Nick Fury: a ghost in a crowded world. A dumb man in a world where fools were the loudest and common sense was subjective. He was THE shadow broker. The Captain of the Flying Dutchman. The scarred pirate with the eyepatch.
He was not the name in the REDACTED files. He compiled the REDACTED files. Conspiracy theories? Those were his headlines after his morning coffee (black, like the coat he wears).
No, Nicholas Joseph 'Nick' Fury was the man who put names to shades and shadows. To him, threat levels and persons of interest were just a matter of clearance. Freedom and Democracy be damned.
He did not have the biggest gun—too bulky. Too glaring— because he did not need to. He knew who had the biggest guns and where they were aiming it at.
The dome of operation that was SHIELD was the best at what they did, and what they did best was knowing things and people. They were not the strongest organization out there, but SHIELD had agents that knew people in stronger organizations.
In case it wasn't clear, it wasn't America, Chinese or Russia that were spying on people; it was him, Nick Fury.
It wasn't a bird, a plane, or a satellite in the sky. It was Nick Fury's one good eye.
He was Big fucking Brother.
Now being the top guy-in-the-know in their mudball of a planet, Nick Fury, with SHIELD as an extension, prided himself in having an ear(or eye) on every major and 'technically' minor news that was worth hearing.
Hearing about some gunsmith making good guns that were currently temporary ghost marks to enforcement databases, and distributing them to the crime gangs of New York was an interesting piece, but not one that required his intervention.
He would bet his boots that the identity of the gunsmith won't remain a secret for much longer because of how stupid thieves and robbers could be, especially if they were gathered in a group or a 'family'.
If the guy was good enough then he wouldn't mind interfering with the local gangs and scoop him up and use him as a favor to Ross. If the gunsmith was that good.
Either way, he didn't really care much about it. He could list over 20 genius gunsmiths in Russia that were involved with the mob— some gunsmith in New York was hardly something he cared about. That was the police's job.
On the other hand, hearing rumors—bare whispers—about some vague mutant cure going around, and hearing that, allegedly, some mutants were giving up their mutation for compensation — now that was some interesting, and potentially dangerous news.
He did not need a repeat of what happened in '05, another scenario where Mr. Terrorist himself is threatening to flip over the Evergreen State.
Admittedly, that wasn't even his biggest concern. He was more interested in which councilman or senator was involved in this, because this was just the type of thing they were fond of doing.
As much as he couldn't trust Ross, he was firmly certain(thirty percent) that the old war hawk had nothing to do with this.
Also, given the fact that some people somehow knew that there was some sort of mutant cure going around, it was annoying as fuck that NO ONE knew anything about the mutant cure. It was as if the information came out from thin air and everyone sniffed it.
The matter was a very delicate one that he was careful about who he sent to trace out a link. Sending either Coulson or Hill was synonymous with sending in a camouflaged nuke. They were the best he had but he knew for sure that sending either of them would result in some kind of escalation.
This needed stealth, experience, capability and precision: there was only one person he had(without outsourcing) that fit the bill to a tee.
Clint Barton. The Hawkeye.
If it was espionage and infiltration then he would have called back Natasha Romanoff and sent her instead.
However, this wasn't about silently erasing a mark. This was about plausible deniability.
He sent his best eye in expecting results and results was what he got. He had not actually been expecting something concrete for at least ten days, but it seemed like he was still underrating Clint Barton.
Without a doubt, he was SHIELD's most capable agent.
When he got further confirmation from Natasha on a highly possible lead and a request for immediate extraction, he had immediately greenlighted it.
The list she sent him was very interesting, to say the least. A normal man would look at it and call it an elaborate prank, but Fury was far from normal. The world they lived in was hardly normal.
He took Natasha's warning and responded appropriately, even going as far as outsourcing it to someone nearby, and he waited.
The first thing the team was to do on arrival was to negate the sophisticated signal jammer on the building with one of Stark's trinkets to give him his vision.
And that was when everything went wrong.
He blinked. The frown on his face slowly receded. He tapped a number on the intercom on his desk and pinged the only person the number was connected to.
A few minutes later, someone stepped inside his office and came to a stop in front of his desk.
"I'm assuming you know why I called you here?" He asked as he looked at his top agent, Yelena Belova, the Black Widow.
"Yeah, yeah, I already heard." She said with a roll of her eyes.
"Whatever you do, steer away from his Brotherhood and the others." Fury said with a dead grim expression, ignoring her frivolous attitude. "All I want to know is who is making a cure for mutants."
Like a skipped record, her amusement disappeared in an instant. "Got it." She then turned around to leave.
"Miss Belova," Fury called out to her. "I don't have to remind you about the importance of your success, do I?"
Her brief pause was the only reply she gave and Fury accepted the admission.
.
...…
Isaac grumbled as he finished clearing out that particular rabble. He was usually a mild mannered man, his only passion being his trade, and it was really hard for something to put him in a bad mood outside his trade.
He wasn't angry even, he was just irritated. What just happened was not something that would the top 50 times he's been pissed off, but that didn't mean that his mild irritation didn't come with its own reprisal.
First of all, those two idiots had goaded his attention and interest into thinking that they were genuinely about to buy something, only for them to suddenly try to kidnap him. His annoyance left him befuddled at the ludicrous thought of trying to kidnap a Merchant from THEIR shop.
He dealt with both of them easily(obviously) and just when he thought that the irritation and profound disappointment would mellow away with time, a group of some people tried infiltrating his shop.
What kind of disrespect was that? The door was literally the last thing they used.
Four of those idiots waltzed in, guns held up, and when they saw him they asked him, rather rudely at that, where the first two idiots were and while he was explaining what happened, wanting them to understand how rudely their friends acted, they suddenly started shouting and disturbing the peace of his shop with their obnoxiously loud guns so he lashed out… accordingly.
He looked at the bouquet of feathers, white goose feathers, sitting inside a small vase at the top of a shelf and felt that bout of disappointment bubble up as his irritation flared.
They were very lucky that he wasn't a stickler for his rules as most of his peers and seniors were.
No, that wasn't accurate.
He enforced his rules, but unlike most Merchants, he did not resort to capital punishment at every little offence.
As for these guys, to a lesser degree compared to the first two, he practically inducted them into the shop—like a forceful free purchase—which was basically kidnapping their entire existence. As long as they remain in the shop, no one would remember them.
Their existence before the shop meant nothing—whoever they were before never existed. All they were now was a pair of shiny marbles and a bouquet of feathers. And that was what they would remain until he decided otherwise.
He might extract a price from them to let them go or he might let them go for free if he felt like it, or he might just forget about their existence altogether. If that became the case then he would just load them off to his agent from the Company.
With that he pushed them away from his mind…. Why couldn't they just buy something off the list? It was league's better than being denied existence.
"You know what, maybe it's not such a bad idea." He said with a resigned exhale. It was just his luck that his recent streak of customers were more of the irritating sort.
He created a board and carved out the general rules along with a foreboding warning.
"Come here." He called over one of the floating specters and when it came over, he grabbed it and fused it with the rule board. He ignored the horrifically evil laugh the board started cackling and continued his work overwriting some of the shop's rules and activating some of the dormant ones.
"There." He said to the board after finishing his little task. "You're now promoted, how about that?"
The laughing board became maniacally gleeful at his words as screaming ghost faces started pushing out from the board.
"Keep the theatrics to a minimum. Don't scare every customer that comes in, only the assholes that start breaking the rules."
The tortured faces sank back into the board but the laughing remained, though with a smaller voice.
Isaac looked at the board and frowned. "What? You still want me to hang you up, myself? Why— you know what, no problem."
He hung the board on the second bend that led to the counter and the bulk of the shop, a place where everyone would see it.
"Now then—" his words fell off as his doorbell rang.
"Fucking hell." He almost groaned as he heard that familiar gruff voice.
"What a surprise! Welcome back." He said to Frank Castle as the man made his way over with suspicious and hesitant steps. "Honestly I didn't think you'd return."
"Me too." Frank replied tersely, stealing a back glance at the rule board behind him. "Don't know why the fuck I'm even back here."
"It's not hard to figure out." Isaac remarked with a shrug, his irritated eyes staring at Frank's depressed ones. "So, what will it be this time?"
"Before that," Frank jabbed a finger over his shoulder to point at the rule board, "What's that about?"
Isaac sighed. "Some people can't just be civil so I hung that there to at least warn them before they do anything stupid."
"Stupid… right." The man said with a tone that was full of reflection. "And if they keep being stupid?"
Isaac gave a half-hearted couldn't-care-less shrug. "Hit snooze on their existence like I did the last group of idiots. I might add their soul to my specters, or just outright destroy it."
Frank looked at Isaac for a second, a long silent second, and softly exhaled with a soft shake of his head.
"Give me the shotgun and 10 mags for both it and the pistol." He mulishly ordered.
Isaac wordlessly made the gun appear floating in midair in front of Frank, and asked the wary looking Frank. "Anything else? If you don't mind, allow me to recommend three things that I think will catch your interest and help you in your extracurriculars."
"Go ahead." Frank took the gun and held it in different positions to test its balance. He stopped after he was satisfied with the results and regarded Isaac and the three new things on the counter.
"Estus— a magic potion that heals any degree of physical wounds, poisons, and other debilitating ailments. A must have for those with dangerous occupations." He shifted the glowing bottle to the side and pushed the other two items—a malformed skull mask and a book, an instruction manual—towards Frank to read their descriptions for himself.
—The Face of Fear (Tales of Maj'Eyal): A mask carved from a malformed, distorted skull. Its hollow eyes seem to stare back, causing shivers in those foolish enough to stare at it.
It instills growing fear in foes in a close radius and, depending on the synergic actions of the wearer, has a low chance of instilling Paranoia—one of the Four Fears— in foes. Has an even lower chance to cause Despair, and a minuscule chance of causing Terror, an effect that creates a crippling state in affected foes.
It has a negligible chance of causing Haunted in affected foes, a state that causes a lasting detrimental mental effect.
*To instill fear, you have to embody it. Every action is a stroke that makes it grow.
Price: $9,700
Frank took a deep breath and looked at the last item, which was the weird instruction manual.
—Shinshinkai-Orochi-ryuu Karate Complete Combat Manual (Baki): The manual of the perfected fighting style of Doppo Orochi and his adopted son, Katsumi Orochi.
A strong-type full contact combat style that has been honed to its conceivable pinnacle, used by Doppo Orochi, one of the handful of men able to contend with the Demon himself, Yuujirou Hanma.
Only those dedicated to the martial way can tell the true value of this manual, and even then it'll still be lacking.
Price: $26,000–$1,000,000.
He couldn't tell what was special about the fighting manual from the description or why it would be important enough that Isaac recommended it. He was no slouch in fighting so he doubted he would need a combat manual to teach him how to fight.
But then his eyes trailed down to the price tag and confusion seeped in on seeing the weird figures.
"What's with the price?"
"This particular manual comes with a condition as part of its price. The creator, Doppo Orochi, a 10th Dan Grandmaster, sold it to me on two conditions: one, whoever buys it will accept him as their martial master. Two, if they manage to achieve a practitioner level in any of the techniques inside the manual within a month then they will pay the first price. They will be in debt of $1,000,000 if they fail to do so in a month."
Isaac's explanation killed any interest Frank would have had in it. It was a debt sink.
He scowled at Isaac. "Ain't that just a fancy way to get into debt? Thought you dealt in transparency?"
Isaac blinked, looking genuinely confused. "Was I not transparent enough?"
"Oh you were." Frank scoffed. "On how to scam a poor fucker of his soul to whatever the hell you are."
Isaac looked at Frank—no smile, no frown, just a neutral look—and Frank saw the look in his eyes. Those eyes could never belong to a young man. Old men didn't have such eyes.
"Frank, I'm a Merchant." Frank's brows creased at that word again, not understanding what it really meant with the way Isaac said it.
"I only sell things of quality or importance. Instead of wondering if it's a scam, you should instead ask yourself why the full price is such an exorbitant amount. You should be wondering if you can master it quick enough so you can pay for it dirt cheap." Isaac shook his head as the look in his eyes faded away, but Frank spotted the disappointed gleam clearly.
It was as if he was looking at a child choosing five $1 bills instead of a single $100 bill.
He initially only came for the Arbitrator shotgun but he then decided to also get the healing juice and the mask Isaac recommended.
Isaac recommended it. Everything Isaac had recommended suited him perfectly… shit!
He looked at the manual again. It looked old and worn out but it also had than genuine smell to it.
"You said you know your customers, right?" Frank asked, still looking at the manual, his interest growing.
"I'm a Mer-"
"You're a Merchant, right, you've said that too." Frank picked it up and held it towards the shotgun, the glow juice and the mask. It was as if he could see a synergy between everything Isaac was selling him. "You recommended it because you think it'll be perfect for me, right?"
"Basically." Isaac said dryly but Frank was sure he had a note of amusement somewhere in there.
"One month, right? I'll take it." Frank said with a grim certainty, knowing with full clarity that he just traded with his soul on the line.
"Perfect." Isaac clapped happily. It was a little weird seeing an adult this excited about making sales in a pawnshop but Frank didn't let it bother him.
"The gun, magazines, mask and a pack of a dozen Estus comes to a total of $35,900, without the cost of manual. You can pay for the manual at the end of the one month deadline, but if you want to pay the initial cost of the manual now your new total will be $61,900."
Frank grimaced. That was not a small sum. "I'll pay for the manual in a month's time."
"We also offer free delivery services to your door if you are interested. It'll arrive before you get home." Isaac suddenly said while packaging Frank's purchase.
Frank's eyes narrowed. "And how do you know where I live?"
Isaac replied offhandedly. "I don't. The shop takes care of it, not me."
That didn't really placate Frank, if anything it made him more paranoid. Unfortunately for him however, it was already established that there was nothing he could do if Isaac wanted to harm him.
"I'll take it."
"Well then, have a good day, Frankie." Isaac gave him a two finger salute as everything on the counter disappeared with a pop.
Frank left the shop and Isaac went back to passing his time by productively waiting for his next customer.
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