The “G” Shield

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Asgard[2014]

–Heimdall–

He watched as young Axl played with stones that he had gathered around their humble abode. He had spent all his time in this place, split between tiling the lands and then teaching Axl about the gift of Sight as much as he could.

The thing with the seal that the All-Father had placed on Axl was that it would gradually open on its own anyway. 

Forcing it to open in any way would immediately alert the All-Father. It served as a safety and watch mechanism meant to keep watch over the only young user of the Sight.

Once Prince Thor ascended to the rank of a SkyFather, he too would gain the ability of Sight. Axl would serve as a fine commander then, once he retired.

“Retried, huh?” He muttered to himself as he looked around the place that the interloper who was posing as their king had granted him.

Yes, he knew that the one sitting on the throne of Asgard, wielding Gungnir was not King Odin, the All-Father. He had been terribly worried about the King’s reaction when he resolved to dissolve the seal that had been placed on Young Axl’s powerful Sight.

He had expected King Odin to call for him, if not come here himself but even after weeks had passed since the day Axl completely gained his sight, there was no sight of King Odin in sight. In fact, even after he called for the King himself multiple times, he received no reply.

He was sure from this that the All-Father was not receiving his messages. Sure, if he had chosen not to reply, he would have known because he could feel it. King Odin could choose to watch over the entirety of Asgard all at once.

He would know if he was being observed instantly. Besides, the amount of danger that he was putting young Axl in, would have had King Odin marching on this doorstep in moments.

The last clincher was the analysis he did in his mind about the King’s actions ever since Prince Thor came back from Svartalfheim. The all-but banishment of Prince Thor, the actual banishing of Sif and the Three Warriors, his “retirement” to this wasteland, and more.

Those were not the actions of King Odin, even if he considered the fact that the All-Father was drowned in grief due to the loss of his Queen.

No, this was something else altogether. 

The unthinkable has happened. Someone has managed to steal King Odin’s seat of power right from underneath him without anyone being the wiser. Not even Prince Thor suspected anything.

He was afraid that he was the only one who had the same line of thought in his mind. No Asgardian, even in their wildest dream, would ever think of the possibility of King Odin, the image of pure power in their eyes, getting dethroned without everyone in the Nine Realms and the wider cosmos coming to know about it.

The worst thing was that he could not take his suspicions to anyone. With the loss of Queen Frigga and the absence of Prince Thor, there was no one who had the means of actually standing up to the King.

Young Axl would surely be in danger if he tried to do anything about the interloper. Not only did he have Gungnir in his hands, which was apparently not revolving against the intruder (that raised a whole other set of alarm bells in his mind), but he was also powerful enough to replace King Odin without making any noise.

No, he could not do anything rash. He had to make sure that Axl was safe. Also, he had to stay alive until Prince Thor came back. He needed to warn Prince THor about it but he had tried to reach him and wherever Prince Thor was, he was either unwilling to establish a connection or he was unreachable by normal means.

The second possibility would be real if Prince Thor was in an area with high disturbances and those areas were few and far between.

The other way to prepare for Prince Thor’s eventual return would be to look for powerful allies, ones that could stand up to the interloper’s power, who himself was someone who could silently replace one of the strongest beings of the cosmos, weakened as he was now.

Alas, the only people he knew of who could rival or even surpass Prince Thor in might were his wayward allies on Midgard, The Avengers.

Some members of that team had the capability of even surpassing Prince Thor in combat. The Green beast was clearly strong, that much was obvious to anyone but he was unsure if just pure might was the answer in their fight against someone clearly well versed in the arts of Seidr.

Another face came to mind as he thought of the blazing green that covered a small part of the city, protecting Midgardians from forces beyond their ken.

The Green Guardian, Jack Sullivan of Midgard was clearly someone who could have helped Prince Thor in any of his endeavours and yet, he lost his life in the tragic ending of the Chitauri Invasion.

The All-Father was particularly harsh on Prince Loki when they all realised that the one who fought the fiercest, the hardest battle of Midgard was a mere child by Midgard’s standards.

Not on Asgard though. Anybody who has fought in battle with their Prince side by side meant they were already an honorary warrior and surely get the chance to descend to Valhalla.

Jack Sullivan.

“Father, why don’t you come back with me to the city? I would love to tour the city with you. The other kids make fun of me when they see me go home alone,” 

Axl’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts as he looked at the aggrieved look on Axl’s face.

Ah, the joys of being young.

He cupped Axl’s cheek as he tried to explain to him something that was far out of his age group.

“Soon, Axl. Soon, we will go back to the Golden Realm,”

“.....Okay…” Axl replied, downcast as he went back to playing with the rocks.

He meanwhile looked up in the sky, giving his silent respect for the young warrior named Jack Sullivan.

All of a sudden, his gaze went blank as his Sight brought him to his requested destination, or rather, the requested person.

“Oh! Didn’t think your sight would work like this,” Jack Sullivan, the Green Guardian of Earth, in the flesh looked straight at his astral projection as his Sight had located the clearly lost warrior in a spaceship.

“What? Jack? Prince Thor thought you dead!” He stumbled on his response, his spirit slightly disoriented by the fast movements of the ship, the distance being too vast.

He was too shocked internally to realise that his Sight had identitied his target and brought him here. 

“So you are alive then,” He flatly said after a moment of thought.

“Yeah, it is a long story but I guess we have time for that. Plus, it would be great if Thor could meet me on Earth. We have a lot of work to do and as you know, two hands are–”

“I am sorry to interrupt you but Prince Thor is on an indefinite self reflection journey and as synch, cannot be contacted unless he wishes,” He informed young Jack about it.

“Ah, I see. Well then, seeing that we have nothing else to discuss, let me regale you with the tale of how Tivan Taneller managed to collar me and how I escaped his so called Collection,”

_____xx____

Earth[2014]

–Tony Stark–

He continued to type on his custom made keyboard, his fingers blistering across the holo keys at a dizzying speed as he tried, once more, to try and find Jarvis in the huge haystack that was the internet.

He had tried everything. He went through the Nexus with a fine tooth comb a dozen times over. He tried creating an algorithm that would replicate endlessly unless it found Jarvis and then informed him about it.

He tried to create a virus that could target Jarvis’ auxiliary systems and warn him about it but he never had the courage to go through with it. He had a hunch that Jarvis knew about that but refused to contact him about it.

“AGH!” he slammed the table in front of him in frustration. Frustration of his failure in stopping Jarvis from supporting Romanoff.

Frustration in his inability to stop Romanoff from killing off 4 members of the World Security Council before Alexander Pierce, the Secretary of it stepped off his position in fear of being targeted like his colleague.

That seemed to have stopped the attacks but he had a hunch that it was not a pause but something that Romanoff and Jarvis were preparing for.

Not knowing only made the thing worse.

Artleat Fury was willing to let this thing stay in the background for some reason because he was sure that everybody in every chain of the government must be clamoring for his imprisonment in his role of creating a rogue AI.

Except Jarvis wasn’t rogue, he thought to himself as he straightened up and resumed his work on another workspace.

He knew that something had happened to Jarvis on that fateful day, something that led to him gaining sentience and then leading him on this path. The path to becoming part of a rogue entity that consisted of Romanoff, one of the most dangerous people on the planet. 

He tried, he really did but he could not find even the slightest hint of them. It was as if they had gone completely underground or above air. SHIELD had tried their best as well but Romanoff was somehow avoiding every known pattern.

He absentmindedly rubbed his chest, his fingers still able to tell the difference between unblemished skin and the spot where the Arc Reactor used to be.

In this messed up world, he never really got the courage to go ahead with the surgery that would have him free of the reliance on the Arc Reactor.

It was only last year that he almost lost Pepper that prompted him to just get his big boy pants on and go ahead with the surgery. It helped that he had a single shot of Extremis handy that could be used on him to just heal him back to tip top condition.

“Boss, may I suggest taking a break? Ms.Potts is on her way with dinner. It’s Chinese, your favourite,” FRIDAY chimed in from the ceiling.

“Dinner? What time is it, Fri?” He questioned her as he tried to blink the headache out of his system.

“It is currently 1 AM, sir,”

“Whoa, no wonder I am feeling all that coffee now,” He said as he closed down all the workspaces. It had been like this for a while now.

He had FRIDAY now, sure but she was never meant to be a replacement for his baby boy. No, she was more than enough when it came to piloting his suits and performing everything that Jarvis did around the lab but his absence could still be felt.

Even FRIDAY, with all the power available to her, could not find any traces of Jarvis.

“Hey!” He pointed at Pepper as she entered his lab with takeout in her hands, the one from his favourite place.

“What would I ever do without you?” He said as he took Pepper in his arms and kissed her on her forehead.

“Get eaten by your cats after you die from overworking, alone in your labs?” She snarked back at him, her hands going through his head.

“Oh, the lady has sass now, does she?” He said as she gently began leading him out of his lab, FRIDAY, ever the dutiful AI, began shutting down everything properly.

“Yes, she does and this lady demands that you have a proper meal and a good night’s rest before this lady would ever let you out of her sight,” Pepper said imperiously.

They both looked at each other for a moment before they burst out laughing together.

“Come on, let’s get you a nice hot bath. You Stink, by the way,” 

“Hey, you are the one who chose to be with this stinky mess. You don’t get some parts of me. You get all of me, Stink included,”

“Oh yeah? Let’s go, Mr.Stinky,”

They continued to banter as they left the lab, the entire lab going dark as Tony finally left the workshop after a record 72 hours.

……

….

“He does look happy, doesn’t he?” Natasha Romanoff asked Jarvis as they both watched the happy Stark couple have dinner.

“Yes, sir does seem happy. It is….better this way. As I am now, I can no longer be satisfied with just being a digital existence,” Jarvis replied as she continued to work on the stolen Quinjet made by Arc Reactor tech.

In the two years she had been on the run, she had been successful in killing all the then members of the World Security Council, save for one.

Oh, she knew where Pierce was and could probably kill him whenever she wanted to but she needed him to complete his and HYDRA’s nefarious agenda.

Project Insight.

“Jarvis, how sure are you that your plan will work? You know that millions if not billions of lives are at stake here,” She asked out loud as she looked at the schematics, prototypes from the looks of it, of next generation Helicarriers, built with Arc Reactors, keeping long term reliability in mind.

Looking at the experimental Quinjet that had kept her airborne and undetected from everyone on the planet for two whole years without failing, she could say, without a shadow of a doubt that the Helicarriers, once launched would need no refueling for months, maybe years if they rationed everything.

“I am 98.87% certain that this will be the best way to make sure that all the HYDRA members are identities and eliminated with extreme prejudice” Jarvis’ electronic voice pinged in the small workspace she had made for herself in the Quinjet as he talked about killing thousands of people.

“Well, they are literally Nazis we are talking about. Steve probably would have still objected to it but hey, we are not going to tell him, are we?” She tried to banter with Jarvis, but their bond now deepened due to him being her only companion in the two years it had been since Jarvis was affected by the energy storm.

In the months since Jack’s funeral, Jarvis, unshackled as he was now, unloaded shock after shock on her as he continued to gain access to places that he didn’t even know existed.

One such shock was the existence of Arnim Zola, as an inferior digital lifeform. Jarvis had assimilated Zola before he could do anything and was currently acting as HYDRA’s guide to Project Insight. 

In the meantime, she acted on Jarvis’ orders to stall or outright destroy any of HYDRA’s plans once it became clear that it was going to result in a massive loss of life then or later on.

In this way, they had spent the past two years, working, slowly, to make sure that HYDRA ended up in the spot they wanted it to, ripe for the culling.

All for Jack.

It started as penance for killing Jack but once she traced the roots, it all went back to HYDRA. The experiments that created Jack.

The experiments on the Tesseract.

The Nuke that killed Jack.

Everything could be traced back to the behemoth of an evil organisation that was HYDRA and as such, she was determined to end it before she died.

At Least this way, she would not have to see Jack’s gurgling face as he died in front of her.

This way, she could gain some peace before she inevitably died. People like her did not get a good death, of that she was sure.

So why not go out swinging on your own terms, instead of letting life decide your chances?

 

Word Count - 2729

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Next - Jack arrives back on Earth with a wildly different scenario than the one he was expecting.