The “G” Shield

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Triskelion

–Jack Sullivan–

“So, let me get this straight,” Tony Stark’s insufferable voice was starting to grate on his nerves now.

“Yes, Mr.Stark?”

“You were initially OK with essentially massacring thousands of people in cold blood and Jarvis was going to carry it out as well. But suddenly, you had a change of heart and were somehow able to shut down Jarvis. The same Jarvis that was capable of evading everything I threw at him without much difficulty,” The disbelief in Tony’s voice was easily identifiable.

“Yes, Tony, I was able to shut him down but not for long. Think of it like this, I hit his core centers with a file with unknown parameters and forced him to open it, not giving him the option to ignore it at all. Now, if it were just a normal computer program, it would just shut down but since it was an awakened Artificial Intelligence like Jarvis–”

“He would just learn how to read the file and come back all the more stronger for it. What did you do anyway? For him to just shut down everything,” Tony’s intense curiosity about the topic gave him a pause as he contemplated if telling Tony would be the right thing to do or not.

And yet, he told him all the same, “Uh, so, I just transmitted my thoughts, my feelings on the matter,”

“Your…feelings? About killing thousands of people? So you essentially transmitted your moral code to an AI?” Tony Stark asked him slowly, clearly not believing it but having no other choice than to accept the explanation since he was just as much in the dark as everyone else.

“And what a thing it was to see. It even managed to dent Cap’s shield. I thought that was supposed to be impossible,” Clint’s voice reached them as all three of them stood on a platform made up of his barriers, watching as rows after rows of HYDRA prisoners were offloaded into a prototype prison. If his knowledge was to be believed, the next version of the prison would be the Raft, a prison specially for the super powered people.

The remaining SHIELD loyalists were the ones who were making sure that all HYDRA personnel were tagged and kept in cells, while they also made sure to check for the cyanide pill that most of them had, but were too cowardly to bite. Already, they had lost a dozen people to the pill and while that was still valuable information lost, he didn’t feel anything about it.

After all, they were still Nazi pieces of shit.

He could feel everyone's gaze turn to him as Clint said out loud something that was supposed to be all but impossible. 

Denting Cap’s shield, he really did it. Without Vibranium, just the sheer amount of energy channeled through his fists as he punched at the shield with all his might somehow leave a dent in it, shocking Cap when he saw it for the first time.

“Vibranium does have its limits, you know. They are absurdly high and I don’t think Little Green here can replicate that absurd amount of energy concentration anytime soon but just knowing that it can be done is sobering enough. It just goes to show that everything has its own limits. No one knew the limits of Vibranium and they do now,” Tony said as he kept on coordinating the efforts to make sure that all the three carriers were safely stowed away in orbit, just as he had planned.

“Are the weapons all depowered?” He couldn’t help but ask once again as Tony had depowered every single energy weapon on board using his software but he was still not sure about that. He knew that anything digital could not be trusted at all, especially on Earth.

“Yeah yeah, I did it the first thing I got my hands on the exquisite interface that Jarvis had built around the entire thing. Just goes to show that he inherited my talents,” 

Tony’s words raised his eyebrows. He was of the opinion that Tony had been deeply hurt by Jarvis’ departure but it seems that Tony still loved Jarvis like his son.

Good to know, he smiled to himself as Tony continued to work on the carriers, while the military copters hovered all around them, “monitoring” their work.

He scoffed at that. As if the government had any power over him. Stark could just claim that he was just doing as Jack Sullivan, the strongest man on Earth had ordered.

It had been a day since he revealed himself to the world through that small statement he made to that stupid media house. Honestly, it just felt so wrong to him that the stupid stunts they pulled that day, probably resulted in minuscule fines but benefited them in the form of vastly increased TRP and views they must have received in the last 24 hours.

The government response was as expected. The same people who were very eager to turn him into the “American Hero” and ask for votes in his name were now very wary and cautious of him. If not for his immense powers, then for the immense political clout he had in the form of the rabid following he had gained from all age groups from almost all countries.

Of course, his greatest support group still came from the States and that just turned into his strength. From yesterday, he had received no less than 6 invitations from various departments of the US government and also an information invitation from POTUS himself, to have dinner.

Now, he knew that his worth to the politicians only came from his immense power and the votes he could turn from his words but the fact remained that he had this power and it would be remiss on his part to not use that.

“So, the Army called. And the Navy, and the Air Force, along with the NSA, CIA, DOJ, and almost all the alphabet agencies called for you. What are you going to do about that? For one, they are not going to be happy with three orbital weapons platforms being in the control of a single individual,” Tony said casually as he came to hover next to him, the process to geo lock the Carriers in orbit apparently complete.

He could see the glow from the repulsor engines dim as Tony’s algorithm meant that they would just passively maintain orbit. Unless a satellite came deliberately close to the carriers, the onboard weapons systems would not activate, even then none of the high powered lasers would be activated.

He sighed, “Well, as you can guess, the carriers will be on the agenda but that is not going to be the main topic of discussion. We need something to aggregate Earth's strength into something unified and SHIELD came pretty close to that. There are things out there that–well, I guess, you will find out soon enough anyway,” He replied as the entire platform they were in, passed through a portal, and arrived on Titan, the home planet of Thanos himself.

“Whoa-What the fuuu-” Tony said, stunned into silence as they all found themselves in the ruins of the once thriving Eternal civilization. 

He could take a guess and say that hundreds of years had probably passed since the last Eternal lived here, judging by the various states of disrepair and the crashed satellites along with what looked like highly advanced space stations.

“This,” He turned to the people present in the small bubble that still held a significant packet of Earth’s atmosphere, especially the compressed air that he kept in a small walled off space in the back end of the barrier, “Is Titan, former home planet of the Titans, an immortal, un-aging cosmic energy wielding race of aliens,”

Tony’s faceplate slid off, showing off his stunned and stupefied expression for everyone to witness. Tony’s suit was no doubt scanning everything for all its worth.

Captain Rogers and Clint looked around the ruins as the barrier pocket flew low and high, taking them through twists and turns while he took care not to disturb anything, showing respect for the dead, something that Thanos would not care for, when he dropped large pieces of an entire moon on Tony’s Mark 85.

“What happened here?” Clint asked them as they found themselves high up in space, above one of the smaller moons that littered the space around Titan. He could see similarly ruined structures on the moon as well. Some of it had been clearly crashed from orbit, judging by the crater marks around it, some of it was built into the land and had just rusted beyond being recognisable.

“Overpopulation? Limited Resources? Civil War? Take your pick. It matters not. What matters is that a highly advanced race such as this one found themselves dying without the outer galaxy even knowing about them.”

He said as Tony and the others found themselves increasingly horrified at the state of the ruins they found on the Moon and the surrounding areas as well.

It was clear that the Titans were an advanced race, considering they had artificial structures built on every single moon around their home world, and yet, they had fallen all the same.

“I show you this not because I want to scare you but to show you what can and has happened to races who didn’t take the future and their place in the cosmos seriously. The Titans could fly unaided, even through space. And even they fell apart like this. If only they had introduced birth control measures if only they had expanded outwards to the rest of the cosmos if only they had listened to a renegade Mad Titan.”

He looked at each and every one of them as he continued, “I don’t want the human race to leave survivors who would ponder on the same questions one day. No, I want humanity to survive, and dare I say, thrive.”

Slowly, they came back, hovering above the moon, looking at the ruins of the planet. He could feel Tony was about to ask him to bring along some of the advanced tech that was lying around, even if most of it was more rust than anything useful. 

Before Tony could get the question in though, “No, Tony. This is the graveyard of the Titans and as much as the technology could be useful, I don’t want to be the one to disrespect the dead. Death doesn’t like that very much. Leave them be, we are about to run out of oxygen anyway,”

Slowly, they passed through a portal that opened up in front of them, depositing them in the same place they were in before. Only this time, they found themselves facing a huge fleet proudly bearing the US Flag on it.

“Think about what I said before taking any huge actions, Tony. If you have any more questions, feel free to approach me. You are the one who is going to make the most waves after this, be careful of what you do,” He said to Tony who didn’t say anything but rocketed off towards the coast, no doubt rocked to the core with what he had seen on Titan, something so close to Earth.

“Well, I can safely say that I wished I had something to make it all forget. If you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to be,” Clint said with a haunted look on his face. It made sense when you thought of the fact that Clint was still an average if honed to his maximum potential, a human who was playing in leagues way above his weight category.

“If you will, New York, please,” Clint said to him and he obliged as a burning orange portal manifested in front of them.

He turned to the Captain who nodded slightly at him, his slightly dented shield still held in his one hand. He knew that only Wakanda had any hope of repairing it and out of the guilt he felt for depriving the man of his signature weapon, he would ask T’Challa to help repair it.

I am sure Wakandan researchers will be very interested to find out that someone had just punched a dent in a Vibranium Shield, however, aided by pure energy they might. 

Hell, Shuri might just have stars in her eyes at the information alone.

“Shall we, captain?” He asked the Captain as they alighted on the nearest Navy ship with helicopters hovering nearby and jets soaring above their head. The overall amount of force gathered to welcome him was slightly overwhelming.

Apparently, the government was very much rattled by his abrupt appearance and disappearance act.

Let’s see what they have in store for him, shall we?

Word Count - 2162

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A/N - Slight political shenanigans next chapter. :)