"MOTHERFUCKER!"
The phone hit the wall with enough force to shatter it completely, pieces scattering across the floor.
Several agents burst through the door within seconds, hands on weapons, scanning for threats.
"Boss, are you okay?" Rumlow asked carefully, reading the energy in the room and keeping his voice measured.
"Rumlow." The word came out quiet, which was somehow worse than shouting. "We got played. Played like three-year-old children."
The man paced, running the sequence of events through his mind with growing, humiliating clarity.
"After thinking about it properly, even a complete idiot could have seen it coming," he said. "Strucker is either already dead or he's been directly compromised and controlled. And all this time—ALL this time—we've been funding our own enemies."
He stopped pacing.
"The super soldier serum," he said, and the bitterness in his voice was almost tangible. "That treasure we've been hoarding, developing, protecting for decades. Our ultimate strategic asset."
"It's worthless now. A completely worthless piece of nothing."
"With everyone and their mother having access to Iron Man suits and Vibranium technology, nobody gives a single damn about the super soldier serum anymore," he continued. "And then we find out there's an even more advanced civilization like Wakanda that's been sitting there the whole time, making everything we had look like toys."
He laughed once, a short, ugly sound.
"We were fools jumping through hoops for someone else's entertainment. And we didn't even know we were in the show."
He turned sharply. "Rumlow. Get moving. Contact every politician we have leverage on—every official, every congressman, every minister in every country we've ever had in our pocket. We're the largest shadow organization on the planet. We apply pressure, we negotiate our own terms with Sokovia. We don't just surrender like everyone else."
"Why are you still standing there?" he snapped. "MOVE."
Rumlow didn't move.
"Boss," he said, with the careful tone. "It's not possible. Not anymore."
"What do you mean not possible?"
"Nobody cares what any official says right now," Rumlow explained slowly. "We tried. Some of our contacts attempted to publicly oppose the Sokovia arrangement earlier today. They didn't even get through their first sentence."
"They were beaten to death in the street, boss," Rumlow said quietly. "By ordinary people. Not soldiers, not enhanced individuals. Just people who have six days to live and have run completely out of patience for anyone trying to complicate their survival."
A helpless smile appeared on Rumlow's face—not amused, just the expression of someone who'd fully processed a situation.
"We can't do anything now, boss," he said simply. "It's over."
The silence that followed was complete.
Tony Stark's Private Residence
"Tony," Fury said, swirling a drink he hadn't actually tasted in twenty minutes. "Do you think this was all planned by Sokovia from the beginning? The Asgard attack, the whole war?"
Tony leaned back in his chair, swirling his own wine glass with the relaxed movement.
A calm smile played at his lips—not happy exactly.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "Maybe. Maybe not."
He considered the wine for a moment.
"But even if Sokovia orchestrated the whole thing—even if every piece of it was planned, the Skrull betrayal, the staged war, all of it—I'm genuinely grateful it happened this way," Tony continued. "Because the alternative was them simply declaring war directly against the whole world."
"And that would have had the same outcome," he said. "Same ending, same result, same transfer of power. Just with a significantly worse process. More destruction, more death, longer suffering."
"So honestly? If they did plan it? Smart," Tony said. "Efficient, relatively clean by the standards of global conquest, and they gave everyone a chance to survive."
He pointed his glass at Fury. "And Nick—don't even think about dodging responsibility here. This whole situation started with the green-skinned shapeshifting bastards that YOU brought to Earth and kept secret."
"If the public ever finds out the full story," Tony continued pleasantly, "they'll want your head on a pike. And a very specific pike, positioned somewhere very visible. So just be grateful you still have your skin intact and that Sokovia seems disinclined to throw you to the mob."
Fury's expression didn't change, but something in his jaw tightened.
"Those green-skinned monsters," Fury muttered, his voice dropping. "My own people. My own operation. Even his own wife betrayed him."
"We're still trying to locate the Skrulls with Wakandan assistance," Fury said. "Though honestly, after Sokovia formally takes over, they probably won't be a problem much longer. Someone with that level of power and intelligence will find them faster than we ever could."
"As for opposing any of this?" Fury shook his head. "Nobody has the energy. There are only two options in front of every person and every government on the planet right now: surrender to Sokovia, or get destroyed by Asgard. That's the entire menu."
"Anyone who tries to create a third option gets beaten to death by their own neighbors before they finish the sentence," he added. "People are very motivated when their lives are on the line."
Tony nodded slowly. "So why hasn't it finished yet? Why haven't we formally joined already?"
"Various governments are still discussing whether they can negotiate specific terms," Fury said, his tone making it clear exactly what he thought of that approach. "Trying to find some angle where they retain partial authority, some arrangement where they come out with more than everyone else."
"What bullshit," Tony said without heat, just a statement of fact. "They're stalling. Trying to find a way to profit from a situation that has exactly zero room for profit."
"It should be soon," Fury said. "Thirty-two countries have already formally surrendered. Most of their governments have dissolved entirely and Sokovia has moved in to manage basic services."
Tony was quiet for a moment, looking at his wine.
"I want to meet him," Tony said. "Elric."
"You and everyone else on the planet," Fury said dryly.
"No, I mean actually meet him," Tony said. "Not as a representative, not as a subject, not as someone negotiating terms. Just as a person. Engineer to... whatever the hell he is."
"You're just a billionaire," Fury reminded him.
"No, a billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, genius," Tony corrected immediately. "Get it right."
"Anyway," Tony continued, his tone shifting to something more reflective. "He can probably be considered the First King of Earth. They're already calling him that online."
"'First Crown of Humanity,'" Fury said, and the title sat strangely in the air between them, too large and too real to be comfortable.
"First Crown of Humanity," Tony repeated softly, tasting the phrase.
He was quiet for a moment, staring into his glass at his own reflection.
"You know," Tony said, "I genuinely never imagined that in my lifetime I would serve under a king. Any king. I'm American, it's practically constitutional to be allergic to the concept."
He looked at Fury with an expression that was half amused, half something more serious.
"Fury, do you think I can become a noble?"
Fury stared at him for a long moment.
"Go to sleep, Tony," he said finally.
The White Space
Inside the white space that existed outside of normal reality, every other version of him looked at him.
Their eyes were complicated now.
[You guys can check out my new story, "Traveling To Other World Started From Marvel With Shadow Monarch Powers"]