the ridiculously complicated coffee-maker. Everyone had attempted to explain how to operate it, but there were so many damn buttons. The coffee-maker could do at least twelve different things, including possibly think for itself. It seemed excessive when all he wanted was a simple cup of coffee. In the old days, a less capable computer had been all you needed to run Manhattan.
He stepped into the rec-room. The coffee-maker crouched on the countertop, a mass of black plastic and silver metal, its little red light blinking at him mockingly. Fury inspected the panel of buttons, then selected one more or less at random, pressed it, and the machine began to make a hissing noise. He pressed several more buttons, all of which failed to make the hissing stop.
"Can't even work this damn thing, and they want my advice on how to rule the world." He muttered, then turned to find Li staring at him. The boy had followed him out of the office, still holding the gadget he kept his notes on.
"What now?" He growled.
"Your 0900? With Director Gendo Ikari? About the Japanese initiative he's put together?"
"Right. That." Fury growled, and gave up in disgust. It was going to be a long day.