The Marvel Universe Without Filters

The Quinjet was fast. After sitting on the plane for several hours, Jack had traveled from New York to the Mojave Desert, not far from Las Vegas.

This was the opening location of The Avengers—the S.H.I.E.L.D. Dark Energy Research Facility.

When the Quinjet landed, Jack finally saw the Dark Energy Research Facility, a place unknown to most S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and 99.999999999% of the world's population.

Five main buildings arranged in two rows of three and two, an underground research complex, countless radar installations, and some little brats running around freely...

Holding his hammer as he got off the plane, Jack asked gloomily, "Can a research facility this important really let employees bring their families?"

Black Widow and the other agents looked at Jack strangely as they asked in return, "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s rules are strict, but we wouldn't deny employees the right to meet their family needs..."

Jack said, "This place doesn't feel very S.H.I.E.L.D. at all..."

Hammer in hand, Jack entered one of the buildings with the others and took an elevator down to the room where the hammer was to be stored. Once he set it down, the boring transport assignment that had consumed his entire day was finally complete.

Since Jack's clearance did not permit him to stay there any longer, he had to leave as soon as he deposited the hammer. But the Quinjet he had arrived in had other missions to carry out.

So the Dark Energy Research Facility could only send a car to take Jack to Las Vegas, where he would have to catch a local flight back to New York himself.

And they would not even reimburse business class—only an economy-class official ticket.

Fury was a cheap bald bastard. Today, that had been confirmed beyond doubt.

After arriving in downtown Las Vegas, Jack looked at the casinos along the way and changed his mind on the spot. He decided to stir up a little trouble here before heading back. After all, S.H.I.E.L.D. had not discovered any major villains or superheroes in this place.

Besides, coming all the way to Las Vegas had wasted quite a bit of his time. He could not possibly return empty-handed.

So Jack got out of the car and headed straight for a casino.

He casually entered one casino, took one look at security measures that nearly rivaled S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top-tier standards and the cameras everywhere, then quietly backed out.

The facts proved that casino owners understood security better than S.H.I.E.L.D...

Well, Jack definitely was not implying that when Hydra rebelled, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s insides had turned into a complete mess, and that the king of spies had not even managed to impose a mandatory lockdown...

After leaving the casino and seeing that McCarran International Airport was only two or three kilometers away, Jack decided to walk.

When Jack reached the Tropicana Hotel beside the airport, he saw a glamorous woman. If she had merely been pretty or had a good figure, Jack might only have stopped to admire her for a moment, but her face...

Jack stared at her in disbelief. Unless something had changed, this woman was Hela!

When she turned around, the dark green cape on her back completely confirmed her identity in Jack's mind.

Other than members of the Odin Family, no family or individual possessed such an instinctive obsession with capes.

The reason was simple... Try fighting while wearing a cape, and when someone grabs it, you would understand just how unpleasant that felt...

So when Jack saw that cape and identified the woman as Hela, he was completely dumbfounded.

Wasn't she supposed to be imprisoned by Odin?

Why was she in Las Vegas?

For a moment, Jack realized he faced a choice that was very easy to make.

An ordinary protagonist: Wow! Hela actually appeared in Las Vegas! I have to follow her and see what she's planning here!

A protagonist with normal brain function: Fuck! That terrifying woman who crushed a hammer with her bare hands! Run! Run!

After thinking for just a few seconds, Jack turned around and fled without looking back. The woman before him was no one to provoke. She might have been alone, but her strength... even ten million Kingpins would only be delivering themselves to her as food.

Jack ran to McCarran International Airport, bought the earliest departing ticket, and flew directly back to New York.

After landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York, Jack, who had been on edge the entire way, finally let out a slow breath of relief. He felt as if he had narrowly escaped disaster.

There was no helping it. Hela had appeared in Las Vegas, and he had just delivered the hammer to the Dark Energy Research Facility nearby. If there was no connection between those things, Jack would gladly go back and dance a tango hand in hand with Hela.

"Fury really knows how to court death..."

"Putting the Tesseract there was bad enough, but he also put a hammer there that no one except me could move. Before the Dark Energy Research Facility even exploded, it drew Hela over. What happens next... is definitely going to be entertaining..."

After mourning for one second for the universe's most famous little expert at courting death, Jack hailed a car to find Kingpin.

Sitting in the car, Jack felt that he had been coming to Hell's Kitchen more and more often. He had even become too lazy to deal with restoring his position and simply came here every day.

Arriving at Kingpin Tower, Jack wiped the smile from his face and entered Kingpin's office with a solemn expression.

As a crime lord, aside from his mandatory daily exercise, Kingpin basically sat in his office every day handling all sorts of matters.

Looking at Kingpin, who was intently focused on his computer, Jack felt that the man's serious work ethic had successfully stripped away another layer of his filter over the Marvel Universe.

Before transmigrating, Jack had thought that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents spent every day carrying out missions outside, Hell's Kitchen gangs spent every day burning, killing, and looting, and superheroes spent every day fighting crime.

But the reality was...

Every time S.H.I.E.L.D. agents finished a mission, they had to drink coffee, curse people out, and write reports all at once. Even after the report was done, their work was not over. They had to wait for the report to be reviewed, then wait for final approval before it truly counted as finished.

Most Hell's Kitchen gangs wanted to do business in peace. Fighting and killing every day cost money when underlings died or ended up hospitalized. If the boss was unwilling to pay even that, who the hell would risk their life for him...

Superheroes did not fight crime every night, either. They had their own troubles. Aside from making a living, the thing that gave them the biggest headache was filing taxes...

So in the real Marvel Universe, there was no such thing as blood flowing like rivers every single day...

If that were really the case, New York City would have been placed under martial law long ago. Did people really think that bringing over a carrier fleet and deploying an additional army group still would not solve Hell's Kitchen's problems?

So, seeing Kingpin seriously handling gang affairs, Jack let out a long sigh.

A dignified crime lord who had raised thousands of underlings and an entire staff team helping him run the gang's businesses still had to spend every day dealing with affairs himself...

A perfectly good boss had been forcibly turned into an entrepreneur who never took a day off...