(AN: This is dedicated to RTS_MASTER for the latest review. Thanks for patiently waiting, I had to do a lot of polishing on it.
PS. School starts again tomorrow, I'll be teaching again and will be busy for the week making the exam for next week.
PPS. My substitute appointment as a teacher ends on January 15 so I'll be back then, sitting and drinking coffee while cooking some chappie.
PPPS. My other work, Naruto: One Piece of Bleach, I'll be rewritting it because it didn't went to the direction I wanted it to, try checking it out before I start the rewrite. Enjoy!)
The world didn't end.
Not loudly, anyway.
SHIELD Research Facility — Undisclosed Location
White lights. Stainless steel.
Silence broken only by scanners and the soft whine of containment fields.
On the tables lay what remained of the impossible.
SHIELD scientists worked in shifts that blurred into one another, dissecting infected remains down to the cellular level.
Every corpse was catalogued, cross-referenced, and named—Hunters, Smokers, Boomers, Spitters, Jockeys, Witches, Tanks—each classification confirmed using helmet cams, satellite footage, audio logs, and survivor testimony.
They knew what they were called.
They knew how they hunted.
They knew how they killed.
What they didn't know was how to make them live again.
Every attempt to recreate the infection failed.
Cells decayed unnaturally fast once removed from the host.
Neural pathways collapsed without the unknown external stimulus that had animated them.
Even the most aggressive samples turned inert within hours.
One conclusion kept repeating in SHIELD reports:
These creatures were not born of Earth.
And that frightened Fury more than success ever could.
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.
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Queens, New York — Quarantine Zone
Queens was sealed. Or part of it anyway which was near Elias' bakeshop.
Officially, it was labeled a chemical incident—an industrial disaster compounded by infrastructure collapse.
National Guard checkpoints ringed the area. Drones patrolled overhead. Cleanup crews in hazmat suits worked day and night.
Unofficially?
It belonged to SHIELD.
No civilians in.
No civilians out.
With exactly five exceptions.
Tony Stark.
Steve Rogers.
Natasha Romanoff.
Bruce Banner.
And Elias Mercer.
Mercer's Hearth remained standing—warm lights behind reinforced glass, ovens still running, bread still baked fresh every morning.
Against all logic, the bakery had become neutral ground for all, agents and civilians both.
A place Fury allowed the 5 of them to visit.
Frequently.
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The Generals — Off the Record
They didn't call themselves that.
They didn't acknowledge it out loud.
But they met.
Sometimes in quiet corners of Stark Tower.
Sometimes through the system's group channel, messages exchanged with careful wording and deliberate pauses.
The conclusion, every time, was the same:
Wait.
No rushing SHIELD.
No tearing into HYDRA prematurely.
No confronting Fury, yet.
Whatever was coming—whatever Arthas had warned them about—it wasn't ready yet.
But it doesn't mean they just wait. They have already located the dark facility where the Tesseract was being tested upon.
When something not ordinary happens, they'll know.
Meanwhile to kill time they used their rewards.
Steve stored his shield inside the inventory slot, the disk vanishing with a thought and he could summon or take it out just as easily.
He didn't like it—but he used it.
Tony stored his armor. The whole thing. Entire platforms reduced to a single slot.
His armors aren't the same as the advanced ones he used in Ironman 3 yet.
He pretended not to be impressed. He failed.
Natasha stored her weapon rack.
Not a single gun.
A collection.
Blades, pistols, suppressed rifles, exotic tools from black-ops missions she never talked about.
An assassin's lifetime, neatly folded into nothingness.
Bruce stored a box of clothes.
Spare pants. Shirts. Shoes.
Practical. Necessary.
Very Bruce
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.
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Happy Hogan's New Job
Happy didn't ask questions.
He just drove.
Morning: Stark Tower → Mercer's Hearth
Evening: Mercer's Hearth → Stark Tower
Repeat.
Elias in the passenger seat. Happy behind the wheel.
Awkward silence broken only by the smell of bread.
"Seatbelt," Happy muttered.
"I'm not a child."
"You're under Stark supervision."
"That makes it worse."
One morning, Elias showed up with a box of pastries.
Happy stared. "You bribing me?"
"No. Feeding you."
"…I accept."
Another day, SHIELD agents tried to swap in.
Tony vetoed it.
"Happy knows the route. And he punches people."
Happy smiled proudly.
At least once, an agent asked why the bakery guy needed an escort.
Happy replied, deadpan, "You ever try his sourdough?"
They stopped asking.
.
.
.
Five months passed.
No outbreaks.
No tests.
No orders.
Just quiet.
The kind that waits until something happens.
.
.
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Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility — Night
The Tesseract did not obey equations.
It never had.
Suspended within a magnetic containment field deep beneath the Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility, it glowed with a restless blue light—bright enough to stain the walls, the floor, the faces of every scientist watching it.
Readings scrolled too fast to follow.
Energy curves bent where they shouldn't.
Power surged inward instead of dispersing.
"This isn't a spike," Dr. Selvig muttered, fingers trembling over the console. "It's… folding. It's responding."
Nick Fury stood a few meters away, coat draped over his shoulders, one eye fixed on the cube.
"Responding to what?" he asked calmly.
Selvig didn't answer.
Because the Tesseract answered first.
The containment field screamed.
Light flared—violent, blinding—and space itself seemed to tear, as if something invisible had punched through reality.
Guards raised weapons. Scientists shouted warnings. Consoles overloaded in a cascade of sparks.
Then—
He fell out of the light.
Boots hit the platform. Gold armor gleamed beneath the harsh facility lights.
Green fabric settled like a curtain of arrogance.
Loki of Asgard straightened slowly, scepter already humming with alien energy.
He smiled.
"Well," he said lightly, eyes flicking across the room. "That was… exhausting."
"Sir!" a guard shouted. "Drop the weapon!"
Loki tilted his head, almost curious.
The scepter flashed.
Dr. Selvig stiffened. His eyes glazed over, turning an unnatural blue.
It wasn't a surprise, the Dr has been under his control since, this was just giving him back his free will serve him.
Before anyone could react, Clint Barton lunged—too fast, too precise, yet.
Fury barely turned in time to see the scepter touch Barton's chest. For all his preciseness, strength was never his strong factor.
Another pulse.
Another obedient soldier.
Chaos erupted.
Gunfire cracked.
Loki moved like smoke, bullets hit but he disregard is with contemptuous ease.
Barton took down two guards before anyone understood what was happening.
Selvig began tearing through the consoles, disabling containment protocols with manic focus.
Fury drew his weapon, aiming straight for Loki's head.
"Put the scepter down," Fury said evenly. "You don't want this to escalate any further."
Loki stepped closer instead.
"I have come way too far to stop now director," he replied, voice calm, almost amused. "I am Loki, of Asgard. And I am burdened with glorious purpose."
Then he moved, he pointed the glowing scepter towards Fury.
The blast threw Fury backward but didn't take his life. Talk about plot armor.
Smoke filled the chamber.
When it cleared, Loki was gone—along with the Tesseract, Dr. Selvig and Barton.
Fury rose slowly, eyes cold.
"Moth----"
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.
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Elsewhere —
Stark Tower, Secured Floor
The footage was grainy—but clear enough.
Multiple feeds played simultaneously across holographic screens Tony Stark had no business accessing.
Internal SHIELD cameras. Energy telemetry. Audio logs pulled straight from restricted channels.
They had been watching that facility for months.
"Well," Tony muttered, arms crossed.
"That's… bad. That's real bad."
Steve stood rigid, jaw tight. "That's an invasion."
"Not yet," Natasha said quietly. She was on a mission, the same one she had in the original plot, however due to the changes, she didn't wait for the target to talk.
She had him sing in no time and completed the mission record time. She's currently on a break.
That gave her time to be now connected to the GC subsystem and their secured channel, Tony has created, where no possible leaks or hacks can occur, technically.
"It's a setup. He wanted the cube. Everything else was a distraction to be able to take it. What I don't understand is, why he also took an astrophysicist and an agent." Natasha was clearly affected by the last part, she and Barton are friends.
Bruce leaned closer to the screen, he was in another place as did the rest, except Steve who was with Tony right now.
Beside being with Betty, he also found a place of his own where he can connect with the rest through a secured channel and the GC subsystem.
"That scepter—it's not just alien tech. It's amplifying neural pathways by simply touching a person's chest. And the result, total control."
Tony exhaled.
"So Fury's about to press the big red button?"
They all knew what's been going on inside SHIELD and they have also subtlety confirmed some of them.
What they found and how much they confirmed? It was very concerning.
Right on cue, a SHIELD broadcast lit up in another screen, only accessed by Fury himself.
AVENGERS INITIATIVE — ACTIVE!
Silence followed.
Steve spoke first. "We respond."
Tony frowned. "Hold on. Respond as what? Their attack dogs?"
"Legitimate assets," Natasha countered.
"With jurisdiction. With access."
"And with leashes," Tony shot back.
Bruce hesitated. "If we don't go through SHIELD, we're vigilantes. If we do… at least we know the battlefield."
Steve looked between them. "We've already seen what happens when we act alone. People die. Cities burn."
Tony ran a hand through his hair, then sighed. "I hate it, but you're right."
Natasha nodded once. "We agree to Fury's terms. For now."
"For now," Tony echoed. "But if this goes sideways—"
"We reassess," Steve finished.
Decision made.
And it wasn't a decision normally decided like in the original plot.
This members? This Avengers? They're not a ticking time bomb like the original.
They don't need a push through a fake bloddied collectible cards.
They don't need a sacrifice.
Why?
They already know the price. They already know what's at stake.
And they paid it. With the blood of innocents. With ignorance. And with blind arrogance.
And they didn't like it. This Avengers Initiative candidates has already proven themselves.
They have been waiting. And they are ready.
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Stark Tower — Guest Suite
Elias Mercer slept.
The city hummed softly beyond the glass walls.
The world turned. Plans were made.
An Invasion has entered it's first phase.
And he missed it.
The Avengers had just been called by Fury through Coulson—and the man who had nudged fate five months earlier slept straight through the opening act.
His system blinking.
[Your new objective has been updated!]
[Objective Updated:
→ Every Villain has a right and left hand. Find your loyal subordinates!
Reward: PowerRoulette!
Details: A collection of templates from the Omniverse that can be bestowed to those who swear fealty to you.
Note: Dishonest will be taken over by the character as precaution.]
End of Chapter