I've dropped a few nukes from orbit on the economy before, don't get me wrong. But I had never dropped a bomb like the return of the Plutonian's first shipment of rare metals. New Year's Day 2015 was going in the history books as an act of economic terrorism. The United States government had commissioned the Plutonian to acquire the metals requisite for the latter half of its large scale up of the Arc Reactor facilities. I had bid far, far lower than any other even theoretical competitor.

We were still going to make money absolutely hand over fist. We had found a platinum group rich metal asteroid and we were now delivering a share of its component parts, including nearly enough palladium to match the extant world supply. A few more ships like this (we were expanding Osiris into all corners of the world) and I wasn't just going to be richer than Midas, I was going to make Midas into a pauper. Gold? I'm sorry, strawberries cost more. The only disappointment was we still hadn't located any vibranium-rich asteroids or meteors.

Ah, I know, I know, I shouldn't celebrate all this extra instability but let me have this. For the few hours before the markets re-opened, I was going to have an estimated net worth in the trillions. Rest in peace to the gold standard.

"You're really going to destroy another major extraction market," Pierce said as we watched the ship come in from the reclining patio beds we'd set up to watch this. I grabbed a strawberry from the bowl of fruit between us, enjoying the morning air and the taste of victory at the private base where we'd held our year end Hydra bash at.

"With Osiris' Educational Program expanding, we won't want to waste the equivalent of a PhD toiling on an oil rig or diamond mine," I said. In the short term, a lot of those workers had been malnourished and wouldn't be able to perform at that level. There were still developmental issues that couldn't be fixed with Extremis, but even so, we could find people better jobs than toiling on dangerous extraction missions. "And with that incident in Missouri in October," I really shouldn't have expected the timeline to match when the movies came out, but Ego in 2014? It hadn't been nearly that far off from any of the other movies. Had I caused a major timeline divergence? Was I responsible for this? I guess it didn't really matter - The expansion had stopped and Star Lord, whatever his earth name, was probably fine. "The United States is happy to take this opportunity to bring the rest of Earth closer to snuff."

One of the really transfiguring things of this universe was that I had come from an America that saw itself as top dog, even if it had internal conflicts about how useful or important that was. In this world, America saw itself as under imminent, catastrophic threat and as a minnow in an ocean. It leapt at chances to tie itself and its allies closer together and defend itself from extraterrestrial threats.

"It wasn't a criticism," Pierce said, taking a drink of water off the table between us. "I'm just in awe of what you have accomplished so far. What you're going to accomplish."

"I'm flattered, sir," I said. Old deference was hard to break, Pierce had led Hydra to an amazing amount of success. He had given them me.

"Palladium supplies to power every Arc Reactor in America and Europe. Maybe even an orbital facility that can match the global power supply." It was a matter of frank realism at this point that power would be completely clean by 2020, especially since we were rendering the later generation Arc reactors essentially free.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Is Konstantin ready for our palace coup?" I asked, taking a drink as Plutonian's cargo door opened. It was a large, remarkably plane like spaceship. Konstantin Dubinin, the Old Bear, had been our spy in the KGB during the Cold War and he and his sons were now our highest placed Russian contacts. They had somehow failed in grasping power through the KGB and FSB, as Putin had, which was embarrassing for our whole organizational theory. But Putin's cunning had run up against its limit. Even Rumplestiltskin couldn't spin gold from air.

"He is. He says that he's ready whenever you need him."

"Tell him the signal will be the collapse of rare earth futures," I said. When the coup happened, Osiris would be happily providing educational uploads to the public in Russia at marginal costs. We needed more scientists and engineers, after all. Or guinea pigs, as the case might be. It would also be our first real attempt to transfigure a society through the upload process. Pakistan and India were viable future markets and their agents had taken to the program well enough, but they lacked the infrastructure that Russia possessed. There were other middle income countries that lacked the population base. There was also Brazil, but their socialist government was suspicious of us and most of our old contacts from the Cold War were connected to the dictatorship.

"I'm proud of you and your work," Pierce said as the palladium began to be wheeled off the ship. "I want you to know, whatever your decisions, you have my support. But if they involve me as Secretary of SWORD, you'll want to start on them quickly. My health is starting to decline and I can't stay on top forever. I have maybe a year or two left and then I need to retire."

I took that in. It made sense. Project Insight had always been something of a reach, but SHIELD must have been at the height of its power in the original timeline that the MCU was based off of. If Pierce was in decline, the replacement would've been Fury. Probably not acceptable to them.

It wasn't what I would've hoped would be Pierce's choice. I looked at him and he seemed to be doing fine, health wise, it wasn't as if there weren't treatments available for most things. I didn't know what he meant by decline, but unless it was catastrophic cancer, we could've helped. Maybe he was opposed to trans humanism on a personal level. Maybe he just wanted to retire. But I took this conversation to mean that he wanted to retire and he was asking me to grant that wish. That could've been useful to me, but it was also inconvenient. I hadn't provoked a confrontation with SHIELD. Banner and Skye had vanished into the Nepalese wilderness in December and we hadn't seen them since - Though Black Widow had not freaked out, so presumably they hadn't sent out a distress signal or died.

If things didn't change, it might end up being my word versus Nick Fury's and I was pretty sure the governments of the world would pick Fury.

Who could blame them?

"Well," I said after a moment. There was no good way to refuse him. It had been him who had convinced the council I was a worthy successor and I needed to repay the favor. Besides, he had given me two years. I could work with two years. "I'll do what I can. Thank you for your long service Alexander."

So much for waiting for Thanos before I ran the tables.