Hopes and Fears

When the darkness faded away and revealed the scene of a stadium once more, unlike what some would expect, there were no cheers. Instead, a gloomy and solemn air hung over the heads of all those present.

Down in the arena below, Tony's face was also marred by a grim expression, lacking any of his trademark character as he sighed. However, if one looked deep into his eyes, they could find that there was an excited spark amidst the turmoil.

Everything about this new world excited him. From the technology, to the aliens, to the story behind it all, never in his life would he have thought to become so enraptured in a video game before today.

'If I can find a way to reverse engineer the stuff in this trailer, I could propel humanity into the stars,' the genius thought to himself in excitement. Plus there's that armor, while not as advanced as mine in some areas, there's bound to be some good stuff to take inspiration from.'

In the next moment however, he shuddered, 'It's a good thing this VR didn't come about while I was still in the weapons business. Just imagining that bastard selling those weapons to terrorists, makes me want to dig him up and fight all over again.'

Across from the billionaire in the blue corner, Steve's thoughts were far different. The trailer had brought up some bad memories he'd much rather forget, 'Pain, anger, hatred, sorrow, those are not emotions that accompany victory. And there were those words at the end, I've been to enough memorials to know one at a glance.'

The veteran shook his head, looked around at the excited crowd above, and sighed, 'I hope Fury doesn't ask me to play this next game. I've had enough war to last myself a lifetime.'

•••••••••••

Within his office at The Triskelion, the same one-eyed man on the Captain's mind exited the VR with a contemplating expression. He naturally didn't attend something as mundane as the semifinals, but when he was told the next ASTIR product was about to release a new trailer, he couldn't afford to miss it and signed in immediately.

Lifting his head, he saw his most trusted agent watching the web version on his phone. He waited for him to finish, wanting to hear his subordinate's opinion before voicing his own.

A few minutes later, Coulson lifted his head and looked over at his boss. His eyes flashed with a brief melancholy for merely an instant before returning to normal. Fury nodded at this, he'd trained his agent well.

"Sir, this game could have a severe impact to the world," Coulson said after gathering his thoughts, "the problem is that we don't know whether it will be a good or bad one. Just the fact that this new game is so realistic, to the point of being indistinguishable from reality, will most definitely cause us some headaches down the line."

The agent sighed, "I can already list many people who'd be foaming at the mouth to get a closer look at the technology in this game. Not even counting the humans whose weapons were shown to far outclass our own, those alien ships and lasers are likely the wet dreams of the boys down in R&D. I believe we'll have our hands full for the foreseeable future, sir."

"What about the web trailer?" Fury asked, his hands steepled under his chin and elbows atop his desk. "How did it differ from the one in the VR? It didn't take you nearly as long to finish it after coming out."

Coulson knew what his boss really meant and shook his head, "It's much more closely aligned to the videos were used to, but it will still draw people in after seeing how Pokémon played. Our best guys couldn't even get close to touching their servers and haven't attempted to do so after you ordered them to stop, there's no way of keeping this all to ourselves."

Fury's brow twitched at the mention of their failed attempts at hacking. A certain anthem loomed ominously at the back of his mind for a moment, before he sighed and rose from his seat, "That's all for now agent, your dismissed."

The man with a receding hairline nodded and left the room as the director made his way to a window. He looked down at the many agents going about their work while gathering his thoughts.

While Fury knew everything his successor had said was true, he had many more worries of his own. As an old player in this field, he'd picked up on far more of the small details that would slip by most people at first glance. Just the small UNSC labels here and there were enough to give him a headache with the council for the foreseeable future, let alone what his agent had just mentioned.

He fished out an old beeper from his coat pocket and fiddled with it for a moment, before sighing and putting it back. He'd thought of contacting an old friend and asking if they knew anything about those aliens in the trailer, but believed it was unlikely to be the case.

His gaze hardened as he clenched a fist within his coat pocket. Despite all the worries he held, Coulson was right about there being many good things that could come out of this new game.

Stark had stopped developing weapons and no one else was anywhere near capable of filling his place. With all these new threats that seem to be popping out of nowhere these days, those new technologies might possibly hold the key to giving Earth a fighting chance.

Of course, he wasn't stupid enough to think that those threats wouldn't find a way to get their own hands on them, but there had been a noticeable decline in criminal activity following the release of Pokémon. Perhaps this new game would follow the same trend as well.

He just had to increase his vigilance in the future and hope that his faith in the Initiative wasn't misplaced.