Nick paced furiously in front of the table like an angry bull. Across from him stood Coulson, Hill, and even Grant Ward. The last of them had become one of their own, having just gone through an utterly terrible battle.
It wasn't as though Hydra had no aspirations. Though most of them had only joined to find work, if there was a chance to get rich through their own efforts, who would refuse it?
But cold reality had dealt them a crushing blow. Fighting the Court of Owls meant eating meat, but fighting Apokolips's army of Parademons meant bleeding.
Before they could react, the even more ambitious Hydra leaders from Europe had sent them to the battlefield. They suddenly realized they were still cannon fodder, but by then, it was too late.
At least they could still convince themselves that the city had been sealed off and there was nowhere to run. Fighting was for their own sake, after all. Those monsters wouldn't give them a chance to surrender.
But as the saying went, an incompetent commander could exhaust an entire army. If these Germans knew how to fight, how could Little Mustache have died so miserably?
The German faction of Hydra, including Red Skull, had been Little Mustache's personal guard. They resembled the Gestapo more than an army and had none of the qualities needed for a head-on war.
They had German equipment, the official banner of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the advantage of striking first, yet they could only fight the Court of Owls—a city's private armed force—to a standstill. That alone showed just how poor their grasp of warfare was.
A person could be evil or stupid, but they couldn't be both evil and stupid. Once the alien army arrived, they knew they couldn't win. Declaring that they would