Together We Stand...

Chapter 6

        My father hadn't come back from wherever he was last night, so I went back to Stark and Doctor Banner's lab after I had eaten breakfast. They had been working on the staff for a while, but stopped so that the Tesseract could be located. The three of us were having a nice conversation when Director Fury stormed in.

        "What are you doing, Mr. Stark?"

        "Uh... kind of been wondering the same thing about you."

        "You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract," Director Fury snapped.

        "We are. The model's locked and we're sweeping for a signature now," Doctor Banner explained calmly. "When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile."

        "And you'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss." The monitor beeped and I began to look over what had come up. My gaze wandered up to Director Fury as I brushed away some of my ebony hair.

        "What's Phase 2?" The door opened and my father threw a strange looking gun onto the ground, looking angrier than I'd ever seen him.

        "Phase 2 is S.H.I.E.L.D uses the cube to make weapons." He looked at Stark. "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow."

        "Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're-"

        "I'm sorry, Nick." Stark pulled up pictures of arrays of weapons. "What were you lying?"

        "I was wrong, Director. The world hasn't changed a bit." Thor and Natasha came into the lab, both looking a bit irritated themselves.

        "Did you know about this?" Doctor Banner asked Natasha.

        "You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?"

        "I was in Calcutta. I was pretty well removed."

        "Loki's manipulating you."

        "And you've been doing what exactly?"

        "You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."

        "Yes, and I'm not leaving because you suddenly get a little twitchy. I'd like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."

        "Because of him, and her." Director Fury pointed at myself.

        "Me?"

        "Wait, how is this my fault?"

        "Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. A couple years before that, we had an artifact awake that was so unaware and unafraid that she nearly killed everyone in New York. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned."

        "My people want nothing but peace with your planet."

        "My psychotic mother was controlling my mind. She's gone, now."

        "But you're not the only people out there, are you? And you're not the only threats. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled."

        "Like you controlled the cube?"

        "Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is the signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war."

        "A higher form?"

        "You forced our hand. We had to come up with something."