26 Chapter 26

I sat in the MTF vehicle, Jones at my side while other members ran the various surveillance equipment around the area. We were monitoring a small clearing away from the population that we were supposed to have a meeting with Pierce and Fury at, the plan being to eliminate Pierce and plant a small seed of fear in Fury's head using that patented paranoia against him. We would also be keeping up our end of the deal with Fury by eliminating the head of Hydra within SHIELD.

One of the agents raised his arm, signaling movement in his sector, checking the camera feed, I noticed it was a few shield agents, either from Fury or Pierce trying to see if this was a trap. After a few moments multiple agents reported movement in their sectors, each tracking a Shield task force.

"They react predictably, although I suppose once you realize how paranoid Fury is his actions become predictable enough." I spoke aloud, the agents around me said nothing as they continued monitoring shield, already running each member they saw through various databases to separate Shield agents from Hydra parasites.

"Sir, Target Pierce just entered sector 9, and a convoy has just been spotted with Barton being among the passengers in Sector 6." The lead technician reported, his eyes darting around a small tablet he was using to communicate with the dozens of technicians and coordinate monitoring efforts.

"Sir, all Hydra agents have been identified" one of the agents reported, "good, have MTF Small Crawlers begin following them and wait on my signal." The Agent nodded and began relaying information quickly. I looked around the small vehicle, while this wasn't anything in the grand scheme of things, what I had built, no what we as the foundation had built, from crawling around like rats in the sewer to having a semblance of presence, soon we wouldn't be bluffing potential foes, soon the power we had would be real, but first we needed things to go okay today, to prepare for tomorrow.

As Fury and Pierce entered the field, Pierce with a small squadron of Hydra goons, while Fury was only flanked by Romanoff and Barton. The difference was that I told Fury to meet here and I would present him the rat that lead Hydra, while Pierce only got a letter detailing several Hydra operations and a warning to meet here to discuss negotiations for me to keep my mouth shut, a pretense of course, Hydra had to die because while not that strong they were wide spread and being capable of seemless mass infiltration I couldn't take the risk that they would later squirm their way into The Foundation like they had Shield, definitely wasn't personal because of the way they struck out against us and killed The Red Right Hand, definitely just business, I thought.

I could see Jones' jaw tighten as the man appeared on screen, it's strange, while all of The Foundation were System generated they still developed emotions of their own, from the nearly robotic level ones to Agents like Jones, who at level five seem no less real than anyone else. While the system had explained that they developed personalities it still struck me that some of them hadn't existed for even a week but could carry on conversations about things like sports and even high school, recalling events from before their existence as if they themselves attended, when I got curious and asked them to provide proof I got laughed off but one Researcher, a level four had actually produced, handing over a signed baseball he claimed he received two years ago at a playoff game.

"Are you alright sir?" One of the technicians asked, noticing me staring into space

"Of course I am." I replied, "begin phase two of the plan" I said, standing from my seat and speaking into a small radio i asked "is it ready"

A couple minutes later a response came from the Overseer back at base "yes sir, it just broke the atmosphere and successfully entered orbit, all signals are strong and were cleared to proceed on our end."

I gave a small smile and began walking towards one of the sets of screens, a microphone was quickly set up

"Hello? Hello? Testing testing one, two, three" I spoke, the speakers throughout the clearing and surrounding woods carrying my voice

Fury gave an exasperated sigh, while Pierce immediately began to look around, likely trying to find a camera or the speaker, considering they were shrunk and hidden he was unlikely to find either.

"Are you the one who threatened us, you should know SHIELD doesn't go easy on fools who think they are untouchable" Pierce said still glancing around like the boogeyman man was gunna appear out of a random bush.

I let out a small laugh, "No no Pierce we are simply keeping up our end of a deal" I said, waving to Jones who took a small platoon and a few members of Hammer Down.

After a few moments of small talk much to Pierces aggravation Jones arrived on site with a small package he handed to Fury that he opened and began reading without hesitation

"Well what ridiculous demands do they have for us" Pierce said smugly, not understanding his situation quite yet

"It's not a list of demands my acquaintance has handed him, what agent Jones, a man I'm sure your familiar with, handed director Fury is a list describing the actions of a certain man" I said with a condescending tone

I watched as Pierces face morphed from confusion, to horror, to rage as the realization set in, he quickly tore the sheaf of papers from Fury, flipping through them furiously. After a moment he crumpled the papers and threw them to the ground. "We had a deal!!" He screamed, slowly losing his composure "Kill them all, then sweep the entirety of the woods and burn them to the ground!!" He ordered

A moment passed, then another, and then one of Pierces men fell to the ground, and like a domino effect every Hydra goon in the field began to topple almost slowly.

A few moments later I received the mission success report from the Captain of MTF Small Crawlers, their mission was to shrink down, as the Pym tech we had 'acquired' was designated for their use, it would be their specialty outside of mass raids and transport, anyway after shrinking they his in the clothes and armor of each Hydra agent, equipped with syringe filled with modified Tetrodotoxin harvested from our octopi every member of Hydra was 'pacified' being rendered immobile.

The modified version they used allowed the victim to breathe at least meaning it could be used for later 'Aquisitions' it also was concentrated enough to knock out an elephant for several hours, which meant even though in their shrunken state it was still effective.

Pierce watched the last of his men fall to the ground with a shocked expression as he opened and closed his mouth several times trying to find the words.

"Now then Pierce normally I'd hand you to Fury so he could enact his... Furious punishment" I said cheerfully before letting my tone fall to seriousness "but you ordered an attack on my men, killed several Foundation members, and tortured one of my best agents. I as head of the foundation now give you not to Fury but to that same man, from this point on Agent Jones may do as he pleases" I said before turning off the mic

Jones approached the man, simply staring at him before nailing him in face with enough force the cameras picked up the sound of the impact. Pierce crumpled to the ground holding his nose.

To Jones's credit he didn't continue his assault, simply pulling out a small detonator like device and pressing the button. "What is that? What did you..." Pierce attempted to ask, unable to finish his question as he vanished from sight with a very audible boom.

Furys face dropped as his brain tried to process what happened, it stayed that way until we started phase 3 where I and the rest of the force assigned to this mission arrived and the foundation began collecting the immobilized Hydra agents, making sure to leave any we knew were pure Shield so Fury wouldn't have anything to get mad about later.

Fury saw me and immediately began marching over asking questions. "What happened to him, where did you send him" he asked giving me that signature Fury stare. "One, he died. Two, orbit" I spoke calmly

"We sent him to orbit, pretty simple" I spoke calmly.

"Okay" Fury said, still probably with thirty thousand questions and plans to try and steal the Orbit sending machine already brewing.

The brainwashed Hydra would be used to try and find way to break brainwashing, while Jones was immune to any brainwashing that would make him betray the foundation the fact that a skill like that existed meant that the other staff were just as susceptible as anyone else. Anyone who survived expirementation would be turned into D-Class, you can never have enough of those, a specially selected MTF would take their place for the infiltration of Hydra.

As for how we launched Pierce? The dagger I had charged with Shadow Tether was placed set into a box during the raid on their base, the container was loaded onto the satellite we built at our new base and launched a little bit ago. The detonator Jones held opened a latch exposing the dagger to the sun, and so on.

As we loaded up onto the trucks no one said another word as we headed back to the facility.