Across the sea from Albion, in what was once a colony of Britain, but is today regarded as a superpower of its own, the United States of America did what it did best: make weapons of mass destruction that it didn't fully understand.
The current world order, or rather the old world order, was one dominated fully by America; their way of life was considered the right one, and everyone who didn't follow that way of life was living in poverty. Or war-torn hellholes.
The people of America, and in particular those in power, were used to being the ones in charge, so when Camelot, Albion, and Arthuria turned things on their heads, they wanted to restore order.
Restore the order they controlled and decided on.
Yet, in an ever more uncontrolled and unimaginable world, that required a lot of effort, or at least, enough weapons to enforce their own world order on the rest of the planet.
So, despite the last economic crisis only being over, the US was pumping money into weapons, and a lot of it. Hammer Industry was one of the big ones; they tried to take the market after Stark stepped out, and while they couldn't compare, they still rolled in orders and money.
But Hammer was still just a small fish, no, the military still had their eyes on something much bigger, or small in most cases, because while everyone raced to make a suit of their own to match Stark's, the military still wanted the real deal.
None could match Stark; this was something he had proven again and again. Nothing matched his weapons, and his newest one, the Iron Man suit, was the real prize everyone wanted. The new generation of super soldiers, not men made in a lab, but in an armory.
With how General Ross's attempts at making a super soldier blew up and destroyed a block in New York, everyone rather liked the idea of a suit that couldn't go rogue, just put a kill-switch in it, and they had the perfect mechanical super-soldier.
Still, Tony Stark wasn't sharing, and taking it by force was proving difficult, because the law stopped them, and while they rarely cared about the law, forcefully taking anything from someone as high profile as Tony Stark, Iron Man.
Yeah, any actions taken would gain far too much notice, so breaking the law wasn't an option, which meant they had to either bend them, or change them.
The problem was that changing and bending them was proving difficult. This involved taking the private property and invention from a rich billionaire, something that touched the sore spot of the elite class.
Because while this attempt was only on someone generally disliked, as Stark, if they allowed it to be done here, it could be done against them, so the normal lobbying powers they used against the lower classes were used against the military this time around.
But , it was slow, more so since Stark didn't want to talk, making even the negotiations hard.
So, while the military worked on getting their suits, a lot of money and resources were going towards SHIELD.
Something that made Nick Fury, SHIELD's current director, both happy and troubled, because he knew well that the better he was treated now, the worse he would be troubled later when they wanted results.
And despite the money he was given, he also knew that results likely wouldn't come as quickly as they liked.
Not that he wasn't pleased with the funding, because he had plenty of places they could be used, and many projects could be sped up.
Still, Fury had once had an ace up his sleeve, a small amount of old Hydra weapons, those things were decades old, yet despite that, they were amazing pieces of tech that were beyond anything of their time.
Pure energy weapons? That was pretty much something only Stark had made with his newest suit, and these were made before he was even born, showing just how beyond their time they were.
Countless times had they tried to make new ones, but they just couldn't, they lacked the proper energy source for them.
Fury had the item that Hydra had used, but after what happened with Carol, he wasn't happy about using it; that thing was something even advanced alien civilizations wanted, and he didn't want their attention, knowing that Earth wasn't ready for it.
But things had changed, the situation had changed.
Arthuria, her Camelot, magic knights, weapons beyond human understanding, Mordred's ability to fight off a full military assault, and tanks being little more than toys before the Round Table made everyone, Fury included, restless.
And that was before you thought about the general truth of magic, SHIELD had investigated its fair share of strange cases, some that looked like magic, but with Mutants being a thing? It was mostly written off as mutants or alien artifacts.
Now? He, as director of SHIELD, needed to deal with Mutants, magic, aliens, and Gods, like that fool Loki who liked to call himself the Lord Regent of the Nine Realms.
Still, as foolish as that man or alien or god or whatever was, he had been a wealth of information. Sure, he might be a god of lies, but he liked to think he could see through them all the same.
And Loki, he had been too arrogant to lie; he loved to show off, the awe on the faces of diplomats and politicians when he talked about Asgard and the universe.
Fury might not have all the knowledge about the rest of the universe, but he knew a few things, he had been to space, fought aliens, worked with them, and had asked the Skrulls everything they knew.
He took everything he had, and together he was able to paint a picture of what the threats were like out there, what kind of threats Earth faced.
Back in 95, the Skrulls had been desperate for a new home, for the Tesseract, and had gone to Earth, and he had to admit, they had hidden themselves while there, keeping a low profile, and he knew why.
It wasn't just because they valued Earth, or didn't want to meddle, but because they were scared. Scared that Asgard might interfere if they did too much, even now, he was sure that the threat of Asgard kept them from doing anything he didn't allow.
It was reassuring; he always feared they might get outside of his control, but now he knew the truth: they didn't dare go outside of it, because as long as what they did was under his orders. Under the orders of a human? They could act all blameless later should Asgard come knocking.
If they tried to take over Earth? Well, they might just face Asgard's wrath before they get far.
Because Loki had confirmed that Asgard was able to see through their disguises, which meant Earth was relatively safe.
Though clearly not completely, as was seen back in 95, when the Kree dared attack, they would have wiped out much of the life on Earth, and Asgard would surely come for them, but he knew the game. He had played it on a smaller scale.
You go to war against someone else under someone's protection? You had to pay the price.
It was politics, the Kree would no doubt have to apologize, make up some excuses, and call it a rogue action. In the end, what did it matter?
Earth would have been devastated, clearly, to those truly powerful, Asgard's protection only meant that much.
It kept space pirates away, smaller civilizations, but to the big ones? If Earth couldn't protect itself until Asgard responded? It was Earth's own fault for being too weak.
Earth needed a defence, and while he did believe in his Avengers idea, he knew that it wasn't enough on its own; firepower was important, what did super soldiers like the Captain matter if his guns and whatever couldn't hurt the other side?
He had seen the fight between Mordred and Halvar of Asgard, seen it again and again, gone over every detail to learn more about the true strength of Mordred as well as Asgard. It was telling.
Mordred was already a nightmare; she was proven. She had gone against Earth's current military and won, easily at that.
That Halvar had been able to fight her on equal ground for a while clearly proved that Asgard was far beyond humanity to handle. And that was just someone fighting with cold weapons.
Every analyst he had talked with was sure of the same, while Asgard preferred fighting face to face, there was no way they didn't have something more. Any interstellar civilization would need a fleet, no matter if Asgard could teleport their troops around, they needed a fleet, and the weapons to deal with one.
So, Asgard had to have large-scale weapons of war, and without the warriors themselves that strong? Earth was hopelessly outmatched.
Whatever it was against Mutants like Magneto, magic users like that Morgana that showed up in Camelot, or aliens, be they Kree, Asgardian or any other, Earth needed better weapons to deal with them.
So, he put his hope in the Tesseract, which had once given Hydra the ability to change the face of war forever; they failed due to their own arrogance. Fury wouldn't make the same mistake.
He would learn to use the energy of that artifact and push humanity into the age of energy weapons.
He was more sure of this than ever, ever since Wakanda had been exposed as more than they put on, when the secrets started to come to life, he knew that energy weapons were within human reach.
Wakanda wasn't currently playing ball; with their tech, they had the upper hand. He was sure the rest of the world could take them down, but it wouldn't be easy; it would take nuclear weapons, and he didn't want to know what they had to fire in return, so before tackling those, he wanted weapons on their level.
He needed energy weapons.
"Tell me, Richard, how is progress coming along?" He asked as soon as he pushed open the doors leading to the lab of Dr Reed Richards, also known as Mr Fantastic. Someone who had the fortune, or misfortune, of being blasted with cosmic rays and becoming enhanced.
Thanks to that, entering his lab was always a shocking thing, seeing him stretched around the place.
"I think his head is somewhere up there, Sir." Came the deep voice of Ben Grimm, nicknamed 'The Thing'.
He wasn't all that bright, but Reed liked him, so Fury had appointed the guy as the security of this lab, well, part of it at least.
He looked up, and up there in a mess of wires, he saw what looked like the upper part of Reed. "Dr Richard, I have told you many times that you aren't to mess with the installations of this lab. If you need something, you are to let SHIELD know about it." He called out loudly, nearly yelling to make sure the man could hear him.
"Ah, Director Fury, didn't see you there." Reed extended his head down from his torso to speak, something that had freaked out most of the staff assigned to work with the man. "I just needed to adjust the power input a bit; it was a small thing, so I didn't want to make a fuss."
"Let me remind you that you are working on an artifact containing nearly infinite power, so those limits you are messing with were placed for a good reason, so a surge from the artifact wouldn't blow out every light in the building." Fury reminded the man, despite knowing it likely would be ignored.
He hated working with him; he didn't care at all about rules, but Fury needed him. No person could do what he did.
Well, maybe Stark and a few others, but they all had their problems.
Stark also didn't respect authority, so no improvement there. Bruce Banner might be of some limited use, but given his unstable state, he wasn't someone he wanted near such an important and potentially dangerous object.
Victor Von Doom, another brilliant man, had declared himself a dictator and emperor in the same league as Arthuria, and everything screamed that he was a power-hungry tyrant, so if anything, these weapons produced here might be needed against the man; he couldn't be allowed anywhere near here.
Which left few names, and Reed's was the best.
"Enough of that, I came here for an update." Fury finally said, wishing to make this interaction as short as possible.
(End of chapter)
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