Originally, although Bant knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. was, at its core, nothing more than a snake pit, he had not really had any particular thoughts about Hydra.
After all, it had not had much to do with him.
But now, Hydra had chosen the path of death.
Cut off one head and two more grow back?
Bant's answer was simple.
I'll mince the whole damn thing into meat paste.
Of course, this was not something he could rush.
At the very least, Nick Fury had said one thing right. Hydra was gutter trash. Acting rashly would only alert the enemy. And in every kind of story, anything even remotely connected to snakes was always absurdly hard to wipe out completely.
Take a certain noseless guy, or a certain fellow who loved gender-bending, for example.
Even if Bant charged straight into S.H.I.E.L.D. right now, blew up their main helicarrier, and sent every single S.H.I.E.L.D. member to die without a grave, the Hydra operatives he killed would still only be a small fraction of the whole.
Maybe just one or two heads at most.
And the result would likely be that he would have to stand against the entire country.
"Good. Destroying Hydra will be the first mission of our Earth branch of the Plumbers," Bant said.
"But we need a thorough plan."
"Tomorrow we'll find Harry, and the three of us will discuss it together," Bant said.
"We're dragging Harry into this too?"
Peter frowned, worried that this would bring Harry danger and trouble.
But Bant smacked him on the back of the head and said,
"We're not dragging him in. Harry is already a member of the Plumbers, and he's our friend, remember?"
"If you leave him out of something this important, that's when he'll really be upset."
"Peter, remember this. Sometimes, keeping secrets comes with a price."
Peter only half understood.
The next day, Bant went to school with Mary Jane and Peter.
After they arrived, Felicia joined them.
She and Mary Jane each took one side of Bant, then happily said, "We have to go to another classroom today. Both classes are together. We might even end up having class together from now on."
Because the classroom wall had been punched through the day before, the students from both classes had been reassigned to a different room. As for the original two classrooms, the school apparently planned to tear down the dividing wall completely and merge the classes into one.
Bant guessed that was probably Harry's suggestion.
Otherwise, why rebuild a wall when demolishing it completely gave you more room to skim off the top?
As the group passed by their old classroom, Bant saw a familiar figure.
Thor was wearing a darkened tank top and gripping a large hammer in both hands. His face was smeared with sweat and dust, and his once golden hair had been cut off, leaving only a short buzz cut that made him look much more resolute.
For an Asgardian, hair was practically a second life.
But there was no helping it.
The weather was too damn hot.
If he could have helped it, Thor would not have wanted to cut his hair either. But after getting scorched by the brutal sun to the point of passing out once, he had changed his mind.
To hell with hair!
No one on Earth knew who he was anyway, so cutting it off changed nothing.
The important thing was that Loki did not find out.
What Thor could not stand most was Loki's ridicule.
Bant had never expected that one day he would see Thor at Midtown High, and as a worker no less.
The only thing that had not changed was that he still loved his hammer.
Bant naturally could not let such an opportunity slip by.
He immediately decided to hand out a little employee benefit to one of his subordinates.
So Bant took out his phone and walked over to Thor, who was still working. Under Thor's puzzled gaze, Bant took a photo together with him.
"What are you doing?"
Thor asked with a frown.
He remembered that the thing in Bant's hand was called a phone or something like that.
"Nothing. You just look a lot like the brother of a friend of mine, so I took a picture."
As Bant spoke, he sent the photo to Loki.
The Plumbers' communication devices could be used without restriction across the universe.
Very quickly, Loki replied.
Loki: !!!
Loki: Where?
Bant: Earth. Get here now!
Loki: Leaving immediately!
Sakaar.
Loki, who had been doing city planning a moment ago, shot to his feet so suddenly that even Khyber in the distance was startled.
"Khyber, get a ship ready for me!"
Loki rubbed his hands together excitedly.
Even though he himself was sporting a buzz cut now too, that was fine. He could use magic to create an illusion.
But Thor was different.
Just wait, my dear brother!
"What happened?"
Khyber asked.
"Don't worry about it. Just know the boss needs me!"
Loki puffed out his chest as he spoke.
At that moment, he was completely convinced by Bant.
Where else could you find a superior who thought of his subordinates even when handing out good stuff?
Loki swore that from this moment on, he would harbor absolutely no disloyal thoughts toward the Plumbers.
Loyalty!
Although Khyber had no idea what kind of madness Loki was acting up over this time, the moment he heard it was Bant's order, he immediately prepared a ship for him.
Still, because of the distance from Sakaar, it would probably take Loki some time to reach Earth.
Back on this side, after taking the photo with Thor, Bant went to the vending machine, bought him an icy cold drink, and handed it over. As a result, Thor, with his simple nerves, immediately categorized Bant as one of the good people.
Even though it was just a cold drink, to Thor, who had been through quite a lot lately, it felt like a rare touch of warmth.
After arriving at the new classroom, Bant thought to himself,
'I didn't expect Thor to still be on Earth, and he still hasn't recovered his godly powers. If that's the case, then Mjolnir has probably been taken into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s custody too.'
If he had not thought about it, it would have been one thing. But once he did, Bant realized that S.H.I.E.L.D. really did have an insane number of good things.
Setting everything else aside, the Tesseract alone was already absurdly valuable. Not to mention that over the years, S.H.I.E.L.D. had also been trying to crack the Super Soldier Serum. Even though they still had not perfectly reproduced Captain America's version, the data they had accumulated was still extremely valuable.
Since he had already decided to deal with Snake Shield, Bant naturally began thinking about how to make that old snake cough up some loot.
By the time they reached the new classroom, Harry was already there.
He waved at them from his seat in the distance.
Bant and the others walked over and casually took seats nearby.
Harry asked, "How's Thompson doing?"
At the hospital yesterday, even though Bant had been the one to step forward and say that Plymouth would take responsibility for Flash's treatment, because he did not want to expose himself too much at school, Bant had attributed everything to Harry Osborn's help.
"His injuries are already healed, but his memory was damaged. I left him in the rehabilitation area on the fifteenth floor of Plymouth. His parents already know, and they're over there taking care of him now."
Hearing that, Harry felt this was already a very good outcome.
Compared to life itself, memory seemed far less important. Even if Flash could never recover his old memories, he could still make new ones.
"Harry, after school tonight, we're going to Plymouth."
There were some things that were simply not convenient to talk about at school, and hearing Bant's unusually serious tone, Harry could more or less guess that something was up.
Felicia and Mary Jane exchanged a glance, and both saw curiosity in the other's eyes.
Still, they did not think too much of it.
After all, what could three guys gathering at Plymouth possibly do?
"You guys doing research?" Felicia asked.
Bant nodded. "Something like that."
After all, who could say researching how to kill snakes was not research?
That afternoon, after school.
The three of them arrived at Plymouth. The massive building did not even have any security guards. Bant had placed two steel robots at the entrance, standing there motionless like stone lions.
They looked completely broken.
But no one dared bet on that.
"This place is way too empty."
Harry had one hand in his pocket. "Back when Plymouth was so small it looked like a lab, not having people around was one thing. But now? You should really hire some staff."
Harry was not wrong.
Plymouth Tower had over a hundred floors, but the total number of people inside had, at its peak, only been six or seven, and that was counting Flash's family while they were still staying there for recovery.
As things stood now, the only reason Plymouth was able to function normally at all was because the Osborn side was basically doing the business work of two companies at once...
And a huge amount of data work was being handled entirely by Eunice alone.
But that obviously could not continue forever.
Bant nodded. Plymouth really did need to hire some employees.
"You didn't call me here today just to help you pick staff, did you?" Harry asked.
At that, Bant rolled his eyes. "As if I'd trouble Young Master Harry with something so minor. It's Peter's matter."
Then Peter began explaining the whole situation to Harry.
The three of them talked as they walked into the underground conference room. Bant pressed a button, and a white table slowly rose from the floor. Then he changed into his Spider-Man suit and sat in the main seat, his chain-wrapped hands clasped together.
"Alright. Now we begin the Plumbers meeting."
"Do we really need to be this serious?"
Seeing that Bant had actually changed into costume for this, Harry felt it was a little too much.
"Of course we do. It's a matter of procedure. You should hurry up and change too. Oh, right, your new suit still isn't finished. Fine, then stand."
Harry: ???
Of course Harry was not about to stand through the meeting.
After all three sat down, Bant said, "Plumber Harry Osborn, I assume Spider-Man has already explained everything to you on the way here."
Harry scratched his head. "Little Bant, weren't you standing right there while Peter was explaining it? And why are you acting so formal all of a sudden?"
"No sense of discipline!"
The white eyes on Bant's spider mask narrowed as he glared at Harry in dissatisfaction.
"When we're working, use titles!"
After fooling around for a bit, Bant opened the virtual display under the speechless gazes of Peter and Harry.
Then he stood up with both hands pressed against the table and said,
"This time, our enemy is Hydra. However, unlike the intelligence Nick Fury brought us, we are not facing a dying, half-dead snake. We are facing a vicious serpent hidden deep within the lifeblood of this nation!"
"What do you mean?"
Peter did not understand.
"In the story we all know, after Captain America Steve Rogers defeated the Red Skull, Hydra collapsed and began to disintegrate. In the eyes of ordinary people today, it has already become history."
Harry and Peter both nodded at the same time.
"But Captain and Nick Fury told me Hydra was never completely wiped out," Peter said.
"They're right. But there are still some differences in the details."
Bant deliberately stressed the word details.
"In truth, Hydra was never destroyed at all. Just like they themselves say, cut off one head and two more grow back. Not only did they not collapse, they actually developed very well."
With a wave of Bant's hand, a white eagle emblem instantly appeared on the virtual screen.
Peter had seen that symbol before. It had been stamped on the cover of the file Nick Fury gave him, the eagle's head above a pair of outstretched wings.
"S.H.I.E.L.D."
"It is a special organization directly under the World Security Council, created specifically to deal with strange incidents of all kinds. It was established during World War II, and back then, it was one of the core forces fighting against Hydra's Nazi branch.
"The current director is Nick Fury. As a direct department under the Security Council, it has very high authority, and it also possesses several flying carriers..."
The more Bant explained, the more Peter and Harry understood the scale of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s power, and the more astonished they became.
"No wonder they were able to crush Hydra. I never imagined their influence was this huge!" Peter said.
But Bant shot him a glare.
"I told you already. Hydra was never crushed."
With another wave of his hand, the white eagle insignia instantly warped into a blood-red skull, while the spread wings beneath it twisted in an instant and became something like tentacles.
"This is!"
Both of them cried out in shock!
"That's right. S.H.I.E.L.D. is Hydra!"
That one sentence nearly made Peter fall out of his chair in shock.
"How is that possible?" he shouted.
Even Captain America, who had spent his entire life fighting Hydra and personally buried Hydra's leader, was part of S.H.I.E.L.D. How could S.H.I.E.L.D. possibly be Hydra?
"There's nothing impossible about it," Bant said.
"The moment Hydra realized defeat in the war was inevitable, they had already started thinking about preserving their strength. Clearly, they understood one thing very well. The most dangerous place is often the safest place."
"I had Eunice investigate a lot of material. Their actions were clean, but in that kind of situation, if they wanted to hide a giant organization completely, they were bound to leave behind plenty of traces."
Bant was not completely making things up.
The moment he decided to deal with Hydra, he had already ordered Eunice to start digging through those clues.
Peter and Harry might believe him without needing any evidence, but others would not necessarily do the same.
Hydra's power today was enormous. It did not stop at S.H.I.E.L.D. It had even infiltrated Congress and the Security Council. If they were not careful, the three of them would effectively be declaring war on the whole of America.
Under those circumstances, Bant naturally needed to raise a banner.
A banner that could represent America itself.
/-\
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