By seven in the morning, the plaza outside the Southern District of New York was already packed so tightly that it had become almost impossible to move through the streets around it. The New York Police Department had deployed in force, and the National Guard had also been called in to maintain order, but even with both agencies present, the surging crowd still looked impossible to control. People filled every visible stretch of pavement, shoulder to shoulder, packed into intersections, sidewalks, and barricaded lanes until the entire area resembled a living sea.
There had to be at least a hundred thousand people gathered there already, and more were still arriving. Today was the day Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., was supposed to stand trial.
The day before, Fury had finally appeared in public and declared that he had absolutely no connection to the devil. According to him, he had no idea why Clint Barton had become a servant of hell, and neither S.H.I.E.L.D. nor Fury himself bore any responsibility for what had happened. To prove his innocence and give an explanation to the people of the world, he had voluntarily agreed to appear before the Southern District Court of New York the very next morning.
That statement had detonated like gasoline on a fire. Reporters, activists, angry survivors, grieving families, and ordinary citizens had all rushed toward the courthouse as fast as they could. Camera crews were shouting into microphones in front of their vans, anchors were nearly screaming over the noise of the crowd, and ordinary people were chanting in waves, demanding justice in voices raw from fury and exhaustion.
At the Avengers base, Locke sat in front of a television and watched the coverage with narrowed eyes. The courthouse entrance flickered across the screen again and again, framed by police lines, banners, and masses of furious people pressing forward against barriers like a flood straining against a dam.
Then his phone rang again.
The ringtone had become so familiar over the past few days that he didn't even need to look to know who it was. It was the president. He had called hundreds of times already, desperate enough now that dignity had long since stopped mattering. He clearly believed that the only person in the country who might still be able to save him was Locke.
Locke had ignored most of the calls. Saving the president now meant stepping directly against the rage of the people, and he had no intention of casually tying himself to a sinking ship just because the man in the White House was panicking.
Still, panic made people generous.
Under crushing pressure, the president had finally broken through whatever lines he still had left. He offered Locke everything he could think of. He promised the Avengers priority law-enforcement authority throughout the United States, plus temporary judicial powers in emergencies. He promised secret federal subsidies, diverted funding streams, open access to advanced American technology, and even direct transfer of bases and facilities.
That alone would have been tempting. But the real prize was the next part.
The president also promised that if Locke saved him, he would move immediately to abolish S.H.I.E.L.D. and hand over the Triskelion, along with large portions of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s infrastructure and legacy assets, directly into Locke's hands.
That part had caught Locke's attention.
The gift was huge, but he wasn't stupid enough to take promises at face value. Right now, the president's authority barely extended beyond the walls of the White House. His orders weren't carrying weight, his support was evaporating, and the whole federal structure looked like it was coming apart. If Locke wanted those promises to ever become real, then the public narrative had to be changed first.
More specifically, someone else needed to carry the blame for launching a nuclear strike on New York.
After a long private discussion, the president had chosen two scapegoats with obvious reluctance. One was the vice president. The other was the secretary of defense. But Locke immediately recognized the problem. That wasn't enough. If they wanted the public to swallow the story, they needed something louder, uglier, and more emotionally satisfying than a simple internal blame shift.
So they wrote a script.
In their version of events, the vice president had secretly belonged to a white supremacist extremist group for years and had always lusted after the presidency. The president, worn down by disaster after disaster, had been under severe psychological strain. Exploiting that, the vice president and corrupt medical personnel around him had manipulated his condition, feeding him excessive anti-anxiety and stress medication until he became unstable, irritable, impulsive, and unable to think clearly under pressure.
Then, during the demonic invasion of New York, the vice president and the secretary of defense had deliberately misled him, falsified the threat picture, and pushed the nuclear option for their own purposes. They were the true criminals. They were the ones who had weaponized the crisis.
The plan moved quickly from there. After reaching an agreement, Locke and the president made a secret trip to Washington. The president contacted the two men directly, spoke to them in a warm and reassuring tone, and obtained their locations without difficulty.
Last night, Locke found them both. A few drops of the Illusion Master Jason's brain secretion behind the neck took care of the rest.
The full plan was straightforward.
If Nick Fury dared walk into court this morning, there was a good chance he would never walk out again. This was New York, and public fury here had become a living force of nature. One bullet, one panicked rush, one broken barricade, and Fury would be finished whether the court wanted it or not.
Then the president would move. He would present medical records, evidence of the vice president's and defense secretary's crimes, and a full confession before the public. Next, the secretary of defense would be found dead by suicide after leaving a confession note. The vice president would issue a televised statement admitting guilt and claiming he was ready to accept punishment, only for the enraged public to find him and tear him apart.
After that, the president would gather whatever loyalists he still had among judges, officials, and members of Congress. The White House would formally announce that Hawkeye Barton had been the primary operational culprit in the demonic invasion, and that S.H.I.E.L.D. bore unavoidable responsibility. Washington police and the National Guard would then surround the Triskelion and demand the surrender of all S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel.
Only after those first steps succeeded would the Avengers and Locke publicly step forward to support the president. Then he would deliver a national address, confess his failures, beg forgiveness, and try to climb back from the edge.
It wasn't a perfect plan. There were too many moving parts, too much emotion in the streets, and far too many ambitious people ready to exploit the chaos. But for something built under emergency conditions, it was the best Locke could put together.
The television feed suddenly shifted. A convoy was forcing its way through the crowd toward the courthouse entrance.
People immediately guessed who it had to be.
The curses started first. Then objects began flying. Stones, bottles, sticks, rotten eggs, chunks of brick, and limp leaves of spoiled vegetables rained down on the cars. Somewhere amid the noise came a few unmistakable gunshots. Silver-white dents bloomed on the black armored body of one vehicle, but the bulletproof plating held.
With police and National Guard units desperately keeping a corridor open, the convoy wasted no time and plunged directly into the underground parking entrance of the courthouse.
Locke frowned slightly.
From the moment Fury had announced he would stand trial voluntarily, something about it had felt wrong. Nick Fury was cold, ruthless, calculating, and hard enough to chew nails. He was not the sort of man who would step forward and offer himself up just because the public was angry. That wasn't courage. That wasn't conscience. That wasn't his style.
So why was he here?
Had he concluded that S.H.I.E.L.D. really was facing a life-or-death moment and decided to gamble himself to save the organization? Was he suddenly some noble martyr now? Locke didn't buy that for a second.
Then another possibility occurred to him, and a smile tugged at his mouth.
Maybe Fury had chosen the option Locke had been hoping for all along.
He looked at the time. It was eight on the dot. The hearing had already begun.
Locke rose and walked toward the window. There were some things too important to watch on television. He wanted to see this one with his own eyes.
With a low hum, Mjolnir flew into his hand the moment he called for it. Silver armor and a red cloak appeared around him in a shimmer of divine power, and then he launched himself into the sky like a streak of light.
Inside the courthouse, the trial opened under suffocating tension. The courtroom was packed, but despite the cameras, officials, and observers crammed into every available space, the room itself was strangely quiet. The judge glanced first at the camera crews below the bench, then at Nick Fury standing straight in his black coat, posture rigid, face unreadable.
He cleared his throat and prepared to speak.
Fury beat him to it.
"Your Honor," he said, voice carrying through the courtroom before the judge could form a word, "I am not here to be judged."
The entire room shifted at once.
Fury turned toward the many cameras and stared into them with his one good eye. "This court can sentence me however it likes today," he said, "but there is one thing I will make absolutely clear. I will never plead guilty."
The judge froze, caught flat-footed by the declaration.
Fury drew a long breath, and when he spoke again, his voice had become heavier, more emotional, more forceful. "S.H.I.E.L.D. is a secret organization. I know that makes people suspicious. But secrecy does not make us evil. Have all of you truly forgotten what we have done to keep this world standing?"
He stepped forward half a pace, and now his tone rang through the chamber. "While you sleep, while you celebrate, while you live your lives without ever knowing how close the darkness comes, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents fight the things that would tear your world apart. Some come home wounded. Some never come home at all. We have lost more than any of you can imagine."
For a moment, genuine grief seemed to flicker in his face. "You call Hawkeye Barton a demon now, but has any of you bothered to ask whether he was controlled? Has anyone asked that bastard savior himself whether he once fought side by side with Barton? Whether Barton once saved New York too?"
He lifted his voice. "Ladies and gentlemen, I have evidence. I can prove—"
Outside, Locke descended in front of the courthouse and immediately triggered a fresh wave of cheers, screams, and camera flashes. The crowd nearly lost its mind at the sight of him. Some shouted his name, some tried to push closer, and the police line instantly bent under the renewed surge of bodies.
He landed on the courthouse steps and casually waved once to the masses. The reaction only got louder.
Just as he turned toward the doors, a reporter near the front raised his voice over the uproar. "Savior! Mr. Savior! Why are you here today?"
Locke paused.
He considered the question for a second, then turned back, descended a few steps, and walked directly toward the banks of cameras.
"I won't lie to you," he said, his voice low and steady. "I did fight alongside Clint Barton once. At that time, he was still a hero. He was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and he did help the people of New York. No one can erase that."
The crowd listened in stunned silence.
"But that's exactly why I don't understand what happened to him. A good man became a monster. A hero became a servant of hell. Why? What changed? Shouldn't S.H.I.E.L.D. answer that?"
His expression cooled as he looked toward the courthouse doors. "So I want to ask Nick Fury something personally. Why did my former ally turn his blade on me? Why was I forced to kill him? And what exactly did Barton mean when his final words to me were, 'Watch out for Nick Fury'?"
The plaza exploded.
People shouted, screamed, cursed, and surged against the barriers so hard that officers had to lock arms to keep the front line from collapsing. That single sentence had landed harder than a grenade.
Be careful of Nick Fury?
Then Fury really was the traitor.
"No trial! Kill him now!"
"Hang Fury!"
Locke raised a hand slightly, signaling for calm, though his eyes remained cold. "I'm here today because I want the truth."
With that, he turned and walked toward the courthouse entrance.
The hearing was already underway, and under normal circumstances nobody would have been allowed in or out in the middle of it, especially not with the proceeding being broadcast nationwide. Two bailiffs stood in front of the courtroom doors, their posture rigid, their faces strained.
Locke stopped in front of them and smiled. "Mind if I come in?"
Both men straightened immediately.
"Of course, Mr. Savior," one said.
Inside, Fury was still in full stride, his voice sharp and forceful as he drove his speech forward. "Citizens of this nation, open your eyes. We of S.H.I.E.L.D.—"
The courtroom doors swung open with a loud crack.
Then came the measured sound of footsteps, steady and unhurried, echoing through the chamber with absolute confidence. A handsome face appeared in the doorway, followed by silver armor, a red cloak, and the unmistakable shape of Thor's hammer in one hand.
The whole courtroom stirred at once. Whispers burst out in every direction, and more than a few people gasped openly.
"It's the Savior."
"He's even better-looking in person."
"That really is Thor's hammer."
"So the gods really did choose him."
As for Fury, he stopped mid-sentence and turned his hawk-like stare toward Locke.
By then, Locke had already crossed the room and come to a stop directly opposite him. Then he smiled.
"Monster, I can tell at a glance that you are not human!"
....
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