69 Oliver's Friendly Ribbing -67

[The Triskelion]

Fury was swamped with work; this past few weeks have been more and more crazy. Not only did he have the 10 rings causing a massive amount of trouble across Asia, so much in fact that SHIELD had to pull everything out of the area.

Not that it had stopped the attacks and destruction in any way. Xu Wenwu clearly wasn't pulling any stops in this. Worse still, the Chinese government seemed to have fallen to him already. Which meant that they had the nerve to blame SHIELD for all the damage caused.

The person on the security board had changed, even if it was now someone belonging to the camp of a terrorist he couldn't do anything about it, and this new person wanted Fury to deal with the situation. All without allowing him to operate in China.

How the fuck is he supposed to deal with the 10 Rings if he isn't able to go after them? And worse yet, they were now also attacking other targets across the world, USA included.

On top of that whole mess there is the new mysterious island that appeared out of nowhere, with an equally mysterious fleet which also seems to have appeared out of nowhere, blockading the island.

Whenever something mysterious happens, then it would be him, everyone expecting to have answers to give. Yet, for once, he had no answers, none at all. How the fuck does a fleet like that appear out of nowhere!

 Well, to be honest, it wasn't that the fleet appeared out of nowhere, merely that those ships didn't seem to have belonged together. Some of those ships had even been assumed to belong to the US Navy.

Yet all of a sudden, these ships all grouped up together, appearing to ignore orders, which was when people started to notice that those ships didn't belong to whom they had first assumed. They had just pretended to be parts of various forces.

No, he had dozens of different nations out there, all claiming that the ships were theirs, that the island was theirs, telling everyone else to stay away. Which didn't do much to escalate the situation at all.

Even SHIELD didn't know to whom those ships really belonged, which meant that should a battle break out, well, who knows who would go to war with whom. Worst was that plenty of those nations, all small and corrupt, claimed that their new fleet had nuclear capabilities.

Something which was indeed backed up by readings from the area, some of those ships could fire and had nuclear warheads. Which made this situation all the more tense. No one liked the idea of these nations having that kind of weapon.

Not that Fury believed that they did. He wasn't fooled by the clams of those ships belonging to them. No this was something else, a coverup for something bigger.

These ships, this fleet belonged to someone else, someone who had been laying in wait, hiding. Yet came out for this island.

This meant this island was clearly of the utmost importance; after all, there was no way they would have revealed these assets, so clearly hidden, for anything unimportant.

A clearly Important, mysterious, suddenly appearing island to a mysterious group with a large fleet and nuclear weapons, well, that was something SHIELD needed to deal with. Yet, with the situation with the 10 Rings, he had lost a lot of his power in the region.

That wasn't even taking into account the global manhunt for one Jonathan Graves. The organization behind him. Then, there was the whole mysterious case of murders happening around the world.

The assassination of Ricci and the disappearances of so many enhanced. Now, even some Ikea stores in Sweden are acting up. Every single person inside it just never comes out. Sending in people only for them to never come out, either.

The whole store was very aggressively bought up and closed off. The world had gone to the shits in the past few months. Clearly, something was happening, something big that he had missed.

Fury decided that he would need to find the source of all this and deal with it once and for all. Which meant he had to start looking into one of the few clues he had, this mysterious cabal that Ricci had belonged to.

However, he couldn't do that without Agent Romanoff, whom he also needed for many other missions. 'Perhaps I will have to just give up on China and most of Asia for a while, use the agents from there to solve some of the other problems first.' He mused.

He almost wished he was back in the simpler days where he was just a simple agent, the burden of leadership was indeed a heavy one.

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[SITE-160]

Moving the pawn to e4, Dr. Oliver Bell started the game and looked up at Bruce. "It sure sounds like someone has a crush on Dr. Morris.' He teased.

Bruce, for one, blushed slightly and moved a pawn of his own forward to e5. "It's not like that. I just found her fascinating, is all."

Moving a knight to f3, attacking the pawn on e5. Bell continued to tease Bruce. "So fascinating you stayed down there for a full week. I don't know a lot about her to be honest, but she sounds like someone who wouldn't mind trying to tame the Hulk."

Bruce placed a knight of his own to c6 in defence of his pawn hard enough to shake the entire board. "I knew it was a bad idea to tell you about her." He grumbled but he really was happy for these types of conversations, it was something he had missed so very much while on the run.

Bell, opening up the center and putting pressure on e5, moved a pawn to d4. "No, no no, don't think you can escape now, do tell me all about your trip."

Knowing that Oliver wasn't about to give up on this, Bruce could only sigh and continue the game. Capturing the pawn on d4 with one of his own. "It was very fascinating. The object, 1338 was something really impossible from a purely scientific point of view."

Bruce then began to tell all about the research he had been able to do while down there. which the most important one was getting a sample of one of the healing pastes the boy was able to make from common plant materials.

The plants he used had indeed been nothing interesting. He had personally seen the boy run around and pick the things up. The method was also nothing special. Just grinding them together using stones and sticks.

Yet the result had been far better than even the most advanced medical drugs in the world. Products created by teams of skilled scientists and with billions of dollars in funding. Completely outdone, but some crushed-up berries and leaves.

Bruce had been allowed full access to the sample and had been able to run a multitude of tests on it. From a purely scientific point of view, the sample had no use whatsoever. It was just some compost.

Yet when used as it was meant to be, it suddenly showed impossible effects on healing cuts and bruises. It wasn't instant, but something that should take days took hours instead. And what should have taken weeks took mere days.

It was almost madding how science failed him completely when it came to this SCP object. The other one he worked on, 1555, while also impossible, could at least be explained by some kind of very advanced technology.

1338, however, didn't seem like something that could be explained merely by technology. Sure, many of the objects he had read about fell into that category as well. But this was the first time he saw one himself.

It was with a massive blush that Bruce moved his knight to c6 and captured one of Oliver's pawns after having told one a particularly embarrassing part of his trip.

Oliver shook with laughter as he placed down his queen on d2. "I can't believe that; no way, you just happened to wander around and spot a naked, skinny-dipping Dr. Morris, who you totally have a crush on."

Moved his knight to g4 and defended himself. "It wasn't like that at all. I was collecting water samples near the river, and it was purely coincidental. Besides, it's not professional to discuss such matters." Bruce tried to deflect, focusing intently on the chessboard, yet the faint redness on his cheeks betrayed his embarrassment.

Oliver, not one to let the topic go easily, advanced his bishop to g5, pinning Bruce's knight to the queen. "Oh, purely coincidental, huh? So you didn't stop and take a good long look at her? From your description of her, well it sure did sound like you knew exactly what she looked like."

Bruce sighed, realizing that Oliver was enjoying this far too much, but he also knew there was no escaping the conversation now. He decided to change his approach, moving his bishop to e6, trying to shift the focus away from his embarrassment and back to the game. "Let's just say I was caught off guard. And please, let's focus on the chess game, shall we?"

Oliver chuckled, clearly amused unwilling to relent. "Now, now Bruce, I can handle the game AND hearing all about what happened after you saw your crush in the nude like that." He teased while capturing Bruce's knight with his bishop, continuing their strategic battle on the board.

 Having no choice but to relent and give his friend what he so clearly craved. "Fine, fine so yeah I stood and watched her like a total idiot, unable to move from the spot." He sighed as he told the story. "She noticed me once my heart rate spiked, then spent the rest of the time I was there teasing me about it." He said while advanced his queen, threatening Oliver's bishop.

Oliver leaned back, a smirk playing on his lips as he considered his next move. "I'm sure you didn't mind the teasing one bit, bet the reason you didn't spend more time there was to hurry back and fix the problem with your heart rate." He moved his bishop back, safeguarding it from Bruce's queen while still keeping pressure on the board.

Bruce rolled his eyes, hearing that, Continuing the game and their chat which thankfully moved away from that topic soon enough. Bruce was left feeling unsure of what to think about the situation.

Oliver wasn't wrong when he had said that Lena continued to tease him about that situation after the fact. She had taken the whole getting caught naked with a good laugh, apparently it was a risk she didn't mind when she chose to bathe in the open like that.

He had taken the teasing as the price he had to pay for getting to see such a sight. It did however leave him feeling unsure about his relationship with both Lena and betty. He knew he wasn't in a real relationship with either right now.

Yet he wasn't sure if it was right for him to go back to Betty after all this, or if he even had a chance with Lena. His distraction with that line of thought led him to lose the game against Oliver as well, which he knew he would hear about for the next week.

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[with Jonathan Graves]

After the whole Shield debacle, Jonathan had been reassigned to a mission far away from the action and the chance of running into anyone from Shield again.

A reassignment he wasn't pleased with one bit. Sure, he understood the need and didn't resist the transfer order when it came. He would just have wished he wasn't transferred to quite such a hellish place like this.

Nonetheless, he worked hard to do the mission entrusted to him. More so since this mission was one that came from the O5 council itself. He wasn't quite sure what about this mission was so important that it needed the O5 council to be involved, but he guessed that a plane this fast might be worth it.

So, he and his men had been searching and digging around for this advanced piece of engineering for weeks now, and finally, he could report that it had been found. Now, he just needed to dig it up and ship it to SITE-311.

Then he could hopefully get transferred somewhere with milder weather.

A/N

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