Chapter 207: Bald Hobo = Nick Fury
"So. What does 'the public outran the campaign' even mean?"
In his otherwise empty office, Matthew sat in his chair staring at the news report announcing that he had been elected the first president of the Mutant Association, the corner of his mouth twitching steadily.
Across the room, Ada was working from the sofa. She heard him and her hands slowed. Those jet-black eyes of hers settled on Matthew, and her voice carried something lightly amused. "Boss, there's nobody else here. You can drop the act."
"The company spent close to a hundred million dollars trying to put Erik Magnus Lehnsherr in that president's seat."
"And none of us expected that in the end, a hundred million dollars couldn't compete with the reputation you built just by going around doing nice things."
"So. Looks like you've got a full schedule ahead of you, Boss."
The way Ada saw it, what Matthew had just called "the public outrunning the campaign" was the oldest story in the book — the people draping the imperial robe over someone in the dead of night, and that someone looking at the camera with exaggerated exhaustion while privately delighted. Classic.
Matthew heard the commentary and pulled a face. "Ada, honestly — I genuinely did not plan on becoming any kind of Association president."
"I can barely keep up with what's happening inside the company. When am I supposed to manage a Mutant Association on top of that?"
"Oh, well — if that's how you feel, you could always just make a big public show of resigning." Ada tilted her head. "That would be the fastest way to get out of this particular problem."
"I don't think resigning is necessary." Eleanor walked through the door at that point, Polaris trailing behind her, still in her running-things-on-the-go phase.
"Sir — if you want to hold real authority over the Mutant Association without actually being bogged down by its day-to-day operations, you can use the president's position to appoint Erik, who came second in the vote, as vice president. Then give yourself and Erik an assistant each."
"With that setup, I think you could go six months without setting foot inside the Association and things would still run smoothly."
The suggestion landed well with Matthew immediately. "Do it exactly like that."
"As for the assistant inside the Association —" Matthew looked at Polaris, standing behind Eleanor. "Lorna. Any objections if that's you?"
Polaris, who had been pulled out of her work by hearing her name, blinked. "...Hm? What?"
Eleanor, serving as Polaris's work mentor, repeated the question. "Sir is asking whether you have any objections to taking a position as assistant inside the Mutant Association."
That one Polaris caught.
"Inside the Mutant Association..." A short pause. "I think I could try."
"I picked up a lot from my dad when it comes to coordinating between mutants."
"Good." Matthew nodded, picked up a pen, wrote a quick letter of introduction, and handed it across to Polaris. "Lorna, take this letter and you can go straight to the Association tomorrow to start."
"Of course, you'll still need to do your work here at the company."
"I'll give you three times the salary during that period."
Polaris: ...
"Sir, can I take back what I just said about trying?"
"With my organizational abilities, I will absolutely turn everything inside that Association into a complete mess." She said it with a perfectly straight face.
In practice, three times the salary for two jobs was just a lot.
Matthew was entirely unbothered. "Don't worry. Your dad Erik will be right there in the Association. Anything you're not sure about, anything you can't make a call on — send it straight to your father."
"And if you actually do make a mess of something?"
"You know how to shift blame, don't you? Send it straight to your father. I trust that as her father, he will absolutely cover for his daughter."
He gave Polaris a thumbs-up as he said it.
Polaris, unwilling as she was, agreed to the assignment after hearing that.
More importantly, she had genuinely taken that last part to heart.
Worst case: just shift the blame.
As they say: a daughter is a father's holey old blanket. And as a holey old blanket, she was going to fulfill her responsibilities as a holey old blanket.
Polaris: Not my fault. Magneto did it.
Magneto: ???
Matthew's elevation to Mutant Association president had been unexpected, but it was where public sentiment had landed. After taking the position, he began receiving speaking invitations from universities in steady succession.
To maximize his public presence, Matthew declined none of them. Eleanor handled the acceptances across the board.
While Matthew traveled from campus to campus giving speeches, however, something was changing quietly inside SHIELD that almost nobody noticed.
Since the end of the Apocalypse incident, Fury had been acutely aware of how fragile Earth's current position was. On one side, he was working quietly with Tony Stark on the secret AI project they had agreed on between themselves.
On the other, he had begun pushing hard on another internal SHIELD initiative: Project Insight.
Project Insight was a program not entirely unlike Tony's AI project in its stated purpose, except this one had been developed from inside SHIELD.
As to why "inside SHIELD" deserved to be handled with some care — those who know, know.
On the surface, the program was designed to use big-data behavioral analysis to identify potential threats globally before a terrorist attack or major incident could occur, neutralizing dangers in the bud.
The official framing was that, to prevent another catastrophe as sudden as the Battle of New York from ever catching them off guard again, a comprehensive security net had to be built: one that could identify and stop any approaching threat before it reached Earth, keeping civilian casualties to a minimum.
In reality, this was nothing more than a cover story HYDRA was using to conceal its actual purpose.
The real objective was simple: identify, in advance, anyone who might threaten HYDRA itself, and eliminate them before they could act.
Not long after Fury threw his full weight behind Project Insight, a serious hostage incident broke out in the Indian Ocean.
This would come to be known as the Lemurian Star incident.
A large number of SHIELD officials were taken hostage aboard the ship. Fury ordered Steve, Peggy, and Natasha onto the vessel to extract them.
The operation went exactly as Fury had anticipated. All SHIELD officials were brought out without casualties, and Natasha, acting on his quiet authorization, used the opportunity to copy classified SHIELD documents from the ship's systems.
But when the Lemurian Star incident had been resolved and Fury went to examine the copied files, he discovered that the files had already been locked.
By "Nick Fury."
Someone had accessed the files first, locked them, and set them as classified documents that "Nick Fury" himself was not authorized to view.
That discovery landed like a hammer. SHIELD had already been compromised: deeply, thoroughly, at a level he hadn't seen coming.
While he'd been operating under the assumption that the organization was secure, someone had been inside it, watching.
Fury's immediate move was to find Pierce at the Security Council and request that Project Insight be put on hold.
The moment he raised that request in person, a conspiracy aimed at him and at SHIELD was already in motion.
An empty street. No traffic.
Fury sat in his vehicle, expression dark, running through every possible angle on what had gone wrong inside SHIELD.
Simultaneously, he was rapidly sorting through who he could still trust.
Steve Rogers. Peggy Carter. Phil Coulson. Natasha. Barton.
Those five were still reliable.
Beyond them, every other SHIELD agent had become a question mark.
As for the Avengers themselves —
He narrowed his eye, running through the roster one by one.
Tony Stark? That man's personality made the idea of him doing something this underhanded essentially impossible.
Peter Parker — kid was about as all-American a neighbor's kid as it got. Spent his days either attached to his girlfriend, buried in work, or running around doing street-level heroics. His character was clean, and even if it weren't, his clearance level wasn't anywhere near SHIELD's core intelligence.
Bruce Banner. Word had it he'd retreated to India to practice yoga, apparently trying to make peace with what lived inside him. He didn't have the attention to spare for SHIELD politics.
Then there were the Maximoff twins.
Both had been Matthew's recommendation. Whether they could be trusted was still an open question.
As for Matthew himself — Fury couldn't honestly say he fully trusted him. But he also understood clearly that if Matthew actually wanted to move against SHIELD, he wouldn't need any of this. He'd just go through everything in his way directly. No angles, no infiltration, no internal plants.
Which made the person who was theoretically the biggest threat paradoxically one of the most trustworthy.
If it came to it, paying for his involvement was still a viable option.
While Fury was running through who else might be reliable, a police car appeared from nowhere on the otherwise empty street.
The moment he saw it, something clicked.
Part of it was instinct. Part of it was the fact that the car was driving directly at him.
Should he run?
The thought crossed his mind and was immediately dismissed. He was Black, yes, but he wasn't at the level of reflexively bolting at the sight of a police car.
He put the thought away and settled himself.
The next second —
Bang.
The police car accelerated hard and slammed directly into Fury's door.
In the same moment, more police vehicles appeared from both ends of the street without warning, converging on his position from multiple directions.
Fury swore under his breath — "mother—" — and floored the accelerator, punching through the gap before the cordon could close.
"So the moles inside SHIELD have decided they've waited long enough."
"Trying to take me out with something this straightforward though. That's either arrogance or desperation."
He pulled the corner of his mouth into something cold and kept the pedal to the floor.
Let's go. Time to show these people what SHIELD's best driver can do.
Before he'd had time to enjoy the thought, a figure appeared from around a street corner.
Dark tactical jacket. Dark pants. Heavy boots. A face mask covering the lower half of the face entirely — completely unidentifiable. And in one hand, a grenade launcher with a design that looked like it didn't belong in this century.
Fury's response was immediate. "What the —"
He didn't slow down. He accelerated toward the figure directly.
You want to stop me? Then get ready to become a speed bump.
He locked both hands on the wheel. His eye went flat and cold.
The car screamed toward the figure at its absolute limit.
The figure didn't move. No alarm in the posture. No rush.
He simply raised the launcher, leveled it at Fury, and pulled the trigger.
What came out wasn't a standard round. A disc-shaped device launched out, skimmed low along the ground toward Fury's vehicle, and locked onto the undercarriage with a clunk before Fury could process what had happened.
Fury heard it connect and understood immediately what it was.
"Mother —"
He didn't finish.
BOOM.
A massive detonation. The vehicle erupted in thick smoke, the explosion's shockwave flipping it end over end, the remaining momentum carrying it sideways into the curb.
Bystanders along the street who had been watching the chase had one second to register that a car was now coming directly at them before they turned and ran.
Nothing to see here. Move.
Inside the vehicle, Fury looked at the cascade of system failures on the dashboard readout, then looked through the window at the figure closing in from the distance.
He made the call quickly: this was not a fight he was going to win.
Without hesitation, he went with the only remaining option.
Get out.
He fixed his gaze on the drainage cover directly below the car through the sunroof, pulled a plasma cutter from inside his jacket, and cut through it in a few seconds.
He looked at the dark, churning water below, still running fast from last night's rainstorm.
He didn't like it. He went in anyway.
One breath, and he dropped headfirst into the drain like a man taking a dive, then swam hard into the darkness of the sewer system.
By the time the figure arrived to check the vehicle, Fury was gone.
The Winter Soldier looked down at the cut-open drain cover through his tactical visor. A moment of silence. Then, quietly: "Target has escaped."
A few seconds passed.
An encrypted response came through his earpiece. "Continue the assassination."
"Until the target is dead."
"Understood." The Winter Soldier's voice was flat.
After getting out of the sewer, Fury did not go to Steve as the original chain of events would have had it.
Instead, he quietly found Matthew.
Matthew had just finished a university speaking engagement. He was walking out through the campus gates in a well-fitted suit, camera flashes going off around him on all sides.
And there, in the middle of all those flashing lights, a completely disheveled, one-eyed man suddenly shoved through the crowd and grabbed Matthew by the jacket.
The students nearby started to react, then stopped when Matthew smiled and gestured for calm.
Which only raised his standing in their eyes.
Of course. Even when grabbed by a one-eyed, bald, foul-smelling hobo, this man who devoted himself to benefiting the people didn't get angry.
That kind of character was exactly what they should be learning from.
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