Marvel-ous Ninjutsu

00013. An Olive Branch of Friendship.

Peggy stood up and yelled, “You know where Steve's body is?”

Ezekiel shook his head and said, “You misheard me, I said I know where Steve is. I didn’t say anything about finding his body.”

Peggy was shaking slightly as she asked in a low voice, “Are you saying that he is still alive?”

“Yes.”

Peggy collapsed back into her chair with her head down, the whole room had gone quiet, Sam had even stopped typing on his laptop. After a minute or so she looked up with determined eyes and asked, “Where is he now?”

“He is currently frozen in a block of ice, inside the remains of the . It is located off the coast of Greenland in the Arctic circle. I have a couple satellite photos of where it is.”

A few images popped up on the screen and they could kinda see what looked like some black metal pieces stuck in the ice. A map appeared next and the images went over the map in a certain location. After that Ezekiel’s face appeared again as he said, “It took a while to rewrite all the coding for one of the CIA’s spy satellites, but it can take highly detailed photos now. Too bad they think the satellite lost it's orbit and burned up in the atmosphere. Their loss is our gain. I will send Sam the info on how to access it later."

Ezekiel Looked back at Fury and said, "I hope that is a good enough olive branch for now."

Everyone was quiet, even Peggy and Hank as they waited for Fury to answer. After a moment he shook his head and said, "All of my experience is telling me not to trust you. We don't really know you at all and you haven't told anyone what you want for our help. I’ve seen enough in this world to know that everything has a price. I wanna know what the price is for all of this before I say yes to anything."

Ezekiel smiled at that before he said, "I could tell you about myself, but my story is so unbelievable that you would assume I was crazy if I told you. Maybe when you actually trust me, I will tell you about it.”

Looking off to the side for a moment Ezekiel started to speak again in a low voice and said. “You want to know what my price is, Fury? My price is people's lives.”

Looking back over the room once more he took a moment to look at each person, when he was done he locked eyes with Fury and said, “If I do nothing and just let the world progress as it should, I know five people in this room who will die when Hydra finally makes its move. But it’s not just Hydra that I want to stop. I also know of other things that will happen, disasters, terrorists attacks. If I don’t do something, those people's deaths are on me because I had the ability to help and I did nothing.”

Fury kept eye contact with Ezekiel for over a minute before he finally let out a sigh and said, “I still don’t trust you, but I will work with you. Until you give me a reason not to. What do you propose we do? I assume you already have some type of plan formed?”

“I have some ideas, but no concrete plans. My first idea was removing some of the people here from S.H.I.E.L.D. so we can work without having to worry about being watched by Hydra spy’s. , Phil Coulson and yourself need to stay. But everyone else here is optional.”

Fury looked at the other two people in question and then asked, “I know why I need to stay in S.H.I.E.L.D., but why do Phil and Maria need to stay?”

“Phil is your go to for a lot of things in the future and runs point on some important things. Maria becomes your second in command later and is who takes over as director when you retire.”

Both Phil and Maria’s eye’s widen a little at that but say nothing. Looking around the room Ezekiel spots a Hispanic looking man with black hair that had a little bit of gray coming in. Once he locked eyes with the man he said, “, I would suggest that you retire for now. I know that between now and when Hydra makes their move in about twenty years your wife passes away and you leave S.H.I.E.L.D. for a few years because of that. But when you come back, you are a great asset to the organization and are one of the reasons S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t completely fall apart when Hydra attacked. I am sorry I can’t give you more details, but that is all I really know about you.”

The man looked completely shocked but just nodded his head in reply. The rest of the room stayed quiet for a moment before Ezekiel said, “I also have the names of a few people that aren’t currently in S.H.I.E.L.D., but are supposed to join it in the future. I want them recruited here instead. It will increase our manpower with people we can trust. I will get it sent to you after we finish here. I will also send you over everything I have collected on Hydra and the currently known members. But I want to stress that this list is tiny compared to how many there are. They have people in every branch of government, military, private company and other organizations that are important throughout the world. We can not show our cards until we know all of them.”

Peggy spoke up at that and said, “How long do you think it will take?”

“I could be as fast as a few years, or it could take me more than ten years. A lot of Hydra leaders are very cautious and it will take a while to figure out who they are. You also have to realize about thirty five percent of S.H.I.E.L.D. is currently Hydra sleeper agents.”

Fury jumped out of his chair and yelled, “How the fuck is that much of S.H.I.E.L.D. compromised?”

“When the people in power are already double agents, it’s not hard to bring in more. It’s actually pretty brilliant how they have done it honestly. But they also find people in S.H.I.E.L.D. who are susceptible to their way of thinking and recruit them from within. That is why we need to be cautious of our current actions and not alert them. We need to have the manpower to fight them properly. If we don’t it will turn into a protracted war and a lot of people will die.”

Fury started to slowly pace as he thought over what he learned. Ezekiel turned to look at Hank and said, “So Dr. Pym, after hearing all of this. Would you like to join us?”

Fury continued to pace, but also paid attention to Hank as he did. Most of the people in the room had listened to what Ezekiel had said and talked quietly amongst themselves for the past few minutes as they waited for his reply. Hank sat and thought for a while, sometimes he glanced towards Peggy then looked at someone else in the room for a moment. After a while he finally looked at Ezekiel and said, “I will help, but my priority is to rescue my wife first. Once that is done, I will see about helping in a more hands-on way.”

Ezekiel smiled at that and said, “Glad to be working with you Dr. Pym. Question for you, have you finished your yet?”

Hank looked a little shocked at first but then calmly said, “Yes, I have, why?”

“I would like to recover the captain as soon as possible and our group doesn’t really have the manpower to do it currently. But if a couple of people went with a shrinking particle disk, we could recover him and the ship and be back within a day or so. Then we could return it to its normal size here and bring the captain out of his hibernation. I would just ask you to go, but I have something else I need you to do and it also can’t wait. So I am asking that you trust someone else with your tech.”

Hank was quiet for a while before he looked at Peggy and said, “I will trust Peggy with some particle discs.”

Peggy nodded her head in thanks to Hank. Hank looked back to the monitor screen and said, “Now what is it you need me to do?”

“For a few weeks now I have been hiding info about an explosion that happened in Argentina. I didn’t want S.H.I.E.L.D. and more to the point Hydra finding out about it. There you will find your former colleague . He is currently taking care of a young girl named . I am sure you can take a guess at who her parents were.”

Hank almost spit out the name as he asked, “Elihas and had a kid? Wait, are you saying they died?”

“Yes, Elihas was trying to make a , but he cut too many corners and it ended up killing him and his wife. His daughter Ava got the worst of it, she is suffering from molecular disequilibrium.”

Almost everyone in the room looked confused except for Hank who had a look of horror. It took him a minute before he asked, “Are you sure it’s molecular disequilibrium?”

Ezekiel shook his head sadly and said, “Yes.”

“How is the poor girl still alive?”

Before Ezekiel could reply, Coulson asked, “What exactly is molecular disequilibrium?”

Ezekiel looked over to Coulson with a sad expression before he said, “The short answer is that every cell in her body is torn apart and then stitched back together. Over and over. Everyday.”

Ezekiel looked over the group, some people had a look of pity, some looked horrified. Fury is the only one who seems disinterested. Ezekiel looks back at Hank and said, “If I did nothing, that girl would be taken in by S.H.I.E.L.D. for training. She would be promised a cure and then trained as an assassin and spy since her molecular disequilibrium also gives her the ability to phase out of existence. A real life ghost, the perfect assassin honestly. But S.H.I.E.L.D. never finds a cure and honestly doesn’t really try, Bill Foster is the only person who really tries to help her. But I think if you and Bill work together, you will have a better chance to cure her sooner and it will also help you with researching the quantum realm.”

“Also, you were looking at hiring a brilliant kid from MIT, , to be your protege, right?”

Hank looked up at Ezekiel and said, “I was planning to make him a formal offer when he graduated.”

“Well if you go through with it, I would be completely honest with him. The man is a genius and is able to make his own version of your tech without your help. But since you weren’t honest with him about your tech in the first place and always denied it even existed while keeping him at a distance, he grew bitter towards you and ended up pushing you out of your own company. He became so obsessed with trying to surpass you, that when you destroyed all of his research work on it, he tried to kill you. I would suggest bringing him on to the project to help rescue your wife and treat him like an equal. But those are just my thoughts on the matter, you can do as you wish.”

Hank just nodded in reply, but said nothing else. Ezekiel looked at another person in the room and said, “Alright next order of business…”

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