Unknownfate
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Chapter 116
🕑 Added 2025-05-02 19:08:00 +0000 UTCFury didn’t rush. He sipped his black coffee like a man with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. That, more than anything, put me on edge.
He was composed. Calm. Curious. And entirely too casual for someone surrounded by several enhanced individuals, any one of whom could’ve wrecked this place with a sneeze.
But I suppose that was Nick Fury’s whole deal, wasn’t it?
“I like to know who’s walking through my country,” he said smoothly, eye roaming from face to face. “Especially when those people show up flagged by three different surveillance systems, have no verifiable national origin, and burn through cash like Stark on a bender.”
He ran the show like he was giving a lecture. With all of us just eating, or looking at him as he kept speaking, asking questions that weren’t really questions, just stating what he knew.
“And speaking of Stark, he is involved in his mess, staying at his place? having him block information about you all? Bold move, real bold.”
Mordred, still chewing, leaned over and whispered — not quietly — “Father, can I hit him?”
“No,” I said immediately.
“Not even a little?”
“Still no.”
Fury gave her a single glance. “I have been aware of you since you showed up in Vegas, no IDs, no leads, total ghosts, and then, after winning a fortune, you leave it all behind and just disappear like ghosts.”
“Well, tell us something we don’t know, the hotel was crawling with you people at the end.” Mordred scuffed between bites.
“Then you appear again, in Hell’s Kitchen, smashing up criminals, starting a gang war with the Hand, and then you.” He looked right at me. “Disappears again, leaving just her.” He pointed his coffee at Mordred.
“Then you appear in this story, Miss Jones, someone we know, a real person, a real face, a background. The hows and the whys aren’t known, but we know who you are.”
“Don’t you pretend to know me!” Jessica hissed, “You know nothing!”
To his credit, Fury didn’t react much; he just moved on. “And then you appeared again,” he said, looking at me. “At the airport, fake names, plenty of money, so much that it's strange you even bothered going to Vegas, not that you earned much, given you left everything you won.”
“Then one of you turns a car invisible, causes a crash, and then just ups and leaves. And then all of you take a trip across the nation, real quality time… and that leaves me with questions, lots of them.” He finally finished telling us what he knew.
There was a brief silence after that, just the background hum of the fryers and Sprite licking ketchup off her fingers.
I met Fury’s gaze, steady and unblinking. “That’s a long list of observations.”
“They’re facts,” he said. “I’m in the business of knowing things. When I don’t, I get… professionally curious.”
Sersi tilted her head, hands folded neatly. “You’ve told us what you see. But I don’t hear what you want.”
Fury offered a small smile — the kind that didn’t touch his eye. “I want to know if you're a threat. To this country. To the people in it. To the world, even.”
“Big leap,” I said calmly. “From ‘strange paperwork’ to ‘world-ending threat.’”
“You wouldn’t be the first.” Fury took another sip of his coffee. “Let’s just say I’ve developed a sense for patterns. And the world isn’t a peaceful place, so if a group of all-female enhanced show up… I want to know why.”
Mordred snorted. “That sounds like a you problem.”
Fury glanced her way, expression unreadable. “Maybe it is. Or maybe I’m about to make you your problem too.”
Jessica sat back with folded arms, clearly restraining herself. “So what? You gonna try to arrest us?”
“If I were here to arrest you,” he said smoothly, “you’d already be in handcuffs. Or unconscious. Or both.”
That got a reaction from Sprite, who muttered, “Please try.”
“Sprite,” I warned. She pouted and sulked back into her fries.
Fury continued like none of that had happened. “I don’t plan to pick a fight. Just want to understand what kind of situation I’m dealing with.”
“And what if we don’t feel like being understood?” I asked.
“Then I walk out of here with questions I will get answers to another way,” he said.
He let the words hang there, just long enough to remind us that, however polite he sounded, this was still a warning.
I was honestly tempted to remove his head from his shoulders, but I knew that while he was rather annoying, he was still someone at least trying to keep the world safe, more than could be said for anyone who might replace him.
And, honestly, I found the idea of him trying everything to find out about us, only to find nothing until the day I would reveal who I was to the world, would be a fun revenge for his disrespect.
“Sprite, if you please would.” I asked, and Sprite was all too happy to do her thing.
“Well,” Mordred said, reaching across the table to steal another handful of fries, “that was anticlimactic.”
Jessica leaned back in her seat, still chewing. “This is how we’re handling problems now? Mindhacks and fries?”
“I’m not complaining,” Mordred said, stuffing her face. “Still think we should’ve let me punch him a little.”
“You don’t just get to push people because you are bored, Mordred, you are a Knight, act like it.”
Mordred just huffed and continued to eat, all while ignoring Sprite's smug look.
“Ugh,” Mordred muttered, standing and stretching as the meal wound down. She walked past Fury on the way out, leaned in close, and whispered into his unblinking face:
“Next time bring backup, pirate. And maybe wear brown pants.”
Then she laughed and pushed the door open with her foot.
We filed out, calm as anything. Sprite was still humming, clearly proud of herself. Sersi gave the cashier a polite nod on the way out — he looked like he’d aged ten years in the last twenty minutes.
Then the door swung shut behind us.
And inside?
Fury sat still.
But in his world, something else was happening entirely.
-----
“Sprite, if you please would.” I asked, and Sprite was all too happy to do her thing.
Fury looked from the regal-looking woman who seemed to be in charge, to the person reacting, letting him know who this Sprite was. And that would be the child in the group.
And once again, he couldn’t help but feel this was. A teen calling herself Mordred, running around killing people with her super strength. Then the woman she called ‘father’ a stunning blond that shouldn’t be totally unknown.
Winning Queen too had the same kind of super strength that would make the old day super soldiers jealous, and possibly the ability to teleport, and manipulate probability… though both were unconfirmed.
How does one even confirm probability manipulation?
Then the last of the known members of this little group, Jessica Jones, now that was at least a real person. With a real background. Parents, schooling, everything a real person should have.
Which did allow them to find out a good bit about her while looking into the situation. Which did include another enhanced, one with mind control powers.
Apparently, Jessica had been under his control. Honestly, Fury wasn’t sure what to think about that bit of information.
On one side, he was glad someone with such a dangerous ability was dead. He had plenty of people already shitting themselves over Xavier, and he had proved that he wasn’t willing to do it.
And on the other hand, he would have liked to get his hands on someone with that power. With so many enhanced running around, so many dangerous ones, he would have liked another way of forcing them to comply.
But as for the last two of this group, they too were completely unknown, other than some fake names. Everything they had on them was pure speculation, and that single thing was that one of them might, might possess the ability to turn things and themselves and others invisible.
Another highly useful ability in his line of work. It had also allowed them to escape a full SHIELD attempt at capturing them, which just went to show how useful such an ability is.
The child was the one to react, and he was instantly on guard; he wasn’t a fool. He knew that just because someone was a child didn’t mean they couldn’t be dangerous; he had seen far too many mutants cause chaos to dismiss any enhanced individual.
He was ready to react; he had men waiting for his signal.
“I am the High Queen of the Universe! Ruler of the Ten Realms! Lord of Stars and Grand Duke of Chaos! The one and only God Queen of the multiverse!” The child said as the world around them seemed to change.
One moment, they were in a small roadside burger joint. The next? A golden palace with the Stars outside the massive windows, entire galaxies were shown in each window.
A dozen more Sprites emerged, each slightly different. One with wings of crystal. One with circuitry laced into her arms. One draped in robes of shadow. They danced in the void between pillars made of memories Fury hadn’t shared in decades.
A memory of the first time he held a gun.
A flash of a failed operation.
A coffin, sealed. A name he never said out loud.
“What is this?” Fury growled, turning in place, hand twitching near his sidearm, which no longer existed.
Next, he tried to send the silent signal, hoping to get them to act and wake him up from whatever was going on.
“Don’t expect your friends to help you? They are all back on Earth.” Sprite said before exploding into blinding light.
When he could see again, he was standing on a massive platform, and before him stood a being larger than planets! It looked like it was made of stone or metal, and the head alone took up almost the entire visible area of the sky.
“You messed up mortal, you have angered the gods!” The massive creature said, a voice both like that of Sprite, and like some all powerful being.
Fury didn’t flinch.
He stood in the center of the cosmic platform, dwarfed by the titanic figure looming overhead. Its glowing eyes bore down on him like twin suns, while ethereal music hummed in the background. Some strange blend of a heavenly choir and ‘80s synth.
“YOU HAVE BEEN FOUND WANTING,” the voice declared. “YOUR FATE SHALL BE DECIDED BY THE LAWS OF COSMIC IRONY!”
A shimmering scroll unrolled in the air beside him, several hundred feet long. Fury’s name was scrawled at the top in glowing pink ink. Below it were crimes ranging from “Unauthorized Intrusion into Sacred Snack Time” to “Disrespecting the Queen of the Multiverse.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “God help me, I’m being judged by a sparkly gremlin.”
The giant Sprite raised a massive celestial gavel. “YOUR SENTENCE: ENDLESS LOOP OF EXISTENTIAL FRUSTRATION. YOUR REALITY WILL BE TURNED INTO—”
Fury raised a hand.
“Cut the theatrics,” he said coolly. “You want to mess with my head, you’ll need better material. I’ve seen worse. Been through worse. You don’t scare me, kid.”
The illusion shimmered.
Cracks formed in the illusion’s sky. The giant Sprite paused, tilting her head like a curious cat.
And then, in a snap, it all collapsed.
Fury was back in the booth.
The tray of fries was empty. His coffee had cooled. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, indifferent to what had just transpired.
“What is going on here!?” He angrily yelled. At which point, the agents who had been hidden suddenly found that they had zoned out for a moment, and now their targets were gone.
“I don’t know, sir, they just suddenly… disappeared.” The ever competent, Coulson said as he stepped forward.
Fury looked at his watch, finding that an hour had passed since he sat down.
Fury sat still for another moment, then exhaled through his nose.
“Cute.”
“We lost them, if we spot them, remote surveillance only, no engagement, and someone, tell Stark to stop collecting magical blondes.” He said as he stood up.
-----
Far away from Fury and the joint, the group led by Arthuria had finally arrived at their destination after Arthuria decided to get this over with by opening a TemGate over to where Phastos was hiding.
(End of chapter)
I had a lot of ideas for what Fury should be seeing. For the reason that wouldn’t even make him realize that something was gone.
To have Sprite proclaim herself as the king of Camelot. And everything in between.
I won’t be doing anything more with the US, will be going right back home after this, not much of a timeskip, but no need to stay around there anymore.
As for Fury… I really did a lot of dumping, didn’t I? But with Mutants being a thing, that leaves so many questions, like why haven’t he done anything about them? because the Fury I saw back in 2008, he wouldn’t just have such people running around freely.
So he might not slap cuffs on them, but he would keep eyes on them, want to recruit them, anything.
He should know about Xavier and his school, likely even have some kind of relationship with him.
I mean, when it comes to Mutants, there are only three paths to take.
Full bad guy, strap them to an operating table and try to clone them or whatever.
Go half bad guy, half good guy, and we have Magneto.
And finally, the good guy, bald guy.
And honestly, I feel that Fury would likely do a mix of the first and third option.
Comments
eevin1
i like that instead of confronting fury they just moved on (because at the end of the day he is just a normal guy)
Biazar Lockhart
Ha Fury had to deal with a fake sprite for over an hour! Artoria's payback will also be fucking hilarious because he'll either start breaking shit or screaming at everyone
