Brock Rumlow
Xia Yu's first reaction was to glance at Hawkeye, thinking that this time, he wondered which unlucky guy had been controlled.
Coulson had barely finished speaking when he stepped out of the elevator. Thor dashed up to him, grabbed Coulson's shoulder, and demanded, "You mean Loki? Impossible, he's dead."
Coulson pulled out a laptop. "Take a look for yourself. See how he introduced himself. He infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.., took control of several of our colleagues, and stole the Tesseract."
Natasha took the computer, while Thor turned to Coulson and asked, "The Tesseract is in your hands? My father left it on Earth over a thousand years ago; it's not a power you can control."
Xia Yu said to Thor, "Never mind that for now, come and take a look first, we'll talk about the rest later."
After everyone watched the video, Thor muttered, "I need to contact Heimdall."
Thor's message from Asgard revealed that Loki was not only alive, but had also allied with the Chitauri to launch an attack on Earth, and that the Chitauri army was already assembling and preparing.
Thor originally wanted Heimdall to check Loki's current whereabouts, but Heimdall told him that Loki should have something shielding his life force, possibly the Tesseract, and that Heimdall couldn't search among the billions of people on Earth one by one.
With the threat of war from an alien army, the situation escalated to a new level. Coulson hurriedly left, saying that a helicopter would be sent tomorrow to pick everyone up and take them to their operations command.
After reviewing S.H.I.E.L.D..'s research on the Tesseract, Tony and Banner discovered that the Tesseract continuously emits minute amounts of gamma rays. Tony and Banner immediately began searching for a design solution for the Tesseract.
Pepper Potts was supposed to go to Washington for a business trip the next day, but seeing that Tony Stark had important business to attend to, she decided to leave tonight.
Xia Yu had a sudden thought and said to Banner and Betty Ross, "Banner, let Miss Thaddeus Ross go to Washington with Pepper. Whether it's to relax, travel, or help Pepper, it might be dangerous for her to come with us."
At this crucial moment, Betty Ross was sensible enough to realize that staying behind would only be a burden if something happened, so he nodded and followed Pepper Potts.
The next morning, the group took a helicopter to the huge deck of an aircraft carrier at sea. This was Xia Yu's first time boarding an aircraft carrier. He knew that this was actually Helicarrier, which could not only fly but also achieve physical stealth using reflective back panels.
The group looked around the deck for a while, and then they saw many people using tools to secure the planes, trailers, and other equipment to the deck. Seeing this, Natasha said, "Let's go inside, everyone. It won't be breathable in here anytime soon."
"Are we going to dive into the sea?" Banner asked.
Hawkeye chuckled and said, "Just go to the edge of the deck and you'll see."
Everyone ran to the edge of the deck. At that moment, the aircraft carrier began to rise, with four huge propellers carrying large amounts of seawater up from the sea level.
Xia Yu had only seen it in movies, but it was nowhere near as shocking as seeing it in real life. The visual impact of such a huge mothership rising into the sky was enormous.
Xia Yu patted Tony Stark's arm and said, "Tony, I think you should get a new yacht."
When the mothership takes off, it's not suitable for people to stand on the deck. Apart from Xia Yu and Thor, even the Captain might not be able to stand steadily. After watching for a while, everyone quickly followed Hawkeye and Natasha into the bridge.
The bridge is the control room of the entire Helicarrier and also Nick Fury's command center. It is densely packed with no less than a hundred computers and staff. When Xia Yu looked up, he saw another circle of computers and staff on the second floor above.
The place where Nick Fury was directing was exactly the same as in the movie: a platform with touchscreen monitors on both sides, with Nick Fury standing in the middle. Whether it was convenient or not is another matter, but the effect of showing off was absolutely top-notch, which also fits Nick Fury's personality of liking to leave people with their backs to him.
Behind Nick Fury's platform was a conference table. Seeing that everyone had arrived, Nick Fury turned around and walked to the conference table, gesturing for everyone to sit down.
"There's someone playing games over there, I see him. Yes, it's you, young man." Tony spotted someone slacking off playing games immediately; you have to admit, being a CEO really makes a difference in this regard.
"Nick, how do you usually see the other screen?" Tony walked up to Nick Fury's platform like a curious child, covering one of his eyes with his hand.
"Turn around and look," a female agent standing next to the platform said calmly.
Xia Yu immediately recognized her as Agent Maria Hill, Nick Fury's most trusted agent, a Level 9 agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.., who joined the Avengers after S.H.I.E.L.D.. was temporarily disbanded in Captain America 2, and took on some logistical support work.
"That's really inconvenient." Tony said, turning and leaving the platform, casually placing a small, round metal object below the screen.
This thing will allow JARVIS to crack and hack into S.H.I.E.L.D..'s servers. Everyone agreed on this last night. After Tony and Banner finished studying S.H.I.E.L.D..'s research data on the Tesseract, they did not believe S.H.I.E.L.D. Tesseract for energy. They suspected that S.H.I.E.L.D.. was using the Tesseract to create lethal weapons.
"Alright, Stark, everyone's here, let's get to the meeting," Nick Fury said to Tony.
"First of all, I want to congratulate everyone. In light of the impending threat of war, last night I persuaded the World Security Council to formally establish Crisis Response Team. In other words, the Avengers are now completely legitimate," Nick Fury said.
Xia Yu curled his lip upon hearing this, "We don't care about that at all, let's talk about Loki instead."
"He has an army, the Chitauri, who don't belong to Asgard or any other planet. They chose to cooperate with Loki, and I think their condition is the Tesseract," Thor said.
Banner chimed in, "So his goal is to open a spatial portal."
"He needs to teleport an army, so the portal must be stable. He needs metal to stabilize it so it won't collapse like the one he came in with. Also, given the need to teleport an army, the portal needs to be larger and last longer," Tony Stark said.
"He also needs a high-density energy source to activate the Tesseract; theoretically, he needs to heat Tesseract to at least 100 million degrees Fahrenheit," Banner said.
"The most important thing now is to find Loki. We've already been using cameras all over the world to track him—cell phones, laptops, public cameras, and so on. Dr. Banner, you and Stark are in charge of tracking the Tesseract. Any problems?" Nick Fury said.
"I need as many Spectrum as possible. Call all the labs, set up all the Spectrum on the roof, and calibrate them all to gamma rays. I'll set up a tracking algorithm to identify the source, which will eliminate most of them, help us narrow down the search, and give us a place to work," Banner said.
Loki has set up a temporary base somewhere underground, and Dr. Selvig is helping Loki build the equipment to activate the Tesseract.
"Where can we find these things?" Loki asked a white man in combat gear next to him. If Xia Yu were here, he would definitely recognize him. This man was Brock Rumlow from the S.H.I.E.L.D.. operations team. He was a member of Hydra and the infamous villain Crossbones in the comics.
"I know which lab has them, but I need you to help me distract them, preferably by staging a little show," Brock Rumlow said.
"Just as I thought," Loki laughed.
Things have developed in a way that is quite different from what was depicted in the movie. Even with the strong momentum of the plot, many details will deviate significantly, and Xia Yu is aware of all of this.
But what he didn't know was that this time the enemy wasn't just Loki and the Chitauri...
Many people think the protagonist is too weak, but he's actually quite strong. If the protagonist is invincible among his peers, then the villains should also be strengthened, and the Avengers would become mere background Hero. That would turn it into an invincible wish-fulfillment story, which would be easier to write. It's a formula; twenty chapters can be rewritten into four hundred chapters, but then there would be no need to write about the Avengers.