'Damn. There's actually a signal here,' Ethan thought, his eyes widening slightly.
Shaking off his surprise, he tapped the screen to initiate a video call to Nick Fury.
The display flickered, went black for a split second, and then Fury's face appeared.
"Ethan. Didn't you go to Asgard? How are you calling me?" Fury asked, a hint of suspicion in his voice. "If you're back, why is your location showing up as an unknown area?"
With S.H.I.E.L.D.'s advanced tracking technology, Fury should have been able to pinpoint Ethan's exact coordinates anywhere on Earth.
"That's a bit complicated to explain right now. The short version is that I'm not on Earth," Ethan replied smoothly. "But I have something urgent to tell you."
"What is it?" Fury's brow furrowed, a familiar sense of dread washing over him.
"The Dark Elf civilization—Asgard's ancient mortal enemies—is about to invade Earth," Ethan said, his expression turning serious. "Their expected landing zone is London."
Fury stared at him through the screen, looking profoundly exhausted.
"What's with that look? I'm entirely serious," Ethan said, frowning.
"I believe you. It's just..." Fury rubbed his temples. "It's just that you have an unmatched talent for delivering apocalyptic news. Why are you so proficient at this? How many times is this going to happen?"
Whenever Ethan initiated a call, Fury felt a spike of anxiety. Half the time, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Director expected the kid to announce that the planet was going to explode in three minutes, there was no hope, and everyone should start making their peace.
Ethan remained silent, offering only a dry stare.
"If the target is London, things are going to be complicated. We actually noticed the atmospheric anomalies over the city a while ago and initiated an evacuation protocol," Fury said, shifting the topic. "But S.H.I.E.L.D.'s current standing makes things difficult."
"What do you mean?" Ethan asked. "Given S.H.I.E.L.D.'s status with the United Nations, even the US has approved your domestic law enforcement jurisdiction. Are you telling me the British government is denying you clearance?"
"Something went wrong," Fury admitted with a heavy sigh. "While you were off in Asgard, I moved to purge the Hydra sleeper agents from within S.H.I.E.L.D., backed by Alexander Pierce and Peggy Carter."
"We succeeded, but there was a minor incident during the sweep," Fury continued. "A localized skirmish caused a fraction of our classified intelligence to leak to the public."
"What kind of information?" Ethan asked.
"The files on the Extremis virus and Hydra's illegal human experimentation. Since Extremis acts as an artificial mutation catalyst, the resulting media storm has painted all enhanced individuals in a terrible light," Fury explained. "As the agency managing these cases, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been directly implicated. Several government authorities are now actively challenging our jurisdiction."
"Implicated? You mean you unilaterally dragged the rest of the meta-human community down with you," Ethan corrected, his tone sharpening.
"That's not fair. I'm a meta-human now too, and so are many of my agents. Our interests on this front are entirely aligned," Fury countered seriously. "But the situation isn't entirely unsalvageable. The general public is just being riled up by political opportunists."
"The real issue is a small, stubborn faction calling themselves 'purebloods.' Backed by certain corporate interests, they've been organizing global anti-meta-human protests," Fury added. "Every era has these reactionary splinter groups trying to stand against the tide of history. It's par for the course."
Fury paused before adding, "Actually, if Phil Coulson hadn't been deployed to London, I doubt this bureaucratic mess would have escalated so quickly. And let's not forget, the only reason Coulson rushed to the UK in the first place was because of you."
"Hello? I think I'm losing connection," Ethan lied smoothly, immediately hanging up the phone.
He was just the messenger. Navigating international political fallout was exactly the kind of headache Nick Fury was paid to handle.
"Are you leaving?"
Laufey, who had been standing quietly to the side, approached him. The Frost Queen's expression was hesitant, but she finally mustered the courage to speak.
"If you see Loki again, please tell him that I want to meet with him. I would like to have a real conversation," she said softly.
She had met with Loki in secret before, but those interactions had been poisoned by mutual manipulation, political interests, and conspiracies. Now that the Tree of Life had restored her true nature as an elemental water spirit, Laufey's perspective had shifted dramatically. She was finally ready to let go of the past.
Ethan easily picked up on the profound change in her demeanor. He hesitated for a moment before speaking up. "Odin's health is failing. He likely doesn't have much time left."
"Is that so?" Laufey froze, processing the information.
After a long silence, a chilling indifference settled over her delicate features. "What a pity."
She had learned to let go of many things, but she would never forget the man who had ruined her family.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the dimensional divide, the streets of Greenwich, London, were entirely consumed by chaos.
A sharply dressed, dignified Member of Parliament stood on a makeshift podium in the public square, delivering an impassioned speech to an agitated crowd of tens of thousands.
"These dangerous meta-humans have rebranded themselves as 'enhanced individuals' to openly parade among us!" the politician shouted, scanning the sea of angry faces. "They are actively competing for our living space and threatening our very lives. It is utterly unforgivable. They are trying to rob us of our human birthright!"
"Just moments ago, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents attempted to lock down this sector! They are terrified of our collective voice! They want to oppress us and force us into silence!" The MP gestured wildly to the sky.
"The world's largest peacekeeping force has become nothing more than a puppet organization for the meta-human agenda. Our leaders tremble before these freaks, bending the knee to their monstrous power," he yelled. "But we will stand and resist! The meta-humans may have their genetic parlor tricks, but we have our own protectors. Trask Industries and their Sentinel program will be our shield!"
As the politician concluded his tirade, a massive screen behind him flickered to life. The display broadcasted visceral combat footage of advanced, octopus-like machines brutally subduing suspected meta-humans in the streets.
"Down with S.H.I.E.L.D.!" the MP roared over the footage. "Down with the meta-humans! Drive these genetic abominations back into the sewers!"
"Down with S.H.I.E.L.D.!" the massive crowd chanted back in a fever pitch, entirely swept up in the man's rabid rhetoric.
"Freaks, huh?" Melinda May muttered, watching the rally from a nearby rooftop. "He's got a lot of nerve saying that when he's one of them."
Thanks to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s sweeping intelligence network, May was fully aware of the politician's file. The man screaming for the eradication of meta-humans was actually a low-level telepath. His vocal cadence carried a subtle hypnotic frequency, artificially amplifying the crowd's outrage and susceptibility to his message.
"Try not to let it bother you. He's just a puppet reading a script," Phil Coulson said, offering a tight, reassuring smile. He was standing a few paces back, rapidly swiping through a glowing data tablet. "The real threat is the financial backing behind him."
"So you've managed to trace his donors?" May asked, glancing over her shoulder.
"There are quite a few of them. Most are high-profile billionaires and political heavyweights," Coulson replied. "Several of them have publicly aligned themselves with the 'pureblood' movement."
While possessing enhanced abilities was a dream for many, it was inevitable that those left behind would push back. With eighty percent of the global population lacking the X-gene, a deeply ingrained sense of existential dread had taken root in regular society.
It was an unsolvable sociopolitical nightmare. Even if every human on Earth suddenly awakened an ability, the disparity would remain. Some were born as Omega-level gods, while others manifested powers so weak they were statistically irrelevant.
It was the genetic equivalent of inherited wealth. The world had always been fundamentally unfair, and superpowers merely made the divide impossible to ignore.
"Unsurprisingly, the biggest donor keeping this MP afloat is Trask Industries," Coulson continued. "They manufacture the Sentinel weapon platforms. The founder, Bolivar Trask, was a controversial visionary."
"Decades ago, he predicted that the emergence of meta-humans would destabilize global society, so he developed the Sentinel program as a human countermeasure," Coulson elaborated.
"His work put him right in the crosshairs of the Brotherhood of Meta-humans," Coulson explained. "Mystique assassinated him in the 1970s. The company is currently run by his son, Lawrence Trask."
"Ever since the global population started manifesting abilities and public anxiety skyrocketed, Trask Industries has been securing massive government contracts."
"Can those machines actually handle an enhanced hostile?" May asked, studying the broadcast.
The mechanical octopuses on the screen were fast and heavily armored. They could easily overwhelm a squad of highly trained tactical agents, but pitting them against seasoned meta-humans was an entirely different equation.
"Even ignoring the heavy hitters holed up in our secure facilities, I'm confident I could dismantle ten of those oversized toasters on my own," May noted dryly.
"I agree. Their robotics tech is easily two decades behind Stark Industries. I could probably take down a few of them myself if I used..." Coulson trailed off abruptly. He glanced down at his artificial right hand, suddenly lost in thought.
"To put it simply, unless Trask Industries manages to surpass Tony Stark's engineering and figure out a way to give those robots artificial meta-human abilities, they aren't a genuine threat to the enhanced community," Coulson concluded, snapping out of his daze.
"Whatever the case, the rest of London has been forcibly evacuated by our joint task force," May said, her frown deepening. "But the civilians in this sector refuse to budge. They actually believe the spatial anomalies appearing in the sky are some kind of meta-human terrorist plot. They don't trust S.H.I.E.L.D. at all."
Coulson mulled it over, a flash of hard determination settling in his eyes. "Then use force. Lie to them, coerce them, bait them—do whatever it takes to get them out of the blast zone."
"Phil," May said, reaching out to grab his arm as he turned toward the roof access door.
"May, I know what you're going to say. It isn't honorable," Coulson said, offering her a quintessential, weary smile. "But I'm an agent tasked with protecting innocent lives. I'm not here to play the hero."
"Phil, that's not what I meant," May said, her voice tight.
She pointed up at the sky, a rare look of horror crossing her stoic features. "I meant that we might be out of time."
Coulson followed her gaze.
High above the city, bleeding through the cosmic tear connecting Earth to Svartalfheim, a colossal, sword-shaped Dark Elf warship was slowly piercing through the atmosphere.
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Word count: 1868
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