At Hero's Bay

Introduction

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐔𝐧𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝

Within a dim-lit room, glowing white and blue through the dark, filled with the specimens known as humans.

They were fickle, fragile little things, but prepotent amongst each other. Within their short lifespan, they made up a small part of nature known as life—ever growing and ever changing—living idly on their own little planet called Earth. Though their minds were as adept as their part of existence, they put themselves to good use.

From birth to adulthood, they made themselves useful—powerful. But that didn't last for long. Now they, these people in this metal labyrinth facility, realized that they were beings within a small world, even smaller than whatever else was beyond the bounds of their planet's atmosphere.

But they understood that some time ago already, a great many. Alien beings, led by a god of another world, had come once. Only a select few knew they were called the Chitauri, an army that invaded their ships and Leviathans in America's New York. They proved enough—with all the death and destruction—that there was more out there. In the great, black, starry nothing. And they were terrified.

They should have died—and many did—but the rest of the world was fortunate.

The humans had them—those who were greater; the Avengers.

Most were human, some were not, but they were all heroes.

From then on, the world has changed—the universe has changed.

For better and for worse.

『✭』

Countless distress faces flash blue and white, each of their foreheads slick with a sheen of sweat. They had been working for hours now, tapping their trembling fingers onto damp keyboards, glowering down wearily at their multiple monitors flying through countless windows. Encryption codes of all sorts had now been burnt into behind their eyelids, each unit memorized by the second. Their lives depended on it; this task. So, they could not complain in the slightest.

Besides, how could they, when they were so caught up in S.H.I.E.L.D's intel?

They weren't making progress, nothing that looked promising enough to satisfy the head of the division—the man in charge. A rumor lingered for a good hour that he wanted to take care of the matter directly. He took an alleged initiative, that he wanted this whole ordeal to be done as quick as possible, to ensure that nothing like 2012 ever happens again.

Nobody wanted that, they were sure, but his entrance was so agonizingly prolonged—some thought he wasn't coming, at all.

But he was always so fashionably late; as the light 'ping' of the elevator announced their final hour. The lingering presence between steel doors was intimidating enough to heed eyes that dart from across the room and away from their work. The elevator had slid open with a gentle hum where a dark, towering man stepped into the mechanical light.

His strides were predatory towards the metal railing, overlooking the surveillance division like a ravenous bird in flight searching for his next prey among the worker ants. The heads veered back to their screens, vexing him as he rolled his singular eye—the other hidden by a black patch. His footsteps were heavy, leaving an echoing impression of the walls the rattle. As he descended the staircase, someone seemed to be waiting for him at the other end.