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Triskelion
–Jack Sullivan–
“Why did you do that?”
“Hmm?” He looked up from the magazines that had been provided to them in the posh waiting room of the nearest bunker they were escorted to. It was more like a medium sized military base. According to his limited understanding, dozens of such bunkers were spread across the country so that VVIPs’ safety can be catered to, by the US Military.
“Why did you take us to Titan? Why now? Why so suddenly? There were people much more qualified than me who deserved to be there as well,” Rogers said, an intense look in his eyes that somehow made him avoid the option of lying to the man’s face.
Damn his blue eyes and his super soldier enhanced charisma, forged in the flames of World War II.
He sighed, folded up the magazine and snapped his fingers, creating a small no surveillance zone around them, by casting a medium difficulty spell, designed to obfuscate everything that was aimed at a certain space, be it by sound, vision, or even air vibrations.
“Look, the only reason I took you all was because I wanted to show Tony of what hubris can lead to, simple as that. YOu and Barton just happened to be present and I was in a hurry to get it over with,”
“Just that? Just because you wanted Tony to be careful in his future endeavours?”
He leaned forward, “Oh, but my dear Captain. Nothing that Tony will do in the near future can be labelled as “just”. No, Tony Stark, much like his bloodline will usher in a new age for Humanity. The only thing that was up for debate was if he could do so in a safe sustainable manner or if he would try and bury it all, only for it to show up in the wider world anyway,” He said as he sensed someone coming to knock on the door, the spell fizzling out of effect.
“Mr.Sullivan, Captain Rogers. Secretary Austin will see you now,” The soldier said as they were led from the waiting room and into another posh office, this one without any personal objects, seemingly made to be used by VVIPs in case they wanted to conduct any surprise meetings.
“Mr.Sullivan, Captain, pleasure to meet you. I know you have probably heard this a thousand times over but let me thank you once again, for saving New York and probably Earth from the alien invasion.”
“You are welcome. Nice to meet you as well, Secretary Austin” He said before gingerly accepting a heavy manilla folder handed to him by the Secretary of Defense. He looked at the equally confused Captain before going through the folder.
By the end of parsing the whole document, a frown had formed on his face, tinged with equal parts annoyance and frustration.
“As you can see, you are the most desirable person on the planet as of yesterday, Mr.Sullivan. The US government would have appreciated a heads up regarding your situation, which could have prevented a lot of embarrassing things, but, we are glad that you are alive and well. That list is the number of official requests that had been made to the US government by foreign governments as well as companies to arrange a meeting, along with all the requests that all the agencies have submitted to the White House for various reasons.”
He handed the folder to Captain who scanned through the entire thing at superhuman speed.
“Obviously, all those requests are superseded by the dinner invitation from the POTUS himself. The President is quite excited to meet the hero of New York. I am sure he is quite curious about quite a lot of things about the mysterious Jack Sullivan. Honestly, if it were not for the very detailed footage - thank Romanoff for that by the way– we would not believe that to be your real name. Believe me, we tried to search for anybody with that name who could remotely be you, all over the world, many times over, and aside from a single blip from Stark who just handed over his very small entry, we found nothing, nada, zilch,”
He hummed to the words of the Secretary. The man seemed to be happy with just repeating already known stuff to the room, content with wasting his and everybody else’s time. While the man might be content in doing that, he was not here to waste his time.
He had work, and a lot of work to do and thankfully, his powers came with privileges that he could exercise at times like this, when someone was trying to occupy his time for something inane like gathering more information and formulating a better strategy to deal with the political hurricane that he was about to raise, with the double reveal of HYDRA in SHIELD and his complete support for the creation of another agency that could help them deal with outer space invaders.
So, he tossed the folder on the table, the gesture finally making the Secretary stop speaking.
“Look, Mr.Secretary, I don’t know what you are trying to do here but let me be clear here, I don’t have much time to waste so why don’t you go ahead and ask me all the questions that have reached you by now. I will try and answer all of them before I have to leave,”
The mere mention of the word “leave” seemed to freak the man out, his face paling as he blurted out, “Leave?! Where? Ahem, I mean, the US government is still yet to debrief both you and Captain about the events that transpired at the Triskelion yesterday,”
“I am sure the good captain here could tell you all about the day. Now, ask, or I walk out in the next 60 seconds,” he threatened the man, who immediately scrambled for the phone and furiously called in his assistant who stumbled into the room, juggling some notes in one hand and a laptop in the other.
“Um-Uh, just a second,” The Secretary said, the sweat clear on his forehead as he hurriedly shuffled through the notes made by the assistant.
“So, this is from the President, where were you in the past two years?”
“..That is a long story, one that doesn’t have much relevance to the current events. Next,”
“Um, what are your next plans?”
“Running for President. I am famous enough for it,”
“....” “....”
“I am kidding obviously. Uh, stay tuned for a press conference that will be conducted later today, in New York obviously,”
……
_____xx____
New York [2 hours and a portal taxi later]
“Ah, Home sweet home,” he muttered to himself as he breathed in the cold crisp air of his favourite city on the planet, even above the Birnin Zana. So what if Wakanda’s capital city was cleaner than a sterile medical room and had some fancy barrier technology, New York had Broadway and Pizza Slices, it was clear who was the winner here.
Of course, it had him to provide all the barriers it might require.
“Though, can I do that,” He asked himself as his body flew back and dove into the seawater, raising a huge geyser of water around him with the speed with which he had dove into the sea, heading straight to the spaceship that had been gifted to him by Nova Prime.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
He might have to get rid of it if he wanted any semblance of privacy but it was a fine ship for now and he didn't have much to hide anyway.
“Recognised, Jack Sullivan, Owner,” The computerised voice greeted him as he entered the ship after the water was drained from the entry area. He ignored everything and swiftly headed to the floor where Bucky was kept in medical stasis.
He found Bucky in the same state as before, with the medical reports looking all right to him. Hey, as long as the heart as well as the brain looked fine to him, Bucky was going to be fine.
Still, he couldn’t keep Bucky locked up here forever and while he had a lot of stuff to do, it grated on his conscience to keep Bucky locked up, someone who was essentially a war hero and arguably one of the biggest victims of the current rendition of HYDRa that had been torn down to its base components by some pre programmed release that Jarvis had planned.
Some parts of Eastern Europe were absolutely on fire as the local governments struggled to deal with the remaining HYDRA forces. It was nice that most of the HYDRA heads were either dead (Pierce, Mallick) or forced underground (Whitehall, Strucker).
It was fine, the ones that were left were the weakest and slowest sections of HYDRA and once Jarvis Came back online, from whichever remote server he had kept himself in, he would be a great help in tracking down the fringe elements and either putting them behind bars or eliminating them outright.
He opened up a portal, this time to the designated area that had been specifically outlined for him, on the outskirts of Birnin Zana that would be continuously monitored to await his arrival.
He popped his neck out and saw a singular Dora Milaje standing guard in front of him. His arrival barely phased her as he grinned at her and asked her something that would have had a vibranium spear being thrown in his direction just a scant few years back,
“Hey! Is T’Challa home? T’Chaka will work too,”
“Prince T’Challa as well as King T’Chaka are both present inside the country. I would be happy to take you to Prince T’Challa,” The Dora Milaje could not have been more bad at hiding her rage at the casual way with which he addressed her Prince and her King.
Oh well, it was not as if he cared one bit about their royal status, not at all.
“Okay! Just a second,” He popped back into the ship and after taking the medical stasis pod out of the ship, with the battery backup working for 6 hours after disconnecting from the ship’s main power source, he carried the pod with him and officially stepped foot on Wakandan soil for the third time.
While the Dora Milaje was gesturing towards an incoming hover vehicle, he did not have time for those. So, barring his portals which were still a bit of taboo, especially when used inside the Royal Palace, his barriers were still the fastest way of travelling through space.
“Wh-What are you doing?!” The Dora Milaje did not like the sudden and very fast method of transportation as they immediately reached the place where he had landed the last time he had come here.
“Green Guardian, welcome to Wakanda,” Prince T’Challa greeted him as he seemed to have come to the landing hangar running after hearing the news of his arrival.
“Prince T’Challa, while I would love to chat a bit longer, I have a press conference to attend. I talked with King T’Chaka the last time I was here and this is the patient I was talking about. He was unfortunately brainwashed by–”
“HYDRA. We..have been hard at cracking everything that you released and after corroborating with what we already knew, it gave us enough clues about the identity of the Winter Soldier. So, Bucky Barnes was a super soldier as well?”
“Yeah, and they kept him cryogenically frozen, only taking him out if they wanted someone gone. The poor man is completely under a brainwashed mindset. I want to help heal his mind without his mind breaking under the weight of everything that happened through his hands. I can’t do that. He will almost certainly try to kill himself the moment his memories come back,”
“We will see what we can do. I can guarantee that he will be alive when you come back, Mr.Jack Sullivan,”
“Great! Now, this pod has enough juice in it to last about 5 more hours so be careful with that. It is also alien tech with all their advanced portal medical tech, so you can study that as well. Consider it advance payment for healing Bucky. Okay? Bye!” He said the last part in a hurry and tapped his foot, his form accelerating above, and straight into a portal that led straight to the loft of Pops.
He couldn’t come back and not meet Pops, now could he? The man was practically the only family he had in this world, aside from the Ancient One and he didn't even know if she was still capable of feeling emotions anymore, so large was the burden on her mind and soul.
“Pops! Long time no see!” he shouted in his shop and frowned upon sensing the area to be empty. That couldn’t be true. It was barely afternoon here. Even with him jumping around the globe, he could still see the light outside, so his sense of time was not completely shot yet.
Then why was the shop not open? And where were all the customers?
It was only closed on Tuesdays and today was Wednesday.
At least judging by the state of the shop, he could say that it was only closed recently, so the thought of anything happening to Pops was swiftly banished from his mind at that time.
Now, all that was left was to search for Pops.
_____xxx____
Tony Stark
“Jarvis, finally came back buddy?” He asked as he ate on the sandwich while starting up all the equipment in his workshop.
All the screens in his workshop flickered before the orange, very different but still, orange form of Jarvis’ digital avatar appeared on one of the screens.
“Greetings, Mr.Stark, Friday,”
The purple form of Friday, a remarkably less complex avatar opened up right beside Jarvis.
The reason he had left Jack behind so swiftly, despite the litany of questions that were in his mind, was because some of his programs had finally sensed Jarvis, probably because of some leftover weakness from recovering from the no doubt devastating mental, or cyber, attack from Jack.
The leftover energy signature on Cap’s shield being the same as Loki’s sceptre was probably not a coincidence so he knew that Jack was speaking the truth when he said that the spell was something related to mind and thought control.
And now, he finally had his baby boy back!
“So Jarvis, had fun on the two year long absence? Hope you are refreshed because we have a lot of work to do, buddy,” He said as he opened up all the data that his suit had managed to gather in the short trip he had taken across the solar system and back, in nearly an hour.
He still shuddered when he thought of the sheer devastation and disrepair the entire planet was in, despite the clear signs of advanced civilization clear for anyone to see.
And they fell, not to some outside unseen threat, at least according to Jack. They fell because of overpopulation, resource management, and differing views. All things and many more that the human race is in spades of.
Hell, they had differences, based on colour, let alone on complex ideological and philosophical differences. They killed each over something as inane as colour of their skin.
“Yes, sir. I have reviewed the footage and despite knowing that, statistically, there must be innumerable such cases in the wider universe, it is still…disturbing,” Jarvis replied, his voice taking on an odd tone towards the end. So, Jack was right. Jarvis had taken the feelings attack that Jack had sent him and after understanding him, came back all the stronger for it.
“Right? Right? Fri, analyse everything and compile all the energy signatures, search for the dissected energy frequencies we have in our database as well.”
“Sure thing, Boss,”
“Now, Jarvis? Is it safe to assume that you had some upgrades while you were on your rebellious tour?” He asked Jarvis as the orange interface seemed to smile before glitching out of the screen as well. His smile faded a little as the lights in the room dimmed and the holographic projectors came to life.
Slowly, a picture was projected into the room, being built later by layer, with incredibly detailed descriptions for each part flooding in a moment later.
His eyes widened more and more as the specs of the entire thing became clear.
He had to take a step back and support himself using the nearby table when he saw the forehead part of it all. It housed a yellow stone, a suspiciously familiar yellow stone.
“Jarvis? Buddy? Please tell me that is not what I think it is because I don’t think my heart can take it, buddy,” He said as Jarvis’ avatar, looking eerily similar to that of his father’s butler with the same name, looked straight at him and said.
“Behold: Project Vision!”
God damn it, Jack. Filling his baby boy’s head with those nasty little feelings. Look what has that led to?
He wants a full fledged vibranium body now!
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Word Count - 2885
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