17 Chapter: 17

Chapter 17:

-With Nick Fury-

"Report, Agent." Fury spoke to Natasha over the other end of her communicator. It wasn't exactly a phone per se, but a high end communication device that directly(and illegally) piggybacked off numerous satellites to remain untraceable.

"I briefly made contact with our query, but I couldn't speak to her for long. She seemed to be in a hurry." Natasha explained to him. Fury thought that 'hurry' was an understatement. The woman would have made major headlines had he not secretly put the kibosh on the media.

"Was that why our cameras showed her running at olympic level speeds through the heart of London, all the while, staring at that weird compass?" Fury asked. Yeah, that drew some eyes. A few videos had even been put online, which SHIELD immediately had taken down. Natasha confirmed that was the case. She then explained how their supposed angel was in a hurry chasing down… a demonic ninja cult. That a sorceress had told her about…

"…A ninja cult?" Fury asked. Nothing in this job fazed him anymore, but that was still weird. Fury had admitted to Romanoff earlier that he had seen some weird shit in his days, but he wasn't expecting honest to god Ninjas. He was expecting this to be a more otherworldly situation to be honest. "Were you at least able to confirm whether or not Layla had any hidden wings?" Fury asked.

Fury let out a sigh when Natasha told him that she had failed on that part. Layla had never displayed any wings to her. Natasha did confirm that Layla was able to create a lightsaber, or a lightspear as she called them. That was enough for Fury to speculate that Layla's wings were probably also real. Also, that she was either an actual Angel, or possibly an Alien. Fury wasn't sure what would be the more shocking situation if the world ever found out about her.

"Woah…" Agent Romanoff trailed off from the other side of the line. "You need to get a cleanup team down to my location immediately, sir. This entire theater is littered with ninja corpses." Natasha had called Fury when she was on the way to the location she had given Layla earlier. It sounded to him, like she had just arrived. While she was on the way there, she had regaled him with the full encounter she had with the Angel. That included Romanoff's short assessment of the other woman.

Fury didn't care about any of that right now though. In fact, he'd have to put his plans for contacting the Angel on hold after the revelation she had given his agent. Japan, an entire country, had supposedly fallen under the control of a secret demon worshiping cult… AND NO ONE KNEW! It was HIS job to know about things like that and prevent them from happening. He had obviously failed. Part of him would like to suspect that the Angel was lying, but Fury knew that just wouldn't be the case. His instincts were telling him so. As a spymaster, he'd learned to listen to his gut.

"Ok, Romanoff. You sit tight there and wait for our cleanup crews to arrive." Fury ordered her before he hung up. He then sent an urgent message to his other two most competent agents. He'd have to step lightly if what he suspected was true.

…

A few moments later Agents Coulson and Barton stepped into his office.

"You called for us sir?" Coulson asked. Fury gave them a look that they immediately recognized.

"Ah, so it's one of these situations then?" Barton joked. "So how fucked are we on scale of 1 to 10?"

Fury just glared before answering. "7… maybe 8 even." The two agents' eyes widened at his answer.

"What!? The hell happened? Did Nat discover a secret alien invasion or something!?" Barton questioned.

Fury exhaled in irritation. "I wish it were so simple… No, she discovered the existence of a secret cult that has allegedly usurped total control of one of America's closest allies. Japan has fallen gentlemen, and none of us knew about it"

Both agents were now open-mouthed staring at him in shock from the news. "An entire country!?" Coulson exclaimed, "Wait, Japan had been trying to get one of their people on the World Security Council for a few years now. Were they trying to infiltrate us as well? The other councilors were even considering letting them join." Coulson explained.

Fury nodded. It was only thanks to the efforts of the Chinese council member that Japan had been stonewalled from joining. Fury wondered if they suspected something was wrong as the country's closest neighbor. "You two will both be going to Japan to investigate. But I need you both to use extreme discretion. If the higher echelons of the country truly have been infiltrated, I want to know. Natasha is going to try and find our… informant again to try and get more information. If she succeeds, I'll relay it over to you both." Fury said as he gave them their orders.

"Although they haven't joined the council yet, we still have had a few agents from Japan join shield in the past year. Are we going to have them investigated?" Coulson asked. In response, Fury just raised his eyebrow and gave him the 'do you even need to ask?' look. They were SHIELD, the greatest spy agency in the world. Of course they were going to thoroughly investigate all of those agents. Not only that, Fury lamented the fact that he wouldn't be getting much sleep this week. He knew his own paranoia was going to force him to do extra work and thoroughly investigate ALL of his agents now. Where there was one mole, there were bound to be others nearby…

XXX

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