Headbutting (Finished)

[Super Chick]

Maria Hill was on site at the ground headquarters of SHIELD. She had been keeping abreast of things unfolding in Hell's Kitchen; the power play by Mr. Negative and resurgence of Kingpin keeping authorities on high alert for violence. Of course, neither man would disappoint. If anything could be counted on, it was this. The question was truly how and when things would explode, but the answer to that question came when a weapons shipment exploded at the docks.

All eyes were on Hell's Kitchen. Maria knew the Daredevil was there, intervening where authorities should have been, but then it seemed every cape saw themselves above the law. SHIELD's registering them and incorporating many into their service had done nothing to curb this sense of entitlement they all seemed to share. If they weren't fighting against crime, they were committing it; both sides seeing common police and government agents are tiny bumps in the progress of their success. Maria hated them. The law should have been respected by capes and common people alike, but it felt like only the common people had any grasp of this "antiquated" reality. Everyone else did what they wanted, when they wanted.

That was one of the problems with this gang war. Both sides, or perhaps better said "all" sides, felt themselves entitled. They were entitled to the Kitchen; Entitled to authority and power and money. Big babies whose mothers never taught them boundaries or who never had a mother to begin with. It irked Maria to think of all the innocent victims of these haughty would-be Kings of the neighborhood. It infuriated her to know there was only so much she could do to save them, but perhaps there was one thing she could do to minimize the damage: She could institute the order that was handed down to her by her superiors.

Hill barked orders and left the building. She had to attend to other things as she entrusted the preparation of the government edict to her subordinates. Still in her uniform, the acting Director of SHIELD moved to her SHIELD-provisioned vehicle which she then drove to a likely location and parked. There, she left her SHIELD issued equipment, including communication devices and her uniform which she knew to be able to be tracked. IN plain clothes, then, Maria took a rental car she had left here three days prior and left for a remote location outside the city with only a burner phone in hand. Once she arrived at the designated location, Hill texted the former Director of SHIELD she was here to meet.

The man requested this, and she owed him a lot. In fact, Maria still respected her former Director a great deal; so much so that when she received the coded message asking for this meeting, she was not surprised in the least to know he was still alive. Nor did she think it convenient that just when Hell's Kitchen was about to implode, he was reaching out to her. Of course, her government wanted Nicholas Fury brought in, and she would do it, too. Just not today.

Hill was smart enough to know that Fury was one asset she couldn't lose.
Not today.

{Tag: @mandosaro}

[Deleted]

Nicholas .J. Fury took deep gulps from his cigar. It was a 'la Carona' and one of the few brands he still enjoyed. They still tasted like they had back in the 50's. He had been stationed in Cuba for several months in 1958. The Cuban revolution had reached it's climax and S.H.I.E.L.D had wanted to assassinate the leaders of the revolution. In reality, it had been the decision of Colonel Rick Stoner who had been the Director of the organisation at the time. Fury went against Director Stoner's orders and had instead played a major role in Castro's victory. He had then reported to the S.H.I.E.L.D facility in Trenton, New Jersey to be debriefed. In Trenton had been a factory that mass produced 'la Carona' cigars. Fury had smoked them ever since. Their smell and taste reminded Fury that sometimes, heads of organisations could be wrong. During his own time as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, he had always ensured he had advisors close to hand to constantly have a second opinion if needed. For the last few years of his leadership, one of these advisors had been Maria Hill. There were many important issues that Fury and Hill had agreed on but probably more that they had fought over which had been one of the main reasons Fury had asked Hill for her opinion, especially in the last five or so years he had been Director for. Seeing her now as Director gave Fury a mixture of emotions. In a way he was pleased. She had earned that role. She had fought for it. Whilst she had been head of S.H.I.E.L.D many innocent lives had been saved. However, as it had always been, there were many issues that Hill resolved in a way that Fury would not have.

Fury breathed out the cigar smoke and let it drift away in the faint breeze. He leaned back against the bonnet of his Ford Galaxie 500. He'd bought the car in 1964 for his partner at the time. They had wanted to travel right across America and decided that this car had been the only one for them. In the end, they only travelled from Oregon to New Mexico but it was the best holiday they'd ever had. In fact, it was the last time Nick Fury ever had a holiday. The car had been kept in one of his safe houses ever since. He'd maintained it from time to time and changed it's numberplate every few years. It was one of the few things that reminded him of that life. Fury checked his watch. He had five minutes until the scheduled meeting with Maria Hill. He had picked the location. It was somewhere that, to his knowledge, neither he or Hill had ever been. It was a large National park. He had parked alongside a tree on the top of a hill that overlooked the sweeping greenland. A large lake glistened in the afternoon's sun several miles away in the distance. Nick smiled as he drew the cigar back to his lips.

Fury had not spoken to Director Hill for quite some time. Years in fact. A large reason for that had simply been that he had cut himself from the world of heroes and spies. Nick Fury had attempted in earnest to leave it all behind and live a semi-normal life as a cop in NYC. As always, things had taken a turn and after hunting down a criminal organisation or two, he had faked his death and gone into deep cover. He had remained this way for several months. Then events began to take place. Norman Osborn, Wilson Fisk, Martin Li and several others began making moves and countermoves in NYC. Nick kept a close eye on them but it wasn't until Elektra that he knew he had to take action. Elektra had brought a bomb into NYC. It was a device that could not be traced with any tech that S.H.I.E.L.D or the Avengers had. Nick knew this as he had hacked into and tried both to no avail. Nick had re-entered the City and approached several people to help with the smaller situations that were ongoing in the City. With the gangs frothing at the mouth to tear each other apart and a bomb ready to detonate at any moment, the City was beginning to boil.

It had been simple enough to get a message through to the acting Director. He had no guarantee that Hill would come but he was relatively certain. His few worries were squashed as his pocket vibrated. Checking his burner phone, he saw that Hill had texted him. She was at the location. Cigar in between his teeth, Fury stood, went round the car and climbed into the driving seat.

A few minutes later, Fury's car pulled up at the location. It was a picnic area in the same park but closer to the large lake. There were only three cars already in the car park. One had an elderly couple still sitting in their seats. They were chewing some sandwiches and gesticulating wildly at a map in front of them. Another was a large family car which was empty. The third was a smaller car and also empty. Fury parked and left the car. Half a dozen wooden picnic tables were in a clearing. Hill was standing beside one of them. Still smoking the cigar, Fury started to walk towards her. His hand reached into his pocket and drew out his AI pen. Nick clicked it three times and waited ten seconds. Nothing. This meant that it wasn't detecting any nearby S.H.I.E.L.D communication or high grade tech. Good. She really had come alone. Fury felt a twinge of guilt for not trusting Hill but it wasn't personnel. Fury didn't trust anyone. Fury took the cigar from his mouth and began to speak.

"Thank you for meeting me Director Hill. I know you must have a busy schedule and meeting with a dead man really is a time consumer. I wouldn't have dragged you out here for no reason which you must know or else you wouldn't be here. I'll cut right to it. New York City is about to rip itself apart. In particular; Hell's Kitchen. The gangs are ready to tear each other apart and I have evidence to believe that there is a bomb in the hands of someone I would judge to be not of sound mind. We need to act fast and with conviction. I assume you have a plan in place...so when are you sending agents into the City?"

[Super Chick]

The wind was blustery on this late afternoon in April, and it kept Maria firmly in place near the picnic table with her hands in her pockets. She had no weapon, but she wasn't entirely defenseless if the need arose. Not that it mattered in this case, but Fury had more enemies than she did and if they were ambushed by one of them then she would be stupid not to have prepared to give herself a fighting chance.

He approached downwind and from behind, but Hill still knew he was here. She kept her senses sharp and knew when his car entered the parking lot, when he exited it and (when it took him an extra minute to approach) that he was probably checking to make sure she didn't bring any backup or other SHIELD weaponry in order to get the drop on him. She expected nothing less from the old spy, and didn't flinch when he stepped up beside her with that familiar cigar scent lingering about him.

He didn't give her a lot of time to speak or even greet him, but got right to the point of this meeting. Her steely eyes remained mostly ahead of her as she kept her face to the wind whenever it gusted. Her jaw tightened when he mentioned a bomb, but that was the only outward emotion she showed. Little surprised her except that Fury assumed she had a play in this game. He should know better than that.

"I'm not sending anyone in," she said. "Rather, my plan is to remove the population altogether, and it sounds like it's the right one."

Her face remained strangely calm despite her mind going a hundred miles a minute. A bomb threat after the massive destruction at the docks meant that things were getting worse rather than better. And for Nick to imply that whomever had the bomb was unstable, Hill could only think of Osborn nuking the place. The thought turned her stomach, but the man was still posing as a superhero, leading the Thunderbolts under government sanction. So while she watched the egotistical maniac pretend to be wholesome and waited for him to mess up, there was little she could do otherwise. Still, she couldn't wait for the day to take him and all of his little would-be-reformed "heroes" right back to the Cube.

Maria turned her face to look at Fury, revealing nothing of her thoughts. "What bomb?"

[Revan]

--------------------

"Is that so?" Fury replied. That was what his intel had said about the plan but he had been hoping it wasn't the case. Apparently the days when SHIELD got it's hands dirty and actually did it's job of dealing with situations like this were gone. The days when they actually fought the battle and actually acted like heroes. Instead, while New York City was falling to pieces, they were sitting on the sidelines. He really hoped there was a plan here he was actually missing. He really hoped this wasn't going the way he thought it might be. Fury puffed on his cigar a moment. Hill tried to give him nothing, but the fact she didn't know anything about the bomb at all told him a lot about what was going through her head. Or that she was trying to bullshit him, but he'd play along.

"Nuclear. Hidden somewhere in the city. It was somehow made untraceable even by Stark tech." Fury told her. In his mind he weighed the pros and cons of releasing too much information to Hill. Pulling agents out and leaving the city in a state of chaos was not how one defended the people. Hard to be the shield when you weren't in front of the attack. What exactly was the endgame in this scenario? Let the criminals have the city? They should be stopping these criminals in their tracks. There were all sorts of red flags going up over this. Still, the looming threat far exceeded the potential issue of not releasing information so he opted to tell her.

"It was brought in by Elektra Natchios. Might want to keep an eye out for the woman." Fury told her, "So you've got a nuclear bomb in the middle of an inevitable war-zone. What's your play now, Director?" he asked. He wanted to see what Hill's response would be. What direction would she lead SHIELD in during a major crisis like this?

--------------------

[Super Chick]

Nick Fury was a man that Maria once admired greatly, but his obvious rebuke of her when he challenged her with his words was not something the woman particularly valued. It was her that had to think through every ramification of her actions; her that had a responsibility to the people and her soldiers. Nick had removed himself from having any of that. He abandoned SHIELD, its soldiers, and its responsibilities. He had no right to question her about any of it.

Maria's eyes narrowed at her old mentor. "You seem to have forgotten that you're supposed to be retired, Nick" she said, deflecting any direct answer to his question.

Of course, she knew Fury was never really out of the game, but that did not mean he had any authority over her, this situation or - basically - anything. Her question was more or less a statement of that fact, but also one that she was certain would be of little deterrence. She moved her eyes away from him again and looked into the distance. "Natchios has been on our radar for some time," she conceded. "Romanov tracked her and we knew she was up to something. Made a damned deal with the devil." Her eyes reconnected to Fury. "Our intelligence was second hand since the Widow could not pin Elektra down, but our source said something about Mephisto referencing New York 'burning'. So I can't say I'm surprised that this bomb's conduit into the city has turned out to be the assassin. It must have been a caveat to her deal."

Hill turned her body to face Fury. She stood tall and straight, unintimidated by the man before her, but her eyes even held the respect he'd earned in spite of his interference in this situation. "So there's a nuclear bomb in the city, and you actually have the balls to challenge my call to evacuate the population? Do you think it unnecessary? Counter-productive? Idiocy? What's your issue, Fury, because from where I'm standing I'd say that's exactly the right call to make."

[Revan]

--------------------

"Just an informed citizen passing on what he heard." Nick responded with a shrug. Not that he expected Maria to buy that, but he didn't care. He only hid his involvement in things if he needed to. Sometimes, though, things needed to get done no matter what rules were in place. Maria talked about SHIELD's side of the information which he was already aware of and then attempted to berate him. Her mannerisms were all about trying to be the boss and her words supported that. Fury didn't bother with the show. He leaned against the picnic table puffing his cigar, completely casual. Yet this did nothing to diminish his aura of authority. Still, he was the retired one and she was the Director. Even if she shared the role, the rules said she was the boss. Fury wasn't here to challenge that.

"Who said anything about challenging your call? I simply asked you what your play was after getting information about a bomb." Fury said. Then he smiled slightly, "On the other hand though, you should know by now that I have the balls to try anything. Nothing wrong with an evacuation though, by all means go ahead with that." he added. Nick puffed the cigar again.

"Of course, then there's always the stubborn ones who refuse to leave their homes even while in the middle of a warzone. And simply removing the citizens doesn't solve the problem of a gang-war or a bomb." Fury said through the smoke, "So while evacuation is all well and good, what's the plan after that? Because there will still be civilians in there and a lot of angry and violent people with guns finding themselves with plenty of empty space to move around in." he said.

--------------------

[Super Chick]

He may not have outright challenged Maria on her authority and methods, but every word he spoke beyond his denial insinuated just that. It would have been amusing in other situations, perhaps, but right now his words were annoying. Fury was pressing Hill about what actions she planned to take beyond those which she stated. Frankly, it was none of his business to know what SHIELD planned or what she personally had in mind for action against this impending thug war, but Maira knew Nick. She advanced in rank under him while at SHIELD and worked closely with the man. There was no way he was going to back off without knowing her intentions - probably largely in part to ensure that her actions did not interfere with his own.

The Director SHIELD stared at Fury's lackadaisical demeanor, resting on the picnic table and puffing rampantly on his cigar. Maria suspected that without the Infinity serum, he would have died of cancer a long time ago. The part of her that was annoyed by his insinuating himself into this mess wished it had happened. The rest of her still respected the guy and knew that he would do things that, as leader of SHIELD, she could not. Perhaps, she thought, it would be wiser to use that than remain annoyed with him.

"If it were up to me, I'd let them blow up one another and save us all the trouble," she admitted. "And that is basically how it's going to go down."

Hill looked to the horizon and stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets for warmth. She was being honest. Her instincts told her to let the bad guys kill each other before she came in to arrest those that remained. That her instincts happened to line up with her orders was mere convenience, but she wasn't as cold as those in the US hierarchy. Hill probably would have continued to utilize SHIELD resources to try to help any innocent civilians who were too slow to get out, but her hands were officially tied. Maria let her eyes travel back to Fury.

"You remember the politics of the job, right? I've been instructed by the US government that SHIELD is to take no further action in Hell's Kitchen than to issue evacuation orders and encourage citizens to leave all but their most valuable possessions. We are to help them off the island using all of our resources. SHIELD agents will keep the bridges open for three days and then all of those that choose to remain are considered 'voluntary casualties of war'. We will work jointly with the Army are barricade the bridges while the harbor will be blockaded by both SHIELD boats and the Coast Guard. No one - and I mean no one - is permitted in or out of the area." She paused for emphasis. "That includes the Avengers or any other capes or vigilantes. If anyone attempts to circumvent the quarantine, I've been ordered to arrest them."

[Revan]

--------------------

Fury remembered the politics alright. He considered them the war on the homefront. He never gave jack-shit about what the suits wanted and did whatever he could to make sure things went the right way. To him, that was his responsibility as Director of SHIELD. Maria's approach seemed to be to do whatever the suits wanted. This was the plan that was going to let a gang war happen and they were simply going to clear out New York City to be the arena. They were literally handing a city to terrorists, and to hell with any of the civilians. To hell with their rights and to hell with their homes, their jobs. Their entire lives that they painstakingly built up for years. All of it gone in an instant. And for what? So they could play 'Guess who's holding the leash now" with the Avengers? This was the wrong play and Maria only seemed like she wanted it to happen. He had expected better but it seemed her ambition had gone completely to her head.

"Well, it seems you have a long and busy time ahead of you. I'll leave you to it then." Fury said and he turned and started walking off. She'd had every chance to drop him a clue that there was more going on if she didn't want to say it outright, but she didn't. So either that was the plan or her ego didn't want to share with her predecessor. But that would be a mistake, because now he had to operate on what he knew. Unfortunately he didn't have the man power to make a big play and prevent this Hell from happening. He'd have to just start doing what he could with what he had. Back on the front lines, back in the trenches. Just like the "good" ol' days. Luckily, his first pick to join him was one of the few still alive from back then. It would take time, but he'd make sure all the proper players got back in this game. One way or another.

--------------------

[Super Chick]

If she could read Nick's thoughts, Maria would tell him that his thoughts of her weren't as accurate as he believed. She played the game of politics insomuch as she had to, but if a real threat to the security of the nation presented itself she would step in. Prior to being informed of the nuclear threat, Maria saw her orders to blockade the city as a simple way to let the gang members mow one another down without undue civilian risks. Sure, there would inevitably be property damage from it, but it couldn't be as much as the Hulk did in any given rage. Plus, innocent lives would be saved and, therefore, the ends justified the means. Buildings and infrastructure could be rebuilt but people didn't come back from the dead unless they were some kind of alien or god. The people in Hell's Kitchen were generally neither and Maria's top priority was first and foremost to spare them. She assumed the majority of people would have homes to go back to but. if a nuclear threat was presenting itself and she could prove it, she'd damned well be doing something about it.

Her former mentor and friend walked away, clearly disappointed in her. Her eyes narrowed at his back. He was likely looking for a quid pro quo, but Maria had given him the only information she suspected was even remotely relevant. It was clear he knew more than she did about the bomb. But then, he always had bucked the system and worked outside of it. It was what gave him such an extensive knowledge base and made him so effective as a spy. It didn't make him a great military leader, in her judgment, but a spymaster he most certainly was. Personally, Maria played well within the military system and only crossed the lines when credible threats prompted her to use better judgment than waiting for bureaucracy to get around to signing the paperwork. Then she'd act and ask forgiveness later. That seemed like what was about to happen now, but Maria felt she had to have real evidence of the threat before disobeying direct orders from the US government. So, she'd let Nick work on it; She knew he would anyway. Besides, he could do things she was prevented from doing. He could get the job done and have no one to answer to for it unless he was caught - and Fury never got caught. Not really. He always kept plausible deniability on his side.

"Fury," she called out to him. When he turned, Maria nodded. "Good luck."